By historical standards, the First World War and the subsequent fall of the three largest world empires occurred relatively recently. Researchers have at their disposal many official documents, memoirs of direct participants in the events and eyewitness accounts. The multi-toned collections of documents that are stored in public and private archives of dozens of countries make it possible, seemingly, literally minute by minute, to reconstruct the course of events at any point in space and time of interest to the researcher. However, despite such an abundance of sources, many mysteries and secrets still remain in the history of those years that prevent many historians, journalists and writers from sleeping peacefully. One of these historical secrets is the fate of the so-called "Kolchak's Gold", which has been sought for a long time and almost as unsuccessfully as the gold of Flint, Morgan and Captain Kidd, the Amber Room or the mythical "Gold of the Party". In this case, we are talking about the gold reserve of Russia, which, of course, never belonged to Kolchak and went to the “Omsk ruler” by accident, after on August 6, 1918, units of the White Guard General Kappel and allied Czech legionaries captured him in the basements of the Kazan Bank. It was to Kazan in 1914-1915 that valuables were evacuated from the storage facilities of Warsaw, Riga and Kiev. And in 1917, these reserves were replenished with gold from Moscow and Petrograd. As a result, Kazan ended up with 40,000 poods of gold (about 640 tons) and 30,000 poods of silver (480 tons) in ingots and coins, precious church utensils, historical values, jewels of the royal family (154 items, including the necklace of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and strewn diamonds, the sword of Alexei's heir). Translated into modern prices, only gold and silver Kolchak received 13, 3 billion dollars. The cost of historical relics and jewelry is not subject to any calculation.
A. V. Kolchak, who came to power in the Trans-Urals part of the former Russian Empire on November 18, 1918, is undoubtedly one of the most tragic figures in Russian history. His tragedy was that in the decisive moments, which Stefan Zweig called "the finest hours of mankind", he, like Nicholas II, found himself out of place and could not adequately respond to the challenges of this difficult time. At the time of coming to power, Kolchak was already a well-known polar traveler and a talented admiral, but, unfortunately, he turned out to be an absolutely mediocre politician and an extremely incompetent administrator. It was this discrepancy with the assumed role that ruined him.
In fact, Alexander Kolchak, who came from America, unlike Kornilov, Denikin, Wrangel or Yudenich, found himself in a very advantageous situation. He was known and even popular among the broad strata of the Russian population as a researcher of the Arctic and a hero of the Russo-Japanese War, was not involved in corruption and political scandals, and no one associated his personality with the "vile crimes of the old regime." The Bolsheviks in Siberia were finished by June 8, 1918. The fact is that at that time the 40,000th Czechoslovak Legionnaire Corps was evacuated to France via the Trans-Siberian Railway. After an attempt to disarm one of the legionary echelons in Chelyabinsk, the corps leadership gave the order to seize all stations along the route and arrest all members of the Bolshevik Soviets. As a result, very moderate "governments", "directories", "dumas" and "committees" came to power in large cities, where the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks got along peacefully with the Cadets and Octobrists and acted in close contact with the Social Democratic parties and official representatives of the countries. Entente. It was quite possible to deal with these politicians and negotiate. The Transsib was now controlled by a disciplined and well-armed Czechoslovak Legionnaire Corps. There were many officers in the army who were ready to fight not for the overthrown Nicholas II, but for a great and indivisible Russia. The anarchist gangs that ruled in the outback, mainly in the east of the country, acted separately and did not represent a serious military force. If Kolchak's army had a man with Trotsky's organizational abilities and charisma, all the local Semyonovs would inevitably face the fate of Shchors, Kotovsky, Grigoriev and Makhno: the most adequate chieftains would become national heroes, and the most uncontrollable of them would be destroyed or driven out of the cordon. If the Soviet government was in complete international isolation, and there was nowhere to wait for help, then the White Guard leaders, whose recognized head was A. V. Kolchak, as junior and inferior partners, nevertheless had fairly wide contacts with their allies in the Entente, who, however, helped them more in words. Nevertheless, in 1918, the troops of the Entente countries landed in the large port cities of the former Russian Empire - a total of about 220,000 soldiers from 11 countries of the world, 150,000 of them in the Asian part of Russia (there were 75,000 Japanese people there). The interventionist armies behaved rather passively, took part in hostilities reluctantly and entered combat contact with the Red Army or partisan formations only in the immediate vicinity of their places of deployment. But they carried out protective and police functions and provided serious moral support to the White Guards. The