The end of the civil war in the Far East.

LAST BATTLES IN TRANSBAIKALIA AND PRIMORYE

In the Far East, the Red Army was opposed not by parts of the white movement and nationalist regimes defeated in 1919, but by the 175,000-strong Japanese army. Under these conditions, the Soviet government decided to create a buffer democratic state on April 6, 1920 - the Far Eastern Republic (FER), closely associated with the RSFSR. The Far Eastern Region includes Transbaikal, Amur, Primorsk, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka regions. G. Kh. Eikhe, who had previously commanded the 5th Army of Soviet troops in Siberia, was appointed head of the People's Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Far Eastern Republic. During 1920, units of the NRA fought with the troops of Ataman Semenov and Kappel’s detachments, which controlled a significant part of the territory of the Far Eastern Republic. Only as a result of the third offensive on October 22, 1920, NRA units took Chita with the support of partisans.

With the help of the Kappel and Semyonovites who retreated from Transbaikalia, Japan strengthened itself in Primorye, where on May 26, 1921, the power of the Primorsky regional administration was overthrown and the pro-Japanese government of S. D. Merkulov was created. At the same time, units of R. F. Ungern invaded Transbaikalia from Mongolia. In the current difficult situation, the Soviet government provided military, economic and financial assistance to the Far Eastern Republic. Eikhe was replaced as commander of the NRA DDA by V.K. Blucher. In June, Ungern retreated to Mongolia, where in August 1921 most of his troops were surrounded and destroyed by NRA units. In the fall of 1921, the situation escalated again, but ultimately, as a result of fierce battles near Volochaevka (January-February 1922) in 40-degree frosts, NRA units turned the tide and returned the previously lost Khabarovsk. The further offensive of the NRA units (new commander I.P. Uborevich) took place in October 1922. On October 25, the NRA troops entered Vladivostok, and on November 14, 1922, the People’s Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic announced the establishment of Soviet power in the Far East and the entry of the Far East into composition of the RSFSR. Soviet power established itself in all regions where civil war had previously raged.

I.S. Ratkovsky, M.V. Khodyakov. History of Soviet Russia

“THE VALLEYS AND THE MOUNTAINS”: THE HISTORY OF THE SONG

The biography of Pyotr Parfenov is amazing, which is closely connected with Siberia. He managed to combine the talents of a poet, writer, historian, military leader, diplomat, head of a large Russian government department and party functionary.

Perhaps his name would have long been forgotten if it were not for the famous song “Across the Valleys and Over the Hills” that he composed.

Pyotr Parfenov, in his article “The History of Partisan Song,” recalled:

“The song “Across the valleys, across the hills” has a long history. Its text has been revised by me several times. The song took its final form under the following circumstances.

After the liquidation of the Kolchak regime and the liberation of Vladivostok, the political commissioner (as military commissars were called then - A.M.) under the head of the Nikolsko-Ussuri garrison made a report on the political and moral state of the military units, pointing out the complete absence of good revolutionary songs.

“For five months now we have been standing, and our Red Army soldiers are singing Kolchak’s “Canary,” and we cannot offer them anything in return. This is a shame, comrades!” - said the commissioner.

Taking advantage of the next Sunday, when there was less operational work, I found my notebook with poems and, borrowing from it the melody, theme, form and a significant part of the text, I wrote a new song “Partisan Hymn” in one evening:

Through the valleys, over the hills

Divisions marched forward

To take Primorye with a fight -

White Army stronghold.

To drive out the invaders

Abroad of the native country.

And do not bend before their agent

Work your back.

We stood under the banners

Created a military camp

Daring squadrons

Amur partisans.

These days the glory will not be silent

They will never forget

How dashing is our lava

Occupied cities.

Preserved as if in a fairy tale

Centuries-old like stumps

Assault nights of Spassk,

Nikolaev days.

How we drove away the atamans,

How we smashed the gentlemen.

And on the Pacific

We’ve finished our hike.”

Later it turned out that the legendary “Partisan Song” had other predecessors. Researcher of Russian song history Yuri Biryukov revealed that back in 1915, a collection of poems “The Year of War. Dumas and Songs” by Vladimir Gilyarovsky, the famous Moscow reporter “Uncle Gilay”. One of his poems, “From the Taiga, the Distant Taiga,” became a song that was sung in the Russian army. The song received the subtitle “Siberian Riflemen in 1914”:

From the taiga, the dense taiga,

From the Amur, from the river,

Silently, a menacing cloud

The Siberians were going to battle...

And in recent years, the “March of the Drozdovsky Regiment” has been published, which is considered the first in time to appear as a double of the “Song of the Siberian Riflemen”. The words of the “Drozdovsky March” were composed by P. Batorin in memory of the 1200 verst long march of the 1st separate brigade of Russian volunteers under the command of Colonel Drozdovsky from Romania, where the revolution found them, to the Don.

From Romania by hike

The glorious Drozdovsky regiment was marching,

To save the people

He bore a heroic heavy duty.

So, for one motive, two different songs were born: “red” and “white” (since later Drozdovsky’s brigade fought with weapons in their hands against the Bolsheviks), which often happened in those days of the tragic rift in the life of Russia. The song of the Drozdovites also has pathos, but the people demand salvation in the name of Holy Rus':

The Drozdovites walked with a firm step,

The enemy fled under pressure:

Under the tricolor Russian flag

The regiment has gained glory for itself!

Both songs remained in history, in songbooks, although the original source was forgotten for a long time. And the song of Pyotr Parfenov, which became a kind of symbol of the Civil War era, gained worldwide fame. Words from this song are engraved on monuments to partisan glory in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk:

These days the glory will not be silent,

It will never fade.

Partisan units

Occupied cities...

ICE CIVIL WAR EPILOGUE

Living in Harbin, General Pepelyaev in the spring of 1922 entered into relations with two delegates from the population of the Yakut region who rebelled against the Bolsheviks: P. A. Kulikovsky and V. M. Popov, who arrived in Vladivostok to seek support from the government of S. D. Merkulov. This government, however, did not show an active interest in Yakut affairs, and the delegates then managed to interest General Pepelyaev in them, who, after much request and insistence, agreed to help the people of Yakutia in their fight against the communists. Deciding to organize a military expedition to this distant Siberian region, A. N. Pepelyaev moved to Vladivostok in the summer of 1922.

Persons and institutions that had nothing in common with either the Japanese or the Merkulov government helped Kulikovsky and Pepelyaev to prepare food, uniforms and weapons for the expeditionary detachment. Recruitment gave the gene. Pepelyaev has up to 700 volunteers, mostly former soldiers of his Siberian Army and Kappelites.

On September 1, 1922, when power in Primorye already belonged to General Diterichs, Pepelyaev’s detachment was ready to leave Vladivostok. It was called the Siberian Volunteer Squad, and officially it constituted an expedition to protect the Okhotsk-Kamchatka coast.

Two steamships were chartered to send the detachment to the ports of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

Upon the expedition’s arrival at the site, it became clear that the popular anti-Soviet movement in the Yakut region had already been liquidated by the Bolsheviks. According to one of the participants in the campaign, the help of the Siberian volunteer squad was late by at least three months.

General Pepelyaev now faced the question of whether to create a new anti-Bolshevik movement in Yakutia or immediately return to Vladivostok. A meeting was arranged with local people, who assured Pepelyaev that it would be easy to create a movement in the region again, since there were still many partisan detachments in the taiga, and it would be enough for the squad to move forward, and it would quickly be strengthened by new volunteers.

Even before the arrival of General Vishnevsky in Ayan, General. Pepelyaev with a detachment of 300 fighters went to Nelkan to take the local red garrison there by surprise with its supplies of food and weapons and shipping facilities. The detachment had to travel 240 miles through deserted terrain and on the way cross the difficult Dzhukdzhursky ridge, which during the autumn thaw, with insufficient transportation means, was extremely difficult.

Nevertheless, this path was passed, and the detachment reached Nelkan, but three defectors warned the Reds about the approach of the enemy, and they managed to sail on barges along the Mae River to Aldan.

Thus, the squad was forced to camp for the winter at two points: in Nelkan, with General Pepelyaev, and in Ayana, with General Vishnevsky... On November 19, a detachment from the port of Ayana, led by Gen., was able to approach Nelkan. Vishnevsky, and now only the third battalion of the squad remained in Ayan.

Pepelyaev’s squad stayed in Nelkana for about a month, organizing their transport and collecting intelligence information. Information was received about the location of the red parts in the area. It turned out that there were up to 350 Red fighters in the settlement of Amga, and almost the same number in the villages of Petropavlovsk and Churapche. In the regional city of Yakutsk itself, the number of red fighters was not clear. It was assumed that their main forces were located here, led by the commander of all the red detachments in the region, Baikalov...

On January 22, 1923, to capture the village of Amgi, a detachment was sent from Ust-Mili, under the command of Colonel Renengart, with a force of up to 400 soldiers with two machine guns... The distance of 200 versts from Ust-Mili to Amga, Renengart’s detachment passed at 40–50 ° along the Reaumur in six days.

Amga was taken after a short resistance by the Reds... This was the first success of the Whites, but the further development of the struggle brought them nothing but disappointment and grave disasters.

On February 12, information was received that the red garrison of the village of Petropavlovsk, under the command of Strodt, had left its place and marched to Yakutsk. General Vishnevsky was sent to meet him with an instructor company and the 1st battalion, which was supposed to set up an ambush and defeat the Reds while they were resting in one of the villages.

Strodt, however, learned about the proposed ambush and prepared to meet the enemy. In the Yakut ulus (village) of Sigalsysy, a battle began on February 13...

Strodt's detachment was surrounded; Guards were posted around him in the forest. The Whites made an attempt to take Sigalsysy by storm, but the Reds developed destructive machine-gun fire, and this attempt was not successful.

Due to the impossibility of taking the enemy out of battle, the Whites decided not to lift the siege until the Reds, under the pressure of hunger, surrendered themselves. On February 25, information was received about the movement of the Churapcha red detachment to the rescue of Strodt. Gene. Pepelyaev sent part of his squad to meet this detachment, but again failed to destroy it.

