KORNILOV, LAVR GEORGIEVICH Russian soldier was born on July 18, 1870 in Ust-Kamenogorodsk, Siberia, his father being a Cossack officer. He entered the army, and was in 1892 commissioned and posted to the Turkistan ar tillery brigade. He devoted himself to service in Turkistan, whence he undertook journeys into Afghanistan, Chinese Turkistan, Persia and Baluchistan. He saw service as a staff officer in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and subsequently spent four years (1907-11) as Russian military attache in Peking. In the World War Kornilov commanded an infantry division in Galicia. He himself was captured and imprisoned in Hungary, but he managed to escape, reaching Russia in the autumn of 1916. He was at once appointed commander of the XX. Army Corps.
At the beginning of March 1917, with the outbreak of the Revolution, Kornilov was appointed to command the troops of the military district of Petrograd; these he found in such a de moralized state that he asked to be relieved and sent to the front, and at the beginning of May he was made commander of the VIII. Army. Appointed by Kerensky supreme commander-in
chief, Kornilov presented his programme enforcing discipline in the army. It was, however, rejected; and this was the beginning of a split between Kerensky and Kornilov, and in the struggle between them that ended in the outbreak of Sept. 8-12 Kerensky gained an apparent victory, and Kornilov was interned in Bikhov. On his release after the November revolution, Kornilov assisted Gen. Alexeyev in forming the Volunteer Army in which he took a command. On March 31, 1918 he was killed in the Caucasus by the bursting of a shell.