Aleksandr Vasil'yevich Kolchak: Arctic Scientist and Explorer

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Barr, William
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1981
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Polar Record; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400003922; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400003922

Aleksandr Vasil'yevich Kolchak is undoubtedly best remembered by history for the role he played in the Russian civil war, and especially for his role as ‘Supreme Ruler of All the Russias’, in sole command of the White Russian armies in Siberia and with his seat of government at Omsk (Fleming, 1963, p 111). Probably the best-known incident of his entire career is the one that ended it: in the early hours of 7 February 1920, by the light of a lorry's headlights, he was executed by a Bol'shevik firing squad beneath the walls of Irkutsk prison, and his body bundled through a hole in the ice of the Ushakovka, where it flows past the prison to its confluence with the Angara (Fleming, 1963, p 216; Grondijs, 1939, p 55).