Japanese Offensive against Russia, 1920 (Part I)
By Jamie Bisher
Revolutionary Prelude in Nikolsk-Ussuriisk
Bolshevik authority in Nikolsk was ousted in mid-1918 before it had long enough to reveal its true savagery. An anti-Bolshevik pincer had begun its westward movement from the Pacific Coast on the morning of June 29, when Major General M.K. Dietrichs and 15,000 soldiers of the Czechoslovak Legion unseated the Bolsheviks in Vladivostok in a violent coup d'etat. About 100 Red Guards covered their comrades' escape from town, and the shooting left some 83 people dead and wounded on both sides. Although the Legion's relations with the city's Bolshevik administration had been relatively cordial, the Czechoslovaks felt compelled to take the port that guaranteed their exit from the Russian morass.
The Czechoslovak action paved the way for Japanese and other foreign military incursions. Small British and Japanese landing parties came ashore on June 29 to show their support for the Czechs. In the afternoon the Chinese landed eighty men, and the Americans dispatched twenty sailors for the sole purpose of protecting resident nationals. The next day, Admiral Kato Kanji, commander of the Japanese naval squadron, even disarmed three Russian destroyers and one auxiliary. One week after the Czech coup, British, French and Japanese forces put the Vladivostok area "under their protection." A Canadian observer, Major James Mackintosh Bell, recalled, "The great majority of the population of the city was still strongly Bolshevik in sympathy and, even many of those who were not, resented what they considered the arrogant attitude of the Czechs. Enormous processions of Red mourners accompanied the funeral of the Bolshevik victims of the Czech attack on the Staff Headquarters."
As soon as they took Vladivostok, the Czechoslovaks launched an offensive to clear the now hostile Reds from the railway. They encountered little resistance in the first sixty miles of their drive, then ground to a halt at Nikolsk-Ussuriisk. Local Red Guards and detachments of Hungarian and German internationalists put up a fierce defense of the town. Heavy fighting raged for days. Finally, "by dint of immense perseverance in the face of very considerable odds" the outnumbered Czechoslovak Second Division forced a Bolshevik withdrawal on July 5, 1918. About 1,000 surviving Red Guards and internationalists conducted a fighting retreat northwards along the Ussuri River, joining about 4,000 other armed revolutionaries from the Maritime Province (mostly the Grodekovo area), before finally being chased into the taiga by the Japanese Army's 12th Division in September. By that time, the White occupation of Nikolsk was well underway, and detachments of the Osobii Kazach’ii Otryad (O.K.O.)—the Special Cossack Detachment of the recently elected Ussuri Cossack ataman, Podesaul (Lieutenant) Ivan Pavlovich Kalmykov—had already established a Nikolsk headquarters and begun executing all suspected Red sympathizers.
Contrary to its popular image, the Ussuri Cossack Host was not a monolithic bastion of reactionary fervor. Indeed, since the February Revolution, the Host had been split by a traumatic schism that polarized Ussuri Cossacks into revolutionary and traditional factions, the former even succeeding to push through resolutions in April 1917 that called for the abolishment of the Host's special privileges and its “merging with the peasant class.” However, as soldiers returned from the front, even radicalized veterans were reluctant to renounce privileges paid for with blood, limbs and their friends’ lives. Japanese, British and French military representatives provided financing and other material incentives to promote Kalmykov's election to the ataman's scepter in January 1918, although detractors insisted that Japanese agents had engineered his election through murder, coercion and bribes. Nevertheless, in Nikolsk, as elsewhere in the Russian Far East, family relationships, old friendships, and economic hardship complicated the polarized Cossack politics to make a vicious struggle even more cruel. Throughout 1919, White counter-intelligence squads and anti-partisan patrols rounded up suspects and robbed wealthy citizens in the city and surrounding villages, and Red hit teams and guerrillas assassinated White officers, sabotaged the railroad and raided the same surrounding villages.
