One of the many tens of thousands of refugees fleeing eastwards from Omsk on November 14th 1919 was moved by ‘the terrible and at the same time beautiful sight’ of fires blazing above parts of the capital to attempt an analogy with the 1812 conflagration of Moscow witnessed by Tolstoy's Natasha in War and Peace. And, although actually citing the precedent of the French Government's removal from Paris in 1914, Kolchak too seemed to be evoking the ghosts of Alexander I and Kutuzov when he informed the Allies on November 11th of his decision to evacuate Omsk: predicting the imminent ‘awakening of the national spirit in the Russian people’, he claimed to ‘regard the future with confidence and with complete faith in the ultimate triumph’. Omsk, however, unlike the Moscow of 1812 or the Paris of 1914, had not been reluctantly evacuated according to a plan, but abandoned by an utterly defeated and demoralised army. True, the Supreme Ruler had been saved and was now en route to rejoin his ministers at Irkutsk. But, as the flight began, General Janin was more than entitled to pose the question: ‘Will he arrive there as the head of a government?’

If Kolchak really did still believe that the evacuation of Omsk would be temporary, that the White movement in the east was on the eve of a revival and that Russia would yet rally to his flag, then news which was to reach his train over the following days concerning events in the Siberian rear must have finally divested him of such illusions: