Execution of Kolchak

In the early hours of 7 February 1920, between four and five o’clock, a firing squad in Irkutsk shot Admiral Alexander Kolchak, the former Supreme Ruler of Russia, and his last prime minister, Viktor Pepelyayev. The execution took place where the little river Ushakovka flows into the Angara, and the bodies were pushed through a hole into the water under the ice. They were never found. The sentence was passed by the Bolshevik Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee. Its resolution is dated 6 February, although one of the committee’s members later gave 7 February. On the same day Ivan Smirnov of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 5th Army issued an order to shoot Kolchak, Pepelyayev and others immediately.

The road to Irkutsk

After the fall of Omsk in November 1919 Kolchak retreated east along the Trans-Siberian Railway, while his authority crumbled under the blows of the Red Army and of risings in the rear. At the end of December his trains were stranded at Nizhneudinsk, where on 27 December, on the instructions of the Allies, the admiral was taken under international protection and the Czechoslovak command took over the train carrying the gold reserve. On 4 January 1920 Kolchak signed a decree handing the title of Supreme Ruler to General Anton Denikin. He travelled on under Czechoslovak guard.

In Irkutsk, meanwhile, power had been seized by the Socialist Revolutionary and Menshevik Political Centre. On 15 January at about seven in the evening, at Irkutsk station, the Czechoslovak commandant of the train handed Kolchak, Pepelyayev and several others over to representatives of the Centre. The head of the Allied mission, the French General Maurice Janin, consented, and the decision remains controversial to this day. The prisoners were taken across the frozen Angara to the provincial prison. Anna Timiryova, the admiral’s companion, gave herself up voluntarily, wishing to share his fate.

Interrogation and sentence

On 21 January the Political Centre handed power, and with it the prisoners, to the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee. That day the interrogations began, conducted by a commission chaired by the Chekist Samuel Chudnovsky.

The matter was hastened by the march of the remnants of the White armies. After the death of General Vladimir Kappel on 26 January they were led by General Sergei Voytsekhovsky. On 3 February his troops took Cheremkhovo (PL) and moved on Irkutsk, and Voytsekhovsky demanded, among other things, Kolchak’s release. The committee justified the sentence by the activity of a White underground in the city and the threat that the prisoner would be freed. “Better the execution of two criminals than hundreds of innocent victims,” the resolution declared. A note by Vladimir Lenin on Kolchak’s case has also survived, addressed to Trotsky’s deputy Efraim Sklyansky and intended for Smirnov. Historians disagree about whether it was written before or after the shooting. Smirnov reported to Lenin on 9 February that the sentence had been carried out.

The execution was directed by Chudnovsky, and the firing squad was commanded by Bursak (real name Blatlinder). Kolchak refused a blindfold. He asked that his blessing be passed on to his wife and son. Timiryova was refused a last meeting.

The same day

On 7 February, the day of the execution, the Czechoslovak Legion concluded an armistice with the Red 5th Army at the station of Kuytun (PL). The legionaries, who for months had wanted only to go home, were given a free road to Vladivostok, and in return undertook not to free Kolchak and to leave the gold to the Irkutsk authorities. The last Czechoslovak train passed through Irkutsk on 1 March. News of the admiral’s death reached the world late. John Stevens, the American in charge of Allied supervision of the railway, telegraphed from Harbin only on 11 February: “Kolchak, Pepeliaev shot at Irkutsk February 7.” In 1999 a Russian court refused to rehabilitate the admiral.