The Events of December 1919 in Tomsk

The article focuses on the military and political events that happenedin the final period of the Civil War in Tomsk, the administrative center of one of the largest Russian provinces. In the autumn of 1919the Kolchak forces were quickly retreating deep into Siberia. As the social base of the anti-Bolshevik movement was dwindling, the attemptsof the Kolchak military leadership to organize a wide-scale resistance against the Red Armys advances failed. The article makes reference tothe facts proving that the social and economic crisis in Tomsk was exacerbating, fuelled by the military hardships, the reduced industrialoutput, the inflow of refuges and the shortage of housing.Since late November Tomsk hosted the headquarters of the 1st Siberian Army under the command of lieutenant-general A.N. Pepelyaev.It was planned that this army, exhausted by the continuous fighting, would have a rest and be replenished with new recruits. Then, it had tostop the advances of the 5th Red Army in the area of Novonikolaevsk - Taiga - Tomsk and, after regrouping, launch the active defensiveoperations. However, the 1st Siberian Army not only failed to regain strength, but, on the contrary, became an object of the intensive propagandisticcampaign on the part of the anti-Kolchak forces and lost its combat power. At the same time the awkward attempts to liberalize theKolchak regime made by the 1st Siberian Armys commander-in-chief A.N. Pepelyaev and his brother V.N. Pepelyaev, the prime-minister ofthe Kolchak government, in the area of the Armys dislocation failed.On the basis of the bulk of historical sources the article gives a thorough description of the anti-Kolchak uprising in Tomsk that resultedin the restoration of the Soviet power in the city a few days before the 5th Red Army arrived. The attention is focused on the culminationevents of December 17-18 as well as on the organization and activities of the power organs of the rebel coalition, such as the military andrevolutionary committee and the military and revolutionary staff. The committee and the staff united Bolsheviks as well as the representativesof moderate socialists - the socialist-revolutionaries, the Mensheviks and the anarchists. Thus, the two opposite but equally erroneousversions of the events found in the historical literature are refuted: first, that the uprising was organized by the Bolsheviks only and second,that the socialist-revolutionaries were at the helm. It is underlined that the decisive factor accounting for the victory of the anti-Kolchakforces was the fact the majority of the 15000 soldiers and officers of the local garrison sided with the Bolsheviks.On December 20, 1919 the Red Army entered the city, followed a few days later by the members of the Military and RevolutionaryCouncil of the 5th Army, the Siberian Bureau of the RCP Central Committee and the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. The rebels powerstructures were dissolved and replaced by an extraordinary organ, the Bolshevik Tomsk Revolutionary Committee. Soon after that Communistsbanned the legal political activities of their recent allies in the anti-Kolchak struggle. The Red Terror came in the place of the WhiteTerror.The Tomsk events of the late 1919 are studied in the wide context of the history of the Civil War in Siberia, as one of the crucial episodesin the demise of the Kolchak regime.

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