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Admiral Aleksandr Vasilevich Kolchak gained a
reputation for energetic leadership and personal courage during his twenty-eight year
career in the Russian Imperial Navy. He was known for having a sharp scientific mind,
intense patriotism, and a strong devotion to duty. His subsequent political career as the
Supreme Ruler of Russia showed a great deal of the courage but very little of the
leadership. The lack of an effective leader and diplomat in the trying times of the
Russian Civil War was a major contributing factor in the defeat of his forces but was not
the only reason for the failure of the White forces.
Kolchak began the war as the commander of the Russian Imperial Black
Sea Fleet. After the Tsar abdicated in March of 1917, the navy was thrown into chaos. To
save the discipline and order in his fleet Admiral Kolchak swore allegiance to the
Provisional Government. When asked about it later, he said that he was "after all,
serving not one form of government or another but my country, which to me was above all
else." His answer showed a strong sense of patriotism in mother Russia and an
incredible sense of duty.
Kolchak’s patriotism can be traced back to his childhood and a
lifetime of duty to his country. He was brought up in a middle class family, the son of an
army major-general. He graduated from the Imperial Naval Academy with the highest honors
in 1894. He was awarded the empire’s highest scientific honor, the Constantine Gold
Medal, for the scientific work he did in the arctic. He used his extensive naval knowledge
to help reorganized the Imperial Admiralty; and he was an expert on naval mine warfare. He
had directed the laying of the minefields in the Gulf of Finland and later in German
waters. He had been promoted to rear admiral at the extremely young age of 43. A year
later he was promoted to vice admiral and given the command of the Black Sea Fleet. He was
at the height of a very promising military career when the Russian Revolution destroyed
the Imperial Russian Navy.
Erosion of the fleets discipline led to many of the ship’s
crews revolting against their officers. In The White Generals, Richard Luckett
describes most mutinies as the massacre of all ships officers in "gross and bloody
circumstances" perhaps because of the often brutal disciplinary measures of the
officers. Kolchak was only partially successful in keeping his Black Fleet operational.
Other fleets, often led by the larger ships with their larger crews, mutinied in March.
Several even went to the extent of putting themselves under the command of the Soviets.
Despite Kolchak’s meetings with the Provisional Government and cooperation with the
Sailor’s Soviets, Bolshevik agitators and the continual strikes in the ship-building
and repair yards finally took their toll and the fleet mutinied in June 1917, demanding
that the officers be disarmed. Kolchak assembled his crew on the deck and declaring that
the demand that the officers be disarmed was a personal insult, Kolchak hurled his sword
over the ships rail and into the sea ending his naval career and beginning a political
career that he was not prepared nor equipped to succeed.
Peter Fleming wrote in The Fate of Admiral Kolchak that he
believes there was a "Jekyll and Hyde" contrast between Kolchak the admiral and
scientist and Kolchak the dictator, the Supreme Ruler of Russia. As a naval officer, he
inspired loyalty in his men and superiors. He was honest and chivalrous, had a sense of
duty and personal honor, and was a true gentleman. Fleming admits right up front that it
is his purpose in writing to establish the circumstances of Kolchak’s failure as a
political leader and so draws a strong contrast between the ‘two’ Kolchaks by
emphasizing his widespread successes as a naval officer. Fleming is not alone in his view
that Kolchak was a fine military leader. Charles Weeks and Joseph Baylen call him one of
the "great tragic personalities of the Russian Revolution" and as having
"all the characteristics of an excellent naval officer" who experienced an
"almost meteoric rise in the Imperial Russian Navy." When Captain Geo Hunt
wrote The History of the Twenty-Seventh Infantry he considered Kolchak to be one of
the great men that Russia ever developed. This opinion was carried on by the regiment when
they named their new mascot "Kolchak."
After his dramatic resignation from the navy, Kolchak is portrayed by
Fleming as more of a pawn of the British than the future ruler of Russia. Kolchak’s
naval expertise earned him an invitation by the United States Navy to lead a small
technical mission to the United States in September 1917. He was on his way back to Russia
when he received news of the October Revolution. He sent a telegram to the British
government offering his services in any capacity, including that of an army foot soldier.
