How did Japan fit into the broader framework of the Allied intervention? What were the Japanese trying to accomplish in Siberia? And who was even in charge of this damned thing? All that and more, this week.
Dunscomb, Paul E. Japan’s Siberian Intervention, 1918-1922
Drea, Edward. Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1854-1945
Guins, George C. “The Siberian Intevention, 1918-1919.” The Russian Review 28 No 4 (Oct, 1969).
Images
American troops in Vladivostok. America represented the largest contingent of foreign troops in Siberia other than Japan.Kolchak reviewing the troops in Omsk in early 1919. He would launch a counterattack against the Bolsheviks later that year which would collapse, beginning the disintegration of his regime.Anti-Bolshevik forces from Kolchak’s army. The White Russians were a rather motley group, brought together by little more than a shared distaste for Lenin’s ideas.Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok.The location of Lake Baikal. The lake represented the westernmost extent of Japanese influence during the intervention.An ethnically Mongol soldier arrayed to fight the Bolsheviks. Grigory Semenov was able to use his heritage as a Buryat Mongol to convince other Mongols to join his cause.The Alexander Kolchak monument in Irkutsk, where he was executed by the Bolsheviks in January, 1920. Today, Kolchak’s image is somewhat rehabilitated after years of being maligned by the Soviet government. In 1919, the collapse of his government caused the other Allies to begin considering withdrawal.
