During the Civil War in Siberia, most of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire disappeared without a trace. The story of the "golden train" is one of the most intricate plot lines in the huge drama of the Russian Civil War in 1918-1920. It still haunts historians and writers. And still there are many blank spots in it.
GOLDEN RESERVE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
By 1914, Russia possessed the world's largest gold reserve. It amounted to 1 billion 695 million gold rubles (about $ 20 billion at the current exchange rate). With the outbreak of World War I, the tsarist government had to spend some of its gold on the purchase of weapons abroad.
The Provisional Government, which came to power after the February Revolution, continued to buy weapons abroad, spending tsarist gold on it. So the Bolsheviks, having seized power in October 1917, found out that they had got "only" 1 billion 101 million rubles worth of gold. This gold was not stored in Petrograd. Back in 1915, when the front approached the capital, the gold reserve was evacuated to safer rear cities - Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. After the revolution, gold was also transported there, which was stored in Voronezh, Tambov, Samara, Kursk and other cities. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3, 1918, more than 120 million of the Nizhny Novgorod part of gold had to be used to pay the indemnity to Germany.
So by the summer of 1918, most of the country's gold reserves were in the vaults of the Kazan branch of the State Bank, far from the western front. However, the Bolsheviks did not take into account that the blow could be delivered from a completely different direction, from the deep rear. It was carried out by the Czechoslovak corps, which was almost the only large combat-ready formation in Russia, engulfed in chaos.
In 1914, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which, together with Germany and Turkey, then fought against Russia, England and France. Having met at the front with the Russian "brothers-Slavs", the Czechoslovaks surrendered in whole regiments. During the war years, 400 thousand of them were in Russian captivity. Some of them began to form detachments in the rear to fight for independent Czechoslovakia. The number of such fighters, who began to be called legionnaires, exceeded 50 thousand.
Having passed through the fronts of the World War, the legionaries became a formidable force. The Bolsheviks understood this. Therefore, they chose not to quarrel with the Czechoslovakians, but concluded an agreement with them: the legionnaires are evacuated from Russia through Vladivostok and continue to fight the Germans on the Western Front. But there was virtually no central authority in Russia. An orderly evacuation was almost impossible. Echelons of Czechoslovakians stretched along the entire Trans-Siberian Railway. In addition, local councils put up all sorts of obstacles: they did not allow trains, did not give steam locomotives and coal. They did not approve of the intention of the legionnaires to continue the World War: the Bolsheviks believed that it was an unjust imperialist war, and therefore, on March 3, 1918, they concluded a separate (that is, without taking into account the interests of the allies) Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with imperial Germany.
Promotional video:
Convoys with German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners moved from Siberia to the west: their release was one of the conditions of peace. On May 14, 1918, the inevitable happened at the Chelyabinsk railway station: one of the Czechoslovakians was wounded by a piece of iron thrown by a Hungarian from a passing train. The legionnaires killed the bully on the spot. And when the local council tried to intervene, the Czechoslovakians simply seized the city.
Soon, all over the Transsib, from Penza to Vladivostok, a revolt of the Czechoslovak corps flared up. Siberian, Ural and Volga cities surrendered to legionnaires one after another. On June 8, 1918, Lieutenant Chechek's detachment occupied Samara, where an anti-Bolshevik government was soon organized under the protection of Czech bayonets - the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), which began to form the People's Army from Russian volunteers.
The People's Army was led by Lieutenant Colonel V. O. Kalpel. And already on August 1, 1918, to the sound of the Russian anthem, detachments of whites sailed from the newly captured Simbirsk up the Volga - to Kazan. The operation also involved two battalions of the Czech Jan Hus regiment and a detachment of Serbs, only a few thousand people. The garrison of Kazan consisted of two regiments of Latvian riflemen. Everyone knew their devotion to the revolution, and the Bolsheviks were in no hurry to export the gold reserves. When the head of the Kazan branch of the State Bank P. L. Maryin ordered to prepare for the evacuation, cannon shots were heard from the side of the Volga: the Kappelites and the Slovaks approached the city. There were no wagons or a steam locomotive at the station for the gold. Only a small part of the valuables was removed by cars.
