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Updated: June 17, 2025
The Sudan type is fairly clean, but this Omsk variety is a cloud of atomic filth which carries with it every known quality of pollution and several that are quite unknown. I don't remember being able to smell a Sudan storm, but this monstrous production stank worse than a by-election missile. The service of a British soldier on these special trips is not exactly a sinecure.
A few miles to the Urals and Europe again so near and yet so far! As Omsk, unlike so many other towns of Siberia, did not care to pay the usual toll demanded by the railway prospectors, it is situated several versts from the main trunk line. To overcome this inconvenience a branch line was afterwards run up to the town itself.
For the first route through Iscim, Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnojarsk, Nijni-Ufimsk, and Irkutsk, a second route has been substituted more to the south, passing by Orenburg, Akmolinsk, Minoussinsk, Abatoni and Vladivostock. When these six thousand kilometres of rails are laid, Petersburg will be within six days of the Japan Sea.
Here the station commandant informed us that General Bolderoff wished our train to wait for his, as it was most essential that he should have a conference with the Minister for War. This was the first intimation I had received that General Bolderoff had left Omsk and was on his way to visit the Ufa front.
If I had been paid in £1 notes or sovereigns, I could have got something approaching 200 roubles for each at the Perm rate! Wages had increased under Bolshevik rule, but prices were such that one of the petitions we had to forward to the Government at Omsk on behalf of the workmen was that the wages and prices should be the same as under the old régime.
In that region the ground never thaws more than a foot or two from the surface; below to an unknown depth it is hardened by perpetual frost. Many Poles have been involuntary residents of this region, and contributed to the development of its few resources. North of Tobolsk, the Ostiaks are the principal aboriginals, and frequently wander as far south as Omsk.
To leave Omsk by one of the breaches would not be difficult after nightfall. As for purchasing a carriage to replace the tarantass, that was impossible. There were none to be let or sold. But what want had Michael Strogoff now for a carriage? Was he not alone, alas? A horse would suffice him; and, very fortunately, a horse could be had.
There was little or no hospital accommodation, and the Omsk Ministers were deaf to all appeals for help, they being more concerned as to how they could shake off the Supreme Governor's control than how best to perform their duty. In the early days of February the feeding of the army became a pressing problem, and still the Omsk Ministers remained silent.
About 2.30 P.M., November 18, I was informed that Admiral Koltchak had assumed absolute power under the title of "Supreme Governor," with a Council of Ministers who would be responsible to him for the proper performance of their duties; that he proposed to call on the French representative, Monsieur Renault, to present himself in the evening; that he would then call on me, as the senior British officer in Omsk, and in my case he would answer any questions I chose to put to him.
We had settled down for a winter in Spascoe, when I received the necessary orders to proceed to Omsk, with the suggestion that before executing them I had better visit Headquarters at Vladivostok for a conference with General Knox. I tried to get a carriage suitable for the journey for my Staff from the railway authorities, but failed, and ended by purloining a cattle-truck.
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