Chapter Eight
As the British consul Francis Lindley and his fellow Allied ambassadors were sorting out the crisis in Archangel caused by Chaplin’s attempted White coup, delegates were gathering for the second, more representative, Ufa State Conference, which would resolve the question of what sort of government should be established in liberated Russia. The URR programme was clear on this: a ‘directory’ should be formed from three or more representative politicians who would head an interim administration until a new Constituent Assembly could be elected. After much debate, the Ufa State Conference resolved the differences within the Green camp between SRs, the URR and former SRs, and by mid-September 1918 a directory had duly been formed. But in less than two months it was to share the fate of Chaikovskii’s Archangel directorate, despite showing greater willingness than Chaikovskii had ever done to make concessions to the military.
On 18 November 1918 the directory was overthrown by Admiral Kolchak, that veteran of some of the very earliest attempts at counterrevolution in the summer of 1917. This White coup was by no means inevitable. Although the divisions within the Green patriotic socialist camp did not go away, the directory was able to keep them in check. Furthermore, although the directory made a rather inept start and was militarily on the retreat in October 1918, something which forced it to concede much to the Siberian government in Omsk as it moved ever eastward, by early November 1918 the directory had reasserted its political authority, and some of its military forces at least seemed poised to resume the attack. Contrary to the verdict of its Bolshevik and White critics, the directory was overthrown not because it was on the point of collapse, but because it was on the point of success.
The UFA State Conference
The Ufa State Conference was a triumph for the URR. It lasted the best part of two weeks and resulted in all participants agreeing on 23 September 1918 to the formation of a five-member directory comprising the former president of the Preparliament Avksentiev (URR), General Boldyrev (URR), the leading SR Zenzinov (Komuch), a Siberian Kadet V.A. Vinogradov (who took the place originally intended for the Moscow Kadet N.I. Astrov) and Vologodskii (the former SR Prime Minister of the Siberian government). Had circumstances permitted it, the membership of the directory would have shown the URR’s predominance even more clearly since Chaikovskii would have occupied the place taken by Zenzinov. The conference opened on 8 September 1918, however since the Siberian government delegation had not yet arrived, this was a purely formal session with Avksentiev making a speech of welcome to the 200 delegates representing not only such obvious organizations as Komuch, the Urals government and eventually the Siberian government, but also the cossack government of Orenburg, the cossack government of Uralsk, the Siberian cossack voisko, the Irkutsk cossack voisko, the Semirechenskii cossack voisko, the Yeniseisk cossack voisko, the Astrakhan cossack voisko, the Bashkir government, the Alash-Ordy government, the Turkestan government, the Tyurko-Tatar government and, bizarrely, the Estonian government. There were also representatives from the SR Party, the Menshevik Party, the Popular Socialist Party, the Kadet Party, the Unity Mensheviks, the URR and the various town and regional councils of Siberia, the Urals and the Volga. As to the political affiliation of those present, although over 100 delegates were members of the SR Party, many were simultaneously members of the URR; thus the URR could claim to represent the majority of delegates, and, since it had been agreed in Chelyabinsk that all votes had to be unanimous, it was in a good position to lay the basis for any consensus.1
On 10 September 1918 a second conference session was held which agreed to establish a Council of Elders: this was to be composed of representatives from all the groups present who would act much as the agreement commission had acted in Chelyabinsk; but since the Siberian delegation had still not arrived the membership of the council could not be finalized. The Siberian delegation finally arrived on 12 September 1918 and the proceedings proper got under way with a speech from the Czechoslovak leader Bogdan Pavlu: he made clear that for the Czechoslovaks a turning point had been reached; either the Russian politicians established an All-Russian government by agreement, preferably giving some recognition to the Constituent Assembly although precise details did not concern them, or they would resume their broken journey to France. Each delegation was then allowed to make an opening statement, and the first to speak was the Komuch president and member of the SR Central Committee V.K. Volskii; to the surprise of many he gave the first hint of a possible compromise agreement.2
Although Volskii spoke at great length about the democratic credentials of the Constituent Assembly, he reminded those present that since the Constituent Assembly was sovereign, it was quite capable of reacting to new circumstances and even of reducing its own powers. He went on: ‘for a whole series of reasons, we think that the Constituent Assembly will come to the conclusion without much difficulty that a new Constituent Assembly needs to be elected’. Until those elections, however, the only body capable of sanctioning the government formed in Ufa was a Congress of Deputies to the Constituent Assembly; once this principle had been accepted, the details of how the congress and the government should relate to one another could easily be agreed, since the government would be responsible to the congress ‘only in the most general form’.3 By suggesting that the existing Constituent Assembly might call early elections to a new Constituent Assembly, and that current Constituent Assembly deputies would only exercise their right to control the government in the vaguest possible way, Volskii was abandoning the aggressive tone that had once seen the SRs compare the Siberian government in Omsk to that of Skoropadskii.
Volskii’s willingness to open the way towards a compromise stemmed from the three-way split within the SR delegation to the conference. The left argued simply that, since the SRs had won the November 1917 Constituent Assembly elections, power was theirs; on the right Zenzinov favoured compromise as a point of principle; Volskii stood in the centre, trying to balance the extremes, and he came down for compromise for two reasons. First, there were the military realities at the front. The SRs’ willingness to compromise partly reflected their shrinking power base as the Bolsheviks counter-attacked. Kazan fell to the Bolsheviks on 8 September 1918, and on 16 September 1918 Komuch decided, after consultations with Volskii, that the State Bank should be evacuated to Ufa; by 18 September 1918 Komuch had taken the difficult decision to shoot deserters, and on 19 September 1918 the evacuation of Samara itself began.4 However, there was a second pressure for compromise besides the military situation, for even without the weakening military position, Volskii would have found it difficult to enforce the left-wing line. Before leaving Samara, the Komuch delegation had debated the question of whether those attending had been mandated by the party to follow a particular policy. The question of whether party members in parliament or government were bound by party policy had been a running sore among SRs since February 1917; many party members had bitter memories of right-wingers like Kerensky ignoring party policy once in office. Yet on 29 August 1918 the Komuch presidium resolved that, since those attending the Ufa State Conference would do so as members of the sovereign Constituent Assembly and not as members of Komuch or the SR Party, they could not be instructed how to vote by the SR Party or any other body; any other decision would violate the principle of parliamentary immunity. Thus Volskii had to recognize that, whatever way his centre group went, the right would join the URR in working for compromise.5
What strengthened the URR still further were parallel divisions within the liberal Kadet camp. When V.N. Pepelyaev had arrived at the Chelyabinsk State Conference from Moscow to represent the Kadets, he informed Krol that the Kadet Central Committee had finally decided that a dictatorship was the only way forward for Russia. In Chelyabinsk, Pepelayev had spoken for the Kadets, and Krol had been free to ignore the Central Committee message concerning a dictatorship and speak on behalf of the URR. In Ufa, Pepelyaev staged a diplomatic illness and left Krol to put the views of the Kadet Party. This put Krol in a dilemma since as a leading member of the URR he was opposed to dictatorship, but in a neat squaring of the circle, Krol informed the delegates that the Kadet Party wanted a dictatorship, but since no suitable candidates stood ready to take up the post, it would be prepared to accept a directory, but a directory which was not subject to any control by a pseudo-constitutional body like Komuch.6
The one gap in the URR programme concerned precisely this question: whether, in the time between a directory being formed and a new Constituent Assembly being summoned, the government had to be responsible to any semi-constitutional body. General Boldyrev stated that the URR did not believe that the future government’s power should be limited by some ‘parallel controlling apparatus’; power should belong to a directory which should appoint an All-Russian executive cabinet comprised of people known for their abilities who would cover the main functions of state – war, foreign affairs, finance, railways, supply, state inspection and control. The URR-run Urals government, however, suggested that the directory should be responsible to some sort of interim constitutional body until elections to a new Constituent Assembly had been organized; indeed the Ufa State Conference itself could perform that function.7
The Siberian delegation when it arrived had little of substance to add to the Ufa talks. It too favoured a directory, but like General Boldyrev and the liberal Krol, one responsible to a future elected body rather than the existing Constituent Assembly or any interim body. Its main concern was to stress that the directory should be small, no more than five, and that all powers other than those concerning the key ministries of war, foreign affairs, post and telegraph, railways and finance, should be devolved to autonomous regional governments; this would mean retaining an autonomous government for Siberia as well as for the other regions.8
The conference session on 12 September 1918 ended by finalizing the composition of the Council of Elders which had 21 members, including General Boldyrev, Zenzinov and Krol, with a presidium of Avksentiev, Rogovskii, Moiseenko, P.V. Murashev (of the Urals government) and 1.1. Serebrennikov (of the Siberian government). This council was where the real work was done as an acceptable compromise was hammered out at meetings of delegations and meetings between delegations held in corridors or hotel bedrooms, with the Allies frequently being brought in to arbitrate. Inevitably there was an atmosphere of gossip, intrigue and even threat; but the key figures in the backstairs negotiations, Rogovskii, chairman of the Komuch Council of Departmental Directors (CDD), and Gurevich, leader of the SR group of deputies to the Constituent Assembly, did have a clear basis on which they could work. As Komuch president Volskii had intimated in his opening speech, the first concession made during sessions of the Council of Elders came from the Komuch side when Zenzinov suggested that, although the ultimate aim remained to reconvene the Constituent Assembly of January 1918, in the immediate future the government could be responsible to a different body. This was close to the view of some of those in the URR: a pre-existing body, like the state conference itself, could be used to supervise the government, perhaps expanding its composition to include all Constituent Assembly members. The question of whether this expanded state conference would exercise day-to-day control over the government, or would only be recalled after several months, could be left until later.