Three days later, news came that a large detachment under the command of Baikalov himself had set out from Yakutsk. This detachment moved straight towards Amga and on the morning of March 2 opened cannon and machine-gun fire on it. The white defenders of Amga shot back at the red ones until the last bullet, then some of them retreated to Ust-Mili, some were captured by the enemy.

The situation has now changed dramatically not in favor of the whites.

March 3rd Gen. Pepelyaev gave the order for his squad to retreat back to the village of Petropavlovsky, at the mouth of the Mai River. The order said, among other things:

Having experienced severe hardships on the way, the squad of Gen. Pepelyaev in early April. 1923 reached Nelkan. In total, about 600 people remained in the squad after the campaign against Yakutsk, including 200 Yakuts.

Having rested in Nelkana, the detachment then went to Ayan on the shore of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. This was already the summer of 1923. Having learned about the departure of General Pepelyaev’s detachment to the sea, the red authorities of Primorye sent a military expedition from Vladivostok on three ships under the command of Vostretsov.

On the night of June 18, with strong winds and a storm at sea, the Reds landed on the shore near Ayan and approached the port unnoticed, surrounding Pepelyaev’s headquarters and his combat units. Vostretsov invited Pepelyaev to surrender without a fight, warning that otherwise his squad would be destroyed by force of arms.

There was no way out: Pepelyaev agreed to surrender...

Pepelyaev and his main associates were taken to Siberia, where their trial took place in the city of Chita. The general himself and ten people captured with him were sentenced to death, but this sentence was later commuted to ten years in prison...

2. Features of the civil war in the Far East

2.1 Feat of youth

In the context of the bloody regime, the entire people rose up to fight against the interventionists and the White Guards, but, above all, the working youth.

A.V. Smolyakov in his book “Under the Scarlet Banner of the Revolution” says that by the summer of 1919. The partisan movement in the region is taking on a wide scale. Hundreds of partisan detachments were created, uniting tens of thousands of partisans. Analysis of statistical data indicates that the partisan detachments consisted largely of young people aged 16 to 26 years. For example, out of the total number of the Amur region (20,000 people), young people made up more than half.

Ivan Melekhin testified that in one of the largest detachments in Primorye, of which he was chief of staff, there were mainly young people. The commander of the Kamchatka partisan detachment I.P. speaks about the same thing. Frolov.

To suppress the Gamow rebellion in the village of Vladimirovka near Blagoveshchensk, a detachment of 50 people was created, but the memoirs of its commander S.D. Dmitrieva, half consisting of young people who fought most bravely. There were partisan detachments made up of only young people. So, in the fall of 1919, in the Middle Amur region, a detachment of 100 fighters was created, consisting of young people from Yelabuga, Slavyanka, Sinda, Anastasyevka.

But not all young people fought on the side of the Bolsheviks. During the civil war, the class positions of all segments of youth were determined. Thus, parts of the Blagoveshchensk Union of Student Youth - people from wealthy strata - joined the rebellion of Ataman Gapov, a number of members of the Yakut circle of young Socialist Revolutionaries fought against the Soviets during the civil war, but this was a minority. The majority of young people, coming from the working class and peasantry, sided with Soviet power.

But young men and women not only fought in partisan detachments, they did a lot of work behind enemy lines - they carried out partisan missions and communicated directly with them. Youth dozens and groups were created in cities and at railway stations, in many villages of the Far East. In Blagoveshchensk, such dozens were led by the Bolshevik Vladimir Shafir. In Vladivostok, the underground group included Alexander Fadeev, Pyotr Nerezov, Grigory Bilimenko, Alexander Borodkin, Yakov Golombik, brothers Grigory and Andrey Tsapurin, and others. In Khabarovsk, the Bolshevik underground group had liaison boys and girls - Khabarovsk postal worker Yulia Smetankina, Amur base worker flotilla Efim Maksimenko. While carrying out the task, they were arrested and shot, only Mikhail Lushko miraculously escaped. At the Vyazemskaya station there was a headquarters for young intelligence officers, it included Nikolai Savchuk, Pavel Kalashnikov, Pyotr Gulak, the chief of staff was Fedya Mazurchuk. They were the ears and eyes of the partisans - they watched everything and reported to the partisans.

Young people showed courage and heroism in battles in the Far East. And there is a lot of evidence of this. Thus, the legendary partisan intelligence officer Georgy Rulev in September 1918 rescued eight wounded soldiers from the Red Guard steamship Muromets, which was fired by the Japanese near Svobodny, and helped them escape into the taiga. In the area of ​​the villages of Usinovka, Kustanaevka, Velikoknyazevka and Svetovka, he supplied the partisans with weapons and medicine, organized a combat sabotage group from his peers and carried out a number of daring operations to destroy the leaders of the White Guard counterintelligence. He died in October 1919. when performing a combat mission.

At the end of the summer of 1919. An operation took place that went down in the history of partisan warfare under the name “Major Repair of Amurka”. Nikolai Shchukin, a young partisan, led a group to destroy bridges and telegraph communications on the Zhuravlevo-Domican section. While carrying out the task, Nikolai was captured by the Japanese and executed. But the task was completed - the transportation of troops was disrupted.

A student at the regional school, Grigory Bondarenko, returned to his native village of Ivanovka during the intervention period, joined an underground group, and in the fall of 1919. led a partisan detachment. The young commander died a hero's death in a battle near the village of Torbogantay.

Vladimir Shafir decided to replace his father, who died in the dungeons of the White Guards; at the age of 16 he became a liaison underground worker, printed leaflets, and worked with young people in labor movements.

The immortal feat of the Far Eastern “Susanins” - the Smirnov brothers from the village of Malyshevo, Khabarovsk region. Summer 1919 Eighteen-year-old Tikhon and fifteen-year-old Yakov established contact with a partisan detachment based in the area of ​​their village. They delivered food and ammunition to the partisans, and reported on the movement of the White Guards and Japanese. Based on a denunciation, the guys were arrested. During interrogation, they were offered to show the way to the partisans in exchange for living and studying abroad. Realizing that they had no choice, the brothers decided to sell their lives at a higher price and led the White Guards into the swamp. And although not the entire detachment died in the swamps of the Neptu River, the Smirnov brothers inflicted great damage on the enemy.

Ivan Derbenev, a student at the Spassk Teachers' Seminary, took a short look at the political events in the country. Already in March 1919, he gathered a combat group from the seminarians underground. Then he becomes a liaison officer on the Spassk-Vladivostok line. At the end of the year, he joined the partisans with young underground fighters. At the age of 19, he became a commissar, the leader of the Spassky Komsomol members, and died trying to convince the Komsomol members to go over to the side of the Soviets.

And there were thousands of such heroes - those who died and those who survived. Victory was formed from great and small feats, from everyday routine work. “The persistent and merciless struggle of the Far Easterners and, above all, the youth led to the fact that the White Guards were defeated, and the interventionists were forced to move to neutral positions. By March 1920 almost the entire Far Eastern territory was cleared of Kolchakism.”

The Civil War in the Far East, which began against the backdrop of the coup that took place in St. Petersburg in 1717, was mainly aimed at opposing the new system of government. As soon as the revolutionaries captured the capital's regions, the counter-revolutionary movement opposing them raised its head throughout the country, but it had particular strength in the Siberian regions and further to the east. Let's consider the main historical milestones of the event.

How it all began

The Soviets took over in '17, and at the end of that year the Civil War in the Far East was already gaining momentum. In the December cold, the cadets began a rebellion in the Omsk lands and Irkutsk, and in Orenburg Dutov stood at the head of the resisters - so the Cossacks also entered the battle. From the Cossacks of Transbaikalia, troops advanced under the command of Semenov, from the Amur side they chose Gamov as the main one, from Ussuriysk - Horvat. Soon the All-Siberian Congress was convened. Then they took the first measures to combat the Bolsheviks at the regional level. The congress was held in an emergency format. Geographically, Tomsk was most suitable for him, where the opposition leaders gathered. The event was held on December 6-15.

An important step in the Civil War in the Far East was the adoption of a decision regarding the new government within the framework of the agreed congress. The participants decided that the region did not recognize the Bolsheviks and the new structure and could not entrust them with the management of the regions. Based on this, a temporary council was formed, the leadership of which went to Potanin. The council was predominantly formed by the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the future, it was planned to give his powers to the Duma of Siberia, but so far it had yet to be convened. The second half of the next month was chosen as the formation time.

Structures and authorities

Organized as part of the resistance and Civil War in the Far East, the Duma of Siberia, as originally intended, was responsible for creating a government that would be entrusted with executive powers. On a frosty January night from the 25th to the 26th, the council decided to dissolve the Duma, and its participants, who were not immediately arrested, organized a secret meeting. Here they determined who would join the Provisional Government of the new autonomous region of the country. Derber took the lead. Krakovetsky joined the government as Minister of War. He was entrusted with measures to ensure armed resistance to the Bolshevik government. At this moment, the Social Revolutionary had the rank of lieutenant colonel. Frizel was chosen as commissioners in the west, Kalashnikov in the east.

Simultaneously with the designated management, independent organizations of officers were formed. They were not based on any party and greatly influenced the underground work of the Siberian resistance. The events of the Civil War in the Far East in 1918-1922 were largely due to this division, since the Socialist Revolutionaries soon ceased to dominate in the military sphere. They were replaced by officers who did not belong to any particular party. In the west, responsibility for the resistance was assigned to Grishin-Almazov, in the eastern regions - to Ellerts-Usov. From sources that have survived to this day, it is known that between the Ural region and Transbaikalia there were secret underground resistance centers in no less than 38 settlements. The work brought together about six thousand people, of which about 2.2 thousand were in the east, others worked in the western part of the region. In order to effectively coordinate the work process, a headquarters was formed in Novonikolaevsk by the end of spring 1918. Its management was entrusted to Grishin-Almazov.

Spring: what happened?

