Troubles. 1919 year. Defeat at the front, loss of Omsk, flight and partisan war in the rear caused the complete decomposition of Kolchak's camp. The decayed garrisons of the cities raised uprisings and went over to the side of the Reds. Conspiracies and riots ripened all around.
The final decomposition of the Kolchak camp
The defeat at the front, the loss of Omsk, the flight and partisan war in the rear caused the complete decomposition of the Kolchak camp. The decayed garrisons of the cities raised uprisings and went over to the side of the Reds. Conspiracies and riots ripened all around. So, dismissed in September 1919 from the Russian army, deprived of all awards and the rank of general, Gaid (the former commander of the Siberian army), settled in Vladivostok and began subversive activities. On November 17, 1919, in Vladivostok, he led a rebellion prepared by the Social Revolutionaries against the Kolchak regime. The Social Revolutionaries planned to convene the Zemsky Sobor in Vladivostok to establish a new government. The mutiny, however, was not supported by the residents of Vladivostok. On the third day, the head of the Amur Territory, General Rozanov, having gathered all who he could - midshipmen, cadets, an officer's school, suppressed the rebellion. Gaida was arrested. At the request of the Entente command, he was released and Gaida returned to Czechoslovakia.
The Social Revolutionaries were preparing uprisings in Irkutsk and Novonikolaevsk. We negotiated with the Czechoslovakians. The allied missions knew about the conspiracy. They informed their governments about the imminent fall of Kolchak's power and the creation of a "democratic" government in Siberia. The Social Revolutionaries contacted the allies, tried to win them over to their side. It is obvious that the Entente has surrendered the admiral, "the Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave." The ataman regimes in Chita and Khabarovsk were also waiting for the fall of Kolchak, playing their games. With the support of Japan, it was planned to form a puppet regime of Semyonov in the Far East.
In Irkutsk on November 12, at the All-Russian meeting of zemstvos and cities, a Political Center was created, which included the Menshevik Socialist-Revolutionaries, representatives of zemstvos and the Central Committee of the Unions of the Working Peasantry. The political center set itself the task of overthrowing Kolchak's government, creating a democratic republic in the Far East and Siberia. The local governor Yakovlev supported the Social Revolutionaries, was a supporter of the independence of Siberia, and did not take any measures against the Political Center. He himself wanted to break with Kolchak, the arrival of the government Irkutsk received coldly. Echelons with refugees and employees of institutions from Omsk ordered not to let them into Irkutsk at all, but to place them in the surrounding villages. Yakovlev began negotiations not only with the Political Center, but also with the Bolsheviks on the issue of ending the war in the region. The Political Center also came into contact with the Bolsheviks. The communists refused to join it, but concluded an agreement on cooperation against the Kolchakites. Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks began to jointly decompose parts of the local garrison, form workers' detachments.
Meanwhile, part of the Kolchak government managed to get into Irkutsk. The new Prime Minister V. N. Pepelyaev reformed the cabinet and tried to find a common language with the Siberian zemstvos in order to neutralize the coup being prepared by the Political Center. He proposed to create a "government of public confidence", but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Zemstvo people did not want to make any contacts with Kolchak. Then Pepeliaev went to Kolchak to persuade him to make concessions and find a way out of the crisis.
Death sentence to the Kolchak people
The Siberian campaign from the very beginning was a tragedy for thousands of people. At first they began to rob people. As soon as the evacuation from Omsk began, the railroad workers decided to put pressure on the "bourgeoisie". Train crews issued an ultimatum to passengers, refusing to continue, demanding "indemnity" and threatening to disembark from the train. This robbery began to be repeated at each subsequent station, where the brigades of railway workers changed. Advance on the railroad was barely going. The Siberian Railway was jammed, the condition of the tracks and rolling stock left much to be desired. Accidents happened frequently. Even the “golden train” of letters crashed, colliding with another train.
