Pereira argues that the White counter-revolution failed in Siberia because of the political weakness of the anti-Soviet governments vying for power in the region and especially because of their policies toward the Siberian peasantry. He highlights similarities and differences among their constitutional programs and ideologies, paying particular attention to the Kolchak government as the chief anti-Bolshevik force in the region. Through his analysis of the conflict Pereira attempts to determine whether parliamentary democracy stood any real chance under the extraordinary circumstances or whether it was, as the Bolsheviks alleged, merely window-dressing hiding the real agenda of counter-revolution by military means and restoration of the ancien régime.

N. Pereira's profile page

"White Siberia is a serious advance in state-of-the-art research on the history of the civil war in Siberia and the role of that conflict in the Russian Revolution and Civil War. It will rank with the work of Peter Kenez on the Whites of South Russia." R.K. Debo, Department of History, Simon Fraser University.