Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
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Vol. 40, Nº 72 (2022), 799-812
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Recibido el 14/10/2021 Aceptado el 26/12/2021
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people
forced to emigrate to Asian countries after
the end of the civil war of 1917-1922
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.4072.48
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev *
Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov **
Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov ***
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin ****
Alexander Georgievich Rogachev *****
Sergey Alekseevich Safronov ******
Abstract
It examines the military activities of white emigration in
China, especially in Manchuria, evaluates attempts to inuence
the situation in the neighboring regions of the Soviet Union in
the 1920s, and further characterizes the reaction of the Soviet
authorities. General scientic methods (analysis, synthesis) and
general historical (historical-genetic, historical-comparative; problem-
based and chronological, historical-systemic) are used. The authors dwell
on the background and reconstruction of the general context of the facts.
Vivid and extensive quotations from various witnesses are provided. By way
of conclusion, the hypothesis of the study is conrmed that the inuence of
white emigration on the life of the Soviet population, which is undesirable
for the Soviet authorities, is eliminated by a combination of measures of
force and propaganda: the creation of borders, troops, campaigns, and the
assassination of emigrated leaders. The actions of the paramilitary units
of the White emigration hinder the life of the local population and are
neutralized thanks to the policy of the Soviet authorities.
Keywords: Soviet Russia; China; Manchuria; Harbin; Russian Military
Union (RAMU).
* Prof. V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky Krasnoyarsk State Medical University of the Ministry of Healthcare of the
Russian Federation, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7607-731X
** Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4764-
8181
*** Irkutsk State Transport University, Irkutsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1944-
4501
**** Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-
0003-0301-7505
***** Krasnoyarsk State Agrarian University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-
0001-9818-1812
****** Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6417-
8260
800
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
Política de la URSS de 1920 en relación con las
personas forzadas a emigrar a países asiáticos después
del nal de la guerra civil de 1917-1922
Resumen
Se examinan las actividades militares de la emigración blanca en China,
especialmente en Manchuria, evalúan los intentos de inuir en la situación
en las regiones vecinas de la Unión Soviética en la década de 1920 y,
además, caracterizan la reacción de las autoridades soviéticas. Se utilizan
métodos cientícos generales (análisis, síntesis) e históricos generales
(histórico-genético, histórico-comparativo; basado en problemas y
cronológico, histórico-sistémico). Los autores se detienen en el trasfondo y
la reconstrucción del contexto general de los hechos. Se proporcionan citas
vívidas y extensas de varios testigos. A modo de conclusión se conrma la
hipótesis del estudio de que la inuencia de la emigración blanca en la vida
de la población soviética, que es indeseable para las autoridades soviéticas,
se elimina mediante una combinación de medidas de fuerza y propaganda:
la creación de fronteras, tropas, campañas y el asesinato de líderes
emigrados. Las acciones de las unidades paramilitares de la emigración
Blanca dicultan la vida de la población local y son neutralizadas gracias a
la política de las autoridades soviéticas.
Palabras clave: Rusia Soviética; China; Manchuria; Harbin; Unión
Militar Rusa (RAMU).
Introduction
The relevance of the topic of the study is determined by the need
for further research into the Russian emigration of the 20th century as a
phenomenon of not only Russian but also world history. An integral part of
this phenomenon is the history of the Russian White emigration over 1921–
1929, in particular in China, where one of the centers of the ideological and
political development of the White emigrants was located.
As a result of the events of the civil war, in total, more than two million
people left Russia for other countries (Goldin, 2007). Politically, the Russian
emigration was a rather complex conglomeration of forces and movements
– from radical monarchists to Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
In general, it was a powerful and ideologically motivated force that still
hoped for the implementation of plans to resume hostilities with Soviet
Russia (Baksheev et al., 2021b).
801
CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 799-812
The greatest danger to the latter was posed by the Russian ocers and
their organizations abroad. In his works, the leader of the Soviet state V.I.
Lenin wrote that White Guard organizations were actively working to try
and create military units and, under favorable conditions, invade Soviet
Russia (Shkarenkov, 1986).
