Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

Ned then thought back to his brief stay in Kazan fifteen years ago, when he and Staff Captain Ivashov had shared a meal of soup and bread at a humble Russian field kitchen and had vowed to drink champagne at the Metropol one fine day after the war was won. Now the war was long over and he was here at last, with champagne in easy reach. But Zhanna was long dead, her memory faded among all but a few of her remaining devotees. For the first time in many years, Ned asked himself again: could events have turned out any other way?

* * *

If anyone had predicted in the autumn of 1919 how far Russia would have advanced toward modernity by 1934, Ned would never have believed him. Thoroughly disillusioned by years of war and ideological conflict, Russians returned to their homes and places of work, leaving neighboring lands in peace. Encouraged by Kolchak’s far-reaching reforms, including low tariffs and taxes, liberal trade and economic policies, land reform, anti-corruption measures, and a sharp focus on restoring civil liberties and public order, investment in Russia surged. Russia’s foreign trade partners, eager to gain a foothold in her wide-open markets, granted generous trade credits, permitting a flood of imported tools and equipment that boosted domestic agricultural and industrial output and soon raised the average Russian’s standard of living to levels not seen even before the Great War.

Admiral Kolchak kept his promise to the Maid to loosen his grip on power once the war was won. As regent, he turned over the reins of power to a new All-Russian National Assembly before the end of 1920 and swore in the Russian Federal Republic’s first Prime Minister soon after. In the following year, Russia ratified its new Constitution, creating the office of President in lieu of a constitutional monarchy. Though the new position was largely ceremonial, President Kolchak accepted his election to that office and wielded his veto power wisely, mainly as a safeguard against abuses by the legislative majority.

Sadly, after more than a decade as Russia’s elder statesman, President Kolchak grew tired and frail, and his center-right coalition government, which had ruled the National Assembly throughout the 1920s, became increasingly corrupt and oppressive. As McCloud had often observed, every great cause starts out as a movement, turns into a business, and, sooner or later, is reduced to a racket.

Russian politics at the national and provincial levels eventually polarized between a resurgent populist, neo-Bolshevik left and a militaristic, oligarchic, proto-fascist right. Leading the former was Boris Savinkov, head of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, while the latter found a champion in Vyacheslav Volkov, head of the Constitutional Democrat Party and the erstwhile governor-general of Irkutsk, who had once sent the Maid on her journey from Irkutsk to Omsk.

Under Volkov’s Constitutional Democrat-led coalition, which had enjoyed power since 1920, large landowners, factory owners, ex-military officers and former nobility grew powerful again. With each passing year, they found new ways to wield their influence and enrich themselves at the expense of the public treasury through subsidies, government contracts, tax abatements, protective tariffs, and favorable regulations. Meanwhile, former peasants who had fought against Germany and in the Russian Civil War saw their incomes fall during the early 1930s as the global economic depression slashed crop prices in half and Russian grain and dairy exports shrank to a trickle. At the same time, outstanding loans were called, new financing dried up, construction halted, factory production stalled, and workers were laid off in droves, just as in Europe and North America.

Despite calls for patience by President Kolchak, Prime Minister Volkov, and other stalwarts of the Old Guard, Russian politicians at both extremes blasted the government for inaction and offered voters extravagant promises of relief if their own party’s radical programs were enacted. In the 1932 general elections, the S-R party won a majority of seats in the National Assembly and in many provincial and local legislatures. Soon after, in a development that shocked the nation, Boris Savinkov was found dead at his residence of an apparent drug overdose. During the days that followed, reports circulated that Savinkov had been addicted to morphine and cocaine for nearly two decades, apparently to cope with the stresses of having fought as an insurgent for so many years against the tsar and, later, the Bolsheviks.