Siberian Red

November 18th, one week after the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, Alexander Vassileyevich  Kolchak, formerly admiral of the Tsar’s Pacific fleet in Vladivostok, had established a dictatorship in Siberia, declaring himself ‘Supreme Ruler of All Russia’. His ‘war of liberation’ came at a terrible price.
    With the help of marauding bands of Cossacks, led by Atamans Semenov, Kalmykov and Rozanov, Kolchak went on the offensive.
    Semenov, who gave up his horse in favour of an armed train known as The Destroyer , operated in the area of Lake Baikal. In October of 1920, having committed numerous atrocities, Semenov’s troops fled across the border into Manchuria. Semenov himself escaped to Japan where, during the Second World War, he became an officer in the Japanese Army. Captured by the Russians in 1945, he was hanged as a war criminal in 1946.
    Kalmykov, operating in the Ussuri Region, was equally guilty of atrocities, the most notable of which was the hanging of Red Cross personnel inside box cars in the city of Khabarovsk. So outrageous were Kalmykov’s acts of violence that even his own Cossacks refused to carry out his orders. Kalmykov escaped to China and was shot in the early 1920s.
    Rozanov, meanwhile, enacted a policy of killing a tenth of the population of every town he passed through and of wiping out entirely any town which offered resistance.
    In an alliance brought about in part by the fact that Kolchak now controlled their only means of escape, the Czechoslovakian forces became merged with Kolchak’s army. In recognition of the Czechoslovakians’ fighting reputation, Kolchak placed Czech General Gaida in overall command of his troops.
    By the summer of 1919, Kolchak’s army had reached the city of Kazan. And they were not alone. The White Army of General Deniken was on the outskirts of Moscow, while the army of General Yudenich was approaching St Petersburg.
    This was the moment when, had the Allies chosen to act, they might have tipped the balance against the Reds. Instead, they remained paralysed by indecision.
    With increasing momentum, the Reds fought back. By the autumn of 1919, the White Armies were either destroyed or in retreat.
    On November 14th, Kolchak was forced to abandon his headquarters in Omsk. He began a retreat which lasted through the winter, and cost the lives of thousands of his followers.
    In an attempt to make scapegoats of the Czechoslovakians, Kolchak fired General Gaida. Adding to the already confused situation, Gaida responded by creating his own army, which he named the Siberian National Directorate. Gaida, who was by now both anti-Bolshevik and anti-Kolchak, began openly recruiting in Vladivostok, which resulted in a gun battle between his soldiers and those of General Rozanov. This culminated in a massive shoot-out at Vladivostok railway station on November 17th, 1919, bullet holes from which can still be seen today on the main station building.
    In that same month, seeing that the situation was hopeless, the British garrison departed.
    Faced with imminent defeat, Kolchak stepped down from power on January 4th, 1920. On the 7th, he placed himself in the protective custody of his old allies, the Czechs. The responsibility for this safeguarding fell to the 6th Rifle regiment, under the command of General Janin.
    Hoping to reach the safety of the coast, where he might find asylum among the Allied expeditionary forces stationed in Vladivostok, Kolchak got as far as the city of Irkutsk before being halted by soldiers of a local government calling itself the Socialist Political Centre.
    Although the Czechoslovakians, with over 13,000 men, eight field guns and an armoured train at their disposal, could easily have defeated the Irkutsk garrison, these soldiers had placed mines in tunnels through which the Czechoslovakian convoy would have to pass in order to reach the coast.
    The Socialist Political Centre made the Czechoslovakians an offer – hand over Kolchak and we will let you proceed. There was one other thing they wanted, and that was the Tsar’s Imperial Gold Reserves. These had been originally been hidden in the city of Kazan, but had since found their way into the safekeeping of the Czechoslovakians.
    Faced with the possibility of never seeing his newly created homeland, Janin gave in to the demands of the Irkutsk garrison. On January 15th, 1920, Kolchak and the gold were handed over.
    On January 30th, after a trial lasting one day, in which