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The “Democratic Counterrevolution” of 1918 in Siberia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Norman G. O. Pereira
Norman G. O. Pereira*
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University (Canada)
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Extract

The conventional distinction between Soviet and Western uses of the term democracy juxtaposes socioeconomic against political considerations— that is, for the former the stress is upon social equality and economic security, whereas for the latter it is upon civil liberty and political freedom. The tone and character of the Bolshevik approach to institutions which in the West are associated with liberal, parliamentary democracy can best be captured in the words of Lenin himself:

[T]he democratic republic, the Constituent Assembly, general elections, etc., are, in practice, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and for the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital there is no otherwaybut to replace this dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat… This means replacing democracy for the rich by democracy for the poor.

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Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 71 - 94
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Copyright © 1988 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities USSR and East Europe Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. This paper is based on work done during residence as a Senior Fellow for the 1987–88 academic year at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, where it was delivered in an earlier version. I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for support.Google Scholar

2. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow, 1965), vol. 28, pages 370–71. For an interesting discussion of what Lenin meant by the “positive abolition of parliamentary democracy,” see Richard Sakwa, “The Commune State in Moscow in 1918,” Slavic Review, 46 (Fall-Winter, 1987), pages 429–449.Google Scholar

3. Lenin, , Collected Works, vol. 39, pages 156 ff. W. H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 2 vols. (New York, 1965), vol. 2, page 34, observed: “If one looks through a collection of civil war posters one is impressed by the effort [of the Bolsheviks] to represent the conflict to the peasants as a struggle for land, and to the poorer classes generally as a war to the death against the aristocrats and the propertied classes.” Paul Miliukov, writing to the London Times on November 19, 1919, put a somewhat different emphasis upon the point, arguing that “there exist now only two camps in Russia: that of the pro-Bolsheviks, which is anti-State, and that of the anti-Bolsheviks, which is pro-State.” P. N. Miliukov, “The First Step in Russian Regeneration,” New Europe (February, 1919), in “Cuttings,” Bakhmeteff Archives (hereafter BAR), Columbia University, box 9.Google Scholar

4. The term “Democratic Counterrevolution” was first applied specifically to Komuch in S. A. Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), but its use has come to be more general, encompassing the entire period leading up to the coup d'état of 18 November 1918. See A. L. Litvin, “Sovetskaia istoriografiia krakha ‘demokraticheskoi’ kontrrevoliutsii v Rossii,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 1 (1982), pages 111–119; N. Ia. Gushchin et al., eds., Istoriografiia sovetskoi Sibiri (1917–1945 gg.) (Novosibirsk, 1968); and K. V. Gusev, Istoriia ‘demokraticheskoi kontrrevoliutsii’ v Rossii (Moscow, 1973). G.S. Guins, Sibir', soiuzniki, i Kolchak, 2 vols. (Peking, 1921), vol. 1, page 261, observed that “the Directory regarded itself as the reborn Provisional Government.”Google Scholar

5. Vardin, I., “Ot melkoburzhuaznoi kontr-revoliutsii k restavratsii kapitalizma,” Za 5 let 1917–1922 (Moscow, 1922), page 39, argues that during “almost all of 1918 the Menshevik Party conducted a militant war against Soviet power.” Vardin minimizes initial positive gestures on the part of Menshevik organizations, such as the resolution adopted on 31 October 1917 by the Tomsk branch of the United Mensheviks, reproduced in Golos svobody, no. 175 (2 November 1917). The Menshevik Central Committee, moreover, moved from a position of hostile neutrality to critical support for the Bolshevik government by the fall of 1918; on 18 October 1918 it issued a statement which described the sacrosanct Constituent Assembly as no longer representative of true democracy and the October Revolution of 1917 as “historically necessary.” See D. Dallin, “The Outbreak of the Civil War,” The Mensheviks (Chicago, 1971), pages 174–84.Google Scholar

