Kolchak & Russia's Civil War (All Parts)

**Sanitized Transcript:**

November 1918. In Western Europe, the four-year conflict of World War One is drawing to an end. But across the former Russian Empire, a new conflict has broken out—a civil war that rages from Central Europe to the Pacific and will claim an estimated nine million lives. Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and their new Soviet Republic battle for survival against their many enemies—collectively known as the ‘Whites’. The Whites’ great hope: their newly-appointed ‘Supreme Ruler of Russia’—Admiral Alexander Kolchak. He is a war hero, a man of duty and discipline, who believes above all in service to the motherland. Millions look to him to restore order and stability in Russia.

This is the extraordinary tale of the life and death of Admiral Kolchak—Russia’s only ‘Supreme Ruler’.

The Arctic Ocean. 1900. The Russian scientific vessel ‘Zarya’ sails east on a voyage of discovery to the outer fringes of the Russian Empire. The expedition leader is Baron Eduard von Toll, a renowned Russian explorer and geologist. He intends to explore the Arctic Ocean and discover ‘Sannikov Land’—a near-mythical landmass rumored to lie north of the Novosibirsk Islands. Among his crew is 26-year-old naval lieutenant Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak. Kolchak had been a brilliant naval cadet, but service aboard the Petropavlovsk, one of Russia’s newest battleships, had bored him. He had a passion for scientific discovery and oceanography, and a thirst for adventure. When Baron Toll asked him to join his expedition, he eagerly accepted.

The dawn of the 20th century is an age of intense imperial rivalry and scientific exploration. Russia, under the autocratic reign of Tsar Nicholas II, seeks to modernize and learn more about its vast eastern territories. Toll’s expedition is part of this process and proves as dramatic as any tale in the annals of polar exploration. Toll was a deeply ambitious leader and expert geologist but knew little about the sea. His ship, Zarya, was in poor condition and ill-suited for long voyages in the ice. Nevertheless, the expedition spent two years exploring the frozen coast, ice floes, and islands of Russia’s Arctic north.

In May 1902, frustrated by his failure to find Sannikov Land, Toll made a dangerous decision. With Zarya trapped in sea ice, he set off with three men, traveling by sled to reach Bennett Island. Zarya broke free of the ice a month later and set off to collect him. However, facing impenetrable ice and running out of coal, the Zarya had to turn back. Toll and his team were stranded. Lieutenant Kolchak had distinguished himself as a key member of the expedition and a loyal comrade to Baron Toll. He was determined their leader should not be abandoned.

Returning 3,500 miles overland to St. Petersburg, Kolchak helped to organize a rescue mission. His plan seemed insane: to reach Bennett Island without a ship, using only sleds and small boats. But in the absence of better options, his proposal was approved. Kolchak postponed his own wedding to return to the Arctic and begin preparations. On May 5, 1903, Kolchak’s 17-man rescue expedition set off across 600 miles of snow and dangerous, shifting pack ice. Traveling by a combination of dog-sled and whaleboat, it took three grueling months to reach Bennett Island, where they found no sign of Baron Toll—just an abandoned campsite and a note dated October 26, stating they had provisions for 14 to 20 days. No sign of Toll or his three companions was ever found.

Despite its failure, Kolchak’s daring rescue mission won him national fame and the Imperial Geographical Society’s highest award, the Konstantin Medal. It also earned him the nickname Kolchak-Poliarnyi—Polar Kolchak. Returning to Yakutsk in January 1904, Kolchak learned that Japan had attacked Russia’s Far Eastern base at Port Arthur, and war had been declared. Here was an opportunity for action and the service to the motherland that Kolchak craved. He immediately requested a transfer to the front.

The world expected Russia—a great imperial power—to easily defeat Japan. However, the war proved a frustrating and humiliating experience for Russia’s military, leading to a political crisis at home. There was little Lieutenant Kolchak could do to change the tide of war, bottled up with Russia’s Pacific Fleet in Port Arthur. He nevertheless served with distinction and courage. As commander of a small, aging destroyer, his main role was laying mines at sea. In December 1904, one of his mines sank the Japanese cruiser Takasago. But the repetitive nature of his duties bored Kolchak, and he was dogged by ill health.