The analysis of the formation and activity of Russian emigration in China
in the 1920s carried out in several studies (Ablazhei, 2007; Goverdovskaya,
2004; Melikhov, 2003; Pisarevskaya, 2002; Revyakina, 2002) allows one
to contribute to the further scientic development of many aspects in the
history of international socio-political processes, as well as to the study of
Russian-Chinese relations in the rst half of the 20th century.
At the same time, some issues related to this topic, in our opinion,
have not been suciently developed in historiography. First, this refers to
the features of the White emigration in China, the struggle of its military
faction with Soviet Russia, as well as the measures taken by the authorities
of Soviet Russia outside Soviet territory. It seems to us that the study of the
inuence of White emigration in the 1920s is one of the tasks of modern
historical science.
The scientic novelty of the article is determined by the study of the
general and special features that the life of the white emigration had
in various regions of China; analysis of the problems that existed in the
protection of the state border of the Far East and Eastern Siberia at the
time as well as an analysis of the set of measures adopted by the Soviet
authorities.
The hypothesis of the study: the inuence of the White emigration on
the life of the Soviet population in the 1920s that was undesirable for the
Soviet authorities was eliminated by a wide range of force and propaganda
measures: the creation of border troops, campaigns, and the murder of
emigration leaders.
1. Methods
In the study, we used a set of general scientic (analysis, synthesis) and
general historical (historical-genetic, historical-comparative; problem-
based and chronological, historical-systemic) methods.
The use of methods of analysis and synthesis made it possible to identify
the features of the status of White emigrants in China and to show their
inuence on the Soviet Far East and Eastern Siberia in the 1920s.
The historical-genetic method made it possible to recreate a
comprehensive image of the features of the White emigration in China.
802
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
Through the historical-comparative method, we showed the general
and specic features of the life of the White emigration in various regions
of China. At the same time, the activities of the paramilitary units of the
White emigration are presented in the context of a real historical process,
determined by the features of goal setting.
Using the problem-based and chronological method, we identied the
corresponding problems with the protection of the state border of the Far
East and Eastern Siberia at that time.
The historical-systemic method, as one of the fundamental methods of
historical research, made it possible to consider a set of measures by the
authorities of Soviet Russia, which were taken outside the Soviet territory
to normalize the peaceful life of Soviet citizens in the region.
2. Results
Features of White emigration in China
The rst Russian emigrants in China were ocials of the Russian
diplomatic corps who did not agree to follow the instructions of the Soviet
government “based on the platform of the Second All-Russian Congress” as
noted in the order of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Aairs (NKID)
dated 26 Nov. 1917 (Shkarenkov, 1986). Among them were ambassadors
to Japan V.N. Krupensky, and China N.A. Kudashev, the consul in Harbin,
Prince D.V. Meshchersky, and many others. In addition, the following
remained in Manchuria: the headquarters, part of the ocers, and lower
ranks of the Zaamursky district of the border guard and the board of the
Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) (Ablova, 2007). During the Civil War,
Ataman I.M. Gamov’s Amur Cossacks temporarily hid in China in spring
1918, and in February 1920 so did Ataman I.M. Kalmykov’s Ussuri Cossacks.
The emigrant community in China was mainly reinforced by the military
personnel of the defeated White armies, their families, and civilian refugees:
In May 1920, the separate Semirechensk army of the ataman B.V.
Annenkova.
In November 1920, a small part of the “Kappelevtsy” (White
members of the military who assumed the informal patronage of
the deceased General V.O. Kappel) and “Semenovtsy” (members
of the White units previously deployed in Transbaikalia, headed by
Ataman G.M. Semenov).
In October 1922, the zemstvo army of General M.K. Diterikhs (this
is the rest of the former “Kappelevtsy” and “Semenovtsy”).
803
CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 799-812
There are still discrepancies in the assessment of the number of Russians
who ended up in China at that time. According to ocial data, in the 1920s
only in Manchuria, there were more than 100 thousand people who arrived
from Russia. According to other sources, 450 thousand Russians lived here.
Although a lot of people arrived there even before the 1905 revolution and
lived in the exclusion zone of the CER (Ivanov, 2003).
