Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

SUKIN, IVAN IVANOVICH (1890–?). One of the most powerful and controversial figures of White Siberia, little is known of I. I. Sukin’s background before his appearance as an assistant secretary at the Russian embassy in Constantinople in 1914, apart from the fact that he graduated from the Tsarskoe Selo Lycée in 1911. In 1917, he was secretary at the Russian embassy in Washington, in which capacity he met Admiral A. V. Kolchak during the latter’s mission to the United States in the summer of 1917.

Arriving in Siberia in October 1918, Sukin became one of the key conspirators in the Omsk coup. He probably enjoyed a closer personal relationship with Kolchak than any other minister and was soon made head of the Diplomatic Section of the Staff of the Supreme Ruler. From January 1919, he was in practical control of Kolchak’s foreign policy, as assistant minister of foreign affairs in the Omsk government (S. D. Sazonov, in Paris, was the nominal minister) and director of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A close associate of the powerful minister of finance, I. A. Mikhailov, Sukin was one of the most influential political figures in Siberia (although opponents regarded him variously as an inexperienced fool, a poseur, and a snob). He set as his main task the cleansing of the last vestiges of Siberian regionalism from the Omsk government and the promotion of its institutions as truly all-Russian in ambition and capacity. However, when his diplomacy failed to achieve the official recognition of the Kolchak regime by the Allies, a meeting of the Council of Ministers on 12 August 1919 passed a vote of no confidence in him. Kolchak, however, turned down the request of Prime Minister P. V. Vologodskii that Sukin be dismissed. Thus, he held onto his job until the final days of the White movement in Siberia. In December 1919, Kolchak’s last prime minister, V. N. Pepeliaev, was planning to prosecute Sukin for corruption, but as the government fell apart at Irkutsk, Sukin slipped away, according to some accounts, disguised as an American Red Cross nurse. In 1920, he served as director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Maritime Zemstvo Government in Vladivostok and subsequently emigrated via China to the United States, where he is rumored to have found employment in a bank. His subsequent fate remains unknown.

Sukin, Nikolai Timofeevich (23 November 1878–1937). Colonel (15 August 1916), major general (18 August 1918), lieutenant general (1920). A Cossack general who played a leading role in the White forces in Siberia, N. T. Sukin was born into a high-ranking family of the Orenburg Cossack Host and was a graduate of the Orenburg Nepliuevskii Cadet Corps, the Mikhail Artillery School (1899), and the Academy of the General Staff (1908). After serving in a Cossack mounted artillery unit, in the First World War he rose to the post of senior adjutant on the staff of the quartermaster general of the 1st Army (from 2 September 1916).

Sukin returned to his home territory following the October Revolution. In the forces of the Provisional Siberian Government, the Ufa Directory, and the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, he served as chief of staff of the Urals Independent (from 26 August 1918, 3rd Urals Army) Corps (14 July 1917–3 January 1919), before becoming commander of the 6th Urals Corps of the Western Army (3 January–26 May 1919). In February 1919, at the Third Extraordinary Krug of the Orenburg Cossack Host, he submitted a memorandum that was sharply critical of the Host ataman, General A. I. Dutov. For this, he was expelled from the Host, but he still played an active part in the spring offensive of Kolchak’s forces, being praised and decorated by the supreme ruler.