In a special resolution the Provisional Government condemned Gutchkov's action in "resigning responsibility for the fate of Russia," and appointed Kerensky Minister of the Army and the Navy. I do not know how the Army received this appointment in the beginning, but the Soviet received it without prejudice. Kerensky was a complete stranger to the art of war and to military life, but could have been surrounded by honest men; what was then going on in the Army was simple insanity, and this even a civilian might have understood. Gutchkov was a representative of the Bourgeoisie, a Member of the Right, and was distrusted; now, perhaps, a Socialist Minister, the favourite of the Democracy, might have succeeded in dissipating the fog in which the soldiers' consciousness was wrapped. Nevertheless, to take up such a burden called for enormous boldness or enormous self-confidence, and Kerensky emphasised this circumstance more than once when speaking to an Army audience: "At a time when many soldiers, who had studied the art of war for decades, declined the post of Minister of War, I--a civilian, accepted it." No one, however, had ever heard that the Ministry of War had been offered to a soldier that May.
The very first steps taken by the new Minister dissipated our hopes: the choice of collaborators, who were even greater opportunists than their predecessors, but void of experience in military administration and in active service;[50] the surrounding of himself with men from "underground"--perhaps having done very great work in the cause of the Revolution, but without any comprehension of the life of the Army--all this introduced into the actions of the War Ministry a new party element, foreign to the military service.
A few days after his appointment Kerensky issued the Declaration of the rights of the soldier, thereby predestining the entire course of his activity.
On May 11th the Minister was passing through Moghilev to the Front. We were surprised by the circumstance that the passage was timed for 5 a.m., and that only the Chief-of-Staff was invited into the train. The Minister of War seemed to avoid meeting the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. His conversation with me was short and touched on details--the suppression of some disturbances or other that had broken out at one of the railway junctions and so forth. The most capital questions of the existence of the Army and of the coming advance, the necessity for unity in the views of the Government and the Command, the absence of which was showing itself with such marked clearness--all this, apparently, did not attract the attention of the Minister. Among other things, Kerensky passed a few cursory remarks on the inappropriateness of Generals Gourko and Dragomirov, Commanders-in-Chief of fronts, to their posts, which drew a protest from me. All this was very symptomatic and created at the Stavka a condition of tense, nervous expectation.