This is my VERY WIP entry for the HoS List challenge:
The Whole Rotten Structure
Supreme Rulers[1] of the All-Russian State
1918-1952:
Adm. Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1952-1953:
Gen. Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1953-1953: Extraordinary Directory of the Glavnaya Uprava
1953-1957:
Gen. Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1957-1960:
Gen. Pavel Rafailovich Bermondt-Avalov (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1960-1973:
Lt. Gen. Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1973-1976:
Baron Boris Mikhailovich Skossyreff (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1976-1977: Extraordinary Directory of the Glavnaya Uprava
1977-1988:
Maj. Gen. Boris Fedorovich Pashkovsky (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
1988-1988: Extraordinary Directory of the Glavnaya Uprava
1988-1991:
Ataman Dmitri Dmitriyevich Vasilyev (All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds / VSC)
[1] - From 1924-1952 and 1954-1991, held alongside the position of Regent of the Russian Imperial Throne and the House of Romanov.
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Extract from A Very British Revolution: The History of Modern Britain, 1917–1991, published 2009 by the Historical Educational Authority (HEA) for distribution on behalf of the Education Committee of the General Congress of British Workers' Deputies (EDUCOM)
The Societal Struggle, 1942–1991
14 - The Eagle in the East: Black-Hundredist Russia
In the first part of this book, we explored the establishment of Black-Hundredist Russia by Admiral Kolchak in the aftermath of his victory in the Russian Civil War. We explored the effects of this on immigration to Britain, and on how it effected global geopolitics in the run-up to the German War. In this part, we will look more closely at Kolchak's Russia, and how the establishment of the All-Russian State essentially set in motion the events which would culminate in the Societal Struggle between East and West.
In the past, the All-Russian State refused to release records which gave insight to the period - but with those records now at our disposal, we can see that Kolchak's victory in the civil war was anything but assured - as the red émigrés who had fled Russia such as Joseph Jughashvili had argued in its immediate aftermath, when they campaigned for support to liberate Russia. Kolchak's forces faced significant hardship, and the factionalism of the White Russians also complicated matters. In time, however, the death Red Russian leaders such as Lenin and Trotsky allowed Denikin and Wrangel to advance in the west, allowing for Kolchak to return from Siberia. It should come as no surprise that, after these victories, Denikin and Wrangel retained vast influence in the White movement. Kolchak, however, retained the position of Supreme Ruler, and was able to lean on the support of the reemergent Black Hundreds to ensure his leadership remained unchallenged. Part of this support, as we know, was to give the Black Hundreds a free hand in pogroms against Russia's sizable Jewish population.
Kolchak's victory did, however, allow Russia to rebuild after the Great War, and in preparation for war with Germany. The German War is explored in prior chapters - but, as mentioned there, one of the key impacts of Russia's engagement in the war with Germany was the Historic Compromise with the west and the mass murder of Jews and Poles in Russian-held German territory. After the war, the Historic Compromise broke down, and it was only through the mediation of the United States that the Kolchak was persuaded to avoid war with the west. This set the stage for the Societal Struggle, and Kolchak established the Danzig Treaty Organisation between Russia and its puppet states (East Germany, Czechia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania) to deter Western influence.
Kolchak would continue to rule Russia, and his influence only rose with time. The death of rivals such as Denikin left him as one of the only candidates for leadership, and the rise of the socialist West allowed Kolchak to continue to rule through anti-communist fearmongering. His support from the Black Hundreds which had emerged - which he kept sated with pogroms and state positions - allowed him to dominate the machinery of state, especially when he unified the disparate groups into the All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds (or VSC for short) and made it the sole political party in Russia, with himself as leader. He retained his power while not forsaking the monarchism that the White movement as a whole had officially stood for - from 1924 onward, he styled himself as Regent of the Russian Imperial Throne and the House of Romanov alongside his title of Supreme Ruler, indicating that once a suitable heir to the throne was found, he would allow them to return - in truth, it seems clear that Kolchak, much like his successors, had no intention of relinquishing power. This position was legitimised by the Russian Orthodox Church, which Kolchak returned to a position of power unseen even in Russia's own zealous history. In exchange for power, wealth and a free-reign on religious matters, the Church promoted Kolchak as a Christ-like Saviour of Russia from Godless Communism, propping up his rule as they had done for Tsars and Emperors for centuries prior. Kolchak's rule with regard to the common people as well had elements of the carrot and the stick - he aimed to preside over a growing economy (partially fuelled by the pillaging of Germany and the liquidation and expulsion of Eastern Europe's Jews, but also by an innovative infrastructure programme) while also keeping a strong state, military and paramilitary in the Hundreds in order to quash dissent.
