home Walls Why the Siberian peasantry opposed Kolchak. Why Siberian peasants hated Kolchak. Salvation under the Stars and Stripes

Why the Siberian peasantry opposed Kolchak. Why Siberian peasants hated Kolchak. Salvation under the Stars and Stripes

"Top Secret", No.1/402 Sergei Balmasov.
In 1919, in the Suchansky district of Primorye, the local population, irritated by extortion and violence from the whites, began to protest. But instead of dialogue, troops were sent against them, the commanders of which, not really delving into the causes of the rebellion, preferred to shoot the dissatisfied, and burn the most "restless" settlements.
However, this did not always happen. In at least three cases, the punitive detachments that arrived at the scene of the events, the members of which were looking forward to the massacre of the "Bolsheviks", were unable to do their job.
They stopped, amazed by the following spectacle: red flags fluttered over the settlements of the rebels, adjacent to the star-striped flag of the United States, under which the American invaders from the expeditionary force of General Graves were located, placing machine guns.
To the timid attempts of the White Guards to find out what the Americans were doing here, a discouraging answer was received: "We have come to help the people of Primorye defend their democratic rights." After standing in bewilderment for several hours waiting for the decision of their command, Kolchak's executors withdrew without fulfilling the instructions given to them.

And similar American interventions were repeated at least three times: in January, March-April and November 1919. In the latter case, the Americans protected the local insurgent White Guard garrisons from reprisals by the Japanese.
These incidents caused the most serious friction between the American and White Guard commands. It got to the point that Ataman Semyonov openly accused General Graves of Bolshevism, opposing them to his Japanese defenders.
Indeed, the comparison between the losses in Russia of the Americans and the Japanese clearly did not look in favor of the Japanese: the Yankees in the North and the Far East lost only 48 people in battles, while the Japanese in the Far Eastern outskirts alone lost more than 5,000.
It must be understood that such behavior of Graves was due not to "chivalrous" motives, but to the desire to prevent the strengthening of their Japanese competitors, who relied on local chieftains.
Nevertheless, the Americans, alien to the local population, turned out to be really closer to the peasants than "their own" Kolchak, who first brought the situation to a boiling point, and then tried to pacify the dissatisfied with force, committing such atrocities that could not leave indifferent the fighters of the American Expeditionary Force, many of whom were specially recruited from Russian-speaking emigrants.
For example, Lieutenant Walter Reming reported to his command that only on March 9, 1919, in the villages of Brovnichi and Gordeevka, he recorded the facts of the brutal murder after sophisticated torture of 23 people who were hiding from mobilization into the army or were relatives of such persons. And this was just one episode when the Americans kept whites from brutal reprisals.

No less colorful in this regard is the "case of the Shcheglov police", which began after, on the night of August 21-22, 1919, the Czechoslovak lieutenant Kauril helped the head of the garrison of the city of Shcheglov in the Tomsk province (today Kemerovo) to arrest almost the entire local Kolchak police in led by her chief Ozerkin.
This case was unique even for the dashing years of the Civil War, because, in fact, some Kolchak people opposed other Kolchak people, and even with the direct help of foreign invaders!
To investigate the events, the Minister of the Kolchak Ministry of Internal Affairs, Viktor Pepelyaev, sent Shklyaev, an official on special assignments, to Shcheglov. Contrary to expectations, having familiarized himself with the case on the spot, he not only did not take the side of his colleagues, but also supported the actions of the "revolutionaries".
As Shklyaev stated, "the policemen were arrested ... for their wrong actions. Those arrested are charged with murder, torture, extortion, bribery and other crimes ..." The investigation he started confirmed these accusations. Shcheglov's militiamen began their fight against "crime" with mass extortion of money from the population.
Shklyaev wrote that “on May 5-7 of this year, in the village of Dideevo, a village clerk and four citizens were arrested by the police for the fact that the society, according to the verdict, imposed taxes on those not assigned to their village. During the arrest, wearable clothes were taken away, the secretary was so flogged that the walls were splattered with blood," after which the detainees were released for bribes in the amount of 1,000-1,300 rubles."
At the same time, under various pretexts, the police arrested the most prosperous local residents in order to get more money out of them. And, as it turned out, "the police themselves initiated robberies under the guise of criminals and red partisans."

As follows from the documents, “flogging extended to arrested women, even pregnant women ... 17 bandits were brought from the Buyapakskaya village. Among them, 11 women. often became disabled or bedridden for at least a few days).
Three women were pregnant. Women were accused of having their husbands go to the Reds, and their property and houses were taken from everyone, although earlier they had publicly renounced any relationship with their husbands without any coercion. The treatment of those arrested was cruel. Policeman Ziganshin hit the arrested woman with the butt of a gun only because she began to give birth, in which he was inclined to see a simulation ... "
Meanwhile, impunity gave rise to more and more new crimes, which became more and more sophisticated and defiant. Thus, police officers who arrested local residents for no reason other than money often demanded intimacy from women they liked in order to release their relatives, and, according to the investigation, "usually it was carried out by frightened women."
Shklyaev testifies: "One arrested person was released for the bribe transferred to Ozerkin, and Berezovsky spoke out the right of the night with the red's wife ... He asked her to give the money and agree to what was proposed because of the unbearable torture."

The law enforcement officers did not stop before direct violence. So, as a result of the investigation conducted by Shklyaev, it turned out that in May 1919, near the pier on the Tom river near the village of Shevelev, Shcheglovsky district, “by order of the head of the 1st police station Kuzevanov, three peasant girls were delivered to the ship, one of whom, Anna Sheveleva, was was raped by policeman Voronin, and the other two were released only because they were menstruating."
However, there were more serious cases on the lists of acts of representatives of the local police. In particular, on the same day they shot "on suspicion of espionage, on the orders of the drunken Kuzevanov, the peasant Smirnov, stripped him and threw him into the river. His brother was beaten half to death."
For this, they were almost torn to pieces by the soldiers of the local Kolchak garrison, who witnessed this crime, according to the confession of his chief, Lieutenant Lugovsky, who openly threatened the law enforcement officers "to raise them with bayonets." According to him, this desire was strengthened in them after "on June 23, a peasant Alexander Dyukov was seriously wounded by a drunken policeman ..."
Shortly thereafter, the drunken passenger Anisimov, disguised as a Bolshevik, was "killed and robbed in front of the crowd by a policeman," although, according to Shklyaev's investigation, it was established that this was a murder in order to conceal the robbery. In addition, the policemen killed a circus actress after refusing to have sex with law enforcement officers.

Ozerkin himself did not yield to his subordinates, who in May 1919 committed the murder of the Shcheglovsky tradesman Novikov. This happened under the following circumstances: policeman Anokhin entered his house with the aim of robbery. Novikov, who was there, defending himself, disarmed him. The disgraced law enforcement officer complained to Ozerkin. He, having called Novikov, shot him dead through the front door.
Interestingly, the authorities standing above the policemen in the person of the manager of the Tomsk province B.M. Mikhailovsky came to the defense of such "guardians of order" as "ideological fighters against Bolshevism", at the same time trying to prove Shklyaev's "incompetence".
So, speaking about the murder of Anisimov, the governor justified this by saying that the deceased was "a Bolshevik agitator who agitated on the ship for Soviet power and, being arrested, was killed on the way while trying to escape."
In turn, in a letter to Pepelyaev about the murder of a worker Kolomiyets committed by policemen, he tried to make the latter a dangerous state criminal, "leading the preparations for the uprising", "killed while trying to escape." However, this version was not confirmed by the investigation, and further Shklyaev managed to establish that "Ozerkin had flogged the arrested Kolomiets to death."

Such behavior is quite understandable: protecting his subordinates (under Kolchak, the governor was subordinate to the minister of the interior, to whom, in turn, the local policemen were accountable), Mikhailovsky tried to shield himself. After all, what happened directly cast a shadow on him.
As Shklyaev established, in his actions Ozerkin indicated that he was acting with the approval of Governor Mikhailovsky. Which, however, was already clear, given how he defended his police subordinates in front of Pepelyaev.
Mikhailovsky tried in every possible way to prevent Shklyaev from investigating, and when he realized that "confidential conversations" with him had no effect, he complained about the inspector to his immediate superior, Pepelyaev.
He wrote to him that Shklyaev "exaggerated" the extent of the violations committed by his subordinates, which arose during the "active struggle of Ozerkin and his colleagues against banditry and red partisans", as a result of which they made numerous enemies.
Mikhailovsky also insisted that the people who fell at the hands of his bone-breakers were "notorious criminals." In addition, they included those who died from accidents. As an example, Mikhailovsky cited the death of the aforementioned circus performer, who died as a result of "a suicide established with certainty", while Shklyaev managed to prove that it was a premeditated murder.

And such crimes were not isolated cases, but reflected the general picture of the white terror unleashed against the population. Even when Mikhailovsky was pinned to the wall with evidence, he tried to justify his subordinates, pointing to "... the martyr role that falls to the lot of police officers, who are persecuted by the Bolsheviks in the first place with particular cruelty.
Under such conditions, they respond to the Red Terror with anti-Bolshevik terror. From this flow these "liquidations", "attempts to escape", etc.".
As a result, as Shklyaev reported, "... the villagers hid at the sight of the police no worse than from any bandit. The horror of the situation is that this mischief of the police was shifted to the head of the government" (Kolchakovsky)
According to the disappointing conclusions of Shklyaev, it was precisely this behavior of law enforcement officers that ultimately led to the very spread of Bolshevism that Mikhailovsky complained about.
In October 1919, two months before the capture of the Tomsk province by the Bolsheviks, Pepelyaev decided to "punish" Governor Mikhailovsky ... by removing him from his post, offering Shklyaev to take it.
However, the latter refused, realizing that he did not have the necessary managerial skills for this, and he was not particularly eager to indirectly assume responsibility for the actions of the previous manager. As a result, Mikhailovsky held his post until the arrival of the Reds.

It should be noted that reports of such crimes committed by policemen and representatives of the authorities in general were then massive and came literally from everywhere where the Kolchak people stood, which caused mass uprisings against them.
For example, the same Shklyaev, sent in December 1919 for an audit to the Irkutsk province, in his report to the Minister of Internal Affairs reported that almost all local police chiefs had committed serious malfeasance or were suspected of committing them.
As a result, those very prosperous Siberian peasants, who until recently were alien to any kind of politics, abandoned everything and went into the partisans. And this happened almost throughout the vast territory controlled by Kolchak.
Shklyaev, an official on special assignments who fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks in Irkutsk, remained to serve as the Reds in their internal affairs bodies. In January 1920, Governor Mikhailovsky managed to leave the rebellious Tomsk province and in 1923 to participate in the Yakut campaign of his former boss's brother, General A.N. Pepelyaev, during which he was captured and got off for his art and the "exploits" of his subordinates with a ten-year prison sentence.
His boss, Interior Minister Viktor Pepelyaev, was less fortunate: in February 1920, already the head of the Kolchak government, he was shot together with Admiral Kolchak in Irkutsk, before being shot, according to the testimony of its participants, he humiliatedly lay at the feet of the Bolsheviks, praying for mercy.
It is significant that when they and the former Supreme Ruler were taken to the ice hole on the Angara, the admiral asked in surprise why this was happening without trial, but he was immediately reminded that during his reign, mass executions were also carried out without any trial. So the boomerang is back.

"Red Gas" 1925. In the role of a Kolchak officer - former Kolchak officer Georgy Pozharnitsky.

From me:

Mannerheim in Leningrad, for his participation in the BLOCKADE was immortalized with a board. A monument to Kolchak was erected where he destroyed the most people. And after the rehabilitation of Vlasov, will they take up the rehabilitation of Hitler?

Blind Leaders of the Blind Documentary:

How and why did A. V. Kolchak come to Russia - a British officer since December 1917

Not everyone knows about this. It is not customary to talk about this now for the same reason that in the mention of the legendary A.A. Brusilov will never be mentioned that he became a red general. Sometimes in disputes about Kolchak they are asked to show a document with a contract. I don't have it. He is not needed. Kolchak himself told everything, everything was recorded on paper. Everything is confirmed by his telegrams to his mistress Timireva.

A very important important question is what brought the British officer to Russia. Especially in light of the fact that some senators and zealots of Kolchak's memory are in favor of erecting monuments to him :

“There must be places of worship, monuments to the heroes of the Russian Army who laid down their lives, well-being in the name of Russia, the Tsar and the Fatherland. A monument to Alexander Kolchak should appear in Omsk!”— © Senator Mizulina.

We will show that:

a) Kolchak really entered the service of the British crown;

b) Kolchak ended up in Russia on the orders of his new superiors. (At the same time, he did not aspire to Russia himself. Maybe he even hoped to avoid a visit.)

* * *

From the minutes of the meetings of the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry.

“... Having considered this question, I came to the conclusion that there is only one thing left for me - to continue the war all the same, as a representative of the former Russian government, which gave a certain obligation to the allies, I held an official position, enjoyed its confidence, it waged this war, and I must continue this war. Then I went to the English envoy in Tokyo, Sir Green, and expressed to him my point of view on the situation, declaring that I did not recognize this government. (remember these words -arctus) and I consider it my duty, as one of the representatives of the former government, to fulfill the promise to the allies; that the obligations that Russia assumed towards the allies are also my obligations as a representative of the Russian command, and that therefore I consider it necessary to fulfill these obligations to the end and wish to participate in the war, even if Russia makes peace under the Bolsheviks. Therefore, I asked him to inform the British government that I ask to be accepted into the British army on any conditions. I do not set any conditions, but only ask you to give me the opportunity to wage an active struggle.

Sir Green listened to me and said:

“I fully understand you, I understand your position; I will report this to my government and ask you to wait for a response from the British government.

