Trans-Siberian Tragedy
The Fate of Admiral Kolchak. By Peter Fleming. (Hart-Davis, 35s.)
FOR many years, after its close the Russian Civil War received little attention from Western scholars; and the account in the second volume of W. H. Chamberlin's The Russian Revolution, published in 1935, has perhaps been more praised than read. Meanwhile Soviet historians have taken the opportunity to establish the myth of an heroic Russian people, united behind Lenin and Stalin. Western progressives have found in `intervention' a convenient stick with which to beat the brass-hats; and some conscience- stricken liberals have gone so far as to see in the Allies' muddled and half-hearted antics round the rim of Russia the key to all subse- quent difficulties between the Soviet Union and the West.
More recently some American and British historians have been showing greater interest. Apart from this published work, Colonel Flem- ing has been able to make use of a number of Kolchak's family letters and of the private diaries of British officers to some extent con• .cerned with the events he describes. Furthermore, he has had access to the voluminous records of the British Military Mission. Finally, he knows Siberia, and has had the experience, denied to so many academic historians, of seeing how human beings in fact behave in moments of physical stress.
Aleksander Vasilevich Kolchak came of a service family and was very much a professional naval officer. As lieutenant he took part in two Arctic expeditions. His record in the Russo- Japanese War was one of exceptional gallantry. In the First World War, after serving in the Baltic, he was promoted to command the Black Sea Fleet. Then came the February Revolution and the subsequent crumbling away of naval discipline. Kolchak was sent to the United States on a Naval Mission. By the time he had reached Japan on his way back home the Bolsheviks had seized power in Petrograd.
Concerned at what he felt was Russia's breach of faith with her allies, he went to the British Embassy in Tokyo and offered his services. After reference to London he was encouraged to pro- ceed, at his own expense, to Mesopotamia— where, the author suggests, there may have been the idea of his attachment to the Dunsterforce. However, the British turned him back at Singa- pore. After months of frustration in Manchuria and Japan, he set off westward, along the Trans- Siberian, hoping to make his way to the Whites in South Russia. But he was persuaded to become Minister of War at Omsk; a few weeks later came the Omsk coup d'Otat and his reluctant ac- ceptance of the role of Supreme Ruler. This, at the time and since, has been sedulously rumoured to have been the result of British intrigue—a myth that is here effectively demolished.
The ill-fate that had dogged Kolchak ever since the February Revolution continued to the end. He took power at Omsk a few days after the armistice of November 11 had removed the original incentive of Allied intervention. By the spring, when he launched his big offensive, the Entente had decided on withdrawal from Russia. By the summer, when Denikin's advance was putting new heart into the White cause, his armies had been utterly defeated. By late autumn, when he set out on his last withdrawal, he was no longer an asset to anybody.
The first chapters of The Fate of Admiral Kolchak describe his earlier career as naval officer and explorer, and give an account of the Czechoslovak break with the Bolsheviks that was to fire off the eastern front of the Civil War. They also include a short, balanced and' lucid analysis of the international background and of the Western anxieties, illusions and impotences, all bedevilled by what George Kerman has de- scribed as the obstinate refusal of President Wilson to face up to the awkward fact of Bol- shevik power. The narrative proper begins with Kolchak's assumption of power, with his early victories and subsequent defeats, and with the progressive disintegration of the vast territory over which he was supposed to rule.
Then came the enforced evacuation of Omsk and the retreat along the 1,500 miles of railway track to Irkutsk in the full ferocity of a Siberian winter—perhaps the grimmest of all the many tragedies of the Civil War. The overstrained rail- way all but broke down. Supplies were lacking. There was hunger, confusion, panic and a virulent typhus epidemic. No estimate has been made or can be made of the many thousands, soldiers, civilians, men, women and children (and horses), who perished in misery. The one element to retain cohesion was the Czechoslovaks with their rolling stock, supplies and technical or- ganisation. By mid-November they were undis- puted masters of the line; and the Supreme Ruler of Russia was travelling, on the sufferance of foreigners, on a Russian railway.
On December 27, 1919, Kolchak and his stall were held up in a traffic block at Nizhne Udinsk, 300 miles short, of Irkutsk. On January 1 the Allied High Commissioners issued an official directive `that all measures must be taken to en- sure, as far as it is humanly possible to do so, the personal safety of Admiral Kolchak.' On January 8 Kolchak continued his journey with a Czechoslovak guard and with the flags of America, Great Britain, France, Japan and Czechoslovakia affixed to his coach. On January 15, on arrival at Irkutsk, he was handed over to his enemies- (a receipt being given); and on February 7, after three weeks of interrogation in prison, he was summarily shot.
The betrayal provoked a burst of recrimina- tion and bitter argument. But it did not seem that any steps could be taken, and it was not an episode that any of the parties concerned could look back on with any satisfaction. The years went by and the story faded. In The Fate of Admiral Kolchak the facts are now carefully assembled and the rights and wrongs meticu- lously weighed. The final verdict is that the responsibility must be laid squarely upon the shoulders of General Janin, head of the French Military Mission, and of General Syrovy, com- manding the Czechoslovak Legion.
The author is justified in claiming to have `established as accurately as possible the circum- stances of Kolchak's failure, of his betrayal and of his death.' The personality of `the man born to command, the dictator incapable of dictating,' has, the author admits, been more elusive. In another context he says that 'an historian never knows all the facts, let alone all the fallacies,' which work on men's minds. The irreverent might comment this is sometimes true of estab- lished psychiatrists. But it does not affect the fact that The Fate of Admiral Kolchak, quite apart from its contribution to history, is a story of absorbing human interest, admirably told.
Previous page