Kolchak remained something of a recluse for his long reign, only speaking to the VSC's leadership organ, known as the
Glavnaya Uprava, on rare occasion. He rarely addressed the populace directly - the Church, Hundreds and State did that for him. This functioned while he was well, as he could concentrate his efforts on running the state and balancing it's factions behind the scenes, while they propagated the Myth of Kolchak to the people of Russia and pursued their own aims. These included the Hundreds' continuing pogrom of Russia's remaining Jews and communists (terms often used in tandem), which had grown from the violent and crude activities of the early regime to far more elaborate ruses and espionage operations (though, still violent) through the Hundreds-controlled state security service known as the All-Russian Internal Defence Commission (VKVO or
Vekvo). Once Kolchak's health started to fail following his 75th birthday in 1949, a vicious power struggle began within the VSC - though the knives only truly came out upon Kolchak's death in 1952.
Pytor Wrangel was seen as his most likely successor, but he failed to secure the support of the VSC due to his relationships with the now-proscribed national movements during the Civil War. This allowed the "Mad Baron" Roman von Ungern-Sternberg to take power using his own intimate relationship with local Black Hundreds. His tenure was not long, however, as he was abhorred by much of the actual military and by the Church on account of his dalliance with Buddhism. After less than a year of leadership in which he was denounced by the Patriarch himself as a "Heathen Devil sent to turn Russia Godless, Buddhist or Lutheran - whichever is worse", he was ousted in the 1953 coup after he attempted to name himself Emperor. He was replaced by a directory of influential people within the
Glavnaya Uprava. This directory was chaired by Wrangel, who in 1953 was announced as Supreme Ruler and Regent in his own right, now with the support of the Church and much of the VSC which feared a second Mad Baron if Wrangel did not take charge.
Wrangel was old - and he passed in his sleep in 1957 after only four years of rule. Few of his planned reforms (such as the feared "reconciliation" with Russia's national minorities) came to pass, but he did manage to stabilise the regime after the Mad Baron. His biggest achievement may be the completion and successful testing of Russia's first Damoclean weapon in 1954, finally putting it on equal footing with the west and turning the Societal Struggle into a frozen conflict. His replacement was far more orderly than Kolchak's. The Cossack General and hero of the Baltic front Pavel Rafailovich Bermondt-Avalov was named the next Supreme Ruler and Regent by the VSC, though he quickly lost the support of that institution. Bermondt-Avalov was perhaps one of the few actual monarchists within the higher ranks of the VSC, certainly one of the few to actually attain power, and upon his ascension he immediately began the search for the next Emperor of Russia, hoping to find and invite one of the lost children of Tsar Nicholas such as Anastasia. The VSC immediately feared that the actual enthronement of an Emperor would challenge their own power within Russia, and replaced Bermondt-Avalov in 1960 through a boardroom coup to prevent this from coming to pass.
Bermondt-Avalov was replaced by Anatoly Nikolayevich Pepelyayev, a follower of Kolchak who until now had been kept at the sidelines due to recovered threats to arrest him back in 1919, when the two were at odds. Now, with Russia having cycled through four leaders in a decade, he was brought out of mandatory retirement to act as a figurehead for powers within the VSC. In the end, Pepelyayev would become the longest serving Supreme Ruler and Regent since Kolchak. The unassuming lieutenant general soon emerged as a power player in his own right, and he did this by emulating Kolchak. He did not try to radically change course as Wrangel, the Mad Baron or Bermondt-Avalov did - instead he stayed the course, balancing Russia's factions behind the scenes and ensuring every critic had enough vodka to keep them quiet. He immediately called off the search for an heir to the throne, announcing that none but a direct child of Nicholas II would be suitable - in doing so he kept the myth of Anastasia alive, throwing this bone to the monarchists, while assuring the VSC that their power was not to be challenged. The Pepelyayev era is therefore remembered in Russia as one of stability - although critics called it one of stagnation. The machinery of state rusted under his tenure, as corruption rose without a strong leader able to challenge it.
The most notable sign of stagnation however was the Second Straits Crisis in 1969, when the Anatolian Federation occupied the Asian side of Russia's Strait Mandate with tacit western support. The slow Russian response, largely due to corrupt officers having been bought off by Anatolian agents, gave rise to the perception that the Strong New Russia of Kolchak's era was gone. Contemporary political cartoons in the west portrayed Russia as a languishing bear, struggling to swat off flies. British Foreign Commissary Barbara Betts described the situation best in a speech to the General Congress, uttering the famous words "in Russia, ruble is all". Despite the war scare it caused, the Second Straits Crisis was eventually resolved; but it was a major constraint on international Russian influence during the Societal Struggle.
