Kolchak in life and in the cinema

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Do you remember how noisy the film "Admiral" was at our box office? The name of Admiral Kolchak sounded loud and noisy in the media. He is a handsome man, he is a talent, an innovator, a war hero, and an enviable lover …

Yes, there was an admiral-polar explorer, there was an admiral - an innovator of mines, but there was also a failed commander of the Black Sea Fleet, an admiral - a punisher in the vastness of Siberia, a shameful hireling of the Entente and a puppet in their hands. But the creators of the books, the film and the TV serial are silent about that, as if they do not know.

In the spring of 1917, Vice Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, threw off the shoulder straps of the Tsarist era and put on a new uniform that had just been installed by the Provisional Government of Russia. But this did not save him from the decree of the Sevastopol Council of Deputies on his dismissal.

On June 6 of the same year, he was out of work, in July he went to America, from there to Japan. There he decided the question of admission to service in the British Navy and in early January 1918 went to the Mesopotamian front. But already from Singapore he was returned by the Intelligence Department of the British General Staff, he was sent to the exclusion zone of the Sino-Eastern Railway. There was the management of the road, the failed government of autonomous Siberia, the Cossacks of the atamans Semyonov and Kalmykov, numerous White Guard officer detachments, which were not subordinate to anyone and did not recognize anyone, fled there. Kolchak was introduced to the board of the Chinese Eastern Railway, was appointed head of the security guard, and his task was to unite the disparate military formations and rush into Russia "occupied" by the Bolsheviks. As before, he sewed on the admiral's shoulder straps, but wore boots, breeches and an army jacket.

Alexander Vasilyevich did not succeed, he did not fulfill the task. In early July 1918, with his beloved Anna Timireva, he left for Japan, ostensibly to negotiate with the chief of the Japanese General Staff on joint actions. He lived in a small town, "improved his health" in a resort town. But not for long. He was found by the English General A. Knox, who headed the Russian Department of the British War Office. Their meeting ended with the admiral agreeing, with the help of England, to "recreate the Russian army in Siberia." The general happily reported to London: "… there is no doubt that he is the best Russian to carry out our goals in the Far East." Pay attention, reader, not to the goals of the Russian state, not to its people, but to their English goals! Entente!

In mid-September, the admiral, accompanied by General A. Knox and the French ambassador Regnault, arrived in Vladivostok. By that time, Soviet power from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean had been overthrown by the Czechoslovak corps and local White Guard formations. On October 14, Alexander Kolchak arrived in Omsk, he was immediately introduced to the government of P. V. Vologodsky as a military and naval minister. On November 8, accompanied by an English battalion under the command of Pol forge J. Ward, he went to the front, visited Yekaterinburg, near Ufa. On November 17, the admiral returned to Omsk, and on the night of November 18, the military overthrew the power of the Directory, while, as Socialist-Revolutionary D. Rakov wrote in his Paris memoirs, a terrible orgy broke out on the banks of the Irtysh - the deputies were beaten with rifle butts, stabbed with bayonets, chopped off with sabers. Alexander Kolchak was proclaimed the supreme ruler of Russia and the supreme commander in chief, on the same day he was awarded the rank of admiral. In a year and a half, this is the fourth time he changed his dress code!

Having overthrown Soviet power, the white army unleashed an unprecedented terror and mockery of the population. People did not know the ships.

The White Guards executed hundreds of people in Barnaul, they shot 50 people in the village of Karabinka, Biysk district, 24 peasants from the village of Shadrino, 13 front-line soldiers in the village of Kornilovo …, which could turn the victim's body into a piece of broken meat in a few blows. Lieutenant Gol'dovich and Ataman Bessmertny, who were active in the Kamensk district, forced their victims on their knees before execution, to sing to themselves a waste song, while girls and women were raped. The obstinate and rebellious were buried alive in the ground. Lieutenant Noskovsky was known for being able to kill several people with one shot. Drunken "their nobility" was taken out of the Barnaul prison by the leaders of the first Soviet power, MK Tsaplin, IV Prisyagin, MK Kazakov and MA Fomin, and executed without trial. Their bodies were never found, most likely, they were chopped up with sabers and thrown from the railway bridge in the Ob.

