Kolchak gold is the most interesting thing in blogs. Secrets of history: Kolchak’s missing gold (7 photos) Withdrawal of US Armed Forces from the Japanese Islands

By the beginning of the First World War, the Russian Empire had the largest gold reserves in the world, much of which disappeared after the revolution.

What's missing?

According to various sources, in the admiral's treasury Alexander Kolchak there were from 500 to 650 tons of gold. In addition, among the treasures that the commander received are 30,000 poods or 480 tons of silver, church utensils and other historical values. The approximate value of gold alone in 2000s prices is about $60 billion.

Colossal treasures of the White Guards under the command of a colonel Vladimir Kappel captured in Kazan, where before that, away from the revolutionary capitals, the Bolsheviks managed to transport valuables. The gold was sent by train to Omsk, where by November 1918 the new Russian government had assembled. Admiral Kolchak was declared the “supreme ruler” of the country.

The valuables were placed in the Omsk State Bank, and their audit was carried out only after 6 months. By this time, 505 tons remained in the “gold reserves”. It is likely that some of the funds have already been spent.

How did it disappear?

One of the armored trains of Kolchak’s army, captured by units of the Red Army,
1920 wikimedia

According to archival documents, a total of eight trainloads of gold left Omsk for the Far East; the first departed in March 1919. Seven of them reached Vladivostok. The fate of the last, eighth train seems the most mysterious; millions of gold rubles and dozens of boxes with bullion from it disappeared without a trace.

When the retreat of Kolchak’s troops from Omsk began, the gold was loaded into 40 wagons and sent east along the Trans-Siberian Railway. 12 escort cars followed him. In the area of ​​Nizhneudinsk station, the train was stopped by the White Czechs, who controlled those territories. They, with the consent of the Entente countries, forced the supreme ruler of Russia to abdicate his post and transfer the existing values ​​to the Czechoslovak Corps. The Czechs, in exchange for security guarantees, gave 311 tons of gold and an admiral to the Socialist Revolutionaries. And those, in turn, to the Bolsheviks. Kolchak was shot, and the “gold reserves” were returned to the state, having lost over 180 tons.

Where to look?

According to one version, Kolchak ordered to hide some of the valuables before his arrest. Potential places to search for treasure were the Maryina Griva lock in the Ob-Yenisei Canal (this navigable water canal between the Ob and Yenisei basins was used from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century) and caves in the Sikhote-Alin mountains in the Khabarovsk Territory.

Some seekers believe that some of the gold could have been sunk in the Irtysh or Baikal. There are legends that near the Taiga station on the 3565th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1919, locals saw a convoy with 26 boxes of gold.

The version that seems more plausible is that during the short time he was in office, the supreme ruler spent a significant part of the gold of the Russian Empire, and the other part was sent abroad. That is, there is practically nothing left of the gold reserves. There is information that Kolchak spent about 250 million gold rubles on purchasing weapons and obtaining loans from foreign banks. In addition, the Kolchak government ordered the printing of its own banknotes in the United States, which it paid for but never received.

Members of the Russian naval mission to the USA led by Alexander Kolchak
(sitting center) with American naval officers in New York

Gold was exported through Vladivostok to Sweden, Norway, Japan, Britain and the USA. There it was placed in banks as collateral for obtaining loans. Part of the ingots was transferred to the United States government for the supply of Remington rifles and Colt machine guns.

There is an opinion that the money remaining in foreign banks was spent on resettling the army Wrangel in the Balkans and assistance to emigrants until the 1950s.

It is known that part of the valuables from one of the echelons was captured by the ataman’s troops Grigory Semenov. He used about 30 tons of gold for the needs of his army. Perhaps some of the valuables were taken by the White Czechs while retreating. After the Czechoslovak Corps returned home, the largest Legiabank was formed by the legionnaires.

The surviving “Kolchak’s gold” was returned to Kazan. With these funds, the restoration of the country's economy and industry began after the Civil War, including the construction of the first “communist construction projects.” Only the last “gold” train, returned from Irkutsk, “lost weight” by more than four million gold rubles or, in equivalent, by almost three and a half tons of precious metal. His fate still worries treasure hunters to this day.

Kolchak's gold: billions of dollars awaiting discovery

Where are the treasures that people have been searching for for centuries? What places on earth hide the untold riches of our ancestors? Perhaps one of these places is not far from our home, office, or favorite supermarket? Treasures are also discovered where no one expected to find them. But sometimes the search continues for centuries. A little more - and the history of the search for the famous “Admiral Kolchak’s gold” will cross the century mark, a significant part of which has not yet been discovered by scientists, intelligence services, or adventurers. According to researchers, the minimum value of the yet unfound treasures is about $2.5 billion.

Humanity is tirelessly searching for the missing gold of the Incas and the untold riches of sea pirates, the treasuries of Napoleon and Alexander the Great, the tomb of Genghis Khan and the treasures of Arab sheikhs... The territory of Russia is also rich in true and not so true stories about once-lost values. However, unlike many of them, the story of Kolchak’s gold has an undeniable advantage. It is reliably known that 1600 tons of jewelry of Tsarist Russia is not fiction or guesswork. These treasures are reality. This means that we should not exclude the possibility that the lost part of them will one day be found.

Where did Kolchak get his gold?

In fact, Kolchak’s gold is a significant part of the reserves of the entire Russian Empire. Judge for yourself: these treasures include about 640 tons of gold, 480 tons of silver, jewelry of the Romanov royal family (the cost of which is simply amazing), as well as unique Siberian Orders, minted from gold and lavishly decorated with precious stones. The specific value of historical and cultural relics is difficult to determine, but the minimum price for gold and silver that ended up in the hands of the White Guard admiral Kolchak is $13.5 billion.

