Американский автор о Колчаке
Казалось бы, что еще может вспомнить российская публика о Колчаке после замечательных статей в Красной Звезде и НВО?
http://www.redstar.ru/2007/05/16_05/5_07.html
http://www.redstar.ru/2008/10/15_10/4_03.html
http://nvo.ng.ru/history/2004-06-25/5_kolchak.html
Биография Колчака, составленная американским автором
http://www.gwpda.org/naval/pers0002.htm
Здесь нет оценок, как таковых. Просто "сухое изложение фактов", но американский акцент все равно есть.
Он заключается, прежде всего, в том, что диспропорционально большое место отдано отношению Колчака с американцами. И симпатии автора к Колчаку все-таки хорошо видны.
Лично мне больше всего мне понравилось вот что
Kolchak returned to Japan and met with General Sir Alfred Knox, who had been head of the British military mission to Russia during the war. Both men felt that strong measures were needed to destroy the Bolsheviks and restore order in Russia. The British proposed establishing a White army that would be furnished with British equipment and trained by British officers. Kolchak and Knox, having agreed on what needed to be done, then set out for Omsk.
Оказывается, мы еще не все знаем об этой замечательной личности
- во время пребывания в США он предлагал американцам завхватить Дарданеллы
- утверждают, что во время пребывания в США у него таинственным образом появился миллион долларов (впрочем, это не доказано)
- он создавал антибольшевистскую силу в Сибири не от широты русской души, а по прямому указанию британцев (о том, как чутьраньше он открыто пошел к ним на службу, знают все). Т.е. обычно пишут так: "он нанялся к англичанам, они не нашли ему дела, тогда он решил воевать с большевиками".
Теперь мы знаем, что дело для АдмиралЪа они все-таки нашли.
In early 1917, as political and social turmoil was brewing in Petrograd, Kolchak traveled to Tiflis to meet with the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, viceroy of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian front. When Kolchak realized how serious the situation was becoming in the capital, he rushed back to Sevastopol'. By the time he arrived the February Revolution had overthrown the tsar and the Provisional Government had declared itself. Kolchak took the fleet out to sea as a precautionary measure, but at this point the crews showed little revolutionary consciousness. For a while operations continued at something like their pre-revolutionary pace, and in March Kolchak even pressed Miliukov, now a prominent member of the Provisional Government, to carry out the Bosporus landing; but over the next few months the supporting structure of the fleet -- the shipyards, dockyards and factories manufacturing war material -- began to slow down as the workers formed soviets and political chaos, strikes and desertion gripped these vital industries. The repair of ships became increasingly difficult, and there was a backlog of destroyers that were awaiting repairs of damage and defects; the vital supply of mines slowed to a trickle. As summer drew on, revolutionary agitators from the Baltic Fleet began to stir up the crews. Kolchak attended meetings of the various soviets, and sometimes swayed the men; but he nevertheless had to make several gestures -- some no doubt personally distasteful to him -- to hold the loyalty of the sailors. He had to remove some officers -- notably Admiral POGULIAEV and Admiral Prince V.V. Trubetskoi -- from their commands because of their association with the imperial court or their noble titles, and he even participated in the ceremonies surrounding the re-burial of the 1906 revolutionary mutineer Lieutenant P.P. SHMIDT.
In April 1917 War and Navy Minister Guchkov had offered Kolchak command of the Baltic Fleet, perhaps hoping that this efficient officer could restore some fighting capability to the revolution-ridden fleet. Kolchak declined, deciding to stay with the Black Sea Fleet. In April, as Russia's military situation continued to grow worse almost by the hour, with troops "self- demobilizing" and heading for home, Kolchak supported the formation of "shock battalions" made up of volunteers. The idea was that these volunteers would inspire the rest of the army by their bravery and dedication. The shock battalions did help to stiffen the troops, but the effect was short-lived.
