Vladimir Kappel in the service of Kolchak
В previous article We discussed Vladimir Kappel's origins, his service in the Tsarist army, and his service in the Komuch People's Army. Today, we'll continue that story.
We concluded the first article with a report on the capture of Kazan by Kappel and his allied Czechoslovak legionnaires, where, among other trophies, they discovered the Russian Empire's gold reserves, which ultimately fell into the hands of A. Kolchak. How did this admiral spend this unexpected wealth, which literally fell into his lap?
Kolchak's Gold
The first valuables were transferred to Kazan from Warsaw in 1914, and then it was decided to add gold reserves from the vaults of Riga and Kyiv. In 1917, gold and jewelry were also delivered from Moscow and Petrograd, and in May 1918, from Tambov. In addition to gold and silver coins and bars, precious church utensils were also found here, some historical relics and 154 items from among the royal family’s jewels (for example, the necklace of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the diamond-studded sword of Tsarevich Alexei, and the tiaras of the royal daughters).
You'll probably be surprised, but even a basic inventory of these treasures by the Whites wasn't conducted until six months later—in May 1919. It's safe to assume that some of the valuables had already been plundered by that time. But we recall from the previous article that, according to data provided by Kolchak's government's Chief of Staff, G.K. Gins, the admiral still had 43,000 poods (688 tons) of gold and 30,000 poods (480 tons) of silver at his disposal.
Kolchak ordered the stolen valuables divided into three parts. The first consisted of 722 boxes of gold bars and coins. They were sent to the rear of Chita and then seized by Ataman Grigory Semyonov – as the saying goes, "a thief stole a thief's club." Semyonov sent 176 boxes to Japanese banks and was later unable to retrieve them. 20 poods (about 200 kilograms) were detained and confiscated at Harbin customs in March 1920. In Hailar, 326,000 gold rubles were confiscated by Wu Zi-Chen, Governor-General of Qiqihar Province. Semyonov himself also took some gold with him, abandoning his army and flying by airplane to the Chinese port of Dalny. Another 36 poods (about 36 kilograms) were seized and transported to Manchuria by the "bloody dictator of Khabarovsk," Ataman I. Kalmykov.
Quite a few large and small "treasures" were left behind in Eastern Siberia by White Guard officers and rank-and-file soldiers. One of them, a former officer named Bogdanov, even returned for hidden gold in 1959, finding it in an abandoned church on the southeastern shore of Lake Baikal. However, while attempting to smuggle the gold across the Turkish border by car, he was detained by KGB agents, who had been tracking him for a long time, believing him to be a spy. To the KGB's great surprise, they found in Bogdanov's car not microfilms with blueprints or photographs of secret "facilities," but two hundred kilograms of gold bars. Finding other White Guard "treasures" is now unlikely.
Kolchak carried the largest portion of the valuables stolen by Kappel with him on the so-called "gold train." Sensing an advantage, the Entente allies offered the admiral to organize deliveries. weapons and ammunition. Having generously agreed to recognize him as an "equal partner" and even the "supreme ruler of Russia," as payment for his "cooperation," they forced him to confirm the legality of the secession of Poland (and along with it, Western Ukraine and Western Belarus) and Finland from Russia, and to submit the issue of the secession of Latvia, Estonia, the Caucasus, and the Trans-Caspian region to the arbitration of the League of Nations.
Then they declared that, since the gold was essentially stolen and the Soviet government might lay claim to it in the event of a Bolshevik victory, they would only accept it at a price significantly below market value. The admiral meekly agreed to this humiliating demand. By the time of his evacuation from Omsk (October 31, 1919), he had handed over more than a third of the valuables he had with him to the Allies. The French, however, declared that the gold they had received (876 poods) was in fact intended to cover the debts of the Tsarist and Provisional Governments. The other allies simply continually delayed deliveries, happily awaiting the fall of Kolchak.
The Japanese, for example, having received gold bullion equivalent to 50 million yen in October-November 1919, pledged to supply weapons and ammunition for an army of 45,000 men—and didn't send Kolchak so much as a single rifle. Later, Japanese officials confiscated 55 million yen imported by General Rozanov and the gold brought to Manchuria by General Petrov. As a result, according to figures cited in the official reports of the National Bank of Japan, the country's gold reserves increased more than tenfold.
An even more foolish expense for Kolchak's Siberian government was the contract for the development and mass production of the "Liberation of Siberia" and "Rebirth of Russia" orders: gold and silver alloys, as well as precious stones, were to be used for their manufacture. These awards are known only from descriptions; collectors have never been able to locate a single actual order. More than 4 million dollars—full-weight, unaffected by inflation—were spent on printing the new banknotes in the United States. They weren't delivered to Siberia in time, and the Americans were subsequently forced to burn 2484 boxes of worthless banknotes.