The situation was sharply worsened by the conflict between Kolchak and the Czechoslovakians who controlled the Trans-Siberian. They were the complete masters of the main highway of Siberia. Even before the fall of Omsk, a memorandum of the Czech leadership was drawn up and published on November 13 that the stay of their army in Russia was pointless, that under the "protection of the Czechoslovak bayonets" the Russian reactionary military was committing crimes (although the Czechs themselves were active punishers and war criminals). It was concluded that an immediate return home was necessary. That is, not earlier and not later. It was at the time of the beginning of the large-scale evacuation of the Russian army of Kolchak and the refugees associated with it to the east. In fact, if the Entente so wished, the Czechoslovak corps - a whole 60 thousand army, fresh, well-armed and equipped, with a whole railway army (armored trains, armored vehicles, echelons, steam locomotives), easily covered the withdrawal of the Kolchakites. The Bolsheviks would not have intensified their offensive, breaking through the Czechs to avoid international complications, as they later avoided entering into conflict with the Japanese.
The Czechs did the opposite, complicating the withdrawal of the Kolchakites as much as possible. The Czechoslovak command gave the order to suspend the movement of Russian echelons, and in no case should they pass beyond the Taiga station (near Tomsk) until all the echelons of the Czechs have passed. It was openly proclaimed: "Our interests are above all others." In fact, given the local conditions - one main highway, huge distances, winter conditions, lack of supplies, this was the death sentence of Kolchak's army from the West.
On November 20, 1919, Commander Sakharov announced the evacuation of the Novonikolaevsk-Krasnoyarsk area. Many hospitals, sick, wounded, families of soldiers, refugees were concentrated here. They had to be taken to the Amur region. However, that was not the case. The Czech army, rested, armed to the teeth, with echelons filled with riches plundered in Russia, was in a hurry to be the first to break through to the east. The Czechs took with them hundreds of wagons of trophies, and dreamed of returning home rich. In conditions of total collapse and chaos, their actions began to bear a marauding, predatory nature. They used their strength to get to Vladivostok at any cost. Russian trains were forcibly stopped, driven into dead ends, locomotives and brigades were taken away. Many echelons - ambulances, rear services, with refugees, were stopped, deprived of steam locomotives and railway brigades. Someone were relatively lucky, they did not find themselves in settlements, the majority did not, they found themselves in a deep taiga, in dead ends and traveling, doomed to die from cold, hunger and disease. Also, trains without guards were attacked by rebels or bandits, robbed and killed passengers.
Kolchak's troops, which the Czechs were forbidden to use and even approach the railway, had to move in marching order along the Siberian highways. Frost, food shortages and widespread epidemics completed the destruction of the Siberian white armies, killing more people than the red ones. To survive, Kolchak's units surrendered entirely to the enemy. It has become so commonplace that the Red Army men who lagged behind the White Guards are called: "Uncle, where are they surrendering here?" Unable to take all weapons, property and equipment to the east, the whites destroyed hundreds of cars, spoiled steam locomotives, blew up railway structures in order to halt the enemy's offensive. But in conditions of rapid flight, they did not have time to destroy everything. Soviet troops captured more and more trophies. Dozens of echelons with military equipment, arsenals, warehouses with ammunition, foodstuffs, factory equipment, etc. Everything that the Kolchakites took out in the summer of 1919 fell into the hands of the Red Army.
In the midst of this chaos, the "supreme ruler" Kolchak was also lost in his train. It was cut off from the troops marching along the old Siberian tract. The admiral wrote protests against the Czechs to their commander, General Syrov, one after another, and complained to the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, General Janin. He noted that the use of the Siberian railway exclusively for the passage of Czechoslovak troops meant the death of many Russian echelons, the last of which were actually on the front line. On November 24, Kolchak wrote to Zhanen: "In this case, I will consider myself entitled to take extreme measures and will not stop in front of them." However, everything remained the same, since Kolchak did not have "large battalions" for "extreme measures", and the Czechs knew this.
