Troubles. 1919 year. 100 years ago, on November 14, 1919, the Red Army occupied Omsk. The remnants of Kolchak's defeated armies began a retreat to the east - the Great Siberian Ice Campaign.
Omsk operation
After the defeat on the Tobol River, Kolchak's army suffered heavy losses that could no longer be restored and retreated to Omsk non-stop. The organized resistance of the Kolchakites was broken. Soviet troops continued their offensive without a pause. After the capture of Petropavlovsk and Ishim (October 31 and November 4, 1919), the Red Army on November 4, 1919 began the Omsk operation. In the main direction, along the line of the Petropavlovsk-Omsk railway, three divisions of the 5th Red Army were moving. A special group of troops (54th rifle and one cavalry divisions) was allocated for the offensive on Kokchetav, where part of the whites, led by ataman Dutov, retreated. The 30th Infantry Division of the 3rd Red Army operated along the line of the Ishim - Omsk railway. In the valley of the Irtysh River upstream to Omsk, the 51st Division was advancing. The 5th and 29th divisions were withdrawn to the front reserve.
The headquarters of Kolchak and his government were located in Omsk. From here came the control of the front. The city was the main stronghold of the White Army, supplying the troops with weapons, ammunition and equipment. Therefore, Kolchak made the last desperate attempts to keep the city. There was no consensus among the white command on this issue. So the front commander, Dieterichs, considered the defense of Omsk a hopeless affair and offered to retreat further to the east. But the supreme ruler did not want to hear about the abandonment of Omsk. “It is unthinkable to hand over Omsk. With the loss of Omsk, everything is lost,”said Kolchak. Sakharov supported him. On November 4, 1919, there was a final break: Kolchak was enraged by the stubbornness of the commander-in-chief, accused him of mediocrity, defeat and ordered to surrender the command to Sakharov. Dieterichs left for Vladivostok.
Kolchak requested assistance from the commander of the allied forces, General Janin. He offered to move the Czechoslovakians to the frontline (their number reached an entire army - 60 thousand fighters). Janin refused under the pretext of complete disintegration of the Czechs. It was true, the Czechs, controlling the Siberian Railway, did not want to fight, but only guarded their echelons with riches looted in Russia. At the same time, they had a negative attitude towards the Kolchak government. The only thing that kept the Czechs from a new uprising, already against the Kolchakites, was greed. The service for the protection of the railway was well paid and gave them the opportunity to accumulate many echelons of trophies, ownerless and looted goods. On the other hand, the Entente has already written off Kolchak as a used instrument.
Kolchakites began to hastily prepare the city for defense. At 6 km from the city, they began to build a defense line, dig trenches and install barbed wire. The position was convenient: the bends of the Irtysh narrowed the front, covered from the flanks by the river and swamps. In Omsk itself there was a large garrison. The troops of the defeated Kolchak armies retreated to the city. The defense was headed by General Voitsekhovsky. Kolchak's newspapers and the church raised another campaign to raise the morale of the army and the population. They called upon the townspeople to join the army, the authorities to defend the "Orthodox faith against the antichrists." However, all these attempts were futile. A large number of combat-ready men have accumulated in the city - employees of the Kolchak government, rear officials, former tsarist officials, representatives of the bourgeoisie, Cossacks, etc., but they were not eager to take up arms. The well-to-do classes had already packed their bags and were thinking about how to escape further east. Officials of the still acting government from the beginning of November went to the service in full readiness and tried at the first opportunity to jump on the train and go deep into Siberia.
