1920: The White Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak
1 comment February 7th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1920, White commander Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak was shot in Irkutsk.
Absent the Russian Revolution, Kolchak’s epitaph would read “naval officer and arctic explorer.”*
After the Russian Revolution touched off civil war, Kolchak became Supreme Ruler — and ruthless dictator — of an anti-Bolshevik government stretching from the Urals to the Pacific Ocean.
It didn’t last.
Fleeing east, Kolchak was arrested by a Bolshevik-allied government in Irkutsk on Lake Baikal. When the White army mounted an offensive to retrieve him — leading the Soviet government to order his immediate execution, along with one of his government ministers, Viktor Pepelyayev. Unable to bury them in the frozen soil, their captors unceremoniously dumped the corpses in the Ushakovka River.
A monument to Admiral Kolchak in Irkutsk, Russia. Image courtesy of Jack Sheremetoff of Baikaler.com.
* An inhospitable Arctic island he helped explore was named (and is now again named, following a Soviet change of moniker) for Kolchak.
Also On This Date
Possibly Related Executions
- 1941: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya
- 1918: Tsar Nicholas II and his family
- 1942: Partisans by the Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger
Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Execution, Famous, Heads of State, History, No Formal Charge, Power, Russia, Shot, Soldiers, USSR, Wartime Executions
Tags: 1920, 1920s, admiral kolchak, aleksandr kolchak, bolshevik revolution, february 7, russian civil war, ushakovka river, viktor pepelyayev
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