Soviet time
Conflict on Lake Khasan
Patrol of Soviet border guards in the area of Lake Khasan, 1938
Throughout the 20-30s. In the 20th century, the aggressiveness of Japan steadily increased, trying to meet the growing needs of the economy and state at the expense of its Far Eastern neighbors. The active opposition of the Soviet Union to Japanese expansion in Southeast Asia created tension in relations between states, manifested in numerous local conflicts. Only on the border with Manchuria in 1936-1938. More than 200 border skirmishes occurred. The Japanese detained several Soviet ships, accusing them of violating Japan's maritime borders.
On July 15, 1938, the Charge d'Affaires of Japan in the USSR appeared at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet border guards from the heights in the area of Lake Khasan. After the Japanese representative was presented with the Hunchun Agreement between Russia and China of 1886 and the map attached to it, irrefutably indicating that Lake Khasan and the heights adjacent to it from the west are on Soviet territory and that, therefore, there are no violations in this no area, he retreated. However, on July 20, the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Shigemitsu, repeated his claims to the Khasan area. When it was pointed out to him that such claims were unfounded, the ambassador said: if Japan's demands are not met, it will use force. It should be said that on July 19, 1938, the Soviet embassy in Tokyo was raided, and literally a few days later a border incident occurred between the USSR and Japan in the area of Lake Khasan (Primorye).
The Red Army soldiers go on the attack. Surroundings of Lake Khasan
The reason for the conflict was the construction of a fortification by Soviet border guards, which, according to the Japanese, crossed the border line.
In response, on July 29, 1938, a Japanese company, under the cover of fog, violated the state border of the USSR, shouting “banzai” and attacked Bezymyannaya Height. The night before, a detachment of 11 border guards, led by the assistant head of the outpost, Lieutenant Alexei Makhalin, arrived at this height. The Japanese chains surrounded the trench more and more tightly, and the border guards were running out of ammunition. Eleven soldiers heroically repelled the onslaught of superior enemy forces for several hours, and several border guards died. Then Alexey Makhalin decides to break through the encirclement with hand-to-hand combat. He rises to his full height and says “Forward! For the Motherland! rushes with the fighters into a counterattack. They managed to break through the encirclement. But out of the eleven, six defenders of Nameless remained alive. Alexey Makhalin also died. (He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously). At the cost of heavy losses, the Japanese managed to take control of the heights. But soon a group of border guards and a rifle company under the command of Lieutenant D. Levchenko arrived at the battlefield. With a bold bayonet attack and grenades, our soldiers knocked out the invaders from the heights.
At dawn on July 30, enemy artillery brought down dense, concentrated fire onto the heights. And then the Japanese attacked several times, but Lieutenant Levchenko’s company fought to the death. The company commander himself was wounded three times, but did not leave the battle. A battery of anti-tank guns under Lieutenant I. Lazarev came to the aid of Levchenko’s unit and shot the Japanese with direct fire. One of our gunners died. Lazarev, wounded in the shoulder, took his place. The artillerymen managed to suppress several enemy machine guns and almost destroy the enemy company. It was with difficulty that the battery commander was forced to leave for dressing. A day later he was back in action and fought until final success.
Japanese soldiers dug in at Zaozernaya heights
The Japanese invaders decided to deliver a new and main blow in the area of the Zaozernaya hill. Anticipating this, the command of the Posyet border detachment (Colonel K.E. Grebennik) organized the defense of Zaozernaya. The northern slope of the height was guarded by a detachment of border guards under the command of Lieutenant Tereshkin. In the center and on the southern slope of Zaozernaya there was a reserve outpost of Lieutenant Khristolubov and a squad of fighters of a maneuver group with two crews of heavy machine guns. On the southern bank of Khasan there was a branch of Gilfan Batarshin. Their task was to cover the command post of the detachment commander and prevent the Japanese from reaching the rear of the border guards. Senior Lieutenant Bykhovtsev’s group strengthened on Bezymyannaya. Near the height was the 2nd company of the 119th regiment of the 40th Infantry Division under the command of Lieutenant Levchenko. Each height was a small, independently operating stronghold. Approximately halfway between the heights there was a group of Lieutenant Ratnikov, covering the flanks with reinforced units. Ratnikov had 16 soldiers with a machine gun. In addition, it was assigned a platoon of small-caliber guns and four T-26 light tanks. However, when the battle began, it turned out that the forces of the border defenders were meager. The lesson on Bezymyannaya was useful for the Japanese, and they brought into action two reinforced divisions with a total number of up to 20 thousand people, about 200 guns and mortars, three armored trains, and a battalion of tanks. The Japanese pinned great hopes on their “suicide bombers” who also took part in the battle.
On the night of July 31, a Japanese regiment, with artillery support, attacked Zaozernaya. The defenders of the hill returned fire, and then counterattacked the enemy and drove him back. Four times the Japanese rushed to Zaozernaya and each time they were forced to retreat with losses. A powerful avalanche of Japanese troops, although at the cost of heavy losses, managed to push back our fighters and reach the lake. Then, by decision of the government, units of the First Maritime Army entered the battle; its soldiers and commanders fought heroically alongside the border guards. During fierce military clashes on August 9, 1938, Soviet troops managed to dislodge the enemy from only part of the disputed territories. The Bezymyannaya and Zaozernaya hills were completely occupied later, after the conflict was resolved diplomatically.
Bombing of Zaozernaya Hill
The events on Lake Khasan, with all their complexity and ambiguity, clearly demonstrated the military power of the USSR. The experience of fighting with the regular Japanese army greatly helped the training of our soldiers and commanders during the battles at Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and in the Manchurian strategic operation in August 1945.
Aviators, tank crews, and artillerymen also made a significant contribution to the overall success of repelling the enemy. Accurate bomb strikes fell on the heads of the invaders, the enemy was thrown to the ground by dashing tank attacks, and destroyed by irresistible and powerful artillery salvoes. The campaign of Japanese troops to Lake Khasan ended ingloriously. After August 9, the Japanese government had no choice but to enter into negotiations to end hostilities. On August 10, the USSR government proposed a truce to the Japanese side. The Japanese government accepted our terms, also agreeing to create a commission to resolve the controversial border issue. For the massive heroism shown in the battles near Lake Khasan, thousands of Soviet soldiers were awarded high state awards, many became Heroes of the Soviet Union. Settlements, streets, schools, and ships were named after the heroes.
Gabriel Tsobekhia
This coming Sunday in the Primorsky Territory, the authorities intend to organize magnificent ceremonies dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the battles on Lake Khasan, between the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army and Japanese troops in the area where in 1938 the borders of the USSR, Japanese-occupied Korea and the Tokyo-controlled puppet state converged Manchukuo.
The Khasan battles began on July 29, 1938 and lasted until August 11. In Soviet times, it was customary to talk about the events on Lake Khasan as one of the classic examples of the valor of Soviet soldiers and the art of Red commanders. But there is a completely different point of view on the battle at Lake Khasan - both on who started it and why, and at what cost a very dubious victory was achieved in it.
This is what Vladimir Voronov, a historian and journalist, an expert in the field of military and foreign policy doctrines of the USSR of the 30s, thinks.
Victory at Lake Khasan, at Khalkhin Gol and in the Soviet-Finnish War is such a “holy trinity” that I remember from a young age when it came to official Soviet military history before the start of the Great Patriotic War. When the Soviet Union began to collapse, very unsightly archival documents and facts came to light. It turned out that everything happened “somewhat differently.” The first two conflicts and the supposedly militarily skillful victories, with little bloodshed, over militaristic Japan on the eve of 1941 became an important element of propaganda and the idea of the invincibility of the Red Army in any war. The song “Three Tankers” appeared and so on...
