Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

UFA DIRECTORY. Also known, formally, as the Provisional All-Russian Government, this coalition, putatively all-Russian, anti-Bolshevik authority was created, during the Democratic Counter-Revolution, at the Ufa State Conference on 23 September 1918, partly in accordance with the polices of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, one of the leading anti-Bolshevik underground organizations of the time (and significantly, one that had engendered some sympathy among Allied representatives in Russia). According to its constitution, the directory was to be the single sovereign power on all territory liberated from the Bolsheviks until 1 January 1919, when it would transfer power to a 250-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly that had been elected in November 1917. If such a quorum could not be assembled by 1 January 1919, the directory was to transfer power to a 170-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly by 1 February 1919. The claims of all other anti-Soviet authorities (including the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region, Komuch, Alash Orda, the Provisional Oblast′ Government of the Urals, the Provisional Siberian Government, and the Siberian Regional Duma) to either regional or national power were annulled. The elected directors were N. D. Avksent′ev (chairman) of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR); N. I. Astrov of the Kadets; the politically moderate General V. G. Boldyrev; the Kadet (and premier of the Provisional Siberian Government) P. V. Vologodskii; and N. V. Chaikovskii, the veteran member of the Party of Popular Socialists (and head of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region). As neither Astrov nor Chaikovskii was present in eastern Russia, they were deputized for by the Kadet V. A. Vinogradov and by V. M. Zenzinov of the PSR, respectively. However, symptomatic of the problems faced by the directory was that Astrov refused to recognize his election; he, like many Kadets who preferred the right-liberal National Center to the left-liberal Union for the Regeneration of Russia, was dismayed that the All-Russian Government was to transfer power to any kind of rump of the Constituent Assembly elected in 1917, in which there had been a huge majority of socialist members (and a tiny number of Kadets), rather than to a newly elected assembly.

As the Red Army bore down on Ufa (it eventually fell on 29–31 December 1918), the directory was forced to move east, and from 9 October 1918, it was resident at Omsk. There, lacking any administrative machinery of its own, it co-opted, wholesale, the Council of Ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government and at the same time took nominal control of the Siberian Army. However, neither the members of the Siberian government nor the military leadership of White forces in Siberia had any sympathy for the directory, and it was toppled, without resistance, by the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918, to be replaced by the military dictatorship of Admiral A. V. Kolchak.

UFA STATE CONFERENCE. This gathering of anti-Bolshevik parties and organizations—one of the key events of the Democratic Counter-Revolution—met at Ufa from 8 to 23 September 1918, following two preparatory conferences at Cheliabinsk on 13–15 July and 23–25 August 1918. There were some 160–170 delegates (of whom 70 were members of the Constituent Assembly), representing various socialist parties, such as the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the Party of Popular Socialists, the Mensheviks, and the Kadets; various national and regional organizations, including Komuch, the Provisional Siberian Government, Alash Orda, the Astrakhan Cossack Host, the Eniseisk Cossack Host, the Irkutsk Cossack Host, the Orenburg Cossack Host, the Semirech′e Cossack Host, the Siberian Cossack Host, and the Urals Cossack Host; and organizations like Zemgor and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. Representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council and Allied diplomatic missions were also in attendance. The latter, like the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, were anxious to unite the anti-Bolshevik movement.