I.K. Okulich: ‘I cannot say that the revolution has been totally unexpected,’ or how the ‘ocean of Russian people’ broke down

The authors focus on the memories of the Tomsk provincial agronomist, public and state figure I.K. Okulich, who after the revolutionary events of 1917-1922 left his homeland and lived in exile. The manuscript of his memoirs is kept by the State Archives of the Russian Federation. Okulich’s memoirs are informative in nature, they reflect the events of 1917-1922 in Russia. By the time the memoirist wrote them, he had a great life experience. First, Okulich studied abroad. Then he worked as an agronomist in the provinces. He was a tsarist official in the Ministry of Agriculture as well. After the February Revolution, Okulich became a member of the Provisional Government. He knew many famous people of his time: Vologodsky, Prishvin, Pryanishnikov. Okulich was a special representative of the government of Admiral Kolchak responsible for financial oversight in the United States, Great Britain and France. He did his utmost to mitigate the situation in revolutionary Russia, but he was unable to change it. I.K. Okulich emigrated and spent his whole life trying to comprehend what he had experienced in 1917-1922. However, he had never recognized the power of the Bolsheviks.