The civil war in the Far East in 1918-1922, according to historians, was a serious problem for the Bolshevik government, and the leaders who captured the central regions were well aware of this. In the spring of 2018, the Special Detachment led by Semenov was regarded as the main threat. The experienced chieftain successfully chose his base area - the exclusion zone on Chinese lands. Already in April he began military operations in the direction of Chita. Presumably, the military could then advance along the Trans-Siberian Railway, capture the western zones, and establish a strong connection with the Cossacks of Orenburg, Siberia. The center, realizing such prospects, sent Red Army soldiers and Red Guards to confront the Cossacks. The forces supporting the Bolsheviks grew throughout the spring, gathering especially actively in April and May. Since Semenov diverted all the attention of the authorities to himself, the pro-Soviet garrisons of many Siberian settlements were weakened, which gave the underground greater opportunities for action.

In short, the Civil War in the Far East was largely due to the activity of the Czechoslovak Corps. This military unit literally turned things upside down. The echelons stationed in the Trans-Siberian Railway opposed the Bolshevik government. In total, the personnel at that time numbered 35 thousand people, formed into four teams.

More about the case

Since the participation of this bloc became one of the important features of the Civil War in the Far East, it is worth taking a closer look at its features. Among the four blocs, Chechek was the first to lead. This group was responsible for the Volga region and numbered eight thousand military personnel. Voitsekhovsky worked with the Chelyabinsk group. There were 8,800 troops under his command. Gaida, who was entrusted with the Siberian group, had about 4.5 thousand people. Finally, the last block is controlled by Dieterichs. It included about 14 thousand military personnel.

On May 20, the 18th, a special meeting was organized to assess the need to fight the Soviet regime. It was held in Chelyabinsk. The event brought together the heads of all units and political instructors of the corps. Chechek was appointed responsible for directing real actions at the front. Gaida and Voitsekhovsky did the same. The underground leaders of the movement opposing the Bolsheviks were not invited to participate in the meeting. They learned about its results either on the eve of hostilities, or already at the moment when the uprising began.

Dates and numbers

In any lists of events briefly describing the Civil War in the Far East, May 25, 1918 is mentioned. It was on this day that the rebels defeated the Bolsheviks in Mariinsk. The next day, Novonikolaevsk was defeated, followed by adherents of the Soviets in Chelyabinsk. The last day of May brought victory in Tomsk, and by the seventh of June the corps was able to capture Omsk. A few days later the Soviets left Semipalatinsk. By June 15, the rebels captured Barnaul.

On the penultimate day of May, a special council was organized in Novonikolaevka, which was entrusted with the obligations of temporary rule of Siberia. The very first resolution of the new body ordered the organization of a commissariat, which would include control departments of various industries. The Commissariat was planned as a temporary management structure, whose functionality should quickly be transferred to the Provisional Government of the region, elected by the local Duma. In 1918, the Civil War in the Far East led to the relocation of the council to Omsk lands. This officially happened on June 15, and two weeks later powers were transferred to the interim government of the region. The Ministerial Council included five figures selected by the Siberian Duma.

New forces and updated means

The Civil War that engulfed Siberia and the Far East was largely explained by the strong underground. It became the foundation for the formation of government armed forces. The process took very little time. This is how the Siberian Army appeared. Her command was entrusted to Grishin-Almazov. In total, the army included three corps; in August it united more than forty thousand people. By autumn government decree it was decided to call up new ones aged 19-20 years. So the age group is up to 200 thousand. Throughout the country, this formation opposing the Bolsheviks was the largest. The operations carried out in the summer of the 18th had two fronts - in the east and west of the region.

The military marched to the east from Tomsk and Novonikolaevsk. Responsibility for these military actions was assigned to the Central Siberian Corps, which was active during the Civil War in the Far East. He teamed up with the 7th Czechoslovakian Regiment, thanks to which pro-Soviet soldiers were defeated near Mariinsk on June 16. Two days later, a victory was won over Krasnoyarsk, and by July 11, Irkutsk was captured. In the second half of August, the military approached Chita, where they won a victory on the 25th. On the last day of August we managed to connect with Semenov’s detachment. The event took place near Olovyannaya station.

Tense situation

The main cause of the Civil War in the Far East was the establishment of Bolshevik power and the organization of the Soviet state, and it was precisely this that the dissenters, who had significant fighting forces, opposed. The local committee, which supported the central regions, did not have the resources to resist, so it was abolished on its own. On August 28, a meeting of activists was organized. Urulga station was chosen as the venue for the event. The event brought together party leaders, military and workers who supported Soviet sentiments. The official result of the meeting was the decision to eliminate the fight against opponents in an organized format.

It is believed that the Far East, during the civil war, was completely freed from the power of the Soviets in the early autumn of the 18th. On June 29, the corps controlled by Diterikhs arrived in Vladivostok, where the offensive began along the railway towards Khabarovsk. Military personnel from Japan and America were involved in the event. It was largely thanks to them that they managed to defeat the Soviet troops. Khabarovsk was taken under control on September 5, and Blagoveshchensk on the 17th. True, the political situation was still unstable, since Vladivostok formed its own government under the control of Lavrov. Back on June 9, Horvath named himself the Provisional Government, creating a business cabinet. In the first autumn month, Vologda convinced the Far Eastern regions to accept the VSP and dissolve their own management structures, but in reality by this time the region was completely controlled by the Japanese expeditionary American corps.

What was happening in the west?

In parallel with what was described earlier, the history of the civil war in the Far East on the Western Front was distinguished by its own characteristics. From Omsk and Ishim, as well as from Petropavlovsk, the military moved towards Yekaterinburg and Tyumen. The event was entrusted to the Steppe Corps. Uralsky began moving from Chelyabinsk. The military's opponents were pro-Soviet fighters from the front that united the Urals and Siberia in the northern sections. In July, a third army was created on the basis of this front. On July 20, a victory was won over Tyumen, and five days later - in Yekaterinburg. The Ural and Steppe corps headed for Kungur. The main goal of the rebels was Perm.

On July 6, Chechek united with Wojciechowski, Komuch tried to take power over the country and began to build the People's Army. Its fighters operated in the middle Volga lands. Under their rule were Ufa, Kazan and several other significant settlements. To count on success in the Russian Civil War in the Far East, it was necessary to achieve greater coordination between the Czechoslovaks and Russians. To do this, they organized a Chelyabinsk meeting, attracted Komuch, VSP and chose Shokorov as responsible for the army until a general commander of all the country's military was appointed. To guide the actions, they chose the Czechoslovak headquarters as a base, and also proposed to unite Komuch, the VSP, so that all-Russian bodies of state power would appear in the eastern lands.

Ufa: new actions

An important event of the Civil War in the Far East was the meeting that began on September 8 in Ufa, which was closed only by the 23rd of the same month. They decided to create a Directory that would temporarily control the entire country. The management of the authority was entrusted to Avksentyev, and the localization was determined to be Omsk. From this point on, all eastern local government organizations were to relinquish their powers and be liquidated. On November 4, a ministerial council was assembled under the command of Vologda, Boldyrev was entrusted with the position of commander-in-chief, dealing with the Czechoslovaks and Russians. Since October, all military personnel opposing the Bolsheviks have been divided into two blocs - the southwestern and western fronts.

The civil war and intervention in the Far East were not as successful as anti-Soviet leaders would have liked. Already at the time of the Ufa meeting, the front-line situation had deteriorated greatly, as the Soviets defeated Kazan, Simbirsk, and on October 4 took control of Samara. Komuch was losing lands, the Socialist Revolutionaries' political influence was declining, and right-wing groups were becoming stronger. The Directory found opponents among the military, convinced that victory was possible only with the establishment of a dictatorship. On November 18, they organized a coup, overthrew the Directory, and entrusted control to Kolchak. He officially abandoned the reactionary or party path and identified the key goal as the formation of a successful army that would help defeat Bolshevism and establish law and order in the country. Kolchak outlined his task as ensuring the rule of law and promised the people the opportunity to determine the optimal version of government. He guaranteed the audience freedom in accordance with that of other powers. Kolchak was recognized by many eastern figures. The only exceptions were Kalmykov and Semenov, but by the end of the spring of 1919 it was possible to regulate relations with these figures.

19th year

At the beginning of this year, the Soviet power was actively advancing, showing good results, and soon took control of Ufa, Uralsk, and Orenburg. Gaida advanced on Perm, Kolchak began reorganizing the troops, forming three armies. They engaged the Soviets' Eastern Front. Managed to subdue Osa and Okhansk. The Soviet military left Votkinsk and Izhevsk. Khanzhin bypassed the Fifth Red Army and attacked Birsk. The Battle of Ufa took place on March 14th. In early April, the military came to Iku, where they planned to wait out the bad road conditions. However, the command mistakenly believed that the Soviet military had already been defeated, on the basis of which they determined the need to go towards the Volga. By the 15th, Buguruslan was captured.

Although at first it seemed that the end of the Civil War in the Far East was just around the corner, so great were the army's successes, they were replaced by numerous defeats. Khanzhin did not notice the southern pro-Soviet military group under the command of Frunze, which led to an attack from the rear and flank simultaneously. The Soviets recaptured Ufa, and after another week and a half they headed towards the Urals. The left flank of the Bolshevik opponents was in a precarious state, so the army was soon defeated. The Sarapulo-Votkinsk operation gave the Soviet government an excellent foundation for the capture of Osa and Okhansk. In the second half of June, measures began to completely defeat Kolchak with the goal of capturing Siberia and the Urals completely. The scale and preparedness of the Red Army men were greater, the difference in the number of machine guns became especially noticeable - the opponents of Bolshevism had half as many. The Siberian army was divided into two blocks and pushed back beyond the Ural Mountains. The rebels suffered another defeat in Zlatoust, captured as a result of an outflanking maneuver by the Red Army.

Autumn 1919

As Soviet leaders believed, the end of the Civil War in the Far East was just around the corner - on November 14, Omsk surrendered to their power, and the rebel management system collapsed. It seemed that the resisters no longer had any moral potential. Commanders and privates showed his absence equally. The military had no medicine, so the epidemic began. Typhus alone caused 150 thousand fighters to lose their combat capability. The majority of patients died before the end of the winter of 19-20.

