Den'gi russkoi emigratsii: Kolchakovskoe zoloto 1918–1957 by Oleg BudnitskiiReview by: Ekaterina PravilovaSlavic Review, Vol. 69, No. 2 (SUMMER 2010), p. 506Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25677153 .

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506 Slavic Review

Den'gi russkoi emigratsii: Kolchakovskoe zoloto 1918-1957. By Oleg Budnitskii. Historia Ros

sica. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo "Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie," 2008. xvii, 508 pp. Notes.

Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Plates. Photographs. Tables. Hard bound.

This book is a historical investigation of the fate of the 30,000 poods (480 tons) of gold, removed to Kazan' from the State Bank's stockrooms in wartime Petrograd in 1915 and

then captured by anti-Bolsheviks who ultimately transferred it to the custody of Admiral

Aleksandr Kolchak's Siberian government. At the same time, the book is also a study of the

fate of the White movement and of the Russian emigration. For the White government, this gold represented a fortune, but it was a spoil too heavy to bear and sell off. The book traces the movement of the boxes of gold bars across the fields of the civil war, and the

attempts of the White government, first, to save the gold for the future post-Bolshevik Rus

sia, then, to trade it for loans, guns, or coal. Oleg Budnitskii brilliantly combines the study of financial transactions with colorful portraits of the various people involved in the move

ment of funds. The fate of the White movement is well known: neither the money nor the

support of the Allies could help them to escape the debacle. Budnitskii does not think that the lack of financial resources or the inability to use the imperial gold effectively were key to the failure of the White movement; however, the story he has to tell offers an apt angle for reconsidering the reasons for this failure. Although many reasons contributed to the

Whites losing the civil war, they lost mainly because they could not offer an alternative to

Bolshevik ideology. The gold, the heritage of old Russia, was unable to help them oppose the arrival of a new ideology and political system.

After the war, the remnants of the treasure nourished hopes and aspirations for the

restoration that the emigres envisioned coming after the fall of the Soviet regime. In the

end, however, everything went to the survival of Russian emigres themselves. Budnitskii

describes a number of unsuccessful attempts by the members of the conference of ambas

sadors to maintain the political unity of emigre organizations and save the money for the

needs of "future Russia." The story ends in 1957, when the last traces of the rest of the

remaining funds were lost. By this time the first generation of Russian post-1917 emigres,

including politicians and diplomats involved in the fate of the gold, had also largely passed from the scene.

Masterfully written, the narrative is told like a detective story. It is far from a fiction, however: Budnitskii's book is a product of extensive archival research. One can hardly overestimate the historical and political importance of Budnitskii's findings. The book

destroys the myths about Russian money (billions of dollars, as some historians suggested)

supposedly deposited in foreign banks. Unlike other authors on the subject, Budnitskii

grounds his conclusions on documents. To make his arguments absolutely irrefutable, he

often cites sources in their entirety, without cuts and omissions. Sometimes he does this

too much, but most documents deserve this treatment. Among many of Budnitskii's archi

val findings, the most precious is a collection of documents from the Conference of Rus

sian Ambassadors in Paris that includes secret financial and political papers he discovered

in the Leeds Russian Archive (Brotherton Library, Leeds University, Great Britain). These

papers allowed him to complete his research and solve the mystery of the Kolchak gold. Budnitskii asserts that his book concludes the last '"unfinished chapter' in the his

tory of the Russian Civil War" (414). Certainly, the puzzle of Kolchak's gold has been resolved. There is no doubt, however, that this is not the last problem produced by the

fall of the Russian empire and the dismemberment of the state. Budnitskii's book provides an example of scientifically accurate, thorough, and detailed historical investigation of a

delicate political issue.

Ekaterina Pravilova

Princeton University

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