Lavr Kornilov was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Siberia, in 1870. After graduating from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Training Corps in 1892 he was commissioned and posted to Turkestan. He also studied at the General Staff Academy (1895-1898) before being assigned to espionage duties in Iran and India.

Kornilov was decorated during the Russo-Japanese War and served as military attaché in China from 1907 to 1911. On the outbreak of the First World War he commanded Infantry divisions on the Eastern Front. He was captured by the Austro-Hungarian Army in Galicia in 1915 but escaped the following year and was given command of the 25th Army Corps on the South-West Front.

When the Tsar abdicated a Provisional Government, headed by Prince George Lvov, was formed. Soon afterwards Kornilov was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Garrison. Kornilov wanted to use force to deal with the Bolshevik agitators in the Russian Army. Alexander Guchkov, the Minister of War, disagreed, and he was sent back to the Eastern Front.

Morgan Philips Price, a British journalist, saw Kornilov make a speech in August 1917: "A wiry little little man with strong Tartar features. He wore a general's full-dress uniform with a sword and red-striped trousers. His speech was begun in a blunt soldierly manner by a declaration that he had nothing to do with politics. He had come there, he said, to tell the truth about the condition of the Russian army. Discipline had simply ceased to exist. The army was becoming nothing more than a rabble. Soldiers stole the property, not only of the State, but also of private citizens, and scoured the country plundering and terrorizing. The Russian army was becoming a greater danger to the peaceful population of the western provinces than any invading German army could be."

Kornilov was appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian Army by Alexander Kerensky, the new Minister of War. The two men soon clashed about military policy. Kornilov wanted Kerensky to restore the death-penalty for soldiers and to militarize the factories. On 7th September, Kornilov demanded the resignation of the Cabinet and the surrender of all military and civil authority to the Commander in Chief. Alexander Kerensky responded by dismissing Kornilov from office and ordering him back to Petrograd.

Harold Williams, a journalist working for the Daily Chronicle, pointed out: "The Kornilov Affair has intensified mutual distrust and completed the work of destruction. The Government is shadowy and unreal, and what personality it had has disappeared before the menace of the Democratic Assembly. Whatever power there is again concentrated in the hands of the Soviets, and, as always happens when the Soviets secure a monopoly of power, the influence of the Bolsheviks has increased enormously. Kerensky has returned from Headquarters, but his prestige has declined, and he is not actively supported either by the right or by the left."

Kornilov now sent troops under the leadership of General Krymov to take control of Petrograd. Kerensky was now in danger and so he called on the Soviets and the Red Guards to protect Petrograd. The Bolsheviks, who controlled these organizations, agreed to this request, but in a speech made by their leader, Vladimir Lenin, he made clear they would be fighting against Kornilov rather than for Kerensky.

Within a few days Bolsheviks had enlisted 25,000 armed recruits to defend the city. While they dug trenches and fortified the city, delegations of soldiers were sent out to talk to the advancing troops. Meetings were held and Kornilov's troops decided to refuse to attack Petrograd.

Kornilov was arrested but he escaped and became one of the commanders of the White Army during the Civil War. Lavr Kornilov was killed in action during the siege of Ekaterinodar on 13th April, 1918.