From May to August 1939, the divisions of the Red Army fought with the Japanese army in Mongolia near the Khalkhin-Gol River. It was in Mongolia that the commanding star of the future Marshal Georgy Zhukov rose. Dozens of years have passed, and it is still unclear why the Japanese attacked the Mongolian Republic - the only ally of the USSR at that time. The secret archives of not only the Red Army, but also the NKVD, as well as Japanese intelligence and White émigré special services in China, revealed the secrets of that Far Eastern conflict.
Hunters at rest
Back in December 1938, an event was discussed among the elite of Russian White emigrants in Harbin. It turns out that the former Minister of War of the Sukhe-Bator government, who fled from socialist Mongolia, began secret negotiations with representatives of the Japanese General Staff. White Russian emigres were worried about this topic in the sense that they discussed the possibility of forming a sovereign non-Bolshevik "Russian republic" on a part of the seized territory of the MPR, called Inner Mongolia. Not less. And in April 1939, in a deserted place, three hunters were supposed to camp, supposedly by accident.
Consul of the USSR Embassy in Manchukuo Alexei Isaev, Vice-Consul of the Third Reich Embassy in China Heinrich Schuman and chieftain in exile Grigory Semyonov. All three were passionate hunters. Before secret intrigues as well. The White Cossack chieftain did not come to the "halt", fearing not so much surveillance by the Japanese counterintelligence as a scandal in emigre circles if it became known about his secret meetings with a Soviet diplomat. (But he spoke in detail about that episode of his life during the investigation, during interrogations in the NKVD of the USSR in 1946.) However, the diplomats did without him.
It was decided that the Bargut tribes would rise up simultaneously with the Japanese offensive. The consuls of the USSR and Nazi Germany will declare respect for the rights of the Bargut people, and an independent republic will be proclaimed on the occupied territory, the population of which will be more than half of former subjects of the Russian Empire. True, on the territory of the Mongolian People's Republic there was the 57th rifle corps of the Red Army, headed by division commander Nikolai Feklenko, but the Soviet consul assured his interlocutor that the corps headquarters command would "play giveaway" with the Japanese. The Japanese received one more "puppet state" in China, the Germans - an ally in the Far East. And what did the consul Alexei Isaev and the commanders from the corps headquarters receive? A protracted war on the outskirts, which can be used for an internal party war with Stalin in the Kremlin. The beginning of 1938 - in the USSR, the "great purge" was in full swing, and it was naive to think that future victims of unreasonable repressions would not try to counterattack the loyal Stalinists.
Russian brigade "Asano"
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The participation of military units from among the Russian White émigrés in battles on the side of the Japanese is an undisclosed page in the chronicle of that war. There was no "Far Eastern Russian Republic" yet, and its armed forces were already cleaning their weapons. Colonel of the Japanese General Staff Asano Takashi became the "godfather" of the first Russian regiment, that is why this unit was called the "Asano brigade". And formally, the commander was the son of the Armenian people Gurgen Nagolyan, who did not serve either in the tsarist or in the "white" armies for a day, had not fought before and had no military education or experience at all. The brigade consisted of more than 3200 bayonets, but this does not take into account the possible mobilization of combat-ready Russian emigrants living in China. The Russian-language magazine "Luch Asia" openly warned its readers - they say, just about to start: "Warriors! The political moment is taking shape in such a way that it is time to be ready. Here, in the East, the beginning of our struggle for the homeland is approaching!"
Strange war
As soon as the Japanese troops crossed the border of the Mongolian People's Republic, the events at Lake Khasan began to repeat themselves - as if a carbon copy. The 57th RKKA Rifle Corps retreated in front of smaller Japanese forces. The corps commander himself, Divisional Commander Nikolai Feklenko, "led" the troops 120 kilometers from the battle line. Neither he personally, nor any of the ranks of his headquarters in battle formations appeared even once. Companions of the "opponents of the Stalinist dictatorship" in the army headquarters sent reinforcements. Not a personnel division of the Red Army, but from yesterday's "reserve" from the Urals - the 82nd infantry division.