Meanwhile, the situation in the Black Sea Fleet had grown increasingly difficult, and on 12 May (N.S.?) Kolchak sent a letter of resignation to the head of the Provisional Government, Prince G.E. L'vov; he felt he could no longer command the fleet. A few days later Aleksandr Kerenskii, Guchkov's successor as War and Navy Minister, visited the Black Sea Fleet as part of his tour of the fronts. He found Kolchak very upset. "To them [the sailors] the Central Committee means more than I do," Kolchak reportedly said. "I don't want anything to do with them. I don't love them any more!" If this statement is accurate (one has to wonder, as there was no love lost between Kerenskii and Kolchak), it reflects a side of the admiral's personality that he normally kept concealed; for although he was credited with a certain coolness and reserve, there is ample evidence that he was capable of deep emotions and was possessed of a fierce dedication to the navy. With Kerenskii's intercession, the situation was repaired, for the moment, and Kolchak continued in his command.
But this reconciliation between the admiral and his sailors lasted only about a month. In June the Council of Soldiers, Sailors and Workers passed an order disarming officers. Kolchak, normally reserved, lost his temper; taking the order as a personal insult, he gathered the crew of his flagship together, gave the men a scathing lecture, and then said "The Japanese left me this sword when we evacuated Port Arthur and I will not give it to you!" With that he tossed his golden sword -- awarded to him for bravery in the Russo-Japanese War -- over the side. He resigned his post there and then.
Kolchak was recalled to Petrograd by an angry Kerenskii, who wanted to know by what right the admiral had resigned his command in the middle of a war. Traveling to the capital by train, Kolchak soon showed signs of strained nerves; seeing a sailor lounging near by, Kolchak, convinced the man was a revolutionary spy, "whipped out an automatic he was carrying in his pocket and rushed at the seaman...." The sailor ran for his life.
During this train trip Kolchak met by chance Admiral James Glennon of the American Root Mission, which had arrived in Sevastopol' the same day Kolchak had so dramatically resigned. In a spirit of friendship, Glennon suggested that Kolchak visit the United States to share with this new ally his experiences in mine warfare and amphibious operations. (This offer led to rumors in Russia that Kolchak had been offered command of the United States Navy!) Kolchak was uncertain whether the Provisional Government would let him go; but they seemed happy to get rid of him at this time, and so Kolchak traveled to the United States via Britain, meeting along the way Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Admiral Reginald Hall (of British Naval Intelligence); he also demonstrated his continuing interest in aviation by visiting British seaplane carriers.
In the United States he gave a series of lectures at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island -- among other things, he outlined a plan he had devised to use burning oil spread on the surface of the sea to cover a landing in Thrace. He had entertained some hopes that his detailed knowledge of Russian plans to capture the Turkish Straits would lead the Americans to undertake an invasion of the Dardanelles, but this sort of expedition formed no part of American plans. Disappointed, Kolchak made ready to return to Russia, traveling across the United States with the intention of sailing from San Francisco for Vladivostok. He reputedly deposited a million dollars in a San Francisco bank, although there are no indications of where the money came from or what it was to be used for (the story is probably apocryphal).
Kolchak was in the United States when the Bolsheviks seized power; he was deeply upset by their avowed goal of dropping out of the war, and so, making his way to Tokyo, he offered his services to the British on 23 November/6 December 1917. He offered to fight as a private soldier, because he considered himself still bound to fight in the Allied cause and knew that the Royal Navy had little need for a Russian admiral. At first the British didn't know quite what to do with him; they decided to send him to Mesopotamia for obscure reasons, but when he reached Singapore he was rerouted to Manchuria, to work with the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), a Russian company with major holdings in northen China and Mongolia which required constant protection from bandits. The CER was to be a sort of a cover; his real purpose, so he was told, was to organize an anti-Bolshevik political force in Siberia, using the wayward Czech Legion as its nucleus. The British intention at this point was directed more toward re-establishing an eastern front against the Germans than fighting against the Bolsheviks per se; but to get at the Germans, it was necessary to defeat the Bolsheviks. It was widely believed in Allied governments that it would take a military dictatorship to defeat the Reds, and Kolchak, relatively liberal, well-known in Russia and with a solid record of accomplishment during the war, seemed an ideal choice.