The British Foreign Office accepted his offer in late December 1917, but did not
effectively use his services for several months. Kolchak’s obvious command
experience and a "kingly quality... that made men eager to place authority in his
hands" made him a good choice to send to Omsk to help organize the White Russian
forces. A few days after he arrived in Omsk he was appointed as the Minister of War,
maintaining his close ties with the British. Fleming does not mention it but the fast
appointment was no doubt due to the British Military Mission’s commanding officer,
General Knox, giving an ultimatum to the council of ministers that unless Kolchak was
accepted as a member of the ministry, British aid would be cut-off. The British must
have had even greater plans for Kolchak since Colonel John Ward, one of the senior British
Army officers in Siberia, stayed with Kolchak to advise him and the 23rd Middlesex "Die-hards"
Infantry Battalion were assigned as Kolchak’s protection. Kolchak was the only
minister that was offered that protection by the British.
According to Fleming, Kolchak made one of his biggest mistakes just
after assuming office as the Minister of War. Earlier he had traveled in the same train
carriage to Omsk as a young Czech officer who had told him of the conditions in the Czech
legions. From this conversation Kolchak knew that the legions were going to leave the
eastern front. Fleming writes that Kolchak considered the legions a spent force and that
he did not consider the effects that had caused the legions to be exhausted and war weary.
He departed Omsk for a tour of the front lines in November 1917. During his trip he
expressed his rather poor opinion of the Czech legions, angering the Czechs. The British
High Commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, reported to his home office that Kolchak had spoken
most harshly of the Czechs and how he wanted them out of Russia as soon as possible.
Fleming considered Kolchak’s lack of understanding of the Czech’s plight a
critical mistake, one that would later cost him his freedom and ultimately his life.
Kolchak returned early from his inspection of the front lines in
mid-November. On the way back to Omsk, he stopped and spent several hours speaking with
General Boldyrev and then again several kilometers outside Omsk where he was approached by
several officers who wanted him to take over as the head of a new government.
Fleming states that he refused but events were proceeding without him
as the Directory was overthrown and the position of dictator was offered to Kolchak. He
goes on to point out that there was no way that Kolchak could have been involved in the
coup since he had returned from the front less than 36 hours before and he had no friends
or associates in Omsk to form a conspiracy. It is clear that he took this information only
from the transcript of Kolchak’s interrogation. In the transcript, Kolchak says that
stated that he could not have become the dictator because he did not have an army that
would have supported him as such. It is only human nature for Kolchak to have
minimized his initial role, to appear as though he was reluctantly elected into the role
of dictator instead of actively seeking to lead the counter-revolutionary government.
Kolchak could have been much more politically savvy than Fleming gives
him credit for in his book. It is true that he had returned from the front less than 36
hours but Fleming does not say that Kolchak cut his trip short to return to Omsk which
nicely eliminates the need to explain why and the implication that Kolchak did indeed know
about the impending coup. Jonathan Smele fills in some of the holes and explains that
while Kolchak was visiting the front he had a meeting with the very same young Czech
officer he had traveled to Omsk with. That officer, Gajda, later recalled that Kolchak had
stated that he was "fully resolved" to assume the mantle of dictator and had
asked for and received a pledge of Czechoslovak neutrality. Smele goes on to say that Ivan
Sukin, a trusted confidant of Kolchak, wrote in his memoirs that the only reason Kolchak
had visited the front was to ensure that the military officers were favorable to a
military government. . If this is true, Kolchak had the army he needed to
support him as dictator and he was much more politically aware than some historians give
him credit. He already knew that he had the full support of the British. Additionaly,
diplomats at the US State Department had been wanting a military man who could restore
order decisively.
During the meeting outside Omsk, where he was offered the dictatorship,
Kolchak argued that the position should be offered to General Boldyrev, the White Army
commander-in-chief. He could have been having second thoughts about accepting the position
as Smele states. His arguing against himself could have been for show if he had already
ensured that he would be elected by the council of ministers. In the end Kolchak received
ten votes to Boldyrev’s one regardless of whether he was a consummate politician or a
straight minded scientist and military leader out of his league. Fleming takes the latter
position and quotes a letter Kolchak sent to his wife soon after he became dictator.