Parts of the division arrived at the front without grenades, entrenching tools, helmets, armored vehicles, motorcycles. Rifles were issued from warehouses still in gun oil, cartridges without clips. None of the command staff even had a holster for personal weapons. Moreover, the vanguard regiment of the Ural division, barely seeing the Japanese chain, rushed to the rear. The commander and commissar of the regiment tried to stop the fleeing fighters, but they were raised on bayonets.
Two Red Army men of a machine-gun company arrested their commander, who had called for them to go into battle, and immediately shot him. The battalion commander Yakov German began to arbitrarily withdraw the fighters from their positions. And when a student of the Military-Political Academy who happened to be nearby tried to prevent this, the battalion commander personally shot the political worker in front of the soldiers.
And the secret allies of the Japanese in the headquarters of the Red Army did their job. Are you asking for reinforcements? Get it - the 603rd separate rifle regiment was brought from the Volga Military District! Of the entire command staff, there were only three regular officers in the regiment that arrived to fight: the commander, the commissar and the chief of staff of the regiment. We received weapons from the warehouses into the wagons (still in oil) on the way to Mongolia. Moreover, only commanders wore military uniform, privates and reserve sergeants came to fight in what they came to the assembly point. Naturally, barely seeing the Japanese on the horizon, the "regiment" - a crowd of people dressed in civilian clothes - fled, abandoning their weapons, but having time to shoot the regular commanders. It was only by a happy coincidence that this maddened crowd was not captured in full force by the Japanese. Those who did not want to return to the USSR after the completion of the battles of Soviet prisoners of war, according to the Japanese side,there were 1143 people. Almost all of them disappeared into the Russian environment of emigrants in Harbin.
Draconian measures
The Chinese consider the dragon to be a magical symbol. In the summer of 1939, the ancient reptile became a "red dragon" and went to serve in the corps commander Georgy Zhukov and the NKVD. Corps commander Georgy Zhukov arrived in Mongolia in early June 1939 with a large group of commanders - students of military academies, with a ready officer reserve.
On June 6, at his suggestion, for ignorance of the situation and inaction, Divisional Commander Feklenko was removed from command of the corps. The measures taken by them then to restore discipline in the units of the 57th corps are called "draconian" because of their rigidity. And what other measures could have been effective in those conditions? Quiet conversations between the military psychologist and the rebel battalion commander Herman? The NKVD organs did not blunder either. The mysterious consul Aleksey Isaev and the entire staff of the Soviet diplomatic mission in Harbin were arrested.
Of course, a number of Soviet diplomats were subjected to unreasonable repressions, but there was no time to figure it out. Then the Chekists "walked" through the chain of initiators and executors of strange orders for the preparation and dispatch of reinforcements from the internal districts to the "Mongol front". And they revealed many secret followers of Marshal Blucher's policy in the army headquarters.
The agents of the NKVD also worked perfectly among the White emigration. The commander of the Asano brigade Gurgen Nagolyan turned out to be … a secret agent of the NKVD. He made sure that the brigade fought not in Russian uniform and not as a single unit, but in Japanese uniforms, was scattered throughout the 23rd Kwantung Infantry Division of the Japanese Army. In battles with units of the Red Army, this division lost eleven thousand out of fifteen thousand people. How many Russians died in Japanese uniform - no one counted. But the Russian brigade as part of the Japanese mikado army ceased to exist. The counterattack of the Soviet-Mongolian troops finally tore the web of cunning conspiracies among the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).
Who is the author?
The "hunting gatherings" of Soviet and Hitlerite diplomats in the spring of 1939 in China make us look differently at the cause of the events called "battles on the Khalkhin-Gol River." It is clear that the Soviet, Japanese, Mongolian troops and combat units of the Russian White emigrants were only "actors" who performed the "roles" written by him. And who was the “director” and author of the “play”? Stalin's Kremlin rivals in the struggle for the highest political power in the party and in the country. The calculation was accurate - a major military conflict in the Far East would force Stalin to suspend the "purge of personnel" in the country. And it will be possible to try to replay the "Kremlin highlander".
They were all rehabilitated in the 1950s and 1960s. Posthumously.
Alexander SMIRNOV