Kolchak transferred 80 million gold rubles to private accounts. Some of these individuals later donated funds to resettle Wrangel's army in Serbia and Bulgaria, support Russian schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, and pay benefits to "the families of Civil War heroes."
Approximately 160 tons of gold, transported on the so-called "D" train, disappeared without a trace. Some believe this train crashed on the Circum-Baikal Railway near the Maritui station, and the gold should be sought at the bottom of Lake Baikal. Other researchers also suggest searching there, believing that in the winter of 1919-1920, this portion of the gold was distributed among members of the Black Sea sailors' battalion, who carried it in backpacks or transported it in carts. Almost all of them froze to death while crossing Lake Baikal on the ice, and in the spring, when the ice melted, the bodies and their luggage ended up at the bottom of the lake.
But Kolchak’s “gold train” still had 18 cars with 5143 boxes and 1578 sacks of gold, weighing a total of 311 tons.
On January 8, 1920, the hapless admiral placed himself under the protection of the allies and Czechoslovak legionnaires. The command of the Czechoslovak Legion decided to hand over both Kolchak and the gold to the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee (the Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik Politcenter) in exchange for free passage to the East. It is known that upon leaving Omsk, Kolchak's "gold train" contained between 28,000 and 30,000 poods of gold, but the legionnaires handed over 19,437.5 poods to the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee. They likely managed to take the difference back to Czechoslovakia: it was this gold that most likely became the authorized capital of Legionbank.
The third portion of the stolen valuables, consisting of the royal family's treasures (154 items), ended up in Tobolsk. On November 20, 1933, they were found thanks to a tip from Marfa Uzhentseva, a former nun at the local Ivanovsky Monastery.
Now let us return to the story of the further fate of Vladimir Kappel.
The Fall of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly
By early August 1918, the Komuch controlled a vast territory from Syzran to Zlatoust and from Simbirsk to Volsk. In the south, Lieutenant Colonel F. E. Makhin's detachment managed to take Khvalynsk, while in the east, Lieutenant Colonel Voitsekhovsky's units entered Yekaterinburg. However, the days of the Komuch, which pursued an inconsistent and ambivalent policy, were already numbered. Its government lacked the support of the local population, and the repressions it carried out only swelled the ranks of its opponents. On the other hand, landowners and factory owners, who had not regained the full power of their former government, were dissatisfied: they sympathized with the Provisional Siberian Government based in Omsk and the Ural Provisional Government in Yekaterinburg. Entente representatives also preferred cooperation with the Provisional Siberian Government.
Meanwhile, by late August, the Red Army had already begun to push back the Kappelites. Trotsky, who had arrived and managed to restore discipline, played a major role in their defeat. The Siberian Army, however, offered no support to the Komuch.
Leon Trotsky inspects the troops
On September 10, 1918, the Red Army liberated Kazan. On October 3, its troops entered Syzran, and on the 7th, Samara, the capital of the Komuch. On September 23, 1918, the Ufa Directory was created, uniting the Komuch and several regional governments, including the Siberian one. Komuch members then formed the "Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly," which met initially in Ufa and, from October 19, in Yekaterinburg.
Less than two months later, the Ufa Directory also ceased to exist: on November 18, 1918, it was dissolved by Admiral Alexander Kolchak, supported by Kappel. Ironically, on that same day, the Supreme Commander of the Ufa Directory, General Boldyrev, promoted him to major general. Kappel also participated in the arrest of the former Komuch leaders: they were taken to Omsk, where, on the night of December 23, 1918, many were murdered in their cells.
Kappel in Kolchak's army
V. Kappel in 1919
In January 1919, we see Kappel commanding the 1st Volga Corps of Kolchak's Western Army. This corps included three rifle brigades of two regiments each. In the spring, these brigades were expanded into divisions. In April 1919, the Red Army broke through the front, leaving Kappel's corps to plug the gaps—and in the very first battle, almost half of Kappel's 10th Bugulma Regiment defected to the Reds. And in the other regiments, there was no one willing to engage in "psychic" attacks. Mass desertion was a serious problem in Kolchak's army. Attempts to incorporate captured Red Army soldiers into White Guard units ended in disaster: they usually readily agreed, but defected to "their own" side at the first opportunity. Kappel's units were no exception.