Kolchak went to Kharbin, headquarters of the CER, and was appalled by the pettiness and mutual hostility of the various groups there. He soon realized that no real political movement could be founded there; while there he also met the Cossack Ataman Grigorii Mikhailovich Semenov, a brutal anti-Bolshevik bandit who was heavily subsidized by the Japanese. The two men disliked each other from the start, and Kolchak was equally disliked by the Japanese, who were not inclined to see a strong Russian government set up in Siberia.
Kolchak returned to Japan and met with General Sir Alfred Knox, who had been head of the British military mission to Russia during the war. Both men felt that strong measures were needed to destroy the Bolsheviks and restore order in Russia. The British proposed establishing a White army that would be furnished with British equipment and trained by British officers. Kolchak and Knox, having agreed on what needed to be done, then set out for Omsk. Traveling with him was his mistress of many years, Anna Vasil'evna Timireva, the wife of Admiral S.N. TIMIREV; Kolchak's wife and nine-year old son were living in France at this time.
Omsk in October 1918 was led by a nebulous liberal-socialist government with anti-Bolshevik leanings. Kolchak was swiftly appointed Minister of War and of the Navy by this Directory of the Siberian Government on 4 November 1918. He accepted the post reluctantly, still uncomfortable with the political role he was increasingly being pushed into by his British and White Russian sponsors. He also soon fell out with the Czechs, then the only effective military force in the region.
The poorly-organized Directory was unable to direct any sort of a war effort -- or even decide upon a general policy -- and it received a rude shock in late November when a minor military coup was staged by a Cossack officer named Krasilnikov, who was dissatisfied with the indecisiveness of the military campaign against the Bolsheviks; although Kolchak probably had no part in planning this coup, he was soon drafted as the leader of a new government. Honest, ethical and able, and with no political ambtions, he seemed the ideal choice for a military dictator. He was given the title of "Supreme Ruler of the Russian State."
However, if Kolchak had little political ambition he also had little political acumen. His government was just as unable as the Directory to carry out a war effort, and just as unable to formulate a set of political goals that would gather support for the anti-Bolshevik cause. D.N. Fedotov, who served in Kolchak's Siberian forces, desribed him at this time as looking "aged and different from the active, energetic man he was when I knew him in the navy in the old days. There was something fatalistic about him which I had never noticed before. [He looked] thoroughly tired of groping and struggling in an unfamiliar environment."
Kolchak was indeed groping in an unfamiliar environment. In November 1918 he issued his "Omsk platform," a complex document that called for the end of Bolshevism and the renewal of the war against Germany. (By this time the armistice between the Allies and Germany had already been signed, but it was only an armistice, not a peace treaty, and German forces still occupied vast areas of western Russia.) To carry out these tasks, the platform called for the creation of a "Unified Russian Army" free from "political influence" -- apparently a reference to political commissars and perhaps soldiers' soviets as well. Civil government was to be free from military control except in war zones. The platform promised to establish local self-government and grant autonomy to "small nationalities in their manner of living" -- a point of contention with many subject peoples, especially the former Baltic provinces, which desired to be sovereign nations. Civil liberties would be guaranteed. In economic affairs, the platform advocated the use of foreign captial to aid development, elimination of fixed prices, and a guarantee of the right of workers to form labor unions.
All of this was very liberal, but it was also a complex and wordy program that did not lend itself to the sort of simple slogans so skillfully used by the Bolsheviks. Worse, Kolchak's government badly fumbled on the issue of ownership of the land, promising only to refer the issue to a constituent assembly. By this time the peasants had already seized the lands; for all they knew, Kolchak's "constituent assembly" might try to take it back from them. So Kolchak's platform gained him few, if any, supporters among any of the classes of Russia.
