Y. N. TSIPKIN

Doctor of History

2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War in Russia. The Intervention in the Far East lasted for five years. The longest was the presence of the Japanese Expeditionary Force; yet, the Intervention was both started and ended by the Americans. In mid-November 1917, the American cruiser Brooklyn entered the Golden Horn Bay of Vladivostok without permission. On board the ship was the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Austin Knight. It was only in November 1922, a month after the Civil War in the Far East had ended, that the American cruiser Sacramento left Russky Island with the US Naval radio station personnel on board.

Foreign intervention was falsely justified by “rendering aid to the Czech Legion” striving to return home through the Russian Far East, or the need to protect ammunition and subsistence warehouses in Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Vladivostok from the Bolsheviks and “German agents,” few Austro-Hungarian and German war prisoners, who supported the Soviet government. It was in the interest of the U.S. to have Japan and Russia mutually weakened, to get Bolshevism crushed by the Japanese. At the same time, America objected to the Japanese seizure of Russia’s coastal zones. Hence, American policy towards the White movement was controversial and incoherent. The U.S. deployed a maximum of 9 thousand personnel in the Russian Far East, while the Japanese Expeditionary Force numbered 73 thousand men by 1 October 1918. By early February 1919, the number of Japanese forces shrank to 25,6 thousand soldiers and officers.

Khabarovsk was taken on 5 September 1918. First, the Cossacks under Ataman I. P. Kalmykov and Japanese troops entered the town, and a little later the Americans. The Far Eastern Council of People’s Commissars, significantly outnumbered by the counter-revolutionaries, evacuated to a remote village Zeya in the Amur Region and was soon dismissed. To fight back, the Bolsheviks formed partisan detachments. Ataman Kalmykov waged brutal terror in Khabarovsk.

In Khabarovsk, units of the Japanese 12th Division and parts of the 27th Regiment of the American Expeditionary Force were garrisoned. On 16 February 1920, Khabarovsk was occupied by the revolutionary troops of the Far East. Power was now in the hands of the Military Revolutionary Headquarters headed by I. G. Bulgakov-Belsky. These troops were formed from the former units of Kolchak’s army who switched to the side of the Red after a rebellion in Primorye. A month later, partisans entered the town. The Japanese remained neutral until most of the American and Czech forces left Primorye. As soon as they did, the Japanese forces immediately advanced to attack and block the troops under the local Zemstvo administration and partisan detachments openly garrisoned in bigger settlements. During this false flag attack in April, over 7 thousand soldiers of the Revolutionary Army of the Far East, partisans, and civilians were killed.

The Japanese attack coincided with the formation of a buffer state — the Far Eastern Republic (FER), founded to prevent war between Soviet Russia and Japan. On 25 April 1920, the Polish–Soviet war began. In the meantime, the White forces under baron Wrangel went forth from Crimea. The Soviet Republic was not strong enough to fight on three fronts at once. The war against Japan had to be prevented. In April 1920, more tragic events happened in Khabarovsk. There were clashes in town and on the outskirts, in which the Japanese lost 300 soldiers and officers killed and wounded. The People’s Revolutionary Army lost much more: around 400 people wounded and over 1 200 captured. The interventionists seized artillery pieces and an armored train of the Revolutionary Army. Partisan units fought their way onto the left bank of the Amur to form a joint regiment under F. A. Petrov-Teterin. The regiment took up station near the bridge over the Amur and the Beshenaya creek. The attempts of the Japanese forces to land troops, under protection of naval artillery, on the left bank, were stopped by machine-gun fire. On 27 May 1920, combat operations between the Russian and Japanese forces officially ended. The interventionists tried to install puppet administration, made up of the White Guard personnel, yet only in Khabarovsk did these attempts succeed. White generals and officers were wary of supporting the Japanese openly, so the interventionists had to return the Primorye Zemstvo administration — however, with limited powers.

In Khabarovsk, the former Kolchak’s Duma took power, headed by the town mayor K. T. Likhoydov, a well-off landlord and an unashamed Japanophile. Nevertheless, Japan’s problems with both domestic and foreign issues, as well as military defeats of the White Guard on other fronts (in Transbaikalia) forced the interventionists to leave Khabarovsk. The Primorye administration declared the Khabarovsk Duma dismissed. On 23 August 1920, the Duma was driven off by a battalion of the People’s Police, and Likhoydov left for Vladivostok under the protection of the Japanese.

On 6 October 1920, the Japanese began to evacuate from Khabarovsk. They took material valuables with them, burned down uniform warehouses, poured acid on the machinery of several gunboats of the Amur Fleet. On 23 October, the evacuation was complete. The town and territory of Primorye to Iman (Dalnerechensk) were occupied by the Amur Division of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the FER. On 22 November 1920, the Amur Region was formed, Khabarovsk being its center. The region spanned over a part of Primorye to Iman, a territory free from intervention. Khabarovsk once again fell under the White Guard; this time the Japanese were not present. The White units under Lieutenant General Kappel occupied the town on 22 December 1921. They only left on 14 February 1922 after the Battle of Volochayevka.

By October 1922, the People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) crushed the remaining units of the White Guard in Southern Primorye. On 25 October 1922, the Japanese left Vladivostok, giving way to the PRA FER. The Far Eastern Republic was dissolved, absorbed by Soviet Russia.

The Civil War caused tremendous damage to the country and the Far Eastern Region. The number of military casualties exceeded 2.5 million people. There were an estimated 21–25 million total casualties of the Civil War in Russia. In the Russian Far East, over 80 thousand people died in combat, were wounded to death, tortured, or executed. The population of Khabarovsk in 1913 was 52 thousand people, while by 1922 only 32 thousand people remained. The regional economy suffered serious harm. Between 17 and 30 percent of enterprises went bankrupt and stopped. Inland waterway transport lost 76 percent motor vessels. Economic losses valued at 603 million gold rubles.