Pepelyayev retired - some say it was a forced resignation, but there is little evidence for this - in 1973. His replacement was Boris Mikhailovich Skossyreff, who claimed to be a baron from Russian Lithuania. Skossyreff won the support of the VSC by taking advantage of the corruption which by this point was rampant. He created a cult of personality that - unlike Kolchak's - was one truly driven by charisma. He said that he was a graduate of Harvard University, and made incredibly unrealistic promises that he would turn around the fortunes of Russia while making every VSC apparatchik incredibly rich. His selection by the party was a landslide, but the minute he took office it became clear to some that he was out of his depth. His promises to increase the freedoms afforded to state servants, to modernise the armed forces, to entice foreign investments and for tax reform became increasingly far-fetched as he ran into further and further corruption at the heart of the state. The issue came to a head in 1976, after three years of rule, when it was revealed by the Vekvo that he was not in fact a baron, and that he had not attended Harvard. It did not take long for the Vekvo to use this information to launch a coup, and Skossyreff was replaced by a second directory from the
Glavnaya Uprava. Skossyreff's body was not found until after the Twilight War, having been buried in Siberia. To the public and world stage, the story was that Skossyreff had suddenly taken ill, and had requested a private funeral.
Boris Fedorovich Pashkovsky was one of the influential figures in the directory, though not its chair, and in 1977 he was selected to succeed Skossyreff as Supreme Ruler. Pashkovsky had an interesting history, having been born to an Orthodox priest in San Francisco. He had also served in the Russian army and navy, before rising to the rank of Major General during the German War. He had also, unbeknownst to the public, served as a military liaison to the Vekvo and was involved in the covert killings of suspected Communists, separatists and other "deviants". All of this meant he had strong relations with every powerbroker in the Russian state, and his long service meant he was seen as a safe pair of hands after the Skossyreff affair. His eleven years of rule are seen by many as the last real attempt to address the issues of the Russian state before its collapse; although most scholars agree that by this point, it was too late. He began an anti-corruption drive and increased the influence of the military and the Vekvo to try and overshadow the VSC, which was seen as the source of most corruption. He also engaged in a more active foreign policy, attempting to reign in the Russian puppet states in the DTO after the attempted East German reconciliation with its western counterpart. He also attempted a crackdown on Polish nationalist groups.
In 1988, upon a planned visit to Warsaw to celebrate the completion of the Moscow-Warsaw direct rail line, a gunman associated with the Freedom Fighters of Poland (the partisan wing of the Polish Socialist Party which had been founded by the exiled Józef Piłsudski) killed Pashkovsky in Warsaw's central square. He fired two bullets, one of which missed, the second of which pierced his heart. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
The death of Pashkovsky sent shockwaves throughout Russia. The military and the Vekvo argued that there was no time to put together a third directory from the
Glavnaya Uprava, but the VSC had already been planning for Pashkovsky's death, and was able to put their own plan into action. The directory met for only three sessions in 1988 - with minimal Vekvo influence - and quickly came to the conclusion that a new leader was needed. One member of the directory was particularly vocal and had a background which endeared him to all sides; the son of an Ataman, a longstanding functionary of the VSC, an ardent Orthodox Christian, and an asset of the Vekvo. Dmitri Dmitriyevich Vasilyev was this man, and he called for a brutal crackdown in Russian Poland (the planned result of which we now know was ethnic cleansing) and a crackdown on foreigners supporting Polish nationalist groups. In a shell-shocked Russia, this was popular to the leadership classes. He was named Supreme Ruler within the year, and set his plans into motion.
We now know that these were the plans which led to the Warsaw Massacre in 1989 which saw international condemnation, and the assassination of Russian refugee Alisa Rosenbaum on British soil in 1990. These two events were what led to a breakdown in east-west relations, the controversial "Stockdale telegram" which gave the west the United States' tacit support to retaliate, and, finally, to the Twilight War and the fall of the All-Russian State in 1991. Vasilyev was found dead in his dacha by the war's conclusion.
KEY TERMS
Societal Struggle: the name given to the political conflict between the socialist West and the authoritarian East which began following the end of the German War in 1948, which left the West and East split into two distinct societies, and ended with the Twilight War in 1990.
Black-Hundredism: the official ideology of the All-Russian State, as espoused by the All-Russian League of the Black Hundreds, which promoted Russian ultranationalism, anti-communism, militarism, authoritarianism, and the supremacy of the Orthodox Christian religion.
PRACTICE QUESTION
"Without the Twilight War, the collapse of the All-Russian State was still assured due to the fragility of its political system". To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