Army rear instability further worsened the situation for the opposition. Already in the summer, the partisans began to be active; by winter there were about 150 thousand in their ranks. The provinces of Irkutsk, Altai, and Yenisei were uncontrollable for whites. Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk by the end of the year were ruled by the Socialist Revolutionaries, who wanted to end the war and agree to a truce with the Bolsheviks. Anti-war agitation played a role in the possibility of a quick end to the Civil War in the Far East, since it completely disintegrated the first army controlled by Pepelyaev. The interventionists went against Kolchak, Janin decided to hand over the general to the Socialist Revolutionary Political Center. In the shortest possible time, the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee took control of Irkutsk, and Kolchak was shot on the Angarsk shores. This famous hero of the Civil War in the Far East died on February 7, 2020.

The retreat continues

Opponents of Bolshevism retreated to the eastern Siberian regions and fought with the Red Army and partisans. Almost 25 thousand people organized the Great Siberian Ice March. Another hero of the Civil War in the Far East, Kappel, took part in it and died. The survivors chose the name “Kappelites” in order to preserve the memory of their leader. By February 20th, they managed to reach Transbaikalia and connect with Semenov, who received all power from Kolchak in early January. However, the ataman’s power concerned exclusively Transbaikalia.

Not everything is so clear

Although the Bolsheviks promoted themselves as a party whose main idea was people's happiness, the arrival of red power was not something truly pleasant for the Siberian peasantry. Unrest began over food policy, a mass movement against the central government. By 1922 he was defeated. However, the period of peasant protest has not been forgotten.

The victory over Kolchak seemed to be promising for the Soviet regime, as the Far Eastern population sympathized with the new government. The Soviets found support in the form of local Cossacks, but part of the territory was under the rule of the Japanese military, and the central apparatus did not want to conflict with the neighboring power. As a compromise, the Far Eastern Republic was formed. The country existed since April 6, 2020, and included several regions. The Soviets officially recognized the republic on May 14 of that year and helped create a local army. On July 17, the Japanese agreed to remove their military from Khabarovsk and Transbaikalia. Soon, Krasnoshchekov, who supported Soviet power, became the chairman of the new country.

Development of the situation

After some time, Merkulov came to power, but he failed to find sufficient support, and in the summer of 1922, Diterichs, who assembled the Zemsky Sobor, was chosen as the leader. The potential of statehood was very limited, so strengthening the situation did not seem realistic. The Japanese evacuated, leading to the final fall of the last territories resisting the Bolsheviks. On November 14, the Far Eastern Russian lands declared themselves under the control of the Bolsheviks. The next day, the Far Eastern Republic became part of the RSFSR.

Why did this happen?

Historians believe that the main reason for the defeat of the Bolshevik opposition was the lack of material support and equipment that made it possible to fight at full strength. The troops had poor supply lines, did not receive the necessary weapons, and therefore could not resist the aggression of the Bolsheviks, who had all the resources of the central regions. The oppositionists counted on foreign support, but even here they found themselves in a weak position. At the same time, such requests provoked a loss of public trust. However, monuments to the Civil War in the Far East are still important and significant for our society. Many monuments have been erected in honor of the heroes who died on both sides. During the Soviet period, these were erected only in honor of Soviet leaders; later they began to highly value the heroism of their opponents. Every year, in memory of the military actions of that time, a day of remembrance is held in the Far Eastern regions. October 25th was set for its organization.

As adherents of the Bolshevik regime believed, victory in the Far Eastern regions was largely the result of negotiations, and not just battles. The fate of these regions was decided at conferences in Washington and Genoa. The Western powers opposed the strengthening of the Japanese position on the mainland, so they met the Red authorities halfway, but the Japanese had no other option other than agreement.

D. the Japanese government decided to take part in the intervention in the Far East. Here we should immediately make a reservation. The scope of the work allows us to talk only about the participation of Japan. As a result, the intervention of England, France and other powers remains, as it were, in the shadows, and the reader may have the wrong opinion that the Japanese behaved much more aggressively towards Russia than the European powers. In fact, the initiators of the invasion of Russia were England, France and the USA. The reason for the intervention was the desire of revolutionary Russia to get out of the state of war with Germany, and the task of the war of interventionists was the dismemberment of Russia into dozens of operetta state formations, which could become, if not colonies, then spheres of influence of the interventionist states.

Japan was no better, but no worse than England, France and the United States. The intervention of European states and the United States alone in the Russian Far East created a certain threat to the interests of Japan, and its government made a completely reasonable decision to take part in the intervention. A Russian proverb says: “If there were a swamp, there would be devils.” I will paraphrase it: “If there was instability in the state, there would be interventionists.” This was the case in 1792-1793. in France, this was also the case in Yugoslavia in the 90s of the 20th century.

In January 1918, the Japanese battleship Iwami (formerly Orel) arrived in Vladivostok, and then the cruiser Asahi and the battleship Hizen (formerly Retvizan) appeared. On the night of April 5, 1918, “unknown persons” carried out an armed attack with the aim of robbery on the Vladivostok branch of the Japanese trading office “Ishido”. During this action, two Japanese citizens were killed. This incident became the reason for the Japanese landing. As a result, by October 1, 1918, there were already 73 thousand Japanese soldiers in the Far East and.

On the night of November 18, 1918, in Omsk, officers and Cossack units arrested members of the so-called Directory, a self-proclaimed anti-Soviet government, and all power was concentrated in the hands of the “supreme ruler of the Russian state,” Admiral A.V. Kolchak. Kolchak's real power extended to Siberia, the Urals and part of the Orenburg province. On April 30, 1919, the power of the “supreme government” recognized the “Provisional Government of the Northern Region”, based in Arkhangelsk, and on June 12, 1919, a similar decision was made by A.I. Denikin.

The United States provided Kolchak with a loan of 262 million dollars and sent over two hundred thousand rifles and other military equipment and property towards him at the end of 1918.

Japan agreed to recognize Kolchak's power and provide him with assistance, provided that he fulfills the following demands: 1) declare Vladivostok a free port; 2) allow free trade and navigation along the Sungari and Amur; 3) give the Japanese control over the Siberian Railway and transfer the Changchun-Harbin section to Japan; 4) grant the Japanese fishing rights throughout the Far East; 5) sell Northern Sakhalin to Japan.

Kolchak hesitated: he had a powerful Japanese expeditionary force in his rear, and, on the other hand, it was somehow inconvenient to accept Japanese conditions - after all, he was a “fighter for the one and indivisible.”

The Japanese also took care of an alternative to Kolchak. Twenty-seven-year-old captain G.M. Semenov recruited in Harbin a “Special Manchu detachment” of Cossacks and declassed elements. On April 8, 1918, Semenov invaded Transbaikalia, and in May, at Borzya station, he announced the creation of a “Provisional Transbaikal Government” headed by himself. From spring to autumn 1918 alone, the “government” received almost 4.5 million rubles in military and financial assistance from Japan. During the same period, France provided assistance to Captain Semenov in the amount of over 4 million rubles.

The relationship between the admiral and the captain was clearly not going well. In mid-November 1918, Semenov telegraphed to Omsk about his refusal to recognize the supreme power of Admiral Kolchak and proposed his candidacies for this highest position in the Russian White movement - generals Denikin, Horvat or the ataman of the Orenburg Cossack army Dutov. The telegram said: “If within 24 hours I do not receive a response about the transfer of power to one of the candidates I have indicated, I will temporarily, pending the creation of a government acceptable to all in the West (Siberia), declare the autonomy of Eastern Siberia... As soon as power is transferred to one of the indicated candidates, I will undoubtedly and unconditionally obey him.”

From words, the brave captain moved to action and interrupted the telegraph connection between Omsk and the Far East, and on the Trans-Baikal Railway he detained trains with military cargo sent by the Entente to the Supreme Ruler of Russia for the Kolchak army being created.

Supreme Ruler Kolchak at the end of November 1918 issued order No. 60, which declared Captain Semyonov a traitor. On December 1, Kolchak, having taken the path of conflict with Japan, issued order No. 61 to eliminate the “Semyonovsky incident.” This order read: “The commander of the 5th separate Amur Corps, Colonel Semenov, for disobedience, destruction of telegraph communications and messages in the rear of the army, which is an act of high treason, is relieved of command of the 5th Corps and removed from all positions held by him.”

But the command of the Japanese expeditionary force stood behind Semenov Mountain. Japanese General Yuhi stated that “Japan will not allow any measures against Semenov, not even stopping to use weapons…” This is exactly the instruction that the 3rd Division of the Imperial Army stationed in Transbaikalia received.

Kolchak, without a doubt, was a talented admiral, but he had little understanding of combat operations on land and politics. In November 1919, he had to flee from Omsk to Irkutsk with the remnants of the white troops. On January 15, 1920, at the Innokentyevskaya station (near Irkutsk), he was handed over by the White Czechs to the Political Center - an organization of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. On January 20, this Political Center in Irkutsk simply fled, and the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) took power in the city. On February 7, 1920, by order of the Military Revolutionary Committee, Kolchak was shot.

Even before his arrest, on January 4, 1920, Kolchak transferred to Semenov all military and state power “in the territory of the Russian eastern outskirts,” and on January 8, Semenov created the “Government of the Russian Eastern Outskirts.”

By the spring of 1920, the advanced units of the Red Army were stopped at the border of Lake Baikal. This was done not due to white resistance, but for purely political reasons. The Soviet government wanted to avoid conflict with Japan. And as V.I. said Lenin, “we cannot wage a war with Japan and must do everything to try not only to postpone the war with Japan, but, if possible, to do without it...”

Therefore, the Soviet government decided on an original move - the creation of a buffer Far Eastern Republic (FER). On April 6, in Verkhne-Udinsk (now Ulan-Ude) at the Founding Congress of Plenipotentiary Representatives of the entire population of Transbaikalia, its proclamation took place. The republic organizationally included Transbaikal, Amur, Primorsky, Kamchatka regions and Northern Sakhalin. Russia's rights in the alienated zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway were transferred to it.

In January, a representative Constituent Assembly was held, where the Bolsheviks played a leading role. At this meeting the following were created: the supreme authority (Government) headed by A.M. Krasnoshchekov and the executive body - the Council of Ministers, chaired by the communist P.M. Nikiforova. The Soviet government recognized the Far Eastern Republic as a friendly independent state.

