White Terror: Cossack Warlords of the Trans-Siberian
Study Guide
Purpose
Why study the Civil War in the Russian Far East?
-Misconceptions about the Russian Revolution and Civil War persist.
-The region is still a volatile source of international tension.
-Some issues from the Civil War era continue to fester:
...billions of dollars in purloined Russian gold remain missing.
...Korea's extremist revolutionary legacy clings to life through "Baby Kim" Jong-Il in Pyongyang, the last vestige of a desperate movement spawned by Korean refugees in the Russian Far East during the upheaval of the civil war.
...the Sakhalin Islands remain an explosive territorial issue between Japan and Russia at least partly owing to civil war animosity.
And in the future?
...Will Inner Mongolian separatists stir again in China?
...Will Pan-Mongol awareness see a resurgence?
Objectives
-Understand misconceptions about the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War.
-Understand why this region is a flashpoint of several nations, major powers, religions and cultures.
-Understand why attempts to build democraccy failed in this region during the revolutionary era.
Discussion
CHAPTER 1 * PRELUDE TO TERROR * CREATION - NOVEMBER 1917 Suggested Reading Historical Fiction Non-fiction - In English
Non-fiction - In Russian
1) How did the Transbaikal and Amur Cossackss differ from their European brethren?
2) What factors sowed violence and vice in Siberia and the Russian Far East?
3) How did Siberian society differ from European Russia on the eve of the Revolution?
4) What were Russias strategic objectives in the construction of railroads into the Far East?
5) What strategic suspicions did Khram Kalachakri (the Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg) arouse?
6) How was Grigorii Semenov different from other imperial military officers?
7) Why did Kerensky's Russian Provisional Government send Grigorii Semenov to Irkutsk and Transbaikal Provinces empowered as a commissar?
CHAPTER 2 * REVOLUTION AND RED TERROR * NOVEMBER 1917 - MAY 1918
1) Why did Buryats and other Mongols join Seemenovs uprising against the Bolsheviks?
2) How did the Russian Revolution arouse Chinese nationalist sentiment in Manchuria?
3) What caused fears of an Austro-German threat in the Russian Far East?
4) What strategic assets facilitated the Japanese governments response to events in the Russian Far East?
5) Who was Aleksandr Kolchak?
6) Who was Sergei Lazo?
CHAPTER 3 * COUNTER-REVOLUTION * MAY 1918 - OCTOBER 1918
1) How did Semenov's uprising unwittingly facilitate the success of the Czechoslovak Legion uprising?
2) What foreign nations gave Semenov military and financial support in spring 1918?
3) Who were the internationalists and the interventionists?
CHAPTERS 4 * OCTOBER 1918 - DECEMBER 1918
1) What were the geographic limits of Grigorii Semenovs influence?
2) How did Grigorii Semenov come to be appointed to command the Provisional Siberian Government's 5th Pri-Amur Independent Army Corps in October 1918?
3) What were the three centers of White power in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East from autumn 1918 until autumn 1919?
4) Why did the appointment of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak to be the Provisional Siberian Governments Minister of War cause a chill in relations between Omsk and Chita?
5) What were the Death Trains?
6) What was the significance of Admiral Kolchaks Order No. 60?
7) How did the Japanese foment and support Semenovs insubordination to Admiral Kolchak in early December 1918?
CHAPTER 5 * JANUARY 1919 - APRIL 1919
1) Why was Masha Sharabans Jewish background significant?
2) What did the murders of Lieutenant Vasilii K. Shumov and Madame Zinaida A. Natsvalova say about Semenovs Transbaikal administration?
3) Why did U.S. Major General Sidney Graves disapprove of many American Red Cross activities in the Russian Far East?
4) What was the strategic situation of the White movement in Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East in spring 1919?
CHAPTERS 6 - 11 * MAY 1919 - PRESENT
To be provided
100-ruble coupon from Semenov's territory, 1920
-Pasternak, Boris, Doctor Zhivago.
-Crone, Alla, East Lies the Sun, Dell, New York, 1982.
-Crone, Alla, Winds Over Manchuria, Dell, New York, 1983.
-Bell, James Mackintosh, Side Lights on the Siberian Campaign, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1922.
-Dotsenko, Paul, The Struggle for Democracy in Siberia 1917-1920, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford CA, 1983.
-Fleming, Peter, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1963.
-Gutman, Anatoly Gan, The Destruction of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur: An Episode in the Russian Civil War in the Far East, 1920, Limestone Press, Fairbanks, 1993.
-Heald, Edward Thornton, ed. by Gidney, James, Witness to Revolution: Letters from Russia 1916-1919, Kent State University Press, Ohio, 1972. Vivid Memoirs of a YMCA Secretary.
-Hopkirk, Peter, Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia, Kodansha Globe, New York, 1984. The enjoyably readable popular history of the Civil War in the Far East.
-Lincoln, Bruce, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War 1918-1921, Da Capo Press, New York, 1989.
-Mercado, Stephen C., The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army's Elite Intelligence School, Brassey's, Washington DC, 2002. Discusses Japanese veterans of Siberian campaign, Japanese intelligence involvement with Asian nationalist groups, Cossacks in Manchukuo.
-Morley, James William, The Japanese Thrust into Siberia, 1918, Columbia University Press, NY, 1954.
-Ossendowski, Ferdinand, Beasts, Men and Gods, E.F. Dutton & Co., New York, 1922.
-Smele, Jonathan D., Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918-1920, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
-Varneck, Elena, and Fisher, H.H., eds., The Testimony of Kolchak and Other Siberian Materials, Hoover War Library Publications, No. 10, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1935.
-Vespa, Amleto, Secret Agent of Japan, Little Brown & Company, New York, 1938.
-Ward, Colonel John, With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia, Cassell and Company, Ltd., London, 1920.
-Borisov, B., Dalnii Vostok, Izdaniye Novoi Rossii, Vienna, 1921.
-Manusevich, A. Ya., Birman, M. A., Klevanskii, A. Kh., Khrenov, I. A., Internatsionalisti: trudyashchiyesya zarubyezhnykh stran uchastniki borbi za vlast sovietov, Izdatel'stvo Nauka, Moscow, 1967.
-Semenov, G. M., O Sebe, Harbin, 1938; reprinted by Izdatel'stvo AST, Moscow, 2002.
-Vasilevskii, V.I., Ataman Semenov, Voprosy gosudarstvennogo stroitelstva: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Knizhnoe Izdatelstvo Poisk, Chita, 2002.