Horvat government

In July 1918, at Grodekovo station in the Russian Maritime Province, right on the border with China, General Dmitry Horvat proclaimed himself Provisional Ruler (Vremenny Pravitel) until the restoration of an all-Russian state authority. He had come here from Harbin in a special train, accompanied by members of his cabinet and Japanese officers, and issued a proclamation on the formation of a new government. Russian biographies of Horvat give the date as 10 July, but American diplomatic reports from Peking and Harbin say that the proclamation was announced at Grodekovo on 9 July.

“Happy Horvatia”

Horvat, a railway engineer born in 1858 into a family of Serbian roots, had since 1903 headed the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Russian line crossing Manchuria, and in practice ruled the whole railway zone with Harbin at its centre. When in December 1917 the Harbin soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies tried to remove him from the management of the railway, Chinese troops entered Harbin at his request and dispersed the soviet. The railway zone remained an island of the old order, which émigrés jokingly called “happy Horvatia”. Russian officers and politicians hostile to the Bolsheviks gathered here, and the Far Eastern Committee active in Harbin urged the general to take power.

The opportunity came with the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion. On 29 June the Czechoslovaks overthrew the soviet in Vladivostok, and on 5 July they took Nikolsk, today’s Ussuriysk. At the beginning of July the commanders of the Allied forces in Vladivostok announced that the city and its surroundings were passing under their temporary protection. On 6 July Horvat informed the American consul in Harbin that at the committee’s request he had formed a “non-party” government for Siberia. Its members included the former State Duma deputy Stepan Vostrotin, the former deputy minister of railways in the Provisional Government Leonid Ustrugov, General Vasily Flug and two representatives of the Siberian cooperatives, Alexander Okorokov and the worker Mikhail Kursky. Horvat himself presented himself as a constitutional monarchist by conviction, ready nevertheless to act as a conservative democrat. On 7 July his train set off towards Nikolsk.

Programme and rivals

The proclamation promised the abolition of all Bolshevik decrees, the restoration of the courts and local self-government, equality of citizens before the law, universal suffrage, the observance of all treaties and obligations towards the Allied and neutral states, the rebuilding of a disciplined and apolitical army, the restoration of property rights and the referral of the land question to the Constituent Assembly. The version announced in Harbin also promised to recognise the right of Siberia and other regions to autonomy, provided the unity of Russia was preserved. Behind Horvat stood only the small detachments of the atamans Grigory Semyonov and Ivan Kalmykov and of Colonel Orlov. He counted above all on Japan. The Japanese consul in Harbin assured the Americans that Tokyo would support his government, and the Harbin newspapers wrote of the arrival of Japanese staff officers and of extra trains on the railway being held up because of troop movements.

Several centres, however, already claimed power in Siberia. In Vladivostok sat Pyotr Derber’s group, which on 29 June had taken the name of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia and which the city duma recognised. In Omsk, Pyotr Vologodsky’s government had announced a few days earlier that no other authority could operate in Siberia. The Czechoslovaks, who were just then moving west from Vladivostok to help their compatriots, wanted nothing to do with political organisations from Harbin. The American consul in Vladivostok warned that the entry of armed detachments from Harbin into Russia would turn the population against the Czechoslovaks and provoke civil war.

The Allied reaction

The British, French and Japanese consuls in Vladivostok reported to their governments that Horvat’s attempt had met with general hostility there and would deepen the split in Siberia. The French consul added that the general had alienated the Czechoslovaks, because he had tried to exploit the situation they had created and had been unwilling to let them through Manchuria. On 12 July the representatives of Britain, France and Japan in Peking called on Horvat to withdraw his proclamation and return to Harbin, without hindering the passage of the Czechoslovaks along the Chinese Eastern Railway. The Chinese governor in Harbin announced that, having left for Russia, the general could return only as manager of the railway, not as a governing authority. In diplomatic circles there were rumours of a monarchist plot and that Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich was to return to the throne, although in reality the Bolsheviks had murdered him near Perm in June. The United States declared that it would support none of the factions, and Japan admitted that it had given Horvat assistance but gave assurances that it had not promised him further support.

The Horvat government gained no real power in Siberia. The general styled himself Provisional Ruler until 13 September 1918, when after long negotiations he recognised the Omsk government and became its supreme plenipotentiary in the Far East. He remained in this post under the rule of Admiral Alexander Kolchak as well.