internal political situation in the territory controlled by Kolchak was also quite favorable. The White Guard armies operating in the European part of Russia, which even the allies in the Entente sometimes ironically called "roving armies without a state", earned universal hatred by "requisitions" and violent mobilizations. For some reason, the leadership of the "volunteers" was convinced that the population of cities and villages that found themselves on their way should feel deep gratitude for the liberation from the tyranny of the Bolsheviks and, on this basis, provide their liberators with everything they needed practically free of charge. The liberated population, to put it mildly, did not share these views. As a result, even wealthy peasants and the bourgeoisie preferred to hide their goods from the White Guard intendants and sell them to European merchants. So, in September 1919, the owners of the Donbass mines sold abroad several thousand cars with coal, and only one car, reluctantly, was handed over to Denikin. And in Kursk, the Denikin cavalry, instead of the two thousand requested horseshoes, received only ten. In Siberia, all state structures functioned, the population at first was quite loyal: officials continued to fulfill their functional duties, workers and artisans wanted to work and receive a fair salary, peasants were ready to trade with everyone who had money to buy their products. Kolchak, who had practically inexhaustible resources at his disposal, not only could, but was obliged to win the favor of the civilian population, suppressing looting and looting with the most decisive measures. In such conditions, Napoleon Bonaparte or Bismarck would have put things in order in the territory under their control in two or three years, restored the integrity of the country and carried out all long-overdue reforms and transformations. But Kolchak was neither Napoleon nor Bismarck. For a very long time, gold lay dead weight and was not used to achieve the most important political goals. Moreover, even an elementary revision of the Gold reserve that fell into his hands, Kolchak ordered to be carried out only six months later - in May 1919, when he was already slightly "pinched" by the staff officers, greedy intendants and the Czechs guarding him. The remaining values were divided into three parts. The first of them, consisting of 722 boxes of gold bars and coins, was transported to the rear of Chita. The second part, which included the treasures of the royal family, precious church utensils, historical and artistic relics, were kept in the city of Tobolsk. The third part, the largest, worth more than 650 million gold rubles, remained under Kolchak in his famous "golden train".
After revising the valuables he received, Kolchak decided to use some of the gold to purchase weapons from the "allies" in the Entente. Huge funds were allocated for the purchase of weapons from the "allies" in the Entente. The allies, cunning in commercial matters, did not miss their chance and famously dodged the Omsk dictator, deceiving him not once, but three times. First of all, as payment for the recognition of Kolchak as the supreme ruler of Russia, they forced him to confirm the legality of the separation from Russia of Poland (and with it - Western Ukraine and Western Belarus) and Finland. And Kolchak was forced to leave the decision on the secession of Latvia, Estonia, the Caucasus and the Trans-Caspian region from Russia to the arbitration of the League of Nations (note dated May 26, 1919, signed by Kolchak on June 12, 1919). This shameful treaty was no better than the Brest Peace Treaty signed by the Bolsheviks. Having received from Kolchak, in fact, an act of surrender of Russia and recognition of it as the defeated side, the Entente countries expressed their readiness to sell him weapons that they absolutely did not need, obsolete and intended for disposal. However, since they did not have confidence in the stability of his government, and they feared claims from the winners, Kolchak was told that his gold would be accepted at a price below the market price. The admiral agreed to this humiliating demand, and by the time of his evacuation from Omsk (October 31, 1919), the gold reserve had decreased by more than a third. The allies, on the other hand, not only delayed deliveries in every possible way, but also in the most shameless manner robbed the overly trusting "supreme ruler of Russia." The French, for example, confiscated Kolchak's gold intended for the purchase of airplanes on account of the debt of the tsarist and Provisional governments. As a result, the allies safely waited for Kolchak's fall, and the remaining unspent funds disappeared without a trace in the largest banks in Great Britain, France and the United States. But the Europeans and Americans have fulfilled at least part of their obligations. The Japanese, who in October-November 1919 received from Kolchak gold bars in the amount equivalent to 50 million yen and a contract for the supply of weapons to an army of 45,000, did not consider it necessary to send at least one rifle or a box of cartridges to Russia. Later, representatives of the Japanese administration confiscated 55 million yen, brought into the country by General Rozanov, and the gold that General Petrov managed to take to Manchuria. According to the figures given in the reports of the National Bank of Japan, the country's gold reserves at this time increased more than 10 times.