6. The majority view in Soviet scholarship still follows closely D. Tumarkin, “Kontrrevoliutsiia v Sibiri,” Sibirskie Ogni, no. 1 (1922), page 89: “‘Democracy’ went down the road from Komuch to the dictatorship of the Supreme Ruler [Kolchak] in some six months, and it passed along this way under the leadership of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, under its flag and under its slogan…. Hoping to unify around itself the broad democratic masses, mainly the peasants, under the concrete slogans of war with the Bolsheviks, in fact it united not them but…the reactionary bourgeoisie.”Google Scholar

7. Iu. V. Zhurov, “Grazhdanskaia voina i rasstanovka klassovykh sil v sibirskoi derevne letom 1918 g.,” Voprosy istoriografii i sotsial'no-politicheskogo razvitiia Sibiri (xix-xx), vyp. 1 (Krasnoiarsk, 1976), pages 63–67. A Bolshevik member of Tsentrosibir' (the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Siberia) noted at the end of May 1918: “Our attempt to mobilize the peasant population ended in nothing….[T]he peasantry in its mass was still not with us, and in this was our weakness and our tragedy.”Google Scholar

8. Zhurov argues that the key role belonged to the SR-dominated cooperative movement, especially Zakupsbyt. It was the latter which provided the Czech echelons with their vital supplies and necessities. See his “Grazhdanskaia voina,” page 43. Also see A. G. Prisiazhnyi, “Iz istorii sibirskoi kooperatsii perioda revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny,” Nekotorye voprosy istorii Sibiri (Tomsk, 1973), page 102.Google Scholar

9. Vladimirova, V., God sluzhby ‘sotsialistov’ kapitalistam (Moscow, 1927), page 95. It was not until the 8th Party Congress in March 1919 that the Bolsheviks decided to make a special effort to cultivate the middle peasant, whose neutrality, if not active support, was finally seen to be critical for victory in the civil war. See G. D. Alekseeva, “Nekotorye voprosy metodologii izucheniia ideinoi evoliutsii i krakha melkoburzhuaznykh partii v rossii,” Neproletarskie partii Rossii v gody burzhuaznodemokraticheskikh revoliutsii i v period nazrevaniia sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 1982), page 45.Google Scholar

10. M. E. Plotnikova, “;Rol' ‘vremennogo sibirskogo pravitel'stva’ v podgotovke kolchakovskogo perevorota v Sibiri,” Sbornik nauchnykh rabot istoricheskikh kafedr. Trudy Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 167 (Tomsk, 1964), p. 52.Google Scholar

11. Radkey demonstrates that the SRs' majority was rather less impressive than they claimed, however; in fact, they and the Bolsheviks—with their coalition partners—were roughly at a stand-off in the assembly. See O. H. Radkey, The Sickle Under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule (New York, 1963), pages 459–60. S. P. Mel'gunov suggests that electoral support for the SRs did not necessarily imply firm commitment or understanding on the part of their voters. In his The Bolshevik Seizure of Power (Santa Barbara, California, 1972), page 189, he concludes that there “was hardly any chance of turning the masses against the Soviets in the name of the Constituent Assembly.”Google Scholar

12. For a discussion of the relationship between the SRs and the Mensheviks, as well as the political resurgence of the latter in the spring of 1918, see V. M. Brovkin, “The Mensheviks' Political Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918,” Russian Review, vol. 42 (1983), pages 1–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Astrov, N. I., “Moskovskie organizatsii 1917–1918 gg.,” S. V. Panina Collection, BAR, box 10, p. 8.Google Scholar

