A group of Russian billionaires spent over 3 million euro's at French auction to buy historic papers of the man who tried - and failed - to halt the Bolsheviks.


A collection of Alexander Kolchak's manuscripts, a hand-written 1918 Proclamation of his Provisional All-Russian Government declaring intention to bring ‘reunited and reborn Russia into the circle of the great democracies of the world', unseen pictures of himself and family, and loving private letters to his wife and son Rostislav written mostly in 1919 were kept for over 90 years inside a foreign bank's vault.

‘No-one knew about the collection, or rather a few close relatives did know that it existed, but they didn't realise what it comprised', said Anastasia Birr, a Paris-based specialist on Russian archives who was asked to view the files in spring 2019.





In one of his letters to his wife, the Admiral says "Have assumed temporary leadership of Russian Armies fighting Bolsheviks in Siberia and Eastern Russia."



His armies, though at first successful, eventually were routed. When Omsk fell to the Red Army on Nov. 14, 1919, Kolchak transferred his headquarters to Irkutsk, but on Jan. 4, 1920, he was forced to resign when a Socialist Revolutionary–Menshevik group seized power in that city. He placed himself under Allied protection, but the Czechs handed him over to the Irkutsk authorities, from whom he was taken by the Bolsheviks. He was summarily executed and his body thrown into the Angara River.


This is the entire feature film on Admiral Kolchak