«I was arrested for giving orders to advance»: Report of Colonel Rumsha on the evacuation of the 5th Polish Division from Siberia

Abstract

This article is the first published in Russian unique document of the commander of the 5th Polish Siberian Division, Colonel K. Rumša, speaking on the first person’s progress of evacuation of Polish units from Siberia during the Civil War. The documents of the 5th Division were captured by the Red Army at the Klyukvennaya station, many of them were destroyed. The central Military Archive in Warsaw holds a small part of the surviving written sources. Even less has been introduced into scientific circulation in Russian historical science. The submitted official document is an important historical evidence, previously not published in Russian, and is of undoubted value for researchers of the Civil War in Siberia. K. Rumsha in his report describes in detail the course of evacuation and surrender of the division units to the Soviet troops at the station Klyukvennaya. The document allows us to refute the memoirs of some officers of allied units and politicians of allied countries in which they deny the involvement of the Allied troops in terror against the population of Siberia, dissociating themselves in this regard from the actions of the Kolchak troops. In the submitted report, Colonel Rumsha clearly indicates that he received the order to put an end to the insurgent partisans directly from the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in Siberia and the Far East, General Maurice Janin. The translation is accompanied by comments. The author of the translation presents brief biographies of the main actors mentioned in the report, and also describes some events about which the commander of the 5th Division preferred to keep silent.