RUSSIA: On this day: 7 February

Aleksandr Kolchak

On February 7, 1920, in Irkutsk, Siberia, the Bolsheviks executed Aleksandr Kolchak, one of the leaders of the White Movement and the so-called Supreme Ruler of Russia.

Before the October Revolution in 1917, Kolchak served in the Navy. In 1900–1903, he took part in a Polar expedition, headed by Eduard Toll. The expedition scoured the Arctic Ocean for the mysterious Sannikov Land, once seen from a distance by the merchant Yakov Sannikov. When Kolchak returned, the Russian Geographic Society decorated him with the medal “for an incredible and important geographic deed.”

Right after the expedition, Kolchak participated in the Russo-Japanese war and in the defense of Port-Arthur. His actions in Port-Arthur earned him another decoration – a golden saber with the inscription “For Courage”. At the beginning of the First World War, Kolchak conducted several successful military operations against the German fleet in the Baltic Sea, and in 1916 earned the rank of Admiral and became the commander of the Black Sea Fleet.

In February 1917, the bourgeois-democratic revolution happened. Nicholas the Second was dethroned, and the Provisional Government came to power. Kolchak embraced the revolution – he thought that it would help Russia to win World War I. However, when the socialist ideas reached the Black Sea Fleet, Kolchack’s subordinates rebelled against him, and it made Kolchak realize the threat of upcoming changes. “The way of revolution leads us to destruction. We should pay for it with our lands and our natural riches. Our country should lose the political independence and the outlying districts, and become so-called Moscovia,” he wrote.

In June 1917, the council of Sevastopol decided to disarm all the officers who were suspected of counterrevolutionary activities. This declaration applied not only to real weapons, but also to Kolchak’s golden saber too. When the representatives of the Soviets came to Kolchak for it, he threw the saber overboard: “If the newspapers do not want me to have this weapon, let it sink”. On June 7, he resigned from the Navy.

Three weeks later, divers found the saber and returned it to Kolchak with a new inscription on it: “To the knight of honor, Admiral Kolchak, from the Union of the Army and Fleet Officers”.

In August 1917, Kolchak headed a delegation to the US. He learned about the October Revolution on his way back to Russia, in Yokohama, Japan. In addition, the Bolsheviks had made peace with Germany. To Kolchak, that peace seemed humiliating. He stayed abroad, tried to join the British army to continue the fight against Germany, and then commanded the security of the Russian railroads in Manchuria, China. In 1918, he decided to return to Russia and join the Volunteer Army in Siberia to fight the Bolsheviks.

On October 13, 1918, Kolchak came to Omsk, Siberia, where the united anti-Bolsheviks government was based, and became the military minister. On November 18, the council of ministers chose Kolchak to be the Supreme Ruler of Russia. In his manifesto, he called the power he obtained “a heavy cross”.

Kolchak controlled Siberia, the Far East and the Urals. Britain and France – the countries of Entente (the Russian Empire’s allies in World War I) – recognized Kolchak’s government, as did Anton Denikin and Nikolay Yudenich, the main leaders of the Russian anti-Bolshevik White movement.

In 1918, Kolchak’s forces occupied the Siberian city of Perm and the city of Izhevsk, but then, after a series of losses, the Red Army took control of the Ural Mountains and commenced military activities in Siberia. Kolchak, being an experienced sailor, was not used to conducting warfare on dry land. In addition, the Siberian peasants, who had received freedom from the Bolsheviks, were afraid of Kolchak’s government, thinking he would take their land away. Thus began the peasant uprisings.

One of Kolchak’s ministers, Aleksey Budberg, described Kolchak as fair, honest, but too far-out to be the leader. He was not aware of what was going on around him, and that was one of the reasons for the so-called “White Terror” – army troops who had gone out of control and tortured, robbed, and killed civilians.

On November 14, 1919, the Red Army occupied Omsk, but Kolchak was nowhere to be found. He escaped to Irkutsk on November 10, and earlier, on October 31, the train with the gold reserve had headed there. Members of the Czechoslovak corps secured it.

The Czechoslovak corps was created in 1917 in Russia. It consisted of Czechoslovak immigrants and prisoners of war, and was headed by the council situated in Paris. In January 1918, the Czechoslovak corps tried to leave Russia, but the Bolsheviks forbid it, so the corps rose against the Bolsheviks and joined the White Movement.

Kolchak’s new addition, however, betrayed him. On December 27, 1919, at the Nizhneudinsk station on the way to Izhevsk, the representatives of Entente met the train with 40 carriages of gold and the train, carrying Kolchak. They made the Supreme Ruler of Russia abdicate, arrested him and placed the gold under the control of the Czechoslovak corps. The corps delivered the gold to the Bolshevik government and in exchange received the right to leave the country.

On February 7, 1920, the Bolsheviks executed Kolchak in Irkutsk. His body was thrown into the Angara River. Kolchak was considered a villain in Soviet times, but nowadays some Russians think of him as a hero. To this day, Aleksandr Kolchak is considered one of the key figures of Russian history.

View Article on RT