Czechoslovaks take Omsk

On 7 June 1918 the leaders of the Bolshevik soviet in Omsk, the largest city of western Siberia, boarded a steamer and sailed down the Irtysh towards Tobolsk. The day before, units of the Czechoslovak Corps had routed the Red Guards defending the approaches to the city. Omsk passed into anti-Bolshevik hands, and the last obstacle on the Trans-Siberian Railway between the two large groupings of Czechoslovaks disappeared. Russian accounts date the capture of the city to 6 or 7 June, but both the orders of the new authorities and Czech accounts indicate that the Bolsheviks left Omsk on 7 June.

Omsk between two fronts

After the outbreak of the revolt at the end of May the corps was split into several parts. The group of Captain Radola Gajda, about 4,400 men strong, took Novonikolayevsk on 26 May and fought on east and west of it, while the men of Colonel Sergei Voitsekhovsky took Chelyabinsk a day later. In the middle lay Omsk, where the soviet had communications with Moscow via Tyumen and Yekaterinburg and was bringing in reinforcements. Some of the Red units were made up of former prisoners of war, Hungarians and Germans. As early as 25 May, at suburban Kulomzino across the Irtysh, the staff train of the Czechoslovak 6th Regiment refused to have its wagons searched and turned back west. Two Red Guard trains pursuing it caught up with the Czechoslovaks at Maryanovka station. According to Czech sources about 120 Bolsheviks and 16 legionaries were killed in a short fight, while the Soviet version credited the victory to the Reds.

Talks went on over the following days. The French Major Guinet of the military mission attached to the corps held the Czechoslovak commanders back from attacking and travelled to Omsk to negotiate with the soviet. Talks in the night of 31 May/1 June came to nothing, because the soviet, in line with Trotsky’s order, demanded that the Czechoslovaks lay down their arms. On the western approaches to the city, near Maryanovka, the Reds concentrated, according to various estimates, about 3,000 men. Another detachment, made up partly of prisoners of war, was sent east against Gajda.

The battle of Maryanovka and the flight of the soviet

On 4 June the Czechoslovaks again advanced on Maryanovka. The 6th Regiment was joined by the 2nd Regiment, and the whole force, called the Omsk group, was led by Lieutenant Jan Syrový, later a general. On 6 June, while a weaker part of the legionaries feigned a frontal attack, a detachment working round the Red positions came out in their rear and forced them to flee. According to Czech accounts the group lost 13 killed.

News of the defeat settled the matter. The members of the soviet sailed away by steamer, taking with them, according to the Czech historian Victor Fic, about 280 million roubles. Workers and railwaymen whom the soviet had armed earlier turned against it and did not allow the mined railway bridge over the Irtysh to be blown up. The American consul in Omsk later wrote that at the moment of the surrender the Czechs were still many miles from the city, and that the matter was decided by the disloyalty of the railwaymen and workers, who went over to their side. The anti-Bolshevik officers’ organisation of Colonel Pavel Ivanov-Rinov (PL) came out of hiding. There were shoot-outs in the streets with the remnants of the Red Guards. Soon a detachment of Siberian Cossacks under Ataman Boris Annenkov rode into the city, greeted with flowers. The Czechoslovaks who were already in the city also played their part: about 500 recruits held at the end of May in a prisoner-of-war camp disarmed their guards and occupied the fortress and public buildings.

In his first order, issued on 7 June, Ivanov-Rinov announced that “the whole fullness of power” belonged from then on to him and to the plenipotentiary of the Provisional Siberian Government until it was handed over to the zemstvo and municipal self-governments. Once the way was clear, word was sent to Maryanovka. The first trains of Syrový’s group entered Omsk on 8 June and were welcomed enthusiastically by the inhabitants, and one of them almost at once went on east against the Reds fighting Gajda. On 9 June, at Tatarsk station, the western and eastern groupings of the corps joined up.

What came next

Omsk became the centre of anti-Bolshevik Siberia. The West Siberian Commissariat, hitherto underground, moved here from Novonikolayevsk, and on 30 June the formation of a new Siberian government under Pyotr Vologodsky was proclaimed. The Czechoslovaks left two battalions in the city. Ivanov-Rinov’s order had promised to hand power over to civilians, but the military kept the decisive voice in Omsk to the end. In November the city became the capital of Admiral Alexander Kolchak.