The brutal and senseless reprisals against people multiplied with the coming to power of Kolchak, with the establishment of a military dictatorship. In the first half of 1919 alone, more than 25 thousand people were shot in the Yekaterinburg province, in the Yenisei province, by order of General SN Rozanov, about 10 thousand people were shot, 14 thousand people were flogged, 12 thousand peasant farms were burned and plundered. In two days - July 31 and August 1, 1919 - over 300 people were shot in the town of Kamne, and even earlier - 48 people in the house of arrest in the same town.

At the beginning of 1919, the government of Admiral Kolchak decided to create special police detachments in the provinces and regions of Siberia. The companies of the Altai detachment, together with the companies of the "Blue Lancers" regiment and the 3rd Barnaul regiment with punitive functions, scoured the entire province. They spared neither women nor old people, they knew neither pity nor compassion. After the defeat of the Kolchakites, the Investigative Commission in the city of Biysk received terrible testimony about the atrocities: Ensign Mamaev in the village of Bystry Istok “tortured more than 20 families with martyrdom,” senior warden Lebedev openly boasted that he personally shot more than 10 people”,“a police detachment number of 100 people with five officers carried out executions, executions and violent robberies "in the villages of Novo-Tyryshkino, Sychevka and Kamyshenka Sychevskaya volost and in the villages of Berezovka and Mikhailovka Mikhailovskaya volost". In one of the documents, 20 guards of the special-purpose detachment are named and against each surname there are the words "flogged", "tortured", "shot", "shot a lot of peasants", "hanged", "tore", "robbed".

In the spring of 2000, 100-year-old police major P. Ye. Arkhipov, recalling his youth, told the journalist of the "Free Course" that when White Guards came to the village of Chekaniha in the Ust-Pristanskiy district of the Altai province, they shot 13 people at once. No way, no matter what. They dragged out people hiding in cellars and sheds and fired at them.

Such was the portrait of the era, such was the reality of those days.

Three years have passed, the writer Vladimir Svintsov published another book - "On the spearhead of the attack", he also talked about Pyotr Arkhipov, but in his village Chekaniha 13 people were shot not by the White Guards, but by the red partisans! Moreover, the forger is also philosophizing about the cruelty of the partisans!

And this is the reality of our days - to rewrite history, distort it, keep silent or lie about the Soviet past.

The atrocities were sanctioned by the admiral himself. One of the directives of that time said: “The supreme ruler ordered to decisively put an end to the Yenisei uprising, without stopping before the most severe, even cruel, measures against not only the rebels, but also the population supporting them … connections to use the locals, taking hostages. If information is incorrect, the hostages will be executed, and the houses belonging to them will be burned … All men capable of fighting should be gathered into large buildings and kept under guard, and in case of betrayal, they will be mercilessly shot."

The victims of the "revival of Russia" in Altai have not been counted, none of the then authorities kept documents, and those that appeared were destroyed while fleeing.

American General W. Grevs, who took care of the Supreme Ruler, later admitted: “I doubt that it would be possible to indicate any country in the world over the last fifty years where murder could be committed with such ease and with the least fear of responsibility, as in Siberia in during the reign of Kolchak . And he also wrote:

"I will not be mistaken if I say that in Eastern Siberia for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements."

American intelligence officers M. Sayers and A. Kann in their book "The Secret War against Soviet Russia" wrote:

“Prisons and concentration camps were packed to capacity. Hundreds of Russians who dared not obey the new dictator hung from trees and telegraph poles along the Siberian Railway. Many rested in mass graves, which they were ordered to dig before Kolchak's executioners destroyed them with machine-gun fire. Murders and robberies have become a daily occurrence."

The aforementioned General W. Greves predicted:

"The atrocities were of such a nature that they will undoubtedly be remembered and retold among the Russian people even 50 years after they were committed." (W. Grevs. "American adventure in Siberia. (1918-1920)". Moscow, 1932, p. 238).

The general was mistaken! The people remember the cruelties of the Kolchak regime even now, after 90 years, although the new government and its mass media are diligently avoiding this topic.