In December 1904, the Japanese got close enough to Port Arthur to shell Russian warships with their land-based artillery. Ship by ship, Russia’s Pacific Fleet was sent to the bottom. Days later, Port Arthur surrendered. Kolchak was among the 25,000 Russian prisoners, though as a sick and wounded officer, he was repatriated a few months later and returned to his wife in St. Petersburg. The war had been a demoralizing affair for Russia and for Kolchak personally, though he received several medals for his leadership and bravery.

In 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sparked an international crisis. Austria-Hungary accused Serbia of responsibility for the crime and planned to retaliate. This caused Nicholas II to mobilize Russia’s army to support Serbia, a Slavic ally. In response, Austria’s ally Germany declared war on Russia. Soon, all the great European empires were at war. That summer, as the Russian army blundered towards disaster in East Prussia, 39-year-old Captain Kolchak took command of a destroyer flotilla in Russia’s Baltic Fleet.

Kolchak was described in an official report as ‘an outstanding officer in every respect… firm character… well-mannered, very disciplined.’ Now in the Baltic, he and his flotilla would enjoy notable success, despite the overwhelming superiority of the German navy. Once more, mine warfare was the Russians’ favored tactic. In the early days of the conflict, Kolchak’s flotilla alone laid 6,000 mines in the Gulf of Finland, effectively shielding the Russian capital from attack by sea. Kolchak went on to direct a series of bold night operations, laying mines on the approaches to enemy ports.

In 1916, Kolchak was promoted, becoming the youngest admiral in the Russian navy, with a new role—Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet. He arrived at his new headquarters in Sevastopol in July, accompanied by his wife Sofia and their six-year-old son. The couple had lost two children in infancy. Across the Black Sea, Kolchak faced Russia’s old adversaries, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. He quickly adopted an aggressive strategy, laying mines off the enemies’ coast and providing naval support for Russian operations near the Caucasus.

His great hope was to launch an operation to capture the Bosporus Strait, which would be a decisive blow against the Ottomans and open up a sea route to Russia’s western allies. Russia’s first Naval Infantry division was created for this task and placed under Kolchak’s command. However, the operation would never happen. It remained a dream—beyond Russia’s capabilities. Nevertheless, Kolchak’s success in the Black Sea made him famous once more—a celebrated war hero at a time when Russians were desperate for good news.

In March 1917, protests against food prices and the sacrifices of the war erupted on the streets of Russia’s capital, Petrograd. It was the start of a revolution. The news took a few days to reach the Black Sea Fleet, 1,000 miles to the south. Admiral Kolchak, determined to prevent unrest within his fleet, issued a proclamation: “I order all officers of the Black Sea Fleet and land forces entrusted to me to continue, firmly and unwaveringly, to fulfill their duty to the Emperor and motherland.” The very next day, Nicholas II abdicated the throne.

For Kolchak, it was a bewildering blow. Duty, discipline, loyalty to sovereign and motherland were all he knew. He foresaw chaos ahead. In contrast, most of his sailors celebrated the news of revolution in Petrograd. Their life was one of grim conditions and brutal discipline—finally, here was a chance to overturn that regime. In Sevastopol, sailors elected their own Soviet council and formed their own committees. Initial demands included renaming every ship that carried an imperial name. Discipline and respect for authority began to collapse.

Kolchak maintained a high tempo of military operations to keep his men occupied but privately talked of facing ‘the disgrace of a senseless mutiny in wartime’. For three months, he held the fleet together with firm leadership and careful compromises with his sailors. But Bolshevik agitators were at work among the men. They wanted the war ended immediately and Tsarist officers like Kolchak removed from command. In June, the crew of his flagship confronted the Admiral, demanding that all officers be stripped of their sidearms and swords. To avoid bloodshed, Kolchak agreed. But rather than hand over his own ceremonial sword, he hurled it into the sea, declaring, “Even the Japanese, our enemies, let me keep my weapons. You will not have them now.”