So, a little history. In the fall of 1918, the treasures of Tsarist Russia, hidden in Kazan, fell into the hands of the White Guards. They were hastily transferred to Omsk under the care of the head of the movement, Alexander Kolchak. After some military expenses, the wealth was divided into three parts. Further, each of these parts has its own destiny...

About 720 boxes of gold (that’s 37 tons) were stolen by Ataman Semenov, who did not obey either the Whites or the Reds, and was spent by him. True, Semenov transported approximately 9 tons to his “patron” - Japan. Another part of the Russian gold was sent to Japan by General Rozanov after the execution of Kolchak. They say that during that period of time the gold reserves of the Land of the Rising Sun increased tenfold! It is not surprising, since Russia’s gold wealth was the largest in Europe. The money spent by Semenov and sent to Japan made up the first part of all Kolchak’s treasures.

To the finder of 200 tons of gold...

The second, largest part of Russia's gold reserves remained under Kolchak and later received the fame of the “golden echelon”. At the beginning of 1920, it was decided to transport 29 wagons of jewelry worth more than 650 million gold rubles from Omsk to Vladivostok. But the train did not reach Vladivostok. In the area of ​​Irkutsk, the train was stopped by Kolchak's former allies, Czech legionnaires, and handed over to the Bolsheviks. But here’s what’s interesting: out of 650 million of the then currency, only 400 million were transferred to the Reds! Yes, about 40 million gold rubles were given to their Motherland by generous Czech hands. But where did the rest of the wealth go, a good 200 tons?! Lost on the road? Or did the prudent admiral hide some of the treasures? This is where historical accuracy ends. This is where legends and versions begin...

Now it is difficult to even count the number of attempts to find the “remnant” of the “golden echelon”. Some researchers believe that Russia's lost gold reserves "sank" into the banks of Great Britain, France and Japan. Facts are layered with legends, and history is overgrown with so many rumors that it is no longer easy to distinguish between truth and fiction. They are looking for the “Golden Train” near the Siberian station Taiga and at the bottom of Lake Baikal, in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and in the Kazakh city of Petropavlovsk, in Irkutsk and even almost in the Arctic. Interestingly, actually finding treasure pieces in all these places is quite possible! But what are these stories based on?..

“Scattered” across Siberia?

Version 1. According to one version, in the fall of 1919, 26 boxes of gold (approximately 1.3 tons) were buried at a depth of 2.5 meters near the Siberian station Taiga. The version is plausible, confirmed by a witness and does not contradict the historical course of events. An Estonian who served as a clerk in the White Guard came to the USSR already in 1931. He hoped to dig up those same 26 boxes that, according to him, four people buried here in 1919: himself, the regiment commander and two privates. By that time, the area had seriously changed, and the Estonian Purrock failed to find anything. Just as the NKVD officers failed to find anything after that. They say they didn't dig deep enough. Who knows...

Version 2. Another version says that the gold of the “echelon” has been resting at the bottom of Lake Baikal since a detachment of White Guards tried to cross the huge lake on foot in the bitter winter. Several thousand military personnel froze to death on the ice then, and in the spring they went under the water along with their belongings. This is precisely the testimony given by one of the officers who survived that ice campaign, White Guard Bogdanov. And this version can also be trusted! About 200 kilograms of gold, according to Bogdanov, were then saved and hidden. Already in 1959, the former officer himself was detained by Soviet border guards while trying to cross the border. Bogdanov was killed in pursuit, and about 100 kilograms of gold, hidden almost 40 years ago, were found in the trunk of his jeep.

But there is gold somewhere...

Version 3. Another probable location of Kolchak wealth is the Ob-Yenisei Canal, which was unfinished under Nicholas II. There, according to Old Believers, there is a mass grave where about 500 White Guards were buried at the end of 1919. It is curious that this area is thousands of kilometers away from the route along which the Guard retreated. There are no documentary explanations for the detachment’s presence here. So maybe this was one of the expeditions sent by Kolchak to hide part of the treasures?

Version 4. There is a mention that at the Kazakh station Petropavlovsk, where Kolchak stopped, several carriages with gold were mysteriously replaced in the precious train with the same number of carriages with weapons. Judging by the documents, the weapon was simply purchased for “lost” gold. However, you don’t need to be a great mathematician to understand: the cost of gold and the resulting weapons are incommensurable. According to the guesses of old-timers of Petropavlovsk, the White Guards hid gold in a mass grave, where they buried all those executed. The fact that the White Guards were generally puzzled by the burial of corpses, and even outside the city limits, is too suspicious, according to the Kazakhs. By the way, some coins from the royal gold reserves are today valued by collectors at several thousand dollars. What is noteworthy is that Petropavlovsk numismatists have such coins.

Of course, this is not all of the current versions about the location of Kolchak’s treasures. Someone is looking for precious cargo in Irkutsk, and someone is looking for it in the remote taiga. One way or another, part of the gold reserves of Tsarist Russia has still not been found. However, almost 90 years later, the search is being conducted not only by adventurers, but also by Russian intelligence services. For the most part, they search in the Siberian expanses. And if they are looking, it must be assumed that there is still gold somewhere...

Big riches of a small town

But there was also a third part of Kolchak’s treasures! Until mid-autumn 1919, this part was stored in the Siberian city of Tobolsk and contained many valuables, the value of which experts still simply do not dare to name. What did the basements of the churches of Tobolsk hide? Firstly, jewelry, precious stones and other luxury of the Romanov family. Secondly, precious church relics, including a 570-kilogram silver and gold-plated shrine from the relics of the last Russian saint, John of Tobolsk. A little later, unique orders of the Provisional Government of Siberia “joined” this wealth.

The orders, by the way, represent enormous historical and cultural value. When asked about their value, experts answer unequivocally: they are priceless.