At the same time his armed forces showed a mixture of military ineffectiveness and brutality that further alienated the common people. His forces were defeated by late 1919, and in December 1919 he fled from Omsk to escape the Red advance. His train was halted near Irkutsk by the Czechs, who by this time disliked Kolchak intensely and who were willing to make a deal with the Reds if they would let them leave the country in peace. And so Kolchak was handed over to the Socialist Revolutionaries of Irkutsk on 15 January 1920, and then turned over to the Bolsheviks when they arrived. Kolchak was rather politely interrogated by a panel of revolutionary political leaders for nine days; then, fearing that a White advance might lead to his liberation, the Bolsheviks had him taken out to the river and shot on 7 February 1920. Kolchak reportedly faced his execution with great courage, and even his enemies commented upon his composure and "culture." Although he has been villified in subsequent Soviet literature, the revolutionaries who questioned him in Irkutsk treated him with courtesy. (Madam Timireva, his mistress, was also imprisoned, but was eventually released.)
The American Admiral Newton A. McCully described Kolchak as "medium size, very dark with piercing eyes and a determined expression... [which] gave every indication of the resolution for which he was noted. He was simple, practical, broad minded, and full of intense patriotism for Russia." McCully also noted Kolchak's "personal affection for the officers of his staff as well as for his sailor orderly, not usually credited to the Russian official character." (Graf, Novik, pp. 63, 73, 77, 90-91; Testimony of Kolchak, passim; Kassell, p. 845; Saul, p. 90; Luckett, pp. 213 et seq.; GSE, vol. 12, p. 575; Modern Encyclopedia, vol. 17, pp. 110-113; Mitchell, pp. 231, 306, 316, 342-343, 352, 597 n.7; Fleming, passim; Miliukov, Political Memoirs, p. 215; Starokadomskiy, p. 277; Nekrasov, pp. 96-103, 110, 114-115, 121- 126; Riha, Russian European, pp. 312-313; Kerensky, Russia and History's Turning Point, p. 280; Mohrenschildt, Russian Revolution of 1917, p. 185, 187; "Admiral Kolchak's Mission," passim; Weeks, American Naval Diplomat, pp. 116, 123-128, 152; Fedotoff White, Survival, pp. 34-38, 154-155, 216; Brinkley, Volunteer Army, p. 381 n.109)
http://www.redstar.ru/2007/05/16_05/5_07.html
http://www.redstar.ru/2008/10/15_10/4_03.html
http://nvo.ng.ru/history/2004-06-25/5_kolchak.html
Биография Колчака, составленная американским автором
http://www.gwpda.org/naval/pers0002.htm
Здесь нет оценок, как таковых. Просто "сухое изложение фактов", но американский акцент все равно есть.
Он заключается, прежде всего, в том, что диспропорционально большое место отдано отношению Колчака с американцами. И симпатии автора к Колчаку все-таки хорошо видны.
Лично мне больше всего мне понравилось вот что
Kolchak returned to Japan and met with General Sir Alfred Knox, who had been head of the British military mission to Russia during the war. Both men felt that strong measures were needed to destroy the Bolsheviks and restore order in Russia. The British proposed establishing a White army that would be furnished with British equipment and trained by British officers. Kolchak and Knox, having agreed on what needed to be done, then set out for Omsk.
Оказывается, мы еще не все знаем об этой замечательной личности
- во время пребывания в США он предлагал американцам завхватить Дарданеллы
- утверждают, что во время пребывания в США у него таинственным образом появился миллион долларов (впрочем, это не доказано)
- он создавал антибольшевистскую силу в Сибири не от широты русской души, а по прямому указанию британцев (о том, как чутьраньше он открыто пошел к ним на службу, знают все). Т.е. обычно пишут так: "он нанялся к англичанам, они не нашли ему дела, тогда он решил воевать с большевиками".
Теперь мы знаем, что дело для АдмиралЪа они все-таки нашли.
