An Occasional Amnesty. How the Siberian Bolsheviks Granted Amnesty to Kolchak Ministers

Abstract

The article analyses the history of the amnesty granted by the Bolsheviks in 1921–1923 to nine Kolchak ministers led by P. I. Preobrazhensky, G. A. Krasnov, A. A. Gratsianov and N. Ya. Novombergsky, prominent figures of the anti-Bolshevik governments, convicted by the Extraordinary Siberian Revolutionary Tribunal at the open trial in Omsk on 20–30 May, 1920. Based on a wide range of archival sources, the authors have reconstructed the entire pardon process, from the improvements in conditions of detention to the official decision of the VTsIK. Amnesty is considered as a political tool of the Soviet power, which allowed the communist leadership of the country to effectively correct the cruel punitive policy, play the card of restoration of social justice, and win the victims over to its side. It is concluded that the pardon of the Kolchak ministers was an individual but significant component of the process of restoring civil peace in Russia at the end of the internal military-political confrontation. What made this amnesty unusual among the many similar acts announced by the Bolsheviks in 1922–1923 was that not the rank-and-file members of the anti-Soviet struggle were pardoned, but its immediate leaders. The main reason for the rehumanization of former enemies were their personal ties and contacts in the upper echelon of the Soviet leadership in Siberia, which were formed primarily in the course of joint activities. The main criterion for applying the amnesty was the high quality work of the Kolchak ministers in the economic departments of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee under the conditions of severe labor shortage.