Admiral Stark at Vladivostok 1922

At age 68 at the beginning of the Great War, Russian Vice-Admiral Oskar Stark had been retired for a half dozen years. He had been an accomplished polar explorer, sailor and commander who saw combat in no less than three wars already. Stark was not called back to command fleets in battle, he was called back to be an administrator. When the Ottoman Turkish Empire entered the war in October 1914 and closed off the Black Sea at the Dardanelles Russian imports and exports all but stopped. The only way Russia could receive vital western war material was through neglected White Sea harbors and the small pacific port of Vladivostok. Stark was sent to the Far East to direct the flow of goods and keep this life line open.

When he arrived there he was given defacto command over the Russian Siberian Squadron. This was basically the battered elderly remnants of the Russian Pacific Fleet that had been sent to the bottom in the Russo-Japanese war ten years prior. Admiral Stark kept the port open as much as he could but military stores accumulated on the docks due to the nature of poor railheads going into the interior and brutal Siberian winters. When Tsar Nicholas abdicated and the governments changed overnight Admiral Stark and his Siberian operation became largely forgotten. The new Bolshevik government’s withdrawal from the war in March 1918 prompted Allied naval forces in Vladivostok to land and occupy the town so that the huge stockpiles of war material would not fall into the wrong hands. Vladivostok, with Stark still in his same post, went on to become the end of the logistics tail for the White Russian anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia during the subsequent intervention and Civil War.

The White Russian movement was eventually beaten in Siberia as it had been in the rest of Europe. In October 1922 the last stronghold of the movement was in Vladivostok and the Bolshevik red Army was fast approaching. Admiral Stark decided the only thing to do would be to mount a naval evacuation to a foreign country. Stark could only muster 30 barely working warships of the Siberian Squadron, many of whom were elderly and had not left port in as many as twenty years. On these warships he embarked all of his crews and their families, along with as many refugees as he could take. The sad lot, which numbered more than 9,000 including the leader of the last White army in SIberia and government in Russia- General M.K. Dieterichs and his staff, politicians, artisans, soldiers, cossacks, and the like. On October 24, 1922 the last of the White Russian movement left Old Russia in this convoy. They arrived seven days later in the Korean port of Wonsan where they stayed for a month. Eighteen ships and three fourths of the refugees remained in Korea under the care of the Red Cross due to the fact that their ships had either broken down or did not have enough fuel to continue. During this leg the fleet encountered a fierce typhoon in which the destroyer Dydymov and the transport Asia were lost with all hands which included 30 teenage officer cadets of the White army and a group of orthodox nuns. Stark arrived in Shanghai with only ten ships left and 3,000 unwelcome refugees. The Chinese government declared his stateless navy to be there illegally and ordered it to leave Chinese waters in 48 hours or risk being attacked. He disembarked all of his non-naval personnel including General Dieterichs and the civilians to create an instant White Russian community in Shanghai and proceeded to Manila Bay where he sold the last of his pitiful fleet at auction to help support the refugees. He ordered the flags of Imperial Russia lowered for the last time in the Pacific on January 15, 1923.

Of the ships sold by Stark many continued their lives under other names all over the world. In December 1923 Soviet Minister Litvinov demanded that the U. S. State Department (which administered the Philippines at the time) return the ships as Soviet property, however only the Icebreaker Baikal could be found and was returned. The others continued their lives for years around the world under many flags and names. On November 13, 1928 Admiral Stark died on land in Helsinki. He had spent more than fifty years at sea.

Sources

The Tarasov Saga: From Russia Through China to Australia Gary Nash Rosenburg publishing 2002

Russian White Guards Mordwinkin, George Trafford Publishing 1923

The Russo-japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero David Wolff, Steve G. Marks, Bruce W. Menning, and David Schimmelpenninck Van Der Oye 2007

The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05 Peggy Warner 1995

white army recruiting poster

Japanese & Russian officers 1922 vladivostok

General M.K. Dieterichs

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