A few days later, Kolchak resigned his command and traveled to Petrograd. His wife and son remained in Crimea; he would not see them again. Kolchak had already publicly denounced the reforms of Russia’s new Provisional Government, which he believed were destroying the military. Now the story of his defiance in the face of mutiny made headlines across Russia. Kolchak’s reputation among Russian conservatives was sky-high. They even wondered if he might be the military leader the country needed to restore order. Such whispers alarmed Russia’s Provisional Government.

The new Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, may have seen Kolchak as a potential rival. He met with Kolchak and informed him that he was to be sent abroad as part of a military mission to the western allies. In truth, it was what Kolchak himself described as ‘a form of political exile.’ That summer, Kolchak sailed via Norway to Britain, then to the United States. He met with President Wilson and senior US naval officers. But plans for meaningful military cooperation between Russia and the allies were clearly going nowhere.

In San Francisco, Kolchak accepted an invitation to return to Russia to enter politics as a candidate for the Kadets—Russia’s last non-socialist political party. But in Japan, en route home, he received shocking news: there had been a second revolution in Russia. The Bolsheviks had seized power, and Lenin was now in charge. Kolchak was appalled by the October Revolution of 1917. He despised Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who soon renamed themselves the ‘Russian Communist Party’.

Kolchak’s course of action was clear: “As an admiral of the Russian fleet, I considered our allied commitment to the war against Germany to remain in full force. The only form in which I could continue my service to the motherland, which was now in the hands of agents and traitors, was to join the war effort against Germany on the side of our allies.” Kolchak offered his services to the British. They initially planned to send him to Mesopotamia but soon backed him for a much larger role.

With fighting still raging on World War One’s Western Front, the allies were desperate for Russia to rejoin the struggle against Germany. This meant removing Lenin and the Bolsheviks from power, who that July executed Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family. Therefore, as civil war engulfed Russia, the allies would back the anti-Bolshevik forces, known as ‘the Whites’, against the Bolsheviks, the ‘Reds’. The British now put forward Admiral Kolchak as a man who could unify and lead White Russian forces in the Far East—a proposal that met with widespread support.

In September 1918, Kolchak arrived in Vladivostok. Here he learned that anti-Bolshevik groups had recently met in Ufa and established a new ‘Provisional All-Russian Government’. This was effectively a continuation of the Provisional Government that had been swept aside by the Bolsheviks. Therefore, it had little support from Kolchak and other conservatives—who blamed the Provisional Government for leading Russia into chaos in the first place. That month, the advance of Bolshevik ‘Red Army’ troops forced the Provisional Government to abandon Ufa and retreat to Omsk. Kolchak traveled 2,800 miles by train to join it.

On November 5, 1918, after much discussion, he agreed to become the Provisional Government’s Minister of War and Navy. Two days later, Kolchak formed a General Staff and went to the front to assess the situation. Across Russia, the military situation was incredibly complex. White Russian forces were scattered on Russia’s periphery. General Boldyrev commanded 180,000 Provisional Government troops on the Omsk front. General Denikin’s Volunteer Army in southern Russia had around 50,000 troops. The Northern Russian Government, a small White Russian enclave, had just 6,000 troops. They were supported by Allied contingents, mostly in support and training roles.

The Allies’ most important contribution was sending arms, ammunition, and supplies via Russia’s sea ports. Then there was the Czechoslovak Legion, about 50,000 strong, on the Omsk front. The Legion’s story was unique. The unit, made up mostly of Czech volunteers, had been fighting alongside the Russians on the Eastern Front against the Germans. When the Bolsheviks took over and made peace with Germany, the Legion received permission to travel by rail to Vladivostok, to then travel by sea to France. However, the Bolsheviks changed their mind and tried to disarm the Czechs, who fought back.

