The Fate of Admiral Kolchak

"In November 1917 Admiral Aleksandr Vassilievich Kolchak, who a few months earlier had been Commander-in-Chief of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, offered his services to the British Army and set out for Mesopotamia. He felt that he was thus doing what he could to honour his country's obligations to an ally whom the new Bolshevik Government, by withdrawing from the war against Germany, had shamefully deserted. Kolchak never reached Mesopotamia. A year later this strange, moody, dedicated man of forty-five was installed following a coup d'etat in Omsk , as Supreme Ruler of All the Russias. Despite the gingerly support of American, British, French and Japanese bayonets, the White cause in Siberia was doomed by its own corruption and incompetence. Omsk fell to the Red Army. A terrible winter retreat began along the Tran-Siberian Railway. The seven trains carrying Kolchak, his staff, his mistress and the State Gold Reserve were held up by the Czechs, who, with the connivance of the French general nominally in command of them, handed him over to the Reds. This book throws new light on his nine-day interrogation in gaol and the manner of his fate. Mr Fleming has had access to such of Kolchak's private papers as survive and to much unpublished material. Working on a wider canvas than in The Siege at Peking and Bayonets to Lhasa, he has written a book which deserves to rank with its two predecessors."