Jonathan Smele, Admiral Kolchak and the Civil War

Abstract

This article discusses the writings of Dr Jonathan D. Smele, in particular his research on the Civil War (or civil wars) fought on the territory of the former Russian Empire. It does this in the context of the development of western historiography since the 1930s. The author of this article worked in the same field for many years and has known Smele since he was a postgraduate at the University of Glasgow. Smele's first major book was Civil War in Siberia, and this article pays particular attention to Smele's view of developments in that region, and to his assessment of the local counter-revolutionary leader, Admiral A. V. Kolchak. The article stresses that Smele's work has latterly included an imaginative overview of the Russian crisis of the first quarter of the twentieth century, with insights into historical contingency. Smele's most recent interpretation takes in a longer period than just the three years after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 and goes back to the 1916 uprising in Turkestan and forward to the suppression of the Bas'machi movement in Central Asia in 1926. It assesses Smele's view that what happened cannot be seen simply as ‘one’ civil war or confined to the years 1917-1921. The article also emphasises Smele's unique contribution to the study of these events, however defined, by providing invaluable and comprehensive reference tools, notably his annotated bibliography and his historical dictionary.