Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (Александр. Васиилиевич. Колчак) (Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kolchak, about 1874-1920), Russian military strategist and Arctic explorer, admiral. He fought against Japan in the Russo-Japanese War. During the First World War, he made many exploits in the Baltic Fleet and was promoted to commander of the Black Sea Fleet. He supported the provisional government after the February Revolution in Russia and was forced into exile. He returned home after the October Revolution and led the White Guards against the Red Army led by the Soviet Communist Party (Bolsheviks). He was recognized by the Allies as head of the Russian Provisional Government (1918-1920), later betrayed by his party to the Menshevik-Soviet-Revolutionary regime, for the Cheka secret executions in Soviet-era textbooks, referring to Kolchak as a period of civil war "leader of the counter-revolutionary". Brushed off the dust of history, the former admiral was actually a gifted scholar, an Arctic explorer, a brave warrior and an outstanding statesman.
Character Deeds
St. Petersburg Naval Academy High student
Kolchak had a soft spot for his military career when he was a child. He got up early every day to do gymnastics, take cold baths to strengthen his body, and read with great interest the biographical stories of those military commanders who made great achievements. In 1888, at the age of 13, he was admitted to the St. Petersburg Naval School, voraciously read books, and was proficient in four foreign languages, including Chinese, which was difficult for foreigners to learn. At the age of 19, Kolchak graduated with honors.
Hydrologist for Arctic Expeditions
At that time, scientists from all over the world were very interested in the untouched Arctic region, and they organized expeditions to investigate. At the end of 1899, Kolchak was invited by the famous Russian polar explorer Baron Thor. He was invited to join an Arctic expedition as a hydrologist. In the summer of 1900, the icebreaker "Dawn" carried Thor's expedition at anchor and set off for the Novosibirsk Islands in the Arctic Ocean. In the spring of 1902, the expedition finally reached the Novosibirsk Islands, but the route to the north was blocked by the ice group, and Kolchak and others had to return the same way. In 1906, Kolchak's academic book "Ice Accumulation in the Kara Sea and the Siberian Sea" won the highest award of the Tsarist Russian Royal Geographical Society - the Grand Constantine Gold Medal. In 1910, he sailed in the Far East with the icebreaker "Vaigach Island", drawing maps and nautical charts. Later, it was based on these nautical charts to open up the Arctic Ocean waterway. In August 1914, when the First World War broke out, Kolchak, who was a naval officer in the Baltic Fleet, was extremely excited
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However, the cumbersome war machine of imperial Russia soon failed, and many generals of Tsarist Russia behaved very mediocrely. But Kolchak was extremely commanding, and he gave the German Marines a head-on attack in Riga, and was promoted to rear admiral soon after. Kolchak was good at laying, and his ships often went deep into enemy waters to lay mines far away, and sank dozens of German ships. In 1916, Kolchak was promoted to Vice Admiral and appointed Commander of the Black Sea Fleet. He also made outstanding achievements in the Black Sea - sinking several German warships in Constantinople and firmly holding the sea control of the Black Sea in the hands of the Russian army.
The commander in the revolutionary storm 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 in the service of one form of government or another, but in the service of my fatherland, which I regard as above all else." Sailors, soldiers and workers in Sevastopol, June 17, 1917 The congress passed a resolution to dismiss Kolchak as the commander of the Black Sea Fleet and send him to the United States for a military inspection. Kolchak stayed in the United States for two months, and when he returned through Japan, he learned that the Bolsheviks had held the October Revolution, and he regarded himself as the representative of the overthrown legitimate government, and felt that it was necessary to fight against the Bolsheviks.
In 1918, the highest consul of Russia and the supreme commander of the White Guards
established a cabinet in power in Ufa, the Urals region, that is, the Russian Provisional Government, and Kolchak was appointed as the Minister of Military Affairs. On November 18, 1918, Kolchak was proclaimed the supreme consul of Russia, and the White Guard generals Denikin and Yudenich both recognized his regime.
In a short period of time, Kolchak had assembled an army of 150,000 men and launched an all-out attack 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 sent guards into the battlefield many times. On the Belaya River, several officer corps, which could be called Kolchak's elite division, were annihilated by the Red Army commanded by Tukhachevsky; Connect with Denikin's Front. Since then, the White Army has been unable to recover and has been in retreat. In October 1919, Kolchak's forces were again defeated at Tobolsk. And so the Great Retreat began. Dozens of trains laden with soldiers, refugees and various items head east from Omsk. The last to leave Omsk was Kolchak, who was to take the gold reserves that the White Guards had brought from the treasury in Kazan to the east.
The end of the "hero"
There are more than 500,000 troops who follow Kolchak, and 750,000 exiles who oppose the Bolsheviks and are nostalgic for the tsar, including 270,000 bishops, monks and nuns; in addition, the ladies
and their There are more than 200,000 children. In fact, among the 1.2 million-strong fleeing team,
there is also an amazing secret - 500 tons of gold nuggets worth $500 million at the time...
