Nikolaevsk incident
The Nikolaevsk Incident ( Russian: Николаевский инцидент , Nikolajewski incident , Japanese. 尼 港 事件 , Nikō jiken ) was a series of events during the Russian Civil War from February to March 1920 that resulted in a massacre of several hundred Japanese in the Siberian City of Nikolayevsk on the Amur (Japanese Nikō ) culminated.
At the beginning of February 1920 there was a Japanese community of around 450 people in Nikolayevsk and a garrison of 350 members of the 14th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army as part of the Siberian intervention forces . In January 1920 the city was surrounded by partisans under the command of Yakov Trjapitsyn , who was in a loose alliance with the Bolshevik Red Army .
Since the partisans were numerically superior and because of the great distance to other Japanese troops there was little prospect of reinforcement of the Japanese garrison, the garrison commander granted Trjapitsyn's troops entry to the city under a white flag . However, when Trjapitsyn began rounding up and executing White Movement sympathizers , the Japanese army launched a surprise attack on March 12, 1920. However, this failed miserably and led to the execution of the survivors of the garrison and the killing of numerous Japanese civilians, of whom only 122 ultimately survived. When a Japanese expedition arrived at the end of May to relieve the garrison troops, Trjapitsyn executed the remaining Japanese and Russian prisoners and burned the city to the ground.
The Japanese government protested against the Bolshevik government in Moscow, demanding redress. The Russian government responded with the capture and execution of Trjapitsyn. However, this was not enough for the Japanese government, and they used this incident as an opportunity to occupy the northern half of Sakhalin and delayed diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1925. To avoid a direct war with Japan, Soviet Russia established a buffer state, the Far Eastern Republic , in April 1920 , which existed until 1922.
literature
- Paul E. Dunscomb: Japan's Siberian Intervention, 1918-1922: "A Great Disobedience Against the People." Lanham, Lexington 2011.
- Teruyuki Hara: Nikō Jiken no Shomondai , 1975 Roshiashi Kenkyû, no.23.
- A. Ya. Gutman, Richard A. Pierce (Ed.): The Destruction of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. An Episode in the Russian Civil War in the Far East, 1920 . Translated with an introduction by Ella Lury Wiswell. Limestone Press, Kingston Ontario et al. 1993, ISBN 0-919642-35-7 , ( Russia and Asia 2).
- John Albert White: The Siberian Intervention . Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1950.