The Far Eastern White emigration shared the global fate of the entire
White emigration with a signicant dierence: the rst months in the refugee
camps were particularly terrible. In the spring of 1920, White émigré camps
appeared in Northern China (the current Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region), where soldiers, Cossacks (Kuraev et al., 2019), ocers, refugees
lived, and lieutenant general A.I. Dutov took command over them. The
total number of the population of the camps is unknown because the Soviet
leadership was more worried about Dutov’s six-thousand detachment in
Suidong. On 7 Feb. 1921, A.I. Dutov was killed by agents of the All-Russian
Extraordinary Commission (Usov, 2002).
In the spring of 1921 famine broke out in the camps and reached
catastrophic proportions. People died every day, the corpses of the dead
were not removed for weeks, a huge number of sick and poor people
appeared, robberies became commonplace. A similar situation occurred in
most refugee camps in northern China (Aurilene, 2008), the only exception
being the end of the camp near Chuguchak. On 24 May 1921, units of the
Red Army crossed the border, captured most of those who were in this
camp, and transported them to Soviet territory. Such a development of
events was only possible in a civil war. Only professional soldiers managed
to avoid deportation to their homeland, command over which was assumed
by Lieutenant General A.S. Bakich (executed in May 1922 after the defeat of
the expedition of Lieutenant-General von Ungern-Sternberg) (Pisarevskaya,
2002).
The same could be seen not only in North China but also in Shanghai.
In his memoirs, the Soviet diplomat M.I. Kazanin described the Russian
Shanghai colony with Bolshevik gloating and prejudice.
What awaited Russian women in the future? To live today so that the
owner of the boarding house, who has not been paid for three months
already, does not throw you into the street – this is the immediate goal.
Then... work in bars and dance halls as paid partners for drunk sailors
who came to dance – and, in the end, selling themselves by the hour in
specialized institutions. Their future is a hospital and a morgue. It was no
better for men.
The poor died quickly. Those who owned some valuables tried to trade,
although they usually did not know how to, those who were physically
stronger were hired by the British police, or as security guards for the rich
804
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
Chinese competing with the Sikh Indians or became strikebreakers when
the Chinese workers went on strike. Some went into military service with
Chinese generals and died even faster than women (Ivanov, 2003).
The comments of the Soviet ocial were partly conrmed by Colonel L.I.
Shtin, who served in the detachment of General K.P. Nechaev subordinate
to the ruler of northeastern China Zhang Zuolin. In 1925, there were 4,000
people in the detachment (infantry, cavalry, artillery). In his memoirs, the
Colonel increasingly asks himself the question: “We are ghting, we are
suering losses, our people are dying for whom and for what?” The ocers’
pessimism was conrmed by the assessment of General A.S. Lukomsky,
who noted that in two and a half years, only Nechaev’s detachment lost
more than 1,000 people in the battles of the civil war in China (Balmasov,
2007).
However, there were also oases of former life in China – Harbin and
the Three- River area. The Three-River area is a special geographic region
in the northwestern part of Manchuria (basin of the Argun River), where
Cossacks settled on numerous farms. According to Japanese data, at the
beginning of the 1930s, there were more than 20 farmsteads, from 10 to
more than 100 households in each (55 thousand Russians). However, the
Japanese probably underestimated the Russian population of the Three-
River area, from which they recruited ghters for the White Guard units
(Klyaus, 2015).
Harbin, a city built with Russian funds at the end of the 19th century,
became the center of the White emigration for many years. The city had
a Russian administration, two dozen Orthodox churches, a polytechnic
institute, and a commercial school. Trade was controlled by the merchant
Churin, restaurants and cafes were controlled by the Georgian Gamarteli,
and Russian performances were staged in theaters (Kapran, 2011).
The emigrant poets called Harbin the Far Eastern Paris. The poet Arseny
Nesmelov (A.I. Mitropolsky) performed in the salons, F.I. Chaliapin gave
concerts, V.L. Durov performed in the circus. Fourteen Russian-language
newspapers and 82 magazines, streets and urban areas retained their
Russian names (Kapran, 2011).
