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During the Russian Civil War, the Far Eastern part of the former Russian Empire was a battleground for violence between the Russian SFSR and the remnants of the Russian State. The fighting in this front expanded from Outer Mongolia, through Eastern Siberia, and in the Ussuri and Amur districts of Outer Manchuria in Russia. [1]
The fighting forces on the Communist side were the Red Army, Kuban Cossacks, Communist Mongolian militias, and the Far Eastern Republic. On the White side, there were local White Army units, pro-white Mongolian militias, Mongolian government forces, and the Beiyang Army. Allied intervention forces arrived which included 70,000 Imperial Japanese soldiers and 10,000 US Marines. [2] [3]
During the October Revolution, the Japanese were already gaining influence in Chinese Manchuria. They were surprised when the Bolsheviks successfully took power in Russia. While the Americans were interested in supporting Kolchak's White government, the Japanese aimed to take over Russian ports and coastal territories. In 1918, Japan occupied Vladivostok with the United States Marines. The Japanese had plans of rapid expansion starting in Amur and Ussuri River region all the way to Lake Baikal. In response to the Russians' establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, the Japanese backed the Provisional Priamurye Government.
The United States was interested in helping Admiral Kolchak's government in Siberia, which was in need of aid. They wanted to press the Red Army out of Siberia and allow the White Army to establish control of Russia and defeat the Bolsheviks. A major contributing factor was the United States government fears that communism would spread through the U.S. if the Bolsheviks won the civil war. Another major reasons were to rescue the 40,000 men of the Czechoslovak Legion, who were being held up by Bolshevik forces as they attempted to make their way along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, and it was hoped, eventually to the Western Front and to protect the large quantities of military supplies and railroad rolling stock that the United States had sent to the Russian Far East in support of the Russian Empire's war efforts on the Eastern Front of World War I. [4]
The Bolshevik effort in the Far East was the same as on the other fronts: to retake or hold on to territory of the former Russian Empire. The goal of the Russian SFSR was to stop the Allied advance into Siberia. The Soviets set up the Far Eastern Republic as a buffer state to hold off the White and allied armies. [5]
The war expanded into Mongolia as White armies in the far east retreated. While others retreated to Japan or China, some tried to hold on to Mongolia which was a Czarist allied state. As the war dragged on, Mongolians were forced to take sides. Some joined the Communists, either by entering their armies or forming militias to help fight the Whites. Others went with the Whites, as part of the puppet government's forces or militias.
In the aftermath, the Whites were forced into exile. The Americans left Siberia and the Russian Far East in 1920. Japan held it even after the Whites were defeated and would not withdraw until October 1922. With the war over, the Soviet government in Russia got to keep all of Russia's pre-war territories in the Far East. Future clashes over territory in the region would continue into the next decade, as seen during the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. [6] [7]
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.
The Battles of Khalkhin Gol were the decisive engagements of the undeclared Soviet–Japanese border conflicts involving the Soviet Union, Mongolia, Japan and Manchukuo in 1939. The conflict was named after the river Khalkhin Gol, which passes through the battlefield. In Japan, the decisive battle of the conflict is known as the Nomonhan Incident after Nomonhan, a nearby village on the border between Mongolia and Manchuria. The battles resulted in the defeat of the Japanese Sixth Army.
The Far Eastern Republic, sometimes called the Chita Republic, was a nominally independent state that existed from April 1920 to November 1922 in the easternmost part of the Russian Far East. Although nominally independent, it largely came under the control of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which envisaged it as a buffer state between the RSFSR and the territories occupied by Japan during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. Its first president was Alexander Krasnoshchyokov.
The White movement, also known as the Whites, was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1922. It was led mainly by the right-leaning and conservative officers of the Russian Empire, while the Bolsheviks who led the October Revolution in Russia, also known as the Reds, and their supporters, were regarded as the main enemies of the Whites. It operated as a loose system of governments and administrations and military formations collectively referred to as the White Army, or the White Guard. Although the White movement included a great variety of political opinions in Russia opposed to the Bolsheviks, from the republican-minded liberals through monarchists to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds, and did not have a universally-accepted leader or doctrine, the main force behind the movement were the conservative officers, and the resulting movement shared many traits with widespread right-wing counter-revolutionary movements of the time, namely nationalism, racism, distrust of liberal and democratic politics, clericalism, contempt for the common man and dislike of industrial civilization; in November 1918, the movement united on an authoritarian-right platform around the figure of Alexander Kolchak as its principal leader. It defended the ideal of pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia, and its positive program was largely summarized in the slogan of "united and indivisible Russia" which meant the restoration of imperial state borders and its denial of the right to self-determination; the movement is associated with pogroms and antisemitism, although its relations with the Jews were more complex. Some historians distinguish the White movement from the so-called "democratic counter-revolution" led mainly by the Right SRs and the Mensheviks that adhered to the values of parliamentary democracy and maintained democratic anti-Bolshevik governments until November 1918 and then supported either the Whites or the Bolsheviks or opposed both factions.