The two hundred thousandth Kazan was occupied without a fight. Kappel reported: "The trophies cannot be counted, the Russian gold reserve of 650 million has been seized …" Vladimir Kappel was a military officer, not an accountant, and could only roughly estimate the value of gold. But it was clear that Komuch inherited most of Russia's gold reserves. On August 16, 1918, the gold reserves were sent to Samara on two ships.
The capture of Simbirsk and Kazan saved the Bolsheviks from revolutionary romanticism. The People's Commissar of Defense Trotsky began to unite the scattered detachments of the Red Guard into a regular army. Kazan was repulsed. The Reds were advancing on Samara.
In September 1918, all anti-Bolshevik forces united and created an All-Russian Provisional Government in Ufa, which was named the Ufa Directory. There, on October 2, to Ufa, six days before the surrender of Samara to the Bolsheviks, gold was also sent, loaded into 80 wagons. Since the White People's Army almost ceased to exist, the Czechs were assigned to guard the train. As a payment, Komuch gave the legionnaires "on credit for the needs of the legion" 750 boxes of silver in the amount of 900 thousand rubles. This silver, although formally was not included in the gold reserve, was stored with it and was captured in Kazan.
Ufa was only a brief stop on the path of Russian gold. The front was inexorably approaching, and the gold reserve under the protection of the Czechoslovakians went further east, to Chelyabinsk, where the Minister of Finance of the Provisional Government Ivan Mikhailov was already waiting for him. It was planned to unload the gold in Chelyabinsk and place it in a local elevator. However, Mikhailov and the Chief of Staff of the Czechoslovak Corps, General Mikhail Dieterichs, suddenly gave the order to cancel the unloading and carry the gold reserve further beyond the Urals - to Omsk.
The British historian Jonathan Smill called this rather dark episode "the largest theft of gold in history" in The Civil War in Siberia: The Kolchak Government. It was not for nothing that Ivan Mikhailov received the nickname “Vanka-Cain” from his contemporaries. It soon became clear why he was striving to deliver gold to Omsk as soon as possible. There, on November 18, 1918, Admiral A. V. Kolchak, with the support of the Entente, overthrew the Ufa directory and declared himself the supreme ruler of Russia. The "golden echelon" came under his control.
THE PROPERTY OF THE PEOPLE
Kolchak took seriously the wealth that fell into his hands. In the first months of his reign, he sharply opposed the sale of part of the gold reserve, calling it the property of the people.
However, in May 1919, the Reds went on the offensive. The Entente countries did not recognize the Kolchak government de jure. The United States refused to provide a previously promised loan of $ 200 million. I had to reluctantly put some of the gold into arms and uniforms for the army. “At a time when the government is on the verge of death, this is not only fair, it is our duty,” one of Kolchak’s ministers said at a press conference in Omsk.
At the same time, in May 1919, the employees of the State Bank, accompanying the "golden train", regardless of who it belonged to, checked the seals and seals, counted the contents of 400 damaged boxes and bags. It turned out that a total of 505 tons of gold were stored in Omsk in the form of Russian and foreign coins, circles, stripes and ingots. The total amount of treasures was 651 million 535 thousand 834 rubles in gold.
The situation at the front forced Kolchak to rush to sell gold. In Vladivostok, where 18 foreign banks opened their branches, “golden echelons” began to go, 14-20 cars each. From there, gold was sent to the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges. The buyers - through private banks - were the allied powers - France, Britain, Japan, the United States. Most of the money was transferred to the state banks in these countries as collateral for loans - which were never provided. From May to October 1919, more than 237 million gold was sent to Vladivostok. However, not all echelons reached Omsk - the last of them with 172 boxes of gold bars and 500 boxes of coins, sent on October 18, was captured by Ataman Semyonov in Chita.