Another part of the expenses of the Siberian Provisional Government was clearly inappropriate spending on the development and production of large quantities of the orders "Liberation of Siberia" and "Revival of Russia" made of noble alloys and decorated with precious stones. These orders remained unclaimed, moreover, not a single copy of them has survived to our time and they are known only in descriptions. More than 4 million dollars were spent on an order in the United States of rubles of a new design. The bills produced were packed in 2,484 boxes, but they did not have time to deliver them to Russia before the fall of Kolchak. For several years, these banknotes were stored in a warehouse in the United States, and then they were burned, for which, by the way, two special ovens had to be built.
The only investment that brought real benefit was the transfer of 80 million gold rubles to the accounts of individuals who were elected as their custodians and managers. Some of them turned out to be decent people, and, despite certain abuses of their position as "patrons" and "benefactors", they still allocated funds for the resettlement of Wrangel's army in Serbia and Bulgaria, support for Russian schools, hospitals, and nursing homes. Allowances were also paid to "families of the heroes of the Civil War", however, only very high-ranking ones: the widow of Admiral Kolchak - Sofya Fedorovna, General Denikin, who took General Kornilov to raise the children, and some others.
722 boxes of gold, sent by Kolchak to Chita, went to Ataman Semyonov, but this adventurer's unjustly inherited wealth did not go for the future. Part of the gold was immediately stolen by his own esauls, podsauls and ordinary Cossacks, who were lucky enough to take part in the seizure and plunder of Chita, nominally controlled by Kolchak's troops. 176 boxes were sent by Semyonov to Japanese banks, from where they never returned. Another part of the Semenovsky gold went to the Chinese. 20 poods in March 1920 were detained at the Harbin customs and confiscated by order of Zhang Tso-Lin, governor general of three Chinese provinces in Manchuria. Another 326 thousand gold rubles was seized in Heiler by the governor-general of the Qiqitskar province, U Tzu-Chen. Semyonov himself fled to the Chinese port of Dalny in an airplane, therefore, he could not take a lot of gold with him. His subordinates had even less opportunities to transport gold abroad. Consequently, a certain part of the values disappeared without a trace in the endless expanses of Manchuria and Eastern Siberia, remained “at home” in the treasures, traces of which are hardly possible to find.
The fate of the Tobolsk part of Russia's gold reserves turned out to be happier. On November 20, 1933, thanks to the help of the former nun of the Tobolsk Ivanovo monastery, Martha Uzentseva, the treasures of the royal family were found. According to the memo of the plenipotentiary representative of the OGPU in the Urals Reshetov "On the seizure of royal treasures in the city of Tobolsk," addressed to G. Yagoda, a total of 154 items were found. Among them are a diamond brooch weighing about 100 carats, three head pins with diamonds of 44 and 36 carats, a crescent moon with diamonds up to 70 carats, a tiara of the royal daughters and queen, and much more.
