From the A. F. KERENSKYS PREFACE TO THE KORNILOV AFFAIR.
Dear Friends,
I send you the stenographic copies of my fundamental statement on the Kornilov affair which have been saved from destruction, with supplementary remarks and explanations which I have now made. I place this manuscript at your disposal and ask you if possible to publish it, but exactly in its present form. This is necessary, though I myself see all its imperfections from a literary point of view. But this is not a literary production, not memoirs for history, not the fruit of my unfettered creative faculty. This is only a document, a bit of real life, a document which can give to those who are really anxious to discover the truth about the Kornilov affair, more information than a whole volume of memoirs, because, without forcing any one to form an opinion, it gives everyone the opportunity of acting on the lines of a commission of inquiry, of doing the work of such a commission himself, sorting out the most important facts of the Kornilov affair, and drawing his own conclusions about it.
To enable the reader to judge fairly is my only desire. My latest notes supplement the statement received by the Commission of Inquiry with additional matter which may in part have been forgotten by or unknown to those who will read the official report of my examination.
Certainly in these notes I have been unable to confine myself all the time strictly to the mere facts of the case, and to the narrow limits of the story of Kornilovs attempt, though I tried my best to refrain from all digression, and especially from argument and deductions. I tried to restrain myself because I found that for me at this moment any other language than that of facts and documents was out of place.
Why? You know that better than I. You know better than I how the enemies of the February revolution, my enemies from the Right and from the Left, took advantage of the Kornilov affair, and how large was the number of those whose faith weakened before the persistent attacks of my slanderers. It was not for those who deliberately slandered, not for those who deliberately lied, that I wrote. It is impossible to convince them of anything. They themselves knew perfectly well that they were distorting and making a mockery of the truth.
I wrote for those who knew little or nothing, who in the end gave credence to what was so insolently described as truth in the Kornilov affair. I do not want to convince them. Let them, dispassionately and calmly, after acquainting themselves with the facts, not from the words of others, but by their own reasoning, discover the truth for themselves if not of the whole Kornilov affair, at least of my connection with it.
It is not personal interest that urges me at this terrible time to think and to write of the Kornilov affair. No; I have seen and studied too many people, not to know the real value of popular love and hatred. At the time when I was at my height, and the crowd bowed before me, I quietly said to my friends: Wait, and they will come and smite me. So it always has been, and so it always will be. No personal motive, I say, but a public one impelled me to write....