But deliveries from the Entente countries, carried out in exchange for gold, did not help Kolchak much. On October 14, 1919, the Fifth Red Army broke through the front on Tobol and rushed to Omsk. On October 28, the evacuation of the gold reserve began. Loading into the wagons was carried out secretly, mostly at night, and lasted for almost two weeks, until November 10.
At the end of October, the head of the Entente mission in Siberia, French General Maurice Janin, addressed the supreme ruler for the first time with a proposal “in the interests of the Russian people” to deliver gold to Vladivostok under an international escort.
Kolchak, however, refused: for a year of communication with the allies, the admiral lost all confidence in them. According to the testimony of his minister G. K. Ginsa, Kolchak literally told the allies: "I don't believe you." Therefore, he preferred to carry the gold with him. On the evening of November 13, just a day before the fall of the city, five trains left Omsk. What remained of Russia's gold reserves - 4.14 million 254 thousand gold rubles - was loaded into 28 wagons, which, together with 12 guard wagons, constituted the "letter D" echelon. Kolchak himself was on the other train. He had not evacuated earlier so as not to lose his main wealth.
On November 4, Kolchak ordered the unhindered passage of the "letter D" train. However, after the fall of Omsk, the railway no longer obeyed his orders.
In the fall of 1918, the Czechoslovakians, by order of Komuch, took the Transsib under their protection. Now, with the advance of the Reds, the Czechs were preoccupied with one thing - to get to Vladivostok as soon as possible and leave Russia. For this, the commander of the Czechoslovak corps, General Jan Syrovy, needed stability in Siberia. But Kolchak could not provide it. Revolts multiplied everywhere, including in Irkutsk, which the admiral declared his new capital. The Czechoslovakians decided that "the salvation of the drowning is the work of the hands of the drowning themselves." On November 16, General Syrovs announced that he was taking all power over the Transsib into his own hands. The legionnaires began to hold up all the white trains on the huge highway and let only their echelons forward to the desired Vladivostok. Kolchak's trains crawled across Siberia at an average speed of 90 kilometers a day. The stations were packed with carriages of Czechoslovak soldiers. At the Tatarskaya station, a shunting locomotive crashed into the train with gold, 8 cars caught fire. The "Golden Echelon" had to be re-formed. The Taiga station to the east of Novonikolaevsk was the last station where the White units were stationed. Further - right up to Irkutsk itself - the highway was completely in the hands of the Czechoslovak legionnaires.
CHRONICLE OF THE DISASTER
December 13, 1919. Kolchak trains in Krasnoyarsk. Czech soldiers unhook their locomotives.
21 December. General Kappel sends a telegram to General Syrovy: “… If you, relying on the bayonets of those Czechs with whom we fought together in the name of a common idea, decided to insult the Russian army and its supreme commander-in-chief, then I, as the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, in defense of its honor and I demand personal satisfaction from you through a duel with me. The Syrovs do not answer, but two of the five Kolchak trains - with the supreme one and with gold - are sent further east.
27th of December. Echelons arrive at Nizhneudinsk. Power in the village passed into the hands of the revolutionaries, but the station is held by Czech machine gunners from the Sixth Legion Regiment. 500 White Guards accompanying Kolchak's train leave for the city one by one. The supreme ruler remains only with the officers of his headquarters.
December 28 - January 4. Kolchak and gold remain in Nizhneudinsk. It is dangerous to go further east - the risk of being attacked by partisans is too great.
January 1, 1920. The meeting of the Entente commissars in Irkutsk decides the fate of Russian gold: “The gold reserve of the Russian government is in danger of falling into the hands of persons who have no right to dispose of it on behalf of the Russian people. In view of this, it is the duty of the allies … to take measures to ensure this gold reserve. " General Maurice Janin decides to send the "golden echelon" under a Czechoslovak escort to Vladivostok.