When discussion began in the Council of Elders on this topic, the SRs again made another concession. They were lukewarm about diluting their sovereign assembly by creating an expanded state conference - it smacked of the little-lamented Preparliament. In the immediate future, they proposed, the directory and All-Russian government need not be responsible to any constitutional body, on condition only that they were allowed one last chance to reconvene a quorate session of the Constituent Assembly by January 1919. Since the Constituent Assembly numbered some 500 deputies without the Bolsheviks and Left SRs, the figure of 250 was quickly seized on as a quorum. This suggestion could have alienated the Siberian delegation, who were determined that the 1918 Constituent Assembly should dissolve itself to allow the directory once formed to organize elections to a new assembly; and so a recess was called while the Siberian government in Omsk was contacted. Meanwhile the SRs reassured delegates that the 1918 Constituent Assembly need not meet for long, simply implementing essential measures for the defence of the liberated territory, then ‘in the quickest time’ new elections would be organized, and, having called these elections, all power would be transferred to the directory and All-Russian government until the new assembly met. Although they were still insisting on reconvening the 1918 Constituent Assembly, the SRs were increasingly doing so simply as a matter of constitutional propriety alone: the government could ignore the assembly until it was quorate, and after the briefest of sessions, ignore it thereafter until a new Constituent Assembly was elected.
By 18 September 1918 agreement had been reached. The Siberian delegation was still adamant that the directory and All-Russian government should not be responsible to the Constituent Assembly, but were prepared to accept a transparent sleight of hand: if the quorate Constituent Assembly gathered by 1 January 1919 the assembly would by definition be sovereign, not the directory and All-Russian government; thus the directory and All-Russian government established in Ufa would not be under the Constituent Assembly’s control but would have ceased to exist. Since reconvening the Constituent Assembly as a quorate body meant bringing from Soviet Russia to liberated territory a further 170 deputies to add to the 90 already there - something virtually impossible - the Siberian delegation was prepared to recognize that this fudge was simply a device to save SR amour propre. Not surprisingly many SRs were unhappy with the compromise, but did not protest; they insisted only that a congress of all the Constituent Assembly deputies present in Ufa should be held to endorse the agreement.9
Carried away with this triumph, on 19 September 1918 the Council of Elders began to discuss the relationship between the directory and All-Russian government and the existing regional governments. This proved more difficult than delegates had anticipated, since it was here, in the practical details rather than the constitutional formalities, that the Siberian government from Omsk dug in its heels. It had already made clear that it felt the directory and All-Russian government’s power should be limited to All-Russian issues, allowing the regions the greatest possible autonomy; the Siberian government was determined to protect its local prerogatives and it took several interventions from the Allies before the bitter rows of 21 September 1918 gave way to the agreement of the 23rd.10 In the final analysis, this issue was never satisfactorily resolved, since at the suggestion of the URR leader Krol, although the principle of the regional governments surrendering authority to the directory and All-Russian government was agreed, the precise details of the future relationship between the All-Russian and regional governments was to be left to the ‘wisdom’ of both sides.11
The other area where the Siberian delegation dug in its heels was the personal composition of the directory. As the conference moved on to discuss the question of personnel, the Siberian delegation was reinforced by the arrival of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and the War Minister. They had been expressly instructed that no SRs should be allowed onto the directory, but soon compromised and accepted that Avksentiev represented the URR rather than the SR Party.12 The original composition of the directory – Chaikovskii, Avksentiev, Boldyrev, Astrov and Vologodskii – met their wishes, but as it became clear that not all those appointed could take up their seats, the Siberian delegation found itself outflanked. It gained from the inability of the Moscow-based Kadet Astrov to take up his seat, since it meant the local Siberian Kadet Vinogradov became a member; however, since Chaikovskii was also unable to reach Ufa from Archangel they had to accept the man elected as his deputy, Zenzinov, a member of the SR Central Committee. Zenzinov’s appointment brought the directory’s composition closer to that proposed by the SRs, i.e. Timofeev (an SR), Zenzinov, Vologodskii, General Boldyrev and Astrov. For the Siberian delegation, Zenzinov’s appointment deprived the directory of much of its moral authority. Nevertheless, the Ufa accord had been reached.13
The Unsuccessful White Coup in Siberia
The URR was so successful at the Ufa State Conference not only because of the willingness of the SRs to make crucial concessions, but also because of the state of crisis into which the Siberian government had descended in Omsk. The Siberian government delayed so long in sending its delegation to Ufa, and was so passive once it had arrived until the very last moment, because in the aftermath of the Chelyabinsk State Conference it was torn apart by dissension, originating from a speech made in Chelyabinsk by the Minister of War Grishin-Almazov. He had insulted the Allies by stating ‘that the Russians have less need of the Allies than the Allies have of the Russians’,14 and then in private talks with the Czechoslovak leader Bogdan Pavlu suggested that if the Czechoslovaks did not like it in Russia they could go home.15 On 4 September 1918 the Siberian government decided to sack Grishin-Almazov for these tactless remarks and replace him with General Ivanov-Rinov; this move brought to a head the ever-simmering tension between the SR and the former SR members of the government.
For the former SRs in the Siberian government Grishin-Almazov’s retention in the government, whatever he might have told the Allies, was an essential point of principle. For, at the end of the Chelyabinsk State Conference in August 1918, an SR delegation had asked to see the Siberian Prime Minister Vologodskii and told him that the SRs did not want either the Minister of Finance in the Siberian government Mikhailov or the War Minister Grishin-Almazov to form part of the Siberian government’s delegation to the Ufa State Conference. This attempt by the SRs to dictate who should, and who should not, be a member of this delegation so incensed the former SRs that they saw it as essential that these ministers should be members of the delegation to Ufa. To them the call for Grishin-Almazov’s dismissal for insulting the Allies was a pretext, part of an SR plot to prevent him attending the Ufa State Conference, and not genuine outrage at his comments, a view reinforced by the fact that at the first government meeting after the Chelyabinsk State Conference, the one loyal SR minister in the Siberian government Shatilov threatened to resign if the government did not accept his views on the question of who should be in the Ufa delegation. Despite these threats and counter-threats Grishin-Almazov was sacked as Minister of War.