The Legion was now stranded in Russia but held key points along the Trans-Siberian Railway—the crucial east-west transport and supply route. To further complicate the picture, Russia’s Civil War raged alongside several national wars and independence struggles in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and elsewhere. Russia’s White forces—fragmented both geographically and politically—faced the resources of Lenin’s Bolshevik state, controlling Russia’s major cities, industrial centers, and transport hubs, with around 800,000 troops under its command.

The challenging military situation did nothing to ease political tensions among the Whites. They included, at one extreme, left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries who’d led the February Revolution; at the other extreme, right-wing conservatives who wanted to restore the monarchy. This latter group had no more time for socialists and provisional governments; they believed only a strong leader could save Russia now. On November 18, they made their move.

Three hundred Cossack troops rode into Omsk and arrested all the Socialist Revolutionary delegates they could find. The Provisional Government was abolished by its own executive, the Council of Ministers. It then moved to elect a new ‘Supreme Ruler of Russia’, who would wield complete dictatorial power. The man they chose was Admiral Alexander Kolchak—a proven leader with a brilliant military record, widely respected and in close contact with the western allies. Above all, he was a man who shared their vision that only a return to order could save Russia from chaos.

Kolchak himself had not sought the position of Supreme Ruler, believing others were better suited. But duty had called, and he would answer. In November 1918, a coup among White forces in Omsk brought Alexander Kolchak to power as Supreme Ruler of Russia. The 44-year-old Admiral now wielded authority equal to that of a Tsar, with an absolute veto over all new laws. Despite his sudden elevation, Kolchak did not surround himself with luxury nor move into a palace. He continued to rent a town house in Omsk and kept a careful eye on his expenses.

He was joined in Omsk by his devoted mistress, Anna Timireva, who also worked as his translator. His wife and son, who he’d not seen in more than a year, were still in Crimea. As Supreme Ruler, Kolchak faced challenges on a scale difficult to comprehend. It soon became clear that he was neither a natural nor a sophisticated politician. His manner was stiff and severe; his sentences short and to the point. If he failed to get his way, he became frustrated and angry.

He clung rigidly to his own conception of honor—for himself and for ‘the motherland’. He was, however, extremely hard-working, well-mannered, and could be personally kind and generous. Kolchak’s first priority was to have his position as Supreme Ruler recognized—by the Russian people, the army, and other White Russian governments. Equally importantly, he needed recognition from the allies—primarily Britain, France, and the USA.

The previous week, the November 11 armistice effectively brought World War One to an end. And though fighting continued in many parts of Europe, the allies would now be able to send far greater resources to support the Whites. However, the allies no longer needed Russia to rejoin World War One; now, they were more interested in ‘regime change’—replacing the Bolsheviks with someone less hostile and more reliable. Initially, therefore, the allies were alarmed by the unexpected coup that brought Kolchak to power.

He immediately set out to reassure them in his first proclamation: “I will not go down the road of reaction or the ruinous path of partisanship. My main objective is to build a combat-ready army, to defeat Bolshevism and establish order, so that the people can freely choose the form of government they wish…” Whether Kolchak really wanted democracy in Russia would never be put to the test.

In White-controlled areas of Russia, the response to the new Supreme Ruler seemed broadly positive. Conservatives welcomed the prospect of a strong leader after so much chaos. But the reaction was not long in coming. The left-wing groups that the coup had forced from power—the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks—had not given up. They convened their own Constituent Assembly at Yekaterinburg—where Nicholas II and his family had been murdered by Bolsheviks just four months before.

This Assembly refused to recognize Kolchak’s new government and called for resistance. In response, the Supreme Ruler ordered local Czech troops to arrest all its members. Several were later killed during a revolt in Omsk, in which several hundred Socialist Revolutionaries were killed. Kolchak had shown himself unafraid to use his new dictatorial powers, and such firm action helped to shore up his position.

On the other hand, the Socialist Revolutionaries—his allies in the fight against the Reds until a few weeks before—were now among his most bitter enemies. They accused Kolchak of wanting to make himself Tsar, which they declared made him an even greater threat than the Bolsheviks.