January 3rd. Kolchak does not agree to the offer of his staff officers to run off-road to Mongolia and further to China, taking with him as much gold as possible. The admiral also rejects the offer of his chief of staff, General Zankevich, to disguise himself as a soldier and hide in one of the Czech echelon: "No, I do not want to be obliged to save these Czechs …".
4 January. Kolchak sends a telegram to the command of the allies in Irkutsk: "Today I began to give the state reserve under the protection of the Czechoslovak armed forces, thus fulfilling the wishes of the great powers." The admiral resigns from himself the powers of the supreme ruler and asks the Entente for his safety. The Czechoslovakians take over the protection of Kolchak and Russian gold on behalf of the allies. The wagons filled with gold are attached to the echelon heading east and the Red Cross flag raised over them. Kolchak and his headquarters are provided in the same echelon with a second class carriage, on which images of allied flags appear.
4 January. The train goes east to Irkutsk. But on the same day, power in Irkutsk passed to the Socialist-Revolutionary-Meninevist Political Center, which announced the "overthrow of Kolchak's power throughout Siberia."
January 6-11. The new Irkutsk authorities are presenting ultimatums to the legionnaires to transfer Kolchak and the gold reserve into their hands. At all stations, the echelon with gold and Kolchak's headquarters is met by the Socialist-Revolutionary agitators. They, according to the reports of the Czech guard, inspire the crowd that "the gold must be seized and distributed to the poor."
January 12. At the Tyret station, 200 km from Irkutsk, while bypassing the train, it was discovered that the seal on the car No. 566028 was broken. It turns out that 13 boxes with 40 poods (1280 kg) of gold worth about 780 thousand rubles have disappeared from the car. The head of the Czech convoy, Captain Emr, refuses to sign the report of the loss.
January 15. The "Golden Echelon" arrives in Irkutsk. The station is completely controlled by the allies (Czechoslovakians and Japanese), but the city greets Kolchak's train with posters demanding the extradition of the former supreme ruler to the Political Center.
DEAL
On January 10, General Zhanin gave an order to General Syrovy to ensure the export of the gold reserve to Vladivostok or to transfer it to the Japanese. The Syrovs responded with a desperate telegram: “I protest against such a solution to the problem. The non-return of gold or its transfer to the Japanese will so arouse against us the entire Russian population, especially the Bolshevik elements, that our troops from Irkutsk to Taishet will be in continuous fire. " The Syrovs realized that, having taken control of the gold reserves of Russia in Nizhneudinsk, the legionnaires had not calculated their forces. Of course, the Czechs wanted to keep the "golden echelon" for themselves, but in the current conditions it was unrealistic. Russian gold, like Kolchak's life, could only be sold for an open path to the ocean.
General Janin, who was personally responsible for the actions of the allies in Siberia, decided to sacrifice Kolchak, who was taken under his protection. With the blessing of Janin, the Czechoslovakians agreed to hand over Kolchak and the gold reserve to the Political Center - on condition that they were provided with steam locomotives to Vladivostok, where ships were already waiting for them to return to Europe.
On January 15, representatives of the Japanese troops asked General Yan Syrovy to hand over Admiral Kolchak to them. But in the evening of the same day, the former supreme ruler, with the direct participation of the Czechoslovakians, was arrested by a detachment of the Red Guard and taken to the city prison. A diarchy developed in Irkutsk. And on January 21, the leaders of the Political Center considered it best to voluntarily transfer power in Irkutsk to the Bolshevik Committee (Revkom).
The new government did not have the forces to storm the station, where a train with Russian gold stood on one of the siding tracks, and the gold was still guarded by Czech machine gunners, who did not even allow State Bank employees, who were driving in the same train from Omsk itself, headed by engineer A. D. Arbatsky. Arbatsky wrote memoranda in vain: "There is no certainty that the protection of gold is at the proper height, which may result in a new theft of gold."
