Far Eastern Republic

Names and background

The republic's Russian name was Дальневосточная Республика (DVR, Dalnevostochnaya Respublika). In January 1920 representatives of the SR-Menshevik Political Center proposed to the Bolsheviks the creation of a buffer state in eastern Siberia between Soviet Russia and the Japanese interventionists on the principles of a 'homogeneous socialist power'; the proposal was accepted in truncated form, and instead of a broad coalition the republic came entirely under Bolshevik control, since the only alternative to a buffer was direct military confrontation with Japan while fighting against Poland and Wrangel continued.

On 18 February 1920 the Politburo of the RCP(b) Central Committee supported the idea of a buffer, but many local Bolsheviks and partisan detachments received it with hostility, and uniting pro-Soviet governments under the republic's auspices proceeded with great difficulty; the creation of the republic was proposed by I. N. Smirnov and A. M. Krasnoshchyokov.

Proclamation and consolidation

The republic was proclaimed on 6 April 1920 by a Constituent Congress of Toilers of the Baikal Region, with the capital at Verkhneudinsk. Soviet Russia officially recognized it on 14 May 1920, providing financial, diplomatic, personnel, economic and military aid, which allowed Moscow to control its domestic and foreign policy. Moscow's leaders, Lenin among them, saw the buffer as a Brest-Litovsk of the east and feared that seizing power directly might provoke the roughly 70,000 Japanese and 12,000 American troops present.

Japan agreed to recognize the new buffer state in a truce with the Red Army signed on 15 July 1920, effectively abandoning Ataman Semenov. After Semenov was expelled from Chita in October 1920 the capital moved to that city, and on 11 November 1920 a provisional national assembly in Vladivostok recognized the Chita government and set 9 January 1921 for Constituent Assembly elections.

The union of the Far Eastern regions into the republic was legislated at a conference in Chita from 28 October to 11 November 1920 by representatives of five regional governments. Elections began on 9 January 1921, and the republic's Constituent Assembly, sitting from 12 February to 27 April 1921, adopted a constitution defining the republic as an independent democratic state; the Bolsheviks, in alliance with representatives of the partisan movements, won a majority.

Diplomacy and military operations

At the Gon'gota station talks (24 May to 15 July 1920) the Japanese delegation was forced to agree to evacuate troops from Transbaikal, which allowed the People's Revolutionary Army to defeat Ataman Semenov's forces and occupy Chita on 22 October 1920, an example of using the buffer diplomatically instead of risking direct collision.

On 26 May 1921 a White coup prepared by the Japanese in Vladivostok produced the Provisional Priamur Government, and the Priamur zemstvo territory (unofficially the 'Black buffer') arose on part of the territory of Primorye oblast. From August to November 1921 the Japanese held direct talks with representatives of the Far Eastern Republic at Dairen; these failed because of harsh Japanese conditions that in practice would have placed the republic under Japanese control, including disarming the fleet and fortifications, free movement for Japanese officials, an eighty-year lease of Northern Sakhalin, and abandonment of the 'communist regime', after which Japan resumed hostilities.

After the Japanese announced in June 1922 that they would withdraw all troops from Siberia by the end of October, the Red Army, thinly disguised as the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, moved east and retook Vladivostok on 25 October 1922. On that day the forward units of the 1st Transbaikal Rifle Division entered the city, and the republic restored control over the whole of Primorye.

State form and dissolution

Multiparty politics in the republic was formal only: Mensheviks and SRs sat in the Council of Ministers in 1921, but multiparty politics was then eliminated; in the autumn of 1922 the republic's authorities dissolved Menshevik organizations and staged a trial of the SRs, and most opposition representatives were not admitted to sessions of the second People's Assembly. In July 1920 Lenin formulated the republic's political order to Krasnoshchyokov as 'democracy is permissible, but slightly privileging the communists'; in practice the Bolshevik share of the country's leadership was always overwhelming.

On 14 November 1922 the People's Assembly of the Far Eastern Republic announced its self-dissolution and asked Moscow to incorporate the Far East into a single Soviet republic, and on 15 November 1922 the republic merged with the RSFSR, its government dissolving itself and transferring all authority and territory to the Bolshevik government in Moscow.

Distinctions and cases

As distinct from the 'Black buffer', the Provisional Priamur Government (26 May 1921 to 25 October 1922, unofficially the 'Black buffer') was a White state formation on part of Primorye oblast that nominally belonged to the Far Eastern Republic and was supported by the United States and Japan; the pro-Soviet Far Eastern Republic and the anti-Soviet 'black' buffer were thus opposites.

Among buffer states, the republic is compared with Litbel, the territory that served as a border zone between Poland and Soviet Russia to prevent open war between them, which indicates a general device of Soviet policy rather than a uniquely Far Eastern construction. Other examples of buffer states cited alongside it are Afghanistan between the Russian and British empires and the Mongolian People's Republic between the USSR and China.