In 1940, the former Irkutsk citizen I.I. Serebrennikov, a historian and
publicist, wrote: “emigration brought many intellectual forces with it to
Harbin. Never during its existence has Harbin seen such a large number of
the highly qualied intelligentsia” (Varaksina, 1999: 30).
However, if Harbin resembled Novocherkassk or Rostov-on-Don, then
in the provincial cities of Manchuria, a real swamp of Atamanism formed,
where people not so much drank too much Chinese vodka – “the prude”
(baijiu), as smoked opium, and the Chinese treated Russian emigrants as
criminals (Lin, 2001).
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CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 799-812
Soviet workers of the CER and those who had business trips to China
were unpleasantly surprised and shocked to nd themselves in Manchuria.
Here is what the future general and hero of the defense of Stalingrad V.I.
Chuikov (1979) wrote on his experience:
Having crossed the border, I did not immediately feel that it was no
longer Russian land under the wheels... But soon, looking out the window
during a train stop, I realized that we were in a dierent world. Life seemed
to have frozen there, stopped and in a moment, we went several years into
the past. Russian ocers walked along the platforms in military uniform
with stars. The Chinese authorities involved them in guarding the road...
Careful preservation of uniforms and personal weapons... The uniform is
stale... The look is wary and hostile....
Chuikov described Harbin as a trade, economic and political cell of
Manchuria, and at the same time a cell of smuggling and espionage.
The whole city is a black market. Everything here was a commodity. If
something is unavailable, they will get it from any part of the globe. Harbin
is a city of contrasts: on the one hand, there are rich people, on the other,
there are many beggars. The city was invaded by the elements of the black
market, police terror, a wave White Guards (Chuikov, 1979).
The existence of those who could get a job at the CER was relatively
prosperous because the economic crisis of the 1920s, which also hurt
Russian enterprises in China, was accompanied by massive unemployment.
The factories stopped working, instead of wheat they grew poppy which the
Chinese processed into opium (Melikhov, 2003).
The ght of the White emigration with Soviet Russia in the
Far East and Eastern Siberia
On 1 Sep. 1924 following order No. 35 of General P.N. Wrangel, the
Russian All-Military Union (RAMU) was created in Sremski Karlovci
(Serbia), designed to unite all the ocers of the former White Army abroad
and preserve the military organization (Goldin, 2007). Members of the
armies of A.V. Kolchak, N.N. Yudenich and others were also allowed to join.
General management was carried out by General Wrangel’s headquarters.
RAMU included those who remained faithful to the ideas of the White
Cause, and its main task was to retain personnel for the creation of a new
Russian army in the future. At the decisive moment, this army was supposed
to be mobilized for a new war against Bolshevism, where it was to become
an important military and political factor.
RAMU consisted of six departments, which were divided geographically:
Department I included military emigrants from France and England,
Department II – in Germany, Department III – in Bulgaria, IV – in
Yugoslavia, V in Belgium, VI – in Czechoslovakia. By the end of the 1920s,
806
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
there were about 100 thousand people in RAMU. Over time, not only white
emigrants who lived in Europe, but also in Asia, South, and North America,
began to join RAMU (Goldin, 2007).
Thus, in 1928, the Far Eastern Department of RAMU was created, its
organizations were in Dairen, Mukden, Harbin, Tianjin, and Shanghai
(Ivanov, 2003).
The department was headed by generals M.V. Chanżyn, and later M.K.
Diterikhs. The chairman of the Russian emigration in the Far East was
General D.L. Horvat, a former CER manager who established excellent
relations with old China, with the diplomatic corps, and united Far Eastern
emigrants (which no one else in Europe succeeded in) to ght Bolshevism.
This ght began with the purging of its own ranks and the suppression
of attempts to return to the USSR in connection with the decree of the
Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars
dated 9 Jun. 1924 on amnesty for all privates of the White armies stationed
in the Far East, Mongolia, and western China (Dubaev, 2002). The most
notorious episode was the murder of D.N. Chernyavsky, the editor of the
“Smenovekhovtsy” newspaper “Novosti Zhizni”.