However, let us return to 1919. You have to pay for everything in life, very soon Kolchak had to pay for his incompetence and political insolvency. While he shifted the solution of the most important and exciting problems to every person in the country to the new Constituent Assembly, and used the wealth he received ineffectively and practically in vain, the Reds promised the people everything at once. As a result, Kolchak lost the support of the country's population, and his own troops practically got out of control. The victorious Red Army was inexorably advancing from the west, the whole east was covered by the partisan movement - by the winter of 1919. the number of "red" and "green" partisans exceeded 140,000 people. The unlucky admiral could only rely on the help of the Allies in the Entente and the Czechoslovak corps. On November 7, 1919, the Kolchak government began evacuating from Omsk. In the letter structure "D", the values that remained at the admiral's disposal were sent to the east. The echelon consisted of 28 wagons with gold and 12 wagons with security. The adventures were not long in coming. On the morning of November 14, at the Kirzinsky junction, a train with guards crashed into the "golden echelon". Several cars with gold were smashed and plundered. Two days later, near Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk), someone disconnected from the train as many as 38 cars with gold and guards, which almost collapsed into the Ob. In Irkutsk, where Kolchak's headquarters and the "golden echelon" were moving, by that time the power already belonged to the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center. The Czechs, on whom the unlucky "supreme ruler of Russia" hoped so much, dreamed of returning to their homeland as soon as possible and were not going to die along with the doomed admiral. Back on November 11, the commander-in-chief of the corps, General Syrovoy, issued an internal order, the meaning of which can be conveyed in a short phrase: "Our interests are above all." When the leadership of the legionnaires learned that the partisans were ready to blow up bridges east of Irkutsk and tunnels on the Circum-Baikal Railway, Kolchak's fate was finally decided. Once the partisans had already "warned" the Czechs by blowing up tunnel No. 39 (Kirkidaysky) on 23 July 1918, which led to the cessation of traffic on the Transsib for 20 days. The Czechs who categorically did not want to become Siberians turned out to be intelligent people, and there was no need to spend scarce explosives on another tunnel or bridge. The official representative of the allied powers, General M. Janin, also really wanted to return home - to beautiful France. Therefore, he announced to Kolchak that he would continue to follow to the East only as a private person. January 8, 1920 Kolchak disbanded the last remaining loyal to him and placed himself under the protection of the allies and Czech legionnaires. But this decision did not satisfy either side. Therefore, on March 1, 1920, in the village of Kaitul, the command of the Czechoslovak Legion signed an agreement with representatives of the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee, according to which, in exchange for the right of free passage to the East along the Trans-Siberian Railway, Kolchak and 18 cars were transferred to the new government, in which there were 5143 boxes and 1578 bags of gold and other jewelry. The weight of the remaining gold is 311 tons, the nominal value is about 408 million gold rubles. This means that during Kolchak's panicky retreat, about 200 tons of gold, worth about 250 million gold rubles, disappeared from Omsk. It is believed that the share of Czechoslovak legionnaires in the robbery of the admiral's train was over 40 million rubles in gold. It has been suggested that it was the "Kolchak's gold" brought from Russia that became the main capital of the so-called "Legionbank" and was a powerful stimulus for the economic development of Czechoslovakia in the interwar period. However, the bulk of the stolen gold is still on the conscience of "domestic" thieves. One of them was the White Guard officers Bogdanov and Drankevich, who in 1920, together with a group of soldiers, stole about 200 kg of gold from the "admiral's train". The bulk of the booty was hidden in one of the abandoned churches on the southeastern shore of Lake Baikal. After this, events began to develop as in a Hollywood action movie, and when retreating to China, the robbers shot each other. The only survivor was V. Bogdanov, who later moved to the United States. In 1959 he made an attempt to export gold across the Turkish border. The KGB mistook him for a spy, took him under surveillance and allowed free movement around the country. Imagine the surprise of the Chekists when, in the detained car of Bogdanov, not secret drawings and not a microfilm with photographs of closed defense enterprises were found, but two centners of gold bullion. Thus, the fate of about 160 tons of gold, transported by the letter train "D", remains unknown. These treasures clearly remained on the territory of Russia, moreover, there is every reason to assume that they are located not far from the Trans-Siberian Railway. The “Baikal” version is especially popular. Currently, there are two hypotheses according to which the lost gold is at its bottom. According to the first, part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire