Alexander Kolchak
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was a Russian navy officer and polar explorer who led the White movement in the Russian Civil War. When he assumed the title of Supreme Ruler of Russia in 1918, Kolchak headed a military dictatorship, which ruled over the territory of the former Russian Empire controlled by the Whites. He was a proponent of Russian nationalism and militarism, and opposed democracy as a principle which he believed was tied to pacifism, internationalism, and socialism.
Kolchak served in the Imperial Russian Navy and fought in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. The son of a naval artillery officer, he graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps and went on to become an accomplished oceanographer and Arctic explorer. He was involved in several expeditions to northern Russia, including to the New Siberian Islands, and became the youngest vice admiral in the Imperial Navy. He was wounded and taken prisoner during the Russo-Japanese War at the Siege of Port Arthur. When he returned to Russia he lobbied the State Duma to strengthen the fleet by introducing submarines and aircraft. Kolchak was the Baltic Fleet Chief of Operations when World War I broke out and was made the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet shortly before the February Revolution. When Emperor Nicholas II asked the commanders of each army group and fleet for their opinion on whether he should abdicate the throne, Kolchak was the only one who opposed the move.
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, Kolchak was popular among conservative newspapers, who saw him as a potential military dictator. Early in the Russian Civil War, he briefly served as the Minister of War and Navy in the Provisional All-Russian Government – the first government that was recognized by all White military and political forces east of Urals, at least nominally – until a November 1918 coup saw him installed as leader and all authority was transferred to his own government. His government was based in Omsk, in southwestern Siberia. When Kolchak assumed the title of Supreme Ruler, his authority was recognized by the other leaders of the White movement, although Anton Denikin enjoyed more power than Kolchak.
After initial successes in early 1919, Kolchak's forces lost ground due to lack of support from the local populace and failure to unite the leaders of the counterrevolutionary movements. Omsk fell to the Red Army in November 1919 during the Great Siberian Ice March, compelling Kolchak to transfer his headquarters to Irkutsk. In December, he was betrayed and detained by the chief of the Allied military mission in Siberia, Maurice Janin, and the Czechoslovak Legion, who handed him over to local Socialist-Revolutionaries in January 1920. The Bolsheviks executed him the following month in Irkutsk.
Biography
Early life and career
Kolchak was born in Saint Petersburg on 4 November 1874. His family was of Moldavian origin, and both his parents were from Odessa. His father was a former major-general of the marine artillery and a veteran of the 1854 siege of Sevastopol, who after retirement worked as an engineer at an ordnance works near St. Petersburg.Kolchak was educated for a naval career, entering the Naval Cadet Corps in 1888 and graduating in 1894 with honors. After being commissioned as a midshipman in the Imperial Russian Navy he served in the Baltic and Pacific Oceans on several ships between 1895 and 1899, during which time he published articles on hydrology.
After becoming a lieutenant, Kolchak took part in Baron Eduard von Toll's Russian Polar expedition on the ship Zarya as a hydrologist and cartographer. During the winter of 1901, Kolchak and Toll rode on dog sleds for 500 km to make a topographic survey of the Taymyr Peninsula, and in the spring they took dog sleds to make a geologic and hydrographic study of the New Siberian Islands. In 1902 he studied the East Siberian Sea while he was onboard Zarya. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902; Toll, along with three other explorers continued further north and were lost. Kolchak took part in two Arctic expeditions to look for the explorers but could not find them and for a while was nicknamed "Kolchak-Poliarnyi". For his explorations Kolchak received the Constantine Medal, the highest award of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.
In December 1903, Kolchak was en route to St. Petersburg to marry his fiancée, Sophia Omirova, when, not far from Irkutsk, he received notice of the start of war with the Empire of Japan and hastily summoned his bride and her father to Siberia by telegram for a wedding, before heading directly to Port Arthur. In the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War, he served as a watch officer on the cruiser, and later commanded the destroyer Serdity. He made several night sorties to lay naval mines, one of which succeeded in sinking the Japanese cruiser. He was decorated with the Order of St. Anna 4th class for the exploit.