Khasan and Khalkhin Gol are fundamentally different events with different backgrounds. If the battles at Lake Khasan were not fully prepared and were provoked by the actions of the Soviet side, then the battle on the Khalkhin Gol River in 1939 was a Japanese initiative and Japanese aggression. Moreover, in both cases this initiative was non-strategic in nature. But the scale of Khalkhin Gol is, of course, much higher. I would say that if there had not been Khasan, there would have been no Khalkhin Gol. The battles of 1938 and how the Red Army behaved in a real battle gave the Japanese the idea to carry out an already prepared operation on Khalkhin Gol. What the Soviet side planned at Lake Khasan was not something that was not implemented - but, by conceiving actions on Khasan and being the initiator of them, the USSR, to put it mildly, ended up in the bag.
- Why do you think that, militarily, it is difficult for the Soviet side to be proud of the course and results of the battles at Lake Khasan?
Because terrible losses were suffered. Until the 60s of the 20th century, no data on losses on Khasan were published at all. It is believed that 759 Red Army soldiers and border guards were killed on Khasan, and 3,279 were wounded. These are official data, which staff historians of the Ministry of Defense stubbornly cling to to this day. But already at the very beginning of our century, such losses of the Red Army were documented: at least 1,112 people were killed, at least 100 died from wounds, 95 were missing. Generally speaking, the remains of killed Red Army soldiers are still being found on Lake Khasan.
It is generally accepted that as a result of Stalin's repressions on the eve of the Second World War, the flower of military thought in the USSR was destroyed, and that if Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Yakir and others had remained alive, there would not have been the nightmarish defeats of 1941-1942. I don’t want to stray now and talk about the “Great Terror” of the late 30s. But is it possible that under the repressed commanders whom I mentioned, if they had remained alive, the beginning of the war with Nazi Germany would have been the same? After all, the same Marshal Vasily Blucher received a terrible reprimand from Stalin towards the end of the events on Lake Khasan - for inability, for slowness and for terrible losses. Is it likely that these commanders remained Civil War commanders until the end of their lives? And their knowledge and skills are outdated?
I will neither dispute nor deny this. But the accusations against Blucher regarding his leadership at Lake Khasan are not founded for at least one reason. He didn't plan this operation. This operation was planned over his head. He had nothing to carry it out, from the point of view of command personnel at that time. On the Red Banner Far Eastern Front, into which the Special Far Eastern Red Banner Army was renamed in June 1938, the shortfall in command personnel was 85 percent. This was the years 1937-1938 - there was an intensive destruction of command personnel, everywhere, including in the Far East, which took on terrifying forms. Comrade Blucher also participated in this destruction - and it could not have been otherwise! For two years in a row, the valiant commanders of the Red Army were concerned about only one thing - their own survival. They spoke at party meetings, they wrote denunciations. No military training! No military training! During these two years, not a single military exercise was held! What maps did the red commanders use to fight in 1938? These were cards, formally, with the stamp of the General Staff and all the marks “top secret”, and so on. But in fact, these were maps compiled by the cartographic division of the NKVD, with deliberate changes made there, “maps for foreign tourists.” And suddenly in August 1938 it was discovered that the swamps were not indicated on these maps, that the roads were completely different. All Soviet artillery got stuck in the swamp and was shot by the Japanese with direct fire from the commanding heights. The artillerymen suffered particularly heavy losses. And Soviet tanks got stuck in swamps that were not on the maps.
Why did Japan need this conflict? It is known that in Tokyo at that time there existed, relatively speaking, an “army party,” which wanted, perhaps, to go north and west, against China and the USSR, and a “navy party,” which was preparing expansion to the south and east, against the United States and Great Britain. Before the conflict at Lake Khasan, one of the top leaders of the NKVD, Genrikh Lyushkov, ran over to the Japanese and told him, perhaps, what potential the Red Army actually had in the Far East. Could it happen that a local conflict would result in a full-scale land war? Or was it a “shooting”, a test of strength on both sides?
Lyushkov, nevertheless, due to the nature of his activity, hardly had detailed information about the combat capability of the Red Army. He, of course, knew the Far East very well, he knew the capabilities of the Red Army very well, but he was not able to lay out what, for example, the chief of staff of the unit knew. He could give the Japanese approximate data. But yes, these data shocked the Japanese, because it turned out that the Red Army in the Far East had a threefold numerical superiority. And the Japanese did not plan any serious operations against the Soviet Union in 1938 and had absolutely no desire to get involved in a serious military conflict. This was a forced reaction of the Japanese to the fighting. They could not leave without consequences, from their point of view, the brazen attempts to seize the dominant hills on the territory of Korea controlled by them, and Manchukuo - the area in question is the point of convergence of the then Korean, Manchurian and Soviet borders. Because the Soviet border guards captured hills not on Soviet territory - and carried out engineering support, which threatened serious consequences for the Japanese. A bridgehead could be created there, from which Japanese territory could be shot deep into, over a very long distance, and a large-scale offensive could be carried out. Therefore, their task, after the start of the conflict, was nothing more than establishing control over the Japanese hills. The Japanese did not enter even one meter or one millimeter into Soviet territory.
- How did the conflict formally begin?
The conflict arose after an unexpected inspection of a number of senior leaders of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD, headed by Mikhail Frinovsky, in July, after Lyushkov’s escape, when, together with the head of the local border detachment, a group of senior NKVD command personnel entered Japanese territory, where a group of Manchus worked under the protection of Japanese gendarmes . And when the Japanese gendarmes, without using force, asked them to leave, they were shot at point-blank range by NKVD soldiers with revolvers! Then, when, already during the battles on Khasan, Stalin, “accidentally” walking along the corridors of the People’s Commissariat of Defense on August 1, suddenly “accidentally” wandered into Voroshilov’s office and “accidentally” contacted Blucher in a direct line, he tried to report to him how the matter really stood . And in response he received from Stalin: “You, Comrade Blucher, don’t want to fight the Japanese? Say so.”
And many facts indicate that this operation was prepared in advance on the Soviet side. At the same time, she prepared, as always, extremely poorly, as evidenced by the results. By July 1, the Special Far Eastern Red Banner Army was deployed to the Red Banner Far Eastern Front. What does it look like that during the first two days of fighting, the Red Army instantly concentrated an entire army corps at Lake Khasan? “By chance” a corps of 32 thousand people was walking in the border zone? Formally, one 19th Infantry Division fought on the Japanese side, but in reality it was an incomplete regiment. According to the Japanese captured documents that the Soviet troops received in 1938, it is clear that this “division” had a shortage of officers, a shortage of personnel, it was formed not from personnel, but from literally just hastily called up reservists.
The main forces of the Japanese ground army were deployed in China. Then China was their target! Tokyo did not need an open conflict with the Soviet Union at all, because the Japanese had already fought with the Soviet Union in China. A huge Soviet aviation group operated there; Soviet pilots flew Soviet fighters and bombers, albeit with Chinese markings. Soviet infantry commanders led Chinese units into battle. Several hundred Soviet military advisers were already in China. In 1938, the Japanese General Staff categorically prohibited the use of aviation against Soviet troops! At a meeting in Tokyo, after the first shots were fired at Lake Khasan, it was said - exclusively defensive actions! We’ll return what was ours, formally put the flag back on the hill, and that’s it, nothing more is needed! According to Soviet official data, the Red Army deployed over 600 guns and about 400 tanks for this operation. But the Japanese didn’t have a single tank there!
The USSR, in this case, already in 1938 was planning a large-scale invasion of northern Korea and Manchuria? And the attack at Lake Khasan was a preparatory operation?