Kolchak writes about "the terrifying burden of Supreme Power" and that he
thought of himself as ‘a fighting man, reluctant to face the problems of state
craft." Either way the British knew about the coup and had given it their approval,
provided there was no bloodshed. The evening that the coup was being discussed, Colonel
Ward deployed British soldiers around the government buildings in the Omsk and positioned
machine gun sections in all the approaches to the center of town. The first day of
Kolchak’s reign was foreshadowed by British and Cossack patrols through the city and
the first blizzard of the harshest winter in living memory.
Kolchak’s new government started with major problems, both
inherited and new ones caused by poor leadership and poor statesmanship. They faced a lack
of popular support and allowed development of pro-revolutionary bureaucratism in
government agencies. The Czech Legion had been fighting alongside the Russian army and was
now trying to move to Vladivstock. They represented an armed and battle tried foreign
armysitting on the Trans-Siberian railroad, growing more impatient by the day. The Czech
commander refused to acknowledge Kolchak’s authority and resigned, publicly declared
that for years the government had been fighting for democracy and now it was ruled by a
dictator. He claimed that the change in government had killed his soldiers. Foreign
governments were pressuring for reforms, eleven foreign expeditionary forces,
including American, British, French, Chinese, and Japanese troops were in control of vast
parts of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Japanese had a clearer agenda than the others
countries and their troops outnumbered all the rest of the allied forces added together.
Kolchak had made a poor impression with the Japanese government during his short stay in
Tokyo before he returned to Omsk. They considered him too independent and believed that he
took his job too seriously. The Russian Ambassador to Japan told once told him that he had
been too independent in dealing with the Japanese and that they considered him to be an
enemy. Japan also had their own agenda for the region and it did not include a strong and
stable government.
Japan’s involvement and interference contributed to many of the
problems that Kolchak faced. Kolchak did not help smooth the problems between his
government and Japan. One of his first actions in office was to send a message to Tokyo
telling them they would not garrison troops in eastern Siberian towns and that Japanese
businessmen in the Far East would not be getting any concessions. The Japanese
presence made it difficult for Kolchak to gain any popular support since the Japanese were
hated and feared by the population since the Russo-Japan War. The British Special
Commissioner, Mr. R. H. Bruce Lockhart had a lengthy interview with Trotsky in March 1818.
He sent a telegram to the British government calling any Japanese intervention in Siberia
the "most serious and lasting harm" that could be done with every Russian. The
Japanese were more than willing to demonstrate what type of harm could come to Russians.
Japanese soldiers routinely accompanied "pacification" patrols that were will
known for their violence and indiscriminate brutality. The biggest problem with the
Japanese was their funding elements in the army that did not support Kolchak or fight the
Bolsheviks, but practiced banditry and murder for personal profit. At one point the
Japanese government openly encouraged attacks against Kolchak by their paid bandits and
then the commander of one of the Japanese divisions announced that any measures taken
against those bandits would not be permitted and that he would not hesitate to use armed
force.
The army was one of the inherited problems for the new government.
Kolchak’s army was beset by individual greed, poor generalship, brutal discipline,
sheer banditry, and widespread insubordination. Many of the problems compounded each
other. The brutal leadership and the often brutal and bloody recruiting techniques that
filled the army with conscripts ensured that the soldiers would not fight with their
hearts and would run given the opportunity. In Armed Intervention in Russia, 1918-1922,
W.P. and Zelda Coates relate articles from a London Times correspondent. He
reported that the men in the army "did not want to fight" and did not know why
they were fighting. Poor discipline was not limited to the soldiers. Many of the
officers were hiding-out in the bars and restaurants of Omsk instead of fighting on the
front. That job, reported by the London Times, went to the NCOs. Officers were busy
"swindling the men of food and equipment. American and British officers came to the
conclusion that Kolchak’s swaggering officers were out of touch with their men and
cared little about the starving and unprotected soldiers living on the streets of Omsk.
General Knox estimated that there were more than 2,000 ranking officers living conformably
but didn’t appear to have a purpose. The abuse of power by individual officers
on such a large scale led to lack of supplies for the forces in Volga contributing to
their being incapable of action by late 1919.
Other officers were uncontrollable and their actions reflected directly
on Kolchak and his government. The most notorious of these was General Grigori Semenov.
