Aleksandr Kolchak
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Admiral Kolchak |
Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Kolchak (Александр 'асильевич Колчак in Russian) (
November 4 (
November 16 NS),
1874 "
February 7,
1920) was a
Russian naval commander and later head of part of the anti-
Bolshevik White forces during the
Russian Civil War.
He was born in
St. Petersburg, the son of a naval officer. He was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval college in
1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion of the city. He was soon transferred to the
Far East, serving in
Vladivostok from
1895 to
1899. He returned to west and was based at
Kronstadt, joining the Polar expedition of Toll in
1900 as leader of one of the two groups. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902; the other group, including Toll, was lost. He took part in three Arctic expeditions and for a while was
nicknamed "Kolchak-Poliarnyi" ("Kolchak the Polar").
When the
Russo-Japanese War began, Kolchak was sent to
Port Arthur in March
1904. He commanded a
cruiser and won a valour medal. As the siege of the port intensified, he was given a land command. Later wounded, he became a
prisoner of war. His poor health led to his repatriation before the end of the war. He became one of the modernisers in the Russian military.
He was on the Naval General Staff from
1906 and joined the
Baltic Fleet on the outbreak of war in
1914. Initially on the flagship
Pogranichnik, he oversaw the extensive coastal defensive minefields and commanded the naval forces in the
Gulf of Riga. He was promoted to
Vice-Admiral in August
1916, the youngest man at that rank. He was also made commander of the
Black Sea Fleet with orders to counter the U-boat threat and plan an invasion of the Bosporus. As commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Kolchak was very successful at sinking Turkish colliars. There was no railroad linking the coal mines of eastern Turkey with
Constantinople, so Kolchak's attacks on the Turkish coal fleet caused the Turks much hardship. In 1916, in a model combined Army-Navy assault, Kolchak helped to take the Turkish city of
Trebizond (modern
Trabzon). After the
February Revolution, as the fleet descended into political chaos, he left the navy in June and travelled to
Britain and the
USA.
At the time of the revolution in November
1917, he was in
Japan and then
Manchuria. Kolchak was a supporter of the
Provisional Government and returned to Russia, through
Vladivostok, in
1918. Kolchak was an absolute supporter of the Allied cause against
Germany, and initially hearing of the Bolshevik coup on November 7, 1917, he offered to enlist in the
British Army to continue the struggle. Initially, the British were inclined to accept Kolchak's offer, and there were plans to send Kolchak to
Mesopotamia (modern
Iraq), but however
London decided that Kolchak could do more for the Allied cause by overthrowing the Bolsheviks and bringing Russia back into the war on the Allied side. Reluctantly, Kolchak accepted the British suggestions and with a heavy sense of foreboding, Kolchak returned to Russia. Arriving in
Omsk,
Siberia, en route to enlisting with the
Volunteer Army, he agreed to become a minister in the (White)
Siberian Regional Government. Joining a fourteen man cabinet, he was a prestige figure; the government hoped to play on the respect he had with the Allies, especially the head of the British military mission General
Alfred Knox.
In November 1918, the unpopular regional government was overthrown in a military
coup d'etat. Kolchak had returned to Omsk on
November 16 from an inspection tour. He was approached and refused to take power. The
Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) Directory leader and members were arrested on
November 18 by a troop of
Cossacks under
ataman Krasilnikov. The remaining cabinet members met and voted for Kolchak to become the head of government with dictatorial powers. He was named Supreme Ruler (
Verkhovnyi Pravitel), and he promoted himself to
Admiral. The arrested SR politicians were expelled from Siberia and ended up in Europe. The SR leaders in Russia denounced Kolchak and called for him to be killed. Their activities resulted in a small revolt in
Omsk on
December 22, 1918, which was quickly put down by Cossacks and the
Czech Legion, who summarily executed almost 500 rebels. The SRs opened negotiations with the Bolsheviks and in January
1919 the SR People's Army joined with the
Red Army.
Kolchak instituted a tough military dictatorship, imprisoning his opponents and forcing workers who had socialised their factories out. He saw his role in military terms – he needed a strong army, regular supplies, and victories, and he did what he saw as necessary to enforce the preconditions to this. He later claimed he "had absolutely no... political objectives... [but tried] only to create an army of the regular type" "...capable of victory over Bolshevism".
He was a political innocent and a patriotic idealist, awkward outside of military issues and with other people and always seeking the simplest explanations. "He does not know life in its severe practical reality and lives in a world of... borrowed ideas" recorded Aleksei Budberg, a contemporary official. Whatever his military successes, he was a poor and careless administrator, his government was notoriously corrupt, and, unchecked, representatives acting in his name did much harm.
Initially the White forces under his command had some success. Kolchak was uncertain about combat on land and gave the majority of the strategic planning to D. A. Lebedev and his staff. The northern army under the Czech
Rudolf Gajda seized
Perm in late December 1918 and after a pause other forces spread out from this strategic base. The plan was for three main advances – Gajda to take
Archangel, Khanzhin to capture
Ufa and
Perm and the
Cossacks under
Alexander Dutov to capture
Samara and
Saratov. Kolchak had put around 110,000 men into the field facing roughly 95,000 Bolshevik troops. Kolchak's good relations with General Knox meant that his forces were almost entirely armed, munitioned and uniformed by the British (up to August 1919 the British spent an official $239 million aiding the Whites, although Churchill disputed this figure at the time as an "absurd exaggeration").
