Образовательный портал

Методическая разработка

Александр Колчак

                                                            Медведева Ольга Анатольевна
                                                            учитель английского языка первой категории
школы № 323 Санкт-Петербурга

Данная разработка создана в рамках городского конкурса  "Мир из моего окна" об известном человеке нашего Невского района и являлась элементом исследовательской деятельности.

World War I

After the outbreak of war initially on the flagship Pogranichnik, Kolchak oversaw the laying of extensive coastal defensive minefields and commanded the naval forces in the Gulf of Riga. Admiral Essen was not satisfied to remain only on the defensive and ordered Kolchak to prepare a scheme for attacking the approaches of the German naval bases. During the autumn and winter of 1914–1915, Russian destroyers and cruisers started a series of dangerous night operations, laying mines at the approaches to Kiel and Danzig. Kolchak, being of the opinion that the person responsible for planning operations should take part in their execution, was always on board those ships which carried out the operations and sometimes took direct command of the destroyer flotillas. He was promoted to vice-admiral in August 1916, the youngest man at that rank, and was made commander of the Black Sea Fleet, replacing Admiral Eberhart. Kolchak's primary mission was to support General Yudenich in his operations against the Ottoman Empire. He also was tasked with the job of countering any U-boat threat and to begin planning an invasion of the Bosphorus (which was never carried out). Kolchak's fleet was successful at sinking Turkish colliers. Because there was no railroad linking the coal mines of eastern Turkey with Constantinople, the Russian fleet's attacks on the Turkish coal ships caused the Ottoman government much hardship. In 1916, in a model combined Army-Navy assault, the Russian Black Sea fleet helped the Russian army to take the Ottoman city of Trebizond (modern Trabzon).One notable disaster took place under Kolchak's watch: the dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya blew up in the port of Sevastopol on 7 October 1916. A careful investigation failed to determine the cause of the explosion; it could have been accidental or sabotage.

Revolution

After the February Revolution in 1917, the Black Sea fleet descended into political chaos. Kolchak was removed from command of the fleet in June and travelled to Petrograd (St. Petersburg). On his arrival at Petrograd, Kolchak was invited to a meeting of the Provisional Government. There he presented his view on the condition of the Russian armed forces and their complete demoralisation. He stated that the only way to save the country was to re-establish discipline and restore capital punishment in the army and navy.

During this time many organisations and newspapers with a nationalist tendency spoke of him as a future dictator. A number of new and secret organisations had sprung up in Petrograd which had as their object the suppression of the Bolshevist movement and the removal of the extremist members of the government. Some of these organisations asked Kolchak to accept the leadership.

When the news was received by the then Naval Minister of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, he ordered Kolchak to leave immediately for America (Admiral James H. Glennon, member of American mission, headed by Senator Elihu Root invited Kolchak to go to America in order to give the American Navy Department information on Bosphorus). On 19 August 1917 Kolchak with several officers left Petrograd for Britain and the United States as a quasi-official military observer. When passing through London he was greeted cordially by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, who offered him transport on board a British cruiser on his way to Halifax. The journey to America proved to be unnecessary, as by the time Kolchak arrived, the US had given up the idea of any independent action in the Dardanelles. Kolchak visited the American Fleet and its ports, and decided to return to Russia via Japan.

Supreme Ruler of Russia

Initially the White forces under his command had some success. Kolchak was unfamiliar with combat on land and gave the majority of the strategic planning to D.A. Lebedev, Paul J. Bubnar, and his staff. The northern army under the Russian Anatoly Pepelyayev and the Czech Rudolf Gajda seized Perm in late December 1918 and after a pause other forces spread out from this strategic base. The plan was for three main advances – Gajda to take Archangel, Khanzhin to capture Ufa and the Cossacks under Alexander Dutov to captureSamara and Saratov. Kolchak had put around 110,000 men into the field facing roughly 95,000 Bolshevik troops. Kolchak's good relations with General Alfred Knox meant that his forces were partly armed, munitioned and uniformed by the British. The White forces took Ufa in March 1919 and pushed on from there to take Kazan and approach Samara on the Volga River. Anti-Communist risings in Simbirsk, Kazan, Viatka, and Samara assisted their endeavours. The newly formed Red Army proved unwilling to fight and retreated, allowing the Whites to advance to a line stretching from Glazov through Orenburg to Uralsk. Kolchak's territories covered over 300,000 km² and held around 7 million people. In April, the alarmed Bolshevik Central Executive Committee made defeating Kolchak its top priority. But as the spring thaw arrived Kolchak's position degenerated – his armies had outrun their supply lines, they were exhausted, and the Red Army was pouring newly raised troops into the area.

