Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak

Kolchak's most original contribution was not as a politician or military commander but as an Arctic explorer and oceanographer. In 1899, while serving as a naval officer, he published his first scientific paper on the currents of the Japan and Yellow Seas; this caught the attention of Baron Eduard von Toll, the eminent Russian polar explorer, who recruited him as hydrologist and cartographer for the 1900 Russian Polar Expedition. Aboard the schooner Zarya, Kolchak surveyed the Taymyr Peninsula and the New Siberian Islands, covering 500 versts (530 km) by dog sled, and Toll noted in his diary: 'Our hydrographer Kolchak is an excellent specialist, devoted to the interests of the expedition.'

When Toll and three companions vanished after striking out for Bennett Island in 1902, Kolchak petitioned the Academy of Sciences to lead the rescue mission himself. In May 1903, he set out from the mouth of the Yana River with 17 men, a whaleboat, and ten dog sleds, crossing the frozen sea to Bennett Island via the New Siberian Islands. Narrowly surviving a fall into a glacial crevasse that knocked him unconscious, Kolchak reached the island and found Toll's last note. Toll's party could not be saved, but Kolchak returned with every member of his own team alive, having discovered and mapped new geographic features and corrected the coastline.

Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky of the Russian Geographical Society hailed the expedition as 'an important geographical feat.' In 1906 Kolchak became only the fourth polar explorer, after Fridtjof Nansen, Adolf Nordenskiöld, and Nikolai Jürgens, to receive the Society's highest award, the Great Gold Constantine Medal, and earned the public nickname 'Kolchak-Poliarnyi' ('Kolchak the Polar'). His 1909 monograph Ice of the Kara and Siberian Seas put forward the discovery that the Arctic ice pack circulates clockwise, a foundational insight in polar oceanography. That same year the icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, which he had helped design, were stationed at Vladivostok for exploration of the Bering Strait.

Kolchak's transformation from war hero to political leader came through the military coup d'état in Omsk on 18 November 1918. Barely two weeks after assuming the post of War and Naval Minister in the SR-dominated Provisional All-Russian Government (the Directory), a coterie of officers linked to the Kadet Party overthrew the Directory and the Council of Ministers installed Kolchak as 'Supreme Ruler of Russia.' He described himself as "a military technician who knew nothing of politics," but he was now absolute ruler of a vast territory. His authority was formally recognized by the other leaders of the White movement, including Anton Denikin.

From December 1918 through the spring of 1919, Kolchak's Siberian Army mounted a striking offensive. It captured Perm and Ufa, approached Kazan and Samara, and threatened the Volga basin. At its height, Kolchak's domain covered over 300,000 square kilometers with a population of some 7 million, and Lenin identified him as the Bolsheviks' most dangerous enemy. But the tide turned sharply when the Red Army's Eastern Front counteroffensive began in late April 1919. Under Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the Reds retook Ufa, broke through the Urals, and on 14 November 1919 captured Omsk, the White capital.

The Kolchak government had taken possession of the Imperial Russian gold reserve, over 650 million gold rubles, and dispatched roughly a third abroad to pay the Allies for military supplies. Kolchak fled Omsk by train on 13 November with the remaining gold, heading for Irkutsk. But on sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion his train was repeatedly delayed, and by late December he was effectively interned at Nizhneudinsk. In exchange for safe passage to Vladivostok, the Czechoslovak command handed Kolchak over to the SR-Menshevik Political Centre in Irkutsk on 15 January 1920.

From 21 January to 6 February, Kolchak was interrogated by a Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee commission. He gave a detailed account of his actions while refusing to admit guilt. A public trial in Moscow was initially planned, but as the remnants of the White Army under General Vladimir Kappel closed in on Irkutsk, the Kremlin ordered liquidation. In the early hours of 7 February 1920, Kolchak and former Prime Minister Viktor Pepelyayev were shot by a firing squad and their bodies dumped beneath the ice of the Angara River. His death marked the symbolic end of White Siberia.