14. An umbrella group founded in April 1918, Soiuz Vozrozhdeniia included Kadets, some center-right SRs, and Popular Socialists who shared a common vision of a non-Communist Russian state system (gosudarstvennost'). See S. V. Panina, “Civil War—Kadets (in general),” BAR, box 13; also G. Z. Ioffe, “K voprosu o mezhpartiinykh obedineniiakh rossiiskoi kontrrevoliutsii,” Velikii oktiabr' i neproletarskie partii (Moscow, 1982), pages 12–13. The Kadets' “National Center” was founded in Moscow in June 1918 and shared some aims and members with the Union of Regeneration, but it viewed the alternative of a three- or five-man directory as much less desirable than a military dictatorship, and was strongly opposed to compromising with the SRs on substantive issues of policy. The Center's agents in Siberia, notably V. N. Pepeliaev, were still more to the right and did not hide their preference for the candidacy of General Khorvat as dictator.Google Scholar

15. P. D. Dolgorukov, Natsional'naia politika i partiia narodnoi svobody (Rostov-na-Donu, 1919), page 9. L. A. Krol', Za tri goda (Vladivostok, 1921), page 28, confirmed that “the Central Committee [of the Kadets] set the goal of uniting all anti-Bolshevik social forces on the basis of an all-national task—the setting up of a national authority and the renewal of war with Germany.”Google Scholar

16. It is worth noting that the qualification “provisional” or “temporary” (vremennoe), beginning with the first post-Romanov cabinet of February-March 1917 and running straight through to the Directory created by the Ufa State Conference in September 1918, was attached to the name of all the democratic governments of 1917–1918. It has been suggested that this undermined their authority in the popular mind. According to the British official Robertson, peasants took the “term 'temporary Government' to imply that taxes already imposed will be collected again when next Government comes into power.” Public Records Office, War Office, 106/1241.Google Scholar

17. L. M. Spirin, Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (1917–1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1968), page 145. Bolshevik grain requisitions were very unpopular throughout Siberia, however, and especially with the powerful cooperatives. See N. Fomin, “Kooperatsiia i perevorot v Sibiri,” in Sibirskaia kooperatsiia, no. 6–8, (June-August, 1918); also V. Safronov, Oktiabr v Sibiri (Krasnoiarsk, 1962), page 537; and L. T. Lih, “Bread and Authority in Russia: Food Supply and Revolutionary Politics, 1914–1921,” (Princeton University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1984), pages 328–330.Google Scholar

18. N. and V. Dvorianov, V tylu Kolchaka (Moscow, 1963), page 22.Google Scholar

19. Spirin, Klassy, page 247. Nevertheless, Radkey, The Sickle under the Hammer, page 278, notes that in the end “the chief reason by far for the SR debacle was the soldier-peasant,” who preferred the Bolsheviks.Google Scholar

20. By contrast to the Constituent Assembly (with which otherwise it had so much in common), “census,” that is propertied, society was initially excluded from the SRD to ensure its purely democratic constitution.Google Scholar

21. See R. E. Snow, “The Russian Revolution of 1917–1918 in Transbaikalia,” Soviet Studies, 23, no. 2 (1971), pages 210–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Uprisings led by Sotnikov occurred in Krasnoiarsk, Ataman Semenov in the Trans-Baikal, and Ataman Dutov in Orenburg. Altogether, at the time of the Czechoslovak intervention towards the end of May 1918 more than 30 conspiracies and mutinies were recorded throughout Siberia. The troubled zone included Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Irkutsk guberniia; there was open warfare in the Trans-Baikal; somewhat quiet but still insecure were the Enisei, Altai, Iakutsk, and Amur regions. See G. M. Belousov, “Eserovskoe vooruzhennoe podpol'e v Sibiri (1918 g.),” Sibirskii istoricheskii sbornik, vyp. 2 (Irkutsk, 1974), page 146–47.Google Scholar

23. There was domestic military opposition to Bolshevik power independent of the Czechs. Vegman estimates these forces at not more than 7,000 active combatants, scattered all over Western Siberia. Their position, however, was enhanced by Soviet preoccupation at the same time with Ataman Semenov and his Japanese backers in the Far East. See V. D. Vegman, “Sibirskie kontrrevoliutsionnye organizatsii 1918 g.,” Sibirskie Ogni, kniga 1 (1928), pages 140–41.Google Scholar