It was, I would say, in fact, rather an internal political operation, for the sake of achieving, first of all, internal political goals - namely, a kind of special operation against Blucher. Stalin was in a wild rage after Lyushkov's flight to the Japanese, and at the same time he had long been sharpening his grudge against Blucher, who for over 10 years had been an almost unlimited governor and master of a huge region. According to Stalin, “his time has come.” But Comrade Stalin always played multi-move games! That is, it was impossible to simply arrest Blucher! This would be banal, especially since the name of Blucher still shone in society. There were two tasks - to show a certain fig to the Japanese, and to blame Blucher. And the Japanese also had to respond adequately for Lyushkov, from Stalin’s point of view. Well, the great Stalin decided to play a “two-move” - to strengthen his positions both inside and outside. Because for the USSR and the Red Army, the Khasan hills were of greater importance in the future; they brought the army to the vast expanses of Manchuria, and then there was operational space. But they did not take the Japanese anywhere except the swamps, through which they would not be able to advance anywhere in the event of war.”
A kind of preface to the coming Sino-Japanese War was a cascade of limited territorial seizures carried out by troops of the Imperial Japanese Army in northeast China. Formed in 1931 on the Kwantung Peninsula, the Kwantung Group of Forces (Kanto-gun) in September of the same year, having staged a provocation by blowing up a railway near Mukden, launched an attack on Manchuria. Japanese troops quickly rushed deep into Chinese territory, capturing one city after another: Mukden, Girin, and Qiqihar fell in succession.
Japanese soldiers pass by Chinese peasants.
By that time, the Chinese state had already existed for three decades in conditions of continuous chaos. The fall of the Manchu Qing Empire during the Xinhai Revolution of 1911-1912 opened a series of civil strife, coups and attempts by various non-Han territories to break away from the Middle Power. Tibet actually became independent; the separatist Uighur movement in Xinjiang did not stop, where the East Turkestan Islamic Republic even arose in the early 30s. Outer Mongolia and Tuva separated, where the Mongolian and Tuvan People's Republics were formed. And in other regions of China there was no political stability. As soon as the Qing dynasty was overthrown, a struggle for power began, punctuated by ethnic and regional conflicts. The South fought with the North, the Han carried out bloody reprisals against the Manchus. After the unsuccessful attempt of the first President of the Republic of China, the commander of the Beiyang Army, Yuan Shikai, to restore the monarchy with himself as emperor, the country was drawn into a whirlpool of infighting between various cliques of militarists.
Sun Yat-sen is the father of the nation.
In fact, the only force that really fought for the reunification and revival of China was the Zhongguo Kuomintang party (Chinese National People's Party), founded by the outstanding political theorist and revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. But the Kuomintang was decidedly lacking in strength to pacify all regional juntas. After the death of Sun Yat-sen in 1925, the position of the National People's Party was complicated by confrontation with the Soviet Union. Sun Yat-sen himself sought rapprochement with Soviet Russia, hoping with its help to overcome the fragmentation and foreign enslavement of China, and to achieve its rightful place in the world. On March 11, 1925, the day before his death, the founder of the Kuomintang wrote: “The time will come when the Soviet Union, as its best friend and ally, will welcome a mighty and free China, when in the great battle for the freedom of the oppressed nations of the world, both countries will go forward hand in hand and achieve victory.”.
Chiang Kai-shek.
But with the death of Sun Yat-sen the situation changed dramatically. Firstly, the Kuomintang itself, which essentially represented a coalition of politicians of various stripes, from nationalists to socialists, began to split into different factions without its founder; secondly, the Kuomintang military leader Chiang Kai-shek, who actually headed the Kuomintang after the death of Sun Yat-sen, soon began to fight against the communists, which could not but lead to a worsening of Soviet-Chinese relations and resulted in a series of border armed conflicts. True, Chiang Kai-shek was able, having carried out the Northern Expedition of 1926-1927, to at least unite most of China under the rule of the Kuomintang government in Nanjing, but the ephemeral nature of this unification was beyond doubt: Tibet remained uncontrollable, in Xinjiang centrifugal processes only grew, and the cliques of militarists in the north retained strength and influence, and their loyalty to the Nanjing government remained declarative at best.
Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang.
Under such conditions, it is not surprising that China, with its population of half a billion, could not provide a serious rebuff to Japan, which is poor in raw materials and has a population of 70 million. In addition, while Japan, after the Meiji Restoration, underwent modernization and had an outstanding industry by the standards of the Asia-Pacific region of that time, it was not possible to industrialize in China, and the Republic of China was almost entirely dependent on foreign supplies to obtain modern equipment and weapons. As a result, a striking disparity in the technical equipment of the Japanese and Chinese troops was observed even at the lowest, most elementary level: while the Japanese infantryman was armed with an Arisaka repeating rifle, the infantrymen of the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang en masse had to fight with pistols and dadao blades, a technique the latter were often made in artisanal conditions. There is no need to even talk about the difference between the opponents in more complex types of equipment, as well as in organizational terms and military training.
Chinese soldiers with dadao.
In January 1932, the Japanese took the cities of Jinzhou and Shanhaiguan, approaching the eastern end of the Great Wall of China and capturing almost the entire territory of Manchuria. Having occupied Manchurian territory, the Japanese immediately ensured the seizure politically by organizing the All-Manchurian Assembly in March 1932, which declared the creation of the state of Manchukuo (Manchurian Power) and elected as ruler the last monarch of the Qing Empire, overthrown in 1912, Aisingyoro Pu Yi, from 1925 years under Japanese patronage. In 1934, Pu Yi was proclaimed emperor, and Manchukuo changed its name to Damanzhou Diguo (Great Manchu Empire).
Aisingyoro Pu I.
But no matter what names the “Great Manchu Empire” took, the essence of this fake state formation remained obvious: the loud name and the pretentious title of the monarch were nothing more than a translucent screen, behind which the Japanese occupation administration was quite clearly visible. The falsity of Damanzhou-Digo was visible in almost everything: for example, in the State Council, which was the center of political power in the country, each minister had a Japanese deputy, and in fact these Japanese deputies carried out the policy of Manchuria. The real supreme power of the country was the commander of the Kwantung Group of Forces, who simultaneously served as the Japanese Ambassador to Manchukuo. Also pro forma in Manchuria there was the Manchu Imperial Army, organized from the remnants of the Chinese Northeastern Army and largely staffed by Honghuzi, who often came to military service only to receive funds for their usual craft, that is, banditry; Having acquired weapons and equipment, these newly minted “soldiers” deserted and joined the gangs. Those who did not desert or rebel usually fell into drunkenness and opium smoking, and many military units quickly turned into brothels. Naturally, the combat effectiveness of such “armed forces” tended to zero, and the Kwantung Group of Forces remained the real military force on the territory of Manchuria.
Soldiers of the Manchurian Imperial Army during exercises.
However, not the entire Manchu Imperial Army was a political decoration. In particular, it included formations recruited from Russian emigrants.
Here it is necessary to make a digression and again pay attention to the political system of Manchukuo. In this state formation, almost the entire internal political life was confined to the so-called “Concord Society of Manchukuo”, which by the end of the 30s was transformed by the Japanese into a typical anti-communist corporatist structure, but one political group, with the permission and encouragement of the Japanese, stood apart - these were the white emigrants. In the Russian diaspora in Manchuria, not just anti-communist, but fascist views have long been rooted. At the end of the 20s, a teacher at the Harbin Faculty of Law, Nikolai Ivanovich Nikiforov, formed the Russian Fascist Organization, on the basis of which the Russian Fascist Party was established in 1931, the general secretary of which was a member of the Russian Federal District, Konstantin Vladimirovich Rodzaevsky. In 1934, in Yokohama, the RFP united with Anastasy Andreevich Vosnyatsky, formed in the USA, into the All-Russian Fascist Party. The Russian fascists in Manchuria counted the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire in 1906-1911, Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, among their harbingers.