In early 1917, as political and social turmoil was brewing in Petrograd, Kolchak traveled to Tiflis to meet with the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, viceroy of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian front. When Kolchak realized how serious the situation was becoming in the capital, he rushed back to Sevastopol'. By the time he arrived the February Revolution had overthrown the tsar and the Provisional Government had declared itself. Kolchak took the fleet out to sea as a precautionary measure, but at this point the crews showed little revolutionary consciousness. For a while operations continued at something like their pre-revolutionary pace, and in March Kolchak even pressed Miliukov, now a prominent member of the Provisional Government, to carry out the Bosporus landing; but over the next few months the supporting structure of the fleet -- the shipyards, dockyards and factories manufacturing war material -- began to slow down as the workers formed soviets and political chaos, strikes and desertion gripped these vital industries. The repair of ships became increasingly difficult, and there was a backlog of destroyers that were awaiting repairs of damage and defects; the vital supply of mines slowed to a trickle. As summer drew on, revolutionary agitators from the Baltic Fleet began to stir up the crews. Kolchak attended meetings of the various soviets, and sometimes swayed the men; but he nevertheless had to make several gestures -- some no doubt personally distasteful to him -- to hold the loyalty of the sailors. He had to remove some officers -- notably Admiral POGULIAEV and Admiral Prince V.V. Trubetskoi -- from their commands because of their association with the imperial court or their noble titles, and he even participated in the ceremonies surrounding the re-burial of the 1906 revolutionary mutineer Lieutenant P.P. SHMIDT.
In April 1917 War and Navy Minister Guchkov had offered Kolchak command of the Baltic Fleet, perhaps hoping that this efficient officer could restore some fighting capability to the revolution-ridden fleet. Kolchak declined, deciding to stay with the Black Sea Fleet. In April, as Russia's military situation continued to grow worse almost by the hour, with troops "self- demobilizing" and heading for home, Kolchak supported the formation of "shock battalions" made up of volunteers. The idea was that these volunteers would inspire the rest of the army by their bravery and dedication. The shock battalions did help to stiffen the troops, but the effect was short-lived.
Meanwhile, the situation in the Black Sea Fleet had grown increasingly difficult, and on 12 May (N.S.?) Kolchak sent a letter of resignation to the head of the Provisional Government, Prince G.E. L'vov; he felt he could no longer command the fleet. A few days later Aleksandr Kerenskii, Guchkov's successor as War and Navy Minister, visited the Black Sea Fleet as part of his tour of the fronts. He found Kolchak very upset. "To them [the sailors] the Central Committee means more than I do," Kolchak reportedly said. "I don't want anything to do with them. I don't love them any more!" If this statement is accurate (one has to wonder, as there was no love lost between Kerenskii and Kolchak), it reflects a side of the admiral's personality that he normally kept concealed; for although he was credited with a certain coolness and reserve, there is ample evidence that he was capable of deep emotions and was possessed of a fierce dedication to the navy. With Kerenskii's intercession, the situation was repaired, for the moment, and Kolchak continued in his command.
But this reconciliation between the admiral and his sailors lasted only about a month. In June the Council of Soldiers, Sailors and Workers passed an order disarming officers. Kolchak, normally reserved, lost his temper; taking the order as a personal insult, he gathered the crew of his flagship together, gave the men a scathing lecture, and then said "The Japanese left me this sword when we evacuated Port Arthur and I will not give it to you!" With that he tossed his golden sword -- awarded to him for bravery in the Russo-Japanese War -- over the side. He resigned his post there and then.
Kolchak was recalled to Petrograd by an angry Kerenskii, who wanted to know by what right the admiral had resigned his command in the middle of a war. Traveling to the capital by train, Kolchak soon showed signs of strained nerves; seeing a sailor lounging near by, Kolchak, convinced the man was a revolutionary spy, "whipped out an automatic he was carrying in his pocket and rushed at the seaman...." The sailor ran for his life.
During this train trip Kolchak met by chance Admiral James Glennon of the American Root Mission, which had arrived in Sevastopol' the same day Kolchak had so dramatically resigned. In a spirit of friendship, Glennon suggested that Kolchak visit the United States to share with this new ally his experiences in mine warfare and amphibious operations. (This offer led to rumors in Russia that Kolchak had been offered command of the United States Navy!) Kolchak was uncertain whether the Provisional Government would let him go; but they seemed happy to get rid of him at this time, and so Kolchak traveled to the United States via Britain, meeting along the way Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and Admiral Reginald Hall (of British Naval Intelligence); he also demonstrated his continuing interest in aviation by visiting British seaplane carriers.