24. See S.N. Nikolaev, “Politika ’Komucha‘,” Grazhdanskaia voina na Volge v 1918g. (Prague, 1930), pages 145–46; and K. V. Gusev, Partiia Eserov: ot melkoburzhuaznogo revoliutsionarizma k kontrrevoliutsii (Moscow, 1975), pp. 322–323. Google Scholar

25. A. P. Bud'berg, “Dnevnik,” Arkhiv Russkoi Revoliutsii, 13 (Berlin, 1923–1924), page 249.Google Scholar

26. It has been assumed generally that Czech sympathies were with the SRs, but The Times correspondent was of the opinion that they preferred “something approximately Cadet in complexion.” See page 5 of the edition of 26 September 1918.Google Scholar

27. This general interpretation remains very much in force as may be seen in V. I. Shishkin, “Sovremennaia sovetskaia istoriografiia inostrannoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri: diskussionnye problemy,” Iz istorii interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri na Dal'nem Vostoke, 1917–1922 (Novosibirsk, 1985), pages 20–42. Contemporary novels like V. Ivanov's Partizany and D. Furmanov's Chapaev suggest that the Bolsheviks had a better grasp of popular attitudes in this regard as well as others. Their efforts to depict even the more progressive Siberian governments as servile to the interests of domestic and foreign capital were generally effective. See M. I. Svetachev, Imperialisticheskaia interventsiia v Sibiri i na Dal'nem Vostoke (1918–1922 gg.) (Novosibirsk, 1983), pages 175–76.Google Scholar

28. Trotsky's orders of 25 May stated: “Every armed Czechoslovak found on the railways is to be shot on the spot.” Quoted in J. Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War and Communism in Russia, April-December 1918 (New York, 1976), page 91.Google Scholar

29. From Harbin in Bud'berg, “Dnevnik,” vol. 13, page 208— “Some new Siberian government has just emerged, made up of persons of very low caliber who are totally unknown in the Far East.”Google Scholar

30. V. V. Maksakov, “Vremennoe pravitel'stvo avtonomnoi Sibiri,” Krasnyi Arkhiv 4/29 (1928), pages 96–7.Google Scholar

31. Derber's courtship of Western and especially American officials and businessmen was no secret. See United States National Archives and Records Service (Washington, D.C.), Naval Intelligence Reports, Record Group 38 C-10-G. no. 10201 A.Google Scholar

32. N. V. Ustrialov, “Belyi Omsk,” Hoover Institution Archives (herafter HIA), box 1, p. 90.Google Scholar

33. In this critical issue, the WSC followed the Komuch example which itself was a continuation of the Constituent Assembly legislation of 5/18 January and the SRD promise to make land available to all (obshchenarodnoe dostoianie). See S. G. Livshits, “K istorii zapadno-sibirskogo komissariata,” Vorprosy istorii SSSR (Barnaul, 1974), pages 71–73; also Nikolaev, “Politika ’Komucha‘,” page 118. For a summary of the Soviet land decrees passed on 26 October, see S. A. Piontovskii, ed., Grazhdanskaia voina v Rossii (1918–1921 gg.) Khrestomatiia (Moscow, 1925), pages 17–18.Google Scholar

34. Livshits, “K istorii zapadno-sibirskogo kommissariata,” p. 80.Google Scholar

35. Spirin, Klassy, pp. 277–67. Also see Maiskii, Demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia, p. 82.Google Scholar