After the October Revolution in Russia, the former commander of the Russian fleet, Alexander Gao Erchak gathered the remnants of the Russian army, organized counter-revolutionary armed forces, and established an independent government in Omsk with the assistance of the United Kingdom. Not long after, in November 1919, Omsk was captured by the Red Army. In order to preserve his strength, Kolchak decided to lead his troops across more than 6,000 kilometers of Siberia and fled to the Pacific coast, where he sought the support of Japan in order to make a comeback.
There were more than 500,000 troops who followed Kolchak, along with 750,000 exiles who opposed the Bolsheviks and were nostalgic for the tsar, including 270,000 bishops, monks and nuns; in addition, there were 200,000 ladies and their children. Thousands of people. In fact, there is an amazing secret hidden in this mighty escape team of more than 1.2 million - 500 tons of gold nuggets worth 500 million US dollars at that time, this is the military budget allocated by the tsar to Kolchak, which is packaged in 28 armed escort vehicles.
The average winter temperature in Omsk is -22°C. Under the leadership of Kolchak, the 1.25 million army embarked on a journey of 6,000 kilometers. The minus 20 degrees Celsius is not uncommon for people living in the European part of Russia, but no one expected it. Today, the temperature dropped sharply from minus 30 ℃ at the time of departure to minus 60 ℃. The small town of Tomsk, more than 1,000 kilometers east of Omsk, where the disaster began, was the coldest town on earth that year.
The icy wind roared, and the blizzard stabbed at the body like a saw, bringing indescribable suffering to the rare mass migration in history. Before long, on the boundless Siberian snowfields, frozen people, abandoned sleds, frozen horses, together with dead bodies and endless snow all around, covered the roads of Siberia.
From November 13, 1919 to February of the following year, for three months, a human tragedy caused by an unbelievable cold turned into a serial drama one day without interruption. The 28 armed escorts carrying the gold nuggets were completely out of fuel, and they had no choice but to exchange the gold nuggets on horse-drawn sleighs. However, the extreme cold caused the Siberian thoroughbred horses that pulled the sled to die one by one, and these huge treasures inherited from Tsarist Russia had to be thrown into the Siberian wilderness. The whereabouts of the 500-ton gold nugget is unknown and remains a historical mystery.
However, the march did not end there. People were like zombies on the move, with only one pair of feet still rubbing alternately from left to right. The snow is getting bigger and bigger, and the whole universe seems to be a huge package sealed by snow flakes. At first, the conductor shouted "no sleep" to motivate people. But later, even they themselves were lured by the Sleeping God.
The team of the Great Migration is shrinking at an ever-increasing rate every day. The severe cold in Siberia, which has never been seen in a hundred years, has turned into extreme suffering, cruelly torturing people. The snow fell like crazy, getting harder and harder, and 200,000 people froze to death in just one night near the city of Nikolaevsk.
By the end of February 1920, the ranks had been reduced from 1.25 million to 250,000. After all the hardships, these people finally came from Omsk to Lake Baikal, 2,000 kilometers away. However, for ultimate safety, it is necessary to cross Lake Baikal. The 80-kilometer-wide lake was covered with 3-meter-thick ice, and 250,000 living people began to cross the ice.
The ice on the lake shimmered like the floor of a bare dance floor. The frozen surface of Lake Baikal was extremely cold. The temperature dropped to minus 69°C, and the violent blizzard roared as if it would freeze the bones of the victims. Wearing bearskins or wrapping sealskins is useless in a place like this, the extreme cold just makes the bearskins act as ice masks on the body.
Thousands more people froze to death. The completely unimaginable scene appeared on the frozen Lake Baikal: a general's wife was about to give birth on the ice, and there was no one to help, and people walked past her with heavy steps and expressionless faces. The general used his body to block a partition, originally to prevent people from seeing his wife giving birth, but he really froze like a wall. The general's wife froze to death with the child who was about to be born, and after a while, everyone froze to death.
...the blizzard finally subsided, and a dead silence enveloped the surroundings. It's passed. Sorrow, pain, sighs, whispers, hatred, indignation, all disappeared with 250,000 souls. The 250,000 corpses on Lake Baikal lay there until the lake thawed the following summer. When the ice thawed, this terrifying and appalling scene quietly disappeared from view and sank into the deep lake bottom.
character ending
Kolchak had now become an obstacle for the British, the French, and the Czech general J. Gaida and the Cossack leader Semenov, among others. They all wanted to own 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 Nizhny-Udinsk on the orders of the French general Genin. On December 19, an uprising broke out in Irkutsk, the new provisional capital of Russia, and power was transferred to the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Menshevik organization "Political Center". The French generals and the Czech regiments made a deal with this "political center", they betrayed Kolchak in exchange for the assurance of their safe departure from Russia.
In January 1920, the supreme consul Kolchak and his cabinet Prime Minister B. Pepelyaev were arrested. They were interrogated for two weeks by people from Moscow's "Chika" (Revolutionary Committee). Moscow called with 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 be blindfolded, but he refused, but asked for his last wish—let him smoke a cigarette. As soon as the cigarettes were burnt out, the gunshots rang out. The body was then thrown into the ice cave.
Kolchak's wife and children live in exile in Paris, France. The widow, Sophia, died in hospital in 1956. His son, Rosti Ralph Alexander Kolchak, joined the French army against the Nazis in World War II and died in 1965.
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