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Updated: May 25, 2025
At the outset I was faced with the difficulty of not being in a position to offer anything definite to the workmen in return for their willingness to assist the combatant branch of the Russian service in its new crusade against anarchy. With nothing to offer it seemed hopeless to ask for so much. 4th February, 1919. To His High Excellency, Admiral Koltchak, Supreme Governor.
Koltchak was quite overcome, first with rage at the crime itself, and secondly at his impotence in being unable to prevent it. But Omsk went on the even tenor of its way: it is remarkable what horrors people can face without a tremor when they get used to them, as they must in revolutions. The coup d'état had thrown the proposed Perm offensive completely into the background.
I had my suspicions that the two groups of the Government had come to grips, and that each had decided to destroy the other; that Admiral Koltchak was to be sounded as to which of these groups had his favour, and that his life, and perhaps that of his British escort, would depend upon his answer.
The other armies were war-weary and clamouring for demobilisation and therefore unwilling to fight the Bolsheviks. If Admiral Koltchak was compelled to make a reasonable arrangement with Japan, their army would guarantee to liquidate the Bolshevik forces in two months and establish a monarchy satisfactory to the Russian officers.
As I was leaving Vladivostok I heard that the Red forces that had been organised in the American neutral zones had at last boldly attacked their protectors. If this was correct, it may be the reason why Admiral Koltchak was able to report their defeat and rout over the Chinese border and we were back again at the point at which British and Czech co-operation had arrived a year previously.
While the loyal Russian officers were being murdered in their beds, other events not less important were happening. When Admiral Koltchak assumed supreme authority the Directorate was surrounded by a party of Royalist officers as turbulent and lawless as Trotsky himself. Private code messages passed between these officers as freely as if they already had the power in their own hands.
This is believed to be the first correspondence ever conducted by the head of any Russian Government upon a purely labour subject. It shows that in supporting Admiral Koltchak we had at least this fact to recommend our policy: that he was a democrat, and anxious that his country should be in labour matters amongst the first flight of nations.
There would have been better ground for assisting Finns, Letts, Esthonians, and Ukrainians against Bolshevik imperialism; but it was to Koltchak, Denikin, and their north Russian friends, rather than to the little peoples that help was sent, and a powerful motive in the discrimination was the pledge of the Russian conservatives to resume responsibility for Russia's debts to her Allies, particularly France, which the Bolsheviks had repudiated.
A very tense condition of affairs existed, when on January 31 I asked for a special interview with Admiral Koltchak that I might introduce my colleague and comrade, Colonel Johnson, and talk over the situation. The admiral was out walking by the river, quite unattended, but in full view of the guard at his residence near the river bank.
Early on Friday I was informed that Admiral Koltchak, the Minister for War, was also travelling to the Czech ceremony, and, as engines were very scarce, would I allow his carriage to be attached to my train? I readily consented.
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