Lost gold of the Whites found in Baikal
by Andy Potts

Submarines in the depths of Baikal may have solved one of the great mysteries of the Civil War.

The long-lost gold of White commander Alexander Kolchak could be within reach of submersibles exploring the lake as part of a scientific mission.

Environmentalists working with the mission told journalists: “Deep-sea vehicles found rectangular blocks with a _meta_llic gleam, like gold, 400 metres below the surface.”

Local residents say that sunken railway wagons found last year match those used on the Circum-Baikal Railway during the Civil War, fuelling rumours that the Admiral’s lost riches could be nearby.

And the latest find, on the bed of Cape Tolstoy, has reinforced that hope.

Doomed admiral

Kolchak was a hero of the Russian navy in World War I who went on to lead the White resistance to the 1917 revolutionaries.

For a time he was commander of much of eastern Russia, but he failed to persuade potential allies to support him, perhaps because of his overtly monarchistic politics.

Ultimately he was executed by the Bolsheviks in Feb. 1920 and his body was hidden under the ice of Irkutsk's Angara river.

After that, legends grew up saying a vast horde of wealth had been lost during the chaos of the civil war.

Hero or villain?

In Soviet times Kolchak was reviled as an oppressive reactionary, though Soviet maps continued to show Kolchak Island in Kara Sea until 1937 when it was confusingly renamed Rastorguyev Island – the same as another Kara Sea landmass.

Five years ago one of the Rastorguyev Islands was renamed Kolchak Island, following a change in post-Soviet opinion

In 2008 his life was turned into a feature film directed by Andrei Kravchuk, which focused on his love life as much as his military and maritime deeds.

However a campaign to have him fully rehabilitated, launched by the “For Faith and Fatherland” movement has twice been rebuffed in the courts and monuments to him in St. Petersburg attracted protests from Communists and some war veterans