RAMU members were engaged in intelligence in the border regions of
the USSR. Armed detachments of White émigrés repeatedly crossed the
state border to carry out sabotage raids: “gangs familiar with the area were
based on Chinese territory and, with support on Soviet territory, carried out
attacks on the local population...” (Krotova, 2014: 69).
However, it should be noted that, despite all the eorts and funds that
were invested in the activities of the militarized White émigré groups,
the goal that was set for them was not achieved (Baksheev et al., 2021a).
Judging by the documents, a lot of emigration eorts were dedicated to
organizing an uprising in the Far East and Eastern Siberia to separate these
territories from the USSR. However, with the exception of the uprising in
the Amur region in 1924, the goal was not achieved. Moreover, in 1927 only
six families left this area, motivating their decision with attacks from abroad
(Sviridenko and Ershov, 2000). This dealt another blow to the counter-
revolutionary underground as people were tired of the war and wanted to
work in peace, not ght.
Operations of the Soviet border troops
The active actions of the radical representatives of the White emigration
in the border regions of the Far East and Eastern Siberia were facilitated by
the lack of development of the state border, which was rooted in the times
of the Russian Empire. This can be explained by the substantial length of
the border in an underpopulated region; the absence until 1917 of the units
of a separate Border Guard Corps of the Russian Empire on the Far Eastern
border and the impossibility of recruiting civilians for the border corps;
807
CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 799-812
the interest of the local population in the development of the smuggling
industry.
The land border with China was four thousand miles long. Moreover,
the region was sparsely populated: about 1.7 million people lived in an area
of more than three million square kilometers, which averaged 1.1 people per
one km2, while in the European part of the country there were 30 people per
one km2.
As a result of studies of the Russian-Chinese border, back in tsarist
Russia, a project was developed for the establishment of a border guard
in Eastern Siberia. The project provided for the creation of border control
posts, the construction of patrol roads, and other activities. The total
number of guards was to increase to four thousand people (based on the
calculation of one border guard per one verst). The main problem for the
border guards was smuggling since after the closure of the Far Eastern “free
port” (duty-free import of foreign goods) in 1907, it was not possible to stop
the ow of smuggled goods. The fact is that for most residents, who lived
mainly at the expense of crafts, smuggling was the most important aspect of
unocial income (Plekhanov and Plekhanov, 2003).
Undoubtedly, the civil war inicted great harm on the border guards of
the Far East and Eastern Siberia. One cannot ignore the fact that the troops
of the interventionists (especially the Japanese) did everything possible to
destroy the infrastructure and material base of the border troops.
Four years of civil war helped to strengthen the position of smugglers in
the area. That is why the Soviet border troops had to start guarding the state
border almost from square one. While their opponents were professional
military men. The border troops located along the border in small groups,
without constant communication, were in very dicult conditions
(Buyakov and Shinin, 2013). In the Far East and Eastern Siberia, similar
work continued with varying degrees of intensity until 1939 (the defeat of
the Japanese armed forces on the Khalkhin-Gol River).
The following gures testify to the eciency of the Far Eastern border
guards: from 1925 to 1935, 31,092 violators of the state border, 384 spies,
37 saboteurs, 216 bandits, and 9,679 smugglers were detained (Gladkikh,
2010). The number of violators, terrorists, and White bandits killed in this
case cannot be counted, because, according to the commandant of the Iman
commandant’s oce: “the main task of the border guards was not to throw
the gang back into the adjacent territory, but to completely destroy it. To
strike them o the centralized register, so to say” (Gladkikh, 2010: 20).
The activities of the border guards gave their results during the constant
military conicts and provocations of the 1920s, among which the most
notorious were the military actions in 1929 at the CER (with China).
808
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
Regular units of the Red Army provided signicant assistance to the
border guards. In July 1924, the 18th Rie Corps headquarters in Chita
(later transferred to Irkutsk) and the 19th Rie Corps headquarters in
Khabarovsk were formed as part of the Siberian Military District.