The fall of Omsk
The city's defense plans went bust. The large Omsk garrison was completely decomposed. It also embraced most of the officers, who indulged in unrestrained drunkenness and revelry. There was no one to take positions. In these conditions, the Kolchak government had no choice but to abandon the plans for the defense of Omsk and begin the evacuation. The command hoped that it would be possible to assemble troops, including Pepeliaev's 1st Army, previously withdrawn to the rear and fight on the Tomsk-Novonikolaevsk line. A belated evacuation began. The Czech regiment stationed here was one of the first to escape - on 5 November. Western diplomats offered Kolchak to take the gold reserve under international protection. The supreme ruler, realizing that he was interesting to the Entente only as long as he had the gold, refused. The capital was moved to Irkutsk. On November 10, the Siberian government went there. Suppressed by the setbacks, the head of the government, Vologda, resigned. A former member of the State Duma, a prominent cadet V. N. Pepelyaev (brother of General A. Pepelyaev) was entrusted with forming a new government. After the February Revolution, Pepeliaev was a commissar of the Provisional Government, chairman of the eastern department of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party and became one of the main organizers of the coup in favor of Kolchak.
The retreat became widespread. The retreating troops, not having a solid support in the rear, lost the remnants of their combat capability. The situation was aggravated by late and prolonged rains. Despite the late season, the stormy and deep river is not frozen yet. Irtysh spilled, flooding began in Omsk. The lower part of the city was flooded, the streets became rivers. In the retreating units, seeing that the escape routes were cut off, panic began. Soviet troops could easily have destroyed the remnants of the White Guard divisions retreating north and south of Omsk, there were no river crossings. The white command even considered the possibility of turning the army retreating to the east to the south, in order to then withdraw it to Altai. On November 10 - 12, unexpected frosts froze the river. A general flight for the Irtysh began. In addition, the position in front of Omsk became vulnerable, now the Reds could easily bypass it. The evacuation took on the character of a total flight. Kolchak remained in the city until the last to take out the gold. On November 12, he sent a train with gold. He left Omsk on the night of the 13th. In the afternoon, the rearguards of the White Guards and the headquarters of Commander Sakharov left through the city. This is how the Great Siberian Ice Campaign began, an almost 2,500-kilometer horse-and-foot crossing to Chita, which lasted until March 1920.
Meanwhile, the advanced units of the Reds were approaching the city. On November 12, the 27th division was 100 km from Omsk. Three brigades of the division, one from the west, the others from the south and north, by forced march approached the white capital. On November 14, 1919, in the morning, the 238th Bryansk regiment, having overcome almost 100 km on carts in a day, entered the city. Other regiments came up behind him. Omsk was occupied without a fight. Several thousand White Guards, who did not have time to leave the city, laid down their arms. The 27th Infantry Division of the Red Army was marked with the revolutionary Red Banner and received the honorary name of Omsk. The Kolchakites fled in a great hurry, so the Reds captured large trophies, including 3 armored trains, 41 guns, over 100 machine guns, more than 200 steam locomotives and 3 thousand carriages, a large amount of ammunition.
Novonikolaevskaya operation
After the liberation of Omsk, Soviet troops advanced to the east another 40-50 km, then stopped for a short rest. The Soviet command pulled up the troops, rear and prepared to continue the offensive. A special Kokchetav group in mid-November liberated the city of Kokchetav and began moving towards Atbasar and Akmolinsk. In the Omsk region, units of the 5th and 3rd red armies united. In view of the reduction of the front line and the defeat of the main enemy forces, the pursuit of the remnants of the Kolchak army and their elimination was assigned to one 5th Army under the command of Eikhe (Tukhachevsky departed for the Southern Front at the end of November). The 3rd Army was withdrawn to the reserve, with the exception of the powerful 30th and 51st Infantry Divisions, which joined the 5th Army. On November 20, 1919, the Red Army renewed its offensive deep into Siberia, starting the Novonikolaevsk operation. By this time, the 5th Army numbered 31 thousand bayonets and sabers, not counting reserves, garrisons and rear units.