In the United States he gave a series of lectures at the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island -- among other things, he outlined a plan he had devised to use burning oil spread on the surface of the sea to cover a landing in Thrace. He had entertained some hopes that his detailed knowledge of Russian plans to capture the Turkish Straits would lead the Americans to undertake an invasion of the Dardanelles, but this sort of expedition formed no part of American plans. Disappointed, Kolchak made ready to return to Russia, traveling across the United States with the intention of sailing from San Francisco for Vladivostok. He reputedly deposited a million dollars in a San Francisco bank, although there are no indications of where the money came from or what it was to be used for (the story is probably apocryphal).
Kolchak was in the United States when the Bolsheviks seized power; he was deeply upset by their avowed goal of dropping out of the war, and so, making his way to Tokyo, he offered his services to the British on 23 November/6 December 1917. He offered to fight as a private soldier, because he considered himself still bound to fight in the Allied cause and knew that the Royal Navy had little need for a Russian admiral. At first the British didn't know quite what to do with him; they decided to send him to Mesopotamia for obscure reasons, but when he reached Singapore he was rerouted to Manchuria, to work with the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), a Russian company with major holdings in northen China and Mongolia which required constant protection from bandits. The CER was to be a sort of a cover; his real purpose, so he was told, was to organize an anti-Bolshevik political force in Siberia, using the wayward Czech Legion as its nucleus. The British intention at this point was directed more toward re-establishing an eastern front against the Germans than fighting against the Bolsheviks per se; but to get at the Germans, it was necessary to defeat the Bolsheviks. It was widely believed in Allied governments that it would take a military dictatorship to defeat the Reds, and Kolchak, relatively liberal, well-known in Russia and with a solid record of accomplishment during the war, seemed an ideal choice.
Kolchak went to Kharbin, headquarters of the CER, and was appalled by the pettiness and mutual hostility of the various groups there. He soon realized that no real political movement could be founded there; while there he also met the Cossack Ataman Grigorii Mikhailovich Semenov, a brutal anti-Bolshevik bandit who was heavily subsidized by the Japanese. The two men disliked each other from the start, and Kolchak was equally disliked by the Japanese, who were not inclined to see a strong Russian government set up in Siberia.
Kolchak returned to Japan and met with General Sir Alfred Knox, who had been head of the British military mission to Russia during the war. Both men felt that strong measures were needed to destroy the Bolsheviks and restore order in Russia. The British proposed establishing a White army that would be furnished with British equipment and trained by British officers. Kolchak and Knox, having agreed on what needed to be done, then set out for Omsk. Traveling with him was his mistress of many years, Anna Vasil'evna Timireva, the wife of Admiral S.N. TIMIREV; Kolchak's wife and nine-year old son were living in France at this time.
Omsk in October 1918 was led by a nebulous liberal-socialist government with anti-Bolshevik leanings. Kolchak was swiftly appointed Minister of War and of the Navy by this Directory of the Siberian Government on 4 November 1918. He accepted the post reluctantly, still uncomfortable with the political role he was increasingly being pushed into by his British and White Russian sponsors. He also soon fell out with the Czechs, then the only effective military force in the region.
The poorly-organized Directory was unable to direct any sort of a war effort -- or even decide upon a general policy -- and it received a rude shock in late November when a minor military coup was staged by a Cossack officer named Krasilnikov, who was dissatisfied with the indecisiveness of the military campaign against the Bolsheviks; although Kolchak probably had no part in planning this coup, he was soon drafted as the leader of a new government. Honest, ethical and able, and with no political ambtions, he seemed the ideal choice for a military dictator. He was given the title of "Supreme Ruler of the Russian State."
