Komuch
코무치
The anti-Bolshevik government set up on 8 June 1918, right after the Czechoslovak Legion took Samara, by Socialist Revolutionary members of the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks had dissolved. It claimed supreme authority in Russia on the Assembly's behalf, raised a People's Army and in the summer extended its sway to Simbirsk, Kazan and Ufa. After the defeats of September it handed power to the Provisional All-Russian Government at the Ufa State Conference, and it ended when its members were arrested in December 1918 after Kolchak's coup.
In depth
The name Komuch is an abbreviation from the initial letters of the first and third words of its Russian title. Its first members were five Socialist Revolutionaries, Volsky (chairman), Brushvit, Klimushkin, Fortunatov and Nesterov, and as former Assembly deputies gathered in Samara it grew to 96 by the end of September. Komuch restored democratic freedoms and allowed the eight-hour day, factory committees and trade unions, but it also abrogated Soviet decrees, returned industry and banks to their former owners and opened the way for landowners to recover confiscated land. Its People's Army, spearheaded by Kappel's detachment and fighting alongside Czech units, took Simbirsk on 21 July and Kazan on 7 August, capturing the imperial gold reserve. It lost Kazan on 10 September and Simbirsk on the 12th, while the Ufa State Conference set up the Provisional All-Russian Government, uniting Komuch with the Provisional Siberian Government, and turned Komuch into a Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. When the deputies protested against Kolchak's coup of 18 November, 25 of them were arrested in Ufa on 2 December and taken to prison in Omsk.