The retreating white troops numbered about 20 thousand people, plus a large mass of refugees. The departing armies of Kolchak were divided into several groups. Yuzhnaya moved along the Barnaul - Kuznetsk - Minusinsk highway. The middle group, the largest and somewhat more stable, moved along the Siberian Railway. The northern group departed along the river systems north of the Siberian Railway. The main forces of Kolchak, as part of the 3rd and 2nd armies, retreated along the only line of the railway and the Siberian highway. The remnants of the 1st Army, previously assigned to the rear for restoration and replenishment, were located in the Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk) - Tomsk area. After the fall of Omsk, the control of Kolchak's troops was disrupted. All were saved as best they could. The government, cut off from the army and Kolchak, essentially collapsed. Front commander Sakharov, together with his headquarters, lost control and retreated on the train, getting lost among the multitude of echelons leaving to the east. In the middle of this huge convoy were Kolchak's echelons. As a result, in November, the entire railway line from Omsk to Irkutsk was packed with trains, which evacuated civil and military institutions, officers, officials, their entourage, families, military and industrial cargo, and valuables. On the same road, starting from Novonikolaevsk, Polish, Romanian and Czech legionnaires fled. Soon all this mixed into one continuous line of large-scale flight of the Kolchakites, and civilians who did not want to remain under the rule of the Bolsheviks.
The Trans-Siberian Railway at that time was controlled by the Czechs, who were ordered not to let Russian military echelons east of Taiga station pass until all the Czechoslovakians had passed with their "acquired" goods. This exacerbated the chaos. The lack of control over the Siberian Railway deprived the Kolchak people of even the smallest chance of holding on for some more time. If the Kolchak government controlled the Trans-Siberian, then the whites could still carry out a quick evacuation, save the core of the army, catch on to any point, use the winter to gain time. The partisan raids on the railroad made the organized withdrawal of the Kolchakites even more difficult.
Meanwhile, the harsh Siberian winter came. On both sides of the Siberian Railway and the Siberian Highway, along which the troops were moving, there was a deep taiga. There were few villages. Cold, famine and typhus began to mow the troops and refugees. Half of Kolchak's army was sick with typhus. In dead ends, and sometimes right on the tracks, there were whole trains with the sick or with the corpses. The epidemic mowed down the local population and Soviet troops. Thousands of Red Army soldiers fell ill, many died. Almost all members of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Army and its commander Eikhe suffered the disease. The chief of staff of the army Ivasi died of typhus.
In the conditions of an almost panicky flight of whites to the east, the Kolchak command could not even think about organizing any resistance to the Reds. The Whites tried to use the vast expanses of Siberia in order to break away from the enemy as far as possible and preserve the remnants of the troops. But this could not be done either. The Red Army, taking advantage of the complete disintegration of the enemy, quickly advanced forward. The main forces were moving along the railway line. One brigade of the 26th division from the Omsk region was sent to the south - to Pavlodar and Slavgorod to eliminate the enemy detachments located there and to provide the right flank of the 5th army. At the end of November, Soviet troops, with the support of the rebels, liberated Pavlodar. Two other brigades of the division launched an offensive on Barnaul to provide assistance to the partisans there. Here the Kolchakites had significant forces to defend the Novonikolaevsk - Barnaul railway. The defense was held by Polish legionnaires who retained their combat capability. But at the beginning of December, the partisans struck a strong blow at the enemy, captured two armored trains (Stepnyak and Sokol), 4 guns, a large amount of ammunition and equipment.
It is worth noting that the partisans provided great assistance to the Red Army. The interaction of the partisans with the advancing units of the Red Army began at the end of October 1919, when the rebels in the Tobolsk province, with the approach of the Reds, liberated a number of large settlements. At the end of November, a close connection was established between the 5th Army and the Altai partisans. Altai partisans at this time created an entire army of 16 regiments, numbering about 25 thousand people and launched a major offensive. In early December, the rebels united with the Soviet units. To communicate with the partisans and coordinate actions, the command of the 5th Army sent their representatives to the main headquarters of the partisans and the revolutionary committees. In addition to solving military issues, they were also engaged in political issues, intercepting the control of partisan detachments, which were often headed by Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists and other opponents of Soviet power.
The partisan movement also intensified in the area of the Siberian Railway. Here the partisans put great pressure on the Kolchakites. In areas remote from the front, the popular movement acquired even greater proportions. Whole partisan armies operated in the regions of Achinsk, Minusinsk, Krasnoyarsk and Kansk. Only the presence of the Czechoslovak corps and other interventionist troops prevented the rebels from seizing the Trans-Siberian.
