A few weeks ago someone asked a question about Admiral Kolchak, and in sending along some pointers for biographical information on him, I completely forgot that I had compiled a fairly detailed biography of him in the course of another project. I append that biography here, in case anyone is interested in this intriguing -- and in many ways admirable but flawed -- man.
I should explain that I wrote this up a part of a
"Biographical Directory of Russian Naval Officers, 1850-1918" -- a
sort of do-it- myself reference book, since at the time I was very annoyed at
the lack of reliable biographical information on Russian naval officers. By the
time I lost interest (since good stuff started to become available in Russian),
I had compiled about 2000 mini-bios, some only a line or two, others -- like
this one -- quite extensive. I've tried to interest a couple of publishers in
the idea of a "Directory of Russian Flag Officers, 1850-1918" based
on this information, but none of them were foolish enough to take me up on it.
Rather than let this information sit silently on my hard drive, I would be very
glad to share data with anyone interested in Russian naval officers. If you've
always wondered about Rozhestvenskii or Nebogatov or
A couple of last notes.
Names in UPPER CASE are cross-references to other officers in the directory.
Source notes in an abbreviated form are attached at the end. Transliteration of
Russian names and words is according to Library of Congress standard. Dates are
given in the form Old Style (used in
I hope this will be of interest to some Marhsters....
Steve McLaughlin stevem@sfpl.lib.ca.us
KOLCHAK, Aleksandr Vasil'evich. Admiral.
Kolchak's family reportedly descended from a Bosnian Muslim, Kolchak Pasha,
captured by the Russians in 1739. Aleksandr Vasil'evich was born on 4/16 November 1874 in
Kolchak served in the
Kolchak was in
Although he was still far from fully recovered,
Kolchak was eventually given command of the destroyer Serdityi.
The ship and her commander distinguished themselves during the final stages of
the siege of Port Arthur, during the defense of Captain N.O. von ESSEN's battleship, the Sevastopol', which anchored outside
the port to escape the Japanese 11in. howitzers firing into the harbor. Serdityi laid a minefield that was responsible for the loss
of the Japanese cruiser Takasago. For this action Kolchak was awarded the Sword
of the Order of
As the seige closed in
about the city, Kolchak commanded a 75mm land battery on the north-eastern
front, despite the fact that he suffered from bouts of pneumonia and
rheumatism, aftereffects of his years of Arctic exploration. He was wounded and
became a prisoner of war after the surrender of the city; he in remained in
hospital in
Returning to
Kolchak went on to command the destroyer Ussuriets until 1913, when he was transferred to the destroyer Pogranichnik, simultaneously acting as flag-captain for operations in the Baltic Fleet. Just before the First World War he chaired a committee that recommended the construction of 30 submarines.
During the First World War Kolchak was one of the Baltic Fleet's most active officers. Admiral N.O. von Essen often delegated the planning and command of difficult offensive mine- laying operations to him, and Kolchak gained considerable expertise in these missions. D.N. FEDOTOV, who was a lieutenant on the armored cruiser Rossiia when Kolchak was quartered aboard her in the latter part of 1914, described Kolchak as a "great favorite with the younger officers, he was not averse to chatting with us in the evenings and would come to the Wardroom for a smoke or a drink whenever he had a minute to spare."
While aboard Rossiia in
the winter of 1914/1915, Kolchak planned and took part in a minelaying
expedition deep into German waters. On the evening of 30 December 1914/12
January 1915 the cruisers Oleg, Bogatyr', Riurik and Rossiia (flying the
flag of Admiral V.A. KANIN, commander of the mine forces) steamed out of Ute.
While Oleg and Bogatyr' laid two minefields west as
Bornholm, Rossiia went even further west, laying 98
mines north of
When Rear Admiral P.L. TRUKHACHEV fell ill in
September 1915, Kolchak took temporary command of the Baltic Fleet's Mine (i.e., Destroyer) Division, a post he held until Trukhachev's recovery in late November. He was
simultaneously commander of naval forces in the
Kolchak was promoted to vice admiral in June 1916
-- the youngest officer of that rank in the Imperial Navy -- and appointed to
command the Black Sea Fleet, replacing Admiral A.A. EBERGARD, who had lost the
confidence of Stavka. Kolchak was given two main
tasks by the high command: defeat the U-boats and, as the tsar himself informed
him, plan an amphibious assault on the
One of Kolchak's first tasks as fleet commander was the organization a new fleet staff; the animosity between Admiral Ebergard's staff and Stavka was seriously affecting the communications between the two. One of the most prominent members of the new staff was Captain M.I. SMIRNOV, who had worked with Kolchak in the Baltic. In November and December Kolchak also made some changes in the commanders of the various units of the fleet; he was particularly dissatisfied with Rear Admiral M.P. SABLIN's leadership of the Black Sea Fleet's destroyers. Kolchak replaced Sablin with Admiral Prince V.V. TRUBETSKOI. (Kolchak's dislike of Sablin was no passing matter; in the fall of 1919, when White General A.I. Denikin's Navy Minister, Admiral GERASIMOV, proposed Sablin for the post of fleet commander, Kolchak rejected him, and Admiral D.V. NENIUKOV was appointed instead.)
Of the two tasks assigned him by Stavka -- defeating the U- boats and an amphibious assault
on the Bosporus -- Kolchak accomplished the first brilliantly; an aggressive
mine-laying campaign outside the U-boat bases at the Bosporus and at Varna in
Bulgaria soon led to the loss of three U-boats (and perhaps a fourth as well;
one boat simply disappeared, perhaps the victim of mines). By the end of 1916
the Germans had abandoned
Kolchak's second task, the landing at the Bosporus, was postponed by the entry of Rumania into the war on 14/27 August 1916; the rapid collapse of the Rumanian army forced the Russians to commit the troops intended for the Bosporus operation to the shoring-up of the Rumanian front.
There were other set-backs. On 7/20 October 1916
the dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariia
suffered a magazine explosion while anchored in
While serving in the Baltic Fleet, Kolchak had become aware of the potential of naval aviation, and during his tenure with the Black Sea Fleet he continued and intensified Admiral Ebergard's tactics of using his seaplane carriers for raids along the enemy's coasts; the seaplanes carried out bombing missions and also spotted for ships bombarding enemy positions.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Kolchak returned to
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
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 "
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
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
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
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Originally published at http://www.gwpda.org/naval/pers0002.htm
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