Two orders “Revival of Russia” and “Liberation of Siberia” were issued in 1918 by decree of the Provisional Siberian Government. They were made by the best jewelry craftsmen in the country, and special ribbons were ordered from Japan! The most noble materials were used for the production of 1st degree awards: gold, platinum and precious stones. Judging by the documents, in total more than 2,000 copies were produced. It would seem like a lot. Judging by the available documents, there was simply no time to award new orders to anyone. Kolchak ordered them to be stored along with the rest of the jewelry in the basements of the Tobolsk church. Since the Civil War, no one has ever seen the orders.

Who will find what the security officers did not find?

In October 1919, all valuables from Tobolsk were urgently evacuated to Tomsk along the river. However, the ship did not reach Tomsk - the ship got stuck in the ice not far from small Surgut. What happened next, no one knows. Some believe that the officers buried 6 boxes of wealth on the banks of the Ob. Others say - in the taiga. Some believe that the treasures were drowned in the river, fearing that they would fall to the Red Army. There is also information that all expensive church utensils, jewelry of the Romanov family and Siberian orders were transferred for storage.

In 1933, the security officers managed to find a serious part of the royal property: a 100-carat diamond brooch, tiaras of the queen and princesses, hairpins with diamonds and other valuable jewelry worth 3.27 million gold rubles. But, for example, the queen’s favorite pearl necklace and the heir’s golden sword, decorated with a considerable number of diamonds, were not found. The unique orders “Revival of Russia” and “Liberation of Siberia” were also not found.

One day, researchers settled on the idea that those orders did not exist at all. And already in the early 90s, when many secret documents ceased to be secret, it became clear that the security officers were looking for these same orders for ten long years. Therefore, they exist. Scientists are sure that if at least one copy of the order had turned up at some auction or in a private collection, it would have become a cultural and historical event on a global scale. For Russia, this is filling in some “blank spots” in history, but for the person who finds the treasure, it means huge sums of money. Real wealth. For finding something that could be hiding, basically, anywhere. Even where our unremarkable everyday life takes place.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly indicated to the Japanese side that the issue of sovereignty of the Southern Kuril Islands is not subject to discussion. All negotiations between Japan and Russia concern only issues of joint use.
Meanwhile, if Tokyo continues to persist, Moscow has something to counter in response. And the counter-demands put forward can significantly cool down the ardor and curtail the ambitions of the Japanese side.

Will the hundred-year Russian-Japanese dispute end with an unprecedented “building of friendship”? Member of the Public Council on Foreign and Defense Policy Mark Masarsky talks about the possible outcome of the exciting detective story that began in 1918.

SCHEME "VLADIVOSTOK - YOKOHAMA HURRY BANK"

- This story, Mark Veniaminovich, is more interesting to read than any detective story. Where do we start?

Because until 1917, Russia's gold reserves were determined by an astronomical figure - 1337 tons. No country in the world (except the USA) could even come close to it. When the Germans came almost close to Petrograd, the tsarist government wisely ordered the evacuation of the gold reserves away from the front, dividing it between Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan.

On the night of August 7, 1918, a small detachment of White Guard Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Kappel captured all the “Kazan” gold - 507.1 tons worth 651.5 million rubles. And already in November it ends up in Omsk, with Kolchak. His army of almost one hundred thousand was in dire need of weapons, and they could only be purchased abroad. The gold of Tsarist Russia flowed there.

- How?

The scheme was simple and reliable. Kolchak’s “golden” trains were sent to Vladivostok (out of four, three reached the site, one was captured and plundered by Ataman Semenov), where their contents were reloaded into the basements of the local branch of the State Bank. And then, directly or through the Syndicate company, specially created from banks in the USA, England and Japan, an agreement was concluded with a foreign partner on a loan or supply of weapons. To secure the loan, so-called “collateral gold” was transferred to a foreign bank.

Kolchak transferred gold to many countries. But most of the money went to Japan, where the admiral’s main counterparty was Yokohama Hurry Bank, the only Japanese bank at that time that had official permission to operate in foreign currency.

But the Japanese never delivered weapons to Kolchak. And the gold was not returned.

1918 Russia's gold reserves in the Kazan State Bank. Here he will be captured by the White Guard detachment of V. Kappel
TWO IMMORTAL AGREEMENTS

Back in 1996, from the rostrum of the Russian State Duma, one of its leaders directly said: “We have all the necessary documents to demand the return of our gold from Japan.” What documents were you talking about?

These are two Russian-Japanese financial agreements, signed in October 1919, providing a loan to the Kolchak government in Omsk secured by pure gold in two bills of lading, equivalent to 20 million and 30 million yen - about 60 tons of gold. We looked for these documents all over the world, but found them in Moscow, among the unsorted rubble of the Foreign Ministry archives. And the originals! The discoverers were graduate students and students of the Diplomatic Academy, students of Professor Vladlen Sirotkin, who sifted through thousands of unexplored documents.

The findings consisted of two loan agreements between a Japanese banking syndicate led by Yokohama Hurry Bank and the representative of the State Bank of Russia in Tokyo, I.G. Shchekin, speaking on behalf of the Omsk government. Let me emphasize so as not to return to this again: these were legal interstate agreements for the production of weapons by the Japanese military plant for Kolchak’s army.

A copy of the first page of the Russian-Japanese financial agreement dated October 6, 1919.

We looked for these documents all over the world, but found them in Moscow, among the unsorted rubble of the Foreign Ministry archives.

A copy of the last page of the Russian-Japanese financial agreement dated October 6, 1919.
In October - November 1919, the Japanese received Russian gold, which was recorded in the preliminary “Information Message of the Bank of Japan” for 1919. Moreover, this information was leaked to the Japanese press. “Yesterday, Russian gold worth 10 million yen arrived in the city of Tsuruga as a loan to the Omsk government in the amount of 30 million yen,” the Toke Niti Niti newspaper notified readers on November 3, 1919.