In moving against Grishin-Almazov the Siberian government acted against the advice of its administrative council. The administrative council had been set up on 24 August 1918 in recognition of the fact that, with only six government members and the likelihood of a powerful delegation being absent in Ufa for much of September 1918, the government was overstretched. The administrative council comprised ten junior ministers, met in almost continual session, and was soon running the government in all but name; its undisputed leader was the former SR Finance Minister in the Siberian government Mikhailov and the administrative council rapidly became his power base. Mikhailov was incensed at the dismissal of Grishin-Almazov, and for several days would not speak to his cabinet colleague the Justice Minister Patushinskii, whom he held responsible for the dismissal. All government activity was paralysed as ministers met and lobbied in private and rumours circulated first that Mikhailov had resigned, then that Patushinskii and Shatilov had resigned. In the end it was Patushinksii who resigned, issuing a statement in which he condemned the role played by the administrative council and its interference in government. He would, he said, make a report to the Siberian Regional Assembly.16
In the aftermath of the Grishin-Almazov affair and the resignation of Patushinskii, the powers of the administrative council were greatly increased. It was agreed that the government would take no further decisions of such importance without first consulting the administrative council, and on 7 September 1918 - the day before the opening of the Ufa State Conference – the ministers agreed that the administrative council could act in the government’s name when a majority of ministers were away from Omsk; this included the right to dissolve or summon the Siberian Regional Assembly. The question of the assembly’s future was again of crucial importance since its session in July had only been prorogued and it was due to reconvene on 10 September 1918. Not only did Patushinskii intend to denounce the Siberian government when the regional assembly met, but the whole situation in Siberia had been transformed on 31 August 1918 when the Czechoslovak Legion succeeded in liberating the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way to Vladivostok and reuniting Siberia with the Far East; now deputies from all over Siberia could attend the Siberian Regional Assembly session, and contact could be re-established between the Siberian government in Omsk and those ministers elected to the underground Siberian government back in January 1918 but stranded in the Far East. As the Ufa State Conference opened, the Prime Minister of the Siberian government Vologodskii set off by train for the Far East to secure recognition from the former leader of the underground government P. Ya Derber.17
The Siberian Regional Assembly was opened on 10 September 1918 by its chairman I.A. Yakushev and immediately launched a campaign to bring the Siberian government under democratic control. It demanded that Patushinskii should be reinstated as Minister of Justice; it demanded that the SR A.E. Novoselov, who had just returned from the Far East and had in January 1918 been Minister of the Interior in the underground Siberian government, should be given a post in the Siberian government; it established a permanent quorum of deputies to be based in Omsk and empowered to supervise the work of the Siberian government; and finally it sent a delegation to the Far East to contact other Far Eastern members of the underground government in order to win them to the assembly’s side. As the Siberian Prime Minister Vologodskii travelled east, he ordered the arrest of the regional assembly’s delegation to the Far East as it reached Irkutsk; he then dissolved the Siberian Regional Assembly, determined that his talks with the remaining members of the underground government should not be complicated by this unwanted intervention.
Enraged, the Siberian Regional Assembly refused to dissolve and decided on 18 September 1918 to send a delegation comprising its chairman Yakushev, the loyal SR minister Shatilov and the former underground minister Novoselov to Omsk to protest. This delegation held talks on the 19th with V.M. Krutovskii, who was standing in for Vologodskii as Prime Minister of the Siberian government, and on 20 September 1918 all four confronted Mikhailov. The support of Krutovskii was crucial: at that moment there were three Siberian government ministers in Omsk, Krutovskii, Shatilov and Mikhailov. So, at what was ostensibly a routine cabinet meeting, Krutovskii and Shatilov raised three issues: first, the need to change the regulations governing the powers of the administrative council; second, the need to change the composition of the government’s delegation to the Ufa State Conference; and third, the demand that the former minister in the underground government Novoselov be recognized as a full member of the government. Mikhailov, realizing he would be out-voted by two votes to one, left the meeting in haste to prevent it being declared quorate. But the regional assembly delegation did not give up. On 21 September 1918 Krutovskii, as Acting Prime Minister, and Yakushev, as regional assembly chairman, jointly contacted Vologodskii in Vladivostok and exchanged angry telegrams: Vologodskii insisted he had suspended, not dissolved the assembly and had done so because it had strayed well beyond the agenda agreed in advance; Yakushev stressed that the assembly would insist on Novoselov being given a ministerial post.
Later on 21 September 1918, just as it seemed the SRs’ campaign was going to succeed and the Siberian regional government would be brought under democratic control and prised out of the control of Mikhailov’s administrative council, White officers in Omsk staged a coup of sorts. Krutovskii, Shatilov, Yakushev and Novoselov were arrested by Colonel Volkov of the Siberian department of state security on the grounds that they were attempting to overthrow the legitimate government; the following day Novoselov was summarily shot. Although the official statement issued at the time insisted that Mikhailov knew nothing of the action by the White officers, his involvement in some capacity was certain since the morning after the arrests, on 22 September 1918, the administrative council accepted letters of resignation from both Krutovskii and Shatilov; even though these had been dictated at gun-point. The same meeting endorsed the suspension of the Siberian Regional Assembly. The announcement on 23 September 1918 that the administrative council of the Siberian government had established a commission to investigate the arrests and murder, and that Colonel Volkov had been arrested, did little to counteract the widely held view that the administrative council had encouraged the White officers to act. That, certainly, was how the local Czechoslovak military authorities interpreted events. On 24 September 1918 the Czechoslovak military command arrested the acting Siberian Minister of the Interior Gratsianov and issued an order for the arrest of Mikhailov; Mikhailov, however, was able to give his pursuers the slip.18
The Rule of the Directory
Thus at the very moment the directory was founded in Ufa, the Siberian government was in disarray; to prevent its democratization, to prevent SRs and SR supporters challenging the power of the administrative council and bringing the Siberian government into line with the URR sponsored Ufa State Conference, White officers had been prepared to take up arms. The first crisis the directory faced, therefore, was what to do about Novoselov’s brutal murder and the attempted coup in Siberia. It was presented with a golden opportunity to assert its authority, and it flunked it. As the directory held its first sitting in Ufa on 24 September 1918 it heard a report from the Czechoslovak military authorities that the chief suspect in the affair and instigator of the plot seemed to be Mikhailov. Yet the directory’s response was cautious: its leader General Boldyrev clarified that the Siberian Regional Assembly had been suspended, not dissolved, and announced that the pre-crisis composition of the Siberian government would be restored and that those ministers who had resigned at gun-point would be reinstated; finally Argunov for the URR would be sent to Omsk to investigate the criminal aspects of the case. In Ufa, where the spirit of compromise still reigned, this might have seemed a statesmanlike solution, but to the SRs it was betrayal. It meant an end to their campaign to bring the Siberian government under democratic control: the suspension of the Siberian Regional Assembly had been confirmed and the demands for the reinstatement of Patushinskii and a government post for Novoselov had been ignored. The Czechoslovaks too were appalled. They had wanted firm action and offered the directory armed units should it resolve to clear things up by force. Although the directory agonized throughout the night of 24–25 September 1918, it turned down the Czechoslovak offer and in Omsk the arrested Gratsianov was released from custody.19
This was an enormous blunder by the directory, for it meant that in their first action they threw away the initiative; it would be fully six weeks before they succeeded in regaining it. The directory took no action against the murderous activities associated with Mikhailov, the leader of the administrative council, yet as an All-Russian government without an administrative apparatus of its own it would soon itself be dependent on that very same administrative council. The military situation at the front meant that Samara was too dangerous a home for the directory, but should it go to Ekaterinburg or Omsk - in both cities efficient government apparatuses existed? The URR leader Krol tried to persuade the directory to base itself in Ekaterinburg, warning both Avksentiev and Boldyrev of Mikhailov’s true nature: but having first resolved to go to Ekaterinburg, then to Omsk, then to Ekaterinburg, the directory finally stopped dithering and resolved on 6 October 1918 to base itself in Omsk, fearing that this was the only city the Siberian army was actually willing to defend. They would, as Avksentiev told Krol, ‘visit the wolf in its den’.20
Few omens in Omsk were good. True the military situation improved somewhat: on 13 October Boldyrev 1918 received an agent sent from Archangel by Poole, and plans were drawn up to advance to Ekaterinburg and launch an attack on Vyatka, linking to Poole’s advance on Kotlas; but all other developments were bad. The directory was housed in a small two-storey house on the outskirts of town and had to request permission from the Minister of Communications in the Siberian government each time it wanted to use the telegraph network. On grounds of security, the SR press found itself systematically suppressed, thus on 11 October Delo Sihiri was closed down, as was its replacement Delo naroda a week later.21 Mikhailov’s clear purpose in treating the directory in this way was to make the administrative council’s co-operation with the directory dependent on the directorate accepting the same sort of arrangement with the administrative council that the Siberian government had been reluctantly forced to accept; the directory, like the Siberian government, Mikhailov hoped, could be reduced to a talking shop while the administrative council ran the show. Thus when talks between the directory and the administrative council began on 13 October 1918, both sides knew where they stood, but the cards were stacked heavily in favour of the administrative council. Avksentiev was determined that the directory should not be dependent on the administrative council, but ultimately there was little he could do to prevent it. Zenzinov shared his apprehension noting the hostile attitude of Mikhailov and his clear intention of ‘turning us into a decoration’, but neither could prevent an agreement being reached which gave substantial powers to the administrative council, based around the pretence that the Siberian government and the administrative council were separate entities and the administrative council a neutral civil service rather than a political power broker.
