Background
Dukhonin was born on December 13, 1876 in the Smolensk Governorate.
Dukhonin was born on December 13, 1876 in the Smolensk Governorate.
He received his commission after graduating from the Aleksandrovsky Military College in 1896. He completed the course at the Russian General Staff Academy in 1902, and served as an intelligence officer in the years before World War I.
Following the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, Dukhonin rose rapidly. After commanding a regiment, he returned to staff positions. By the summer of 1916, having been promoted general, he served as deputy chief of staff for the southwestern front. In August 1917, he took over as chief of staff for this portion of the Russian defense perimeter. The course of the Russian Revolution, however, elevated Dukhonin to a short-lived national prominence in the fall of 1917.
The forty-one-year-old general accepted the post of chief of staff for the entire Russian army in late September. With Aleksandr Kerensky, the nominal commander in chief, Dukhonin stood as the effective head of the Russian army as it entered the final months of its role in World War I. Mayzel finds Dukhonin a representative of the moderate Left segment of the officer corps, especially of the elite General Staff graduates. Hoping at once to preserve the army's fighting abilities and to continue the war against the Central Powers, Dukhonin also wished to come to some accord with the revolution and its demand for democratization and reform of the military system.
The army, of course, was already changing no matter what Dukhonin chose to do. It was shrinking for one thing partly through deliberate demobilization, more through widespread desertion. The entire basis of military service was being altered by the government. Voluntary service was becoming the norm; and the army was being reorganized into ethnically homogeneous units.
When the ultimate crisis came in early November, Dukhonin was totally in the dark. On November 5 Kerensky did not call on Dukhonin, but rather appealed to individual army commanders to come to his aid in Petrograd, where a Bolshevik move was imminent. After Lenin and his followers had seized power, Dukhonin called on the rank and file to stand loyal to the provisional government. His words had no effect.
The bewildered young general managed to retain the appearance of authority for a few weeks. On November 14 he took over as commander in chief, replacing Kerensky. He avoided a direct challenge to the Bolsheviks and ordered his troops to stand fast No more military attempts were to be made to reverse the Bolshevik Revolution, like the November 12 Kerensky-Krasnov march on Petrograd that had ended in military failure at Pulkovo, just south of Petrograd. Dukhonin could hardly have failed to realize that his troops paid little attention to anything he said.
On November 21 events reached the flashpoint. Lenin ordered Dukhonin to open truce talks with the enemy at once. The general stalled for a day. His senior officers were willing to support his refusal to obey, but the rank and file of the army was certain to explode in response to such a move. On November 22 Dukhonin received word from the new Bolshevik government that he was no longer in command.
It took over a week before Dukhonin's replacement could make his way to Mogilev. Ensign Krylenko took over as commander in chief of the Russian army. In his final hours of power, Dukhonin had permitted the release of five prominent generals held in loose custody since September. These leaders of the political Right had participated in the Kornilov coup and they included Kornilov himself. Krylenko's entourage of revolutionary soldiers grew enraged at this news. Shortly after their arrival at Dukhonin's command post on December 3, they slipped out of Krylenko's control and murdered Dukhonin.
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