However, if Kolchak had little political ambition he also had little political acumen. His government was just as unable as the Directory to carry out a war effort, and just as unable to formulate a set of political goals that would gather support for the anti-Bolshevik cause. D.N. Fedotov, who served in Kolchak's Siberian forces, desribed him at this time as looking "aged and different from the active, energetic man he was when I knew him in the navy in the old days. There was something fatalistic about him which I had never noticed before. [He looked] thoroughly tired of groping and struggling in an unfamiliar environment."
Kolchak was indeed groping in an unfamiliar environment. In November 1918 he issued his "Omsk platform," a complex document that called for the end of Bolshevism and the renewal of the war against Germany. (By this time the armistice between the Allies and Germany had already been signed, but it was only an armistice, not a peace treaty, and German forces still occupied vast areas of western Russia.) To carry out these tasks, the platform called for the creation of a "Unified Russian Army" free from "political influence" -- apparently a reference to political commissars and perhaps soldiers' soviets as well. Civil government was to be free from military control except in war zones. The platform promised to establish local self-government and grant autonomy to "small nationalities in their manner of living" -- a point of contention with many subject peoples, especially the former Baltic provinces, which desired to be sovereign nations. Civil liberties would be guaranteed. In economic affairs, the platform advocated the use of foreign captial to aid development, elimination of fixed prices, and a guarantee of the right of workers to form labor unions.
All of this was very liberal, but it was also a complex and wordy program that did not lend itself to the sort of simple slogans so skillfully used by the Bolsheviks. Worse, Kolchak's government badly fumbled on the issue of ownership of the land, promising only to refer the issue to a constituent assembly. By this time the peasants had already seized the lands; for all they knew, Kolchak's "constituent assembly" might try to take it back from them. So Kolchak's platform gained him few, if any, supporters among any of the classes of Russia.
At the same time his armed forces showed a mixture of military ineffectiveness and brutality that further alienated the common people. His forces were defeated by late 1919, and in December 1919 he fled from Omsk to escape the Red advance. His train was halted near Irkutsk by the Czechs, who by this time disliked Kolchak intensely and who were willing to make a deal with the Reds if they would let them leave the country in peace. And so Kolchak was handed over to the Socialist Revolutionaries of Irkutsk on 15 January 1920, and then turned over to the Bolsheviks when they arrived. Kolchak was rather politely interrogated by a panel of revolutionary political leaders for nine days; then, fearing that a White advance might lead to his liberation, the Bolsheviks had him taken out to the river and shot on 7 February 1920. Kolchak reportedly faced his execution with great courage, and even his enemies commented upon his composure and "culture." Although he has been villified in subsequent Soviet literature, the revolutionaries who questioned him in Irkutsk treated him with courtesy. (Madam Timireva, his mistress, was also imprisoned, but was eventually released.)
The American Admiral Newton A. McCully described Kolchak as "medium size, very dark with piercing eyes and a determined expression... [which] gave every indication of the resolution for which he was noted. He was simple, practical, broad minded, and full of intense patriotism for Russia." McCully also noted Kolchak's "personal affection for the officers of his staff as well as for his sailor orderly, not usually credited to the Russian official character." (Graf, Novik, pp. 63, 73, 77, 90-91; Testimony of Kolchak, passim; Kassell, p. 845; Saul, p. 90; Luckett, pp. 213 et seq.; GSE, vol. 12, p. 575; Modern Encyclopedia, vol. 17, pp. 110-113; Mitchell, pp. 231, 306, 316, 342-343, 352, 597 n.7; Fleming, passim; Miliukov, Political Memoirs, p. 215; Starokadomskiy, p. 277; Nekrasov, pp. 96-103, 110, 114-115, 121- 126; Riha, Russian European, pp. 312-313; Kerensky, Russia and History's Turning Point, p. 280; Mohrenschildt, Russian Revolution of 1917, p. 185, 187; "Admiral Kolchak's Mission," passim; Weeks, American Naval Diplomat, pp. 116, 123-128, 152; Fedotoff White, Survival, pp. 34-38, 154-155, 216; Brinkley, Volunteer Army, p. 381 n.109)