Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

NOTES5339The counter- revolutionary revolt of the bourgeoisie and thelandowners in August 1917, which was headed by the Commanderin-Chief of the Army, the tsarist General Kornilov. The plottersplanned to take Petrograd, destroy the Bolshevik Party, disperse theSoviets and set up a military dictatorship with a view to restoringthe monarchy. Kerensky, the head of the Provisional Government,took part in the plot, but when the revolt got under way he realisedthat he would be swept away with Kornilov and washed hishands of the whole business: be declared the revolt was aimedagainst the Provisional Government.It broke out on August 25 (September 7), with Kornilov sendingthe Third Cavalry Corps against Petrograd, where counterrevolutionaryorganisations were itching to go into action.The mass struggle against Kornilov was led by the BolshevikParty, which continued, as Lenin demanded, to expose the ProvisionalGovernment and its Socialist- Revolutionary and Menshevikaccomplices. The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party ralliedthe workers of Petrograd, and the revolutionary soldiers and sailorsto struggle against the mutineers. Petrograd workers swiftlyorganised Red Guard units and revolutionary committees wereset up in several places. The advance of the Kornilov troops wasstopped and their morale undermined by Bolshevik agitators.The Kornilov revolt was crushed by the workers and peasantsled by the Bolshevik Party. Under the pressure of the masses, theProvisional Government was forced to order the arrest and prosecutionof Kornilov and his accomplices on charges of organisingthe revolt. p. 2310Cadets (Constitutional- Democratic Party)—the leading party ofthe liberal- monarchist bourgeoisie in Russia, set up in October 1905.Its membership was made up of capitalists, landowners servingon local councils and bourgeois intellectuals. Among its moreprominent members were P. N. Milyukov, S. A. Muromtsev,V. A. Maklakov, A. I. Shingaryov, and P. B. Struve. The Cadetseventually developed into a party of the imperialist bourgeoisie.During the First World War they actively supported the tsaristgovernment’s foreign policy of aggrandisement. During the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February 1917, they tried to savethe monarchy; playing a keg part in the bourgeois ProvisionalGovernment, they conducted a counter- revolutionary policyopposed to the people’s interests.After the Great October Socialist Revolution they becamerabid enemies of Soviet power and took part in all the counterrevolutionarymilitary operations and the campaigns of the interventionists.After the defeat of the interventionists and whiteguards,the Cadets fled abroad to continue their anti- Soviet counter- revolutionaryactivity. p. 2311The Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petrograd was the place where theDemocratic Conference was convened.