The total cost of gold received by the Japanese side from the Kolchak administration as collateral for the promised arms supplies amounted to 54,529,880 gold rubles.

- This, as we remember, did not help Kolchak much...

Yes, literally a couple of weeks after the “golden” transfer, a series of defeats for Kolchak’s army followed; it retreated in panic from Omsk. What happened next is well known: the defeat at Irkutsk, the capture of Kolchak and his death. It was here that the Japanese side seized the excellent opportunity not to deliver what was promised “due to the absence of an addressee.” And it’s trivial to appropriate Russian gold. As a result, the loan was sold for only 300 thousand dollars, and the Japanese satellite Ataman Semenov received the weapons.

And this was only the beginning of the plunder of the royal treasury.

August 1919. Retreat of Kolchak's army to the east.
BULLONTS "ON YOUR WORD OF HONOR"

I guess that you mean the Japanese robbery of 25 pounds of gold from the Khabarovsk branch of the State Bank of Russia. This was stated in the telegram of the People's Commissariat of Finance of the RSFSR dated November 21, 1918.

Not only this. The biggest "golden jackpot" was hit by the Japanese thanks to the betrayal of Kolchak's general Sergei Rozanov. On the night of January 29-30, 1920, the Japanese cruiser Hizen moored directly opposite the building of the Vladivostok branch of the State Bank standing on a hill. The landing force that landed from it cordoned off the territory, and an assault group burst into the bank - it was led by Rozanov, dressed in the uniform of a Japanese officer. And the operation was commanded by Japanese intelligence colonel Rokuro Izome, the main specialist in Kolchak’s gold in the Far East.

Within two hours, about 55 tons of Russian gold, without any receipts or acts, were moved from bank vaults to the holds of a Japanese cruiser. Of course, the city authorities lodged an official protest with the Japanese government. Of course, a criminal case was opened against General Rozanov for theft on an especially large scale.

But Japan did not even bother to respond to the ultimatums.

There was another side to the medal. White generals carried tons of gold to the east in their convoys. But, pursued by the Bolsheviks and Chinese Honghuz bandits scurrying around Manchuria, they often found themselves faced with a fateful choice: either be captured and say goodbye to the gold, or...

Give it to the preservation of the only “real” power in Manchuria at that time - the Japanese. And escape the chase "lightly".

On November 22, 1920, the chief of logistics of Kolchak’s army, General Petrov, transferred 22 boxes of gold for temporary storage to the head of the occupation Japanese military administration in Transbaikalia and Manchuria, Japanese Colonel Rokuro Izome.

On February 13, 1920, the military foreman of the Ussuri Cossack army Klok transferred to the commander of the 30th Japanese infantry regiment, Colonel Servant, for safekeeping two boxes and five bags of gold from 38 pounds of gold confiscated by the White Guards in the Khabarovsk office of the State Bank.

Let us also remember about the 33 boxes of gold that were transferred to the Japanese side in March 1920 and placed in the Chosen Bank branch in Osaka. This is evidenced by the protocols of the Tokyo District Court dated March 9, 1925.

Let's add 143 boxes of gold, which General Semenov handed over to Japanese Colonel H. Kurosawa in March 1920 in Chita...

And General Istrov gave the Japanese 1 million 270 thousand gold rubles, General Podtyagin - one and a half million gold rubles, financial agent of the Ministry of Finance of the tsarist government Konstantin Miller - 10 million gold rubles...

- Was this gold given to the Japanese against receipt?

Not always. Who and on my word of honor...

Routes
SECRET FUND OF THE KWANTUN ARMY

Recently, the Kyodo Tsushin agency reported that representatives of the ruling circles of Japan took an active part in the illegal import of Russian capital...

Yes, the former president of the Japanese Credit Bank, Yoshio Tatai, managed to prove that at least four tons of Russian gold were stolen from Russia on the direct orders of the Japanese government. And Finance Minister Takahashi is personally involved in the secret transportation of 9.1 tons of Russian gold in 186 boxes into the country.

By the way, most of the gold embezzled by the Japanese, as shown by a parliamentary investigation conducted in Japan in March 1925, went to the “secret fund” of the Kwantung Army. This fund was managed by the future prime minister of the country, General Giichi Tanaka, concentrating by the end of 1922 many tons of Russian gold for a huge amount at that time - more than 60 million yen.

Several years will pass, and thanks to Russian gold, the Kwantung Army will turn into a real “state within a state” in the vastness of Northern China and Korea...

August 1918. Vladivostok. Japanese troops on Svetlanskaya Street.
CHANCE TO CLOSE THE "GOLDEN" TOPIC

- Let me pose the question point blank: Has Russia retained the rights to the gold taken from it?

Undoubtedly. The Soviet Union was the legal successor of the Russian Empire and all regimes on its territory until the 1920s inclusive. Just as, according to the Paris Convention, the Russian Federation turned out to be the legal successor of the Russian Empire and all regimes on its territory. Let us remember how foreign counterparties have always treated us: “if you have to, you pay.” And we state that Article 8, fixed in the agreements of October 6 and 19, 1919, has not lost force: “The State Bank of Russia remains the manager of the gold deposit and, upon request, can return it from Osaka to Vladivostok, paying only six percent of the costs for the return transfer".

I repeat once again: Russia has the full and legal right to demand the return of the pledged gold.

- Are our Japanese partners aware?

In fact, they were never particularly secretive. And until 1925 they calmly waited to see if Soviet Russia would demand the return of gold deposits under the 1919 treaties. Wouldn't it require recognition of the legality of the signed agreements? Didn't demand it. And in June 1927, Yokohama Hurry Bank converted part of the collateral gold into government assets worth 62 million yen. And then every ten years the Japanese carried out this banking operation, the profit from which went straight to the treasury. Over 90 years, more than six billion US dollars have accumulated, at the lowest percentages.

