During the first week of August, 1918, about 7,000 American soldiers, most of them regulars from the Philippines, were landed at Vladivostok, the United States Government announcing, on August 7, 1918, that Major General William S. Graves, former assistant chief of the Army General Staff, would have command of the American expedition. The Japanese landed a similar force, under General Kikuzo Otani, president of the famous military technical school of Toyama Gakko, and who, on account of his senior rank, would assume command of the entire Allied force. The French and British landed smaller forces each, the former being native troops from Tonkin and the British being local garrisons from India.

Meanwhile the Czecho-Slovak Army in the interior of Russia continued its operations. On July 26, 1918, they reported the capture of Simbirsk, 600 miles east of Moscow; on the last day of the month they gained possession of a large railroad bridge at Syzram, in the Volga region, and on the following day they took the city of Ekaterinburg, where the czar had been executed by order of the Ural regional soviet. In western Siberia they ordered the mobilization of the classes from 1912 to 1920, at Omsk. It was also reported that they were being joined by thousands of Rumanians and Italians who had formerly been soldiers in the Austrian armies and had later been taken prisoners by the imperial Russian armies. By this time it was generally recognized that the original plan of the Czecho-Slovaks, to withdraw from Russia by way of Vladivostok, had been changed to one whereby they were to remain and form the nucleus about which the anti-Bolshevist elements in Russia and the Allies might reconstruct an eastern front against the German forces.

The Japanese, being the first to land at Vladivostok, were the first to advance into the interior, and they immediately took up their position along the Ussuri River, which forms the eastern boundary of Manchuria with Siberia. The Americans, as soon as they arrived, occupied the railway toward Nikolsk.

At this time, in the middle of August, 1918, the main forces of the enemy, Russian Bolsheviki and German and Magyar ex-prisoners, were located near Chita, in Transbaikalia, numbering about 50,000. Others occupied positions along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, north of Vladivostok.

On August 24, 1918, the first serious fighting took place, when the Japanese, supported by their allies, drove the Red Guards fifteen miles north from the Ussuri. Here the enemy numbered about 8,000, consisting of infantry and some artillery. Four days later the Japanese occupied Krasnoyarsk and Blagovyeshchensk. On September 7, 1918, the Bolshevist naval base at Khabarovsk was taken by Japanese cavalry, the booty including seventeen gunboats, four other vessels, and 120 guns.

One of the objects of the expedition was to establish communications with the Czecho-Slovaks far in the interior of the country, and this was quickly accomplished by an unexpected success on the part of the Allied forces. The isolated Czecho-Slovak army near Lake Baikal, under Colonel Gaida, had been endeavoring to advance toward Chita. General Semenov, the Russian anti-Bolshevist leader, with a force of Cossacks supported by Japanese, had been coming out of China and was also advancing toward Chita. A delayed dispatch from the American Consul at Irkutsk, dated August 13, 1918, brought word that the Bolsheviki army east of Lake Baikal had been destroyed and on September 4, 1918, telegraphic communication between Irkutsk and Vladivostok was reopened. On the same day it was announced that the Czecho-Slovaks and the Cossacks and Japanese under Semenov had joined hands at Chita and that that main stronghold was taken. This gave the Allied forces entire control of the railways in Siberia as far west as Samara, on the Volga River, a few hundred miles from Moscow.

During this period the anti-Bolshevist elements in Russia were cooperating with these efforts in their behalf. On August 5, 1918, the Russian embassy in Washington announced the formation of a new government in Siberia, whose chief purpose was to oust the Soviets and bring Russia back in line with the Allies against Germany.

"The United Siberian Government," said the statement in part, "states that it was elected on January 26, 1916, by the members of a regional Siberian Duma—representative assembly. The point where this government has temporarily transferred its center is Vladivostok, the other members of it remaining at Omsk. A message from those at Omsk has just been received, stating that, owing to the combined efforts of the Czecho-Slovaks and the military organizations of the Siberian Government itself, the following cities have been liberated from the Bolsheviki: Mariinsk, Novo Nicolayevsk, Tomsk, Narim, Tobolsk, Barnaul, Semipalatinsk, Karkarlinski, Atchinsk, and Krasnoyarsk.... The 'Temporary Government of Siberia' adds a public statement of its political aims, which are: the creation of a Russian army, well disciplined, in order to reestablish, in cooperation with the Allies, a battle front against Germany. Siberia, being an inseparable part of United Russia, the Temporary Government of Siberia believes it to be its first duty to safeguard, in the territory of Siberia, the interests of the whole of Russia, to recognize all the international treaties and agreements of Russia with friendly nations which were in force until October 25, 1917, the moment of the Bolshevist uprising...."

CHAPTER VII

ALLIED INTERVENTION IN THE NORTH OF RUSSIA