The Omsk Chekists Working with Ex–White Counterintelligence Agents: The Gudimov-Gorsky Incident

Abstract

Modern Russian academic science pays close attention to the history of national state security agencies, noting that studying their experience is of high importance for understanding the functioning of state and society institutions, especially in the era of social cataclysms. The article presents previously unknown episode from the work of the Omsk Chekists at the final stage of the Civil War in Siberia concerning opposition of the Soviet state security agencies to the activities of the White counterintelligence and physical neutralization of its employees and agents in the RSFSR. The article is to analyze forms and methods of the special services opposing one another at the end of the Civil War in the East of Russia, using the example of the final stage in the biography of Lieutenant Colonel Gudimov-Gorsky. The studied issue is connected to the general historiography of the problem, emphasizing the relevance of research. The study draws on a complex of unpublished sources from Gudimov-Gorsky’s archival criminal case, which was in closed departmental storage during the Soviet period. The theoretical basis is anthropological and systematic approaches, problem-chronological and comparative-historical methods, which permits to trace the described military and political processes in the general context of functioning of state and society, attempting to comprehend, among other things, the influence of human factor and random element on the outcome of some precedents in the work of regional bodies of the Cheka. The final part of the article underscores debatable problematic points related to the limited source base and complexity of biographical identification of Gudimov-Gorsky. Thus, the study is deemed uncompleted, however, it opens a way to further development of the designated broad issue. The publication may be of interest to the specialists studying the Civil War in the East of Russia, activities of national state security agencies in the era of social cataclysms, existence of officers during the revolutionary processes, as well as socio-political life in the early Soviet society.