36. Close ties existed between the zerhstvos, on the one hand, and both the WSC and the PSG on the other. See Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv omskoi oblasti, Fond 1617, opis 2, delo 2, for a WSC report on the rapid transfer even in remote areas (such as Tatarsk) of the local functions of the soviets to the zemstvos. Also see the 21 June 1918 edition of Narodnaia gazeta and the 11 July 1918 edition of Vestnik vremennago pravitel'stva avtonomnoi Sibiri. The soviets, nevertheless, fared better under the zemstvos than vice versa. The Second Provincial Congress of the Soviets of Peasant Deputies which convened on 1 March 1918 in Tomsk passed a resolution liquidating all zemstvo and municipal self-government. See Zemskaia gazeta (organ of the Tomsk zemstvo board), no. 19 (7 March 1918); and E. N. Babikov, “Bor'ba s kontrrevoliutsionnym zemstvom v tomskoi gubernii (1917-aprel' 1918 gg.),” Voprosy istorii Sibiri, vyp. 4 (1969), page 201.Google Scholar

37. Plotnikova, M. E., “Rol”vremennogo sibirskogo pravitel‘stva’,…” pages 57–58, however, argues that on 21 June the WSC caved in to Siberian commercial interests and created a “Business Apparat”made up of persons with distinctly conservative views: thus, Grishin-Almazov was appointed head of military affairs, and prominent positions were also given to Sapozhnikov, Guins, Golovachev, N. Petrov, and Shumilovskii. While it is true that of this group only the last named was a socialist, none of the others can be described fairly as arch-conservative.Google Scholar

38. Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii vremennogo sibirskogo pravitel'stva, no. 2 (Omsk, 18 July 1918), pages 1–5, 15–16, and 18–22.Google Scholar

39. See Sibirskoe biuro RKP(b), 1918–1920: sbornik dokumentov (Novosibirsk, 1978), page 139. V. A. Kadeikin, “Antirabochaia politika vremennogo sibirskogo pravitel'stva,” Voprosy istorii sibiri, vyp. 4 (Tomsk, 1969), page 151, argues that “in terms of trade unions the Provisional Siberian Government took a more reactionary position than had the government of Kerensky.” PSG legislation on 31 July limited both the role of the trade unions and of the employers' contributions to social welfare and insurance.Google Scholar

40. See Vologodskii, P. V., Deklaratsiia vremennago sibirskago pravitel'stva (Tomsk, 1918), pages 1–2.Google Scholar

41. See Serebrennikov, I. I., “K istorii sibirskago pravitel'stva,” HIA, box 9, pages 1–7.Google Scholar

42. I have referred to this as the victory of the Omsk over the Tomsk principle in Siberian history. See my “Regional Consciousness in Siberia Before and After October 1917,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 30., no. 1 (March 1988).Google Scholar

43. To be sure, the Siberian Kadet leader Zhardetskii refused any formal affiliation with the PSG as long as it was in any way identified with regionalist aspirations. And both Mikhailov and Vologodskii began their political careers as SRs and never formally renounced those affiliations. But, as Ustialov, “Belyi Omsk,” pages 52–53, observed: “Although the Omsk ministers were not part of the [so-called Eastern] Committee of the Kadet [Party], in essence they were Kadets, as were the ideology and program of the government…. [Thus] our civil war [was throughout] 'a war between the Bolsheviks and the Kadets'.”Google Scholar

44. Krol', M. A., “Sibirskoe pravitel'stvo i avgustovskaia sessiia sibirskoi oblastnoi dumy,” Vol'naia Sibir', no. 4 (1928), page 73.Google Scholar

45. Radkey, O. H., The Elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1950).Google Scholar

46. Siberia, In, by contrast to Ukraine and the south, there was little interest in Miliukov's idea of separate peace or a pro-German policy. See O. F. Solov'ev, “O roli vnutrennei kontrrevoliutsii v razviazyvanii interventsii antanty letom 1918 g.,” Oktiabr' i grazhdanskaia voina v SSSR (Moscow, 1966), pages 407–08.Google Scholar

47. See Freeze, G. L., “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” The American Historical Review, vol. 91, no. 1 (1986), pages 11–36.Google Scholar