The White forces took Ufa in March 1919 and pushed on from there to take
Kazan and approach Samara on the
Volga River. Anti-Bolshevik risings in Simbirsk, Kazan, Viatka, and Samara assisted their endeavours. The newly-formed Red Army proved unwilling to fight and retreated, allowing the Whites to advance to a line stretching from
Glazov through
Orenburg to
Uralsk. Kolchak's territories covered over 300,000 km² and held around 7 million people. In April, the alarmed Bolshevik Central Committee made countering Kolchak their top priority. But as the spring thaw arrived Kolchak's position degenerated – his armies had outrun their supply lines, they were exhausted and the Red Army was pouring newly raised troops into the area.
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Emblem of Kolchak government |
Kolchak had also aroused the dislike of potential allies including the
Czech Legion and the
Polish 5th Rifle Division. They withdrew from the conflict in October 1918 but remained a presence, their new leader
Maurice Janin regarded Kolchak as an instrument of the British and was pro-SR. Kolchak could not count on Japanese aid either; they feared he would interfere with their occupation of Far Eastern Russia and refused him assistance, creating a 'buffer state' to the east of
Lake Baikal under Cossack control. The 7,000 or so American troops in Siberia were strictly neutral regarding "internal Russian affairs" and served only to maintain the operation of the
Trans-Siberian railroad in the Far East. The American commander
William S. Graves personally disliked the Kolchak government, which he saw as royalist and autocratic, a view that was shared by the American
President,
Woodrow Wilson.
When the Soviet forces managed to reorganise and turn the attack against Kolchak from 1919 he quickly lost ground. The Red counter-attack began in late April at the centre of the White line, aiming for Ufa. The fighting was fierce as, unlike earlier, both sides fought hard. Ufa was taken by the Red Army on
June 9 and later that month the Red forces under
Tukhachevsky broke through the
Urals. Freed from the geographical constraints of the mountains, the Reds made rapid progress, capturing
Chelyabinsk on
July 25 and forcing the White forces to the north and south to fall back to avoid being isolated. The White forces re-established a line along the Tobol and the Ishim rivers to temporarily halt the Reds. They held that line until October, but the constant loss of men killed or wounded was beyond the White rate of replacement. Reinforced, the Reds broke through on the Tobol in mid-October and by November the White forces were falling back towards Omsk in a disorganised mass. The Reds were sufficiently confident to start redeploying some of their forces southwards to face
Anton Denikin.
Kolchak also came under threat from other quarters, local opponents began to agitate and international support began to wane, with even the British turning more towards Denikin.
Gajda, dismissed from command of the northern army, staged an abortive coup in mid-November. Omsk was evacuated on November 14 and the Red Army took the city without any serious resistance, capturing large amounts of ammunition, almost 50,000 soldiers, and ten generals. As there was a continued flood of refugees eastwards,
typhus became a serious problem.
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Postal stamp issued in 1919 with inscription "For United Russia - Supreme leader of Russia Kolchak |
Kolchak had left Omsk on the 13th for
Irkutsk along the
Trans-Siberian Railroad. Travelling a section of track controlled by the Czecho-Slovaks he was sidetracked and stopped, by December his train had only reached Nizhneudinsk. In late December Irkutsk fell under the control of a leftist group (including SRs) and formed a 'Political Centre'. One of their first actions was to dismiss Kolchak. When he heard of this on
January 4, 1920, he announced his resignation, giving his office to Denikin and passing control of his remaining forces around Irkutsk to the
ataman,
G. M. Semyonov. The transfer of power to Semenov proved a particularly ill-considered move.
It appears that Kolchak was then promised safe passage by the Czecho-Slovaks to the British military mission in Irkutsk. Instead, he was handed over to the leftist authorities in Irkutsk on
January 14. On
January 20 the government in Irkutsk gave power to a Bolshevik military committee. Kolchak was "investigated" before a commission of five men from
January 21 to
February 6. Following the arrival of an order from Moscow, he was summarily sentenced to death along with his Prime Minister, V. Pepelaev. They were executed by
firing squad in the early morning and the bodies were disposed of in a local river, the Ushakovka. The Red Army did not enter Irkutsk until
March 7, and only then was the news of Kolchak's death officially released.
Admiral Kolchak is a controversial historic figure in post-Soviet Russia. The movement "
For Faith and Fatherland" has attempted to rehabilitate his reputation. Two rehabilitation requests have been denied, by a regional military court in
1999 and by the
Supreme Court of Russia in
2001. In
2004, the
Constitutional Court of Russia returned the Kolchak case to the military court for another hearing. Monuments dedicated to Kolchak were built in St. Petersburg in
2002 and in Irkutsk in
2004, despite objections from some former Communist and left-wing politicians and former Soviet army veterans.
*
White movement*
Russian Civil War*
An essay on Aleksandr Kolchak, including a photo
