Kolchak coup d'etat in coverage of Russian memoirs

In November 18, 1918 in Omsk a coup was staged, in the course of which the replacement of supreme power in the counterrevolutionary camp occurred. The Directorate (Provisional All-Russia Government) elected at the State meeting in Ufa was abolished, and instead an individual rule of the Supreme Governor was established, A.V. Kolchak being elected for this position. In the paper the task is set to find and critically analyze memoir literature of participants and contemporaries of that event to reveal factual completeness, precision and credibility. The necessity of such analysis is accounted for by the fact that, up to now, memoirs have remained the most important source base from which researchers, publicists and popularizers of historical knowledge not only get information, but also widely use its interpretations and conceptual ideas. For solving the set task the memoirs of well-known journalists, political and military figures have been analyzed in the paper: L.V. Arnoldov, A.A. Argunov, M.V. Vyshnyak, G.K. Guins, K.Y. Gopper, I.S. Ilyin, L.A. Krol, I.M. Maysky, S.P. Rudnyev, K.V. Sakharov, N.V. Svyatitsky, I.I. Serebryannikov, M.I. Smirnova, A.S.Soloveychik, I.I. Sukhin. It has been found out that the memoirs contain the most voluminous, diverse and reliable information concerning the social and political situation in Omsk after the Directorate moved there, as well as the arrest and further troubles of its socialist and revolutionary part (SRs). The memoirists very scantily and inconsistently covered the meeting of the Council of ministers that lasted for several hours, where key decisions were taken: it was admitted that the Directorate stopped its activity; the Council of ministers resolved to take over all the state power, and then it decided to repose power temporally in the hands of one person, awarding him the title of the Supreme Governor; it elected A.V. Kolchak for this post. However, the memoirs have not practically any concrete and reliable information about the plot. In the published memoirs serious contradictions were found which have factual and conceptual character. These are explained by the fact that the memoirists originally possessed fragmentary and inconsistent information, besides they took different political positions during the Civil War. Such content of the memoirs requires critical attitude to the given information and the check of its credibility using other sources. Even taken collectively, the published memoirs are not a sufficiently reliable source base for obtaining an objective picture of Kolchak's coup at all stages of its realization exclusively on the that basis. To solve this task, it is necessary to use all the complex of published sources as well as to continue a search for new documents in Russian and foreign archive depositories.

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