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Ataman Grigorii Semenov Decorated combat hero on the Polish, Galician and Mesopotamian fronts of the Great War. July 1917 Provisional Government commissar tasked to raise troops of Buryat ethnicity. December 1917 leader of anti-Bolshevik uprising in Transbaikalia. November 1918 became Corps Commander, Army of Transbaikal and Amur Provinces and Ussuri Cossack Host. December 1918 Expedition Ataman of Far Eastern Cossack Host and Commander of Independent Eastern Siberian Army. July 1919 promoted to major general. January 1920 became Supreme Ruler of White territory in Russian Far East. 1922 exile to China and Manchuria. 1945 Captured at Dairen, Manchukuo by Red Army. |
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General Dmitri Horvath Retired Imperial Army engineer, Administrator of the Chinese Eastern Railway since 1902. A wily politician and quick-thinking technocrat, he survived the Civil War and became a consultant to Asian railways. |
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Ataman Ivan Kalmykov Young patriotic officer who led an anti-Bolshevik uprising in the Maritime Province in spring 1918 and took control of Khabarovsk. Quickly corrupted by power and unabashedly beholden to Japanese military and intelligence organs, he became a ruthless, kleptomanic warlord. |
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Baron Roman Ungern-Shternberg, White Liberator of Urga Young patriotic officer who dreamed of founding a militant Buddhist sect and became a legendary warlord known as "the Bloody Baron," surrounded by myths of psychopathic atrocities and supernatural rumors, immortalized in French comics. |
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Masha Sharaban, Ataman's Mistress Beautiful Jewish cabaret singer, mistress of the Ataman, escorted gold to Japan and the corpse of a saint to the Holy Land |
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Colonel Charles H. Morrow Stubborn Kentucky colonel who stood up to Semenov's bullying on the railroads |
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General Kreshchatitskii The first general officer to cast his lot with Semenov, loyal until the Red victory. Became a respected officer of the French Foreign Legion in Syria. |
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Sando, Amban of Urga An old Qing amban (Chinese colonial administrator) who was handed control of Urga (present-day Ulan Bator, Mongolia) in September 1920. For a short time Peking felt cocky, having regained control over Mongolia while retaliating against Russia for 20 years of indignities. Sando, an "utterly incapable" Chahar, lost control over unruly Chinese occupation troops in Mongolia, just as Baron Ungern-Shternberg's army of the dispossessed and desperate formed in the wastelands. |
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Sukhe Bator, Red Liberator of Urga Commander of the Mongolian Red Army (5th standing from left) who in February 1921 began a campaign with generous Bolshevik assistance and guidance to eradicate Ungern-Shternberg and the Whites from Mongolia. Began military career in the elite machine-gun company of the army of newly independent Mongolia in 1912. |
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Choibalsan, Stalin's Mongolian Protege Khorloogin Choibalsan started one of Mongolia's revolutionary political groups, was appointed commissar of Sukhe Bator's Mongolian Red Army in February 1921, violently purged the ranks of revolutionaries of all who opposed the Reds, led nationwide campaigns against religion and instilled Soviet communism into Mongolian life. |
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US Commanders Leaders of US forces and institutions in the Russian Far East: at left foreground in black overcoat with huge mittens dangling at his waste, Rear Admiral Knight, commander of US naval vessels in Vladivostok; standing right of Knight, Major General Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force-Siberia (AEFS); standing right of Graves, Dr. Raymond Teusler, chief of the American Red Cross (ARC) in Siberia and cousin of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. |
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Ataman Annenkov Semenov established links with other anti-Soviet atamans such as Boris Annenkov, leader of the Semireche (Seven Rivers) Cossacks. Annenkov (left) and aide were photographed in Vladivostok during a summer 1919 visit, waiting to ask for US support. Major General Graves and the AEFS staff were not sympathetic, having already tasted Semenov's bitter brand of Cossack governance. |
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Czechoslovak Legion Semenov's relations with the Czechoslovakians were occasionally amiable, constantly tense, and frequently violent. The egalitarian, democratic fervor of the transient, yet disciplined, battle-hardened Czechoslovak units antagonized ultra-conservative elements of White-Cossack forces in the Far East. |
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Count A. A. Vonsiatskii Rich Nazi gold-digger from Connecticutt who annoyed Semenov in Manchukuo in the late 1930s. |
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Ataman Grigorii Semenov Hung by the Soviets after all of the USSR followed his 1946 war crimes trial at Khabarovsk. His executioners allegedly used prohibited methods to prolong his dance of death on the gallows... |
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