“. To take measures to prevent this corrupting work”: The Young Men's Christian Association in the perception of Kolchak's government
The article considers the relationship between the leadership of the American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), which operated in Russia during the Civil War, and the Russian Government under the leadership of Admiral Kolchak. The work of YMCA in Russia has repeatedly become the subject of consideration by foreign and domestic researchers. Western historians, focusing on the directions and principles of the organization's activities, the biographies of its individual representatives, the peculiarities of working in the conditions of revolutionary and military chaos, paid less attention to identifying the reasons why the anti-Bolshevik forces in the East of Russia came to breaking off the relations with YMCA. Domestic researchers of the Soviet period mostly considered the work of YMCA in Russia as one of the directions of the intervention. Modern Russian historians, despite addressing poorly researched issues, also did not analyze the relationship between Omsk and YMCA in such details. The aim of this work is to consider the features of decision-making that determined the dynamics of relations between the Omsk Government and its foreign Allies through identifying and analyzing the factors that influenced the perception of the actions of the representatives of YMCA by the military-political leadership of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the East of Russia. The sources for the study were unpublished office documents reflecting the course of the policy-making process in relation to YMCA on the part of military and civilian officials of the Omsk Government, as well as materials of the periodical press. As a result of the study, the author found that the decision-making process on limiting or allowing YMCA activities at the front and in the rear depended on two closely intertwined groups of factors that can be conditionally designated as “ideological” and “pragmatic”. Stereotypical ideas about the United States as a rich and powerful empire raised doubts about the need to provide the benefits requested by YMCA. At the same time, the fears of the military, which saw YMCA as an intelligence agency or a conductor of the ideas of socialism and Freemasonry, intertwined with attitudes to protect national interests, pushed to the conclusion that it was necessary to ban the work of Americans. The analyzed case, according to the author, gives grounds to believe that the relations of the Omsk Government and the foreigners could be built on similar principles in other cases. The aspiration of not to make concessions to the Allies, coupled with inflated expectations about their capabilities and the desire to help Russia, made the foreign policy of the Kolchak Government state-oriented, but extremely weak and inconsistent.