It was not difficult to agree that, until the Siberian government Prime Minister and directory member Vologodskii returned from the Far East, precise details could not be agreed as to how much autonomy the Siberian government should retain in its new guise as a Siberian regional government working under the directory. In the meantime, the directory could use the administrative council’s administrative apparatus; but in return, Mikhailov exacted a heavy price. Just as had been the case for the Siberian government since the War Minister Grishin-Almazov’s dismissal, all directory decisions would have to be agreed with the administrative council. In particular, when the directory came to appoint its executive ministries all ministerial appointments would have to be discussed jointly by the administrative council and the directory. To gain an administrative apparatus, the directory was being asked to lose the right to appoint the ministers it chose. In essence the administrative council, which Zenzinov considered had become a toy in the hands of White officers - as the September coup attempt had shown - had the right of veto when it came to forming new All-Russian ministries.22
For SRs like Komuch member Brushvit, who was in Omsk at the time, as well as for URR activists like Krol, also in Omsk, this agreement betrayed the Ufa accord. The directory was not standing above all regional governments, as had been agreed, but ‘trading’ with them; it was not truly sovereign. The directory preferred to see things in a different light. Avksentiev was optimistic and based that optimism on the activities of General Boldyrev: he was working hard, becoming popular among the troops, strengthening his position, uniting the army – in a month’s time, Avksentiev felt, White officers would no longer be strong enough to stage a coup against the directory, and in a month’s time the Allies would recognize the directory; it would then be strong enough to assimilate the administrative council, strengthening it with sympathetic ministers brought in from Samara. The only alternative to this was force, and Avksentiev insisted: ‘I will not have on my conscience unleashing a civil war in the anti-Bolshevik camp’, a view shared fully by fellow directory member Zenzinov. So when Vologodskii returned from the Far East on 18 October 1918 the directory settled down to negotiate with the administrative council over the composition of its executive ministries.23
This process took two weeks. Most ministerial appointments were uncontroversial. The directory had wanted to appoint the former Komuch Departmental Director for Labour, Maiskii, Minister of Labour, but he had turned down the post even before it became apparent that the administrative council might object. The possibly contentious appointment of Minister of War proved quite uncontentious. Admiral Kolchak arrived in Omsk on 13 October 1918, having arrived in Vladivostok a month earlier: he seemed the obvious man for the job since he was a nationally known figure and as a recent arrival could stand above the Samara–Omsk politicking; after his first meeting with General Boldyrev on 14 October 1918 he was offered the job on the 16th, with the formal appointment being made on the 22nd. Vologodskii was keen that Savinkov should be made Minister of Foreign Affairs, but made no fuss when Boldyrev quashed the idea after representations from Avksentiev, and no doubt his personal objections as well. It was only the proposal that Rogovskii should be Minister of the Interior in charge of state security which caused controversy.24
As well as being chairman of the Komuch Council of Departmental Directors (CDD) Rogovskii had been Komuch Departmental Director for State Security and had a brigade of some 200 loyal troops at his disposal. White officers in Omsk were obsessed with the possible threat this armed force might pose to their power and independence. To such officers the appointment of Rogovskii as ‘police minister’ had almost mythical significance. As General K.V. Sakharov recalled:
It was certain that if Rogovskii formed his police force, his SR Party police force, then in fact all power in the country would again fall into the hands of that ill-fated party. Nobody would agree to that.25
Mikhailov’s administrative council shared the view, common among conservative opinion in Omsk, that, if made Minister of the Interior, Rogovskii would arrive with his special armed guards from Samara and stage an SR coup. Kolchak, sucked into the general mood, made it clear he would not work with Rogovskii.26
The row was furious, for the administrative council counterattacked by proposing that Mikhailov should be appointed Minister of Finance, the post he held in the Siberian government. On 27 October 1918 Avksentiev threatened to resign. The following day the directory tried to make a concession: it would agree to drop Rogovskii if the administrative council dropped Mikhailov; but the administrative council would not back down. The Czechoslovaks then intervened, insisting that Mikhailov be excluded from the list. On 29 October 1918 Zenzinov joined Avksentiev when he again threatened to resign, but after seeking the views of URR and SR advisors like Krol, Yakushev, Pavlov, Argunov, and Rogovskii himself, they decided to back down.27 In the end the directory made a further concession. Mikhailov was appointed Minister of Finance, and Rogovskii was made Deputy Minister of the Interior, but in charge of state security and head of the police, with the right both to take part in ministerial meetings and to report directly to the directory. In a chilling reminder of the sort of police work Rogovskii might become involved in, on 26 October 1918 Moiseenko, the one-time head of the SR military commission and a founder member of the URR, was murdered by a gang of officers.28
However, once the ministers had been appointed, the administrative council lost the initiative it had held ever since the directory’s fateful decision after the Ufa State Conference to come to Omsk despite the murder of Novoselov. Thereafter the directory stopped making concessions and began to assert its authority. On 2 November 1918 the Urals government surrendered power to the directory and transformed itself into a purely regional government; on 4 November 1918 the Siberian government did the same; and on 5 November 1918 the new executive ministers met for the first time. Their composition reflected the work put in by the administrative council: Vologodskii was made Prime Minister and nine of the fourteen ministers had served in the Siberian government at some level; but there were still all the junior government posts to fill, and the directory, as Avksentiev had hinted in October, was determined to redress the balance at this stage. Thus on 4 November 1918 the right-wing SR and Constituent Assembly deputy Oganskii – in December 1917 a member of the SR commission to welcome the Constituent Assembly – was offered the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture.29 On 8 November 1918 the final point of conflict between the directory and the administrative council was removed when it was agreed that the Siberian Regional Assembly would be allowed to reconvene for a final one-day session and then dissolve itself. On 10 November 1918 Avksentiev went to Tomsk and persuaded the regional assembly to do just that.
With its constitutional position finally clear, the directory really could begin to assert itself. Avksentiev was determined to handle foreign affairs as a directory matter; the Minister of Foreign Affairs he appointed had no executive powers. Vinogradov was equally determined that when the executive ministers met together they did not do so as a cabinet, but simply as a council appointed by the directory to act as advisors and executors. Thus the directory insisted that it had the power to legislate in its own right, and no laws needed to go through any Council of Ministers. A press law was quickly passed without discussion in the Council of Ministers, and the directory began to appoint its own departmental directors on all matters concerning legislation. As had been anticipated by the directory, this soon paralysed the cabinet ambitions of the Council of Ministers.30 The directory, then, was beginning to recover the initiative when on 5 November 1918 Vologodskii raised at one of its meetings the question of the so-called Chernov Charter.
