A state established by non-Bolshevik governments and organizations at the Ufa State Conference on September 23, 1918, which controlled the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia.

 

September 8–23, 1918, saw a state conference held in Ufa, attended by delegations of the governments of revolutionary democracy (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly [Komuch], Provisional Siberian Government, Provisional regional Government of the Urals), Cossack Hosts (Orenburg Cossack Host, Ural Cossack Host and others), national entities (Alash-Orda, Bashkurdistan, the Estonian Provisional Government, etc.), as well as representatives of political parties (Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Kadets, etc.). The Conference formed the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directorate), which was declared “the only bearer of supreme power in the entire space of the Russian State” to operate until the future convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. The main declared goal of the government was to fight against the Bolsheviks and restore the integrity of Russia. All regional governments were to submit to the new authorities. The Siberian and People’s armies, the Czechoslovak Legion were subordinate to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief (Vasily Boldyrev). The gold reserves of the former Russian Empire were moved from Samara to Ufa.

 

Ufa Directorate positioned itself as a new composition of the Provisional Government, which stopped operating after the October coup of 1917. It comprised 5 people: Nikolay Avksentiev, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary (SRs) Party (Chairman), Nikolay Astrov, a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets), General Vasily Boldyrev, Pyotr Vologodsky, the Chairman of the Provisional Siberian Government, and Nikolay Tchaikovsky, a Popular Socialist, Head of Supreme Directorate of the Northern Region. To act in the event of the departure or absence of one of the members of the government, their deputies were appointed. Thus, Astrov was to be replaced by fellow party member Vladimir Vinogradov, and Tchaikovsky by SR Vladimir Zenzinov. The government agenda included civil liberties, labor protection, freedom of trade unions, and rejection of the grain monopoly. The land was left in the hands of those who owned it at that time, the final solution of the land issue was left to the future Constituent Assembly.

 

On October 9, 1918, as Ufa was at risk of occupation by the Reds, Ufa Directorate members moved to Omsk, where they became dependent on the Provisional Siberian Government. On November 4, 1918, they formed a new executive body together: the All-Russian Council of Ministers headed by Vologodsky. The Council included supporters of the one-person authoritarian government, headed by Aleksander Kolchak. The Council of Ministers demanded that all regional, national, and Cossack governments be abolished. While most of the regional governments resigned in early November, some of them (for instance, the Bashkir government) chose to defect to the side of the Soviet regime.

 

On October 22, 1918, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party issued an appeal containing several complaints against the Directorate and called for armed resistance in the event of a threat from counterrevolutionary forces (there were many monarchist-minded officers in Omsk). This document provoked a military coup organized and conducted in Omsk by a group of officers, supporters of Kolchak. On the night of November 18, they arrested the leadership of the Directorate: the SRs Nikolay Avksentiev, Vladimir Zenzinov, Andrey Argunov, and Yevgeny Rogovsky, and others. In the morning, the Council of Ministers held an emergency meeting, in which Vologodsky and Vinogradov took part, which abolished the Directorate. The supreme power was provisionally transferred to the Supreme Ruler. Kolchak was elected to this post by secret ballot. Former members of the Directorate were exiled to China.