A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

The rivalry between Samara and Omsk had always been intense. It broke out in a customs war and a series of territorial disputes. But there were also growing pressures to find agreement: the military position of the Komuch was steadily weakening; and the Allies were concerned that such petty conflicts should not prevent a combined effort to repulse the advancing Reds. Such an agreement finally materialized at the State Conference held in Ufa from 8 to 23 September. There the Komuch leaders found their voice increasingly drowned out by the Rightists on their own side, who were calling for the sort of dictatorship favoured by the Siberians. The Kazan industrialist Kropotkin called for a 'strong and united military power to save Russia from those politicians [i.e. the socialists] who have ruined it'. According to V N. Lvov, the power-broker in the Kornilov fiasco, another 'military dictator' was essential.³⁸

To appease the Komuch leaders a compromise of sorts was struck. The ultimate sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly, provided it could find a quorum of 250 members, was recognized by the Ufa Conference. But in the meantime the Komuch lost its claim to be the legal government of all Russia. In its place a five-man Directory was set up as the executive arm of the Provisional All-Russian Government based in Omsk. It was an alliance of two SRs (Avksentiev and Zenzinov), two Siberian liberals (Vologodsky and Vinogradov) and General Boldyrev, close to the SRs, who also acted as the Commander-in-Chief. Although the SRs thus had a nominal majority in the new government, they were the real losers. In the fragmented politics of the civil war it would be a Sisyphean task to raise the quorum needed to restore the Constituent Assembly. To all intents and purposes, their citadel of liberty was in ruins.

The Directory was a pale reflection of the French revolutionary government after which it was named. This was a government only on paper. It had no proper structure or means of financing itself. Until near the end of its eight weeks in power, it was accommodated in a railway carriage in a siding a few miles from Omsk, hardly a prestigious 'capital' for what claimed to be the only legal government of Russia. Avksentiev, its chairman, was a dilettante who played at politics. He 'surrounded himself with aides-de-camp, brought back the old titles', and, according to one contemporary, 'created a buffoon sort of pomp behind which there was nothing of any real substance'. It was a throwback to the last days of Kerensky. This Directory had even less authority than the Provisional Government. It did not even command the confidence of the factions it represented. Both the SRs and the Rightist circles plotted against it from the start. Each thought the alliance gave too much power to the other side. Omsk

was full of intrigues and rumours of a coup. 'Mexico amidst the snow and ice', was how Boldyrev described it.³⁹

The Rightist officers struck first. On 17 November a Cossack detachment broke into a meeting of the SRs in Omsk and arrested several of their leaders, including the two Directors, Avksentiev and Zenzinov. They were accused of plotting the overthrow of the Directory. It is true that the Chernov group had plotted against it from the start. But so too had the Rightists, and they now used the SR plot as a pretext for their own coup d'etat. The next morning the Directory's Council of Ministers gave its blessing to the coup and invited Admiral Kolchak to become the Supreme Ruler. There were hardly any forces prepared to defend the Directory. The Czechs had lost the will to fight since the declaration of Czech independence on 28 October. All they wanted was to go home. As for the People's Army, it was in a state of advanced decay.

For the next fourteen months Alexander Kolchak was the paramount leader of the counter-revolution, along with Denikin. It is somehow fitting that an admiral without a fleet should have been the leader of a government based in a town 4,000 miles from the nearest port; for Kolchak was one of history's misfits. Small but imposing with dark piercing eyes, he was an oddity, a mining engineer and an Arctic explorer in a tsarist Naval Staff dominated by the landed nobility. In 1916, when he was appointed Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Kolchak, at only forty-one, was young enough to be the son of most of the other field commanders. In 1917 he refused to go along with the fleet committees and, in a dramatic resignation which made his name politically, broke his sword and threw it overboard. General Budberg described Kolchak as a 'big sick child':