The Samara government had raised a small 'People's Army', which fought alongside the Czech Corps. A few early successes were followed, however, by a Red Army counter-attack in late September, and the Komuch forces had to fall back from their original Volga base into the southern Urals and western Siberia.
Meanwhile, the European Allied powers, although obsessed with their life or death struggle with Germany on the western front, had maintained their presence on the fringes of Russia. Responding to the successes of the Central Powers before and after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, they had kept ships and landing parties in the two peripheral ports that they could reach and the Germans could not: Murmansk and Vladivostok. The 'rescue' of the Czech Corps provided a justification for further operations in Russia. In early August 1918 a small expeditionary force, led by the British, took control of the port of Arkhangelsk, south of Murmansk and 600 miles north of Moscow. Japan, a non-European ally, landed forces in some strength at Vladivostok, as did the British and the Americans. A minor British army unit, a reserve battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, was even sent 'up country' to Omsk.
Despite the Ufa State Conference and the involvement of the Allies, by the late summer of 1918 political opinion in the anti-Bolshevik camp, and especially in Omsk, had become more polarised. It was a conflict in multiple dimensions - between left and right, between soldiers and civilians, between locals (Siberians) and outsiders (refugees from European Russia). An especially important issue was the presence of the two Socialist Revolutionary members in the Directory. The SRs were bitter enemies of both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. Nevertheless, they were regarded by those on the right as little different from Lenin's party and certainly as part of Russia's humiliation as a great power in 1917; the Director Avksentiev had been minister of the interior in the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky. What also aroused ongoing hostility from other parties was the SR's claim to an exclusive and continuing legitimacy, as a result of their landslide success in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.6
For their part the SRs, who regarded themselves as the true heirs of the 1917 revolution, not its opponents, were increasing distrustful of their non-socialist political adversaries, and especially of the military officer corps. Etched in their collective memory was the struggle with the autocracy, especially in the failed revolution of 1905. In August 1917 there had been the attempt by General Kornilov to seize effective power in Petrograd. Most recently, in September 1918, conservative officers had briefly overthrown the government led by the veteran SR N. V. Chaikovsky, which had been created in Arkhangelsk (under
British protection). In Omsk there were violent incidents in which SR activists were killed by right-wing death squads.
These growing tensions prompted the national SR leader Viktor Chernov to draft a manifesto (obrashchenie) that made the struggle with 'counter-revolutionary intrigues' a main priority. The manifesto called on party members to be mobilised, trained and armed to resist such intrigues, and was issued by the PSR Central Committee (based in Ekaterinburg in the Urals) in late October 1918.7 This act in turn further inflamed the right, and it was of special importance in motivating the imprisonment of the SR Directors in Omsk on 17-18 November.
The conflict was furthered by the political and institutional weakness of the Directory, which had been grafted on top of an existing non- socialist 'Siberian' government. Many ofthe individuals and institutions in that government continued in power within a 'Council of Ministers' (Sovet ministrov), formed on 4 November. Meanwhile, the prestige of the Directory suffered because the military campaign being conducted in its name was not going well; the anti-Bolshevik forces were having to give up ground to the growing Red Army on the Volga, and then in the southern Urals. The retreat made it seem to conservative soldiers - Russians and foreigners alike - that what was required was 'firm' authority, organised in the form of uncompromising military rule.8
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was a remarkable - and ultimately tragic - figure.9 In August 1916, at the age of only forty-two, he had been promoted to the rank of vice admiral, and made commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet; this force was an important element of Russia's war effort against Turkey. Kolchak was already a much decorated war hero, having led daring offensive destroyer actions in both the Russo- Japanese War and in the Baltic in the First World War. In addition he had earned a reputation as an intrepid polar explorer, and an ocean- ographer. From his service in the Naval General Staff during the early 1910s he had made valuable political contacts. After the 1917 revolution Kolchak furthered his political reputation by opposing revolutionary change in the armed forces. At the Sevastopol naval base in early June
when confronted by radical sailors who demanded that officers surrender their side arms, Kolchak threw his ceremonial sabre overboard and resigned his post.
The Provisional Government despatched the admiral with a naval mission to the United States, and he visited the British Admiralty en route. After his visit to America he departed from San Francisco on 25 October (New Style), aiming to return to Russia via the port of Vladivostok. By the time he reached Yokohama, Kerensky and the Provisional Government had been overthrown; unable and unwilling to return to Russia under the Bolshevik 'anarchy', Kolchak stayed in the Far East in the winter of 1917-18. A man of action, still committed to the defeat of the Central Powers, Kolchak offered his services to the British and was invited to take part in the Mesopotamia campaign. En route to the Persian Gulf, he had reached Singapore from Japan in March
when he was recalled by the Russian (pre-Soviet) ambassador to China, and asked to raise forces for the Russian-owned Chinese- Eastern Railway. Based in Kharbin (Harbin), Kolchak held his post for three months in the spring and early summer of 1918; he achieved little and returned to Japan in late July.
During his summer in Japan Kolchak had talks with General Alfred Knox, the British Army's leading expert on Russia. General Knox was impressed by Kolchak's energy and his no-nonsense preference for military government; he reported to the War Office in late August 1918 that 'there is no doubt that he is the best Russian for our purposes in the Far East'.10 In early September Kolchak and Knox sailed together across the Sea of Japan to Vladivostok, where they disembarked on the 8th. The two men set off by train into Siberia two weeks later. Of necessity the journey was a slow one, and a further three weeks would pass before Kolchak reached Omsk (on 13 October).
Kolchak's decision to travel deep into Siberia has intrigued historians. When on trial for his life at Irkutsk in January 1920, the admiral maintained that he had hoped to join his family in south Russia.11 It is more likely that he was exploring various options, in the highly uncertain and rapidly developing political and military situation of September and October 1918. One possibility was a role with the anti- Bolshevik forces taking shape in the Urals and western Siberia. Another was making his way further west - if a route opened - to join the forces of General Alexeev and General Denikin; these two leading figures in the old army were reported to be waging an isolated but successful struggle to consolidate their position with their 'Volunteer Army' in the north Caucasus (south Russia) region. There is only circumstantial or post factum evidence that Kolchak journeyed with the intention of becoming - or being helped by the British Army to become - a regional military dictator, let alone an all-Russian one. The PA-RG and the Directory did not even exist when he left Vladivostok.12