Kolchak was shot by order of the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee No. 27 on the morning of February 7. A day earlier, the Revolutionary Committee issued another order: “Under no circumstances should a train with Russia's gold reserves be allowed to travel east of Irkutsk along the Zabaikalskaya railway line, no matter who accompanied it. To spoil the path, blow up bridges, tunnels, destroy vehicles, pull these valuables out of the hands of a gang of robbers, whoever they are, by open combat. " However, there was no need to resort to such extreme measures. The "robbers", that is, the Czechoslovakians who had guarded the wagons with gold until now, wanted to get rid of the gold burden themselves.
The armistice between the Czechoslovak Corps and the Red Army was signed on the day of the death of Admiral Kolchak - February 7, 1920, at Kuytun station, west of Irkutsk. The Bolsheviks, represented by the representative of the Revolutionary Committee of the Fifth Army I. N. Smirnov promised the Czechs free travel to Vladivostok. The Czechs agreed to add clause 6 to the signed truce, according to which “the gold reserve belonging to the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic will in no case be exported to the east, remains in Irkutsk, is guarded by a mixed guard of Czech and Russian troops and is transferred to the Irkutsk Executive Committee upon leaving the last Czech echelon from Irkutsk”.
This was the end of the rebellion of the "White Czechs", as Soviet historians called them. Echelons with Czechs rolled unhindered towards Vladivostok. General Syrovy hardly suffered from remorse - he fulfilled his task: he took the corps out of Siberia safe and almost unharmed, although his evacuation lasted another six months: the last legionnaire left Vladivostok on September 2, 1920.
Meanwhile, the "golden echelon" was still at the Irkutsk station. On February 27, gold transshipment began. The cars were leaving, boxes and sacks were counted. There were only 18 free wagons at the station, into which the gold was tightly packed. This explains that their number decreased by almost a third: from 28 to 18. Later, the White emigres tried to use this fact as proof that 10 cars were stolen by legionnaires.
On March 1, 1920, at the Irkutsk-1 station, a representative of the Czechoslovak Army Corps, Lieutenant Colonel Chila and an employee of the special department of the Fifth Soviet Army Kosukhin, signed an acceptance certificate, after which the Czechoslovakians left the echelon in which the gold was stored, and the Red Army soldiers remained to guard it.
On March 22, a steam locomotive decorated with a portrait of Lenin took the train westward, to the European part of Russia. He arrived in Kazan on May 3, and on May 7 all the treasures were already stored in the storerooms of the State Bank, from where their journey across Siberia began two years ago. So the wanderings of the "golden train" ended.
SO WHERE ARE MILLIONS?
318 thousand 848 tons of gold returned to Kazan in the amount of 409 million 625 thousand 87 rubles, that is, approximately 2/3 of the captured by Kappel's troops in August 1918. The losses were enormous. And not all of them could be explained by the spending of the Kolchak government. Therefore, the most fantastic legends arose. According to one of them, gold still lies in Siberian mines, where Kolchak hid it. On the other hand, the Czechoslovakians took him home with them.
This version was stubbornly adhered to by the White emigres. In January 1921, in the London magazine Russian Economist, the comrade (deputy) minister of finance in the Kolchak government, Novitsky, wrote that the legionnaires had taken 63 million 50 thousand gold rubles from Siberia. It was they, Novitsky believed, that formed the basis of the capital of Legiobank, founded in Prague at the expense of the Czechoslovak legionnaires who returned from Siberia. Legiobank has indeed become one of the largest financial institutions in the country. However, the amount of 63 million royal rubles - a tenth of the total gold reserve - is absurdly large and is not documented. However, despite the strict accountability and control of bank employees, white spots remain in the history of the gold reserve. And each of them pulls several million.
ON THE WAY TO SIBERIA …
Doubt is already aroused by the amount seized by the Kappelites and the Czechs in Kazan. According to a note from the Department of International Settlements of the USSR People's Commissariat of Finance dated October 1, 1943, about 663 million rubles were stored in Kazan in August 1918. However, only over 651 million arrived in Omsk. Where did the other 12 million go?