48. Komin, V. V., Istoriia pomeshchich'ikh, burzhuaznykh i melkioburzhuaznykh politicheskikh partii v Rossii (Kalinin, 1970), pages 114–115.Google Scholar

49. Sibirskaia rech' (2 December 1917).Google Scholar

50. Quoted in Mel'gunov, S. P., Grazhdanskaia voina v osveshchenii P. N. Miliukova (Paris, 1929), page 41. As J. Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution (New York, 1986), page 122, observes: “The liberals had no troops of their own, no tradition of underground subversion and, most important, no mass following. If they wanted an army, they had to turn to others.” N. G. Dumova, Kadetskaia kontrrevoliutsiia i ee razgrom (Oktiabr' 1917–1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1982), pages 36–53, confirms the impression of Kadet dominance over the SRs.Google Scholar

51. The attitude of the Left-SRs toward their former comrades was one of extreme hostility even when subsequently they, too, found themselves in conflict with their new Bolshevik partners. See no. 167 (30 March 1918) of the Left-SR organ Znamia truda. Google Scholar

52. Radkey, O. H., The Sickle under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule (New York, 1963), page 2: “There was within the PSR itself an element for which coalition was not an expedient but a way of life. This element constituted the right wing of the Party. It was small in numbers but large in influence, and clung to the partners in coalition as a protection against all…evils.” Vladimirova, God sluzhby ‘sotsialistov’ kapitalistam, pages 200–201, contends that both the SRs and the KDs preferred the cover of the Soiuz to an open alliance along formal party lines.Google Scholar

53. This is a minor point of difference with Haimson (following Dan) who argues that only the Kadets and the Bolsheviks were prepared, indeed wanted, civil war. See Haimson, L., “The Problem of Social Identities in Early Twentieth Century Russia,” Slavic Review, vol. 47 (Spring 1988), page 7.Google Scholar

54. , Spirin, Neproletarskie, pages 391, 394–5. At the end of May in Moscow, there was also a major Menshevik conference which called for the replacement of “Soviet power by an authority which unites the forces of all the democracy.” Nevertheless, the Mensheviks were reluctant to join any organization which might be construed as counter-revolutionary, and that included Soiuz Vozrozhdeniia. Google Scholar

55. Chernov and his followers tried to alert the public that neither the Kadets nor the Bolsheviks had any real commitment to the niceties of democracy. See “Po stopam' bol'shevikov” in Delo Sibiri, no. 35 (2 July 1918).Google Scholar

56. Chernov, V. M., Pered burei. Vospominaniia (New York, 1953), page 376. As V. V. Garmiza, “Bankrotstvo politiki 'tret'ego puti' v revoliutsii (Ufimskoe gosudarstvennoe soveshchanie 1918 g.),” Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (1965), page 12, points out, however, that there were decisive external reasons for the Ufa compromise as well: “It is impossible to understand how it could happen that the petty-bourgeois parties, with a clear majority of the delegates at the [Ufa] conference, surrendered their position to the bourgeois reaction if one does not take into account the correspondence of forces outside the conference which did not favor Komuch.” Moreover, the Allies insisted upon a united front against the Communists as a condition of further aid, much less formal recognition.Google Scholar

57. The five originally selected were: Astrov, N. I. (Kadet), Boldyrev, V. G. (Union for the Regeneration of Russia, nonparty), N. D. Avksentiev (SR and member of the Union), N. V. Chaikovskii (Popular Socialist and member of the Union), and P. V. Vologodskii (nonparty and head of PSG). In fact V. A. Vinogradov (left-wing KD) and V. M. Zenzinov (SR and member of the Union) took the places of Astrov and Chaikovskii, respectively. The Directory was to be fully autonomous until 1 January 1919, when it would report and hand over power to a reconvened CA made up of 250 original delegates or more. If the quorum was not there, then the transfer would be put off for a month and the quorum reduced to 170. See Garmiza, “Bankrotstvo politiki,” page 21.Google Scholar