Peter Fleming describes Grigori Semenov as a "strange, terrible man."
General Graves, the commander of the American forces in Siberia considered him to be a
"murderer, robber and a most dissolute scoundrel." Smele is not as kind.
He quotes a witness to the "inhuman cruelty" of Semenov’s inner circle that
Semenov would boast that "he could not sleep peacefully at night unless he had killed
someone that day." In just one three day period, Semenov had over 1,000 people
killed. Semenov slaughtered victims on the first day by gunfire, the second
day by the sword, and the third by poison and asphyxiation and finished with a grand
finale of burning the remaining victims alive. The allies had looked at his career before
the revolution, where he had apparently served with distinction as a Cossack leader and
was well decorated, and the fact that he had a small but effective fighting force that was
committed to fighting the Bolsheviks. Since he looked like one of the best hopes for
Siberia he was funded by the Americans, the Japanese, the French, and briefly by the
British. David Foglesong explains that diplomats in America had grown tired of the weak
Kernensky government and were actively looking for a strong military man who could restore
order and establish a stable government.
The truth about Semenov’s style of leadership was known but
ignored by the Washington officials. Allied observers had regarded Semenov as brutal, and
a trusted advisor to President Wilson warned that Semenov was a "reactionary military
autocrat ofthe old type" and that his men were not well liked by the Russian people
because they often committed "infringements of [the Russian people’s] personal
rights." The US even sent an observer to Manchuria and Siberia to report on
Semenov. The observer, David Barrows, was a professor serving as an intelligence officer
for the US Army. Barrows reported that he had found "the most promising
anti-Communist force" under Semenov. Later reports Barrows wrote encouraged a
positive image of Semenov, calling him "tolerably severe" although he had seen
seven suspected Bolsheviks executed in one night. Barrows was the same intelligence
officer that concluded in 1917 that America could control the forces in Siberia and use
them against the Bolsheviks just by controlling the supplies. Semenov was given support
from the highest levels of the US government. President Wilson ordered that a close watch
be kept on Semenov and any legitimate way to help him be found.
The initial, very elaborate, US plan was to have allied troops support
Kolchak’s and Semenov’s forces and the Czech Legion push the Bolshevik forces
back and establish a stable government in the region. In reality the forces under
General Graves operated without a clear set of instructions or rules. There was often a
conflict between the US State Department (who supported Semenov) and the War Department
(who was operating on a policy of neutrality). The US supplied arms and supplies to
Semenov even though the US forces had numerous conflicts and even pitched battles with his
forces. The British were similarly at internal odds with their policy. The French were
supporting the Czech Legion and did not trust Kolchak because of his close attachment to
the British. The Japanese were paying Semenov to fight the Bolsheviks and the British were
paying him not to. Britain was negotiating with the Soviet government in Moscow to have
Russia reenter the eastern front. The fact that they were funding a counter- revolutionary
army in Siberia did not inspire a lot of Soviet trust in the Allies. About the same time
the negotiations between the British and the Soviet government broke down, Semenov’s
true nature was beginning to be known. The image of patriotic hero and liberator was fast
being replaced with that of a bandit. Meanwhile, Semenov and his subordinates officers put
a stranglehold on supplies moving from Vladivstok to the front in the Urals, routinely
committed unspeakable atrocities against the population, took bribes and encouraged
corruption, and used the railroads as their personal transportation while they did it.
Smele considers one of the major causes of rural discontent with the
Kolchak government the brutal actions of Cossack bands led by Semenov and his associate
General Kalmykov. Certainly Kolchak’s demonstrated inability to control what Semenov
-- and the Japanese were doing in the Far East caused many people to associate the White
government with the horrors they saw from Semenov and others like him. General Graves had
the opportunity to meet both men and came away with the impression that the only
difference between the two men was that "Semenov ordered others to kill" while
"Kalmykov killed with his bare hands." Cossack bands rode into villages looting,
beating, abducting, torturing, and murdering villagers. Friends and relatives of loved
ones killed by the rampaging bands became instant converts for the Red partisan ideology.