Nevertheless, he had the opportunity to remain in the Russian Navy, there are many examples of naval senior officers, and the investigator draws attention to this:

Alekseevsky. At the time when you made such a difficult decision to enter the service of another state, even if it was an allied or former allied state, you should have had the idea that there is a whole group of officers who quite consciously remain in the service of the new government in the Navy, and that among them there are certain large figures ... large officers in the Navy who deliberately went for it, such as Altvater* . How did you treat them?

Kolchak. Altvater's behavior surprised me, because if the question was raised earlier about what political convictions Altfater had, then I would say that he was more of a monarchist. … And even more so I was surprised by his repainting in this form. In general, before it was difficult to say what political convictions an officer had, since such a question simply did not exist before the war. If one of the officers had asked then:

"Which party do you belong to?" - then, probably, he would have answered: "I do not belong to any party and do not engage in politics." (and now let us recall the words noted above about the non-recognition of the Bolshevik government, and carefully read the following -arctus )

Each of us looked in such a way that the government can be anything, but that Russia can exist under any form of government. You understand a monarchist as a person who believes that only this form of government can exist. As I think, we had few such people, and rather Altvater belonged to this type of people. For me personally, there was not even such a question - can Russia exist under a different form of government. Of course, I thought that it could exist.

Alekseevsky. Then among the military, if not expressed, there was still an idea that Russia could exist under any government. Nevertheless, when the new government was created, did it already seem to you that the country could not exist under this form of government?

<…>

Two weeks later, a reply came from the British War Office. I was first informed that the British government was willing to accept my proposal for enlistment in the army and asked me where I would prefer to serve. I replied that in applying to them to accept me for service in the English army, I did not put any conditions on it, and suggested that they use me in any way they found possible. As to why I expressed a desire to join the army and not the Navy, I knew the English Navy well, I knew that the English Navy, of course, did not need our help.

<…>

A.V. Kolchak - A. Timireva :

... Finally, very late, the answer came that the British government offered me to go to Bombay and report to the headquarters of the Indian army, where I would receive instructions about my appointment to the Mesopotamian front.

For me, although I did not ask for it, it was quite acceptable, since it was near the Cheriy Sea, where actions against the Turks took place and where I fought at sea. I therefore gladly accepted the offer, and begged Sir C. Greene to give me the opportunity to travel by boat to Bombay.

A.V. Kolchak - A. Timireva :

Singapore, 16 March. (1918) Met by order of the British government return immediately to China for work in Manchuria and Siberia. It found to use me there in the views of allies and Russia, preferably over Mesopotamia.

... In the end, on the 20th of January, after a long wait, I managed to leave Yokohama by boat for Shanghai, where I arrived at the end of January. In Shanghai, I went to our Consul General Gross and the English Consul, to whom I handed over a paper defining my position, asking his assistance to arrange me on a steamer and deliver me to Bombay to the headquarters of the Mesopotamian army. On his part, an appropriate order was made, but he had to wait a long time for the ship. …

When meeting with the first "whites" in Shanghai who came for weapons, Kolchak refuses to help, referring to his already new status and the obligations associated with it:

Then, back in Shanghai, I first met with one of the representatives of the Semyonov armed detachment. It was the Cossack centurion Zhevchenko, who traveled through Beijing, visited our envoy, then went to Shanghai and Japan with a request for weapons for the Semenov detachment. At the hotel where I was staying, he met with me and said that there had been an uprising against Soviet power in the exclusion zone, that Semyonov was at the head of the rebels, that he had formed a detachment of 2,000 people, and that they had no weapons and uniforms, - and so he was sent to Cathay and Japan to ask for the opportunity and funds to purchase weapons for the detachments.

He asked me how I felt about it. I replied that no matter how I feel about it, but at the moment I am bound by certain obligations and cannot change my decision. He said that it would be very important if I came to Semyonov to talk, since I needed to be in this business. I said:

"I fully sympathize, but I made a commitment, received an invitation from the British government and I'm going to the Mesopotamian front."

From my point of view, I considered it indifferent whether I would work with Semenov, or in Mesopotamia - I would do my duty towards the motherland.

How did Kolchak end up in Russia? What kind of wind "blowed"?

I left Shanghai by boat for Singapore. In Singapore, the commander of the troops, General Ridout, came to greet me, handed me an urgent telegram sent to Singapore from the director of the Intelligence Department of the intelligence department of the military general staff in England.

This telegram read as follows: the British government accepted my proposal, nevertheless, due to the changed situation on the Mesopotamian front (later I found out what the situation was, but earlier I could not foresee this), he considers in view of the request addressed to him by our envoy, Prince. Kudashev, useful for the common allied cause, so that I return to Russia, that I am recommended to go to the Far East to start my activities there, and it is more profitable from their point of view than my stay on the Mesopotamian front, especially since the situation there has completely changed.

Let us pay attention to one more evidence that what Kolchak sought:

« I ask you to accept me into the English army on any terms you like. happened.

I've already made more than half the way. This put me in an extremely difficult situation, primarily financial - after all, we traveled all the time and lived on our own money, not receiving a penny from the British government, so our funds were coming to an end and we could not afford such walks. I then sent another telegram with a request: is this an order or just advice that I can not fulfill. An urgent telegram was received to this with a rather vague answer: the British government insists that it is better for me to go to the Far East, and recommends that I go to Peking at the disposal of our envoy, Prince. Kudashev. Then I saw that the issue had been resolved. After waiting for the first steamer, I left for Shanghai, and from Shanghai by rail to Beijing. This was in March or April 1918.

<…>

That is, Kolchak obeyed the order, and not at the call of the soul went to Russia.

And as for material difficulties, well, really, the question is logical, only strong romantics and enthusiasts can work without a salary.

* Vasily Mikhailovich Altvater - Rear Admiral of the Russian Imperial Fleet, first commander of the RKKF of the RSFSR

About Kolchak and the Kolchakites

As part of the propaganda of the "white" movement and the distortion of history, many artistic works. One of these works is the film "Admiral".

A white officer, an admiral, a patriot, a hero... Such a handsome Khabensky Kolchak cannot be bad. Can't be wrong. Wrong, then, the Bolsheviks.- It is this chain of reasoning that the authors of this article offer us. artistic movie.

But this is not true!

The truth is that the historical Kolchak bears very little resemblance to the artistic one.

1918 In November, Kolchak, with the blessing of the British and French, declared himself dictator of Siberia. The admiral is an irritable little man, about whom one of his colleagues wrote:

"a sick child ... certainly a neurasthenic ... forever under the influence of others," he settled in Omsk and began to call himself "the supreme ruler of Russia."

The former tsarist minister Sazonov, who called Kolchak "Russian Washington", immediately became his official representative in France. He was lavished with praise in London and Paris. Sir Samuel Hoare again declared publicly that Kolchak was a "gentleman." Winston Churchill claimed that Kolchak was "honest", "incorruptible", "intelligent" and "patriot". The New York Times saw him as "a strong and honest man" backed by "a solid and more or less representative government."

Kolchak with foreign allies

The allies, and especially the British, generously supplied Kolchak with ammunition, weapons and money.

“We sent to Siberia,” proudly reported the commander of the British troops in Siberia, General Knox, “hundreds of thousands of rifles, hundreds of millions of cartridges, hundreds of thousands of sets of uniforms and machine-gun belts, etc. Each bullet fired by Russian soldiers at the Bolsheviks during this year , was made in England, by English workers, from English raw materials and delivered to Vladivostok in English holds.

In Russia at that time they sang a song:

English uniform,
French epaulette,
Japanese tobacco,
Ruler of Omsk!

The commander of the American expeditionary forces in Siberia, General Grevs, who can hardly be suspected of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, did not share the allies' enthusiasm for Admiral Kolchak. Every day his intelligence officers supplied him with new information about the reign of terror that Kolchak had established. The admiral's army had 100,000 soldiers, and new thousands of people were recruited into it under threat of execution. Prisons and concentration camps were packed to capacity. Hundreds of Russians who dared to disobey 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.

One of Kolchak's assistants, a former tsarist officer named Rozanov, issued the following order:

1. Occupying villages previously occupied by bandits (Soviet partisans), demand the issuance of leaders of the movement, and where leaders cannot be found, but there is enough evidence of their presence, shoot every tenth inhabitant.
2. If, during the passage of troops through the city, the population does not inform the troops of the presence of the enemy, to collect a monetary contribution without any mercy.
3. Villages, the population of which provides armed resistance to our troops, should be burned, and all adult men should be shot; property, houses, carts, etc. confiscate for the needs of the army.

Telling General Graves about the officer who issued this order, General Knox said:

“Well done this Rozanov, by God!”

The bodies of workers and peasants shot by Kolchak

Along with the troops of Kolchak, the country was ravaged by gangs of bandits who received financial support from Japan. Their main leaders were Ataman Grigory Semyonov and Kalmykov.

Colonel Morrow, who commanded American troops in the Trans-Baikal sector, reported that in one in the village occupied by the Semyonovites, all men, women and children were villainously killed. Some were shot "like rabbits" when they tried to flee their homes. Others were burned alive.

"Soldiers Semenov and Kalmykov, says General Graves, using the patronage of the Japanese troops, they roamed the country like wild animals, robbing and killing civilians ... Anyone who asked questions about these brutal murders was told that the dead were Bolsheviks, and, apparently, such an explanation satisfied everyone.

General Grevs did not hide the disgust that the atrocities of the anti-Soviet troops in Siberia aroused in him, which earned him a hostile attitude from the White Guard, British, French and Japanese commands.

The American ambassador to Japan, Morris, during his stay in Siberia informed General Greves that he had received a telegram from the State Department about the need to support Kolchak in connection with American policy in Siberia.

"You see, General, Morris said, you will have to support Kolchak.

Grevs replied that the military department had not given him any instructions about supporting Kolchak.

“It's not in the military, it's in the State Department,” Morris said.

“The State Department doesn't know me,” Graves answered.

Kolchak's agents began harassing Grevs in order to undermine his prestige and force him to be recalled from Siberia. Rumors and fictions began to spread that Grevs had "become a Bolshevik", and that his troops were helping the "communists". This propaganda was also anti-Semitic in nature. Here is a typical example:

“American soldiers are infected with Bolshevism. For the most part, they are Jews from the New York East Side, who constantly start riots.

The English Colonel John Ward, a member of parliament who was a political adviser to Kolchak, publicly stated that when he visited the headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force, he discovered that "out of sixty liaison officers and translators, more than fifty were Russian Jews."

The same kind of rumors were spread by some of Grevs' compatriots.

"American Consul in Vladivostok, Graves recalls, day after day, without any comment, telegraphed to the State Department the slanderous, false, obscene articles about American troops that appeared in the Vladivostok newspapers. These articles, as well as the slanders of the American troops that were spreading in the United States, were based on the accusation of Bolshevism. The actions of the American soldiers did not give rise to such an accusation ... but it was repeated by Kolchak's supporters (including Consul General Harris) in relation to everyone who did not support Kolchak.

At the very height of the slanderous campaign, a messenger from General Ivanov-Rynov, who commanded the Kolchak units in Eastern Siberia, appeared at the headquarters of General Grevs. He informed Grevs that if he pledged to give Kolchak's army $20,000 a month, General Ivanov-Rynov would see to it that the agitation against Grevs and his troops ceased.

This Ivanov-Rynov, even among the generals of Kolchak, stood out as a monster and a sadist. In Eastern Siberia, his soldiers exterminated the entire male population in the villages, where, according to their suspicions, "Bolsheviks" were hiding. Women were raped and beaten with ramrods. Killed indiscriminately - the elderly, women, children.

Kolchak's victims in Novosibirsk, 1919

Excavations of the grave in which the victims of the Kolchak repressions of March 1919 were buried, Tomsk, 1920

Tomsk residents carry the bodies of the spread participants of the anti-Kolchak uprising

The funeral of the Red Guard brutally murdered by Kolchak

Novosobornaya Square on the day of the reburial of the victims of Kolchak on January 22, 1920

One young American officer sent to investigate the atrocities of Ivanov-Rynov was so shocked that, after finishing his report to Grevs, he exclaimed:

“For God's sake, General, don't send me on such orders again! Just a little more - and I would have tore off my uniform and would begin to save these unfortunate ones.

When Ivanov-Rynov faced the threat of popular indignation, the English commissioner, Sir Charles Elliot, hurried to Greves to express his concern for the fate of the Kolchak general.

– As for me, - General Grevs answered him fiercely, - let them bring this Ivanov-Rynov here and hang him on that telephone pole in front of my headquarters - not a single American will lift a finger to save him!

Ask yourself why during the Civil War the Red Army was able to defeat the well-armed and sponsored by the Western Powers White Army and troops 14 !! states that invaded Soviet Russia during the intervention?

But because the MOST of the Russian people, seeing the cruelty, baseness and venality of such “Kolchaks”, supported the Red Army.

Kolchak. He is such a douche...

Such a touching series was filmed with public money about one of the main executioners of the Russian people during the civil war of the last century, which simply brings tears to the eyes. And to the same touching, heartfelt, they tell us about this guardian of the Russian land. And trips through Baikal are held with memorial and prayer services. Well, just grace descends on the soul.

But for some reason, the inhabitants of the territories of Russia, where Kolchak and his comrades were heroic, have a different opinion. They remember how entire villages of Kolchak threw people still alive into the mines, and not only that.

By the way, why is the tsar father being honored in such a way on a par with priests and white officers? Didn't they blackmail the king from the throne? Didn't they plunge our country into bloodshed, betraying their people, their king? Didn't the priests joyfully restore the patriarchate immediately after their betrayal of the sovereign? Didn't the landowners and generals want power for themselves without the control of the emperor? Weren't they the ones who started organizing the civil war after the successful February coup organized by them? Didn't they hang the Russian peasant and shoot all over the country. It was only Wrangel, horrified by the death of the Russian people, who left the Crimea himself, all the others preferred to cut the Russian peasant until they themselves were reassured forever.

