Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Vologodskii, Petr Vasil′evich (30 January 1863–19 November 1925). The prime minister of the Omsk government, who added a touch of Siberian regionalism (oblastnichestvo) to a putative all-Russian government, P. V. Vologodskii was born in Eniseisk guberniia, the son of a village priest. He graduated as an external student from the law faculty of Khar′kov University (1892), but was expelled from St. Petersburg University in 1887 and exiled to Tomsk. He subsequently worked in a number of regional and district legal offices in Siberia, rising to senior chairman of the Omsk Chambers, and in 1905 acted as council for the defense in a number of political trials at Tomsk. Initially attracted to Populism, he helped found the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries’ group at Tomsk, in the early years of the 20th century, but became increasingly involved in the regionalist movement, as editor of Sibirskii vestnik (“The Siberian Herald”) from 1904 to 1905, and in March 1907 was elected to the Second State Duma as a Progressive representative of Tomsk. However, he did not arrive in St. Petersburg in time to participate in the Duma before its dissolution by Nicholas II, and he was never entirely committed to any one political party. From 1916 to 1917, he was coeditor of the newspaper Sibirskaia zhizn′ (“Siberian life”).

After the February Revolution, Vologodskii acted as one of a three-man Regional Commissariat that was appointed by the Russian Provisional Government to administer Tomsk guberniia following the removal of its governor-general. In the wake of the October Revolution, he was associated with opponents of the new Soviet regime, and on 25–26 January 1918, at a secret convention of the Siberian Regional Duma at Tomsk, he was elected (in absentia) as a member of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia, as minister of foreign affairs. After the collapse of Soviet power in Siberia, from 30 June 1918 Vologodskii was chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government, on behalf of which he undertook an extended tour of the Far East to garner the support of Allied and Russian forces in Omsk’s struggle for supremacy over Komuch. Although, on 23 September 1918, he was chosen as a member of the Ufa Directory, he was by this time a convinced supporter of provisional military dictatorship as a cure for Russia’s ills. Thus, following the Omsk coup, he served as chairman of the Council of Ministers (i.e., prime minister) of the Provisional All-Russian Government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. In that role, Vologodskii was frequently critical of the lawlessness in White Siberia, blaming it firmly on the injustices and crimes committed by the military authorities, but did little to prevent them and was accused at the time (and since) of passivity. Following the reorganization of Kolchak’s government on 22 November 1919, he was retired as premier and instead headed the stillborn Commission on Elections to the Constituent Assembly at Irkutsk. With the seizure of power in that city by the Political Center in January 1920, Vologodskii narrowly managed to evade arrest, and with the help of the Japanese military mission, made his way to Harbin. In March 1920, he moved on to Dairen. For the rest of his life he worked (in the Chinese Eastern Railway Zone) as a legal consultant for a Shanghai bank.

Vol′skii, Vladimir Kazimirovich (23 June 1877–4 October 1937). One of the leaders of the Democratic Counter-Revolution of 1918 on the Volga, V. K. Vol′skii, who was born in Tambov guberniia, was of hereditary noble background. He graduated from the Tambov Gymnasium (1894), but was sent down from the Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University as a consequence of his association with radical political groups. He joined the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) in 1903, and was subsequently arrested on six occasions by the tsarist authorities. In 1917, he was elected deputy chairman of the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies of Tver′ guberniia. He also chaired the Tver′ Zemstvo Board and was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly, as a representative from Tver′ guberniia.