Approximate cost of building two nuclear power plants.

Russia has the full and legal right to demand the return of pledged gold

- It is logical to demand the return of interest money and collateral gold to Russia...

Not so simple. When this topic was raised in the media in the 90s, the Japanese, in response to a request from the Russian Foreign Ministry, reported: there is no Russian gold in Japan. I will not go deeper into their argumentation - it does not stand up to criticism. The root of the problem is the Japanese mentality, which I have studied well over the years of living in the Far East. The Japanese, it seems to me, will never admit that they stole Russian gold. For them, preserving national honor and their face before the world is much more important than any economic interests.

Let us also pretend to be “politically correct” that Japan did not steal anything from us. And we will do as Indonesia did in its time. After the end of the Japanese occupation, the devastated country did not begin to extort debts from the former aggressor, but agreed with him on multi-billion dollar investments in the Indonesian economy. They not only revived Indonesia, but also brought considerable taxes into the state treasury...

- Instead of political litigation - a business plan?

Exactly. Do the Japanese need electricity? They are in need. Does Russia need to break the economic blockade that the United States (and its ally Japan) are actually putting on us in the Far East? Without any doubt.

Japan owes Russia, according to my calculations, six billion US dollars. Why not ask the Japanese government to act as a guarantor of energy investments and allow the Japanese Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank (successor to Yokohama Urgent Bank, today the largest in the world) to invest these six billion in the construction of two nuclear power plants in the Russian Far East? Their energy can be supplied to the island of Honshu via a sea cable (there is a corresponding project developed by a Russian institute.)

Moreover, they will be supplied at a reduced price until the Russian side reimburses investors for all the money invested in the construction of the stations. After this, Japanese investors withdraw from co-ownership of the nuclear power plant and two modern plants, built using safe, “post-Chernobyl” technology, remain in Russian ownership.

- You don’t believe in the direct return of “Kolchak’s gold”?

There is no real “Kolchak’s gold”. Bullions and Russian coins have long been melted down. But there is a geopolitical and economic reality where the ability to negotiate and compromise is more valuable than any money. In the investment option there will be no losers: Japan receives cheap electricity, Russia returns its gold reserves in the form of two nuclear power plants.

And it closes the topic of “Russian gold in Japan” forever.

- Does this project have a chance of implementation?

I think the time has come for this. The implementation of the “Indonesian option” of investment would be an asymmetric response to American plans for uncontested supplies of overseas shale LNG to the Far Eastern region. And for the Russian economy - the Far Eastern analogue of the South Gas Stream.

A bitter smile from history: “Yokohama Hurry Bank”, and then “Tokyo Ginko”, created on its basis, is the only one in Japan that until the mid-60s worked reliably with foreign currency. And the Land of the Rising Sun should thank its northern neighbor for this. It was Russian gold that took part in the formation of the Japanese “economic miracle”...

Historical gratitude is a perishable product. Russia has experienced this bitter truth more than once.
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What are the Southern Kuril Islands like? Return 200 tons of gold and fulfill two more conditions

On March 7, at a briefing on Smolenskaya Square, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova promised to study the issue of Russian gold exported to Japan during the Civil War, and also to consult on this issue with experts from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

According to some sources, Japanese banks managed to get:
- 523 million red rubles.
- Gold bars worth 90 million rubles.
- 28 million rubles in foreign currency.

In all likelihood, about 200 tons of precious metal were stored. This is without taking into account the huge amount of money at that time.

If you try to convert the amount of those years into modern monetary equivalent, then, according to experts, we are talking about an amount of 80 billion dollars, or 5.3 trillion. rubles If we compare the value with the budget approved for this year, we get a little more than a quarter of it, to be more precise - 26%.

By the way, unlike its European partners, France and Great Britain, who do not deny that they continue to store imperial gold, Japan categorically denies this fact. Although it has long been no secret to the public that the holder of the royal assets is Mitsubishi Bank and its subsidiaries.

It is these circumstances that need to be clearly linked to the negotiation processes. The correct order of actions should be as follows: gold - signing a peace treaty - discussing the Kuril Islands.

Two more important conditions

1) Withdrawal of US Armed Forces from the Japanese Islands

The parties began actively discussing the signing of the Peace Treaty last year. At the same time, Moscow and Tokyo agreed to build on the 1956 declaration, according to which the USSR considered the possibility of transferring the island of Shikotan to Japan as a neutral party. In exchange, the Japanese side had to ratify the Peace Agreement.

But in 1960, American troops were stationed on Japanese soil, according to a military pact concluded between Tokyo and Washington. Since Japan entered into an alliance with its main geopolitical enemy, the Kremlin withdrew from the agreement.

If we assume that the Russian authorities will transfer the islands to Japanese jurisdiction, it logically follows that Japan should break off allied relations with the United States. This means that the Americans will have to completely dismantle their bases in Okinawa and off the Chinese coast.

According to comments left by the Soviet government on January 27, 1960, the islands can be transferred to the Land of the Rising Sun only if all foreign military bases on its territory are dismantled.

This will essentially jeopardize the national security of not only Japan, but also South Korea, which has not only Russia but also China at its side.

And Washington will lose all influence in the region. There is no need to remind how the White House will react to such a proposal. The States will never allow the Japanese to enter into such an agreement.

2) Payment of reparations

After its defeat, Japan was obliged to pay reparations to the United States and the USSR, but it did not do so. And if, as a result of the war, the United States received approximately 40% of the world's gold reserves, then the Soviet state suffered huge losses.

What was it worth just to maintain the Far Eastern Group of Forces in the period from 1941 to 1945?

Thus, Japan will have to pay reparations that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, since Russia has officially declared itself the legal successor of the Soviet Union.

