Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SIBERIA, PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF. This anti-Bolshevik polity was formed, after a meeting at Tomsk of the Siberian Regional Duma, on 23 June 1918, as Soviet power collapsed in the region in the wake of the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion. With a membership of proponents of Siberian regionalism, members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, Kadets, and others, the Provisional Siberian Government was at one and the same time both a central actor in the Democratic Counter-Revolution and one of the key battlefields on which more right-wing forces sought to win control of the anti-Bolshevik movement during the summer and autumn of 1918.

The Provisional Siberian Government, led by its premier, P. V. Vologodskii, succeeded the Western Siberian Commissariat and took nominal control of the nascent Siberian Army. Although many of the latter’s officers were distrustful of the partly socialist and regionalist complexion of this new authority, the government allayed such fears by introducing a political program that denationalized industry and reaffirmed the right of private land ownership, reestablished the old legal system, and proscribed the activities of trade unions and other social organizations. It also sought to assert its authority over the Siberian Regional Duma and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the leftist Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia (even though the Provisional Siberian Government’s members had originally been part of that government, when it had been secretly elected at Tomsk in January 1918).

On 24 August 1918, the Provisional Siberian Government established an Administrative Council, which in turn assumed more and more authority and often ignored or undermined the socialist members of the government. Meanwhile, challenges to the government’s authority from the Siberian Army’s commander, Colonel A. M. Grishin-Almazov, also became increasingly frequent and pointed, and a series of political crises and murders shook the regime (notably the Novoselov affair, which resulted in the death of A. E. Novoselov and the resignation from the government of its leading socialist members, M. B. Shatilov and V. M. Krutovskii). The remaining ministers of the government subordinated themselves to the Ufa Directory on 4 November 1918 and effectively became its governmental apparatus, although members of the government (notably I. M. Mikhailov) were implicated in the Omsk coup, which toppled the directory on 18 November 1918 and brought Admiral A. V. Kolchak to power as supreme ruler. Subsequently, members of the former Provisional Siberian Government became the leadership corps of the provisional All-Russian Omsk government, while often presenting their legitimacy as resting on the very democratic institutions in Siberia that they had worked to destroy.

SIBERIA, PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF AUTONOMOUS. This anti-Bolshevik regime (also known as the Derber government, after its prime minister, P. Ia. Derber) was established at a secret meeting of the Siberian Regional Duma at Tomsk, on 26–27 January 1918. It united some 24 members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries with prominent proponents of Siberian regionalism (not all of whom were actually present as the ministers were named) around a platform of struggle against the current Soviet authorities and the establishment of Siberian autonomy (although it expressed a wish also to maintain soviets, as class organizations). However, the regime never formally began to function, as Red Guards succeeded in dispersing the meeting. Some of its members were arrested by the Bolsheviks, notably G. B. Patushinskii, V. M. Krutovskii, and M. B. Shatilov. Others (initially V. I. Moravskii, V. T. Tiber-Petrov, I. S. Iudin, E. E. Kolosov, and N. Zhernakov) accompanied Derber to the Far East, where in May 1918, the government failed to get its authority recognized by the local authorities at Harbin (notably the Far Eastern Committee of General D. L. Khorvat) and then by the leaders of White formations, the Allies, and the Czechoslovak Legion at Vladivostok, after Derber transferred operations to the port in July 1918.