In 1934, the “Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Emigrants in the Manchurian Empire” (hereinafter BREM) was formed in Manchuria, the curator of which was the major of the Japanese Imperial Army, assistant to the head of the Japanese military mission in Harbin, Akikusa Xiong, who participated in the intervention in Soviet Russia during the Civil War; in 1936, Akikusa joined the Japanese General Staff. Using ARVs, the Japanese placed the White emigrants in Manchuria under the command of the Kwantung Group of Forces. Under Japanese control, the formation of paramilitary and sabotage detachments from among white emigrants began. In accordance with the proposal of Colonel Kawabe Torashiro, in 1936 the unification of the White emigrant detachments into one military unit began. In 1938, the formation of this unit, called the Asano detachment after the name of its commander, Major Asano Makoto, was completed.
The formation of units from Russian fascists clearly demonstrated anti-Soviet sentiments among the Japanese elite. And this is not surprising, given the nature of the state regime that had developed in Japan by that time, especially since the Soviet Union, despite all the contradictions and conflicts with the Kuomintang, began to take steps towards supporting the Republic of China in the fight against Japanese intervention. In particular, in December 1932, on the initiative of the Soviet leadership, diplomatic relations with the Republic of China were restored.
The separation of Manchuria from China became the prologue to the Second World War. The Japanese elite made it clear that they would not limit themselves to Manchuria alone, and their plans were an order of magnitude larger and more ambitious. In 1933, the Empire of Japan withdrew from the League of Nations.
Japanese soldiers in Shanghai, 1937.
In the summer of 1937, limited military conflicts finally escalated into a full-scale war between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly called on representatives of the Western powers to help China, argued that only by creating a united international front can Japanese aggression be contained, and recalled the Washington Treaty of 1922, which confirmed the integrity and independence of China. But all his calls found no answer. The Republic of China found itself in conditions close to isolation. ROC Foreign Minister Wang Chonghui gloomily summed up Chinese pre-war foreign policy: "We always hoped too much in England and America".
Japanese soldiers massacre Chinese prisoners of war.
Japanese troops rapidly advanced deep into Chinese territory, and already in December 1937, the capital of the republic, Nanjing, fell, where the Japanese committed an unprecedented massacre that ended the lives of tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people. Massive looting, torture, rape and murder continued for several weeks. The march of Japanese troops across China was marked by countless savages. In Manchuria, meanwhile, the activities of Detachment No. 731 under Lieutenant General Ishii Shiro, which was developing bacteriological weapons and conducting inhumane experiments on people, were in full swing.
Lieutenant General Ishii Shiro, commander of Detachment 731.
The Japanese continued to split China, creating political objects in the occupied territories that were even less similar to states than Manchukuo. Thus, in Inner Mongolia in 1937, the Principality of Mengjiang was proclaimed, led by Prince De Wang Demchigdonrov.
In the summer of 1937, the Chinese government turned to the Soviet Union for help. The Soviet leadership agreed to the supply of weapons and equipment, as well as to the dispatch of specialists: pilots, artillerymen, engineers, tank crews, etc. On August 21, a non-aggression treaty was concluded between the USSR and the Republic of China.
Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army of China on the Yellow River. 1938
The fighting in China became increasingly large-scale. By the beginning of 1938, 800 thousand soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army fought on the fronts of the Sino-Japanese War. At the same time, the position of the Japanese armies became ambiguous. On the one hand, the subjects of the Mikado won victory after victory, inflicting colossal losses on the Kuomintang troops and the regional forces supporting the Chiang Kai-shek government; but on the other hand, there was no breakdown of the Chinese armed forces, and gradually the Japanese ground forces began to get bogged down in hostilities on the territory of the Middle Power. It became clear that the 500-million-strong China, even if lagging behind in industrial development, torn by strife and supported by almost no one, was too heavy an opponent for the 70-million-strong Japan with its meager resources; even the amorphous, inert, passive resistance of China and its people created too much tension for the Japanese forces. And military successes ceased to be continuous: in the Battle of Taierzhuang, which took place from March 24 to April 7, 1938, the troops of the National Revolutionary Army of China won their first major victory over the Japanese. According to available data, Japanese losses in this battle amounted to 2,369 killed, 719 captured and 9,615 wounded.
Chinese soldiers at the Battle of Taierzhuang.
In addition, Soviet military assistance became increasingly visible. Soviet pilots sent to China bombed Japanese communications and air bases and provided air cover for Chinese troops. One of the most effective actions of Soviet aviation was the raid of 28 SB bombers, led by Captain Fedor Petrovich Polynin, on the port of Hsinchu and the Japanese airfield in Taipei, located on the island, on February 23, 1938, on the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. Taiwan; Captain Polynin's bombers destroyed 40 Japanese planes on the ground, after which they returned safe and sound. This air raid shocked the Japanese, who had never expected enemy aircraft to appear over Taiwan. And Soviet assistance was not limited to aviation actions: samples of Soviet-made weapons and equipment were increasingly discovered in units and formations of the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang.
Of course, all of the above actions could not help but arouse the wrath of the Japanese elite, and the views of the Japanese military leadership increasingly began to focus on the northern direction. The attention of the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army to the borders of the Soviet Union and the Mongolian People's Republic increased greatly. But still, the Japanese did not consider it possible for themselves to attack their northern neighbors without having a sufficient understanding of their forces, and first they decided to test the defense capability of the Soviet Union in the Far East. All that was needed was a reason, which the Japanese decided to create in a way known since ancient times - by making a territorial claim.
Shigemitsu Mamoru, Japanese Ambassador to Moscow.
On July 15, 1938, the Japanese charge d'affaires in the USSR showed up at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and officially demanded the withdrawal of Soviet border guards from the heights in the area of Lake Khasan and the transfer of territories adjacent to this lake to the Japanese. The Soviet side responded by presenting the documents of the Hunchun Agreement, signed in 1886 between the Russian and Qing empires, and the map attached to them, which exhaustively testified to the location of the heights of Bezymyannaya and Zaozernaya on Russian territory. The Japanese diplomat left, but the Japanese did not calm down: on July 20, the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Shigemitsu Mamoru, repeated the demands of the Japanese government, and in the form of an ultimatum, threatening the use of force if Japanese demands were not met.
Japanese infantry unit on the march near Lake Khasan.
By that time, the Japanese command had already concentrated 3 infantry divisions, separate armored units, a cavalry regiment, 3 machine gun battalions, 3 armored trains and 70 aircraft near Khasan. The Japanese command assigned the main role in the coming conflict to the 20,000-strong 19th Infantry Division, which belonged to the Japanese occupation forces in Korea and reported directly to the imperial headquarters. A cruiser, 14 destroyers and 15 military boats approached the area of the mouth of the Tumen-Ola River to support Japanese ground units. On July 22, 1938, the plan to attack the Soviet border received approval at the level of the Showa tenno (Hirohito).
Patrol of Soviet border guards in the area of Lake Khasan.
The Japanese preparations for the attack did not go unnoticed by the Soviet border guards, who immediately began building defensive positions and reported to the commander of the Red Banner Far Eastern Front, Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher. But the latter, without informing either the People's Commissariat of Defense or the government, on July 24 went to the Zaozernaya hill, where he ordered the border guards to fill up the dug trenches and move the installed wire fences away from the no-man's land. The border troops did not obey the army leadership, due to which Blucher’s actions can only be regarded as a gross violation of subordination. However, on the same day, the Military Council of the Far Eastern Front gave the order to put units of the 40th Infantry Division on combat readiness, one of the battalions of which, together with the border outpost, was transferred to Lake Khasan.
Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher.
On July 29, the Japanese, with the help of two companies, attacked a Soviet border post located on the Bezymyannaya hill with a garrison of 11 border guards and penetrated into Soviet territory; Japanese infantrymen occupied the heights, but with the arrival of reinforcements, border guards and Red Army soldiers pushed them back. On July 30, the hills came under Japanese artillery fire, and then, as soon as the gunfire died down, the Japanese infantry again rushed into the attack, but the Soviet soldiers were able to repel it.
People's Commissar of Defense Marshal of the Soviet Union Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov.
On July 31, People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov ordered the 1st Red Banner Army and the Pacific Fleet to be put on combat readiness. By that time, the Japanese, having concentrated two regiments of the 19th Infantry Division in the strike fist, captured the Zaozernaya and Bezymyannaya hills and advanced 4 kilometers deep into Soviet territory. Having good tactical training and considerable experience in combat operations in China, the Japanese soldiers immediately secured the captured lines by tearing off full-profile trenches and installing wire barriers in 3-4 rows. The counterattack of two battalions of the 40th Infantry Division failed, and the Red Army soldiers were forced to retreat to Zarechye and to height 194.0.
Japanese machine gunners in battles near Lake Khasan.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff of the front, commander Grigory Mikhailovich Stern, arrived at the scene of hostilities on the instructions of Blucher (who, for unknown reasons, did not go on his own, and also refused to use aviation to support ground troops, justifying his reluctance to cause damage to the Korean civilian population), arrived, accompanied by the deputy people's commissar of defense, army commissar Lev Zakharovich Mekhlis. Stern took command of the troops.
Komkor Grigory Mikhailovich Stern.
Army Commissar Lev Zakharovich Mehlis.
On August 1, units of the 40th Infantry Division converged on the lake. The concentration of forces was delayed, and in a telephone conversation between Blucher and the Main Military Council, Stalin directly asked Blucher: “Tell me, Comrade Blucher, honestly, do you have a desire to really fight the Japanese? If you don’t have such a desire, tell me directly, as befits a communist, and if you have a desire, I would think that you should go to place immediately".
Soviet machine gunners in the area of Lake Khasan.
On August 2, Blucher, after a conversation with Stalin, went to the combat area, ordered an attack on the Japanese without crossing the state border, and ordered the deployment of additional forces. The Red Army soldiers managed to overcome the wire fences with heavy losses and get close to the heights, but the Soviet riflemen did not have enough strength to take the heights themselves.
Soviet riflemen during the battles near Lake Khasan.
On August 3, Mehlis reported to Moscow about Blucher’s incompetence as a commander, after which he was removed from command of the troops. The task of launching a counterattack against the Japanese fell on the newly formed 39th Rifle Corps, which, in addition to the 40th Rifle Division, included the 32nd Rifle Division, the 2nd Separate Mechanized Brigade and a number of artillery units moving towards the battle area. In total, the corps numbered about 23 thousand people. It fell to Grigory Mikhailovich Stern to lead the operation.
The Soviet commander observes the battle in the area of Lake Khasan.
On August 4, the concentration of forces of the 39th Rifle Corps was completed, and Commander Stern gave the order for an offensive to regain control of the state border. At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 6, 1938, as soon as the fog cleared over the banks of Khasan, Soviet aviation with 216 aircraft carried out a double bombardment of Japanese positions, and artillery carried out a 45-minute artillery barrage. At five o'clock, units of the 39th Rifle Corps moved to attack the Zaozernaya, Bezymyannaya and Machine Gun hills. Fierce battles ensued for the heights and the surrounding area - on August 7 alone, Japanese infantry carried out 12 counterattacks. The Japanese fought with merciless ferocity and rare tenacity; confrontation with them required extraordinary courage from the Red Army soldiers, who were inferior in tactical training and experience, and from the commanders - will, self-control and flexibility. Japanese officers punished the slightest signs of panic without any sentimentality; in particular, Japanese artillery sergeant Toshio Ogawa recalled that when some Japanese soldiers fled during the bombing carried out by red star planes, “three of them were immediately shot by the officers of our division headquarters, and Lieutenant Itagi cut off the head of one with a sword.”.
Japanese machine gunners on a hill near Lake Khasan.
On August 8, units of the 40th Infantry Division captured Zaozernaya and began an assault on Bogomolnaya Heights. The Japanese, meanwhile, tried to divert the attention of the Soviet command with attacks on other sections of the border, but the Soviet border guards were able to fight back on their own, thwarting the enemy’s plans.
Artillerymen of the 39th corps artillery regiment in the area of Lake Khasan.
On August 9, the 32nd Infantry Division knocked out Japanese units from Bezymyannaya, after which the final ousting of units of the Japanese 19th Infantry Division from Soviet territory began. In an attempt to hold back the Soviet onslaught with barrage artillery fire, the Japanese deployed several batteries on an island in the middle of the Tumen-Ola River, but the Mikado gunners lost the duel with the Soviet corps artillery.
A Red Army soldier watches the enemy.
On August 10, in Moscow, Shigemitsu visited the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Maksimovich Litvinov, with a proposal to begin peace negotiations. During these negotiations, the Japanese launched about a dozen more attacks, but all with unsuccessful results. The Soviet side agreed to a cessation of hostilities as of noon on August 11, leaving units in the positions they occupied at the end of August 10.
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maksimovich Litvinov.
Red Army soldiers take pictures at the end of the Khasan battles.
At half past two in the afternoon on August 11, the fighting on the shores of Lake Khasan subsided. The parties concluded a truce. On August 12-13, meetings between Soviet and Japanese representatives took place, at which the disposition of troops was clarified and the bodies of the fallen were exchanged.
The irretrievable losses of the Red Army, according to the study “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses of the armed forces,” amounted to 960 people, sanitary losses were estimated at 2,752 people wounded and 527 sick. Of the military equipment, the Soviet troops irrevocably lost 5 tanks, 1 gun and 4 aircraft (another 29 aircraft were damaged). Japanese losses, according to Japanese data, amounted to 526 people killed and 914 wounded, and there is also data on the destruction of 3 anti-aircraft installations and 1 Japanese armored train.
Red Army warrior at his best.
In general, the results of the battles on the banks of Khasan completely satisfied the Japanese. They conducted reconnaissance in force and found that the Red Army troops, despite being more numerous and generally more modern in comparison with the Japanese weapons and equipment, had extremely poor training and were practically unfamiliar with the tactics of modern combat. In order to defeat well-trained, seasoned Japanese soldiers in a local clash, the Soviet leadership had to concentrate an entire corps against one actually operating Japanese division, not counting the border units, and ensure absolute superiority in aviation, and even under such favorable conditions for the Soviet side, the Japanese suffered fewer losses. The Japanese came to the conclusion that it was possible to fight against the USSR and especially the MPR, because the armed forces of the Soviet Union were weak. That is why the following year there was a conflict near the Mongolian Khalkhin Gol River.
However, one should not think that the Soviet side failed to derive any benefit from the clash that took place in the Far East. The Red Army gained practical combat experience, which very quickly became the object of study in Soviet military educational institutions and military units. In addition, Blücher's unsatisfactory leadership of the Soviet armed forces in the Far East was revealed, which made it possible to carry out personnel changes and take organizational measures. Blucher himself, after being removed from his post, was arrested and died in prison. Finally, the battles at Khalkhin Gol clearly demonstrated that an army recruited on the basis of the territorial-militia principle cannot be strong with any weapons, which became an additional incentive for the Soviet leadership to accelerate the transition to recruiting the armed forces on the basis of universal conscription.