The People's Revolutionary Army (PRA) of the Far Eastern Republic had 36 infantry, 12 cavalry and 17 artillery regiments, 11 armored trains, 10 tanks, 17 aircraft and 145 vehicles.

Initially, the power of the Provisional Government of the Far Eastern Republic actually extended to the territory of Western Transbaikalia. In August 1920, the executive committee of the Amur region agreed to submit to the Provisional Government of the Far Eastern Republic. The western and eastern parts of the republic were separated by the “Chita problem” - an area occupied by Semyonov-Kappel units and Japanese troops.

The total number of White Guard troops by the end of March 1920 in the Chita region was about 20 thousand bayonets and sabers, 496 machine guns and 78 guns. The active actions of the Eastern Transbaikal partisans forced the White Guard command to keep more than half of its forces in the areas of Sretensk and Nerchinsk. To the west of Chita and in the city itself, the White Guards had up to 8.5 thousand bayonets and sabers, 31 guns and 255 machine guns. Japanese troops (parts of the 5th Infantry Division) had up to 5.2 thousand bayonets and sabers with 18 guns.

By this time, the NRA of the Far Eastern Republic (Commander-in-Chief G.H. Eikhe) included the 1st Irkutsk Rifle Division, partisan detachments P.P. Morozova, N.D. Zykina, N.A. Burlova and others. In addition, the Transbaikal Rifle Division and the Transbaikal Cavalry Brigade were in the process of formation. For the attack on Chita, there were about 9.8 thousand bayonets and sabers with 24 guns and 72 machine guns.

The first Chita operation was carried out on April 10-13, 1920. Considering that Japanese troops controlled the railway, NRA troops launched an offensive from the north through the passes of the Yablonovy Ridge. Two columns of troops were created. The main forces of the right column (under the command of E.V. Lebedev; about 2.7 thousand people, 8 guns, 22 machine guns) were on the railway, the rest of them were advancing on the city from the southwest, trying to cut off the White Guards’ retreat to the south. The left column (commander V.I. Burov; over 6 thousand people, 16 guns, 50 machine guns) delivered the main blow through the passes of the Yablonovy Ridge.

On April 9, the Japanese began to retreat to Chita by rail. Parts of the right column advanced behind them to Gongota station. Further advances of NRA units were stopped by White Guard and Japanese troops.

By April 12, the troops of the left column reached the northern outskirts of Chita, but Japanese troops, during stubborn battles, forced them to retreat to the passes.

The main reasons for the failure of the NRA offensive were the lack of sufficient superiority in forces and especially in equipment and weapons.

By the beginning of the second Chita operation (April 25 - May 5, 1920), the NRA was replenished with the Transbaikal Cavalry Brigade and the Verkhneudinsk Rifle Brigade. To coordinate the actions of partisan detachments, the Amur Front was created (commander D.S. Shilov).

The Japanese troops were replenished with an infantry regiment and a detachment of three thousand transferred from the Manchuria station.

The NRA command divided its troops into three columns that advanced: the first (commander Kuznetsov, about 5.5 thousand people, 6 guns, 42 machine guns) - bypassing Chita from the south; middle (commander K.A. Neiman, about 2.5 thousand people, 3 guns, 13 machine guns) - from the west; left (commander Burov, about 4.2 thousand people, 9 guns, 37 machine guns) - from the north and northeast. The main attacks were delivered from the south and north. The partisan detachments of the Amur Front (12-15 thousand bayonets, 7-8 thousand sabers, 7 guns, 100 machine guns, 2 armored trains) were supposed to capture the areas of Sretensk and Nerchinsk.

It was not possible to fully implement the plan of the operation; the offensive resulted in a series of disparate, uncoordinated actions of the troops. On May 3, the enemy launched a counter-offensive and forced NRA units to retreat and go over (May 5) to the defensive.

In the summer of 1920, despite the failures of the NRA's offensive on Chita, the position of the Far Eastern Republic was significantly strengthened. On July 17, the Japanese command was forced to sign the Gongoth Agreement on the cessation of hostilities, and from July 25 to begin evacuating their troops from Chita and Sretensk.

The third Chita operation was carried out on October 1–31, 1920. The actions of the regular NRA troops west of Chita were bound by the Gongot Agreement. Therefore, the center of gravity of the NRA’s fight against the White Guards was moved to Eastern Transbaikalia. The troops of the Amur Front (commander D.S. Shilov, then S.M. Seryshev; about 30 thousand bayonets and sabers, 35 guns, 2 tanks, 2 armored trains) were given the task of eliminating the “Chita traffic jam”.

The total number of White Guard troops was about 35 thousand bayonets and sabers with 40 guns and 18 armored trains. The main blow was delivered from the northeast in the Nerchinsk - Karymskaya station zone. On October 1, partisan detachments began active hostilities north and south of Chita. On October 15, the troops of the Amur Front went on the offensive and, during stubborn battles, captured Karymskaya station and Chita on October 22.

The enemy's attempt on October 23 to launch a counteroffensive was unsuccessful. On October 30, NRA units captured Byrka and Olovyannaya stations. The remnants of the White Guards fled to Manchuria.

In May 1920, the Amur Flotilla was created in Blagoveshchensk, formally part of the armed forces of the Far Eastern Republic.

Since the monitors and gunboats of the former military flotilla were under Japanese control or were disabled, the basis of the flotilla was made up of the armed steamships Trud, Mark Varyagin and Karl Marx, auxiliary ships Botkinsky, Muravyov-Amursky and Ussuri,” stolen in April under Japanese fire from the Blessed Zaton in Khabarovsk.

On May 18, 1920, the Japanese used the Smerch monitor to provide fire cover for the crossing of Japanese troops across the Amur River. However, the crossing was disrupted by artillery fire from the DDA troops and the Kommunist armored train.

From September 20 to October 12, 1920, Japanese troops left Khabarovsk and Osipovsky Zaton. Previously, they hijacked the most combat-ready ships of the Amur Flotilla to Sakhalin - the Shkval monitor, the gunboats Buryat, Mongol, Votyak and many other ships and ships.

The Japanese demonstratively sank the gunboat Karel and ran the Smerch monitor aground. They collected gun locks, parts of engines and steam engines from gunboats and monitors and sank them in the Amur. Mechanisms, superstructures and decks were doused with hydrochloric acid, and the guns were jammed with shells wrapped in tow soaked in acid. The Japanese destroyed the barracks, living quarters on the shore, a dredging machine and a floating crane in the backwater, plundered the workshops, took away tools and part of the machines, and destroyed the water supply and heating. The total amount of losses caused by the Japanese to the flotilla during the intervention amounted to 11,561,528 rubles. gold. In addition, the interventionists destroyed the entire railway line from Khabarovsk to the base. The Japanese removed the rails from it and threw it into the Amur.

In January 1921, elections were held to the Constituent Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic, as a result of which a government led by the Bolsheviks was created in the capital of the republic, Chita.

Simultaneously with the intervention in the Far East, the Japanese sought to capture Outer Mongolia. To do this, they used the Russian White Guards Semenov and Baron Ungern von Sternberg von Pilkau, as well as the Manchu militarist Zhang Zuolin. The latter, being the sovereign satrap of Mongolia, fought for power with the Beijing government, collaborating with the Japanese.

The 30-year-old Baron Ungern met the October Revolution as a captain of the 3rd Verkhneudinsk Cossack Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossack Army. Already at the end of 1917, with the help of the Japanese, he assembled a detachment of several thousand people from all sorts of rabble. In June 1919, the baron renamed his army the Native Corps, and then the Asian Cavalry Division. He awarded himself the rank of lieutenant general. Thrown out of Russia, the Asian Division broke into Mongolia and on February 4, 1921 drove the Chinese out of the Mongolian capital Urga (from 1924 Ulaanbaatar).

Eyewitness Volkov recalled: “Urga was a terrible picture after it was captured by Ungern. This is probably how the cities taken by Pugachev should have been. Looted Chinese shops gaped with broken doors and windows, the corpses of the Gamin Chinese, mixed with beheaded tortured Jews, their wives and children, were devoured by wild Mongolian dogs. The bodies of those executed were not given to relatives, and were subsequently thrown into a landfill on the banks of the Selba River. One could see overweight dogs gnawing the hand or leg of the executed man that they had brought into the streets of the city. Chinese soldiers settled in separate houses and, without expecting mercy, sold their lives dearly. Drunk, wild-looking Cossacks in silk robes over a tattered sheepskin coat or overcoat took these houses by storm or burned them along with the Chinese who had settled there.”

In May 1921, the troops of Baron Ungern (about 10.5 thousand sabers, 200 bayonets, 21 guns, 37 machine guns) invaded the Far Eastern Republic in the Troitskosavsk region. They delivered the main blow along the right bank of the Selenga River, and a secondary blow along its left bank in order to cut the Circum-Baikal Railway and isolate the Far Eastern Republic from the RSFSR. In stubborn defensive battles from May 28 to June 12, 1921, units of the Red Army repelled White attempts to break through to the railway along the left bank of the Selenga. Baron Ungern's troops suffered heavy losses and retreated deep into Mongolia beyond the Iro River.

In mid-June 1921, the Reds formed an expeditionary force of the 5th Army under the command of K.A. Neumann consisting of 7.6 thousand bayonets and 2.5 thousand sabers. The corps had 20 guns, 2 armored vehicles and 4 aircraft. On June 27-28, units of the expeditionary force, in cooperation with the NRA of the Far Eastern Republic and the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Army (MNRA) under the command of Sukhbaatar, began an offensive. On July 6, the Reds took Urga.

On August 22, Ungern von Sternberg was captured, and on September 15, he was executed by sentence of the revolutionary tribunal. It is curious that during interrogation the baron stated that his homeland was Austria. To some extent this was true, since he was born in the Austrian city of Graz during his parents' trip to Europe.

