Horvat's coup

On the night of 23–24 August 1918 in Vladivostok an armed Russian unit, which the local zemstvo had been allowed to form with the consent of the Czechoslovaks and the Allies as the nucleus of a new army fighting alongside the Entente, refused obedience to the commander appointed by the zemstvo and declared for General Dmitry Horvat. It was made up mainly of officers and young students, the people to whom Horvat’s programme appealed most. The mutineers seized the headquarters building and tried to take over the State Bank and other public buildings, but were stopped by the city police. The action was led by General Mikhail Pleshkov, during the war commander of the 1st Siberian Army Corps and now commander of the Russian troops subordinate to Horvat. The British chronology of the war records the event as Horvat’s coup d’état. In reality it was an attempt to seize power in the city that did not get beyond the first night.

Two governments in one city

Horvat, the manager of the Chinese Eastern Railway, had proclaimed himself Provisional Ruler in July until an all-Russian state authority was restored. At the beginning of August he came to Vladivostok. The American consul John Caldwell reported that the general had arrived on 3 August with about fifty armed officers, who were joined by about twenty more men. Russian historians give the date as 4 August. His cabinet also came to the city, and soon afterwards so did Ataman Grigory Semyonov. The workers received Horvat with hostility, regarding him as a counter-revolutionary. The zemstvo sent the consuls a long protest against his presence and threatened a general strike. At the demand of the Allied commanders Horvat had to send his troops out of the city.

Already established in Vladivostok was Pyotr Derber’s group of Socialist Revolutionaries, which on 29 June had taken the name of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia and was regarded as left-wing. The Allies urged both sides to come to an agreement. According to Russian studies the talks collapsed when Colonel Tolstov, subordinate to that government’s war minister Krakovetsky, refused to recognise Pleshkov’s authority over the troops. Shortly afterwards the officers of the zemstvo unit went over to Horvat on their own.

The Allied reaction

On 24 August the consuls of the Allied powers conferred with representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council. Since the end of June it was the Czechoslovak Legion that had controlled Vladivostok. The consuls unanimously recommended to the Allied military commanders that the unit be disarmed or compelled to leave Russian territory, since it was in the city in breach of regulations issued by the Czechoslovaks and the Allied command. They also decided that until the Allies took control of the formation of a Russian army, there should be no armed Russians in the city apart from the city police. Caldwell reported to Washington that evening that Horvat was issuing orders as if he were master of the situation, and that crowds were gathering in the streets, mostly hostile to the general. The consuls even considered demanding that Horvat leave Russia, by force if necessary. They feared that his presence was convincing the peasants that the Allies and the Czechoslovaks stood behind him, and this was turning the population against the Czechoslovaks, who were at that very moment fighting on the Ussuri front.

The Allied commanders issued the order to disarm, and the unit laid down its arms. At the end of August Caldwell reported that the wealthier classes were indignant at this order and were demanding permission to form a Russian unit that would go to the front as part of the Allied forces. On 30 August the zemstvo handed full power to the Government of Autonomous Siberia. On the night of 3–4 September Horvat unexpectedly left Vladivostok, and on 13 September he recognised the Omsk government and became its supreme plenipotentiary in the Far East. The disarmed officers got their weapons back in mid-September, when they promised to go to the front. Some of them went to Harbin, others to Semyonov.