Mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet

On 19 June 1917 (6 June in the Julian calendar) at Sevastopol the Black Sea Fleet mutinied. It was one of the last parts of the Russian armed forces still to have kept its discipline and fighting capacity. On an order sent by radio from one of the battleships the sailors disarmed their officers, and an assembly of sailors’, soldiers’ and workers’ delegates resolved to remove the fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Alexander Kolchak, and his chief of staff. Kolchak addressed the crew of the flagship, threw his sword overboard and handed over command to Rear-Admiral Veniamin Lukin. The British chronology of the war records the outbreak of the mutiny under 21 June, when news of it was reaching the West.

A fleet that held together

Kolchak had taken command of the fleet in the summer of 1916 as a 41-year-old vice-admiral. He was known for his courage, energy and knowledge of mine warfare. Under his command the Russians mined the approaches to the Bosporus and seriously curtailed the sorties of Turkish and German ships into the Black Sea. When in March 1917 sailors in the Baltic were murdering their officers, there was no bloodshed at Sevastopol. Kolchak himself announced the news from the capital to the crews, recognised the Provisional Government and accepted the formation of sailors’ committees. Through his personal authority he kept the fleet obedient for several months, and the ships continued to put to sea.

On 8 May (25 April Old Style) the admiral made a famous speech at a meeting of garrison delegates in the Sevastopol circus. “The army and the navy are perishing. The Baltic Fleet has ceased to exist as an armed force (…). The Black Sea Fleet must save the motherland,” he said, demanding a halt to “home-grown reforms” in the armed forces. The speech was printed throughout Russia. Impressed by it, the sailors sent a large delegation to the front and to the Baltic to campaign for fighting the war to victory. The departure of the most ardent supporters of the war, however, weakened their influence in the fleet itself. In May the admiral came into sharp conflict with the Sevastopol executive committee, which on its own authority arrested one of his subordinates. On 25 May Kolchak asked the government by telegram to relieve him of his post. Five days later the minister of war and the navy, Alexander Kerensky, arrived in Sevastopol and for a time smoothed over the dispute.

The disarming of the officers

In June a delegation of sailors from the Baltic, largely Bolsheviks, arrived in Sevastopol supplied with piles of propaganda literature. Its members went round the ships and spoke at meetings, while rumours were spread in the town that the admiral owned large landed estates and therefore wanted to prolong the war. On 16 June a sailors’ meeting demanded the removal of Kolchak, his chief of staff Mikhail Smirnov and several other officers. The next day the admiral informed Kerensky that the local authorities were not in control of the situation. On 18 June, at another meeting, one of the officers was arrested and there were demands that the officers be disarmed on a charge of counter-revolutionary conspiracy.

On 19 June, in the afternoon according to Kolchak’s account, an order was sent by radio from one of the battleships to disarm all officers and search their quarters. On many ships the officers were at once required to hand over their arms. Kolchak forbade resistance, so as to avoid bloodshed. According to his testimony several officers shot themselves in protest. He then had the crew of the flagship Georgy Pobedonosets assembled. He told the sailors that fears of an officers’ conspiracy were absurd, since the officers were scattered among the ships, one to every fifteen or twenty sailors, and that the disarming was an insult which he regarded as aimed above all at himself. He declared that from that moment he no longer wished to command them. He then threw his sword into the sea. According to an account repeated later, it was the golden sword awarded for the defence of Port Arthur in 1904, and the admiral is said to have cried: “Even the Japanese, our enemies, left me my sword. I will not give it to you either!”

That same day Kolchak informed Kerensky that he would under no circumstances command the fleet any longer, and handed over command to the next most senior officer, Rear-Admiral Veniamin Lukin, commander of the battleships. In the evening a delegation of the council brought him a resolution removing him and Smirnov, but he had already given up command. Hearing that he was to be arrested, he moved aboard a ship for the night. A few hours later a sharply worded telegram arrived from the government. It regarded the events at Sevastopol as an act hostile to the revolution and the motherland, demanded that the officers’ arms be returned and ordered Kolchak and Smirnov to report to Petrograd immediately. Some historians stress that in doing so the government blamed the admiral for allowing the mutiny to happen.

What came next

The next day the officers’ arms were returned and an apparent calm settled over Sevastopol. In the night of 20–21 June Kolchak and Smirnov left for Petrograd. The admiral’s gesture with the sword went round the press of Russia and the Allied countries, and opponents of the “democratisation” of the army hailed him as a hero. A commission of inquiry found Kolchak not to blame, but the admiral refused to return to Sevastopol and soon left on a naval mission to the United States.

Significance

The June mutiny was not as bloody as the March events in the Baltic, but it had similar consequences. The Black Sea Fleet, which as recently as the spring had been held up as a model for the rest of the armed forces, lost the commander who had kept it disciplined, and the officers lost the last of their authority. The sailors’ committees took effective control of the ships. The fleet still formally existed and put to sea, but it played no further significant part in the war. The Provisional Government, which could not protect a commander from his sailors and at the same time blamed him for the mutiny, showed how weak its authority over the armed forces was on the eve of the planned great offensive.