Arbitrariness, lawlessness and cruelty of the authorities, executions and flogging, cancellation of labor legislation, constant requisitions in favor of the army, rampant crime, theft, counterfeiting, fraud, swindle, bribery, unrestrained rise in prices for everything and everyone quickly pushed the people of Siberia away from the new rulers. People did not want to drag the yoke of Kolchakism, and therefore whole families with a stake and a cudgel went to the partisans. On the territory of the Altai province in the fall of 1919, the 25,000th army of Efim Mamontov, the 20,000th division of Ivan Tretyak and the 10,000th detachment led by Grigory Rogov operated. In the regions liberated by the partisans, the power of the Soviets was restored, even partisan republics existed.

In order to suppress only the partisan army of Efim Mamontov, the Kolchak government transferred 18 thousand bayonets and sabers, 18 guns and 100 machine guns to Altai under the command of General Yevtin. Among them were the 43rd Omsk and 46th Tomsk rifle regiments, the Cossack regiment of the Blue Lancers, and the regiment of the Black Hussars. Armored trains "Sokol", "Stepnyak" and "Turkestan" also came here. But the partisans won the battles, overwhelmed by hatred of the masters-enslavers and their masters from overseas countries.

At the end of 1918, Kolchak's army managed to win a number of victories over the Red Army, they captured Perm and a number of other cities of the Western Urals, intending to reach Vyatka, Kotlas and unite with the White Guard and Anglo-American troops in the occupied North. But those plans were not destined to come true. The decisions of the VIII Congress of the RCP (b) on military issues made it possible to quickly strengthen the Red Army, raise discipline and increase the combat effectiveness of its units, mobilize all forces and means for victory on the Eastern Front.

In the summer of 1919, the offensive of the Red Army began, Perm was liberated on July 1, then the Kolchakites fled from the Middle Urals, and then … on October 25, units of the Red Army occupied Tobolsk, on October 30 - Petropavlovsk. On November 10, the Supreme Ruler and his government fled from the Siberian capital - Omsk. Since that time, Kolchak's army practically did not resist, it, demoralized, dying without glory and feats of arms, continuously rolled along the Trans-Siberian Railway in a continuous avalanche, losing thousands of people killed, wounded and sick. Desertion, going over to the side of the partisans have become everyday and everyday occurrences.

Even when the threat of the surrender of Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk) was just looming, the 46th Tomsk and 43rd Omsk rifle regiments rebelled, killed their officers and went over to the side of the Altai red partisans. Following the same example, the teams of the armored trains "Sokol", "Turkestan" and "Stepnyak" followed. On December 9, 1919, the entire Barnaul garrison - the 3rd Barnaul regiment, the "Blue Lancers" regiment, the 15th reserve Votkinsk regiment, the artillery battalion of the Naval Riflemen, a special-purpose militia detachment, militia bodies - fled from the city, because from three sides to it partisan regiments approached. He fled, despite the order of General V. O. Kappel to hold the Barnaul-Biysk region at all costs. An attempt to blow up the railway bridge across the Ob was stopped by the underground workers of Barnaul, led by Pavel Kantselyarsky, to whom the entire company to protect the bridge had already passed.

In the Tomsk-Krasnoyarsk regions, the Siberian army of Lieutenant General Anatoly Pepelyaev did not become - part of it was destroyed by the partisans A. D. Kravchenko and P. E. Shchetinkin, most of it decomposed and "melted". Krasnoyarsk province and part of Irkutsk, as one of the officers put it, "literally burned in the fire of partisanship." Not so much the Red Army as the people in the rank of partisans hammered the White Guard, as they say, in the tail and mane. The remnants of the Pepelyaevites of 500-600 people were added to the 2nd Army, but that was also defeated. No more than 40 thousand White Guards from a huge army ran up to Transbaikalia across snow-covered and frosty Siberia.