Kolchak had also aroused the dislike of potential allies including the Czechoslovak Legionand the Polish 5th Rifle Division. They withdrew from the conflict in October 1918 but remained a presence; their foreign adviser Maurice Janin regarded Kolchak as an instrument of the British and was pro-SR. Kolchak could not count on Japanese aid either; the Japanese feared he would interfere with their occupation of Far Eastern Russia and refused him assistance, creating a buffer state to the east of Lake Baikal under Cossack control. The 7,000 or so American troops in Siberia were strictly neutral regarding "internal Russian affairs" and served only to maintain the operation of the Trans-Siberian railroad in the Far East. The American commander, General William S. Graves, personally disliked the Kolchak government, which he saw as Monarchist and autocratic, a view that was shared by the American President, Woodrow Wilson. As a result, both refused to grant him any aid.

Defeat and death

When the Red forces managed to reorganise and turn the attack against Kolchak, from 1919 he quickly lost ground. The Red counter-attack began in late April at the centre of the White line, aiming for Ufa. The fighting was fierce as, unlike earlier, both sides fought hard. Ufa was taken by the Red Army on 9 June and later that month the Red forces under Tukhachevsky broke through the Urals. Freed from the geographical constraints of the mountains, the Reds made rapid progress, capturing Chelyabinsk on 25 July and forcing the White forces to the north and south to fall back to avoid being isolated. The White forces re-established a line along the Tobol and the Ishim rivers to temporarily halt the Reds. They held that line until October, but the constant loss of men killed or wounded was beyond the White rate of replacement. Reinforced, the Reds broke through on the Tobol in mid-October and by November the White forces were falling back towards Omsk in a disorganised mass. The Reds were sufficiently confident to start redeploying some of their forces southwards to face Anton Denikin.

Kolchak also came under threat from other quarters: local opponents began to agitate and international support began to wane, with even the British turning more towards Denikin. Gajda, dismissed from command of the northern army, staged an abortive coup in mid-November. Omsk was evacuated on 14 November and the Red Army took the city without any serious resistance, capturing large amounts of ammunition, almost 50,000 soldiers, and ten generals. As there was a continued flood of refugees eastwards, typhus became a serious problem.

Kolchak had left Omsk on the 13th for Irkutsk along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Travelling a section of track controlled by the Czechoslovaks he was sidetracked and stopped; by December his train had only reached Nizhneudinsk. In late December Irkutsk fell under the control of a leftist group (including SRs-Mensheviks) and formed the Political Centre. One of their first actions was to dismiss Kolchak. When he heard of this on 4 January 1920, he announced his resignation, giving his office to Denikin and passing control of his remaining forces around Irkutsk to the ataman, G. M. Semyonov. The transfer of power to Semyonov proved a particularly ill-considered move.

Kolchak was then promised safe passage by the Czechoslovaks to the British military mission in Irkutsk. Instead, he was handed over to the Left SR authorities in Irkutsk on 14 January. On 20 January the government in Irkutsk surrendered power to a Bolshevik military committee. The White Army under the command of General Vladimir Kappel advanced toward Irkutsk while Kolchak was interrogated by a commission of five men representing the Revolutionary Committee (REVKOM) during nine days between 21 January and 6 February. Despite the arrival of a contrary order from Moscow, Admiral Kolchak was condemned to death along with his Prime Minister, Viktor Pepelyayev.

Both prisoners were brought before a firing squad in the early morning of 7 February 1920. According to eyewitnesses, Kolchak was entirely calm and unafraid, "like an Englishman." The Admiral asked the commander of the firing squad, "Would you be so good as to get a message sent to my wife in Paris to say that I bless my son?" The commander responded, "I'll see what can be done, if I don't forget about it.

A priest of the Russian Orthodox Church then gave the last rites to both men. The squad fired and both men fell. The bodies were kicked and prodded down an escarpment and dumped under the ice of the frozen Angara River. When the White Army learned about the executions, the decision was made to withdraw farther east. The Great Siberian Ice March followed. The Red Army did not enter Irkutsk until 7 March, and only then was the news of Kolchak's death officially released.