In addition, the Soviet leadership derived a positive information effect for the USSR from the Khasan battles. The fact that the Red Army defended the territory, and the valor displayed in great numbers by Soviet soldiers, increased the authority of the armed forces in the country and caused a rise in patriotic sentiments. Many songs were written about the battles on the banks of Hassan, newspapers reported on the exploits of the heroes of the workers' and peasants' state. State awards were given to 6,532 combat participants, among them 47 women - wives and sisters of border guards. 26 conscientious citizens in the Khasan events became Heroes of the Soviet Union. You can read about one of these heroes here:
On July 29, 1938, near Lake Khasan, the first clash occurred between Japanese troops and the SovietRed Army. Together with the subsequent series of clashes, these events in Russian historiography were called the battles at Lake Khasan or the Khasan battles.
Fight for land
Military conflicts on the eve of World War II can be called a test of strength for future opponents. Japan did not have the desired success during its military intervention in Siberia and the Far East in 1918-1922, but since then continued to cherish hopes of annexing vast Asian lands of the USSR. The situation especially worsened when the militaristic part of the Japanese elite gained real power in Japan (by 1930). China was also involved in these complex relationships, in which case the CER was the bone of contention. In 1931-1932, Japan, taking advantage of the weakening of the Republic of China due to the ongoing civil war, occupied Manchuria and created the puppet state of Manchukuo). Since 1936, Japanese troops have increased the frequency of provocations on the Soviet-Japanese border in search of its weak point. There were more than 300 such incidents by 1938. By the time the Khasan battles began, the USSR and Japan had long considered each other as the most likely military adversary.
He who sows a storm will reap a hurricane
In 1938, the Pravda newspaper wrote about the border incident near Lake Khasan: “He who sows a storm will reap a hurricane.” The Battles of Khasan entered the history of Russia as a decisive victory of the Red Army over the Japanese aggressors. 26 soldiers and officers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, more than 6.5 thousand were awarded orders and medals. The Military Council of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR was responsible for summing up the results of the battles at Lake Khasan on August 31, 1938. The matter ended with the decision to disband the administration of the Far Eastern Red Banner Front and remove Marshal Blucher from the post of commander of the troops of the said front. Such decisions are usually made on the basis of failure, defeat, but here there is victory... Why?
Bombing of Zaozernaya Hill
Setting by the lake
A direct role in accelerating the outbreak of the conflict between Japan and the USSR was played by Genrikh Lyushkov, an NKVD officer of the highest rank. He arrived in the Far East with special powers and ran over to the Japanese, revealing to them a number of important information about the protection of the state border, concerning the number of troops and their locations. The Japanese immediately began to accumulate troops on the Soviet-Manchurian border. The reason for the outbreak of hostilities was the accusation brought by the Japanese side to the Soviet side for the construction of an observation post on the Zaozernaya hill, which each side considered its own, since the border on the ground was not clearly marked. A commission sent by Blucher to investigate found that Soviet troops allegedly advanced three meters further on the hill than expected. Blucher's proposal to rebuild the fortifications met with an unexpected reaction: Moscow had previously ordered not to react to Japanese provocations, but now demanded that an armed response be organized. On July 29, 1938, 150 Japanese soldiers began an assault on the Bezymyannaya hill; they were opposed by 11 Soviet border guards. Help soon arrived and the Japanese retreated. Blucher gave the order to strengthen the defense of the Bezymyannaya and Zaozernaya hills. After the assault on the night of July 31, the Japanese captured these hills. Already in early September, the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Voroshilov, would accuse Blucher of deliberately sabotaging the defense precisely for this failure. The aforementioned episode with Lyushkov contributes to the understanding of this attitude towards the honored hero of the Civil War, holder of the Order of the Red Banner for No. 1. Blucher acted hesitantly, but not treacherously, guided by the general situation in the international political arena and tactical considerations. On August 3, Grigory Stern replaced Blucher as commander of combat operations with the Japanese, on orders from Moscow. At the cost of significant losses and after the massive use of aviation, Soviet troops completed the task assigned to them to protect the state border of the USSR and defeat enemy units. On August 11, 1938, an armistice was concluded between the USSR and Japan. For all the failures and miscalculations, the blame was placed on Blucher. The shortcomings identified during the battles on Lake Khasan, which became the first major military clash for the USSR in the last ten years, were taken into account, the army was improved, and already in 1939 the USSR won a confident and unconditional victory over Japan in the battles on the Khalkhin Gol River. The Khasan battles were vividly reflected in Soviet culture: films were made, songs were written in the shortest possible time, and the name “Hasan” itself became a household word for many small and previously nameless lakes in different parts of the USSR.
On September 4, 1938, the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 0040 was issued on the reasons for the failures and losses of the Red Army troops during the Khasan events.
In the battles on Lake Khasan, Soviet troops lost about a thousand people. Officially 865 killed and 95 missing. True, most researchers claim that this figure is inaccurate.
The Japanese claim to have lost 526 killed. True orientalist V.N. Usov (Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief researcher at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) argued that there was a secret memorandum for Emperor Hirohito, in which the number of losses of Japanese troops significantly (one and a half times) exceeds the officially published data.
The Red Army gained experience in conducting combat operations with Japanese troops, which became the subject of study in special commissions, departments of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, the General Staff of the USSR and military educational institutions and was practiced during exercises and maneuvers. The result was improved training of units and units of the Red Army for combat operations in difficult conditions, improved interaction between units in combat, and improved operational-tactical training of commanders and staffs. The experience gained was successfully applied on the Khalkhin Gol River in 1939 and in Manchuria in 1945.
The fighting at Lake Khasan confirmed the increased importance of artillery and contributed to the further development of Soviet artillery: if during the Russo-Japanese War, the losses of Japanese troops from Russian artillery fire amounted to 23% of the total losses, then during the conflict at Lake Khasan in 1938, the losses of Japanese troops from artillery fire of the Red Army accounted for 37% of the total losses, and during the fighting near the Khalkhin Gol River in 1939 - 53% of the total losses of Japanese troops.
The bugs have been worked out.
In addition to the unpreparedness of the units, as well as the Far Eastern Front itself (about which in more detail below), other shortcomings also emerged.
The concentrated fire of the Japanese on the T-26 command tanks (which differed from the linear ones by the handrail radio antenna on the tower) and their increased losses led to the decision to install handrail antennas not only on the command tanks, but also on the linear tanks.
"Charter of the military sanitary service of the Red Army" 1933 (UVSS-33) did not take into account some features of the theater of operations and the situation, which resulted in an increase in losses. Battalion doctors were too close to the battle formations of the troops and, moreover, were involved in organizing the work of company areas to collect and evacuate the wounded, which resulted in large losses among doctors. As a result of the battles, changes were made to the work of the military medical service of the Red Army.
Well, about the organizational conclusions of the meeting of the Main Supreme Council of the Red Army and the order of the NGOs of the USSR, I will quote the story of a comrade andrey_19_73 :
. Results of Hasan: Organizational conclusions.
On August 31, 1938, a meeting of the Main Military Council of the Red Army took place in Moscow. It summed up the results of the July battles in the area of Lake Khasan.
At the meeting, a report was heard from the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal K.E. Voroshilov "On the position of the troops of the DK (note - Far Eastern Red Banner) Front in connection with the events on Lake Khasan." Reports were also heard from the commander of the Far Eastern Fleet V.K. Blucher and the head of the political department of the front, brigade commissar P.I. Mazepova.
VC. Blucher
P.I. Mazepov
The main result of the meeting was that the fate of the hero of the Civil War and the battles on the Chinese Eastern Railway, Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Blucher, was decided.