Yes, and remembering the Polovtsian princes by the names Gzak and Konchak, cited in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, the conclusion involuntarily suggests itself that Kolchak is related to them. Maybe that's why you shouldn't be surprised by the following?

By the way, it makes no sense to judge the dead, neither white nor red. But mistakes cannot be repeated. Only the living can make mistakes. Therefore, the lessons of history need to be known by heart.

In the spring of 1919, the first campaign of the Entente countries and the United States of America began against the Soviet Republic. The campaign was combined: it was carried out by the combined forces of the internal counter-revolution and the interventionists. The imperialists did not hope for their own troops - their soldiers did not want to fight against the workers and working peasants of Soviet Russia. Therefore, they relied on the unification of all the forces of the internal counter-revolution, recognizing the main arbiter of all affairs in Russia, Tsarist Admiral Kolchak A.V.

American, British and French millionaires took over the bulk of the supply of arms, ammunition, and uniforms to Kolchak. In the first half of 1919 alone, the United States sent more than 250,000 rifles and millions of cartridges to Kolchak. In total, in 1919, Kolchak received from the USA, England, France and Japan 700 thousand rifles, 3650 machine guns, 530 guns, 30 aircraft, 2 million pairs of boots, thousands of uniforms, equipment and underwear.

With the help of his foreign masters, by the spring of 1919, Kolchak managed to arm, clothe and shoe an army of almost 400,000.

Kolchak's offensive was supported from the North Caucasus and the south by Denikin's army, intending to link up with Kolchak's army in the Saratov region in order to jointly move on Moscow.

The White Poles advanced from the west along with the Petliura and White Guard troops. In the north and Turkestan, mixed detachments of Anglo-American and French interventionists and the army of the White Guard General Miller operated. From the northwest, supported by the White Finns and the English fleet, Yudenich advanced. Thus, all the forces of the counter-revolution and the interventionists went over to the offensive. Soviet Russia found itself again in the ring of advancing enemy hordes. Several fronts were created in the country. The main one was the Eastern Front. Here the fate of the country of the Soviets was decided.

On March 4, 1919, Kolchak launched an offensive against the Red Army along the entire Eastern Front for 2 thousand kilometers. He put up 145 thousand bayonets and sabers. The backbone of his army was the Siberian kulaks, the urban bourgeoisie and the prosperous Cossacks. In the rear of Kolchak there were about 150 thousand interventionist troops. They guarded the railways, helped to deal with the population.

The Entente kept Kolchak's army under its direct control. At the headquarters of the White Guards there were constantly military missions of the Entente powers. The French General Janin was appointed commander-in-chief of all interventionist troops operating in Eastern Russia and Siberia. The English General Knox was in charge of supplying Kolchak's army and forming new units for it.

The interventionists helped Kolchak develop an operational plan for the offensive and determined the main direction of the strike.

On the Perm-Glazov sector, the most powerful Siberian army of Kolchak operated under the command of General Gaida. The same army was to develop the offensive in the direction of Vyatka, Sarapul and unite with the troops of the interventionists operating in the North.

victims of Kolchak and Kolchak's thugs

victims of the atrocities of Kolchak in Siberia. 1919

peasant hanged by Kolchak

From everywhere, from the territory of Udmurtia liberated from the enemy, information was received about the atrocities and arbitrariness of the White Guards. So, for example, at the Peskovsky plant, 45 people of Soviet workers, poor peasant workers, were tortured. They were subjected to the most cruel tortures: their ears, noses, lips were cut out, their bodies were pierced in many places with bayonets (Doc. Nos. 33, 36).

Women, old people and children were subjected to violence, flogging and torture. Property, livestock, harness were taken away. The horses that the Soviet government gave to the poor to maintain their economy were taken away by the Kolchak people and given to the former owners (doc. No. 47).

A young teacher in the village of Zura, Pyotr Smirnov, was brutally cut down with a White Guard saber because he met a White Guard in good clothes (Doc. No. 56).

In the village of Syam-Mozhge, the Kolchakites dealt with a 70-year-old old woman because she sympathized with the Soviet government (doc. No. 66).

In the village of N. Multan, Malmyzhsky district, on the square in front of the people's house, the corpse of the young communist Vlasov was buried in 1918. The Kolchakites drove the working peasants to the square, forced them to dig up the corpse and publicly mocked him: they beat him on the head with a log, squeezed his chest and, finally, putting a noose around his neck, tied the tarantass to the front and dragged it along the village street for a long time (doc. No. 66 ).

In the workers' settlements and cities, in the huts of the poor peasants of Udmurtia, a terrible groan arose from the atrocities and butchery of the Kolchakites. For example, during the two months of the bandits' stay in Votkinsk, 800 corpses were found in Ustinov Log alone, not counting those single victims in private apartments who were taken away to no one knows where. Kolchak plundered and ruined the national economy of Udmurtia. It was reported from the Sarapulsky district that “after Kolchak, literally nothing was left anywhere ... After the Kolchak robberies in the county, the presence of horses decreased by 47 percent and cows by 85 percent ... In the Malmyzhsky county, in the Vikharev volost alone, the Kolchakists took 1,100 horses, 500 cows from the peasants , 2000 carts, 1300 sets of harness, thousands of poods of grain and dozens of households were completely plundered.

“After the capture of Yalutorovsk by the Whites (June 18, 1918), the former authorities were restored in it. A brutal persecution of all those who collaborated with the Soviets began. Arrests and executions became a mass phenomenon. The Whites killed a member of the Soviet of Demushkin, shot ten former prisoners of war (Czechs and Hungarians) who refused to serve them. According to the memoirs of Fyodor Plotnikov, a participant in the Civil War and a prisoner of the Kolchak torture chambers from April to July 1919, a table with chains and various devices for torture was installed in the basement of the prison. The tortured people were taken outside the Jewish cemetery (now the territory of the sanatorium orphanage), where they were shot. All this happened from June 1918. In May 1919, the Eastern Front of the Red Army went on the offensive. On August 7, 1919, Tyumen was liberated. Feeling the approach of the Reds, the Kolchakites perpetrated atrocious reprisals against their prisoners. On one of the August days of 1919, two large groups of prisoners were taken out of the prison. One group - 96 people - was shot in a birch forest (now the territory of a furniture factory), another, in the amount of 197 people, was hacked to death with swords across the Tobol River near Lake Gingiryai ... ".

From the certificate of the deputy director of the Yalutorovsk museum complex N.M. Shestakova:

“I consider myself obliged to say that my grandfather Yakov Alekseevich Ushakov, a veteran of the First World War, a Cavalier of St. George, was hacked to death by Kolchak drafts beyond Tobol. My grandmother was left with three young sons. My father was only 6 years old at that time ... And how many women throughout Russia did the Kolchakites make widows, and children - orphans, how many old people were left without son's care?

Therefore, the logical result (please note no torture, no bullying, just execution):

“We entered the cell to Kolchak and found him dressed - in a fur coat and a hat,” writes I.N. Bursak. It looked like he was expecting something. Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the Revolutionary Committee. Kolchak exclaimed:

- How! Without trial?

Chudnovsky replied:

- Yes, Admiral, just like you and your henchmen shot thousands of our comrades.

Having risen to the second floor, we entered the cell to Pepelyaev. This one was also dressed. When Chudnovsky read out to him the decision of the revolutionary committee, Pepelyaev fell to his knees and, wallowing at his feet, begged not to be shot. He assured that, together with his brother, General Pepelyaev, he had long decided to rebel against Kolchak and go over to the side of the Red Army. I ordered him to get up and said: “You can’t die with dignity…

They again went down to Kolchak's cell, took him away and went to the office. The formalities are over.

By 4 o'clock in the morning we arrived at the bank of the Ushakovka River, a tributary of the Angara. Kolchak behaved calmly all the time, and Pepelyaev - this huge carcass - was in a fever.

Full moon, bright frosty night. Kolchak and Pepelyaev are standing on a hillock. Kolchak refuses my offer to blindfold. The platoon is lined up, rifles at the ready. Chudnovsky whispers to me:

- It's time.

I give the command:

- Platoon, on the enemies of the revolution - pl!

Both fall. We put the corpses on the sledge-sledge, bring them to the river and lower them into the hole. So the "supreme ruler of all Rus'" Admiral Kolchak goes on his last voyage ... ".

(“The defeat of Kolchak”, military publishing house of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, M., 1969, pp. 279-280, circulation 50,000 copies).

In the Ekaterinburg province, one of the 12 provinces under Kolchak's control, at least 25 thousand people were shot under Kolchak, about 10% of the two million population were flogged. They flogged both men and women and children.

M. G. Aleksandrov, commissar of the Red Guard detachment in Tomsk. He was arrested by Kolchak, imprisoned in Tomsk prison. In mid-June 1919, he recalled, 11 workers were taken out of the cell at night. Nobody slept.

“The silence was broken by weak groans that came from the courtyard of the prison, prayers and curses were heard ... but after a while everything was quiet. In the morning, the criminals told us that the Cossacks who had been taken out were chopped with sabers and stabbed with bayonets in the back exercise yard, and then they loaded the carts and took them away somewhere.

Aleksandrov said that he was then sent to the Alexander Central near Irkutsk, and out of more than a thousand prisoners there, the Red Army released only 368 people in January 1920. In 1921–1923 Alexandrov worked in the county Cheka of the Tomsk region. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 15, d. 71, l. 83-102.

American General W. Graves recalled:

“The soldiers of Semenov and Kalmykov, being under the protection of Japanese troops, flooded the country like wild animals, killed and robbed the people, while the Japanese, if they wished, could stop these killings at any time. If at that time they asked what all these cruel murders were for, they usually received in response that the dead were Bolsheviks, and such an explanation, obviously, satisfied everyone. Events in Eastern Siberia were usually presented in the most gloomy colors, and human life there was not worth a penny.

Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was commonly thought. I won’t 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.”

Graves doubted that it was possible to point to any country in the world during the last fifty years where murder could be carried out with such ease and with the least fear of responsibility, as in Siberia during the reign of Admiral Kolchak. Concluding his memoirs, Graves noted that the interventionists and the White Guards were doomed to defeat, since "the number of Bolsheviks in Siberia by the time of Kolchak had increased many times over in comparison with their number at the time of our arrival"

There is a board for Mannerheim in St. Petersburg, now there will be Kolchak ... Next - Hitler?

The opening of the memorial plaque to Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the White movement in the Civil War, will take place on September 24 ... The memorial plaque will be installed on the bay window of the building where Kolchak lived ... The text of the inscription is approved:

"In this house from 1906 to 1912 lived an outstanding Russian officer, scientist and researcher Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak."

I will not argue about his outstanding scientific achievements. But I read in the memoirs of General Denikin that Kolchak demanded (under pressure from Mackinder) that Denikin enter into an agreement with Petlyura (giving him Ukraine) in order to defeat the Bolsheviks. For Denikin, the homeland turned out to be more important.

Kolchak was recruited by British intelligence when he was a captain of the 1st rank and commander of a mine division in the Baltic Fleet. It happened at the turn of 1915-1916. This was already a betrayal of the Tsar and the Fatherland, to whom he swore allegiance and kissed the cross!

Have you ever thought about why the fleets of the Entente in 1918 calmly entered the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea?! After all, he was mined! In addition, in the confusion of the two revolutions of 1917, no one removed the minefields. Yes, because Kolchak's entry ticket for joining the British intelligence service was the surrender of all information about the location of minefields and barriers in the Russian sector of the Baltic Sea! After all, it was he who carried out this mining and he had all the maps of minefields and obstacles in his hands!

"Top Secret", No.1/402 Sergei Balmasov.

In 1919, in the Suchansky district of Primorye, the local population, irritated by extortion and violence from the whites, began to protest. But instead of dialogue, troops were sent against them, the commanders of which, not really delving into the causes of the rebellion, preferred to shoot the dissatisfied, and burn the most "restless" settlements.
However, this did not always happen. In at least three cases, the punitive detachments that arrived at the scene of the events, the members of which were looking forward to the massacre of the "Bolsheviks", were unable to do their job.
They stopped, amazed by the following spectacle: red flags fluttered over the settlements of the rebels, adjacent to the star-striped flag of the United States, under which the American invaders from the expeditionary force of General Graves were located, placing machine guns.
To the timid attempts of the White Guards to find out what the Americans were doing here, a discouraging answer was received: "We have come to help the people of Primorye defend their democratic rights." After standing in bewilderment for several hours waiting for the decision of their command, Kolchak's executors withdrew without fulfilling the instructions given to them.

"Red Gas" 1925. In the role of a Kolchak officer - former Kolchak officer Georgy Pozharnitsky.

Printed counterpart: Myshansky A.A. The attitude of the population of Siberia to the "white" regime during the period of Kolchakism. // Civil war in the east of Russia. Problems of History.: Bakhrushin Readings 2001; Interuniversity. Sat. scientific tr. / Ed. V. I. Shishkin; Novosib. state un-t. Novosibirsk, 2001 C. 109136.

The period of the civil war still attracts the attention of historians. One of the main questions remains the question of understanding the driving forces of the revolution and civil war. The events of 1919 need historical rethinking, since this stage of the civil war was decisive for its outcome, and, consequently, for the entire subsequent history of our country.

The struggle between the Bolsheviks and their opponents was not limited to armed confrontation between the parties. The civil war was also determined by the socio-psychological confrontation. In Siberia, the attitude of the population towards the anti-Bolshevik regime played a decisive role in such a confrontation. The favorable or negative attitude of the population towards the authorities determined the internal stability of the anti-Bolshevik governments: during the civil war, the functioning of the regime without the support of mass social groups was impossible. In turn, the attitude of the population towards the regime could also serve as a kind of indicator of the effectiveness of the policy pursued by the Kolchak authorities. Therefore, the study of the role of socio-psychological factors in the history of the civil war, the mood of the population and its attitude towards the existing authorities acquire significant importance.