A US Army Intelligence officer remarked that "a lot of people who did not necessarily
coincide with Bolshevik beliefs, and did not necessarily coincide with the other forces,
were obliged to take one of those two sides because the only two military forces existing
were of the two extremes."
At one point, General Kalmykov’s atrocities went so far that a
regiment of his Cossacks killed their officers and surrendered to US soldiers in
Khabarovsk. When asked what they were doing, they replied that they had mutinied and would
prefer to" die fighting in the streets" rather than serve under Kalmykov or any
of his officers again.
An eyewitness account written by a veteran of the 27th Infantry in
Siberia in a letter to the 27th Infantry’s commander in 1971 states that the Cossacks
were disarmed, fed, and given firewood while officers decided what to do with them.
Nick Hociota was the veteran that wrote the letter almost 50 years after he returned from
Siberia. This can account for his letter varying both in details and the broad issues from
the official regimental history. The letter puts Kalmykov arriving 3-4 hours after dark
with 2,500 Cossacks, and after a stand-off, Colonel Morrow turned over to him all the arms
and horses that the rebels brought with them. The regiments history is less dramatic.
Five-hundred deserters (the number increased to 800 in the next two days) were disarmed
and conducted to Krasnays-Retchka on February 1st. An assembly of the sixth Ussuri Cossack
citizens committee conducted investigations into the matter. In mid-March it disbanded
without making a decision and the deserters departed for their homes, taking their horses
with them. The arms were claimed by Japan who reported they had supplied them to Kalmykov.
The end result of both stories is the same, Kalmykov turned on the Americans and the
relationship between the US forces and those under Kolchak degraded further.
White forces were the not the only ones committing atrocities. John
Stephen explains in The Russian Far East, why there are more reports of White
atrocities than Red ones: The White atrocities were far more visible to American
forces so they were reported and because the victors write the history books. Red Russian
atrocities were purged from the records. One report that survives is that of a partisan
attack on the Japanese garrison of Nikolaevsk, near the mouth of the Amur river. The
partisan’s razed the garrison to the ground, slaughtering more than 6,000, men,
women, and children. Orders were even issued that every child over the age of five would
be killed, About 700 of the victims were Japanese.
Even the allied forces are not free from the charge of atrocities. The
Japanese were observed arresting five Russians without cause, marching them to a shallow
grave site, and being ceremonially decapitated by a Japanese officer with his sword. On
one occasion they leveled an undefended village using artillery. There are unconfirmed
reports from the Soviets that American forces committed numerous brutal raids, leveling
several villages, tortured and murdered pregnant women, and beat newspaper editors.
While the Soviet report, published in 1945, may have been purely for political purposes
there is at least some evidence that American forces attacked non-combatants near Kazanka
in revenge for an attack near the village of Romanovka on the Trans-Siberian railway where
Americans from the 31st Infantry were killed. The US forces would later name the battle
the "Romanovka Massacre." It was the bloodiest day for the US during its stay in
Siberia. Of the 74 men in the unit, 23 were killed or died of wounds and 20 were
injured. After these battles, General Graves reported to the Adjutant General office
in Washington D. C. that it had now become "bitter guerrilla warfare."
The movement of supplies to the soldiers was another critical
problem. The importance of the 4,000 mile long Trans-Siberian railway can not be under
emphasized. Control of the railroad meant control of the only major logistics and
communication line in the region. It also meant access to massive stockpiles of munitions,
food, fuel, coal, and other war supplies that the Allies had shipped to the ports of both
Archangel and Vladivstok. The US War Department estimated the tonnage of supplies sitting
in Vladivstok at 400,000 tons of steel, copper, brass, lead, barbed wire, rails,
automobiles and trucks, machine tools, and munitions, all worth over $1 billion. Mr.
Ole A. Bjonerud, one of the US Army officers and railroad experts that visited Vladivstok
in December 1917, kept a diary of his experiences. He wrote, "warehouses were loaded
to the roof and large piles of supplies piled outside sheltered from the weather by
tarpaulins. Some of those supplies have been here for over two years awaiting movement
over the Trans-Siberian Railroad."