He was charged with the fact that in May 1938 he “questioned the legality of the actions of the border guards on Lake Khasan.” Then com. The Far Eastern Front sent a commission to investigate the incident at the Zaozernaya height, which discovered a violation of the border by Soviet border guards to a shallow depth. Blucher then sent a telegram to the People's Commissar of Defense, in which he concluded that the conflict was caused by the actions of our side and demanded the arrest of the head of the border section.
There is an opinion that there was even a telephone conversation between Blucher and Stalin, in which Stalin asked the commander a question: “Tell me, Comrade Blucher, honestly, do you have a desire to really fight the Japanese? If there is no such desire, tell me directly.. ".
Blucher was also accused of disorganizing military command and control and, as “unfit and discredited himself militarily and politically,” was removed from the leadership of the Far Eastern Front and left at the disposal of the Main Military Council. Subsequently arrested on October 22, 1938. November 9 V.K. Blucher died in prison during the investigation.
Brigadier Commissioner P.I. Mazepov escaped with “a slight fright.” He was removed from his position as chief. political department of the Far Eastern Fleet and was appointed with a demotion as head of the political department of the Military Medical Academy named after. CM. Kirov.
The result of the meeting was the order of the USSR NKO No. 0040 issued on September 4, 1938 on the reasons for the failures and losses of the Red Army troops during the Khasan events. The order also determined the new staff of the front: in addition to the 1st ODKVA, another combined arms army, the 2nd OKA, was deployed in the front zone.
Below is the text of the order:
ORDER
People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR
On the results of the consideration by the Main Military Council of the issue of the events on Lake Khasan and measures for defense preparation of the Far Eastern theater of military operations
Moscow
On August 31, 1938, under my chairmanship, a meeting of the Main Military Council of the Red Army took place, consisting of members of the military council: vol. Stalin, Shchadenko, Budyonny, Shaposhnikov, Kulik, Loktionov, Blucher and Pavlov, with the participation of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, Comrade. Molotov and deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Comrade. Frinovsky.
The Main Military Council considered the issue of events in the area of Lake Khasan and, after hearing the explanations of Comrade Comrade. Blucher and deputy member of the military council of the CDfront comrade. Mazepov, came to the following conclusions:
1. The combat operations at Lake Khasan were a comprehensive test of the mobilization and combat readiness of not only those units that directly took part in them, but also of all troops of the CD Front without exception.
2. The events of these few days revealed huge shortcomings in the state of the CD front. The combat training of the troops, headquarters and command and control personnel of the front turned out to be at an unacceptably low level. The military units were torn apart and incapable of combat; The supply of military units is not organized. It was discovered that the Far Eastern theater was poorly prepared for war (roads, bridges, communications).
Storage, conservation and accounting of mobilization and emergency reserves, both in front-line warehouses and in military units, turned out to be in a chaotic state.
In addition to all this, it was discovered that the most important directives of the Main Military Council and the People's Commissar of Defense were criminally not followed by the front command for a long time. As a result of such an unacceptable state of the front troops, in this relatively small clash we suffered significant losses - 408 people killed and 2807 people wounded. These losses cannot be justified either by the extreme difficulty of the terrain on which our troops had to operate, or by the three times greater losses of the Japanese.
The number of our troops, the participation of our aviation and tanks in operations gave us such advantages that our losses in battles could be much smaller.
And only thanks to the laxity, disorganization and combat unpreparedness of military units and the confusion of the command and political personnel, from the front to the regimental, we have hundreds of killed and thousands of wounded commanders, political workers and soldiers. Moreover, the percentage of losses of the command and political personnel is unnaturally high - 40%, which once again confirms that the Japanese were defeated and thrown beyond our borders only thanks to the fighting enthusiasm of the fighters, junior commanders, middle and senior command and political personnel, who were ready to sacrifice themselves in defense honor and inviolability of the territory of his great socialist Motherland, as well as thanks to the skillful leadership of operations against the Japanese by Comrade. Stern and the correct leadership of comrade. Rychagov by the actions of our aviation.
Thus, the main task set by the Government and the Main Military Council to the troops of the CD Front - to ensure full and constant mobilization and combat readiness of the front troops in the Far East - turned out to be unfulfilled.
3. The main shortcomings in the training and organization of troops, revealed by the fighting at Lake Khasan, are:
a) the criminal removal of fighters from combat units for all kinds of extraneous work is unacceptable.
The Main Military Council, knowing about these facts, back in May of this year. By his resolution (protocol No. 8), he categorically prohibited the squandering of Red Army soldiers on various types of economic work and demanded their return to the unit by July 1 of this year. all soldiers on such deployments. Despite this, the front command did nothing to return fighters and commanders to their units, and the units continued to have a huge shortage of personnel, the units were disorganized. In this state they set out on alert to the border. As a result, during the period of hostilities we had to resort to cobbling together units from different units and individual fighters, allowing harmful organizational improvisation, creating impossible confusion, which could not but affect the actions of our troops;
b) the troops advanced to the border on combat alert completely unprepared. The emergency supply of weapons and other military equipment was not scheduled in advance and prepared for distribution to the units, which caused a number of outrageous outrages during the entire period of hostilities. The head of the front department and unit commanders did not know what, where and in what condition weapons, ammunition and other military supplies were available. In many cases, entire artillery batteries ended up at the front without shells, spare barrels for machine guns were not fitted in advance, rifles were issued unfired, and many soldiers and even one of the rifle units of the 32nd division arrived at the front without rifles or gas masks at all. Despite the huge reserves of clothing, many soldiers were sent into battle in completely worn-out shoes, half-footed, and a large number of Red Army soldiers were without overcoats. Commanders and staffs lacked maps of the combat area;
c) all types of troops, especially the infantry, showed an inability to act on the battlefield, to maneuver, to combine movement and fire, to adapt to the terrain, which in this situation, as in general in the conditions of the Far [East], replete with mountains and hills, is the ABC of combat and tactical training of troops.
The tank units were used ineptly, as a result of which they suffered heavy losses in material.
4. The culprits for these major shortcomings and for the excessive losses we suffered in a relatively small military clash are the commanders, commissars and commanders of all levels of the CDF, and first of all, the commander of the CDF, Marshal Blucher.
Instead of honestly devoting all his strength to the task of eliminating the consequences of sabotage and combat training of the CD Front and truthfully informing the People's Commissar and the Main Military Council about the shortcomings in the life of the front troops, Comrade Blucher systematically, from year to year, covered up his obviously bad work and inactivity with reports about successes, the growth of the front’s combat training and its general prosperous condition. In the same spirit, he made a multi-hour report at a meeting of the Main Military Council on May 28-31, 1938, in which he hid the true state of the KDF troops and argued that the front troops were well trained and combat-ready in all respects.
Numerous enemies of the people sitting next to Blucher skillfully hid behind his back, carrying out their criminal work to disorganize and disintegrate the troops of the CD Front. But even after the exposure and removal of traitors and spies from the army, Comrade Blucher was unable or unwilling to truly implement the cleansing of the front from the enemies of the people. Under the flag of special vigilance, he left hundreds of positions of commanders and chiefs of units and formations unfilled, contrary to the instructions of the Main Military Council and the People's Commissar, thus depriving military units of leaders, leaving headquarters without workers, unable to carry out their tasks. Comrade Blucher explained this situation by the lack of people (which does not correspond to the truth) and thereby cultivated a sweeping distrust of all the commanding cadres of the CD Front.