The Czechoslovak action paved the way for Japanese and other foreign military incursions. Small British and Japanese landing parties came ashore on June 29 to show their support for the Czechs. In the afternoon the Chinese landed eighty men, and the Americans dispatched twenty sailors for the sole purpose of protecting resident nationals. The next day, Admiral Kato Kanji, commander of the Japanese naval squadron, even disarmed three Russian destroyers and one auxiliary. One week after the Czech coup, British, French and Japanese forces put the Vladivostok area "under their protection." A Canadian observer, Major James Mackintosh Bell, recalled, "The great majority of the population of the city was still strongly Bolshevik in sympathy and, even many of those who were not, resented what they considered the arrogant attitude of the Czechs. Enormous processions of Red mourners accompanied the funeral of the Bolshevik victims of the Czech attack on the Staff Headquarters."
As soon as they took Vladivostok, the Czechoslovaks launched an offensive to clear the now hostile Reds from the railway. They encountered little resistance in the first sixty miles of their drive, then ground to a halt at Nikolsk-Ussuriisk. Local Red Guards and detachments of Hungarian and German internationalists put up a fierce defense of the town. Heavy fighting raged for days. Finally, "by dint of immense perseverance in the face of very considerable odds" the outnumbered Czechoslovak Second Division forced a Bolshevik withdrawal on July 5, 1918. About 1,000 surviving Red Guards and internationalists conducted a fighting retreat northwards along the Ussuri River, joining about 4,000 other armed revolutionaries from the Maritime Province (mostly the Grodekovo area), before finally being chased into the taiga by the Japanese Army's 12th Division in September. By that time, the White occupation of Nikolsk was well underway, and detachments of the Osobii Kazach’ii Otryad (O.K.O.)—the Special Cossack Detachment of the recently elected Ussuri Cossack ataman, Podesaul (Lieutenant) Ivan Pavlovich Kalmykov—had already established a Nikolsk headquarters and begun executing all suspected Red sympathizers.
Contrary to its popular image, the Ussuri Cossack Host was not a monolithic bastion of reactionary fervor. Indeed, since the February Revolution, the Host had been split by a traumatic schism that polarized Ussuri Cossacks into revolutionary and traditional factions, the former even succeeding to push through resolutions in April 1917 that called for the abolishment of the Host's special privileges and its “merging with the peasant class.” However, as soldiers returned from the front, even radicalized veterans were reluctant to renounce privileges paid for with blood, limbs and their friends’ lives. Japanese, British and French military representatives provided financing and other material incentives to promote Kalmykov's election to the ataman's scepter in January 1918, although detractors insisted that Japanese agents had engineered his election through murder, coercion and bribes. Nevertheless, in Nikolsk, as elsewhere in the Russian Far East, family relationships, old friendships, and economic hardship complicated the polarized Cossack politics to make a vicious struggle even more cruel. Throughout 1919, White counter-intelligence squads and anti-partisan patrols rounded up suspects and robbed wealthy citizens in the city and surrounding villages, and Red hit teams and guerrillas assassinated White officers, sabotaged the railroad and raided the same surrounding villages.
White rule ended abruptly on January 26, 1920. After a short siege, a partisan detachment under one Commander Shevchenko boldly marched into Nikolsk-Ussuriisk that morning. Upon their arrival, all but one of the local White units declared allegiance to Shevchenko's partisans. Even Nikolsk’s Ussuri Cossacks, formerly the pillar of Kalmykov’s power, and the Third Transbaikal Cossack Regiment joined the rebels. The partisans moved to surround the barracks of the Jaeger Cavalry Regiment. The young Jaeger commander, Colonel Viktor Vrashtel, and about 80 men, representing half of the understrength regiment, fled with four field guns. They lobbed three or four shells into Nikolsk from the city’s outskirts, killing a handful of partisans, then “took to the hills.” Meanwhile, some 500 Japanese and 1,000 Chinese troops declared their neutrality and observed the day’s events from positions near the train station. Late that evening Vrashtel's soldiers returned to Nikolsk without their officers, surrendered and offered to fight for the partisans. Vrashtel and his officers made for the Chinese border but were captured and thrown into prison. The fall of Nikolsk cut off Vladivostok from Ataman Semenov’s shrinking White bastion in Transbaikalia.