The Czechoslovak Legion were volunteer armed forces consisting predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Entente powers during World War I and the White Army during the Russian Civil War until November 1919. Their goal was to win the support of the Allied Powers for the independence of Lands of the Bohemian Crown from the Austrian Empire and of Slovak territories from the Kingdom of Hungary, which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the help of émigré intellectuals and politicians such as the Czech Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, they grew into a force over 100,000 strong.
Nikolai Nikolayevich Yudenich was a commander of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I. He was a leader of the anti-communist White movement in northwestern Russia during the Civil War.
Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, often referred to as Roman von Ungern-Sternberg or Baron Ungern, was an anti-communist general in the Russian Civil War and then an independent warlord who intervened in Mongolia against China. A part of the Russian Empire's Baltic German minority, Ungern was an ultraconservative monarchist who aspired to restore the Russian monarchy after the 1917 Russian Revolutions and to revive the Mongol Empire under the rule of the Bogd Khan. His attraction to Vajrayana Buddhism and his eccentric, often violent, treatment of enemies and his own men earned him the sobriquet "the Mad Baron" or "the Bloody Baron."
Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov, or Semenov, was a Japanese-supported leader of the White movement in Transbaikal and beyond from December 1917 to November 1920, a lieutenant general, and the ataman of Baikal Cossacks (1919). He was the commander of the Far Eastern Army during the Russian Civil War. He was also a prominent figure in the White Terror. U.S. Army intelligence estimated that he was responsible for executing 30,000 people in one year.
The Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions that began in 1918. The initial impetus behind the interventions was to secure munitions and supply depots from falling into the German Empire's hands, particularly after the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and to rescue the Allied forces that had become trapped within Russia after the 1917 October Revolution. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the Allied plan changed to helping the White forces in the Russian Civil War. After the Whites collapsed, the Allies withdrew their forces from Russia by 1925.
The White Army or White Guard, also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen, was a common collective name for the armed formations of the White movement and anti-Bolshevik governments during the Russian Civil War. They fought against the Red Army of Soviet Russia.
The Russian Civil War spread to the east in May 1918, with a series of revolts along the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, on the part of the Czechoslovak Legion and officers of the Russian Army. Provisional anti-Bolshevik local governments were formed in many parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East during that summer in the wake of the Czechoslovak Legion uprising, including in Samara, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok.
The Siberian intervention or Siberian expedition of 1918–1922 was the dispatch of troops of the Entente powers to the Russian Maritime Provinces as part of a larger effort by the western powers, Japan, and China to support White Russian forces and the Czechoslovak Legion against Soviet Russia and its allies during the Russian Civil War. The Imperial Japanese Army continued to occupy Siberia even after other Allied forces withdrew in 1920.
The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, also known as the Soviet-Japanese Border War, the First Soviet-Japanese War, the Russo-Mongolian-Japanese Border Wars or the Soviet-Mongolian-Japanese Border Wars, were a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union, Mongolia and Japan in Northeast Asia from 1932 to 1939.
The White movement in Transbaikal was a period of the confrontation between the Soviets and the Whites over dominance in Transbaikal from December 1917 to November 1920.
The revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion comprised the armed actions of the Czechoslovak Legion in the Russian Civil War against Bolshevik authorities, beginning in May 1918 and persisting through evacuation of the Legion from Siberia to Europe in 1920. The revolt, occurring in Volga, Ural, and Siberia regions along the Trans-Siberian Railway, was a reaction to a threat initiated by the Bolsheviks partly as a consequence of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. One major secondary consequence of victories by the Legion over the Bolsheviks was to catalyze anti-Bolshevik activity in Siberia, particularly of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, and to provide a major boost for the anti-Bolshevik or White forces, likely protracting the Russian Civil War.
The Russian Eastern Okraina was a local government that existed in the Russian Far East region in 1920 during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923.
Admiral Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was a Russian military leader and polar explorer who held the title of Supreme Ruler of Russia from 1918 to 1920 during the Russian Civil War, though his actual control over Russian territory was limited. In this role, he was one of the key architects of the White Terror. Previously, he served in the Imperial Russian Navy and fought in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In 1918, he headed a military dictatorship which ruled over the territories of the former Russian Empire controlled by the White movement; his main values in politics were Russian nationalism and militarism, in favour of which he opposed democracy as a principle which he believed to be tied to pacifism, internationalism and socialism. His authority was recognized by the other leaders of the White movement, and he served as its principal leader, although Anton Denikin enjoyed more power than Kolchak.
Regional government of Primorye Zemstvo was a local government that existed in the eastern part of Russia during the Russian Civil War between January 31, 1920 and October 28, 1920.
Ivan Pavlovich Kalmykov, was an Ataman of the Ussuri Cossacks and General associated with the Anti-Bolshevik White Movement during the Russian Civil War.
The Russian State was a White Army anti-Bolshevik state proclaimed by the Act of the Ufa State Conference of September 23, 1918, “On the formation of the all-Russian supreme power” in the name of “restoring state unity and independence of Russia” affected by the revolutionary events of 1917, the October Revolution and the signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.