As the blockade of the port tightened and the Siege of Port Arthur intensified, he was given command of a coastal artillery battery. He was wounded in the final battle for Port Arthur and taken as a prisoner of war to Nagasaki, where he spent four months. His poor health led to his repatriation before the end of the war. Kolchak was awarded the Golden Sword of St. George with the inscription "For Bravery" on his return to Russia.
Returning to Saint Petersburg in April 1905, Kolchak was promoted to lieutenant commander and took part in rebuilding of the Imperial Russian Navy, which had been almost completely destroyed during the war. He served on the Naval General Staff from 1906, helping draft a shipbuilding program, a training program, and developing a new protection plan for St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Finland.
Kolchak took part in designing special icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, launched in 1909 and spring of 1910. Based in Vladivostok, these vessels were sent on a cartographic expedition to the Bering Strait and Cape Dezhnev. Kolchak commanded the Vaigach during this expedition and later worked at the Academy of Sciences with the materials collected by him during expeditions. His study, Ice of the Kara and Siberian Seas, was printed in the Proceedings of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and is considered the most important work on this subject. Extracts from it were published under the title "The Arctic Pack and the Polynya" in the volume issued in 1929 by the American Geographical Society, Problems of Polar Research.
In 1910 he returned to the Naval General Staff, and in 1912 he was assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet.
First World War
The onset of the First World War found him on the flagship Pogranichnik, where Kolchak oversaw laying of extensive coastal defensive minefields and commanded the naval forces in the Gulf of Riga. Commanding Admiral Essen was not satisfied to remain on the defensive and ordered Kolchak to prepare a scheme for attacking the approaches of the German naval bases. During the autumn and winter of 1914–1915, Russian destroyers and cruisers started a series of dangerous night operations, laying mines at the approaches to Kiel and Danzig. Kolchak, feeling that the man responsible for planning operations should also take part in their execution, was always on board those ships which carried out the operations and at times took direct command of the destroyer flotillas.He was promoted to vice-admiral in August 1916, the youngest man at that rank, and was made commander of the Black Sea Fleet, replacing Admiral Eberhardt. Kolchak's primary mission was to support General Yudenich in his operations against the Ottoman Empire. He also was tasked with countering the U-boat threat and planning the invasion of the Bosphorus. Kolchak's fleet was successful at sinking Turkish colliers. Because there was no railroad linking the coal mines of eastern Turkey with Constantinople, the Russian fleet's attacks on these Turkish coal ships caused the Ottoman government much hardship. In 1916, in a combined Army-Navy assault, the Russian Black Sea fleet aided the Russian army's capture of the Ottoman city of Trebizond.
One notable disaster took place under Kolchak's watch: the dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya exploded in port at Sevastopol on 7 October 1916. A careful investigation failed to determine whether the cause of the disaster was accident or sabotage.
Revolution
The Black Sea fleet descended into political chaos after the onset of the 1917 February Revolution. Kolchak was relieved of command of the fleet in June and traveled to Petrograd. On his arrival at Petrograd, Kolchak was invited to a meeting of the Provisional Government. There he presented his view on the condition of the Russian armed forces and their complete demoralisation. He stated that the only way to save the country was to re-establish strict discipline and restore capital punishment in the army and navy.During this time many organisations and newspapers of a conservative inclination spoke of him as a future dictator. A number of new and secret organisations had sprung up in Petrograd with the goal of suppressing the Bolshevik movement and removal of the extremist members of the government. Some of these organisations asked Kolchak to accept the leadership.
When news of these plots found their way to then Naval Minister of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, he ordered Kolchak to leave immediately for America. Admiral James H. Glennon, a member of American mission headed by Senator Elihu Root, invited Kolchak to the United States to brief the American Navy on the strategic situation in the Bosphorus. On 19 August 1917 Kolchak with several officers left Petrograd for Britain and the United States as a quasi-official military observer. When passing through London he was greeted cordially by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, who offered him transport on board a British cruiser on his way to Halifax in Canada. The journey to America proved unnecessary, as by the time Kolchak arrived, the US had given up the idea of any independent action in the Dardanelles. Kolchak visited the American Fleet and its ports, and in San Francisco he decided to return to Russia via Japan.