On July 11, 1921, the People's Government of Mongolia was formed, and on November 5, a cooperation agreement was signed with the RSFSR. Power in Mongolia (Outer Mongolia) was concentrated in the hands of revolutionary elements, but until May 1924, when the last Mongol khan (Bogdo Gegen) died, Mongolia was formally a monarchy.

On January 12, 1921, troops of the Far Eastern Republic defeated the White Guards at Volochaevka. On February 14, Khabarovsk was liberated. White Guard units, covered by Japanese troops, retreated to the south. The People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic successfully advanced towards Nikolsk-Ussuriysk and Vladivostok. The partisans provided great assistance to the revolutionary troops.

The successes achieved by the NRA and the partisans, on the one hand, and the sharp deterioration in Japan's domestic and international position, on the other, forced the Japanese government to enter into new negotiations, this time not only with the Far Eastern Republic, but also with the RSFSR. At the beginning of September 1922, a conference of representatives of Japan and the joint delegation of the Far Eastern Republic and the RSFSR opened in Changchun.

Even before the convening of the conference, the Japanese announced the withdrawal of troops from Primorye by November 1, 1922. The delegation of the Far Eastern Republic and the RSFSR demanded the withdrawal of Japanese troops also from Northern Sakhalin, but the Japanese rejected this demand. The Changchun Conference was interrupted on September 26, 1922.

At 2 o'clock in the afternoon on October 25, 1922, a large Japanese squadron stationed in the Golden Horn Bay with the last expeditionary troops on board raised anchors and began to go out to the open sea. The Japanese stayed for a short time on Russky Island, but after a few days they left there.

On the same day, October 25, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, NRA troops solemnly, without firing a single shot, entered the city of Vladivostok, whose population welcomed their liberators from the interventionists. The civil war in the Far East has ended.

A few words are worth saying about the fate of the ships of the Siberian flotilla. On October 23, 1922, the commander of the Siberian military flotilla, Admiral G.K. Stark took the Russian ships to the Korean port of Genzan. A total of 30 ships were taken away, including the gunboat "Manchzhur", the icebreaker "Ilya Muromets", the auxiliary cruiser "Lieutenant Dydymov" (former border guard cruiser), transports, steamships, minelayers, etc. The ships carried about 9 thousand people. Admiral Stark selected the best ships in Genzan and led them to Shanghai. During a storm on December 4, 1922, the cruiser “Lieutenant Dydymov” was lost. At the beginning of December 1922, Stark's flotilla arrived in Shanghai. The Chinese authorities greeted the White Guards with extreme hostility and soon offered to leave the port. Stark was forced to obey and on January 10, 1923 he again went to sea, having previously landed all the White Guards and civilian refugees ashore. Only the crews of the ships went to Manila with Stark, and then only in an incomplete composition. (A significant part of the teams were officers). This was done intentionally. In Manila, Stark sold the remains of the flotilla and a number of steamships of the Voluntary Fleet. The gentlemen officers divided the money among themselves. Admiral Stark himself went to Paris, where he lived comfortably until 1950.

Of the warships of the Siberian flotilla, only destroyers remained in Vladivostok, but their mechanisms were worn out and partially looted by the interventionists. The Bolsheviks managed to put into operation in September 1926 only the destroyers Tverdy (from September 19, 1923, Lazo) and Tochny (from September 19, 1923, Potapenko). But they did not last long, and both were dismantled for metal in April 1927. The remaining destroyers were not commissioned and were dismantled in 1923-1925.

Only after a brief excursion into the Civil War can we return to Russian-Chinese relations. Already in November 1917, the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs came into contact with the Chinese envoy in Petrograd, Liu Ching-ren. During the negotiations that lasted until March 1918, the Soviet side announced its government’s refusal of all kinds of enslaving agreements that violated the sovereign rights of China.

Without waiting for the start of negotiations on the revision of the treaties, the Soviet government withdrew from China the military units that, according to the “Final Protocol,” were maintained there by Tsarist Russia and the Kerensky government (as well as other powers) to protect the diplomatic mission. Further, the government of the RSFSR expressed its readiness to annul a series of Russian-Japanese agreements of 1907-1916. about spheres of influence in China. In addition, the Soviet government restored China's sovereign rights in the CER right of way.

At the beginning of December 1917, Liu Ching-ren was officially notified that the former royal envoy to China, Prince NA. Kudashev “is no longer a representative of the Russian government” and that at the same time “the manager of the East China Railway, General Horvath, has been dismissed from his post.”

However, the Beijing cabinet, which was completely under the control of the Entente, continued to maintain relations with the former mission of the tsarist government. Moreover, he provided refuge to the gangs of Semenov, Kalmykov and other White Guard chieftains, who used the territory of Northeast China as a springboard for waging the Civil War against Soviet power.

The government of the RSFSR demanded that the Chinese cabinet stop this course, which actually amounted to interference in the internal affairs of Soviet Russia. Chinese representatives, who met in April 1918 at Matsievskaya station with Soviet representatives for negotiations on border issues, refused to comply with the demands of the Soviet government and very openly explained their position by the fact that “the allies have not yet recognized the Russian Soviet government and have not given China instructions that the Semyonov movement must be liquidated.”

On May 16, 1918, the Beijing government signed a secret Japanese-Chinese agreement on joint actions against Soviet Russia. On August 24, the Beijing government announced the sending of its troops to Russia. Chinese troops were in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Transbaikalia, and the Chinese cruiser Hai-Yun was sent to the Vladivostok port, which left there only in 1919. All Chinese troops located on Russian territory were promptly subordinated to the Japanese command.

On July 25, 1919, the government of the RSFSR addressed a message to the Chinese people and the governments of South and North China (i.e., to Duan Qizhong and Sun Yat-sen). This message outlined the program of the Soviet government to establish friendly relations with China. It repeated and clarified the main provisions of the peace decree and restated the position of the RSFSR on the issue of revising old Russian-Chinese treaties. The Soviet government announced its refusal of the “Boxer” indemnity, which the Chinese government still continued to pay to the tsarist envoy. The message also spoke of the Soviet government’s renunciation of extraterritorial rights in China and stated that “not a single Russian official, priest or missionary dares to interfere in Chinese affairs, and if he commits a crime, he must be tried fairly by a local court. In China there should be no other power, no other court, than the power and court of the Chinese people.” In conclusion, the Soviet government invited “the Chinese people, represented by their government, to immediately enter into... official relations.”

And this important document, published in the Izvestia newspaper on August 26, 1919, was hidden by the Beijing government from its people for seven months; only at the end of March 1920 was it published in the Chinese press. But even after this, on April 4, 1920, a representative of the Beijing Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that his government had not received the text of the Soviet note. But it soon became clear that this version was invented to deceive public opinion, which demanded the establishment of friendly relations with the RSFSR. In response to a student petition calling for the opening of negotiations with Soviet Russia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published an official statement on April 11, 1920, which stated that “weak state diplomacy does not have large forces, it always operates with the support of the great powers. If we act independently now, we will encounter many obstacles in practice and are unlikely to achieve success. So now we need to wait.”

In 1918-1920 the Chinese Eastern Railway was ruled by all and sundry - the White Guards, the Japanese, and the Chinese, or rather, Mukden authorities, also intervened. However, formally the head of the CER, as well as Zheltorossia, was Lieutenant General D.L. Horvat, appointed commander-in-chief of the CER at the beginning of the century. Only after a general strike of CER employees in March 1920 was Horvat forced to resign and went to Beijing, where he died on May 16, 1937. After Horvat's departure, the Chinese authorities announced that they were taking over administrative power in the CER right-of-way.

In 1920, the Far Eastern Republic and China (northern government) established diplomatic relations. On August 26, 1920, the diplomatic mission of the Far Eastern Republic arrived in Beijing, and in February 1921, a representative office of the Far Eastern Republic was established in Harbin. This was especially important, since in Yellow Russia the power of the Beijing clique played a very small role, and actual power belonged to the Mukden governor (militarist) Zhang Tso-ming.

The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Far Eastern Republic made it impossible for the Tsar's ambassador, Prince Kudashev, to continue staying in Beijing. It should be noted that this prince was no mistake. In 1918-1920 To repay the so-called “Boxer” indemnity, China regularly deposited 250 thousand taels into the Russian-Asian Bank every two months, which went to Kudashev’s disposal. Repeated protests from the Soviet government, which refused to receive indemnities and demanded “not to give these rewards to former Russian consuls... or Russian organizations that illegally claim this,” were systematically ignored. Naturally, the prince did not report to anyone on the expenditure of this money.

But even this money was not enough for the prince. At his request, on July 8, 1920, the Shanghai police removed the crews from three Russian ships (Simferopol, Penza and Georgiy), which belonged to the Voluntary Fleet before the revolution. The sailors were taken to the territory of the French concession, where they were actually under arrest. In September 1920, on a secret order from Kudashev, Russian ships were withdrawn from the Shanghai port in an unknown direction. It will no longer be possible to establish how much the prince received for these ships.

And so on September 23, 1920, Chinese newspapers published a presidential decree that “China... now ceases to recognize Russian Envoys and Consuls,” since “they have long lost their representative character and truly have no reason to continue to fulfill their responsible duties.” "

On March 7, 1921, representatives of the Far Eastern Republic and the militarists of Chong Tso-lin signed an agreement on the restoration of through railway traffic Chita - Harbin - Vladivostok. The first train departed the next day - March 8.

The need for a buffer state disappeared. In October 1922, the Central Committee of the RCP(b), “taking into account the demands of the working people of the Far East,” recognized the abolition of the “buffer” as appropriate. On November 14, 1922, the People's Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic decided to declare Soviet power in the Russian Far East and ask the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to extend the Soviet Constitution to the entire territory of the region. On November 15, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a decree according to which the territory of the abolished Far Eastern Republic (with the exception of Northern Sakhalin, from where Japanese troops were evacuated only in May 1925) became an integral part of the RSFSR.

Great political changes have also occurred in China. In April 1921, Sun Yat-sen was elected president of China. However, its capital was the city of Canton, and its jurisdiction extended only to the southern Chinese provinces.