The collapse of the white command
The discord among the command of the White Army also intensified. The commanders of some formations and garrisons refused to obey the orders of the command. At the end of November 1919, General Griven, the commander of the Northern Group of Forces of the 1st Army, ordered the troops to immediately withdraw to the Irkutsk region, the place where its units were formed. By doing this, he violated the order of the command, which forbade the retreat to the east without resistance. As a result, units of the Northern Group withdrew from the front. Grivin told the commander of the 2nd Army, General Voitsekhovsky, who arrived that the Northern Group was so weak that it could not fight. Therefore, he decided to take her deep into Siberia and will not change his decision. The demand to surrender the command was answered with a categorical refusal. General Voitsekhovsky personally shot Grivin "as if he had failed to carry out a combat order and violated the foundations of military discipline." A new commander was appointed, but the troops continued to flee or surrendered in whole regiments.
In early December 1919, one of the divisional commanders, Colonel Ivakin, revolted in Novonikolaevsk, demanding an armistice with the Bolsheviks and the convocation of a Siberian Constituent Assembly. The rebels blocked Voitsekhovsky's headquarters and tried to arrest him. The mutiny was suppressed. The Polish legionnaires who guarded the Novonikolaevsky section of the railway, unlike the Czechs, retained their combat capability and did not sympathize with the rebels. They defeated the rebels, the activists were shot.
The main command was at a loss. In early December, a military meeting was held in Kolchak's carriage in Novonikolaevsk. A plan for further action was discussed. Two views were expressed. Some proposed to withdraw along the railway line to Transbaikalia, where there was hope for the help of the Semyonovites and the Japanese. Others suggested going south from Novonikolaevsk, to Barnaul and Biysk. There, join up with the troops of the atamans Dutov and Annenkov, spend the winter and in the spring, having bases in China and Mongolia, launch a counteroffensive. The majority supported the first option. Kolchak agreed with him.
In addition, the command of the Kolchak army was changed again. The failures of the White Guards led to the fall of the authority of Kolchak and the commander Sakharov in the army, he was considered one of the main culprits of the defeats at the front and the fall of Omsk. This caused a conflict between the supreme ruler and the commander of the 1st Army A. N. Pepelyaev (the prime minister's brother). When the admiral's train arrived at the Taiga station, he was detained by Pepeliaev's troops. The general sent Kolchak an ultimatum on the convocation of the Siberian Zemsky Sobor, the resignation of Commander Sakharov, whom Pepeliaev ordered to be arrested on December 9, and an investigation into the surrender of Omsk. In case of failure, Pepeliaev threatened to arrest Kolchak himself. The head of the government, V. N. Pepelyaev, who had arrived from Irkutsk, was able to hush up the conflict. As a result, Sakharov was removed from the post of commander, other issues were postponed until his arrival in Irkutsk. The troops were offered to lead Diterichs, who was in Vladivostok. He set a condition - the resignation of Kolchak and his immediate departure abroad. Kappel was appointed the new commander.
This could not change anything. The collapse of the army was complete and final. But amid the general collapse and chaos, Vladimir Kappel showed his talents as a commander and organizer, and to the very end was the most intelligent Siberian commander of the whites. Until his death, he retained nobility and loyalty to Kolchak, and was able to collect the most reliable units from the remnants of the troops, organize at least some kind of resistance.
On December 3, 1919, the Red partisans occupied Semipalatinsk, where on the night of November 30 to December 1, the uprising of the Pleshcheevsky plant and part of the garrison began. On December 10, the partisans liberated Barnaul, on the 13th - Biysk, capturing the entire garrison, on the 15th - Ust-Kamenegorsk. On December 14, 1919, units of the 27th division liberated Novonikolaevsk. Many prisoners and large trophies were taken. Thus, by mid-December 1919, the Red Army reached the line of the r. Obi.