The 18th Rie Corps consisted of:
35th Siberian Rie Division, stationed in Irkutsk.
36th Transbaikal Rie Division in Chita.
5th separate Kuban Cavalry Brigade in the village of Berezovka (now
Divisional near Ulan-Ude) (since 1927, the brigade’s headquarters
at Dauria station).
since 1926, the Buryat-Mongolian cavalry squadron (since 1 Oct.
1927, a separate Buryat-Mongolian cavalry division) – the village
of Berezovka.
The 19th Rie Corps included:
1st Pacic Rie Division in Vladivostok.
2nd Priamurskaya Rie Division in Khabarovsk.
9th separate Far Eastern Cavalry Brigade in Nikolsk-Ussuriysky
(Baksheev, 2020).
Discussion
Despite constant tension along the Soviet-Chinese border, in the
conditions of an undeclared war with shots not only across the border but
also military operations on Soviet territory, the intensive development of
the Far East and Eastern Siberia region continued (Baksheev et al., 2020).
To ensure a peaceful life for Soviet citizens in the region, in addition to
the actions of the border guards, the Soviet government and its defense and
law enforcement agencies implemented a set of measures that were carried
out on the other side of the Soviet border. The actions that were carried out
by Soviet workers can be divided into the following components:
- campaigning and propaganda work among emigrant organizations
since November 1922. Thanks to this activity, already in March 1923,
1,200 ocers and soldiers stationed in Jilin (Manchuria) abandoned active
military operations against the USSR, and 900 people left this anti-Soviet
organization. There were no more than 500 people left in the White Guard
organization of the interim Amur government of General I.F. Shilnikov,
3,000 people left the Genzan organization (Korea), etc. Moreover, the
actions of Soviet workers contributed to the return home of the former
809
CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
Vol. 40 Nº 72 (2022): 799-812
White Guards. Thus, at the beginning of 1923, four echelons with former
members of the White Army crossed the state border. We believe that in
subsequent years, the return from emigration was also facilitated by the
results of the trial which took place in Chita over General A.N. Pepelyaev and
his associates, who were taken prisoner in June 1923 during the Okhotsk-
Ayan expedition led by S.S. Vostretsov. Contrary to Pepelyaev’s pessimistic
forecasts, the General and 65 others were sentenced not to execution but to
ten-year imprisonment, 11 people to ve years, and the Yakut Filippov to
ve years’ probation (Ablazhei and Komissarova, 2007).
Large-scale military actions in China: the capture of residents of
the Chuguchak camp in May 1921; actions of “unknown” guerilla
detachments in the Three-River area, etc. (Buyakov and Shinin,
2013).
The physical destruction of key gures of the Far Eastern emigration,
an example of which was the murder of Lieutenant General A.I.
Dutov and the organization of the extradition of Lieutenant General
B.V. Annenkov by the Chinese (1926) (Buyakov and Shinin, 2013).
Conclusion
The White emigration in Manchuria played an active role in attempts
to destabilize the situation in the east of the USSR. At the same time, after
the end of the civil war in 1922, for the rst time in the entire period of
the development of the Far East and Eastern Siberia, a border factor arose
which included murders, terror, and attacks by armed detachments on
Soviet territory, in which Russian emigrants also actively participated.
However, the military raids of the White emigration that made the life of
the local population harder were eliminated thanks to the policy of the
Soviet authorities.
Thus, the hypothesis of the study was conrmed.
An analysis of the creation of fascist political organizations in
Manchuria by White military emigration, their cooperation with the
Japanese occupation authorities in the struggle against Soviet Russia after
the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 may become a prospect for
further research.
Certain limitations of the study include the lack of analysis of archival
documents when writing this article, as such documents were not available
to the authors due to restrictions on access to archives.
810
Andrey Ivanovich Baksheev, Mikhail Dmitrievich Severyanov, Vladislav Nikolaevich Vorontsov,
Sergei Tihonovich Gaidin, Alexander Georgievich Rogachev y Sergey Alekseevich Safronov
USSR policy of 1920 in relation to people forced to emigrate to Asian countries after the end of
the civil war of 1917-1922
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