The Directory and the Future of Komuch
At the height of the row over the appointments of Rogovskii and Mikhailov, the Omsk branch of the Kadet Party, dominated by White officers, organized a public meeting on 29 October 1918 at which it was suggested that Avksentiev and Zenzinov were insisting on Rogovskii’s nomination because they were being put under pressure by the SR Party. The nomination had been dictated to them by the SR Party Central Committee, and in this way the SRs were seeking first to control the directory and through it the executive ministries. The allegation was supported by telegrams, at the time being routinely intercepted by the administrative council’s security apparatus. Central to these allegations was the document which became known as the Chernov Charter.31
The SR leader Chernov had arrived in Samara on 19 September 1918, but although he was given a salary of 2,500 roubles, ten times the Samara minimum, there was little in practice for him to do. He made a stirring speech to the Samara Peasant Union Congress, held from 15–23 September 1918, and no doubt was involved in the decision to grant the union 100,000 roubles for its propaganda work, and the decision of 27 September 1918 to allocate the government’s agitation and cultural education department 500,000 roubles, but the tide was turning against Komuch. The Komuch Council of Departmental Directors (CDD) returned to Samara from the Ufa State Conference on 29 September 1918, but by 1 October 1918 the decision had been taken to abandon the city, and by the 6th the Bolsheviks were back in control and Komuch had retreated back to Ufa. All these upheavals meant that it was the second week in October before the CDD began to address the question of its future relationship with the directory and the All-Russian ministries once formed.32
Komuch was at first conciliation itself. On 13 October 1918 the CDD informed Zenzinov that its affairs had more or less been wound up: it no longer considered itself a national government, and would transform itself into a regional government for what remained of the Volga territory under the terms of the Ufa accord as soon as details were finalized. In the meantime a four-member team had been appointed to administer All-Russian concerns in the locality – Filipovskii, Vedenyapin, Nesterov and Klimushkin. These tasks were essentially two-fold, but expensive: the four-member team faced pay demands from the railway workers and the army, and would need to settle these in the name of the directory. When Zenzinov made light of these difficulties and pointed out that it was now the responsibility of the administrative council to sort out these problems, Vedenyapin snapped that his team wanted to resign these residual responsibilities as soon as possible, but since local workers and soldiers were approaching them, not the administrative council, with pay demands they had to respond.33
The SRs’ willingness to accept the Ufa accord and wind up the affairs of the CDD changed dramatically after the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies had met for the first time since the Ufa State Conference. The congress had endorsed the decisions made in Ufa and had been recognized as a ‘permanently functioning state legal institution’ charged with reconvening the Constituent Assembly with a quorum of 250 by 1 January 1919.34 But as its members, including Chernov and Gendelman, began to arrive in Ufa on 14 October 1918 they had more on their minds than how to assemble the Constituent Assembly. Those on the left of the SR Party had already protested at the Ufa accord: some had refused to sign it, one had even returned to Bolshevik territory in protest; in fact nearly half the SRs who had taken part in the Ufa State Conference had reservations about the accord. At the congress of deputies on 14 October, discussion centred on the protocols of the meetings of the Council of Elders held during the Ufa State Conference: many deputies were clearly unaware of the crucial concession made on this occasion, especially the notion that the only real task the existing Constituent Assembly had to perform was to dissolve itself and call fresh elections. Deputies also queried the validity of the Central Committee’s vote to accept the accord, since only seven members had taken part and a telephone call from Chernov urging members not to sign had been ignored. Thus deputies were already in angry mood when the details of the agreement reached in Omsk between the directory and the administrative council began to emerge, an agreement which breached the spirit of the Ufa accord since it gave the administrative council a say in the appointment of executive ministers.
Meeting contemporaneously with the congress, the SR Party took a series of decisions hostile to the directory. A quorate Central Committee meeting of nine (the Central Committee had twenty members, but only eight were needed for a quorum) voted six against two with one abstention to reject the Ufa accord and return to the long-held SR view that a ‘democratic third force’ was needed to fight on two fronts, against both the Bolsheviks, the reactionaries of the left, and the White reactionaries of the right. The work of the party’s delegation to the Ufa State Conference was criticized, and it was decided that, while the directory could not be opposed, the party would bypass it since its primary concern was not the directory but working to reconvene the Constituent Assembly. Joint membership of the party and the URR was also banned at this meeting.35 All this anger was suffused in the Chernov Charter resolution adopted on 22 October 1918, which seemed to cast the White reactionary right as the main enemy. It stated:
In anticipating the possibility of political crises, which might be brought on by the dreamers of counter-revolution, all the party’s strength at the present time must be mobilized, trained in military affairs and armed so that it is ready at any moment to withstand the blows of counter-revolutionaries organizing civil war in the rear of the anti-Bolshevik front. The work of arming the party’s forces, of closing ranks, of all-round political education and purely military mobilization, must be the main task of the Central Committee; this, it is hoped, will give it new points of influence along side its current, purely state influence.36
Clearly talk of extending party influence into military affairs and of putting the party on a military footing in the event of armed clashes with counter-revolutionaries would not go down well in Omsk. But those directory members associated with the SR Party, Avksentiev and Zenzinov, thought they could distance themselves from the Chernov Charter. Despite the allegations of White propaganda – like that heard in Omsk on 29 October 1918 about the charter being binding on all SR Party members, and in particular on Zenzinov since he was an elected member of the Central Committee – the SR Central Committee had announced at the Ufa State Conference that it opposed the notion of exercising political control over those of its members who joined the directory; the Kadet Party and the Popular Socialist Party made similar statements at the same time. Indeed, all those joining the directory offered to leave their parties to underline this independence, but the Council of Elders at the Ufa State Conference decided that this was not necessary.37
When the Chernov Charter was shown to Zenzinov by the head of the telegraph agency in Omsk, he decided to ignore it and instructed the agency not to publish it under any circumstances, a decision endorsed by Avksentiev. On 24 October 1918 Zenzinov informed the Central Committee in Ufa that while the content of the Chernov Charter did not bother him too much, its timing was most unfortunate ‘complicating the situation and strengthening the other side; all the more so since we are concluding an agreement where we are standing up for what is accepted and essential for everyone’. The charter, he argued, reflected a misunderstanding of developments in Omsk. He went on:
We are standing firm on the personal make-up of the executive ministries and I hope we will get an agreement on conditions which are acceptable to us. Do not forget that, because of the collapse of the Volga front we have to talk about agreements when we should be concerned simply with implementing our decisions; the balance of real forces is apparent at every step.38
Right-wing SRs immediately sought to challenge the charter. Meeting in Ekaterinburg on or slightly before 4 November 1918 the SR group of deputies to the Constituent Assembly heard Oganskii, just nominated Deputy Minister of Agriculture, and a dozen other right-wing deputies protest at the Chernov Charter. When it came to the vote, the group split into three: Komuch president Volskii and Chernov for the left supported the charter and won the support of 22 of the 45 deputies present; Gendelman and a centre group accounted for a further ten; while the right also comprised ten, and three deputies abstained. The left alone did not have a majority, but unlike at the Ufa State Conference where the centre of the party had tended to support the right, events since had pushed the centre nearer the left. A compromise resolution was cobbled together by the left and centre, which conceded only that it had been tactless to publish the Chernov Charter resolution; Oganskii therefore informed Avksentiev that as a consequence the group of SR deputies to the Constituent Assembly was likely to split, for the right was determined to publish its protest. Avksentiev endorsed the idea of a public split: ‘we have learned nothing and, it seems, are again capable of wrecking, or at least damaging the situation’, he concluded.39
However, if Avksentiev and Zenzinov thought they could handle the impact of the Chernov Charter by ignoring it and using their allies in the SR Party to discredit it, they were mistaken. By early November 1918 versions of its contents were being reproduced by various White groups and a version of it was eventually published in the press. Thus when on 5 November 1918 Vologodskii raised the matter in the directory there was an angry scene. Zenzinov and Avksentiev stressed how little they had had to do with it; they had only seen the extracts provided for them by the head of the telegraph agency, they said. General Boldyrev was incensed by the charter and called for the arrest of the SR Central Committee; Vologodskii asked Zenzinov directly if, as a member of the SR Central Committee until joining the directory, he had been consulted on the matter. Once tempers had cooled a little, Zenzinov, Avksentiev and Vinogradov persuaded their fellow directory members Vologodskii and Boldyrev that the SR Central Committee could only be arrested if proper legal channels were followed, and a proper judicial enquiry established. This was duly done, and the executive Minister of Justice was instructed to undertake the matter. A few days later he informed Zenzinov that the whole thing had ‘blown over’ and there would be no arrests. That might indeed have been the case if the charter had been the only incident of SR action against the directory.40
