The anti-Bolshevik Revolutionary Democracy government that operated in 1918 and controlled the territories of Samara, Simbirsk, Ufa, as well as parts of Kazan and Saratov governorates.

 

It was organized by former members of the Constituent Assembly dispersed by the Bolsheviks on June 8, 1918, in Samara, after the city was taken by the Czechoslovak Legion. The first composition of the Komuch Government included Socialist Revolutionary Party members (SRs) Vladimir Volsky (Chairman), Ivan Brushvit, Prokopy Klimushkin, Boris Fortunatov, Ivan Nesterov. Later, their number increased to 97 people. The Board of Department Managers was the executive body of the Komuch. It was chaired by a former member of the Constituent Assembly, a Socialist Revolutionary Eugeniy Rogovsky.

 

Komuch proclaimed itself a provisional authority combining legislative, judicial, and military functions. It sought to establish friendly relations with other anti-Soviet state-territorial entities that emerged in Russia in 1918. Agreements on military and political alliance were concluded with the Ural and Orenburg Host Governments, contacts were established with the leadership of the Bashkir and Alash autonomous regions. The Komuch declaration of September 5, 1918, stated that in the future, Russia would be the Democratic Federative Republic.

 

Komuch officially established an 8-hour working day, allowed worker meetings and peasant congresses, the activities of factory committees with restrictions on the right to strike, restored freedom of private trade. It canceled the decrees of the Soviet government in the field of industry, banking, and local self-government. It restored the property rights of the church. It banned the activities of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries on its territory since these parties participated in dispersing the Constituent Assembly.

 

The armed forces of Komuch were called the People’s Army, which fought under the Red flag and was supported by the Czechoslovak Legion. The army included experienced officers of the World War I such as Vladimir Kappel. However, Komuch faced problems in recruiting peasants for the army. Along with disobedience to the command of several units of the People's Army, including those consisting of mobilized workers, this became an important factor in the military success of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in the Volga region in the autumn of 1918.

 

On September 23, 1918, Komuch transferred its powers to the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directorate). On October 8, Red Army units occupied the former Komuch capital, Samara.