Siberian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP Bolshevik

also Sibbiuro, a regional body authorized to represent the Central Committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) in Siberia.

The Siberian Bureau was organized on Dec. 17, 1918, to direct underground party activity and the partisan movement in areas seized by the White Guards. The bureau’s members were appointed by the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and included representatives of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fifth Army of the Eastern Front and representatives of the Siberian party underground. The bureau established ties with the party organizations in Siberia, assisted them with personnel, money, weapons, and literature, and collected information on the situation in the White Guards’ rear.

In the spring of 1919, during Kolchak’s offensive, the bureau’s work was temporarily halted and its members were dispatched to the political sections of the army. The party underground and the partisan movement were directed by the Siberian Regional Underground Committee of the RCP(B), elected in March 1919 at the Third Siberian Conference of the RCP(B) in Omsk. In the summer of 1919 the bureau resumed its work in conjunction with the offensive of the Fifth Army. It organized bodies of Soviet power in the liberated territory, reestablished party organizations, and helped restore economic activity. On Mar. 3, 1920, the bureau created the Far East Bureau of the RCP(B) to direct the creation of the Far East Republic and to implement the Bolshevik line in the republic. Initially subordinate to the Sibbiuro, the Far East Bureau became an independent bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) on Aug. 13, 1920.

At the end of the Civil War, during the shift to peacetime reconstruction, the Sibbiuro, by a decree of the Central Committee of the RCP(B), became the region’s highest party body on Apr. 8, 1920, responsible for all party and economic work in Siberia. The bureau directed the work of the party organizations of the provinces of Altai, Eniseisk, Irkutsk, Novonikolaevsk, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, Tomsk, and Yakutsk. Later it supervised the party organizations of the newly formed Buriat-Mongolian, Oirot, and Yakut autonomous oblasts.

At various times, the bureau’s membership included F. I. Go-loshchekin, K. Kh. Danishevskii, V. M. Kosarev, A. A. Maslen-nikov, A. la. Neibut, V. N. Sokolov, A. P. Spunde, F. I. Sukho-verkhov, S. E. Chutskaev, B. Z. Shumiatskii, V. N. lakovleva, and E. M. Iaroslavskii. From 1920 to 1922 the bureau published the newspaper Izvestiia Sibbiuro TsK RKP(b). In May 1924, the First Siberian Regional Party Conference, after hearing the bureau’s account of its work and praising its achievements, elected a new party organ, the Regional Committee of the RCP(B) of Siberia.