58. For background see Cherniak, E. I., “Esery Sibiri i vopros o vlasti (mart-iul' 1917 g.),” Klassy i partii v Sibiri nakanune i v period velikoi oktiabrskoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Tomsk, 1977); pages 96–108.Google Scholar

59. Centrifugal tensions continued within the PSR, as evident in the fall of 1919 when what was left of its left wing in Siberia split and took the name of the Union of Siberian Socialist Revolutionaries. See Stishov, M. I., Bol'shevitskoe podpol'e i partizanskoe dvizhenie Sibiri v gody grazhdanskoi voiny (1918–1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1962), pages 304–05.Google Scholar

60. See Chemerisskii, I. A., “Eserovskaia gruppa ’Narod‘ i ee raspad,” Bankrotstvo melkoburzhuaznykh partii Rossii (Moscow, 1977), pages 77–86. Chernov's manifesto called upon all SRs to rally around the old Constituent Assembly and to organize the people as “a third force” for struggle on two fronts: against the Bolsheviks in the West and counterrevolutioaries in the East.Google Scholar

61. On 10 November Avksent'ev, on behalf of the Directory, appealed successfully to the SRD to dissolve itself, on the grounds that it was necessary “immediately to establish a strong state authority which would be authoritative throughout all of Russia, throughout all the regions….” Quoted in Demidov, V. A., “Natsional'nyi vopros i demokraticheskaia kontrrevoliutsiia v Sibiri,” Iz istorii grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri (Novosibirsk, 1973), page 59. There were only isolated expressions of concern for the fate of the SRD. One such appeared in Dalekaia okraina (Vladivostok), no. 3654 (29 September/12 October 1918), over the signature of Kievskii, G.: “The old Regional Duma, with all the limitations of its construction, had…the significance of an organ through which there was expressed organized social opinion [and] organized social control without which no government can survive for long. The dispersal of the Duma was seen, therefore, as first of all an attack upon the direct participation of society [in government]. It was seen as an attempt to restore the country while ignoring popular rights.”Google Scholar

62. Argunov, A. A., “Omskie dni v 1918 godu,” Sibirskii arkhiv, no. 5 (Prague, 1935), page 198.Google Scholar

63. Quoted in Bunyan, Intervention, Civil War, page 355. This was in contrast with the Bolsheviks' land policy which some saw as closer to the SRs' original position. Guins, Sibir, soiuzniki, i Kolchak, vol. 1, page 48, writes: “The Bolshevik [land] program unmercifully stole from the SRs. The latter [thus] let the peasants slip out of their hands. The SR Party began to resemble an army staffed exclusively by officers.” I. I. Mints, God 1918yi (Moscow, 1982), page 252, however, argues that “there should be no confusion of the Bolshevik and SR positions on the land question, despite superficial similarities, since the Bolsheviks saw the key to be the “social exploitation of the land, whereas the SRs believed in…the socialization of the land, that is, the withdrawal of the land from commercial transactions and the equalizing of holdings among peasant households.”Google Scholar

64. Bunyan, See, Intervention, Civil War, pages 369–371, for their names; it was this same Council of Ministers (plus Guins and G. Krasnov) which dissolved the Directorate and handed supreme power over to Kolchak just a few weeks later.Google Scholar

65. Shikanov, L. A., “K voprosu o khronologischeskikh ramkakh ‘demokraticheskoi’ kontrrevoliutsii v Sibiri,” Iz istorii interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny v Sibiri i na Dal'nem Vostoke, 1917–1922 gg (Novosibirsk, 1985), pages 64–65.Google Scholar