In Russian historiography, the role of socio-psychological factors during the civil war was not properly reflected. Separate indications of the significance of public sentiments of the population during the years of the civil war were given in the works of G. Kh. Eikhe, G. Z. Ioffe, I. F. Plotnikov, V. S. V. A. Kadeikin and other Russian historians. In the works of Russian historians of the post-Soviet period, more attention is paid to the role of political sentiment during the civil war in eastern Russia. However, the factual material presented in them is not accompanied by a comprehensive analysis.

The year 1919 was decisive for the outcome of the entire civil war. It was at this time that the political moods of the population and the army largely determined the internal stability of the anti-Bolshevik regime and contributed to its death.

By the time of the revolution and civil war, the political situation in society was determined by another social group that emerged during the world war, the army. Consisting of people from different segments of the population, the army during the civil war became an independent social phenomenon. The militarization of society was very high. Naturally, the moods of this social group had an important, sometimes decisive influence on the political life of the country, especially after the military coup in Omsk on November 18, 1918.

The Russian army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak during the first half of 1919 remained invariably loyal to the anti-Bolshevik regime, which served as one of the main reasons for the stabilization of political life in the east of the country during this period.

At the same time, there was no unity in the mood of the officers of the Kolchak army. Already at the beginning of 1919, an extensive stratum of officers arose who served in the rear units and numerous offices. The very existence of such a group of "rear guards" caused anger among the front-line officers in relation to the authorities and the high command. They were still anti-Bolshevik and regarded the presence of such a large group of rear officers as a sign of weakness in the regime. It is not surprising that among the Siberian front-line officers, as the counterintelligence reports reported, “there were persistent talks” about the need to remove A. V. Kolchak and his possible replacement by D. L. Horvat, from whom they expected a better attitude to the needs of the army.

To many radical officers, Admiral Kolchak seemed too "leftist". Such officers were in favor of absolute dictatorship, which went against the general policy of Kolchak, as it was designated immediately after the November 18 coup.

An additional factor irritating the front-line officers of Siberia was the appointment of the chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General D. A. Lebedev, who arrived "for communication" from General A. I. Denikin. The mediocre, according to a significant number of officers, military abilities of General Lebedev, along with his military ambitions, irritated the front-line officers. It is not surprising that many considered him the main culprit of the defeats of the spring-summer offensive of the Kolchak armies in 1919.

However, the criticism of the authorities by the officers did not have, so to speak, a "systemic" character, that is, the officers demanded only a tightening of domestic policy without changing the political system.

The mood of the broad masses of soldiers of the Russian army of Admiral Kolchak was distinguished by certain features. The attitude of the mass of soldiers towards the anti-Bolshevik regime differed among front-line soldiers and military personnel of the rear garrisons.

The soldiers left to serve in the rear, as a rule, showed anti-government sentiments. By the summer of 1919, the military counterintelligence agencies of the Russian army reported on "unfavorable moods" in a number of rear garrisons.

A significantly more loyal attitude towards the anti-Bolshevik regime and its struggle against the Bolsheviks was observed among the soldiers serving in the front-line units and subunits, which is confirmed by the analysis of soldiers' letters read by military counterintelligence.

The soldiers and officers of the Kolchak army were particularly enthusiastic about the winter 1919 offensive in the region of Perm. And although in the spring and summer of 1919 the “White” armies in eastern Russia fought with varying success, the enthusiasm of the winter offensive maintained a favorable psychological atmosphere at the front until serious defeats began after the failure of the summer offensive of 1919.

Thus, the moods of both the broad masses of soldiers and officers in the first half of 1919 differed at the front and in the rear. The soldiers of the rear garrisons were anti-government. The front-line officers, front-line soldiers were still anti-Soviet and were ready to support the Kolchak regime in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Criticism by front-line officers of the government did not mean they went into opposition and did not affect their readiness to continue the fight against the Soviet regime. Such sentiments in the active army ensured the psychological stability of the front and, in the end, were a factor in stabilizing the entire internal political situation in the east of Russia.

In the second half of 1919, the army remained the most influential group of the Siberian population. The regime paid the greatest attention to the psychological state of military collectives, since the outcome of the civil war largely depended on the morale of the army.

Meanwhile, the psychological climate of the active army was subjected to a double influence. On the one hand, the morale of the soldiers was subject to the demoralizing psychological impact of the retreat, which began in June 1919 and continued until the autumn. A long retreat negatively affects the psychological atmosphere of any army; this is the time when it is strongly discouraged to bring recruits into battle. On the other hand, Kolchak's armies were defeated in the civil war, which implies a high degree of moral conviction in the rightness of the military personnel of each side. But in the second half of 1919, such conviction in Kolchak's army was typical only for a part of the officers and volunteer soldiers. These internal factors largely determined the severity of the defeats of the "White" armies in the summer and autumn of 1919.

To these internal psychological factors, in the summer of 1919, an external factor was added. After the retreat from the territory of the Urals, Kolchak's armies found themselves, if not in a hostile, then at least in an unfriendly environment. Meanwhile, the hostility of the local population towards the army in the conditions of a civil war always has a corrupting effect. These were the main socio-psychological determinants that determined the psychological climate in the Kolchak army in the second half of 1919.

Numerous army reports reported on the mood in the army in the summer and early autumn of 1919. Military officials and staff officers who compiled such reports drew attention to the deterioration of the psychological situation in the troops.

An interesting source about the attitudes of the officers during this period are the private letters of the officers, censored by military censors and included in the material of secret reports. In letters, officers complained about the constant understaffing of units and subunits of the army in the field, expressed dissatisfaction with the illiteracy of the high command, and pointed to the psychological and military superiority of the Red Army. The most disturbing note that was noted in most of the letters was the disbelief of the officers in the possibility of victory in the civil war.

The deterioration of the psychological state of the officer corps was noted by many contemporaries. “The impulse of our officers and volunteers has significantly weakened,” was heard in a report prepared at the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief for members of the Council of Ministers of the Russian government in early August 1919. and from the newly released junkers of short-term schools of a very unsatisfactory quality, wrote in his diary the minister of the Russian government, A.P. Budberg. Complain that at the slightest penalty, officers are the first to surrender; explain this by the fear of red captivity and distrust of their soldiers, which always become aggravated when a unit falls into a dangerous situation and the likelihood of its captivity or going over to the red side is approaching.

During the summer retreat of 1919, the psychological state of the masses of soldiers worsened. Mass desertion, especially of Siberian recruits, became a frequent occurrence. These facts of the desertion of Siberian soldiers were also confirmed in the soldiers' letters. In addition, the soldiers, as well as the officers, pointed to the military superiority of the Red Army: “The Reds are fighting in such a way that God forbid that all our troops fight like that. The mobilized Siberians do not want to fight and, when approaching the enemy, go over to his side.

Conflicts were also brewing in the army collectives. The mobilized soldiers did not trust the volunteer soldiers. “Our volunteers were often beaten by their own, mobilized, who after that went over to the Reds,” an eyewitness to the events later recalled.

The psychological atmosphere in a retreating army is always very unstable; this factor increased many times during the civil war. “Information from the wounded officers brought from the front, even adjusted for the inevitable aggravation of pessimism, is the most disturbing,” Budberg noted in his diary. While there was success, the soldiers went forward quite willingly; but after the first weeks of the turn of military happiness in favor of the Reds, the mood changed dramatically and mass desertion began ... Now the majority does not want to fight, does not want to defend itself and passively goes to the east, thinking only about not being overtaken by the Reds; this retreating stream carries with it a few who have preserved the order and combat effectiveness of the unit and individual soldiers and officers with an unshakable spirit.

Thus, the high command of the anti-Bolshevik armed forces left the front psychologically unprepared for the rapid breakthrough of the Red Army. The loss of the mining Urals, whose population constantly supported the counter-revolutionary regimes and their armed forces, the long retreat, heavy losses and the hostility of the local population dealt a heavy blow to the morale and combat readiness of the army. Attempts to "patch holes" by introducing into the front-line units recruits from among the peasants, who at that time were already mostly opposed to the government, only worsened the psychological situation at the front.

The military command of the "whites" correctly assessed the danger of the disintegration of the front, but the means of "curing" the psychological illness of the army was chosen ill-considered. Having understaffed the army, the command decided on a counteroffensive in September 1919. This offensive, which began with a series of local victories and even the liberation of the city of Tobolsk, bogged down, and Kolchak's armies rolled east. This outcome of the operation was largely determined by the demoralization of the army, as evidenced by the memoirs of the participants in these events and the military reports of Kolchak's counterintelligence.

In the autumn of 1919, the political mood of the officers of the Russian army was of particular concern. Indifference and fatigue began to cover more and more of their layers. The officers lost faith in the coming victory, which testified to the highest degree of fatigue of the entire officer corps. But there was no one to replace them. "A nightmare month, a terrible offensive, worse than any defeat" such sentiments prevailed by October 1919 in the army environment.

Obviously, with such a decadent mood, not a single army in the civil war could conduct effective military operations. Pointing to this circumstance, the command of the units and formations of the Russian army demanded that their formations be withdrawn to the rear, for rest, hoping to put them in order. However, the conditions of the Siberian rear, whose population was hostile to the Kolchak government, further corrupted the army.

The final blow to the psychological stability of the army was dealt by the abandonment of Omsk, which destroyed the belief of the majority of officers in a favorable outcome of the war for "white" Siberia. “In fact, the army has now descended to the task of covering the evacuation,” General Sakharov described the front-line mood after leaving Omsk, “The army was reduced, in essence, to a number of small detachments that were still in order ... The organization was preserved, but the spirit was greatly reduced. To the point that even cases of non-compliance with a combat order appeared. On this basis ... General Voitsekhovsky was forced to personally shoot the commander of the corps, General Grivin, from a revolver.

Immediately after the evacuation of Omsk in November 1919, a series of officer mutinies followed, supported by the Social Revolutionaries with the main goal: to end the civil war, make peace with the Bolsheviks, and preserve at least what was left of "white Siberia". So, on December 6-7, 1919, in the city of Novonikolaevsk, Colonel Ivakin, commander of the 2nd Barabinsky Regiment of the "resting" army of General A.N. Pepelyaev, rebelled "against the government of Admiral Kolchak and for a democratic world." As the conditions for this peace, according to the memoirs of General Russky, it was proposed to make peace with the Bolsheviks, create conditions in Siberia for democratic governance and put General Pepelyaev at the head of the armies. The rebels issued a proclamation to the army, the main theme of which was a bet on the fatigue of soldiers and officers from the civil war: “What do we care about saving Russia, when 99% do not want it, and who wants to, he wants to do it at the cost of thousands of lives of others, but in no way of our own… It will be, not a drop of blood more and we will begin negotiations with the Bolsheviks for peace in Russia, which is drenched with fraternal blood. By doing this, we will do a thousand times better for Russia than what a bunch of talkers, “creators of great Russia”, want. There is nothing to be afraid of: our demands will be supported by the people and the brothers of Czechoslovakia. The uprising was suppressed by units under the command of General Wojciechowski.

“After the surrender of Omsk,” General Russky later recalled, “the situation developed in such a way that more and more often despair crept into the soul of the army. More and more often the word “peace” was uttered, the thought was carried that “the Bolsheviks are no longer the same.” “[Ivakin's] uprising was suppressed, but the disintegration of the troops is progressing,” the author summed up.

Novonikolaevsk was followed by a speech by General B. M. Zinevich in the city of Krasnoyarsk. The general naively suggested making peace with the Bolsheviks and relying on the Zemstvos and "democratic organizations" of the Socialist-Revolutionary persuasion. It ended badly for him personally and, of course, had no effect. And even the experience of the Political Center that followed this, which was the last attempt to "get out of the civil war", failed: those who made such proposals had an army behind them that was not ready to fight even for peace. Meanwhile, the disintegration of the army continued. In December 1919, even in the government there was no longer any doubt that a significant part of the officers did not want to fight.

The combat discipline of the officers was finally broken by the death of two hundred echelons with refugees, wives and families of servicemen who froze to death on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “The death of echelons with families,” General M.I. Zankevich later recalled, “dealed a huge moral blow to the officers of the army and was one of the reasons for its rapid and final decomposition.” The decomposition reached such proportions that even the personal elite battalion of Admiral Kolchak left him in the city of Nizhneudinsk, Irkutsk province.

Thus, within a month, from mid-November the moment of the surrender of Omsk to mid-December 1919, the armies of Admiral Kolchak ceased to exist largely for internal reasons. The main of these reasons was the unwillingness of most officers and soldiers to fight for the ideals of "white" Russia or their disbelief in victory. Only a small part of the army, which consisted mainly of volunteers from the Urals, proved to be sufficiently stable and, under the common name of "Kappelites", made its way to the Far East in order to continue the fight against Bolshevism.

The mood of the army in the second half of 1919 was decisive for the outcome of the civil war in Siberia. Under the influence of various political, economic, socio-psychological and military factors, the majority of the army turned out to be incapable of conducting combat operations against the advancing Red Army. At the same time, the soldiers and officers of the "white" army, tired of the endless civil war, made their choice in favor of peace, which predetermined the end of the war.

Most of the urban population of Siberia during the first half of 1919 was set conservatively. This became evident during the city government elections: representatives of homeowners won a landslide victory in the elections. At the same time, the results of the elections demonstrated the growing indifference of the majority of the inhabitants to political and public life, including the outcome of the civil war. This was manifested in widespread absenteeism: only 30% of voters in Irkutsk, 28% in Shadrinsk, 20% in Kurgan took part in the elections.

The disillusionment and indifferent attitude of the majority of the urban population of Siberia towards political life and the struggle against the Bolsheviks could not but alert the organs of Kolchak's counterintelligence. In April 1919, the counterintelligence headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief repeatedly reported on this. Meanwhile, the political leadership of the counter-revolution underestimated the seriousness of the changes taking place in the mass consciousness. Only when - after the end of the winter offensive, the establishment of a lull in public life and the unsuccessful monetary reform - this manifested itself in the mood of the inhabitants, many government departments began to pay much more attention to this problem.