On January 31, 1920, Vladivostok's White overseer General Sergei N. Rozanov was overthrown with a single artillery shot that rattled the walls of his villa. No fighting occurred. In the words of U.S. Major General William S. Graves, “That shot missed its mark, but the sound seemed sufficient for Rozanov and his supporters, the Japanese, to lose their nerve, as the Japanese clothed Rozanov in a Japanese officer’s long cape and Japanese military cap, and conducted him to Japanese Headquarters, which ended his crooked career in Siberia.” Vladivostok’s revolutionaries launched the Provisional Zemstvo Government of the Maritime Province which, on the surface, seemed to sincerely strive to organize an honest, just administration, but was actually a facade for Bolshevik control. The government lacked any legislative body, and was nominally led by an executive board consisting of two former teachers, a doctor and a surveyor, chaired by former educator A.S. Medvedev.
On January 31, 1920, Vladivostok's White overseer General Sergei N. Rozanov was overthrown with a single artillery shot that rattled the walls of his villa. No fighting occurred. In the words of U.S. Major General William S. Graves, “That shot missed its mark, but the sound seemed sufficient for Rozanov and his supporters, the Japanese, to lose their nerve, as the Japanese clothed Rozanov in a Japanese officer’s long cape and Japanese military cap, and conducted him to Japanese Headquarters, which ended his crooked career in Siberia.” Vladivostok’s revolutionaries launched the Provisional Zemstvo Government of the Maritime Province which, on the surface, seemed to sincerely strive to organize an honest, just administration, but was actually a facade for Bolshevik control. The government lacked any legislative body, and was nominally led by an executive board consisting of two former teachers, a doctor and a surveyor, chaired by former educator A.S. Medvedev.
The partisans that liberated Nikolsk swarmed around Khabarovsk, where, on February 12, Ataman Kalmykov emptied the gold from the State Bank and ominously gave his army colors to a Sublieutenant Karpinskii for delivery to Chita. The Japanese Army counted on Kalmykov to defend the city, and did its part by tearing up about one mile of railroad tracks leading into town. However local partisans had already begun negotiating with remaining White units in Khabarovsk to convince them to mutiny and help track down Kalmykov. Suddenly, an armed force appeared from the south, and the partisans took up defensive positions. A day and a half passed before they realized that the approaching force consisted of Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries from Vladivostok. Meanwhile, Kalmykov and his pirates hijacked every drozhkii (horse-drawn taxi) they could find and escaped, killing all the drozhkii drivers at the edge of town. Partisans marched into Khabarovsk unopposed on February 16, 1920. People wept with joy and red flags blanketed the city. The partisan commander Bulgakov-Bel’ski forced a Japanese armored train commander to give up eight Kalmykov officers who were hiding on his train, and pressured the Japanese headquarters to agree “not to molest Russian or foreign [i.e., Korean] residents and to abstain from entering the town” unless given permission by Vladivostok’s Zemstvo Government. Meanwhile Ataman Kalmykov and 800 diehard followers split into two groups and fled across the border into Manchuria, where the Chinese Army was waiting for them. Kalmykov surrendered without a fight at a squalid village called Norti about March 5.
The Red Army had pushed the front lines deep into Transbaikalia while partisans controlled huge swaths of territory that threatened to smother remaining White and Japanese strongholds, almost all located on the railroad. Before the end of March 1920, hundreds of Japanese civilians from Blagoveshchensk and other towns in Amur Province joined the sea of refugees that was fleeing to Vladivostok. A similar evacuation appeared likely from Nikolsk-Ussuriisk, which had become a flashpoint for Russo-Japanese tension. On March 26, Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets surrounded the railroad station, roundhouse, railyards, commandant’s office, and telephone exchange, “preparing for a fight” but apparently could find no one to fight with. Their lust for battle would not go unfulfilled for long.
Copyright 2018, Jamie Bisher