Due to the threat of the offensive of German troops, in order to concentrate and more reliable protection, in May 1918 the Soviet government ordered to transport gold, silver, platinum and other valuables to Kazan from Moscow, Petrograd, Tambov, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. And on August 7 of the same year, Kazan, unexpectedly for Soviet power, was captured by Czechoslovak troops, supported by the White Guards. The entire gold reserve of the RSFSR was in their hands. Although on November 18 power in Siberia passed to the Supreme Ruler, Admiral Kolchak, the gold remained in the jurisdiction of the Council of Governors of Departments - he did not trust the Admiral. But this did not last long. On December 3, all members of the Council were arrested by General V. O. Kappel, some of them were shot. Admiral A. V. Kolchak became the sole manager and trustee of Russia's gold reserves. However, the Supreme ruler ordered a complete inventory of the riches he had received only in May 1919. From that month until the end of the year, he spent 11, 5 thousand poods of gold (37 percent of the Omsk revision). And how much he spent before the revision is still unknown.

The United States sent 600,000 rifles, hundreds of guns and thousands of machine guns to the army of Admiral Kolchak. England supplied two thousand machine guns, 500 million rounds of ammunition. France donated 30 aircraft, more than 200 vehicles, and Japan - 70 thousand rifles, 30 guns and 100 machine guns. The entire army of the ruler of Siberia was dressed and shod from someone else's shoulder. At first, everything was written off for spending on the purchase of weapons, ammunition, military equipment from the invaders, for the maintenance of the army, officials and the repressive apparatus. But this turned out to be far from the case.

The British received 2883 pounds of gold, the French - 1225, and the Japanese - 2672 pounds of gold. It is not known how many poods the Yankees took to them, but it has recently become known that gold was also transported to foreign banks. Created, so to speak, an airbag. This is another essence of the meanness of the authorities headed by the admiral. Only later, after fleeing from Russia, the White emigres, so that the Soviet government would not seize the banks, transferred money to the accounts of private individuals. In London, about £ 3 million was credited to K. E. von Substitution, in New York 22.5 million dollars - to the account of S. A. Uget, in Tokyo over 6 million yen - to the account of K. K. Miller.

Alexander Kolchak generously endowed his foreign patrons and allies. When the commander of the Czechoslovak corps, Radol Gaid, was traveling abroad on a special train, he received 70 thousand francs in gold from the admiral! The admiral did not pull these francs out of his own pocket!

On November 9, 1919, a train with a gold reserve departed from Omsk with the letter "D", it followed the train of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. But on the way he was pursued by continuous accidents: either another train crashed into him, and even at the same time explosions thundered, then some of the cars were unexpectedly uncoupled, then he made “forced” stops in deserted places. Ataman G. S. Semyonov stopped the "golden echelon" for several hours, and despite the admiral's formidable demands for an explanation, he did not provide it. Meanwhile, he stole 711 boxes with valuables worth 70-90 million rubles in gold. The ataman of the Ussuri Cossacks, Esaul I. M. Kalmykov, took 36 poods of gold to Manchuria. Brothers Victor and Anatoly Pepelyaevs loaded the steamer "Permyak" with gold and sent them to their native Tomsk, but it did not reach its destination. Until now, there are documents and testimonies that parts of "Kolchak's treasures" are hidden in the vastness of Siberia. They are searched for in the Kemerovo, Tomsk and Irkutsk regions, in the north of Kazakhstan and the Tyumen region, in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the Transbaikal region and at the bottom of Lake Baikal, in the Sikhote-Alin caves, and in foreign countries. But…

The white army plundered, stole, gave away, hid, took out billions of gold rubles of the Russian treasury abroad, while the country was in ruin, hunger and poverty. They would have taken with them the remaining treasury, but the partisans of the Baikal region did not allow them. In March 1920, 18 wagons of the "golden echelon" returned to Moscow; boxes and bags contained gold and other valuables worth 409,625,870 rubles 86 kopecks.

In Nizhneudinsk, the train of the Supreme Ruler was detained for a long time. Despite the admiral's indignation, the allies promised to send the train only after the main stream of Czechoslovak echelons had passed. Trains with White Czechs stretched from Krasnoyarsk itself. They seized 20 thousand cars, 600 cars with "war booty" were specially guarded, and the white government of Siberia did not know what was in them. To promote their trains, the Czechs often took steam locomotives from ambulance trains, from trains with refugees. Kolchak's power did not extend to them. As well as the advisers - the French General M. Jeannin, the American General W. Greves and Admiral O. Knight, the English generals A. Knox and D. Ward.