In Beijing, in the early 1920s, power passed from one feudal-militarist group to another. There was an armed struggle mainly between two cliques - the Zhili and Mukden, of which the first, led by Wu Pei-fu and Cao Kun, was to a large extent the conductor of British and American policy, and the second, led by Zhang Tso-lin, was dependent on Japan.

In the summer of 1921, the government of the RSFSR established friendly relations with the government of Sun Yat-sen, and an agreement with the Beijing government was signed only on May 31, 1924 (I will talk about it in the next chapter).

A few words should be said about Japanese-Soviet relations. On January 20, 1925, an agreement was signed between the USSR and Japan in Beijing. According to its article 3: “The Japanese government must completely evacuate troops from Sakhalin by May 1/15, 1925. Evacuation must begin as soon as climatic conditions allow. Immediately following the evacuation of Japanese troops from all regions of Northern Sakhalin and from each one separately, full sovereignty of the legitimate authorities of the USSR is established over the latter.”

In return, the USSR granted concessions to Japan for oil and coal production in Northern Sakhalin. Looking ahead, I will say that these concessions were canceled only in 1944.

In August 1925, ships hijacked by the Japanese to Sakhalin returned to the Amur. Among them were the monitor "Shkval", the gunboats "Buryat", "Mongol" and "Votyak", the armored boat "Spear", boat No. 1, the steamships "Khilok", "Silny" and five barges.

The civil war in the Far East took place at a very difficult stage and, due to geographical and political reasons, had its own characteristic peculiarities:

1. 1. The civil war in the Far East was protracted. The war lasted almost 5 years and ended only in October 1922.

2. 2. The course of the war was greatly influenced by the region’s remoteness from the country’s industrial centers and its border position.

3. 3. Due to the fact that the Far East was the object of economic expansion of Japan, the USA and other countries, the social war here was closely combined with the war against the invaders.

4. 4. The civil war in the Far East exceeded the intensity and severity of the struggle in the European part of Russia. Only here were various methods and forms of defense of the revolution used. Due to specific natural, social and political conditions, the partisan movement acquired great importance here. In no other region of the country were there such a number of partisan detachments and mass voluntary participation of workers and peasants in them. The long reign of the interventionists here, accompanied by robbery and banditry, executions and executions of civilians, led to a nationwide uprising against them.

5. 5. The majority of the region's population were peasants, who for the most part were prosperous and did not experience acute land shortages. The Far Eastern peasantry was not affected by the organization of the Podkom, it did not know the policy of “war communism”, its integral part - surplus appropriation with the “seizure of surpluses”. There were no food detachments with their violent methods and actions to collect food, and there was no mass expropriation of the wealthy peasantry and Cossacks. The coastal village did not go through the agrarian revolution that the peasantry of the European regions of the country experienced throughout all the years of the revolution.

6. 6. Far Eastern industry was poorly developed, so the number of workers, the main support of Soviet power, was significantly lower here than in the center. Among the urban population, a significant stratum consisted of bureaucrats and the petty bourgeoisie.

7. 7. An important feature of the region was also the fact that here the privileged Cossacks fully retained their military organization, the wealthy part of which rented out most of their land. Along with the kulaks, the urban trading bourgeoisie, the officers of the old army and tsarist officials, the leadership of the Cossacks constituted a significant part of the counter-revolutionary forces of the region.

8. 8. One of the specific features of the civil war in the Far East was the active participation of representatives of various nationalities in it. In addition, there were a large number of prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army and Czechoslovaks. For the Bolsheviks, as well as for their opponents, it was very important which side these people would be on.

9. 9. Difficulties in organizing resistance to internal and external counter-revolution were aggravated in the Far East by the fact that the Bolshevik organizations in the region were relatively small in number and weakened by the repressions of the tsarist government. Until the end of 1917, the parties of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Anarchists still enjoyed significant influence among the peasants, intelligentsia, and students. That is why, after the Bolshevik victory in October 1917, ardent supporters of the monarchy, all anti-Soviet elements, rushed to the Far East, hoping to find salvation here and the opportunity, together with anti-Bolshevik parties, to continue the struggle against the new government.

10. 10. The intensity of the civil war intensified due to the development of large-scale white banditry and Honghuzism, which was largely specific to the region.

11. 11. Combat operations in the Far East developed mainly in the zone of the Amur and Ussuri railways. In winter, the beds of large rivers – the Amur and Ussuri – became important.

12. 12. Another feature was the creation in the Far East in 1920-1922. buffer state - the Far Eastern Republic (FER).

Periodization of war. The history of the civil war in the Far East can be divided into three periods:

1st period from April to September 1918, that is, from the landing of Japanese troops in Vladivostok until the temporary overthrow of Soviet power in the region. The period was characterized by front-line warfare and the beginning of military intervention.

2nd period from September 1918 to February - March 1920. This was the time of the struggle against the interventionists and the Kolchak regime. The main form of struggle in these years was the activity of partisan detachments, which is why the second period is often called partisan. It ended with the overthrow of Kolchak’s power in the Primorsky, Amur, Kamchatka, Sakhalin regions and in the Baikal region. In Transbaikalia, the power of Ataman Semenov was preserved (until November 1920).

3rd period from April 1920 to November 1922. It coincided with the existence of the buffer state - the Far Eastern Republic. This is a period of united actions of partisans and the regular People's Revolutionary Army of the Far East, which ended with the liberation of the Far East from interventionists and White Guards, the liquidation of the Far East and the reunification of the Far East and Soviet Russia.

After the victory of the October Revolution, the governments of the USA, Japan, and the Entente countries began to develop plans to overthrow Soviet power. Great importance was attached to the seizure of Siberia and the Far East as a springboard for the fight against the Soviet Republic. In preparation for the intervention, the governments of the Entente countries and the United States not only sought to save Russia from the Bolsheviks, but also wanted to solve their own selfish interests.

Thus, the United States for a long time persistently prepared to seize Russian territories in Siberia and the Far East, waiting only for an opportunity to carry out its plans. The widely known American historian D.F. Kennan wrote in one of his works: “The Americans (i.e. capitalists, businessmen) persistently demanded that the US government ... show special interest in the vast territory of Siberia.” The “special interest” of US monopolists in the Amur basin is also noted by D.U. Morley, author of the book "Japanese Penetration into Siberia." The fact that the US government was preparing to carry out the territorial division of Russia is evidenced by the documents of President Wilson's personal adviser, Colonel E. House. The US Ambassador to Russia D. Francis insisted in February 1918 on the need to take Vladivostok under US control. The US government provoked Japan to act, in every possible way encouraged the Japanese military to carry out armed aggression and at the same time sought coordinated actions from its ally, which in reality meant US control. The anti-Soviet orientation of US policy was perfectly understood and fully taken into account by the Japanese militarists. They were quite happy with the American plan to recognize the need to use the Japanese army in the intervention. The Japanese government justified the need to fight against Russia on the Asian continent with its traditional policy, allegedly caused by the historical development of the country. The essence of the foreign policy concept of Japanese imperialism was that Japan should have a bridgehead on the mainland.

Russian counter-revolutionaries contributed to the outbreak of foreign intervention, hoping to overthrow Soviet power with the help of foreign troops. Thus, the Black Hundred-Cadet newspaper “Voice of Primorye” published on March 20, 1918 a message in English about the alleged beating of 10 thousand residents in Blagoveshchensk, about mass executions of citizens of the Amur region by Soviet authorities. This message was a blatant lie, designed to strengthen aggressive aspirations in Japan. After all, it was precisely this that testified to “unrest and anarchy in Russia, and what’s more, coming from the “Russian leaders” themselves, gave Japan and other countries a reason to begin intervention.”

England also actively participated in the deployment of aggression. Busy with the war against the countries of the German bloc in Europe and interested primarily in strengthening its positions in the north of European Russia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, it sought a speedy invasion of the Far East by Japanese-American troops. At the same time, the British ministers especially noted that the Japanese army was best prepared for immediate intervention. This opinion was especially defended by the Minister of War W. Churchill, who was an ardent supporter of the war with the Bolsheviks.

The French capitalists, who sought to create a “cordon sanitaire” around Soviet Russia and then starve Bolshevism to death, supported the internal counter-revolution by all means and prepared for military intervention. The US and French governments were the direct organizers of the counter-revolutionary rebellion of the Czechoslovak corps. It was the governments of these states that financed the rebels.

Preparations for armed intervention in the Far East were completed in the early spring of 1918. By this time, the Allied powers had finally agreed to grant the initiative to Japan, to use the Czechoslovak corps for a counter-revolutionary rebellion, and to supply the White Guards with everything necessary. And although there was a strong “rivalry between Japan and America”, as well as between other states, class enmity towards the world’s first socialist state forced them to unite and conduct a joint armed intervention.

By agreement of the governments of the United States and Japan, the latter was given freedom of action in the Far East. Japanese troops were to serve as the main striking force of the states participating in the intervention.

First period of the war. On April 4, 1918, the Japanese export-import office Ishido was attacked in Vladivostok; two Japanese were killed and one wounded. This provocation became the reason for the landing of Japanese and English troops in Vladivostok on April 5, 1918, under the pretext of ensuring the safety of their citizens. Thus, without a declaration of war, the intervention in the Far East began.

The landing of foreign troops intensified the activities of the internal counter-revolution. Ataman in Transbaikalia Grigory Semenov launched active military operations.

The main blow was aimed at Chita. In May, a rebellion of the Ussuri Cossack army began in southern Primorye, led by Esul Kalmykov. In connection with this, a revolutionary headquarters was created led by the Bolshevik K. Sukhanov and formed Grodekov Front. The Soviet government managed to suppress the internal counter-revolution quite easily: defeat the detachments of Semenov in Transbaikalia and Kalmykov in Primorye.

For armed struggle in Siberia and the Far East, the interventionists decided to use the Czechoslovak corps, formed in the summer of 1917 with the permission of the Provisional Government from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army. The Soviet government allowed the evacuation of the corps from the country. Initially, it was assumed that the Czechoslovaks would leave Russia for France through Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. But due to a change in the situation, it was decided to evacuate the corps through Vladivostok. The drama of the situation was that the first echelons arrived in Vladivostok on April 25, 1918, while the rest stretched along the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway up to the Urals, the number of the corps exceeded 30 thousand people. In May–June 1918, corps troops, with the support of underground counter-revolutionary organizations, overthrew Soviet power in Siberia. On the night of June 29 there was mutiny of the Czechoslovak corps in Vladivostok, almost the entire composition of the Vladivostok Council was arrested.