Let us recall that a few hours before the capture of Kazan by the Kappelevites and the Czechoslovakians, the Bolsheviks were able to take out a small part of the gold. Historians, relying on the available documents, usually speak of 100 boxes worth 6 million rubles. Thus, the Kappels and Czechs got 657 million. The same amount was also mentioned by the commissar of Komucha V. I. Lebedev in his radio message from Kazan, captured by the whites on August 16, 1918. However, almost 6 million rubles less gold reached Omsk.
There are two versions of this. The first of them relies on the testimony of the head of the Kazan branch of the State Bank, Maryin, who, contrary to the documents, asserted that the Bolsheviks managed to take out from Kazan not 100, but 200 boxes of gold in coins. In this case, the missing amount in the calculations was probably appropriated by one of the Reds when fleeing from Kazan. The second version is simpler and therefore more believable. When exporting gold from Samara, the legionnaires received 900 thousand from Komuch "on credit for urgent needs." Perhaps, in Chelyabinsk, the convoy succumbed to the persuasion of Minister Mikhailov and General Dieterichs not to unload the gold, but to send it further to Omsk for a reason, but having received another "loan" from Mikhailov.
LOST IN SIBERIA
But it would be even more interesting to find out the fate of the gold that went missing between November 13, 1319 and May 7, 1920. Indeed, during this time, gold has been recalculated several times. In Omsk, the train "letter D" was loaded with gold in the amount of 414 million 254 thousand gold rubles. And in Kazan 409 million 625 thousand rubles were unloaded from the “golden echelon”. Where did more than 4.5 million go missing? This is also still unknown. It is safe to say that 780 thousand have disappeared between the stations "Zima" and "Tyret". Kolchak's officers discovered this on January 12, 1920. The train was then guarded by Czech legionaries, but it is not clear whether they appropriated the gold or someone else. In addition, gold could migrate into the pockets of the Czechoslovakians either on the route from Nizhne-Udinsk to Irkutsk, or already there, at the end of January, when even the employees of the State Bank were not allowed to approach the train.
But the only available proof of the legionnaires' guilt is an article published in 1925 in the London Economist. It cited eyewitness accounts of the legionnaires exchanging gold bars for Japanese yen in Harbin.
However, one should not sin only on the Czechoslovakians. After all, even at the station "Tatarskaya", before the echelon passed under the protection of legionnaires, it was necessary to reload gold from burning cars. Of course, then no one arranged checks. During the transshipment of gold and its transfer in Irkutsk, according to the act, "when inspecting boxes with gold, a significant part of them turned out to be cracked and damaged seals." And although it was estimated by eye that nothing was missing, the gold was not counted to the nearest coin. Yes, and on the way back to Kazan, during the control on the Zima-Taiga section, several cars were found to have “weakened seals” …
VERSIONS
So, did the legionnaires take out part of the gold reserve from Russia or not? On February 13, 1920, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the young Czechoslovak Republic, Edward Benes, sent a secret telegram to Vladivostok, in which he directly called on the legionnaires to take away as many valuables from Russia as possible. The Czechoslovakians took with them over 1000 carriages of cars, furniture, silver, copper. Perhaps, among this wealth, which dragged on millions of rubles in gold, "lost" and a couple of really gold millions.
There is, however, another version. According to her, most of the missing gold went not to the legionnaires, but to the ataman G. M. Semenov - the one who fought off the last of the trains sent by Kolchak to Vladivostok with gold. The fate of this gold, which the Russian historian V. N. Sirotkin tried to trace in his books "Gold and Real Estate of Russia Abroad" and "Foreign Gold of Russia" (both were published in 2000), is even more mysterious. It is only known that traces of most of it lead to Japan. But there they are completely lost.
Valery DMITERKO
