The office's sole holder for most of its existence, and the only one to officially adopt the titles and functions of the Supreme Ruler, was Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who was elected to the position by the All-Russian Council of Ministers following the November 18 coup which overthrew the Directory.

[1] All commanders of the White armies in the south and west of Russia, as well as in Siberia and the Far East recognized the Supreme Ruler; at the turn of May — June 1919, the generals Anton Denikin, Yevgeny Miller, and Nikolai Yudenich voluntarily submitted to Alexander Kolchak and officially recognized his Supreme Command over all armies in Russia.

On May 9, 1919, the Russian government approved the symbols of the Supreme Ruler - a flag and a pennant with a double-headed eagle, but without the signs of "royal" power.

On December 22, the Council of Ministers of the Russian Government adopted the following decree: “In order to ensure the continuity and succession of all-Russian power, the Council of Ministers decided: to assign the duties of the Supreme Ruler in the event of a serious illness or death of the Supreme Ruler, as well as in case of his resignation or his long absence, to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin".

Kolchak issued a decree in Nizhneudinsk, which "in view of the foregone conclusion ... of the transfer of supreme All-Russian power to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia, Lieutenant General Denikin".

As Denikin himself testifies in his memoirs, in the midst of the grave defeats of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia and the political crisis, he considered it completely unacceptable to "accept the appropriate name and functions" and refused to accept the title of Supreme Ruler, motivating his decision with "lack of official information about events in the East".

On April 6, the Governing Senate in Yalta issued a decree declaring that the "new people's leader" henceforth "belongs to all power, military and civil, without any restrictions."

On April 11, P. N. Wrangel accepted the title “Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia”, effectively rendering the office of Supreme Ruler extinct and bringing about the dissolution of the Russian State, after which the activities of the White Army in the Far East came under the authority of the Far Eastern Army of Ataman G.M.

In the summer of 1920, A. I. Guchkov turned to Denikin with a request “to complete the patriotic feat and to vest Baron Wrangel with a special solemn act ... by the successive All-Russian power”, but he refused to sign such a document.