The textbooks of the Soviet period referred to Kolchak as the "counter-revolutionary leader" during the civil war. Brushing the dust of history, he was actually a genius scholar, Arctic explorer, brave warrior, and poor politician as an admiral.
Kolchak has a special liking for military career as a child. He gets up early every day to do gymnastics, take cold baths to strengthen his physique, and read the biographies of those military commanders who have made great achievements with relish. In 1888, when he was 13 years old, he was admitted to the St. Petersburg Naval Academy and read various books eagerly. He was also fluent in four foreign languages, including Chinese, which is difficult for foreigners to learn. At the age of 19, Kolchak graduated with honors.
At that time, scientists from various countries showed great interest in the untouched Arctic, and they organized expeditions to investigate. At the end of 1899, Kolchak received a letter of invitation from the famous Russian polar explorer Baron Thor. He was invited to join the Arctic expedition as a hydrologist. In the summer of 1900, the icebreaker "Dawn" with Thor's expedition set up anchor and set off for the Novosibirsk archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. In the spring of 1902, the expedition finally reached the Novosibirsk archipelago, but the route to the north was blocked by ice, and Kolchak and others had to return along the same route. In 1906, Kolchak's academic work "Ice Accumulation of the Kara Sea and the Siberian Sea" won the highest award of the Royal Geographical Society of Russia-the Great Constantine Gold Medal. In 1910, he sailed in the Far East with the icebreaker "Vai Gach Island", drawing maps and nautical charts. Later, it was precisely based on these nautical charts to open up the Arctic Ocean route.
In August 1914, when the First World War broke out, Kolchak, who was a naval officer in the Baltic Fleet, was extremely excited. However, the clumsy war machine of imperial Russia quickly failed to function, and many generals in Tsarist Russia behaved very mediocre. But Kolchak was very commanding. He attacked the German Marines head-on under Riga and was promoted to Rear Admiral soon after. Kolchak is good at mine-laying, and his ships often go deep into the enemy's waters to mine them far away, and he has sunk dozens of German ships. In 1916, Kolchak was promoted to lieutenant admiral and served as commander of the Black Sea Fleet. He was also outstanding in the Black Sea-sinking a number of German warships in Constantinople and firmly controlling the Black Sea in the hands of the Russian army.
The February Revolution broke out in Russia in March 1917, and the Tsar was forced to abdicate; Kolchak was the first admiral to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. He said: "I am not serving this or that form of government, but for the motherland that I regard as above all else." On June 17, 1917, sailors, soldiers and workers in Sevastopol The Congress passed a resolution to dismiss Kolchak from his position as commander of the Black Sea Fleet and send him to the United States for military inspections. Kolchak stayed in the United States for two months. When he returned to Japan through Japan, he learned that the Bolsheviks had held the October Revolution. He regarded himself as a representative of the overthrown legitimate government and believed that it was necessary to fight the Bolsheviks.
In 1918, a cabinet was established in Ufa in the Ural region, the Russian Provisional Government, and Kolchak was appointed as the Minister of Military Affairs. On November 18, 1918, Kolchak was declared the supreme consul in Russia, and the White Guard generals Denikin and Yudenich both recognized his power.
In a short period of time, Kolchak assembled an army of 150,000 and launched a full-scale offensive from east to west in the spring of 1919. The army has entered the area close to the Volga River, forcing the founder of the Soviet Red Army Trotsky to take an armored train to the front line to supervise the battle, and has sent guards into the battlefield many times. On the Belaya River, several officer regiments called Kolchak’s elite divisions were annihilated by the Red Army commanded by Tukhachevsky; the left flank of the front was counterattacked by the Southern Red Army commanded by Frunze, unable to get through. Connect with Denikin's front. Since then, the White Army has been devastated and retreats steadily. In October 1919, Kolchak's troops were defeated again in Tobolsk. Thus, the great retreat began. Dozens of trains full of soldiers, refugees and various items drove from Omsk to the east. The last one to leave Omsk was Kolchak, who was going to take the gold reserves obtained by the White Guards from the Kazan treasury to the east by car.
Kolchak had become an obstacle to the British, French, Czech generals Day Geda and Cossack chief Semenov. They all wanted to take possession of the train with gold, and no one cared about the life and death of the supreme consul. In December, Kolchak’s train was detained in Lower Udinsk on the order of French General Genin. On December 19, an uprising broke out in Irkutsk, the new temporary capital of Russia, and power was transferred to the Social Revolutionary Party and the Menshevik organization "political center". The French generals and the Czech Army made a deal with this "political center" and they betrayed Kolchak in exchange for guarantees that they would leave Russia safely.
In January 1920, the Supreme Consul Kolchak and his cabinet Prime Minister B. Pepelyaev were arrested. People from Moscow's "Cheka" (Committee for Anti-Revolutionaries) interrogated them for two weeks. Moscow calls instructions: "Secret execution." In the early morning of February 7, Red Army soldiers took Kolchak and Pepelyaev to an ice cave on the Angara River. The executioner suggested that Kolchak should be blindfolded, but he refused, but asked to fulfill his last wish-let him smoke a cigarette. As soon as the cigarette was burnt, the gunfire rang. The body was then thrown into the ice cave.
Kolchak's wife and children went into exile in Paris, France. The widow Sophia had a bleak evening scene and died in the hospital in 1956. His son Rostirarf Alexanderovich Kolchak joined the French army against the Nazi Germans in World War II and died of illness in 1965.
(If vanilla is tasteless) I first knew that Kolchak was watching "How Steel Is Made" when he was a child, and he was called the "Kolchak Bandit" in the book.
In 2008, Russia put this idealistic hero on the screen. The film subverted our impression of symbolic political definition from previous textbooks, and basically objectively reproduced the soldier’s change in the second half of his life with political changes. The ups and downs of life. Focus on the shaping of the characters, without too much video evaluation on the political background. The tragic ending of life caused by his character, the film has carried out a lot of moving renderings.
The movie itself has the characteristics of a blockbuster, in which the war scenes are majestic and majestic, and the special effects of the German naval battles are produced at a relatively high level (reminiscent of "Pearl Harbor", ha ha); after the confrontation with the Red Army, the scene of the vast snowfield corpses is also everywhere. It's shocking.
The language of the lens is exquisite, and it has the unique poetic characteristics of Russian films. The use of symbolic lenses is impressive, such as close-ups of old Anna's eyes (think of "Titanic" again, haha), broken wine glasses... it is also a finishing touch to the tragic atmosphere.
It's an unforgettable war hero movie!
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