With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia

by John Ward

It is too important an item in the general failure of Allied policy to pass over without mention. From the very nature of the case the main Allied effort was the formation and organisation of a new Russian army. Our policy was not to prop Russia on her feet, but to enable her to stand by herself. Major-General Knox had been sent out by the War Office to accomplish this purpose, and no more able or competent officer could have been appointed for the task.

General Knox had hardly begun to perform this duty when the French agents in Siberia became alarmed for their own position. Cables were dispatched to Europe pointing out the danger to French prestige which General Knox's mission entailed. If the English were to be made responsible for the reorganisation of the Russian Army, and were successful, this would tend to make New Russia rely more upon the English than the French, as had been the case hitherto; that it would be better to leave Russia without an army than have it organised under such influence. These senseless fears of our French friends found willing listeners in Paris. General Knox had already made some selections of officers and the business was well under way when a message from the Allied Council in Paris put an extinguisher on all his work. His orders were cancelled, and he was told to do nothing until a French commander had been appointed, whose name would be forwarded later.

By this uninformed Allied interference a well-thought-out scheme of army reorganisation was hung up for four of the most precious months to Russia. By the time General Ganin arrived the time for the project had passed and the whole business had been taken out of Allied hands.

The Russian situation at that time was such that four days' delay would have been fatal, and if nothing had been done for four months we should have been hunted out of the country.

Finding Allied jealousy so great as to render all their efforts impotent, first General Bolderoff and then his successor, the Supreme Governor, began to organise armies on their own for the protection of the people and their property. These armies were ill-equipped and badly disciplined—not the kind of armies which would have been raised had General Knox's plans been allowed to develop—but they performed their duty, they captured Perm, and had increased to over 200,000 before General Ganin appeared on the scene.

When General Ganin reported himself to the Supreme Governor with the Allied Council's orders to take over the command of the Allied and Russian forces in Siberia, he was met with a blank refusal from the Omsk Government.

I was consulted upon the question, and I am therefore able to give the reasons for their objection. The Omsk Government's position was a very simple one: "Had General Knox or any other Allied commander organised, paid, and equipped the new Russian army he would have naturally controlled it until such time as a Russian Government could have been established strong enough to have taken over the responsibility. The French would not allow this to be done, and we ourselves therefore undertook the duty. Having formed our own army in our own country, it is an unheard of proposal that we should be forced to place it under the command of a non-Russian officer. It would be derogatory to the influence and dignity of the Russian Government and lower the Government in the estimation of the people."

From this position they never retreated, but Allied bungling had landed General Ganin, who is himself an able and excellent officer, in a not very dignified position.

Bolderoff, as I have stated, was at the Ufa front when Koltchak assumed supreme power. He remained there in consultation with the Czech National Council and the members of the old Constituent Assembly for five or six days without a word as to his intentions. It was a critical position for Koltchak, who did not know what he was doing or intended to do. Hot-heads advised immediate action, but I suggested caution. The subject-matter of Bolderoff's conferences or whether he had any we do not know, but we do know this: General Dutoff, who commanded the Russian armies south of Ufa, had some proposals from Ufa put before him, and replied advising caution, as he had it on unimpeachable authority that the English were behind Admiral Koltchak. This statement, I was told, fell like a bombshell among the conspirators at Ufa, and soon after General Bolderoff returned to Omsk. There he interviewed Koltchak as Supreme Governor, and made satisfactory statement relative to his absence. He was offered a post, which he refused, stating that he wished to leave the country, as he did not believe that a dictatorship could help Russia out of her difficulties. His request was granted, and so ended a very different interview between these two men from that at Petropalovsk a few days before.

Some time after this the Japanese representative at Omsk made a request to be informed whether General Bolderoff had been forced to leave the country, or had left voluntarily. This was answered in a definite way in accordance with the facts. In the same note the Japanese also demanded to be informed whether the British Army had supplied the train and guard which had taken the exiled Social Revolutionary Members of the Directorate to Chang-Chun, on the Chinese frontier. This question was not answered quite so definitely, but the interest of the Japanese in these men shows how far the coup d'état had upset their plans relative to the occupation of the Urals.