On December 21, an anti-White Guard uprising broke out in Cheremkhovo, the next night - in the suburbs of Irkutsk … Soon the White Guard power was overthrown in the settlements of Zima, Tulun, Nizhneudinsk … On January 5, 1920, the underground Political Center announced the transfer of all power to it. The power of the dictator of Siberia ordered to live long.

The admiral agreed to ride in a separate carriage of the echelon of the Czechoslovak troops. The protection of 500 people immediately went to the Bolsheviks. Unexpected betrayal of her so shocked the admiral that he turned gray overnight. The car of the Supreme Ruler, where he was assigned only one small compartment, was shamefully attached to the tail of the first battalion of the 6th Czech regiment.

The Irkutsk Provincial Committee of the Bolsheviks began to negotiate with the Political Center on presenting the command of the interventionists with a demand to extradite Admiral Kolchak, his chairman of the government, V. N. Pepelyaev, and the republic's gold reserves. Otherwise, the partisans threatened to blow up the Circum-Baikal railway tunnels, and the workers - not to provide coal, firewood or water. The interventionists did not have a choice; it was not part of their plans to substitute their backs for the soldiers of the Red Army.

On January 15, 1920, at the Innokentyevskaya station, an assistant to the Czech commandant entered the carriage and announced that the admiral was being handed over to the Irkutsk authorities. The supreme ruler clutched his head with his hands.

- Does Jeannin know about this? He asked, recovering quickly. And when he received an affirmative answer, he concluded: - So the allies are betraying me.

Yes, they surrendered it, as they say, with giblets, in order to save their skins.

The dictator of all Siberia, the chairman of his government and several people close to them were taken to prison. On January 21, the Investigative Commission began interrogations, the leaders of White Siberia were awaiting trial. On February 6, the interrogation continued, and on the outskirts of the city, the workers' squads fought a stubborn and unequal battle with the vanguard of the most desperate officers, who demanded the extradition of the admiral.

Given the complexity of the situation, Gubrevkom, without completing the investigation, issued a resolution: “The former Supreme Ruler, Admiral Kolchak and the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Pepeliaev, should be shot. Better to execute two criminals who have long deserved death than hundreds of innocent victims."

They were shot at 5 am on January 7, 1920, on the banks of the Ushakovka River, a tributary of the Angara. The corpses were lowered into the hole.

Admiral Kolchak was presented with power, as the people say, "on a silver platter." By chance he received the entire gold reserve of Russia at his disposal. All the Entente countries helped him, and not only with weapons, ammunition and equipment. In Siberia, in addition to the White Army and the Czechoslovak corps, an American corps, three Japanese divisions numbering 120 thousand people, a Polish division, two British battalions, a Canadian brigade, French units, a Romanian legion of 4,500 people, several thousand Italians, a regiment of Croats, Slovenes and Serbs operated, a battalion of 1300 Latvians. Dark! Horde!

But in just one year of his reign, the admiral managed to raise against himself the majority of the population of Siberia. With mass executions and lawlessness, the invasion of foreigners pushed the good-natured and peace-loving peasants from the Urals to the Far East to take up axes and pitchforks and join the partisans. He brought an army of hundreds of thousands to demoralization, decay, mass desertion and going over to the side of the partisans and the Red Army.

Well, what kind of "talent" do you need to lose the army, territory, and state treasury with an unprecedented speed? Such would-be generals, in fact, are seated on the dock!

But fate turned to him differently.

Admiral Kolchak was known as an experienced miner, and the miner, as you know, makes mistakes once. The admiral made his mistake in the pre-autumn days of 1918 in Japan, when he agreed to the head of the Russian department of the British Ministry of War, General A. Knox, to lead the "re-creation" of the Russian army in Siberia. The shots fired on February 7, 1920 was the inevitable explosion of a time bomb, a delayed explosion that cost him his life.

To erect monuments to him today, to hang memorial plaques is the greatest crime against people, past, living and future. Monuments to him have already stood for 90 years from the Volga to the Pacific coast in the form of thousands of grave crosses and pyramids with red stars, modest structures over mass graves.