A week after having said it would resign, the Komuch Council of Departmental Directors (CDD) in Ufa changed its mind. After the adoption of the Chernov Charter on 22 October 1918, the CDD informed Zenzinov on the 24th that it had decided not to liquidate itself. Its situation was in many ways desperate – a strike by railway workers and river boat crews was imminent since October’s pay had not been received, the Czechoslovak troops were demoralized and uncertain why they were fighting since news of Czechoslovak independence had been received – but a response to these problems had been found; the SR Party was forming volunteer units into so-called Constituent Assembly battalions, and these would become the core of a new armed force. To help establish these, and associated Russo-Czech volunteer brigades, a special war sub-department of the Komuch CDD’s agitation and cultural education department was set up on 1 November 1918 and General Notbek appointed to head it.41
In line with the winding up of the Urals and Siberian governments, on 3 November 1918 General Boldyrev informed the Komuch CDD that its dissolution was imminent; but rather than accept this, the Komuch CDD decided to resist, after holding talks with Czechoslovak representatives and the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies, which had by then moved to Ekaterinburg. The Komuch CDD pointed out that the manner in which the executive ministries had been formed – in other words the role played in this by the administrative council – meant that, far from being dissolved, the Siberian government, the parent of the administrative council, had actually been retained in a disguised form. Why, it asked, should it resign when in recent days it had done so much to restore the front: the Constituent Assembly battalions, the Russo-Czech volunteers, and other units organized by General Kappel, Fortunatov and Colonel Makhin had done much to raise morale. Work in forming more of these units and expanding them was already underway on a broad front, yet all this good work could be threatened by the news that the Komuch CDD had been dissolved. The directory would have to annul its decision, the Komuch CDD insisted and informed the directory that it intended to seek the support of the Czechoslovak National Council to this end. At all costs the public announcement of dissolution had to be delayed.42
On 5 November 1918, the very day the Chernov Charter was discussed in the directory, Komuch’s Departmental Director for Foreign Affairs Vedenyapin contacted Zenzinov and in a forceful telegram spelt out once again the case for not dissolving the Komuch CDD, and reminding Zenzinov that the SR Central Committee had called every party member to arms. The party’s volunteers, he went on, were by then not only holding the front but advancing back towards Samara; if the Komuch CDD were dissolved these forces would abandon the front, so an exception had to be made and the Komuch CDD spared from dissolution. Zenzinov was taken aback: the Komuch CDD had known for three weeks that it would be dissolved, he said; their demand was quite impossible, since, as a quid pro quo, the Siberian government would be restored, which would destroy all the directory’s work. By 7 November 1918 the Komuch CDD was only slightly more amenable. It demanded to know the precise terms on which the Urals and Siberian governments had been dissolved, so that it could consider the full implications of taking such a step.43
When on 10 November 1918 the directory summonsed the Komuch CDD to Chelyabinsk to meet the so-called liquidation commission charged with winding up its affairs, the Komuch CDD decided not to attend and informed the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies of this decision asking them to endorse it. On 12 November 1918 the Komuch CDD was again protesting to Zenzinov that the Ufa accord had been broken by the directory coming to what was essentially a bilateral arrangement with the Siberian government. It therefore put down the terms to be met before it would agree to dissolve: these amounted to a public statement by the new ministers that they would stick by the Ufa accord and surrender their mandate to the Constituent Assembly when quorate, at the same time granting immunity from arrest for all Constituent Assembly deputies. Ignoring this ultimatum, Zenzinov informed the Komuch CDD that the liquidation commission was about to leave Chelyabinsk for Ufa and would soon be with them. He urged them not to rock the boat, especially since he believed the Allies were on the point of recognizing the directory. The Komuch CDD made no substantive response, but curtly reminded Zenzinov that its volunteer divisions were now advancing and had recently captured a Bolshevik regiment; the Czechoslovaks could report that the front in Ekaterinburg was also firm.44
But behind this war of words, some sort of compromise stance was beginning to emerge. The directory could object to the tenor of the Komuch CDD’s ultimatum, but its content, that the Ufa accord be implemented, was easy for it to accept since all its actions were governed by the accord. Equally, by 15 November 1918, when the Komuch CDD was considering its negotiating stance for the arrival of the liquidation commission, it too was beginning to show more flexibility. It informed the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies that it planned to put forward a scheme which just might find favour with the directory. The idea was to give a wide degree of autonomy to the Ufa region, putting it under the authority of a chief plenipotentiary. The plenipotentiary, to be appointed by the directory from a list of three names, would appoint a number of assistants, all deputies to the Constituent Assembly, to take charge of departments such as internal affairs, production, education, state property, and work within Bolshevik-controlled zones.
This was a greater degree of autonomy than that proposed for other regions, but it would be under the overall control of the directory and it could possibly be justified with reference to the unique conditions operating so near the front. In any event, it was clearly part of a bargaining strategy which would enable the Komuch CDD to dissolve itself formally, while retaining its distinctive commitment to the Constituent Assembly; there were also clear parallels with Chaikovskii’s proposal in Archangel for a military governor responsible to the directory in the northern battle zone. Was there the basis here for a compromise? White officers clearly did not like what they heard, for the telegraph between the Komuch CDD in Ufa and the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies in Ekaterinburg was suddenly cut as this negotiating stance was being discussed.45
While Zenzinov was busy trying to persuade the SRs to wind up the Komuch CDD, General Boldyrev was determined to put an end to the volunteer units; having struggled to establish a unified command at the Ministry of War it was unacceptable to have to cope with armed units controlled by the agitation department of the Komuch CDD. On 6 November 1918 Boldyrev ordered the Komuch CDD to stop forming volunteer battalions and to dissolve those already formed.46 There was no satisfactory response. Indeed on 8 November 1918 the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies endorsed the decision to establish worker-peasant volunteer brigades and Russo-Czech battalions; it also sung the praises of the volunteers fighting in Izhevsk and the Kama valley who, isolated from the rest of Komuch territory since their initial insurrection in early August 1918, were staging a dramatic, if doomed, counter-offensive. It was equally clear that the Czechoslovaks were turning a blind eye to this clear challenge to General Boldyrev’s authority.47 On 15 November 1918 Boldyrev set off on a tour of the front, determined to put a stop to all political-cultural educational work in the army, including the illegal formation of volunteer units. He had Avksentiev’s agreement summarily to execute anyone found responsible for founding party-based military units within the army.48
The Whites Overthrow the Green Directory
Among White officer circles in Omsk vague plans to overthrow the directory had been under discussion since its arrival in the city. From mid-October 1918 General Boldyrev was being warned about coup attempts, and he was well aware of the ‘thirst for dictatorship’ developing among the officer corps.49 Such talk had been particularly current during the row about Rogovskii, Mikhailov and the composition of the All-Russian ministries; on 27 October 1918, at one point in this long running dispute, Vinogradov had, momentarily, resigned from the directory and suggested to General Boldyrev that all the other members of the directory should resign as well so that he, Boldyrev, could take over as dictator. The same day Boldyrev noted in his diary that Admiral Kolchak and the conservative politicians gathering in Omsk were increasingly of the view that the directory should be slimmed down to one; the following day he noted that in such officers’ discussions it was increasingly Kolchak rather than himself who was cast in the role of dictator.50
Once the All-Russian ministries had been formed at the beginning of November, however, such speculation was quelled for a while, although some officers toured the front finding widespread support for the idea of a dictatorship among the fellow officers they canvassed. The favoured candidate for dictator, Kolchak, travelled to Ekaterinburg on 9 November 1918 to attend a ceremony to present medals to members of the Czechoslovak Legion. In private Kolchak spoke in the most disparaging terms of the Czechoslovak soldiers, believing that the sooner they left Russia the better, and perhaps he said as much to General Boldyrev when their trains crossed on 16 November 1918 as Kolchak returned to Omsk and Boldyrev set off for the front. Certainly a British officer with Kolchak, Colonel John Ward, gained the impression that the two men had quarrelled about something, and on his return on 17 November 1918 Kolchak informed the All-Russian ministers that he intended to resign as Minister of War.51 With General Boldyrev out of the way, and Kolchak’s relations with him soured, serious plotting began.
