Policy of the Provisional Regional Government of the Urals on the Organisation of Civil-Military Interaction

Abstract

This article aims to identify the model of relations between the civil and military authorities, an attempt to construct which was made between August and November 1918 by the anti-Bolshevik Provisional Regional Government of the Urals (PRGU). This problem seems relevant in view of its fragmentary study and contribution to the disclosure of the reasons for the defeat of the White movement and the “third way” in the Russian revolution. As a theoretical basis, the author refers to works of E. Hoffman on total institutions and S. Huntington on the historically established types of civil-military interaction. The study draws on the funds of the Sverdlovsk Region State Archive, including the memoirs of a few PRGU founders, its regulations, and office documents (PRGU minutes of meetings, correspondence with zemstvos and city bodies, chief representatives in counties). The article considers the PRGU’s plans for the formation of the Ural Region branches of power and local self-government with the deprivation of military voting rights, the PRGU’s relationship with the White Guard and Czechoslovak command, as well as the establishment of bodies and practices for the demilitarization of the spheres of civil administration in the Urals. The study shows that the PRGU demonstrated complete subordination to the All-Russian anti-Bolshevik authorities, while excluding the participation of the military in solving local political and economic problems, realizing their lack of specific experience, leading to excessive cruelty, and undermining the loyalty to the White regimes among the local population. At the same time, the PRGU made efforts to help the armed forces without interfering in the military sphere, which demonstrates greater optimality in comparison with the Provisional Government or White generals’ regimes.