Interwar · Film · 2008
Admiral
Адмиралъ
A decorated naval officer and the wife of his friend fall in love as the Russian Empire collapses, and he becomes the leader of the White cause across Siberia.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Helsingfors naval base
After a daring minelaying action in the Baltic, Captain Kolchak is promoted and meets Anna Timiryova, the wife of a fellow officer.
Stop 2: Sevastopol
Now commanding the Black Sea Fleet, Kolchak faces a revolution that reaches his own ships and his own officers.
Stop 3: Omsk
Key location
Kolchak becomes Supreme Ruler of the White government, and Anna leaves her husband to be near him as a volunteer nurse.
Stop 4: Irkutsk
As the White front falls apart, the couple retreats east along the Trans-Siberian, depending on foreign allies who have their own plans.
What really happened
Alexander Kolchak was a polar explorer and one of the Russian Navy's best mine-warfare experts, promoted to command the Black Sea Fleet in 1916. After the Bolshevik revolution he joined the anti-Communist Whites, and on 18 November 1918 a coup in Omsk made him Supreme Ruler of Russia. His armies reached the Volga in spring 1919 before collapsing under Red counter-offensives, and his government retreated east along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
His love for the poet Anna Timiryova, who followed him to Siberia and was later imprisoned for decades in Soviet camps, is real. The film is openly sympathetic to Kolchak and says little about the White terror in Siberia; its opening sea battle is invented, since the German cruiser Friedrich Carl actually sank on Russian mines in November 1914.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Адмиралъ
- Directed by
- Andrei Kravchuk
- Countries
- Russia
- Languages
- Russian
- Released
- 2008
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front, China & Southeast Asia
- Themes
- Civil war
- Biography
- Romance
- Naval
- True story