During 17 November 1918, several officers approached Kolchak and urged him to act against the directory; Kolchak was noncommittal, but his supporters decided to act. During the night of 17–18 November, as they were holding talks with Dedusenko, Maslov and Likhach, victims themselves of the thirst for dictatorship among White officers in Archangel, Avksentiev and Zenzinov were arrested by the Omsk officer corps, along with Argunov and Rogovskii. On 18 November 1918 the executive ministers met and Vinogradov proposed, as he had done once before, the establishment of a dictatorship; in the subsequent voting one minister (presumably Vinogradov) voted for General Boldyrev, the rest for Admiral Kolchak. Vologodskii and Vinogradov, the surviving members of the directory, resigned their posts, but Vologodskii, the former Prime Minister in the Siberian government, was persuaded to accept a new job within Kolchak’s administration.52
Hearing of the coup on 18 November 1918, General Boldyrev ordered Admiral Kolchak to surrender power, and toyed with the idea of getting Czechoslovak support for a counter-move. However, he had no desire to seek the support of Chernov and the SRs, whom he was in the process of trying to discipline, and on 20 November 1918 rejected an SR plea to issue a call to arms. A dignified resignation then seemed the only honourable course.53 As to the SRs, the Komuch CDD announced from Ufa on 18 November 1918 that it had assumed power in all the territory that had once belonged to Komuch and that it was seeking to hold talks with the Czechoslovaks: it also asked the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies to convene in full session in Ekaterinburg. Meanwhile the Congress of Constituent Assembly Deputies had already established a committee headed by Chernov, and including Volskii and Brushvit, which called on citizens to obey its instructions in the defence of democracy.54
Both General Boldyrev and the SRs had instinctively looked to the Czechoslovaks for support. Their representative in Ufa contacted the Czechoslovak headquarters in Ekaterinburg on 18 November 1918 seeking instructions, but clearly expecting the National Council to condemn the coup firmly. Krol too expected the Czechoslovaks to act to restore Boldyrev and the directory; but the Czechoslovaks did not respond.55 Back on 2 November 1918 General J. Syrovy, the new Czechoslovak Commander-in-Chief, had informed his French superior General Janin that both divisions of the Czechoslovak Legion were so demoralized they needed to be ‘taken out of fine, rested and purged of agitators’. By 6 November 1918 Boldyrev could claim that it was Russian troops alone who held the Siberian front. The armistice with Germany at the end of the First World War on 11 November 1918 only reinforced the Czechoslovak demand to leave Russia.56 When the coup occurred, Syrovy was called on by his superiors to order the Czechoslovaks not to become involved, supporting neither Boldyrev nor Kolchak. When the Czechoslovak National Council issued a statement on 21 November 1918 it was an appeal of despair and protest, not a call to arms; it merely regretted that the coup had meant that troops needed at the front were active in the rear, and that a government based on law had been destroyed so soon after it had begun to operate. On 23 November 1918 the Komuch CDD issued a bitter protest at this weak response by the Czechoslovak National Council and sent a copy to Masaryk himself.57
The coup was the work of headstrong and embittered young officers, for whom, like for Chaplin in Archangel, the directory was repeating all the old mistakes of Kerensky. The leader of the coup was Colonel Volkov, the same Colonel Volkov involved in the attempted coup in Omsk in September 1918. As antagonistic to the SRs as to the Bolsheviks, men of this type felt left-wing politicians were interfering in everything, just as had happened to the army under Kerensky. The official gloss on the coup made this clear. The plotters’ motivation was considered fully justified: links had been discovered between the arrested members of the directory and political activists engaged in anti-state activity by propagandizing in the army for the formation of purely party-based armed groups. These links were established by the refusal of those concerned to act against the Chernov Charter – far from leaving the party or protesting in any way, Zenzinov had continued to report to the SR Central Committee on the work of the directory.58
However, the real position of the directory was rather different. The plotters made their move when the directory was taking determined action against both left and right. One element of the SRs’ alleged interference in military affairs was their success in disciplining monarchist White officers. On 13 November 1918 a certain cossack officer, Ataman Krasilnikov, had publicly sung ‘God Save the Tsar’ at a banquet given for Allied representatives; this was not the first occasion on which this had happened and Zenzinov succeeded in persuading the directory to order his arrest. Krasilnikov became Volkov’s co-conspirator in the 18 November coup.59 By acting as he did Krasilnikov not only avoided arrest, but brought down the directory at the very moment it was discovering a new authority. It had established the All-Russian ministries; it had begun to assert its powers over the administrative council; it showed no signs of giving in to the Komuch CDD in Ufa and appeared to be about to coax them towards agreeing a satisfactory compromise; far from being dictated to by the SR Party, Avksentiev and Zenzinov were prepared to see a split among the congress of Constituent Assembly deputies publicly to discredit the Chernov Charter; Boldyrev had gone to the front with powers to execute on the spot all concerned with volunteer party-based units; and finally, as Zenzinov had tried to make clear in his bitter exchanges with the Komuch CDD, the directory was on the point of being recognized by the Allies.
The British Cabinet decided to recognize the directory on 14 November 1918, and on the 16th the British consul in Siberia was informed of the fact, and told that the only likely condition to be put on recognition was that the directory should ‘deal firmly’ with Chernov. This news reached Omsk from the Russian representative in London, K.D. Nabokov, whose facility for coded communication with Russia had just been restored by the British as a sign of growing confidence in the directory, and who was already in communication with Avksentiev.60 The directory was overthrown not because it was inherently weak, but because it was in danger of succeeding. Much as its opponents had feared when they started the brouhaha about the Chernov Charter, the Green patriotic socialists were getting a grip on the directory, and via that were seeking to control the All-Russian ministries and outmanoeuvre the administrative council.
Unlike in Archangel, where the Allies took prompt action against the White plotters, in Omsk the Allies just looked on. This was because in the Allies’ original plan for intervention in Russia Siberia was to be a sideshow. Diplomats of the calibre of Lindley and Noulens had all been moved to Archangel; quite who was responsible for the political side of developments in Siberia was a constant concern of the British government at cabinet meetings throughout September 1918. Apart from the Czechoslovaks, the only Allied representation of any weight in the region was the military mission under the command of General Knox, in 1917 the British military attaché in Petrograd; but this was a military rather than a political mission, which had arrived in Siberia at the same time as Admiral Kolchak and was charged with encouraging all forces sympathetic to the Allies to advance on Perm and Vyatka. Knox’s personal views were well-known. As General Boldyrev noted in his diary after their first meeting on 21 October 1918: ‘Knox hated socialists, and considered that a firm military dictatorship was quite enough to deal with a bunch of rebels’. This meeting took place during the row concerning Rogovskii, Mikhailov and the composition of the All-Russian ministries, and Knox ‘threatened to get together a band of soldiers and overthrow us if we did not reach an agreement with the Siberians; he was, he said jokingly, a Siberian’. Knox was also known to consider Avksentiev as ‘no better than Kerensky’, and had told Boldyrev that in Britain Chernov would have been shot for issuing the Chernov Charter. However, this was simply ill-humoured rhetoric. Before leaving Omsk for Vladivostok ten days before the coup occurred, Knox reported to London: ‘Kolchak is being urged by right elements to effect a coup d’état. I told him that any attempt of this sort would at present be fatal.’61
During and immediately after the coup, Colonel J.F. Nielsen, left in charge by Knox, became carried away with excitement and enthusiastically endorsed what Kolchak’s supporters planned and achieved; but this was the exuberance of an officer who had been with Kornilov at the time of his unsuccessful coup attempt in August 1917.62 Kolchak’s coup was a Russian affair, a move by White officers to hijack the Allies’ carefully laid plans for intervention in support of Russian democracy. The wheel had turned full circle since Kornilov’s failed coup fourteen months earlier, only this time there was no pretence that the plotters were working with the directory in order to strengthen it. Back in August 1917, Savinkov had proposed a democratic government combined with firm military discipline, only to find this did not accord with the true motives of Kornilov’s backers. In autumn 1918 it was General Boldyrev, not Admiral Kolchak, who had restored discipline in the army; the directory was a democratic regime with a disciplined army, but it was still overthrown by White officers of the reactionary right. Just as when Kornilov’s true intentions were revealed in the casual asides of his adjutant Zavoiko to the liberal politician V.N. Lvov, so Kolchak’s coup was a straightforward attempt at counter-revolution, turning the clock back to the ambitions of the first counter-revolutionary conspirators of April 1917.