Such sentiments in the conditions of victory or at least a stable military-political situation, in a stable state system would hardly pose a threat to the regime. In the event of a deterioration in the military situation, the behavior of the population turned out to be unpredictable. This meant the potential loss of support for the Kolchak government among the only social group of the population of the cities of Siberia, which constantly supported the anti-Bolshevik regimes.

The serious defeats of Kolchak's armies on the fronts in the summer of 1919, the flow of refugees that swept through the Siberian cities, mostly representatives of the intelligentsia and the inhabitants of the Urals, blew up the outwardly calm life of the cities of Siberia. The awareness of complete insecurity in the face of the rapidly approaching war was especially traumatic for the psyche of people. The distance that the Russian army of Admiral Kolchak covered during December 1918 June 1919 was now lost in a matter of days. The catastrophe was imminent, the disappointment with government power was universal.

The government, as it became obvious, was not ready for such a reaction from the population. Attempts to hide or disavow the scale of the defeats finally undermined the confidence of the townsfolk in the institutions of power. The anger of the population was caused by the "popular" army practice, when the population of the surrendered territories learned about the upcoming evacuation a few hours before the arrival of the Red Army. The result was panic and the flight of a significant part of the urban population to Siberia without funds and necessary things.

“The mood of the population in recent days can be characterized by the words: panic and confusion,” reported in early August 1919 a summary of the Information Department of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander. Panic gripped not only the front line, but also the deep rear ... Refugees arriving from the front tell amazing details of the total flight of the population from Perm, Yekaterinburg and other cities and villages.

“In Yekaterinburg and Perm,” another army report prepared for members of the Council of Ministers in late August early September 1919 reported, the military authorities until very recently hid the truth from the population and did not allow the evacuation of government institutions. Thanks to this unfortunate reception, all institutions and the entire population rushed to the railroad tracks in complete disorder at the last hour. The result is unimaginable chaos everywhere. More than two hundred echelons completely filled the line from Yekaterinburg to Kulomzino, hindering and even completely stopping the advance of reserves, cargo and equipment for the army. Huge crowds of refugees move on foot along with the troops.

The authors of the reports correctly assessed the danger of the psychological impact of defeats on the fronts on the attitude of the population of Siberia to the Kolchak authorities. “These stories [of refugees], as well as the confusion felt by the society in the actions of the authorities, excites the population even more and undermines its shaky trust in the Government. Society no longer believes the talk about the stability of the front, that Omsk is safe, as it is afraid of repeating the history of Kazan and Yekaterinburg.

In the autumn of 1919, the situation at the front became the main determinant of the political moods of the main social groups in Siberia. When in September 1919 the situation at the front somewhat stabilized, there were changes in the attitude of the townsfolk towards the Kolchak government. Information appeared in the reports about "calming down the rear". But if it was possible to "overcome the panic", then the general distrust of the authorities remained. This attitude of the population towards the regime was manifested, in particular, in the fact that a significant part of it supported the demands of the Socialist-Revolutionary opposition to change the political system. In the summer and autumn of 1919, city dumas and provincial zemstvo assemblies made sharp demarches against the policy of the Kolchak government. The Irkutsk Zemstvo defiantly welcomed the disgraced General Gaida "the young leader of the Slavs, the liberator of Siberia." At the same time, the idea of concluding a truce with the Bolsheviks was first voiced.

It seems that the urban population expected the government to restore stability at the front and in the rear. The counter-offensive of the anti-Bolshevik armies, which began in September 1919, did not guarantee such stability, so the news of it aroused enthusiasm only among ordinary refugees from the territory of the Urals, while many Siberian newspapers assessed it as an adventure. Designed to calm the rear and inspire the army, this offensive not only did not achieve its goals, but also undermined the small credit of trust in the government that it still possessed among the townsfolk.

The failure of the Tobolsk offensive in the autumn of 1919 again became a catalyst for mass dissatisfaction with the activities of the government among the masses of the urban inhabitants of Siberia. The news of the surrender of Omsk in November 1919 for the majority of the population of the cities served as proof of the regime's inability to find a way out of a difficult situation. The unfavorable political situation was exacerbated by the growing economic crisis. According to the report of K. P. Kharitonov, Comrade Chief Executive of the Council of Ministers Affairs, in early December 1919, the growth of dissatisfaction among the population of cities with the regime of Admiral Kolchak was provoked “firstly, by a terrible financial crisis; secondly, the fabulous high cost; thirdly, the impending famine in ... the cities of Siberia; fourthly, bad news from the front. All this together led to the emergence of a vacuum around the Russian government of Admiral Kolchak.

Until that time, the few voices in favor of concluding a truce with the Red Army began to gain mass popularity. The anti-government sentiments of the townsfolk, which were caused by fear of anarchy, war weariness and, paradoxically, fear of the Bolsheviks, led to the popularity in the cities of the slogans of the so-called "third force", represented mainly by the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The "third force" promised the population to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks. “Let the government and the allies leave, we will come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks, they will recognize the self-determination of certain regions and come to terms with the creation of a free socialist Siberia,” said the Socialist-Revolutionary speakers at a meeting in Krasnoyarsk in December 1919.

Such sentiments among the inhabitants of Siberia made possible first the rebellion of General Zinevich in Krasnoyarsk, and then the establishment of the power of the Political Center in Irkutsk. “The mood ... of government employees is panicky, the mood of the layman is such that no matter who raises an uprising, it will succeed,” the governor of Irkutsk province reported in a report to the Council of Ministers. P. D. Yakovlev at the end of December 1919

Thus, in the second half of 1919, in the conditions of heavy defeats of Kolchak's armies on the fronts, the population of the rear cities, called upon to bear the main burden of the civil war, refused to support the Russian government of Admiral Kolchak. At the same time, the inhabitants did not want the return of the Bolsheviks either. The implementation of this indefinite position of the urban inhabitants was the promotion of a “third force” on the political stage in Siberia, in which the Socialist-Revolutionary Party had the predominant influence. But such a position without the support of the army was doomed to defeat.

The political mood of the Siberian bourgeoisie in the first half of 1919 was determined by the measures of the Russian government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak in the economic sphere. They were based on a change in the attitude of representatives of this social group towards the Kolchak regime.

The tax policy of the Kolchak government hit hard on the interests of the bourgeoisie of Siberia. According to the legislation of 1916, a tax was levied on profits from commercial and industrial enterprises and small businesses. The 1917 amendments to this law established the possibility of maximum taxation of up to 90% of profits with a high level of profitability of the enterprise. In practice, this decision of the Provisional Government, whose legislation was unconditionally recognized by all the counter-revolutionary governments of Siberia, began to be implemented only from the beginning of 1919 and caused sharp dissatisfaction among entrepreneurs. The result of this was the practice of systematic tax evasion; the treasury began to receive less even the funds that it received under the previous taxation procedure. Therefore, already in April 1919, the size of the maximum taxation was again reduced to 50% of the profits.

The dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie was also caused by extraordinary tax collections, which were introduced by the Russian government "for the needs of the army." The hopes of merchants and industrialists for the establishment of a private trade in alcohol did not come true: the government restored the wine monopoly.

The legislation of the Russian government allowed in emergency circumstances the use of forced harvesting methods by state bodies. Under the conditions of the civil war, these methods lost their exclusivity, and in the spring of 1919 they even acquired a centralized character, their scale increased sharply. Coercive measures were used mainly in relation to private and cooperative trading enterprises. And although they did not become the dominant form of procurement, their very use was contrary to the proclaimed principles of respect for private property and caused an increase in discontent among entrepreneurs.

But the main event that served as a catalyst for the emergence of anti-government sentiments among the bourgeoisie of the entire east of Russia was the exchange of “kerenok” banknotes of the 1917 model, the issue of which was carried out in 1918-1919. People's Commissariat of Finance in Moscow. The purpose of the reform was to establish a single emission center for the Eastern counter-revolution in Omsk and to reduce inflation.

Representatives of the bourgeoisie offered to simply exchange "Kerenok" for "Siberian" money. The government’s version, which provided for the immediate withdrawal of “kerenok” from circulation, and postponing compensation for them for later, caused an increase in dissatisfaction among commercial and industrialists: representatives of the Council of Congresses of Trade and Industry abstained from voting on the approval of the government’s project, which was tantamount to voting “against”.

The dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie only intensified after the beginning of the implementation of the reform. Due to the chaos that had been established in connection with the withdrawal of money, private trading establishments stopped working: the supply of the village with industrial goods was interrupted, and the workers' settlements with food. Entrepreneurs from the Far East, especially those who made money on trade with China, suffered the most from the money exchange. On the territory of the Republic of China, which was flooded with Russian banknotes, only a few exchange offices were opened, which made the exchange of money almost impossible. Nevertheless, the government announced a successful Kerenok exchange in China.

One of the consequences of the monetary reform and other government measures in the economic sphere was the disappointment of entrepreneurs from the policy of counter-revolutionary regimes in the economic sphere. Numerous reports of the first half of 1919 demonstrated a “cooling” in relations between the authorities and entrepreneurs: agents of power, mass media began to accuse the bourgeoisie of “selfishness”, “pursuing only their own interests”, etc. “Modern representatives of the commercial and industrial class apparently unable to rise above personal interests,” an agent telegram reported in June 1919. The bourgeoisie was accused of failing to fulfill its promises. “According to the persistent ideas of commercial and industrial circles, the Government has abolished the monopoly on bread, meat and butter,” reported in June 1919 in a report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, intended for printing, “and as a result of free trade, the prices of these items quickly increased and speculation intensified. Both the state and society had no right to expect such results from free trade, by achieving which the commercial and industrialists promised to promote the economic life of the country.

Thus, in the first half of 1919, the activities of the counter-revolutionary government in the economic sphere became the cause of dissatisfaction with the Kolchak government on the part of entrepreneurs. Their previously generous appropriations to support the army ceased. Entrepreneurs have ceased to provide real support to the regime.

In the second half of 1919, entrepreneurs formally declared their loyalty to the regime. In fact, their attitude towards the Russian government of Admiral Kolchak worsened: it was in the second half of 1919 that the consequences of his economic policy began to affect.

The growing dissatisfaction of entrepreneurs was caused by the tax policy of the Kolchak regime. The tax legislation of the Russian government provided for a high taxation of the income of the bourgeoisie and private trading enterprises. The dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie was also caused by emergency taxes “for the needs of the army”, the growth of forceful, administrative interference of the authorities in the activities of the commodity market, aggravated by the inefficiency of such methods, and mass corruption of officials. In many respects, the consequence of this was the transfer by entrepreneurs of their capital to the shadow economy and the development of illegal forms of trade.

At the same time, the commercial and industrial class continued to publicly support the actions of the Russian government, Admiral Kolchak; in fact, at first the most far-sighted or cautious of its representatives, and then the majority of entrepreneurs, ceased to believe in the possibility of a favorable outcome for the Kolchak government of the civil war. This position of the bourgeoisie did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. “At best, the commercial and industrial class had power for itself, if one can only seriously talk about such a support in the person of a class that, even at the most acute moment, was not able to renounce the main thought about the profit”, wrote in his memoirs a prominent member Cadet Party L. A. Krol.

It was the failures of the "white" armies at the front that caused a change in the attitude of the bourgeoisie towards the prospects of the Kolchak regime. Already in August September 1919, the withdrawal of capital from the economy of Siberia and the transfer of funds to the Far East, to Harbin or abroad began. "Speculators", who specialized in the delivery of goods from the Far East, by the autumn of 1919 began to reduce the volume of trade, those of them who continued to trade raised the price of their goods several times. As early as October 1919, entrepreneurs refused to ship goods west of Irkutsk.

During the period of the greatest successes of the troops of General A. I. Denikin, the interest of commercial and industrialists in the political life of the country again increased. There were calls to strengthen the dictatorship and to fight even moderate socialists. However, by November 1919, all political activity of this social group had ceased due to the beginning of the defeats of Denikin's armies near Moscow.

After the surrender of Omsk in November 1919 to the troops of the Red Army, the commercial activities of trade and industrialists in "white" Siberia were actually curtailed. Entrepreneurs began to leave the region, travel to the Far East and abroad.

Thus, in the second half of 1919, the bourgeoisie formally continued to support all government initiatives. However, due to the inefficient economic policy of the government, on the one hand, and the distrust of entrepreneurs in the prospect of victory for the Kolchak regime in the civil war, on the other, the bourgeoisie actually remained in opposition to the authorities. A significant part of them chose to leave the country. This position of entrepreneurs largely contributed to the economic and political weakening of the regime.

In the first half of 1919, the proletariat of Siberia was in opposition to the Kolchak regime, which was noted both in the reports of counterintelligence agencies and in the memoirs of contemporaries.

The main reason for the growing negative attitude of the proletariat of Siberia towards the Kolchak regime was the deterioration of the social and economic situation of the workers against the backdrop of skillfully constructed Bolshevik propaganda about the successes of socialist construction in Soviet Russia, which was very popular among the workers. Thanks to these mood factors, even that part of the proletariat that was ready to put up with the existence of a counter-revolutionary government, the railroad workers, began to change in the direction of opposition to the anti-Bolshevik authorities. “As for the mood of the railway workers, I must report that a relatively small part of them are supporters of Bolshevism, while the rest represent a completely inert mass. But this situation can easily change for the worse due to the dissatisfaction of the workers on the basis of the insufficient diligence of the Ministry of Railways in the matter of correct wages and the complete lack of diligence of the same ministry in the issue of supplying the workers with essential products, which often creates impossible living conditions for the workers, wrote in April 1919 the head of the military communications of the Siberian region. At non-strategic or less significant enterprises of various forms of ownership, the situation was even worse.