66. Founded on 24 August 1918, the Administrative Council contained the heads and deputy heads of each ministry of the PSG. Its official function was to assist with the administrative functions of the five-man Council of Ministers (the government's legislature), but in fact it was used by its unofficial leader, I. A. Mikhailov, to further his own political ambitions and to undermine the power of the socialists in the government and in the SRD. On September 7, 1918, the Administrative Council's powers were broadened so that in the absence of a majority of the Council of Ministers it was to assume full legislative responsibility. See Guins, Sibir', soiuzniki, i Kolchak, vol 1, pages 185–86; also P. V. Vologodskii, “Diary,” trans. E. Varneck, HIA, box 1, entries for 29 and 30 September 1918.Google Scholar

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69. According to a fellow officer: “The ultra-democratic principles of the People's Army did not exist in the Siberian Army. Grishin…declared that the army should be created on the basis of strict military discipline, without any committees, conferences, or meetings whatsoever and without limiting the prerogatives of commanders'.” Quoted in Vyrypaev, V. I., “Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel': vospominaniia uchastnika beloi bor'by,” trans. E. Varneck, HIA, box 1 page 28–29.Google Scholar

70. Ivanov-Rinov, N. I. was a reactionary and chauvinist of the darkest hue. Along with his colleague V. N. Pepeliaev, he objected to the mere representation of the Siberian minority nationalities at the Ufa State Conference on the grounds that they were not sufficiently “state-conscious.” E. L. Harris, “Political Situation in the Omsk District Covering Period from May 1918 to Date” (10 November 1918), Assorted Papers, HIA (1918–1921), box 2, page 10, confirms that Grishin-Almazov was removed after having offended Allied officers in Omsk. So strong and visceral was the distaste for the Komuch government among the officers of its own “People's Army” that many removed their uniforms and donned those of the Siberian Army. See Spirin, Neproletarskie, page 259; and P. Dotsenko, The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia 1917–1920 (Stanford, California, 1983), page 43.Google Scholar

71. This was also the attitude of the Samara industrialist and leading Kadet A. K. Klafton. See Spiring, Neproletarskie, page 274.Google Scholar

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74. The British War Cabinet, in fact, decided to recognize the Directory officially, but before the decision could be conveyed to the appropriate authorities on the ground, the coup of 18 November occurred.Google Scholar

75. See Rosenberg, W. G., Liberals in the Russian Revolution. The Constitutional Democratic Party, 1917–1921 (Princeton, New Jersey, 1974), pages 385–86.Google Scholar

76. See Delo Sibiri [organ of the SRs in Akmolinsk guberniia], no. 26 (20 July 1918).Google Scholar

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78. Bassin, M., “A Russian Mississippi?: A Political-Geographical Inquiry into the Vision of Russia on the Pacific 1840–1865” (University of California at Berkeley , 1983).Google Scholar

79. See Shishkin, V. I., “Iz istorii bor'by kommunisticheskoi partii i sovetskoi vlasti protiv anarkhizma v Zapadnoi Sibiri v 1919–1920 gg.,” Klassovaia bor'ba v sibirskoi derevne v period postroeniia sotsializma (Novosibirsk, 1978), pages 3–38. Also see Pavlunovskii, I. P., Obzor banditskogo dvizheniia po Sibiri s dekabria 1920 g. po ian 'varia 1922 g. (Novonikolaevsk, 1922); the existence of this rare Cheka publication was brought to my attention during a sojourn in the Soviet Union in April-May 1988.Google Scholar

80. Guins, , Sibir', soiuzniki, i Kolchak, vol. 1, page 287, concedes that he and his cohorts in Omsk consciously subscribed to the Kadet article of faith that “everything [should be] for the army, [and] that politics should be kept out of it.” That was also the view of the Bolshevik leaders, with the significant difference that they were more successful in implementing it. Recent studies in the West confirm that units with a makeup of 15% or more Communists during the summer of 1918 became the shock troops of the Red Army, far superior to all enemy forces in Siberia except for the elite Izhevtsy under Kappel. See M. von Hagen, The Red Army and the Revolution: Soldiers' Politics and State-Building in Soviet Russia, 1917–1930 (Ithaca, New York, forthcoming), chapters 1 and 2.Google Scholar