Notes
1. The fullest accounts of the Ufa State Conference are I. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya Kontrrevolyutsiya (Moscow 1923), p. 215 et seq; V.G. Boldyrev, Direktoriya Kolchak, Interventy (Novonikolaevsk 1925), p. 35 et seq.; and L.A. Krol, Za tri goda (Vladivostok 1921), p. 95 et seq. See also V.L. Utgofa, ‘Ufimskoe Gosudarstvennoe Soveshchanie 1918’ Byloe no. 16 (Petrograd 1921), p. 38; G.K. Gins, Sibir’ Soyuzniki i Kolchak (Peking 1921) vol. 1, p. 204 et seq; and V.M. Zenzinov, Iz zhizni revolyutsionera (Paris 1919), p. 110.
2. For the council of elders, see Krol, Za tri goda, p. 96; for the Czechoslovaks, see Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 232 and K.V. Sakharov, Belaya Sibir’ (Munich 1923), p. 14.
3. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) 144.1.30.3, 144.1.30.7.
4. Utgofa, ‘Ufimskoe’, pp. 28–30; Krol, Za tri goda, p. 130. For the evacuation of the bank and executions, see GARF 670.1.1.65 and 670.1.1.67.
5. GARF 670.1.1.30.
6. Krol, Za tri goda, pp. 80, 100.
7. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 100; GARF 670.1.37.4.
8. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 205.
9. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 219; Krol, Za tri goda, pp. 102–22; Utgofa, ‘Ufimskoe’, p. 30. For the atmosphere of ‘threat’, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 45.
10. Krol, Za tri goda, pp. 125, 130.
11. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 122; Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 242.
12. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 243; Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 227.
13. For the SR proposal, see GARF 667.1.17.25. For unease about Zenzinov, see Krol, Za tri goda, p. 130; Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 48; and V.M. Zenzinov (ed.), Gosudarstvennyi perevorot Admirala Kolchaka v Omske 18 noyabrya 1918 goda: Sbornik Dokumentov (Paris 1919), p. 21.
14. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 195.
15. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 86.
16. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, pp. 185, 197, 201.
17. For the right to dissolve the assembly, see S.P. Melgunov, Tragediya Admirala Kolchaka (Belgrade 1930) Part 1, p. 174; for the Siberian railway, see A. Vergé, Avec les Tchécoslovaques (Paris 1926), p. 140; otherwise Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, pp. 198, 207.
18. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, pp. 212, 219–22, 235.
19. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 136; Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 255. For the Czechoslovaks, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 49.
20. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 140; Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 63.
21. For the military plans, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, pp. 61, 73; for the situation of the directory, see Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 304; for the SR press, see Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, p. 69.
22. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, pp. 263–6; Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 70; Krol, Za tri goda, p. 147.
23. For Brushvit, see Krol, Za tri goda, p. 145; for Avksentiev and Zenzinov, see Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, pp. 310, 312.
24. For Maiskii, see his Demokraticheskaya, p. 314; for Kolchak and Savinkov, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, pp. 72, 81–3.
25. Sakharov, Belaya Sibir’, p. 17.
26. Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, pp. 276, 306.
27. For Avksentiev’s first threat to resign, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 86; forth Czechoslovaks, see Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, p. 53; otherwise, Krol, Za tri goda p. 151.
28. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, pp. 307, 315; V.M. Zenzinov (ed.), Gosudarstvennyi perevorot Admirala Kolchaka v Omske 18 noyabrya 1918 goda: Sbornik Dokumentov (Paris 1919), p. 19.
29. For the Urals government, see Krol, Za tri goda, p. 155; for the government, see Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 282; for Oganskii, see Zenzinov, Perevorot, p. 68.
30. For the assembly, see Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 95; for the directory, see Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 288.
31. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 151.
32. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, pp. 66, 264. For Chernov’s salary, see GARF 670.1.1.78; for other financial matters, see 670.1.1.81 and 670.1.2.48.
33. GARF 144.1.22.1–3.
34. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya, p. 238; GARF 144.1.22.3.
35. M. Jansen, A Show Trial under Lenin (The Hague 1982), pp. 4, 100; S.P. Melgunov, N.V. Chaikovskii v gody grazhdanskoi winy (Paris 1929), p. 155.
36. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 156.
37. Zenzinov, Perevorot, pp. 171, 187.
38. GARF 144.1.22.7. For the decision not to publish, see Zensinov, Perevorot, p. 191.
39. Zenzinov, Perevorot, pp. 68–9, 192.
40. Zenzinov, Perevorot, pp. 191–2.
41. For Notbek’s appointment, see GARF 670.1.1.95; otherwise 144.1.22.6–9.
42. GARF 144.1.22.9–11.
43. GARF 144.1.22.12, 144.1.22.17.
44. GARF 144.1.22.19–23.
45. GARF 144.1.22.24.
46. GARF 144.1.22.16.
47. Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, pp. 29–30; Melgunov, Chaikovskii, p. 156. For Izhevsk, see S.M. Berk, ‘The “Class Tragedy” of Izhevsk: working class opposition to Bolshevism in 1918’ Russian History vol. 2, no. 2 (1975), pp. 176–90.
48. Zenzinov, Perevorot, pp. 189, 192.
49. Krol, Za tri goda, p. 146; Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 59.
50. Boldyrev, Direktoriya, p. 86.
51. P. Fleming, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (London 1963), pp. 104–9.
52. The coup is discussed in exhaustive detail in Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, and is described in Fleming, Kolchak p. 108; Maiskii, Demokraticheskaya p. 322; Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 306 et seq. The official justification for the coup is in Zenzinov, Perevorot, p. 19 et seq.
53. Zenzinov, Perevorot, p. 9; Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, pp. 159–63.
54. GARF 144.1.22.26, 144.1.22.32; Gins, Sibir’ vol. 2, p. 12.
55. GARF 144.1.22.27; Krol, Za tri goda, p. 158.
56. Fleming, Kolchak, p. 100; Gins, Sibir’ vol. 1, p. 296.
57. For Syrovy, see Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, p. 160 and GARF 144.1.22.37; for the statement, see Zenzinov, Perevorot, p. 73; for the protest, see 144.1.20.1–4.
58. Zenzinov, Perevorot, pp. 19, 37.
59. V.M. Zenzinov, Iz zhizni revolyutsionera (Paris 1919), p. 115; Melgunov, Tragediya Part 2, p. 90.
60. M. Kettle, Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco (London 1992), pp. 8–13.
61. Fleming, Kolchak, p. 113. For Knox’s comments to Boldyrev, see the latter’s Direktoriya, pp. 79, 83, 93.
62. For Nielsen and Kornilov, see Sakharov, Belaya Sibir’, p. 18. In his study Kettle (Archangel p. 13) paints a picture of Nielsen being in close touch with plotters like Sakharov, something confirmed by Sakharov (p. 18), but suggests his influence was limited to giving the mistaken advice that the Allies would welcome a coup.