Battle of Volochayevka | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War | |||||||
The hill on which the battle took place. | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
Far Eastern Republic | White movement | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Vasily Blyukher | Viktorin Molchanov | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
6,300 infantry Contents | 3,850 infantry | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
128 killed 800 wounded 200 frostbitten | 400 killed 700 wounded |
The Battle of Volochayevka was an important battle of the Far Eastern Front in the latter part of the Russian Civil War. It occurred on February 10 through 12, 1922, near Volochayevka station on the Amur Railway, on the outskirts of the city of Khabarovsk.
The People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic under Vasily Blyukher defeated units of the counterrevolutionary Far Eastern White Army led by Viktorin Molchanov.
In November 1921 the Far Eastern White Army launched an offensive against the Far Eastern Republic, supported by Japan, which wanted a foothold in the Russian Far East. The White army, based on Vladivostok, advanced into the north of Primorskaya Oblast, following the railroad and the Ussuri River, occupying cities, towns and villages, and capturing Khabarovsk. [1]
On December 28, 1921, the Whites suffered their first check at a battle 110 kilometres (68 mi) west of Khabarovsk and retreated to Volochayevka and fortified themselves in a position based on Ju-Quran hill. Throughout January 1922 the two armies skirmished and fought in this area. [1]
At dawn on February 10, 1922, in severe cold and deep snow, Blyukher's Red Army attacked the White positions. The Reds had 7,600 soldiers with hundreds of machine guns and 30 field guns, and two light machine-gun tanks. The White Army had 4,950 soldiers equipped with 13 guns and many fewer automatic weapons. [1] [2]
The Red attack of February 10 was repulsed with heavy losses. One of the Red tanks was knocked out and the other broke down. Wounded died quickly in the −30 °C (−22 °F) temperatures. Blyukher regrouped on February 11, then attacked again on February 12. This time, the 3rd and 6th Regiments broke through the wire and after fierce fighting the Reds captured Ju-Quran hill around noon. This rendered the White position untenable, and Molchanov retreated. [1] [2]
On February 13, Molchanov's White forces retreated past Khabarovsk and the Red Army entered the city. [2]
The Red Army was too exhausted to effectively pursue the White Army, which escaped encirclement. However, White military fortunes continued on a downward path after this battle, and the last remnants of White and Japanese forces in the Far East surrendered or evacuated by October 25, 1922. [1]
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the liberal-democratic Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.
Operation Bagration was the codename for the 1944 Soviet Byelorussian strategic offensive operation, a military campaign fought between 22 June and 19 August 1944 in Soviet Byelorussia in the Eastern Front of World War II, just over two weeks after the start of Operation Overlord in the west. It was during this operation that Nazi Germany was forced to fight simultaneously on two major fronts for the first time since the war began. The Soviet Union destroyed 28 of 34 divisions of Army Group Centre and completely shattered the German front line. The overall engagement is the largest defeat in German military history, with around 450,000 German casualties, while 300,000 other German soldiers were cut off in the Courland Pocket.
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union.
Vasily Konstantinovich Blyukher was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky was a Soviet and Polish officer who became a Marshal of the Soviet Union, a Marshal of Poland, and served as Poland's Defence Minister from 1949 until his removal in 1956 during the Polish October. He became one of the most prominent Red Army commanders of World War II.
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria, formally known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation or simply the Manchurian Operation and sometimes Operation August Storm, began on 9 August 1945 with the Soviet invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, which was situated in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It was the largest campaign of the 1945 Soviet–Japanese War, which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace.
The Battle of Lake Khasan, also known as the Changkufeng Incident in China and Japan, was an attempted military incursion by Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state, into the territory claimed and controlled by the Soviet Union. That incursion was founded in the Japanese belief that the Soviet Union had misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and Qing China and had subsequently tampered with the demarcation markers. Japanese forces occupied the disputed area but withdrew after heavy fighting and a diplomatic settlement.
The 2nd Red Banner Army was a Soviet field army of World War II that served as part of the Far Eastern Front.
The Sino-Soviet conflict of 1929 was an armed conflict between the Soviet Union and the Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang of the Republic of China over the Chinese Eastern Railway.
The Far Eastern Military District was a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In 2010 it was merged with the Pacific Fleet and part of the Siberian Military District to form the new Eastern Military District.
The Yakut revolt or the Yakut expedition was the last episode and final set of military engagements of the Russian Civil War. The hostilities took place between September 1921 and June 1923 and were centered on the Ayano-Maysky District of the Russian Far East.
Viktorin Mikhailovich Molchanov, was a Russian Major-General and a participant in the White movement.
The Orel–Kursk operation was an offensive conducted by the Southern Front of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic's Red Army against the White Armed Forces of South Russia's Volunteer Army in Orel, Kursk and Tula Governorates of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic between 11 October and 18 November 1919. It took place on the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War and was part of the wider October counteroffensive of the Southern Front, a Red Army operation that aimed to stop Armed Forces of South Russia commander Anton Denikin's Moscow offensive.
The 51st Rifle Division was an infantry division of the Soviet Army, formed twice. Its first formation was formed during the Russian Civil War and fought in the Perekop-Chongar Offensive in 1920. It also fought in the Soviet invasion of Poland, Winter War and World War II. During World War II, it fought in the Battle of Rostov, Barvinkove-Losowaja Operation and Second Battle of Kharkov before being destroyed at the Battle of Voronezh. Officially disbanded on 28 November 1942, the division was reformed on 15 April 1943 from the 15th Rifle Brigade. The 2nd formation fought in Operation Bagration and the Battle of Königsberg. It was disbanded in an executive order by Premier Joseph Stalin in 1946.
The 15th Tank Corps was a tank corps of the Soviet Union's Red Army. It formed in 1938 from a mechanized corps and fought in the Soviet invasion of Poland, during which it participated in the capture of the Grodno and Augustów Forest from Poland. The corps was disbanded in January 1940 at Vilnius and Šalčininkai in Lithuania.
Vasily Alexeyevich Koptsov was a Soviet major general of the Red Army and a Hero of the Soviet Union.
The 345th Rifle Division began forming in September, 1941, as a standard Red Army rifle division, at Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea. Its first formation served exclusively in the southernmost parts of the Soviet-German front, specifically in the Caucasus and Crimea. It arrived at Sevastopol in December, and fought stubbornly in defense of the fortress-port until mid-July, 1942, when the city capitulated and the division was destroyed. In March, 1945, a new 345th was formed in the Far East, and a few months later took part in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August, but as it was in a reserve formation it saw little, if any, actual combat.
The Northern Taurida operation was a military campaign in the Russian Civil War between the Red Army and the White Army under Pyotr Wrangel for the possession of Northern Taurida. The campaign can be divided into 3 stages: the White offensive, trench warfare around the Kakhovka Bridgehead and the counterattack of the Red Army.
The White Rebel Army was a large military formation of the Priamurye Provisional Government of the White Movement during the Civil War in Russia, created in 1921 from the remnants of the White Armies of the Eastern Front – Semyonov–Kappel troops and operating in the Far East, in the Amur Region and Primorye from 1921 to 1922 year.
The Spassk operation, also known as the storming of Spassk, was an attack by the People's Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Far Eastern Republic (DVR) on the forces of the White Zemskaya Rat at Spassk. The attack took place between 7 and 9 October 1922 during the NRA's Primorsky operation to take control of Primorye, the last major operation of the Russian Civil War. During the operation, the NRA forces stormed Spassk, one of the major settlements of Primorye and an important center of resistance of the Zemskaya rat, clearing the path to Vladivostok.