The Kerensky Offensive was a major Russian offensive on the Eastern Front of World War I which occurred from 1 to 19 July 1917. The offensive, named for the its planner and the war minister of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, was a colossal failure, leading to the disintegration of the Russian armies fighting the Germans and Austro-Hungarians and ultimately resulting in the loss of Poland and the Baltics to the Central Powers.
Background[]
In summer 1916, the Imperial Russian Army achieved its greatest success of the war in the Brusilov Offensive, but then political upheaval ensued. General Alexei Brusilov inflicted a heavy defeat upon the Austro-Hungarian army in Galicia in June 1916, but fighting continued into the autumn, by which time Russian losses were severe. The defeat of Romania by Germany in August-December 1916 further weakened Russia's military position. The hardships endured by Russian soldiers and civilians, and distrust of the czarist regime, led to an uprising in Petrograd in March 1917 and the abdication of Czar Nicholas II. A Provisional Government took over the Russian war effort, but its authority was contested by the Petrograd Soviet (council), representing revolutionary soldiers, sailors, and workers.
Offensive[]
The Russian decision to launch a major offensive in summer 1917 was a huge gamble. In the ranks of the army, morale and discipline were close to collapse. Soldiers' committees, set up in the wake of the revolution, contested the authority of unpopular officers. In the capital, Petrograd (St. Petersburg), antiwar feeling was rife. The Provisional Government, in contrast, was fully committed to playing its part in the Allied war effort. It was receiving substantial funding from Britain and France, in return for which the Russian army was expected to undertake major military operations.
In May 1917, the Provisional Government shifted to the left, with more representatives of socialist parties. Alexander Kerensky, until then the only socialist member of the government, became Minister for War. One of his first acts was to appoint General Alexei Brusilov as army commander-in-chief. Not only had Brusilov commanded Russia's most successful offensive of the war the previous year, but he was also broadly in sympathy with the revolution, seeking to work with soldiers' committees rather than against them.
Planned offensive[]
A Russian Provisional Government poster urging the people to continue the war
Kerensky and Brusilov agreed to mount an offensive that could be presented as a liberation struggle, turning the revolutionary energes of the Russian people against German imperialism. It would, they hoped, restore army morale and unite the people behind the government. Kerensky toured the trenches, making stirring speeches that celebrated the Russian army as the freest military force in the world. The Russian middle classes, enthused by patriotism, formed volunteer units and also headed for the front. Female volunteers were allowed to form Women's Battalions of Death, combat units that were meant to shame men into continuing the fight.
Tired of war[]
The notion that Russian soldiers might fight with greater enthusiasm for the revolution than they had for the czar was wildly overoptimistic. Disaffection among ordinary soldiers was deep-rooted. On many sectors of the front, mutinies and desertion were common. Bolshevik propaganda advocating immediate peace found a ready audience in the trenches. Most soldiers were tired of a war that seemed pointless. Mainly peasants, they wanted to go back to their villages to farm the plots of land promised to them by the new government.
Brusilov focused the offensive in Galicia, the scene of his great success the previous year, with subsidiary attacks in the center and north of the Russian front. The scale of the operation was smaller than in 1916 because many units were not in usable shape. Launched on 1 July, after a two-day preliminary bombardment, the offensive made some initial gains, with several miles of ground taken. The Germans, however, had already transferred divisions from the Western Front to meet the well-publicized attack. The Russian advance stalled after two days. In many places, reserves refused orders to relieve the frontline troops. As the German and Austro-Hungarian counterattack got under way, Russian troops fled in a chaotic retreat that degenerated into mass desertion.
Spiraling crisis[]
Military disaster at the front was accompanied by political disturbances in Petrogrand, known as the July Days. Demonstrators calling for the overthrow of the Provisional Government were suppressed by Kerensky with the aid of loyal military units. The Bolsheviks were blamed for the protests, and their leader, Vladimir Lenin, fled to Finland to avoid imprisonment. Tightening his grip on power, Kerensky became prime minister, while Brusilov, paying the price for the failed offensive, was replaced as commander-in-chief by General Lavr Kornilov.
Kornilov took command of Russia's disintegrating army. On 1 September, the German General Oskar von Hutier launched an offensive at Riga on the Baltic, using new infiltration tactics. The German forces easily defeated the demoralized Russians, taking Riga in just two days. The battle at Riga was the last serious fighting on the Eastern Front. Hutier's forces began advancing on Petrograd, but quickly realized it was pointless. The Russian state and its army were falling apart.
Aftermath[]
The failure of the Kerensky Offensive helped send Russia into a political and social meltdown. After the Russian defeat at Riga, Kerensky dismissed General Kornilov, who was alleged to have been planning a military coup. To defend himself, Kerensky relied on the armed support of revolutionary workers and soldiers in Petrograd. He released Bolshevik leaders from prison, including Leon Trotsky.
In November, the Bolsheviks ousted Kerensky and set up a revolutionary government. They sought an armistice with Germany and accepted a punitive peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Civil war then broke out between the anti-Bolshevik White and the Bolshevik Red armies.