The fears of the chief of military communications were not groundless. "The greatest unrest is among the railway workers," was reported in a survey of political sentiment prepared for the Information Department of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in July 1919.

A direct connection between the growth of anti-government sentiments in the social group of the proletariat and its difficult economic situation was also indicated by the letters of the workers to the Kolchak Ministry of Labor. Such letters “rarely touched upon issues of a political nature... The letters contain constant complaints about the high cost, the severity of living conditions, which at times turn into clear sympathy for the Bolsheviks, who, in the opinion of the workers, create the well-being of the working class. These hopes make some workers wait for the arrival of the Bolsheviks “like a bright day”, was reported in one of the summer reports of the Military Censorship and Control Bureau of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander.

Despite its revolutionary nature, the proletariat of Siberia in the first half of 1919 rarely took part in urban uprisings against the Kolchak regime, even when the radical left called for such actions. So, for example, in January 1919, during the soldiers' uprising in Bodaibo, the workers of the depot and the railway, "having discussed the issue of the situation that had arisen in the city, strongly opposed their participation in the uprising" of the soldiers of the city's garrison. This decision of the workers of Bodaibo had a sobering effect on the rebellious soldiers: “Feeling deprived of support, the soldiers began to scatter,” the report from the scene reported.

Another form of protest, the strike, was more actively supported by the workers. In the first half of 1919, strikes were not uncommon. The strikes of water transport workers, railway workers, strikes and conflicts between workers and administration at the Lena mines and Cheremkhovo coal mines, in Kuzbass caused great public outcry, caused significant harm to the socio-economic and political stability of the regime of Admiral Kolchak. The government's ban in the spring of 1919 on all strikes, including those of an economic nature, further aggravated the relationship between the authorities and the proletariat. From now on, any strike took on a political character, as it had the features of a struggle with the Kolchak government, which banned strikes.

A striking manifestation of the opposition of the proletariat was the mass non-participation of workers in elections to local governments in the cities of Siberia. Evidence of such behavior of the workers came from everywhere, even from Irkutsk province, known for its liberal rules. The workers practically did not take part in the elections of the city duma of Irkutsk in May 1919. Manager of the Irkutsk province. P. D. Yakovlev reported that the same situation had developed in the workers' settlements, where "a boycott of the Zemstvos is observed."

But even the participation of workers in the elections of representative bodies did not guarantee the normal functioning of these institutions. Having received a significant number of mandates in them, representatives of the proletariat could sabotage their work. Thus, the workers thwarted the opening of a zemstvo meeting in Bodaibo, where a large-scale strike had been suppressed shortly before. “The opening of the session of the Bodaibo district zemstvo assembly [due to] the non-arrival of the quorum of zemstvo vowels could not take place. There were no public workers,” reported in an agency telegram of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in early June 1919.

This behavior of the majority of Siberian workers destabilized the internal political situation in the country and caused constant nervousness in the cities. The boycott of the zemstvo and city dumas by the workers undermined the very idea of representativeness, which these bodies were called upon to personify, which, in turn, did not contribute to the strengthening of the anti-Bolshevik regime.

The beginning of the successful offensive of the Red Army in July 1919 was accompanied by outbreaks of the strike movement of the Siberian proletariat. The political strike of coal miners in Cheremkhovo, which ended only on July 3, resumed. "Their mood is Bolshevik, reported in the report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the striking miners, they are expecting the arrival of the Bolsheviks, to whom they could join."

The strikes of the miners of Kuzbass did not stop. By August 4, workers went on strike at the Yuzhnaya and Tsentralnaya mines, the Kopikuz joint-stock company in the Kuznetsk basin. The strike, in addition to purely political reasons, was caused by a doubling of bread prices, a delay in wages for June and July, and then the issuance of it with bonds issued by the Kopikuz society, which were not accepted anywhere except for consumer enterprises of the same society.

In September 1919, the strike swept through the mines of the largest gold mining enterprise, Lenzoto. The unrest of the workers spread to the Bodaibo railway.

The threat of constant workers' strikes forced the Kolchak government to concentrate military units in the mining areas. Constantly military units were stationed at the Kolchuginsky, Kemerovo and Anzhersky mines. Until April 1919, the area of the Anzhersk and Sudzhensky mines was guarded by a garrison of 65 people. railway guard, echelon of Czechoslovak troops and police up to 90 people. In the second half of 1919 the situation changed. With the beginning of the defeats of Kolchak's armies on the fronts, anti-government sentiments are growing here. "There is fermentation among the working masses," the head of the Anzher mine reported to Omsk. Since July 1919, in connection with the growth of anti-government sentiments of the workers at the mines, a counterintelligence headquarters was organized, reinforced by an armed detachment.

In the second half of 1919, reports about the “Bolshevik sentiments” of the workers became widespread and came from all corners of Siberia64. These reports, however, pointed out that the Bolshevik agitators took advantage of the difficult economic situation of the workers, who "turn purely economic actions into political ones." The irreconcilable hostility of the proletariat to the anti-Bolshevik regime became obvious to the Siberian public as well.

As the failures of Kolchak's armies increased, the number of workers' strikes at the front increased. The Czech major Kosek even explained the appearance of the famous Czechoslovak memorandum in December 1919 by the fear of railroad strikes, which could provoke a delay in the evacuation of allied trains from Russia.

After the Omsk catastrophe, the workers took an active part in all anti-Kolchak demonstrations, both Bolshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary. They also supported General Zinevich's speech in Krasnoyarsk. The proletariat of Cheremkhovo, Irkutsk, "bolshevik-minded", supported the uprisings organized by the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center. However, after the victory of the anti-Kolchak SR speeches, the Bolsheviks received the majority of seats in the emerging soviets precisely thanks to the support of the proletariat of Siberia.

Thus, in the second half of 1919, the revolutionary sentiments of the workers played an important role in the social life of the second half of 1919 in Siberia and were realized in the course of their strikes and protests. The workers' support for the anti-Kolchak uprisings led by the Socialist-Revolutionaries was temporary. After the overthrow of the Kolchak administration, the workers contributed to the transfer of power into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

In the first half of 1919, there was a noticeable increase in anti-government sentiments of all sections of the peasantry of Siberia, provoked by problems that arose in the relationship between the Kolchak authorities and the rural population of Siberia.

The most significant problem for the peasantry, and for the entire Siberian society in the first half of 1919, was the lack of banknotes of small denominations. Indeed, the lack of change funds led to a stagnation in trade and an increase in prices, which hurt agricultural producers in the face of a growing shortage of goods. The inability of the authorities to solve this problem, the introduction of money surrogates in many regions of the Urals and Siberia, the confiscatory nature of the monetary reform in the spring of 1919 led to a decline in the authority of the government among the Siberian peasantry.

Another pressing problem of the Siberian countryside, which aroused the peasant population against the counter-revolutionary government, was the repression against moonshining. Agents on the ground reported that "government detachments, who fought against moonshine, aroused the anger of the peasantry" of Siberia.

The collection of taxes, especially zemstvo payments, remained a serious problem for the government. The peasantry was outraged by the increase in the amount of taxes caused by inflation, as well as the practice of collecting arrears for 1917-1918, which they considered "lawlessness".

Among the factors that irritated the peasantry was the ill-considered decision of the government to collect uniforms for the army among the population. The government did not have the means or trained personnel to solve this problem, but the negative consequences were more than enough. “How many people have been turned against themselves by the government by taking away their overcoats, but how many have been taken away? Some 510%, and 90% again wear and boast that there is no need to succumb to the bourgeoisie, they will leave everyone naked, one peasant of the Yenisei province wrote to P.V. Vologodsky. In the end, the same thing can happen with taxes ... ” the author of the letter concluded. The above measures of the Kolchak government were, in many ways, the cause of new peasant anti-government uprisings in the first half of 1919.

The uprisings destabilized the political situation in Siberia. At the same time, “campaigning” in favor of the rebels was often carried out by government agents. The actions of government punitive detachments caused discontent among the local population. “In general, government troops have been acting sluggishly [against the rebels. A. M.], which becomes offensive, but they vigorously flog civilians and shoot them without trial or investigation, and even rob civilians and only produce Bolsheviks; in general, the whole region is extremely dissatisfied with government detachments ... And when a gang comes in, killed, plundered, and there is no one from the government, where will this lead to ... ” an Altai peasant complained to Omsk in May 1919. The uprisings provoked the growth of anti-government sentiments among the peasantry.

A critical attitude towards the Kolchak government was also noted in the reports of agents of power. In the reports of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, describing the situation in the country, an important place was given to the analysis of the reasons for the growth of anti-government sentiments of the peasantry. Among the reasons, army analysts called "actions of punitive detachments", "reprisals against the innocent" and "certain orders of the government", such as "cancellation of kerenok", "collection of arrears and taxes in general", as well as mobilization.

In the first half of 1919, relations between the Cossack and the resettlement peasant population of Siberia escalated. The growing dissatisfaction among the peasantry, mainly among the newly settled peasants, with the privileged position of the Cossacks, their provision with land threatened to expand the internal front of the civil war between the peasants and the Cossacks. First, in the resolutions of rural assemblies, and then in the decisions of the leadership of the insurgent groups, there appeared demands "to equalize the Cossacks with the peasants." In case of non-fulfillment of these requirements, the rebels threatened to "cut all the Cossacks and officers." At the same time, cases of pogroms of Cossack villages became more frequent. This practice, however, was not then widespread.

In the first half of 1919, the attitude of the peasantry towards Bolshevism also changed. “The Bolsheviks robbed less,” many peasants claimed. Peasants treated reports of Bolshevik atrocities in European Russia with obvious distrust; refugee peasants from the Urals and the Volga region were accused of insincerity or tried to justify the repressions of the Bolsheviks.

The serious military defeats of Kolchak's armies in the summer of 1919 demonstrated the weakness of the counter-revolutionary government. It was precisely the weakness of the Kolchak regime, which could neither restore "order" in the countryside, as the peasants understood it, nor protect its supporters there, nor, finally, defeat its ideological opponents on the fronts of the civil war, which led to an increase in anti-government sentiments among the peasantry. . War weariness also determined the sympathies of the peasantry for the Bolsheviks.

In the period from September to December 1919, discontent engulfed broad sections of the peasantry, both old-timers and settlers. Yu. V. Zhurov in his monograph "The Civil War in the Siberian Village" even draws a conclusion about the formation in the late 1919 early 1920s. "All-Peasant Anti-Kolchak Front". Apparently, it is not worth talking about the existence of a “front”: despite the mass nature of the peasant uprisings in the second half of 1919, not all the peasantry of Siberia participated in them. But it seems indisputable that, in general, a critical attitude towards the Kolchak regime embraced almost all sections of the peasant population of Siberia.

A certain specificity in this period was the mood of the peasantry in the rebel regions of Siberia. Thus, in the report of the intelligence department of the Irkutsk military district at the end of November 1919, an overview was given of the political moods of the peasant population of the Stepno-Badzheisk insurgent region. According to this report, the entire population of the volosts engulfed in the uprising, both old-timers and settlers, was sharply anti-government.

As the uprising moves away from the area, there is a difference in the assessment of the political situation by old-timer peasants and settlers. “The new settlers ... in the mass sympathize with the Reds and replenish the contingent of the rebels,” the report said. The population of old-timers is grouped mainly in the rich Irbey volost; The Irbey volost has organized squads and is vigorously fighting the Reds, not hoping for government help. Thus, if in the centers of the uprisings, the old-timer peasants supported the rebels, then outside of them they were more likely “for themselves”, trying to protect their economy from civil war, extortions and requisitions of both warring parties. General Sakharov, talking about conversations with peasants during the “ice campaign” of the Kappelites to the east, also cited evidence of the hostile indifference of the old-timer peasants to both the “whites” and the “reds”.

Military reports also pointed to the special resistance of the old-timer peasantry against the propaganda of the rebels. "The most stable element against the Bolshevik propaganda are the native Siberians," reported the summary of the Main Military Censorship and Control Bureau of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The resettlement population, on the other hand, openly supported the Bolsheviks in the second half of 1919. In the Semipalatinsk region, where the peasant settlers prevailed, and public relations were complicated by land disputes with the Cossacks and the indigenous Kazakh population, the peasants supported all the rebellions and first rendered them, and then the regular Red Army, all kinds of help. “The entire local population,” later recalled an eyewitness officer of the Southern Army, General A. I. Dutov, “provided the widest possible assistance and support to the red partisan detachments.” The administrators of Pavlodar, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Semipalatinsk districts of the Semipalatinsk region repeatedly reported to Omsk about the "Bolshevik moods" of the local migrant peasantry.

In addition, the Siberian peasantry in the second half of 1919 was largely forced to help the "red" rebels. “They are more afraid of them, and therefore they serve them, and not us,” explained the reason for this behavior of the Siberian peasantry in his report, the head of the intelligence department of the Irkutsk military district.

Thus, the majority of the Siberian peasantry, both old-timers and settlers , in the second half of 1919 was anti-government. However, if in the areas of peasant anti-government uprisings, the attitude of old-timers and new settlers to the Kolchak authorities did not differ, then as they moved away from them, the old-timers began to be equally critical of both the Kolchak government and the rebels and Soviet power. But, having gone over to the opposition to the Kolchak regime, the majority of the peasants objectively supported the restoration of order, the symbol of which in 1919 could only be the Soviet government.

The Cossacks in 1919 actively supported the regime of Admiral Kolchak, which made it possible to use them primarily to combat internal unrest. The participation of the Cossacks in the suppression of peasant anti-government uprisings and speeches served as the reason for the growth of antagonism between these social groups. The rebellious peasants openly promised to physically destroy all the Cossacks "who would fall into their hands, without distinction of sex and age", was reported in a report from the scene.