And here the question arises - having put forward all these conditions, will Tokyo continue to show its claims to the Southern Kuriles or will it sign a Peace Treaty, forgetting about the “Northern Territories”, as they are called in the Land of the Rising Sun?

Still, the second option is more likely.

One of the most difficult to study pages of our history is connected with the fate of the so-called “Kolchak’s gold.” That is, the general scheme of what happened to the “golden echelon” from August 1918 to February 1920 is well known. There is some confusion with the amount of gold. This is where all sorts of myths intertwined with the truth appear... Therefore, traces of gold caches are still being sought throughout Siberia.

Gold marks

Some historians are confident that the search is in vain - supposedly all the gold (except for that spent by Kolchak) to the last penny was transferred by the White Czechs to the Bolsheviks on March 1, 1920 in Irkutsk. But the figures given in the documents are so different that this confidence does not seem so well-founded.

Others, on the contrary, looking for eyewitness accounts, are sure that some of the valuables are hidden and can be found.

“The “golden echelon” is in many ways a figure of speech,” says candidate of historical sciences Alexey Tivanenko from Ulan-Ude (it was partly through his efforts that part of Kolchak’s “golden echelon” was recently discovered at the bottom of Lake Baikal). - There were three echelons. In one, especially guarded, disguised as a hospital train, there were 29 carriages of gold, another 11 carried the guards and headquarters of Kolchak’s retreating army. In the remaining two echelons, carriages with other valuables were “scattered” throughout the train. The Circum-Baikal Railway (CBZD) turned out to be especially difficult for transporting gold. In the 1960s, I lived on it and walked quite a bit along the Circum-Baikal Railway. Along the road, every 10–15 km, there were stations for repair workers, some of whom were the first builders of the highway. Many clearly remembered the events of 40 years ago.

Tivanenko became fascinated by the amazing story. He listened to the stories of eyewitnesses and participants in events telling about the crash of trains guarded by White Czechs. About how people found gold coins, some bags of gold sand, and some just bank gilded dummies of gold bars at the crash sites...

/ photo by Alexey Tivanenko

I saw one such dummy ingot with my own eyes in the village of Baklan,” recalls Tivanenko. - The owner used it as a weight for sauerkraut, and her husband himself picked it up at the site of the crash of the White Bohemian train.

As a result, Alexey Vasilyevich began to write down stories, mark on the map the places where train crashes occurred, and work in archives, looking for any data about the two-year journey of Russia's gold reserves to the east.

Kazan - Omsk - Irkutsk

During the First World War, the tsarist government of Russia, worried about the safety of the country's gold reserves (at that time the largest in the world), divided it into two parts and evacuated it to Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. Nothing special happened to the Nizhny Novgorod half, but to the Kazan half...

After the revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks managed to remove only a small part of the gold from the Kazan bank - 4.6 tons out of 500 tons stored there. They were prevented by the White Guard units of Colonel Vladimir Kappel and the White Czechs, who quickly took Kazan by storm in early August 1918. Kappel then telegraphed: “The trophies cannot be counted, Russia’s gold reserves of 650 million have been captured...”

This is only gold bullion, Tivanenko assures. - And there were also bags of platinum, silver (one silver coins worth 14,186 thousand rubles), gold, jewelry, nuggets, coins, and so on. Later, only these “little things” will make up 7 carriages in Admiral Kolchak’s “golden echelon”.

The Kappelites sent the captured gold to Omsk - to the “Supreme Ruler of Siberia” Kolchak. Under the protection of White Czech detachments, the gold traveled through Samara, Ufa, along the Volga and the Urals, and only reached Omsk by the end of November 1918.

In October 1919, Kolchak evacuated his government away from the advancing Reds, to Irkutsk, and the “golden echelon” also went there. And by February 1920, the admiral had already been betrayed by his comrades, deposed, handed over to the Bolsheviks and shot. At the same time, the Reds signed the “Kuitun Agreement” with the White Czechs: the Czechs must give up gold and for this they will be able to leave Russia without hindrance.

/ photo by Alexey Tivanenko

But the Czechs were not going to part with their valuables so easily. The head of the Czech Foreign Ministry directly wrote to the Legion command: “If it is still in your power, try to take it [the gold reserves] to a safe place, for example to the Czech Republic.” And they managed to take something away. Historians talk about a figure of 63 million gold rubles, but in fact there were more.

Everyone who touched the “admiral’s gold” was mesmerized by its radiance. So, representatives of the Entente also had their eyes on him, trying to gain control over the gold and persuading the Supreme Ruler to send valuables abroad. And Lenin’s orders came from Moscow: under no circumstances should gold be released from the country... And the partisans began to derail the trains.

So it is not surprising that the gold that returned from Irkutsk to Kazan in 1920 “lost weight” by almost half.

When talking about the amount of gold taken by the Kappelites in Kazan, historians use different figures - sometimes 650 million gold rubles were taken from the bank, then 659, then 657... Or even 1.2 billion. Apparently, because in the surviving documents gold was counted either in poods (16 kg), sometimes in tons, or in equivalent currency; they named the number of boxes without indicating their weight...

The complexity of the calculations also lay in the fact, explains Tivanenko, that during the “audits” neither the whites nor later the reds opened the boxes, trusting the seals. And then it was opened - in some of the boxes that the White Czechs handed over to the Bolsheviks, there were not gold bricks, but ordinary bricks: they accepted the valuables according to the inventory, without examining the contents of the boxes.

In general, there is a fair amount of confusion with this gold reserve. It also happened: there was suddenly much more gold. Historians explain this by the fact that the list also included valuables from various Siberian banks. After all, gold bars and coins were also stored there.

"Worlds" are going down

Tivanenko is not only a historian, he is also a hydronaut explorer. Therefore, I ended up participating in a three-year International Search Expedition on the Mir deep-sea manned submersibles. In 2008, he was invited to become the head of a humanitarian program to search for artifacts at the bottom of Lake Baikal.