5. The leadership of the commander of the CD Front, Marshal Blucher, during the fighting at Lake Khasan was completely unsatisfactory and bordered on conscious defeatism. His entire behavior in the time leading up to the fighting and during the fighting itself was a combination of duplicity, indiscipline and sabotage of the armed resistance to the Japanese troops who had captured part of our territory. Knowing in advance about the impending Japanese provocation and about the Government's decisions on this matter, announced by Comrade. Litvinov to Ambassador Shigemitsu, having received on July 22 a directive from the People's Commissar of Defense to bring the entire front to combat readiness - Comrade. Blucher limited himself to issuing the relevant orders and did nothing to check the preparation of troops to repel the enemy and did not take effective measures to support the border guards with field troops. Instead, quite unexpectedly on July 24, he questioned the legality of the actions of our border guards at Lake Khasan. In secret from a member of the military council, Comrade Mazepov, his chief of staff, Comrade Stern, deputy. People's Commissar of Defense Comrade Mehlis and Deputy. People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Comrade Frinovsky, who were in Khabarovsk at that time, Comrade Blucher sent a commission to the Zaozernaya height and, without the participation of the head of the border section, conducted an investigation into the actions of our border guards. The commission created in such a suspicious manner discovered a “violation” of the Manchurian border by 3 meters by our border guards and, therefore, “established” our “guilt” in the conflict at Lake Khasan.
In view of this, Comrade Blucher sends a telegram to the People's Commissar of Defense about this alleged violation of the Manchurian border by us and demands the immediate arrest of the head of the border section and other “those responsible for provoking the conflict” with the Japanese. This telegram was sent by Comrade Blucher also in secret from the comrades listed above.
Even after receiving instructions from the Government to stop fussing with all sorts of commissions and investigations and to strictly implement the decisions of the Soviet government and the orders of the People's Commissar, Comrade Blucher does not change his defeatist position and continues to sabotage the organization of armed resistance to the Japanese. It got to the point that on August 1 of this year, when talking on a direct line TT. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov with Comrade Blucher, Comrade. Stalin was forced to ask him a question: “Tell me, Comrade Blucher, honestly, do you have a desire to really fight the Japanese? If you don’t have such a desire, tell me directly, as befits a communist, and if you have a desire, I will I would think that you should go to the place immediately."
Comrade Blucher withdrew himself from any leadership of military operations, covering up this self-elimination with the message of our front-line comrade. Stern to the combat area without any specific tasks or powers. Only after repeated instructions from the Government and the People's Commissar of Defense to stop the criminal confusion and eliminate disorganization in troop command and control, and only after the People's Commissar appointed Comrade. Stern as the commander of the corps operating near Lake Khasan, a special repeated requirement for the use of aviation, the introduction of which Comrade Blucher refused under the pretext of fear of defeats for the Korean population, only after Comrade Blucher was ordered to go to the scene of events. Comrade Blucher took on operational leadership. But with this more than strange leadership, he does not set clear tasks for the troops to destroy the enemy, interferes with the combat work of the commanders subordinate to him, in particular, the command of the 1st Army is actually removed from the leadership of its troops without any reason; disorganizes the work of front-line control and slows down the defeat of the Japanese troops located on our territory. At the same time, Comrade Blucher, having gone to the scene of events, in every possible way avoids establishing continuous communication with Moscow, despite the endless calls to him via direct wire from the People's Commissar of Defense. For three whole days, in the presence of a normally working telegraph connection, it was impossible to get a conversation with Comrade Blucher.
All this operational “activity” of Marshal Blucher was completed when on August 10 he gave the order to recruit 12 ages into the 1st Army. This illegal act was all the more incomprehensible since the Main Military Council in May of this year, with the participation of Comrade Blucher and at his own suggestion, decided to call up only 6 ages in wartime in the Far East. This order from Comrade Blucher provoked the Japanese to announce their mobilization and could drag us into a big war with Japan. The order was immediately canceled by the People's Commissar.
Based on the instructions of the Main Military Council;
I ORDER:
1. In order to quickly eliminate all identified major shortcomings in the combat training and condition of the military units of the KDF, replace the unfit and militarily and politically discredited command and improve the conditions of leadership, in the sense of bringing it closer to military units, as well as strengthening defense training activities The Far Eastern theater as a whole - the administration of the Far Eastern Red Banner Front should be disbanded.
2. Marshal Comrade Blucher should be removed from the post of commander of the troops of the Far Eastern Red Banner Front and left at the disposal of the Main Military Council of the Red Army.
3. Create two separate armies from the troops of the Far Eastern Front, with direct subordination to the People's Commissar of Defense:
a) the 1st Separate Red Banner Army as part of the troops in accordance with Appendix No. 1, subordinating the Pacific Fleet operationally to the military council of the 1st Army.
The army's deployment office is Voroshilov. The army will include the entire Ussuri region and part of the Khabarovsk and Primorsk regions. The dividing line with the 2nd Army is along the river. Bikin;
b) the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army as part of the troops in accordance with Appendix No. 2, subordinating the Amur Red Banner Flotilla to the military council of the 2nd Army in operational terms.
The army's headquarters will be located in Khabarovsk. The army will include the Lower Amur, Khabarovsk, Primorsky, Sakhalin, Kamchatka regions, the Jewish Autonomous Region, the Koryak, and Chukotka national districts;
c) transfer the personnel of the disbanded front-line department to staff the departments of the 1st and 2nd Separate Red Banner Armies.
4. Approve:
a) Commander of the 1st Separate Red Banner Army - corps commander Comrade. Stern G.M., member of the military council of the army - divisional commissar comrade. Semenovsky F.A., chief of staff - brigade commander comrade. Popova M.M.;
b) commander of the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army - corps commander Comrade. Koneva I.S., member of the military council of the army - brigade commissar comrade. Biryukova N.I., chief of staff - brigade commander comrade. Melnik K.S.
5. The newly appointed army commanders should form army directorates according to the attached state draft No. ... (note - not attached)
6. Before the arrival in Khabarovsk of the commander of the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army, comrade commander. Koneva I.S. Divisional commander comrade takes over temporary command. Romanovsky.
7. Start forming armies immediately and finish by September 15, 1938.
8. The head of the command personnel department of the Red Army should use the personnel of the disbanded department of the Far Eastern Red Banner Front to staff the departments of the 1st and 2nd Separate Red Banner Armies.
9. The Chief of the General Staff shall give appropriate instructions to the commanders of the 1st and 2nd armies on the distribution of warehouses, bases and other front-line property between the armies. Keep in mind the possibility of using the commanders of the branches of the Red Army troops and their representatives, who are currently in the Far East, to quickly complete this work.
10. To the Military Council of the 2nd Separate Red Banner Army by October 1 of this year. restore control of the 18th and 20th Rifle Corps with deployment: 18 sk - Kuibyshevka and 20 sk - Birobidzhan.
The disbanding departments of the Khabarovsk Operational Group and the 2nd Army of the CD Front should be used to restore these corps departments.
11. Military Councils of the 1st and 2nd Separate Red Banner Armies:
a) immediately begin to restore order in the troops and ensure their full mobilization readiness as soon as possible; inform the military councils of the armies about the measures taken and their implementation to the People’s Commissar of Defense once every five days;
b) ensure the full implementation of orders of the People's Commissar of Defense No. 071 and 0165 - 1938. Report on the progress of the implementation of these orders every three days, starting from September 7, 1938;
c) it is strictly prohibited to separate soldiers, commanders and political workers for various types of work.
In cases of extreme necessity, military councils of armies are allowed, only with the approval of the People's Commissar of Defense, to involve military units in work, provided that they are used only in an organized manner, so that entire units headed by their commanders and political workers are at work, always maintaining their full combat readiness, for which units must be promptly replaced by others.
12. The commanders of the 1st and 2nd Separate Red Banner Armies should report to me by telegraph in code on September 8, 12 and 15 about the progress of the formation of directorates.
People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR Marshal of the Soviet Union K. VOROSHILOV Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army Army Commander 1st Rank SHAPOSHNIKOV