Mutual hatred was so great that cases of pogroms of villages left without armed protection actually took place. In order to protect the villages "from attacks by Bolshevik gangs (in May 1919), the Military Congress of the Siberian Cossack Host decided to ask the Siberian military government for the total armament of the Cossacks for self-protection."

The distrust of the Cossacks towards the resettled peasant population was also expressed in their attitude towards the county zemstvos. Zemstvos on the territory of Siberia, according to the law of 1917, were provided as territorial authorities, their composition was to be elected in the same territory by both Cossacks and peasants "out of town". The Cossacks did not like this situation - they were afraid that the zemstvos, composed on a non-estate basis, might try, like the councils of 1917 of the first half of 1918. to revise the established procedure for the distribution of land resources.

Throughout 19171918. Cossacks boycotted the election of zemstvo self-government bodies on the territory of the Siberian Cossack Host. At the beginning of 1919, the Cossacks continued to demand for themselves a "estate zemstvo", that is, the creation of separate zemstvo bodies for Cossacks, peasants, townspeople, etc. Then these demands were not satisfied. The situation developed by May 1919.

In May 1919, the Third Military Circle of the Trans-Baikal Cossacks, virtually independent of the Omsk authorities, decided that the army should withdraw “from the common zemstvo due to the peculiarities of Cossack life (direct democracy)”, in order to avoid disputes and actual dual power between the zemstvo and military authorities and “ because of the burdensome zemstvo taxes.

The withdrawal of the Siberian Cossacks from the Zemstvos was not formalized legally, but was actually carried out: the Cossacks ignored the elections to local governments at the county and city levels. The Russian government of Admiral Kolchak had neither the strength nor the desire to force the Cossacks to work together with the peasants in the zemstvos. Nevertheless, in the first half of 1919, the Cossacks remained the only mass social group of the population of Siberia, which continued to really support the regime of Admiral Kolchak.

With the onset of defeats at the fronts in the summer of 1919, remaining generally loyal to the counter-revolutionary authorities, the Cossacks began to claim greater participation in the political life of the country. In July 1919, the Cossacks raised the issue of creating a special Cossack ministry, which, however, did not meet with sympathy in the Council of Ministers. Instead, the post of Assistant Minister of War for Cossack Troops was established in the government, to which a representative of the Ural Cossack Host, General B. I. Khoroshkin, was appointed.

At one of the meetings of the Cossack conference at the end of August 1919, Admiral Kolchak was made a proposal to toughen the dictatorship regime, relying on the Cossacks. “It turned out,” A.P. Budberg wrote at that time in his diary, “that the Cossack conference, which had become more and more impudent of late, came to the admiral and offered him to assume full dictatorial power, backing himself up with a purely Cossack government and relying mainly on the Cossacks. This proposal, however, was later disavowed.

The failure of the authorities to fulfill the requirements of the Cossacks became the reason for their dissatisfaction with the government. So, according to the proposal of the ataman B. V. Annenkov in the fall of 1919 in favor of the Cossacks of the Semipalatinsk region. additional plots of land were to be transferred at the expense of the infringement of peasants and foreigners. Only the intervention of P.P. Ivanov-Rinov prevented the approval of such a decision. The Cossacks were not satisfied.

In the autumn of 1919, changes began to take place in the attitude of the Cossacks towards the counter-revolutionary regime. So (unlike in August 1919), the serious dissatisfaction of the Cossacks with the "white" authorities was caused by the demand for almost universal mobilization into the army. Already in the autumn of 1918, the reserves of conscripts of the next two ages (1919 and 1920) were almost completely exhausted. Therefore, in the summer of 1919, it was necessary to significantly expand the age limits of the mobilized. During that period, however, the Cossacks supported the idea of expanding the number of conscripts. By the autumn of 1919 the situation had changed. The need to defend the villages from attacks by "partisan" detachments, dissatisfaction with government policy led to a change in the position of the Cossacks on the issue of additional mobilizations. The government, based on the summer information about the mood of the Cossacks, forced the mobilization. Indicative in this sense was the order for the Siberian Cossack Host, signed by Ataman Ivanov-Rinov: “Cossacks of all denominations, called up to the age of 40, enter the service in the field, active regiments. I call all the officers and Cossacks who are able to carry weapons from the draft, from the age of 17, to hundreds of self-protection to protect the villages. The order already contained very cruel measures provided for as punishments for its non-fulfillment, which suggests that the office of the military ataman had a better idea of the attitude of the Cossacks to this action.

After the fall of Omsk in November 1919 and the loss of most of the territory of the Siberian Cossack army, the remaining Cossack units began to disintegrate. A significant part of the Cossacks of Semirechye took refuge in the territory of western China. The Cossacks of the Kolchak army retreating to the east left the front or declared their "neutrality". So, in the days of the battles for Irkutsk with the rebels of the Political Center in December 1919 and during subsequent negotiations between representatives of the Kolchak Council of Ministers and the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center, the Cossacks of the military units located in the Irkutsk region even expressed their intention to "get out of the civil war." “We have decided ...,” said a representative of the Cossack troops in the Irkutsk region during the negotiations, “announce that we no longer wish to take part in the struggle.” The Cossack representative, announcing the recognition of the authority of the Political Center, declared on behalf of the military Cossack Circle that the Cossacks "will no longer tolerate any interference" in their internal affairs. In fact, it was a declaration about the withdrawal of the Cossacks of Siberia from the civil war.

The Siberian Cossacks were the most reliable social support of power throughout the civil war. It supported the Kolchak government even in the most difficult periods. However, by the end of 1919, after the actual death of the White Guard statehood in eastern Russia and Siberia, the Cossack formations were decomposed. By the time of the fighting in the Irkutsk region, the Cossacks were unable to take part in the war.

It is legitimate to distinguish two main stages in the evolution of the attitudes of the population of the east of Russia towards the anti-Bolshevik authorities. The stage of the first half of 1919 is interesting in that the socio-psychological prerequisites for the death of the Kolchak regime were laid down precisely at that time. In the first half of 1919, the Siberian population began to move away from supporting the government of Admiral Kolchak, caused both by the methods of conducting domestic policy and by its increasingly obvious inability to win the war. A significant part of the country's population was disappointed and lost confidence in the successful outcome of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. The tendency to refuse support for the regime, as a rule, did not yet mean going into opposition; nevertheless, it was a dangerous symptom: if the authorities were deprived of assistance during the period of victories and stability, then what did the era of defeats threaten it with?

In the second half of 1919, the political mood of all sections of the population of Siberia took shape under the influence of events at the front. After the loss of the territory of the Urals by the "white" armies, the population of which constantly supported all anti-Bolshevik regimes, the population of Siberia faced a choice between the weakening regime of Admiral Kolchak and support for the triumphant Bolshevism.

The result of this choice was the refusal of the majority of the population to support the Kolchak regime, which determined its collapse even before military defeats became decisive. At the same time, with the exception of the workers and part of the peasantry, not a single social group came out on the side of the Bolsheviks, trying to put forward the idea of leaving the war with Soviet Russia, subject to the preservation of "democratic Siberia". However, without the support of military force, this idea was doomed. In the conditions of disunity of social groups, against the background of general fatigue from the war, only the "party of order" could win, as which the population at the end of 1919 perceived only the Bolsheviks. The victory of the Red Army was facilitated by the fact that a significant part of the population of Siberia practically did not experience the “charms” of the Soviet regime until its fall in 1918.

These socio-psychological factors in the second half of 1919 predetermined the rapid fall of the Kolchak regime and the restoration of Soviet power in Siberia.

NOTES

Eikhe G.H. Overturned rear. M., 1966; Ioffe G. Z. Kolchak's adventure and its collapse. M., 1983; I. F. Plotnikov On the question of the nature of armed uprisings in the Kolchak rear (1918-1919) // Izv. SO AS USSR, ser. societies. Sciences. Novosibirsk, 1966, no. 1, No. 1; Poznansky V. S. Essays on the armed struggle of the Soviets of Siberia against the counter-revolution in 1917-1918. Novosibirsk, 1973; Pokrovsky S. N. The victory of Soviet power in Semirechye. Alma-Ata, 1961; Zhurov Yu.V. Civil war in the Siberian village. Krasnoyarsk, 1986; Kadeikin V. A. Siberia Unconquered (The Bolshevik Underground and the Labor Movement in the Siberian Rear of the Counter-Revolution during the Years of Foreign Military Intervention and the Civil War). Kemerovo, 1968.
See for example: Nikitin A. N. Documentary sources on the history of the civil war in Siberia. Tomsk, 1994; He is. Periodical press about the political moods and positions of the working class of Siberia during the civil war // Siberia during the civil war. Kemerovo, 1995; Kuryshev I.V. Socio-Psychological Image of the Peasantry of Western Siberia during the Civil War (Based on Periodicals). Abstract … cand. ist. Sciences. Tomsk, 1998.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 2, d. 17, l. 87.
Melgunov S. P. The tragedy of Admiral Kolchak. From the history of the civil war on the Volga, the Urals and Siberia. Belgrade, 19301931, part III, vol. 1, p. 281.
Melgunov S. P. Tragedy ... part III, vol. 1, p. 123.
RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d. 143, l. 1.
There, l. 1rev.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 3, ll. 14.
Budberg A. Diary // Gul R. ice hike; Denikin A.I. Campaign and death of General Kornilov; Budberg A., baron. Diary. M., 1990, p. 294.
RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d. 143, l. 1rev.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 2, d. 804, l. 2.
Budberg A. Diary ... p. 294.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 1, d. 327, l. 1.
There, l. 8.
RGVA, f. 39499, op.1, d. 143, l. 2rev.
Sakharov K.V. White Siberia (Internal war 19181920). Munich, 1923, p. 183.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 2, d. 215, l. 89.
The last days of Kolchak. Sat. M., 1926, p. 85.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 2, d. 215, l. 8.
There, l. 9.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 23, l. 427428.
Cit. By: Melgunov S. P. Tragedy ... part III, vol. 2, p. 161.
Melgunov S. P. Tragedy ... part III, vol. 2, p. 176177.
GAIO, f. D70, op. 11, l. 547; Melgunov S. P. Tragedy ... part III, vol. 1, p. 255.
Dawn, 1918, No. 114.
Partisan movement in Siberia. Sat. doc. L., 1925, v. 1: Yenisei region, p. 69.
RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d. 160, l. 7.
GARF, f. 176, op. 12, d. 26, l. 12rev.
There.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 3, l. 4.
Siberia, 1919, No. 66.
There.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 23, l. 329.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 2, d. 254, l. 18.
The Last Days of Kolchak // Siberian Lights. 1922. No. 11, p. 8182.
Rynkov V. M. Economic policy of the counter-revolutionary governments of Siberia (second half of 1918-1919). Diss. cand. ist. Sciences. Novosibirsk, 1998, p. 92.
There.
Rynkov V. M. Economic policy of the counter-revolutionary governments of Siberia (second half of 1918-1919). Abstract diss. cand. ist. Sciences. Novosibirsk, 1998, p. 1718.
Rynkov V. M. Economic policy of the counter-revolutionary governments of Siberia (second half of 1918-1919). Dissertation… p. 77.
Ibid, p. 80.
Ibid, p. 83.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 15, l. 74.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 15, l. 7576.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 15, l. 73rev.
Rynkov V. M. Economic policy of the counter-revolutionary governments of Siberia (second half of 1918-1919). Abstract … With. 14.
Krol L. A. For three years (memories, impressions and meetings). Vladivostok, 1921, p. 190.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 49, l. 115.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 14, l. 333rev.
RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d. 160, l. 3.
GARF, f. 176, op. 12, d. 26, l. 6rev.
There, op. 3, d. 14, l. 31.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 2, d. 17, l. 85; RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d.160, l. 3.
Kadeikin V. A. Siberia unconquered... p. 246.
GAIO, f. D70, op. 15, d. 981, l. 17.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 21, l. 2730.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 2, d. 19, l. 156.
Kadeikin V. A. Siberia unconquered... p. 258.
GARF, f. 296, op. 2, d. 12, l. 2.
GARF, f. 176, op. 1, d. 72, l. 19.
Kadeikin V. A. Siberia unconquered... p. 263264.
Ibid, p. 259.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 20, l. 12.
There.
Cm. Krol L. A. For three years ... with. 190.
Gins G.K. Siberia, allies and Kolchak. Beijing, 1921, vol. II, p. 530.
Kadeikin V. A. Siberia unconquered... p. 453.
Ibid, p. 465468.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 14, l. 46.
There, l. 47.
There.
There, l. 4850.
There, l. 15.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 5, d. 66, l. 21.
GARF, f. 176, op. 12, d. 26, l. 6.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 15, l. 8183.
There.
Our Dawn, 1919, May 31.
Krol L. A. For three years ... with. 190.
Zhurov Yu.V. Civil war in the Siberian village. Krasnoyarsk, 1986, p. 150.
GARF, f. 176, op. 3, d. 14, l. 135.
Sakharov K.V. White Siberia ... with. 255.
RGVA, f. 39499, op. 1, d. 143, l. 3.
GARF, f. 5881, op. 243, l. 1.
GARF, f. 176, op. 2, d. 87, ll. 6370.
There, op. 3, d. 14, l. 335.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 1, d. 15, ll. 8086.
Siberian speech, 1919, May 14.
GARF, f. 1700, op. 2, d. 17, l. 276.
Melgunov S. P. Tragedy ... part III, vol. 1, p. 286.
Budberg A. Diary ... p. 309.
There.
Gins G.K. Siberia ... with. 378.
RGVA, f. 39709, op. 1, d. 10, l. 6.
Verbatim record of negotiations on the surrender of power of the Omsk government to the Political Center in the presence of high commissars of the highest military command of the powers, Irkutsk, January 1920. Harbin, 1921, p. 47.
There.

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25 Feb 2017, 07:50

The year 1919 was decisive for the outcome of the civil war. At this time, the mood of the population and the army predetermined the death of the anti-Bolshevik regime in Siberia. We tell how the "terrifying" financial crisis and the impending famine in the cities, as well as "lawlessness" in the countryside and the raids of punishers, affected the positions of Admiral Kolchak.