The first search took place in September, recalls Tivanenko. - We had two approximate coordinates, which I calculated from long-standing conversations with eyewitnesses. In the first place, Berezovaya Bay, at a depth of 1.3 km, we found nothing. However, at the end of the work we still discovered valuables. But not Kolchak’s gold, but 3 million silver coins from a merchant’s cargo that sank back in the 19th century. This happened on the last day of work, and we did not have time to raise them.

Actually, the search for treasures was not at all the main task of the expedition. They did this only in their free time.

The next year we plunged at a different point,” continues Tivanenko. - We went down 1 km. The shore in that place is steep - rocky. She walked with the same straight plumb line in the water. Suddenly the spotlight picked out pieces of metal with a golden glow... Gold? No, broken carriages, pieces of railroad tracks... The “graveyard” stretched for a kilometer. Apparently, the disaster was monstrous.

But once again it seemed to the researchers that something similar to an ingot flashed. "Mir" put forward its "mechanical arm". Capturing an object at such a depth is a difficult task: just stir the tightly packed scree a little, and the whole mass will begin to move and easily crush the submarine with people. Alas, what was in the “hand” was not an ingot, but again a fragment of a carriage.

However, Tivanenko, on the contrary, considers the find a success:

We sent it for examination. Experts are convinced: this is a piece of a carriage from the 1920s. So, they were on the trail!

/ photo by Alexey Tivanenko

Putin and Kudrin went to the bottom

But we discovered the most important thing in 2010, the historian rejoices, when we returned to the “wagon cemetery.” The picture there has changed - the base of the rubble has moved. Making our way up the underwater slope, we soon discovered the support of a collapsed bridge. This means that, as eyewitnesses claimed, the partisans undermined the White Czech forces here. But the main discovery awaited us a little higher. It was... 4 gold bars sandwiched between stones. Skeletal bones were visible next to them... We spent 8 hours trying to hook at least one ingot with a probe. They couldn’t - the gravel immediately began to move.

Scientists made an even more interesting discovery at the second coordinate proposed by Tivanenko. He showed it back in 2009. But then one of the Mirs broke down, and the work had to be completed: submarines alone do not work at great depths. And in 2010 everything worked out.

Only, alas, it happened without me,” the historian regrets. - Colleagues did not tell us what exactly they found - it’s a mystery. But they shared a photo of the Mira’s onboard vehicles: a scree of stones, from which protrudes a pile of boxes, very similar to those that, according to eyewitnesses’ descriptions, were traveling in the “golden echelon”. The photo shows that the boxes fell out of the carriage. I still don’t know if they were able to lift at least one of them and check the contents.

Scientists hope that both finds are indeed of national importance. It is not for nothing that Vladimir Putin (then Prime Minister), Alexey Kudrin (then Head of the Ministry of Finance), and Sergei Mironov (then Speaker of the Federation Council), many businessmen and scientists, have already come to this shore of Lake Baikal - at different times. And even earlier, many Soviet leaders came to this place: immediately after the crash, in 1921, - Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin; in the 1930s - People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR Klim Voroshilov, People's Commissar of Defense of the Far Eastern Republic (FER) Vladimir Blyukher, Marshal of the USSR Semyon Budyonny and other top officials of the country. In the 1950s, for some reason, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen came here...

/ photo by Alexey Tivanenko

Putin and Kudrin arrived at different times, but both even sank to the bottom, says Tivanenko. “Apparently, they were trying to decide how much gold might be there and whether it was worth undertaking the difficult work of clearing dangerous underwater debris for the sake of it.”

However, this interpretation of the president’s dive to the bottom of Lake Baikal was refuted by his press secretary:

Vladimir Vladimirovich was interested in the ecology of the lake; he did not see gold. And, as far as I know, the issue of raising it was not discussed,” Dmitry Peskov told Interlocutor.

Well, at least now we know for sure: Kolchak’s mysterious gold still lies at the inaccessible depths of Lake Baikal and is waiting in the wings to replenish Russia’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. It seems that our descendants will deal with them with more reliable equipment for ultra-deep work.

Among the legends about treasures, the secret of the gold reserve, allegedly hidden by Admiral Kolchak during the retreat from the advancing formations of the Red Army, stands out. This story is also shrouded in mystery, but it is extremely interesting, since these events took place not so long ago, which significantly increases the likelihood of discovering Kolchak’s lost gold...

The government of the young Soviet Republic, at the beginning of 1918, decided to concentrate the gold reserves in one place. The reason was the danger of the advance of German troops. From the areas in which this threat was most likely, gold and valuables began to be evacuated to Kazan. It was the Walls of the Kazan Kremlin that were supposed to protect gold from attacks by both external and internal enemies. There were no final peace agreements with the Germans, so gold was transported from both Petrograd and Moscow to Kazan, thus combining all reserves in one storage facility. But the calculation turned out to be wrong, and all the valuables, collected with such difficulty back in the years of the empire, were captured by the White Guard troops!

If we talk about the composition of the gold reserves that ended up in the hands of the White Guards, then it weighed more than 490 tons and was based on bars and coins of various states, as well as gold mugs and stripes of gold. It is known that Kolchak proclaimed himself the “Supreme Ruler of the Russian State,” and in the gold reserve there were specially issued orders of the “Siberian Provisional Government” that were to be awarded to the participants in the events. Two orders, called “For the Liberation of Siberia” and “For the Revival of Russia”, were actually issued, and there were also their varieties, that is, different degrees. Until now, no one has seen these orders. They are not present in state museums or private collections.

But this gold did not help the whites in implementing their plans to restore the old regime. They retreated under the pressure of the Red Army and went further and further to the east. The Czechoslovak Corps captured Kolchak near Irkutsk. The Czechs themselves did not take part in military operations against Germany, but they were actively engaged in robbery and robbery, which was remembered by both the White Guards and Red Army soldiers. The Czechs got Kolchak's gold, part of which they later transferred to the Reds, but the rest, and a very significant part of it, disappeared without a trace.