The amount of supplies was more than sufficient. The problem lay in
getting the supplies from the port to the soldiers on the front. A commission of American
railroad experts had surveyed the rail lines between Petrograd and Vladivstok before the
Provisional Government was overthrown. They found that most of the equipment was outdated,
in poor repair, and poorly managed. The vast majority of the railroad east of Omsk was
made of light weight rails. The inferior construction of the rails made it necessary for
thetrains to travel at slow speeds and with relatively light loads. In the winter the
intense cold froze watering points and burst pipes and boilers on train engines. Passenger
cars that ran out of fire wood or had heaters that failed resulted in passengers dying
from exposure. Policies that required trips to be no longer than 60 miles before turning
around so that the engineers "could be home every night" kept the railroad
operating at 30% to 40 % less than its capacity.
The chaotic conditions along the railway were another reason the
supplies were not reaching the front. Thousands of refugees, poor communication, Czech
control over parts of the railway, numerous allied sectors being run without central
guidance, and bandits like Semenov kept the railway and the telegraph lines disrupted.
Kolchak’s government failed to pay the railroad workers sometimes for up to 3 months
at a time and the railroad failed to maintain adequate stocks of coal along the routes.
Trains would often have to wait for days because there was not fuel for the engines. As
the Red Army moved closer to Omsk the westbound traffic that should have been carrying
reinforcements and supplies was stopped and those rails used for refugees fleeing the war.
What supplies that did get to Omsk were more likely to be warehoused than shipped to the
front. When Omsk was captured, with minimal fighting, the Red Army became the proud owners
of 3 armored trains, 3,000 wagons of military supplies, 40 artillery pieces, almost a
thousand machine guns and 5 million bullets that had been hoarded instead of being
transferred to the army that needed it.
Not all the blame for Kolchak government’s inability to win the
support of the people can be placed on incompetence of government officials, the
atrocities and violence of army officers or even on the fact that regular army officers
encouraged desertions by their degree of cruelty and summary justice to their own men.
Kolchak bears much of the responsibility. Peter Fleming says that Kolchak had "all
the attributes of a dictator except the will to dictate." A great deal of the
problems Kolchak faced were caused by his inability to select competent advisors and
commanders. This blame can be mitigated in a small way because he really did not have much
of a choice in the quality or quantity of the officers that rallied to his cause. The vast
majority were second and third rate officers that were walking testaments to the
corruption of the old Russian military bureaucracy. The Cossack type officer was dishonest
and greedy. Their idea of leadership was to beat or flog the men until they would fight
bravely. They believed that "salvation of Russia lay in the whip and only in the
whip: the whip in the barracks, the whip in the villages, the whip against the peasants
and, in particular the whip against the workers."
Kolchak tended to direct the ground war himself instead of delegating
it to a competent general. The soldiers in the armies were already prone to desert because
of theharsh brutality of the officers. Kolchak’s lack of a clear military strategy
and frequent reversals of tactics and especially continual changes in the chain of command
maintained the army in a constant state of flux. Kolchak began the offensive without an
adequate reserve force which kept units on the front for extended periods of time without
rest or resupply. In April 1919, facing drastic soldier shortages, Kolchak ordered that
all captured "Red" soldiers or deserters would be given retraining and
incorporated into the White army.
In reality Kolchak allowed his officers to practice mass executions,
torture, and inhumane treatment because he did not have the will to stop them. Jonathan
Smele relates that in one instance, observed by horrified British officers, starving
prisoners from the 3d Red Army were summarily executed as Bolsheviks. Other units were
stripped and thrown into overcrowded concentration camps. Abuse, overcrowding, cold, and
typhus soon killed off but a few. Those not put in camps were put on ‘Trains of
Death’ and spent months traversing up and down the Trans-Siberian railway Undoubtedly
the White leadership could have used many of these men in their own army, but even during
the White retreat in May-June 1919, the army continued its wholesale slaughter. Kolchak
knew of the attitude of the military toward the peasants and the workers and still chose
to authorized the army police powers. He then failed to control the brutal chaos that
resulted. Smele cites Kolchak’s Order Number 56 as giving military leaders the power
and authority to make arrests of any political opponents of the government. The order
instructed officers to "cut short the criminal work of these people by the most
decisive means" including military force. Kolchak clearly did not see what the
ramifications of issuing such an order would be. Officers that were already looking at
every order to see what personal benefit they could gain out of it now became more
independent and less likely to follow any order sent by the government. Kolchak’s
previous military background did not prepare him for what he was now doing. When he was in
the navy, his advisors would have been men who were trained, motivated, and sincere in
their careers. The advisor that could competently advise him on governing, politics, and
land warfare, for the most part, did not exist in his army or in his cabinet. Smele sums
it up by calling Kolchak’s advisors "a gang of political adventurers and
unscrupulous social climbers." Stress began to take its toll on Kolchak, affecting
his decision making and his ability to run the government. After recovering from a near
fatal attack of influenza and pneumonia he spent an amazing amount of time -- almost half
of his time in office -- touring the front lines. It must have been too difficult for a
man who had in essence spent his entire life in and around the military, not to portray
the image of the commander- in-chief and professional soldier. His real fault was in
naively trusting his unqualified advisors.
