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1920: The White Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak

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. 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.

On this day..

• 1935: David Maskill Blake, wedding's eve murderer - 2020
• 1391: Agnese Visconti and Antonio da Scandiano, adulterous lovers? - 2019
• 1885: August Reinsdorf and Emil Kuchler, Kaiser Wilhelm I bombers - 2018
• 1940: Peter Barnes and James McCormack, the last IRA men hanged - 2017
• 1896: Benjamin Ratcliff, school shooter - 2016
• 1545: Cornelis Appelman and Willem Zeylmaker, Batenburgers - 2015
• 1931: The Longhua Martyrs and the Five Martyrs of the League of Left-Wing Writers - 2014
• 1902: Privates Edmond Dubose and Lewis Russell, deserters to the Philippine Resistance - 2013
• 1579: Thomas Sherwood, Catholic martyr - 2012
• 1714: Various rebel slaves in the Cape Colony - 2011
• 1852: Martin Merino, Jesuit assassin - 2010
• 1868: Susan, a 13-year-old - 2008

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