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On January 8, 1919, Denikin assumed supreme command of all the anti-Bolshevik forces in the south: the Volunteer Army now became a part of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia and Denikin its Commander in Chief (Glavnokomanduiushchii Vooruzhënnymi Silami na luge Rossii). (He had refused the title “Supreme Leader”—Verkhovnyi Rukovoditel—held by Alekseev.)101 The status of the Don Cossacks was partially resolved with Allied help. After the defeated Germans had withdrawn from the Ukraine and he had lost their patronage, Krasnov had no choice but to accommodate the Allies. They told him he would receive aid only through Denikin, and that to obtain it he had to subordinate himself to him.102 Krasnov had difficulty with this arrangement and in February 1919 made way for a Don Cossack of greater pro-Russian sympathies.* The Don Cossack army, however, was never fully integrated: it retained its distinct identity and was promised that it would be deployed only on the Don front.103

   On the Eastern front—the Volga, Urals, and Siberia—where the politicians led and the military followed, there was growing dissatisfaction with the bickering and intrigues that marked the Directory’s rule: to many it seemed a “repetition of Kerensky.”104 The Directory’s impotence was indeed striking: it is said to have had “as much voice in affairs as a cuckoo-clock on the wall of a rowdy saloon.”105 Calls resounded for a “firm hand.” How else, it was asked, could the most oppressive dictatorial regime in history be overcome, except by another dictatorship? A messenger dispatched from Moscow by the National Center brought to Omsk a recommendation to this effect; similar demands were made by Siberian politicians and even some Social-Democrats. “The idea of dictatorship hung in the air.”106

The events that precipitated the November 17, 1918, Omsk coup that brought to power a dictator in the person of Admiral Alexander Kolchak were the subversive activities of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. As noted, Chernov, the party’s titular head and unchallenged leader of its left wing, had all along opposed the concessions his colleagues had made to the Right SRs and the liberals as a price of forming the Directory. On October 24 the Central Committee of the SR Party in Ufa passed on his motion a resolution that in effect repudiated the Ufa accords.107 The “Chernov Manifesto,” as it came to be known, stated that in the struggle between Bolshevism and democracy, “the latter is dangerously imperiled by counterrevolutionary elements that have allied themselves [with democracy] for the purpose of ruining it.” While supporting the Directory in its struggle against “commissar autocracy,”

in anticipation of possible political crises resulting from counter-revolutionary schemes, all the forces of the party must be immediately mobilized, given military training and armed, so as to be able to repel at any moment the attacks of the counter-revolutionaries who organize a civil war in the rear of the anti-Bolshevik front.

The document leaked, infuriating the military, whom it reminded of what the Petrograd Soviet had done to them in 1917. More sensible SRs were appalled. General Boldyrev wrote in his diary that this “Manifesto” showed that the SR Central Committee was resuming its “treacherous work” by declaring the intention to form a new government and secretly gathering an armed force to put it in power: it was nothing less than a coup d’état directed from the left.108 In the opinion of General Knox, had such a document been written in England, its authors would have been shot.109 Avksentev and Zenzinov, members of the Central Committee as well as dominant figures in the Directory, were upset by the Manifesto, but out of party loyalty did not disown it, thereby reinforcing the prevalent impression that the SR members of the Directory were conniving in a looming putsch.

This belief provided the rationale for removing the SRs from the government—an act tantamount to liquidating the Directory. When Chernov’s Manifesto became known in Omsk, Vologodskii, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and General Boldyrev called for the arrest of the SR Central Committee.110 At the same time, judiciary proceedings were initiated against the document’s authors.

While these events were taking place, Kolchak was on an inspection tour of the front; he returned to Omsk on November 16. The following day several officers and Cossacks approached him with the request that he take power. Among them was General D. A. Lebedev, Denikin’s liaison officer in Omsk and once a close associate of Kornilov’s, who hated the SRs for their role in the Kornilov affair. Kolchak refused for three reasons: he had no armed force at his disposal (this was in Boldyrev’s charge); he did not know the attitude of the Siberian government; and he did not wish to act disloyally toward the Directory, which he served.111 Rather than assume dictatorial powers, he said he was considering resigning his ministerial post, which was to him a source of endless frustration.

Rebuffed, the supporters of a dictatorship apparently decided to force his hand. At midnight of November 17–18, in a raging storm, a detachment of Siberian Cossacks, led by Ataman I. N. Krasilnikov, broke into a private meeting held at the residence of the Deputy Minister of the Interior. Present were several SRs, including Avksentev and Zenzinov. The latter two were arrested along with their host; Argunov, Avksentev’s deputy, was taken in later that night. The coup, directed against the Socialists-Revolutionaries in the government and apparently masterminded by Lebedev, was a total surprise to everyone, including Kolchak.

Because of the myths spread about the circumstances that brought Kolchak to power—myths that had a very harmful effect on his relations with democratic circles in Russia and abroad—it is important to establish certain facts. For one, Kolchak did not engineer the coup: no evidence has been produced to show that he instigated it or even knew of it beforehand. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt his version of events, namely that he first learned of what had happened when he received a phone call in the middle of the night.112 According to his biographer, Kolchak was “perhaps the only member of the Council of Ministers of whom it can be said with certainty that he was not privy to Krasilnikov’s coup.”113 Nor is there any basis for the claim, originating with French generals, that the Omsk coup had been masterminded by the English mission.114 The evidence, some of it made available only after World War II, corroborates General Knox’s assertion that the coup “was carried out by the Siberian government without the previous knowledge, and without in any sense the connivance of Great Britain.”115 Archival materials indicate that ten days before the coup, when rumors of it were rife, Knox had warned Kolchak that such a step would be “fatal.”116

The news of the arrests spread during the night and at six a.m. the cabinet of ministers held an emergency session. The demise of the Directory being accepted as a fait accompli, the cabinet temporarily assumed full authority.117 The majority of the ministers felt that power should be entrusted to a military dictator. Kolchak suggested Boldyrev for the post, but the candidacy was rejected on the grounds that the general could not be spared from his responsibilities as Commander in Chief. The cabinet then chose Kolchak, with one dissenting vote. When he learned of this decision (he was at the front at the time) Boldyrev was so outraged that he advised Kolchak to resign, threatening that the army would not obey his orders.118 Since Kolchak did not heed his advice, Boldyrev gave up his command and left for Japan.* Allied representatives in Omsk promptly gave Kolchak their support, as did the two members of the Directory not under arrest.119 The Directory enjoyed so little popular support that no one rose to its defense: this much is conceded even by Argunov.120 Maiskii, a Menshevik who later turned Bolshevik and ended up as Soviet ambassador to England, admits that the population of Omsk sympathized with Kolchak, from whom it expected the restoration of order: the people he encountered immediately after the coup wore the expression “if not of happiness then of something like relief.” Local workers took the imposition of a military dictatorship in stride.121