After some of the gold returned to the disposal of the Soviet state, the reserve “lost” by more than a third! There were no rare orders in it either. And this became clear when the gold again ended up in the vaults of the state bank in Kazan. It is known that Kolchak actively used gold reserves to purchase various weapons for his army. That is why significant funds settled in banks in the USA, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan. But the version is stubbornly supported that there is a difference between the money that was initially captured by him and those that returned to the treasury, minus expenses. This means that there was another part that could well have been hidden by the admiral for a rainy day.

And here, precisely, begins a vast field for assumptions, opinions, hypotheses and, of course, myths and legends that are always born around such significant events.

Versions of the history of Kolchak's gold.

There are several main versions of the history of Kolchak’s gold and they are very different from each other. According to one version, the lost gold ended up in banks in the USA, Great Britain and Japan, and it is still there. For known reasons, it is not possible to confirm or refute this theory, so we can consider other versions of what happened.

According to another version, the Czechoslovak Corps deliberately concealed part of the supply and secretly transported it to its homeland. To confirm their guess, theorists propose to consider the fact that Czechoslovakia experienced an extraordinary economic recovery in the 20s and 30s of the last century. But this version also has no direct evidence.

According to the third legend, which excites the minds of researchers and search engines, Kolchak’s gold was hidden by order of the admiral himself, who foresaw the tragic outcome of military operations. The version is quite plausible, all that remains is to find out - where exactly were the countless treasures hidden and in which direction should we look for their traces?

The field for thought is enormous, and in the course of research carried out by various people and over the years, many places have emerged that could become repositories of gold reserves hidden by the White Guards during their retreat.

It was quite likely to assume that the Soviet government was also searching for treasures, but any reliable information on this matter, even during the years of glasnost, did not leak out, so we can assume a negative result obtained in this government investigation into the circumstances of the disappearance of gold.

According to one version, Kolchak’s gold could have been hidden in places completely different from those directly associated with hostilities, suggesting the admiral’s foresight in choosing a springboard for hiding the reserve. The Maryina Griva lock, which is located on the Ob-Yenisei Canal, is called such a place. The assumption is quite strange and contradicts normal logic, since the retreat routes of Kolchak’s army are far from this point on the map. The fact is that in the vicinity of this place there is a grave in which 500 White Guards are buried, which led the search engines to believe that this may have been a special detachment whose task was to hide part of the gold, and this was done on the orders of Kolchak . But on the other hand, it was quite logical to send the gold in a way that did not coincide with the direction of advance of the troops, and therefore gave a greater chance to complete the secret task.

What happened to the detachment itself, assuming that it was really a combat unit whose task was to deliver and hide valuables? Who could destroy such a large and experienced detachment? Versions have been put forward that the Red partisans could have destroyed it, but according to historical evidence, there were no active partisan formations in the vicinity of Krasnaya Griva, which means that this version can be discarded and not taken seriously.

It remains to be assumed that either a mutiny broke out in the unit itself, or liquidators were initially present in it, who were supposed to destroy all unnecessary witnesses after the bulk of the work was completed and Kolchak’s gold was securely hidden.

The second version is the most plausible. Several other facts that were established during the study of these events speak in favor of the general concept. It turns out that the detachment was moving along the old Baronsky tract, paved with wood. So, having passed along it, they destroyed it, perhaps with two goals - to cover their tracks and to make it difficult for the Reds to export gold in case their plan was figured out.

To support this version, there is evidence of a blind old man who appeared in 1969 in the area where this detachment died. The old man said that he, being one of the fighters of this detachment, miraculously survived the bloody massacre that the “murderers” staged, and the eyes of the surviving handful of White Guards were gouged out. True, no one heard details from him regarding Kolchak’s gold, so the secret was never revealed, thanks to this living eyewitness and participant in those events.

There are other versions that take us to completely different lands. For example, according to a group of scientists, Kolchak’s gold should be looked for in the Sikhote-Alin mountains. It turns out that there is evidence that gold bars were found in one of the caves. But no one knows the details of this story, since it happened a long time ago, and for a long time there have been no people who could accurately indicate this place.

But here is another version, proposed by one of the specialists studying the bank archives of the very countries where Kolchak’s gold was sent. He is sure that he should not look for it and waste time on it. They have established that this money has been spent and there is no chance now of discovering the mythical millions hidden by the admiral in distant years. And this version is also supported by evidence that speaks quite convincingly in its favor.

But people want to believe that there is still gold and valuables somewhere, they want to hope that someday Kolchak’s gold will be discovered!

According to another version, part of the gold reserves was stolen during its transportation by rail. And this happened, according to researchers, at Taiga station. However, numerous searches for the ill-fated gold in this area, using modern search technology, did not give a positive result. They didn’t find it at the station with the funny name Tyrit, where, as it was assumed, Kolchak’s gold could also be buried. But even here no traces of the train were found.

According to information, even Stalin at one time sanctioned the search “movement”, and then special agents masquerading as geologists, botanists and history buffs scoured suspected places, trying to obtain and realize information about the missing gold.

This is how people are made that they don’t want to believe that Kolchak’s gold may not exist. Such people are not satisfied with the fact that it was actually spent on the needs of the white movement. I would like to believe that somewhere there is a golden box of fabulous price, hidden by the prudent Kolchak.

Well, it is difficult to lean towards a single version today, almost a hundred years later, after these events, which gave rise to many assumptions and rumors. Probably, only the discovery of Kolchak’s gold, or vice versa, his unsolved secret, will be able to confirm and refute the opposite versions. Time will tell what will happen next with this secret. In the meantime, the search continues!..