Taiga.info publishes a fragment of a study by Andrey Myshansky, Candidate of Historical Sciences, published in online magazine"Siberian Zaimka". The full version is available at the link.

Printed analogue: Myshansky A. A. The attitude of the population of Siberia to the "white" regime during the period of Kolchakism. // Civil war in the east of Russia. Problems of History.: Bakhrushin Readings 2001; Interuniversity. Sat. scientific tr. / Ed. V. I. Shishkin; Novosib. state un-t. Novosibirsk, 2001. C . 109–136.

The struggle between the Bolsheviks and their opponents was not limited to armed confrontation between the parties. The civil war was also determined socio-psychological confrontation. In Siberia, the attitude of the population towards the anti-Bolshevik regime played a decisive role in such a confrontation. The favorable or negative attitude of the population towards the authorities determined the internal stability of the anti-Bolshevik governments: during the civil war, the functioning of the regime without the support of mass social groups was impossible. In turn, the attitude of the population towards the regime could also serve as a kind of indicator of the effectiveness of the policy pursued by the Kolchak authorities.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a complex social structure was formed in Siberia. Quantitatively, the rural population prevailed here - the peasantry and the Cossacks. However, political and - to a large extent - economic life was dominated by Siberian cities, the population of which was the middle urban strata - the inhabitants, as well as representatives of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. By the time of the revolution and civil war, the political situation in society was determined by another social group that appeared during the world war - the army.

Omsk during the Civil War

Townspeople

Most of the urban population of Siberia during the first half of 1919 was conservative. This was clearly revealed during the elections to the city government: the representatives of the homeowners won a convincing victory in the elections. At the same time, the results of the elections demonstrated the growing indifference of the majority of the inhabitants to political and public life, including the outcome of the civil war. This was manifested in widespread absenteeism: only 30% of voters in Irkutsk, 28% in Shadrinsk, 20% in Kurgan took part in the elections.

Such moods in conditions of victory or at least a stable military-political situations in a stable state system would hardly pose a threat to the regime. In the event of a deterioration in the military situation, the behavior of the population turned out to be unpredictable. This meant the potential loss of support for the Kolchak government among the only social group - the population of the cities of Siberia, which constantly supported the anti-Bolshevik regimes.

The serious defeats of Kolchak's armies on the fronts in the summer of 1919, the flow of refugees that swept the Siberian cities - mainly representatives of the intelligentsia and the inhabitants of the Urals, blew up the outwardly calm life of the cities of Siberia. The awareness of complete insecurity in the face of the rapidly approaching war was especially traumatic for the psyche of people. The distance that the Russian army of Admiral Kolchak covered during December 1918 - June 1919 was now lost in a matter of days. The catastrophe was inevitable, the disappointment with government power was universal.

“The stories of refugees and confusion about the actions of the authorities even more excites the population and undermines their shaky trust in the government”

“The mood of the population in recent days can be characterized by the words: panic and confusion,” the summary of the Information Department of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief reported in early August 1919. - Panic gripped not only the front line, but also the deep rear ... Refugees arriving from the front tell amazing details of the total flight of the population from Perm, Yekaterinburg and other cities and villages.

“In Yekaterinburg and Perm,” another army report prepared for members of the Council of Ministers in late August - early September 1919 reported, “the military authorities until very recently hid the truth from the population and did not allow the evacuation of government institutions. Thanks to this unfortunate reception, all institutions and the entire population rushed to the railroad tracks in complete disorder at the last hour. The result is unimaginable chaos everywhere. More than two hundred echelons completely filled the line from Yekaterinburg to Kulomzino, hindering and even completely stopping the advance of reserves, cargo and equipment for the army. Huge crowds of refugees move on foot along with the troops.

The authors of the reports correctly assessed the danger of the psychological impact of defeats on the fronts on the attitude of the population of Siberia to the Kolchak authorities: “These stories [of refugees], as well as the confusion felt by society in the actions of the authorities, excites the population even more and undermines its unsteady trust in the Government. Society no longer believes the talk about the stability of the front, that Omsk is safe, as it is afraid of repeating the history of Kazan and Yekaterinburg.

This attitude of the population towards the regime was manifested, in particular, in the fact that a significant part of it supported the demands of the Socialist-Revolutionary opposition to change the political system. In the summer - autumn of 1919, city dumas and provincial zemstvo assemblies made sharp demarches against the policy of the Kolchak government. The Irkutsk Zemstvo defiantly welcomed the disgraced General Gaida - "the young leader of the Slavs, the liberator of Siberia". At the same time, the idea of concluding a truce with the Bolsheviks was first voiced.

“The mood of the layman is such that whoever raises an uprising will succeed”

It seems that the urban population expected the government to restore stability at the front and in the rear. The counter-offensive of the anti-Bolshevik armies, which began in September 1919, did not guarantee such stability, so the news of it aroused enthusiasm only among refugees from the territory of the Urals, while many Siberian newspapers assessed it as a gamble. Designed to calm the rear and inspire the army, this offensive not only did not achieve its goals, but also undermined the small credit of trust in the government that it still possessed among the townsfolk.

The failure of the Tobolsk offensive in the autumn of 1919 again became a catalyst for mass dissatisfaction with the activities of the government among the masses of the urban inhabitants of Siberia. The news of the surrender of Omsk in November 1919 for the majority of the population of the cities served as proof of the regime's inability to find a way out of a difficult situation. The unfavorable political situation was exacerbated by the growing economic crisis. According to the report of K. P. Kharitonov, comrade-in-chief of the affairs of the Council of Ministers, in early December 1919, the growth of dissatisfaction among the population of cities with the regime of Admiral Kolchak was provoked “firstly, by a terrifying financial crisis; secondly, the fabulous high cost; thirdly, the impending famine in ... the cities of Siberia; fourthly, bad news from the front. All this together led to the emergence of a vacuum around the Russian government of Admiral Kolchak.

The "Third Force" promised the population to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks. “Let the government and the allies leave, we will come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks, they will recognize the self-determination of certain regions and come to terms with the creation of a free socialist Siberia,” the Socialist-Revolutionary speakers said at a rally in Krasnoyarsk in December 1919.

Such sentiments among the inhabitants of Siberia made possible first the rebellion of General Zinevich in Krasnoyarsk, and then the establishment of the power of the Political Center in Irkutsk. “The mood ... of government employees is panicky, the mood of the layman is such that whoever raises an uprising will succeed,” the governor of Irkutsk province reported in a report to the Council of Ministers. P. D. Yakovlev at the end of December 1919

Thus, in the second half of 1919, in the conditions of heavy defeats of Kolchak's armies on the fronts, the population of the rear cities, called upon to bear the main burden of the civil war, refused to support the Russian government of Admiral Kolchak. At the same time, the inhabitants did not want the return of the Bolsheviks either. The implementation of this indefinite position of the urban inhabitants was the promotion of the "third force" on the political stage in Siberia, in which the Socialist-Revolutionary Party had the predominant influence. But such a position without the support of the army was doomed to defeat.

Admiral Kolchak at the review of the Czechoslovak units

Peasants

The most significant problem for the peasantry, and for the entire Siberian society in the first half of 1919, was the lack of banknotes of small denominations. Indeed, the lack of change funds led to a stagnation in trade and an increase in prices, which hurt agricultural producers in the face of a growing shortage of goods. The inability of the authorities to solve this problem, the introduction of monetary surrogates in many regions of the Urals and Siberia, the confiscatory nature of the monetary reform in the spring of 1919 led to a decline in the authority of the government among the Siberian peasantry.

Another pressing problem of the Siberian countryside, which aroused the peasant population against the counter-revolutionary government, was the repressions against moonshining. Agents on the ground reported that "government detachments fighting moonshine aroused the anger of the peasantry" of Siberia.

Among the factors that irritated the peasantry was the ill-conceived decision of the government to collect uniforms for the army among the population. The government did not have the means or trained personnel to solve this problem, but the negative consequences were more than enough. “How many people have the government turned against itself by taking away their overcoats, but how many have been taken away? - Some 5-10%, and 90% again wear and boast that there is no need to succumb to the bourgeoisie, they will leave everyone naked, - he wrote to P. V. Vologda one peasant of the Yenisei province. “In the end, the same thing can happen with taxes ... ”- the author of the letter concluded. The above measures of the Kolchak government were, in many ways, the cause of new peasant anti-government uprisings in the first half of 1919.

“Government troops vigorously flog civilians and shoot them without trial or investigation. »

The uprisings destabilized the political situation in Siberia. At the same time, “agitation” in favor of the rebels was often carried out by government agents. The actions of government punitive detachments caused discontent among the local population. “In general, government troops are so sluggish [against the rebels] that it becomes offensive, but they energetically flog civilians and shoot them without trial or investigation, and even rob civilians and only produce Bolsheviks; in general, the whole region is extremely dissatisfied with government detachments ... And when a gang swoops in, they killed, plundered, - and there is no one from the government, where will this lead to ... ”- an Altai peasant complained to Omsk in May 1919.

The uprisings provoked the growth of anti-government sentiments among the peasantry. A critical attitude towards the Kolchak government was also noted in the reports of agents of power. In the reports of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, describing the situation in the country, an important place was given to the analysis of the reasons for the growth of anti-government sentiments of the peasantry. Among the reasons, army analysts called "actions of punitive detachments", "reprisals against the innocent" and "certain orders of the government", such as "annulment of Kerenok", "collection of arrears and taxes in general", as well as mobilization.

In the first half of 1919, relations between the Cossack and the resettlement peasant population of Siberia escalated. brewing among the peasantry, chiefly among peasants-new settlers, dissatisfaction with the privileged position of the Cossacks, its provision with land threatened to expand the internal front of the civil war - between peasants and Cossacks. First, in the resolutions of rural assemblies, and then in the decisions of the leadership of the insurgent groups, there appeared demands "to equalize the Cossacks with the peasants."

In case of non-fulfillment of these requirements, the rebels threatened to "cut off all the Cossacks and officers." At the same time, cases of pogroms of Cossack villages became more frequent. This practice, however, was not then widespread.

In the first half of 1919, the attitude of the peasantry towards Bolshevism also changed. "The Bolsheviks robbed less," many peasants argued. Peasants treated reports of Bolshevik atrocities in European Russia with obvious distrust, refugee peasants from the Urals and the Volga region they were accused of insincerity or tried to justify the repressions of the Bolsheviks.

The serious military defeats of Kolchak's armies in the summer of 1919 demonstrated the weakness of the counter-revolutionary government. It was the weakness of the Kolchak regime, which could neither restore "order" in the countryside, as the peasants understood it, nor protect its supporters there, nor, finally, defeat its ideological opponents on the fronts of the civil war, led to an increase in anti-government sentiments among the peasantry . War weariness also contributed to the sympathy of the peasantry for the Bolsheviks.

In the period from September to December 1919, discontent engulfed broad sections of the peasantry - both old-timers and settlers. Yu. V. Zhurov in the monograph "The Civil War in the Siberian Village" even draws a conclusion about education in the late 1919 - early 1920s. "All-Peasant Anti-Kolchak Front". Apparently, it is not worth talking about the existence of a "front": despite the mass nature of the peasant uprisings in the second half of 1919, not all the peasantry of Siberia participated in them. But it seems indisputable that, in general, a critical attitude towards the Kolchak regime embraced almost all sections of the peasant population of Siberia.

The new settlers in the mass sympathized with the Reds and replenished the contingent of the rebels. TO old-timers were more for themselves

A certain specificity in this period was the mood of the peasantry in the rebel regions of Siberia. So, in the report of the intelligence department of the Irkutsk military district at the end of November 1919, an overview was given of the political mood of the peasant population Stepno-Badzheysky rebel area. According to this report, the entire population of the volosts engulfed in the uprising, both old-timers and settlers, was sharply anti-government.

As the uprising moves away from the area, there is a difference in the assessment of the political situation by old-timer peasants and settlers. " New settlers ... in the mass sympathize with the Reds and replenish the contingent of the rebels, the report said. - The population of old-timers is grouped mainly in the rich Irbey volost; The Irbey volost has organized squads and is vigorously fighting the Reds, not hoping for government help.

Thus, if in the centers of uprisings old peasants supported the rebels, then outside of them they were more likely “for themselves”, trying to protect their economy from civil war, extortions and requisitions of both warring parties. General Sakharov, talking about conversations with peasants during the "ice campaign" of the Kappelites to the east, also cited evidence of hostile indifference old-timer peasants both whites and reds.

Military reports also pointed to the special resistance of the old-timer peasantry against the propaganda of the rebels. "The most stable element against the Bolshevik propaganda are the indigenous Siberians", reported the summary of the Chief Military censorship control office of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The resettlement population, on the other hand, openly supported the Bolsheviks in the second half of 1919. in the Semipalatinsk region, where peasant settlers prevailed, and social relations were complicated by land disputes with the Cossacks and the indigenous Kazakh population, the peasants supported all the rebellions and first rendered them, and then the regular Red Army, all kinds of assistance. “The entire local population,” later recalled an eyewitness, an officer of the Southern Army, General A. I. Dutov, “provided the widest possible assistance and support to the red partisan detachments.” The administrators of Pavlodarsky, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Semipalatinsk districts of the Semipalatinsk region.

Thus, the majority of the Siberian peasantry, both old-timers and settlers, were anti-government in the second half of 1919. However, if in the areas of peasant anti-government uprisings, the attitude of old-timers and new settlers to the Kolchak authorities did not differ, then as they moved away from them, the old-timers began to be equally critical of both the Kolchak government and the rebels and Soviet power. But, having gone over to the opposition to the Kolchak regime, the majority of the peasants objectively supported the restoration of order, the symbol of which in 1919 could only be the Soviet government.

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