fell into the lake as a result of a train wreck on the Circum-Baikal railway near the Marituy station. Supporters of the other argue that in the winter of 1919-20s one of Kolchak's detachments, which included a battalion of Black Sea sailors who enjoyed the admiral's special trust, retreating to the east, to Manchuria, had a part of Russia's gold reserves with him. The main roads were already controlled by units of the Red Army and partisans, so it was decided to walk through the frozen Baikal on foot. Gold coins and bars were handed out to soldiers 'backpacks and officers' carts. During this transition, most of the people froze on the way, and in the spring, when the ice melted, the corpses, along with their luggage, ended up at the bottom of the lake. They tried to search for gold in Lake Baikal back in the 70s of the XX century. Then, at a depth of about 1000 meters, it was possible to find a bottle of gold sand and a gold ingot. However, the belonging of these finds to "Kolchak's gold" has not been proven, since individual prospectors, gold miners and even small merchant carts were drowning in Baikal before. It is known, for example, that in 1866 a part of a merchant convoy sank in the lake, which tried to pass on the still immature ice. Legend has it that there were leather sacks with silver rubles on the sunken wagons. Soon it became clear to everyone that if Kolchak's treasures were located on the Baikal bottom, then they were scattered over a vast territory extremely unevenly, and, moreover, they probably ended up under a layer of silt and algae. The estimated costs of underwater work were so high, and the result so unpredictable, that they preferred to refuse further searches. However, the temptation to find at least some of the missing valuables is very great, so in 2008 the search for "Kolchak's gold" at the bottom of Lake Baikal was resumed. That year, the research expedition "Worlds on Baikal" began its work, during which, among other goals, scientists were tasked with trying to find traces of lost gold at the bottom of the great lake. From the end of July to the beginning of September, deep-sea bathyscaphes made 52 dives to the bottom of Lake Baikal, as a result, oil-bearing rocks, seismogenic soils, and microorganisms unknown to science were discovered. In 2009, new dives of the Mir bathyscaphes (about 100 in total) took place, but nothing comforting has yet been found.
There is also evidence of Kolchak's intention to send part of the valuables not by rail, but by river. The proposed route looks as follows: from Omsk along the Ob, then - through the Ob-Yenisei canal, which, although it was not completed to the end, was passable for ships, then along the Yenisei and Angara to Irkutsk. According to some reports, the steamer "Permyak" managed to reach only the village of Surgut, where the gold cargo was unloaded on the shore and hidden. Legends say that the place of the treasure was marked with a rail concreted in the ground. Later, this rail, which interfered with the excavation work, was allegedly cut off, and now it is almost impossible to find this place, which, however, does not bother individual enthusiasts.
The Primorsky Territory also has its own legends about "Kolchak's Gold". There are certain grounds for them, because, in addition to the famous "golden echelon", Kolchak managed to send 7 trains with jewelry to Vladivostok. From there, gold was sent to the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as payment for armaments. Since Kolchak's officials were not distinguished by their honesty, it is quite possible that some of the gold was stolen by them and hidden "until better times." Since the 20s of the last century, persistent rumors have circulated among the population that weapons and gold ingots that disappeared from the Pervaya Rechka station during the Civil War were buried in one of the caves in the foothills of the Sikhote-Alin ridge. According to RIA PrimaMedia, in 2009, an expedition organized by one of the tourist companies of Vladivostok jointly by the Regional Studies Institute of the Far Eastern State University, attempted to enter one of the caves, but due to numerous avalanches and landslides, this was not possible.
They are also trying to look for the lost values in Kazakhstan. Petropavlovsk is considered one of the most promising places, where in September 1919 Kolchak's "golden train" was located for some time. From there, the train was sent to Omsk, where it suddenly turned out that in some cars instead of gold, weapons and ammunition were loaded. It is suggested that the stolen gold could have been hidden in a mass grave near the so-called Fifth Log, where the executed communists, Red Army men and people sympathizing with them were buried. Another point that attracts the attention of local treasure hunters is the North Kazakhstan settlement of Aiyrtau, which Kolchak and his numerous retinue visited in the winter of 1919 - two months before his death. One of the surrounding hills is still called Kolchakovka, or Mount Kolchak.
However, all attempts made so far have not been crowned with success, which gives skeptics reason to talk about the hopelessness of further searches. Optimists are still convinced that the gold of tsarist Russia that remained on the territory of our country, like the treasures of Homer's Troy, is waiting in the wings and its Schliemann.