Kolchak’s policies and the widespread actions of the military
alienated the middle class, the workers and the peasants. Land reform had initially
reversed any gains that the peasants made when Siberia was briefly under Soviet rule. Many
of the peasants had already worked the land and had crops in. When any of the villages
refused to give the land back to the previous owner or landlord, the military attacked and
burned the village to the ground. A later policy was announced that the welfare of the
peasants was more important than any other constraints or considerations. Smele interprets
the new ruling as temporary and only put into place to facilitate the supply of food to
the army, to ensure production not for the benefit of the peasants. Widespread
grain requisitions, recruitment, and high taxes imposed by the government and by the army
had brutal methods of collection and conscription. Workers in factories and mines were
treated in much the same way. Despite often announced support for workers rights, Kolchak
issued orders to the army to prohibit work stoppages or even preparations for strikes.
Anyone arrested would be tried by a military field court, which of course means they would
be shot or otherwise executed. Smele writes that the military was increasingly dominate in
society. He quotes the government’s labor minister as saying that the military
considered the working class responsible for the conditions the officers found themselves
in. Under the Tsar the military officer has been a highly respected career. Since
the abdication of the Tsar and the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian government, the
warrior caste had lost much of its prestige and benefits.
Some of the blame for the fall of Kolchak government can even be placed
on the British government and the other allies for pushing Kolchak into the role of
Supreme Ruler. Much of the push was from General Knox who did not take into account
Kolchak’s weaknesses and accepted his credentials on the strength of naval
reputation, devotion to duty, and patriotism. Perhaps he was selected because he was the
strongest option. In Admiral Kolchak’s defense no one may have been able to control
the many various intrigues and political agendas, the insubordination of army officers,
and the lack of support by the population to win.
Kolchak was turned over to the Red Army by the Czech forces while he
was traveling eastward to Vladivstok. Peter Fleming believes that the allies had
sufficient strength to free Kolchak but chose not to. He even quotes Kolchak as his train
is being captured by Czech and Red Army forces, asking if the allies were now betraying
him. The Czech officers that informed Kolchak of his arrest stated that the orders came
from French General Janin to hand Kolchak over to the local authorities. Jonathan Smele
thinks that Fleming is wrong to have blamed Janin. The Czechs could have saved Kolchak but
did not wish to delay their railway evacuation or risk traveling the vast distance to
Vladivstok on foot in the middle of the Siberian winter. He goes on to add that with the
abuse (including orders to Semenov to stop the Czech’s movement eastward) they
received from Kolchak he wonders why they did not get rid of him before now.
The white government represented all that was unpopular with the
Monarchy. Kolchak by his inaction allowed the nepotism, corruption, brutality, greed, and
incompetence to spread and grow until it took on a life of its own and became
uncontrollable. Admiral Kolchak ended his ill-fated political career with the same courage
that he showed in Sevastpool Harbor when he threw his sword into the sea rather than
submit to the orders of those he thought beneath him. After being interrogated by the
Bolsheviks, he was led out into the cold Siberian pre-dawn for execution. True to his
nature he remained outwardly calm, even refusing a blindfold. After two volleys by a
firing squad his corpse was kicked over the embankment and through a hole in the ice into
the Angara River.
Much
Ado About Nothing: Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
World War I Document
Archive Kolchak's
Bio
Admiral Kolchak
Trans-Siberian Railroad Photo
Gallery
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