Provisional Siberian Government

counter-revolutionary White Guard-Socialist Revolutionary (SR) organization that was illegally set up in Tomsk on Jan. 27 (Feb. 9), 1918, at a conspiratorial conference of members of the former Siberian Oblast duma, which had been dis-banded by the Tomsk soviet on Jan. 26 (Feb. 8), 1918. Subsequently, a majority of the members of this organization, headed by the Right SR P. la. Derber, moved to Harbin,” while the other members remained in Tomsk. In mid-May 1918, Derber arrived in Vladivostok with his “government,” under the protection of interventionist troops.

In its activity the Provisional Siberian Government en-countered competition from other pretenders to all-Siberian and even all-Russian power—Far Eastern counterrevolutionary groupings. In late May 1918 as a result of the mutiny of the Czechoslovak Corps, White Guard and Czechoslovak units took Tomsk, and on June 1 power in the city was seized by members of the Provisional Siberian Government who remained there—Right SR’s, who proclaimed the formation of the Western Siberian Commissariat of the Provisional Siberian Government. In June the commissariat moved to Omsk. On June 23, 1918, a new Provisional Siberian Government, with P. V. Vologodskii as chairman, was formed in Tomsk. On June 29 the main part of the Provisional Siberian Government (headed by Derber), which was in Vladivostok, proclaimed itself the “central administration of Siberia” after the occupation of Vladivostok by White Czechs. With the formation of the Ufa Directory (Sept. 23, 1918), the Provisional Government published a Siberian declaration on November 3 transferring power in Siberia to the Ufa Directory.