In May 1919, the Whites abandoned Buguruslan, Bugulma, and Belebey, and in June, Chapaev's 25th Rifle Division liberated Ufa. After this, the Red Army established control over the important Izhevsk-Votkinsk industrial region. In July, Kappel was appointed commander of the Volga Group of Forces of Kolchak's 3rd Army, operating from the Urals to Western Siberia.
Kolchak's forces retreated eastward, and Kappel's only success, already at Tobol, was a victory over units of Tukhachevsky's 5th Army in September-October 1919. However, this success had no strategic significance, and the retreat continued. In October 1919, Kappel commanded the so-called Moscow Army Group, and in November, the 3rd Army of the Eastern Front. That same month, he was promoted to lieutenant general.
V. Kappel and officers of his staff, November 1919.
Finally, after retreating from Omsk in December 1919, Lieutenant General Kappel was appointed commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front. Meanwhile, the White Army was advancing toward Transbaikalia: its retreat would later be grandly dubbed the "Great Siberian Ice March" in the émigré press. Its starting points were considered to be Barnaul and Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk), and its endpoint was Chita. The Czechoslovaks, who controlled the Trans-Siberian Railway, allowed only Kolchak's train to pass. They themselves were rushing east, and Kappel's army was forced to move in two columns along the Siberian Highway and across frozen rivers. At the beginning of the campaign, the troops numbered between 100 and 150; by its conclusion (March 14, 1920), only 25-30 remained, with up to half of the survivors sick and wounded.
This entire journey was a drawn-out, painful agony: the ground literally burned beneath the White Guards' feet, the victorious Red Army pressed them from the front, and partisans battered them in the rear. Cities rebelled, but there was no force to storm them—they had to be bypassed. Finally, Kappel's retreating units were blocked by the rebellious city of Krasnoyarsk. The "Committee of Public Safety" formed there was supported by the commander of the White Guard garrison, General Zinevich, who issued the slogan: "War against the civil war."
They failed to take the city; moreover, 12 thousand White Guards surrendered to the Bolsheviks.
The death of Vladimir Kappel
The last photo of V. Kappel
Having bypassed Krasnoyarsk from the north, in early January 1920, the White Guards reached the mouth of the Kan River down the Yenisei River, and now they needed to fight their way south to the Trans-Siberian Railway. The White commanders were divided. Some troops, disobeying their commander, headed for the railway via a circuitous route along the Angara River. Kappel, meanwhile, led the remnants of his army across the frozen Kan River to the city of Kansk (which they ultimately had to bypass).
Along the way, his boots got wet and his feet suffered severe frostbite, leading to gangrene, accompanied by a high fever and temporary loss of consciousness. Only on the third day was the commander brought to the village of Barga (now Zelenogorsk), where his heels and some toes had to be amputated. Kappel was able to continue his journey, but about a week later, signs of double lobar pneumonia appeared.
On January 20 (or, according to other sources, January 21), 1920, Kappel handed over the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Front to General S. N. Voitsekhovsky. On January 26, he died at the Uta siding in a freight car, a hospital wagon belonging to the Romanian Marasheti Battery. After Kappel's death, the White Guards attempted to capture Irkutsk; they were unsuccessful, but their actions provoked Kolchak's execution. They then moved toward Lake Baikal, and from there to Chita. Kappel's coffin was brought to that city, and from there to Harbin, where it was finally buried in the cemetery of the Holy Iverskaya Church. In 2007, as part of the shameful de-Sovietization of Russia that has been ongoing since the Yeltsin era, the remains of V. Kappel were reburied in the Donskoy Monastery cemetery in Moscow, next to the graves of A. Denikin and I. Ilyin.
Interestingly, Kappel's mother, Elena Petrovna, changed the spelling of her surname to "Koppel" (which, of course, fooled no one in the "authorities") and lived peacefully in the USSR until 1949. V. Kappel's wife also remained in Soviet Russia, reverting to her maiden name of Strolman. She lived in Perm, was arrested in 1937, and was imprisoned for six and a half years. She died in 1960. V. Kappel's son, Kirill, graduated from a construction technical school and fought in the Great Patriotic War, which he ended with the rank of junior lieutenant. He was wounded twice and awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd Class, and the Medal "For Victory over Germany." After demobilization, he held senior positions in the construction industry. He died in 1995.
Kirill Vladimirovich Strolman
V. Kappel's daughter Tatyana died in 2000 at the age of 90.
Kappel's descendants still live in modern Russia. His great-grandson, Yegor Borisovich Strolman, is reported to be a graduate of the Perm Higher Military Command Engineering School. missile troops.
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