On July 3, 1918, the first major battles with the White Czechs began in the Nikolsk-Ussuriysk region. On July 8, after stubborn fighting, the city was abandoned, and Soviet troops retreated to Spassk. On the line Spassk - Iman (now Dalnerechensk) was formed Ussuri Front. On July 16, 1918, Spassk had to be surrendered.

In mid-August, French, Japanese, American and British troops landed in Vladivostok to support the Czechoslovaks.

On August 22-23, 1918, in the area of ​​the Kraevsky crossing, a united detachment of interventionists came out against Soviet units. Soviet troops were forced, after stubborn fighting, to retreat to Khabarovsk.

The threat to Soviet power in the Far East loomed not only from Vladivostok. The western group of Czechoslovaks and White Guards fought their way east. On August 25-28, 1918, the 5th Congress of Soviets of the Far East. In connection with the breakthrough of the Ussuri Front, the issue of further tactics of struggle was discussed at the congress. By a majority vote, it was decided to stop the front-line struggle and disband the Red Guard detachments in order to then organize a partisan struggle.

On October 4, 1918, Japanese and American troops entered Khabarovsk and transferred power to Ataman Kalmykov. Soviet power was overthrown in the Amur region, and Blagoveshchensk fell on September 18. Thus ended the first period of the civil war in the Far East.

The overthrow of Soviet power in the region was due to several reasons.

1. 1. The Red Army was opposed by well-armed and trained units of interventionists and White Guards.

2. 2. The middle peasantry and Cossacks allowed themselves to hesitate, and the rural poor turned out to be insufficiently organized.

3. 3. The left parties were unable to create a united front against the interventionists and the White Guards. Serious inter-party contradictions weakened the resistance forces.

4. 4. Mistakes and miscalculations of the leadership of party and military organizations of the Far East.

However, in the first period, a certain amount of experience was gained in conducting combat operations against the interventionists and the White Guards; for five months, the Far Easterners diverted their significant forces to themselves.

Second period of the war. In November 1918, the All-Russian Government of Admiral Kolchak was formed in Omsk, who declared himself the supreme ruler. The command of the Czechoslovak corps took this notice without much enthusiasm, but, under pressure from the allies, did not resist it. In fact, the relay of the armed struggle against Soviet power on Eastern Front Kolchak's army picked it up. Explaining his political platform, Kolchak stated that his immediate goal was to create a strong and combat-ready army for a “merciless and inexorable fight against the Bolsheviks.” Only after this should a National Assembly be created in Russia “for the reign of law and order in the country.” All economic and social reforms, according to Kolchak, should also be postponed until the end of the fight against the Bolsheviks.

From the first steps of its existence, the Kolchak government embarked on the path of exceptional laws, introducing the death penalty, martial law, and punitive expeditions.

However, in the territory of the Far East there was also “opposition” to the Kolchak government in the person of Ataman Semenov and Kalmykov. Semenov decided to extend his power to the Amur region and the Ussuri region, to concentrate in his hands not only military, but also civil power. The confrontation between Semyonov and Kalmykov in relation to Kolchak only intensified the violence in the region. Bloody terror came from Kalmykov, and from Semenov, and from Kolchak, and from the interventionists. All the prisons in the cities were overcrowded. In Blagoveshchensk, about 2 thousand people were arrested and imprisoned in just 20 days. Every night they were taken out in batches and shot. In November 1918, in Vladivostok, while being transferred from a concentration camp to prison, the chairman of the Vladivostok Council, K. Sukhanov, was killed. Between Khabarovsk and Vladivostok there was a “train of death” – a camp dungeon. None of those who got on this train survived. The corpses were thrown into the Amur from the railway bridge. The response to the terror on the part of the whites and the interventionists was a wave of peasant uprisings that swept throughout the Far East.

But the opposite side was just as blind in its class rage. The list of follies and crimes of the Red Terror is also long. The concentration of enormous power in the hands of the Cheka (created in December 1917) and the activities of the military revolutionary tribunal with unlimited powers only intensified mutual cruelty.

The scope of the “white” and “red” terror was due to: firstly, the desire of both sides for dictatorship as a method of control; secondly, the lack of democratic traditions in the country; thirdly, the devaluation of human life as a result of the world war.

In 1918, Bolshevik organizations began to be created in the occupied territory in deep underground conditions. By the end of the year, the Vladivostok Committee of the RCP (b), having established contacts with the communists of Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, Nikolsk-Ussuriysk, Harbin, took over the functions of the regional organization. At the beginning of 1919, a Far Eastern Committee of the RCP (b), which included A.A. Voronin, Z.I. Sekretareva, I.M. Gubelman, S.G. Lazo and others. To work among the population, underground committees, trade unions, cooperatives, and zemstvos were used.

The main form of struggle at the second stage of the civil war in the Far East was partisan movement. From October 1918 to February 1919 there was a turn of the middle peasants towards Soviet power. Having felt the power of self-proclaimed rulers and atamans, having experienced all the horror of robberies, murders and violence of white gangs, the peasantry of the Far East decisively turned to a militant alliance with the working class under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. This turn in the mood of the peasants was expressed in mass participation in partisan detachments and material support for the Red Army.

The beginning of the organized formation of the partisan movement in the Amur region was made at the illegal congress of workers of the Khabarovsk district. A military revolutionary headquarters was formed there under the leadership DI. Boyko-Pavlova. In Primorye, to coordinate the actions of partisan detachments, a headquarters was created in the village. Anuchino, commander of all partisan forces was appointed S.G. Lazo. The number of partisans, united under a single command, was 4-5 thousand people. In the summer and autumn of 1919, partisans destroyed 350 bridges and derailed 15 military trains.

By the fall of 1919, the partisan struggle in the Amur region intensified even more. Partisan detachments began to operate in the southern, northeastern and western directions from Khabarovsk. By the beginning of 1920, about 200 partisan groups and detachments were operating in the Far East, the number of which reached 50 thousand people. Negative factors under normal conditions: the poor population of the region, the presence of vast uninhabited territories, the lack of roads and means of communication, contributed to the wide scope of the partisan movement in the Far East. Partisan detachments and formations diverted a significant part of the military forces of the White Guards and interventionists.

In general, 1919 was marked not only by the scale of the partisan movement in the region, but also by mass strikes; on May 21, a general political strike of miners took place demanding the withdrawal of American and Japanese troops from Primorye; in July - a general strike of railway workers of the Ussuri Railway, the Vladivostok port and other enterprises.

In 1919, the Soviet government declared the Eastern Front the main front of the civil war. During the battles, the Red Army under the command M.V. Frunze went on the offensive and practically defeated Kolchak’s army.

Having accepted defeat, Kolchak resigned the title of supreme ruler, transferring it to Denikin. In January 1920, Kolchak was captured and shot.

The successes of the Red Army accelerated the fall of the Kolchak regime in the Far East. To overthrow Kolchak's power, the Bolsheviks of Primorye began preparing armed uprisings in the region. After lengthy discussions on the issue of struggle tactics, the Far Eastern Committee of the RCP (b) decided to refrain from proclaiming Soviet power and carry out the liquidation of the Kolchak regime under the slogan “All power to the Zemstvo Council.” This decision was dictated by political considerations: the transfer of power to the zemstvo deprived the interventionists of a reason for armed action.

As a result of the uprisings, Kolchak's power was liquidated on January 26, 1920 in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, on January 31 in Vladivostok, on February 1 in Iman (Dalnerechensk).

In February - March 1920, under the blows of the united forces of partisans and rebel workers, Kolchak’s power in the Far East fell. At this time, several regional governments were formed: in Primorye, where the Japanese remained, power passed to the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Government; in Khabarovsk - to the Khabarovsk district zemstvo government; in the Amur region, from where Japanese troops were evacuated, Soviet power was restored; in the Baikal region, with the center in Verkhneudinsk (Ulan-Ude), there was a temporary zemstvo authority of the Baikal region. Only in Transbaikalia did the regime of Ataman Semenov continue to exist. Thus ended the second stage of the civil war.

The beginning of the third stage of the war. By the spring of 1920, the situation in the Far East had changed dramatically. The governments of the USA, England and France abandoned open intervention and began to withdraw their troops from the territory of the Far East. But the intervention continued by Japanese forces, which in Primorye maintained 11 divisions numbering about 175 thousand people.

On April 5, 1920, Japanese troops suddenly moved against the revolutionary forces in Vladivostok, Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, Spassk, Shkotovo, Posyet and Khabarovsk. Members of the Primorsky Military Council were arrested in Vladivostok S.G. Lazo, V.M. Sibirtsev and A.N. Lutsky. At the end of May, Lazo and his comrades were taken to the Muravyov-Amursky station (now Lazo) and burned in the locomotive furnace.

During this difficult period for the region, in November 1920, at the first congress of the Red Youth of Primorye, a single Komsomol organization was formed, uniting about 1,900 boys and girls. The regional committee of the RKSM was elected. Headed it Mikhail Yanshin. Komsomol members actively participated in the partisan struggle against the White Guards and interventionists. In the fierce battles for the young Far Eastern Republic, many of them accomplished feats, among them Vitaly Banevur, Ivan Derbenev, Andrei Evdanov and others.

The political situation in the south of the Far East has again reached a critical point. The Soviet government understood that Soviet Russia could not simultaneously wage a war against Poland in the west, against Denikin in the south and against Japan in the east. In order to avoid a direct collision with Japan, to alleviate the situation of the Soviet Republic, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Council of People's Commissars decided to create a buffer state on the territory from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean - Far Eastern Republic (FER). The difficulty of creating a buffer state was that not only the revolutionary-minded, but also a significant part of the communists stood for the immediate restoration of Soviet power in the Far East. A huge amount of work was required from local party organizations to explain the need for the temporary creation of a buffer state on the eastern outskirts of the country.