Yakut Revolt
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The Yakut revolt () or the Yakut expedition () was the last episode and final set of military engagements of the
Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
. The hostilities took place between September 1921 and June 1923 and were centered on the Ayano-Maysky District of the
Russian Far East The Russian Far East ( rus, Дальний Восток России, p=ˈdalʲnʲɪj vɐˈstok rɐˈsʲiɪ) is a region in North Asia. It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asia, Asian continent, and is coextensive with the Far Easte ...
.


Revolt

An uprising flared up in this part of
Yakutia Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million ...
in September 1921. About 200 White Russians were led by Cornet Mikhail Korobeinikov. The Communist Party sent more troops to deal with the revolt. Among the reinforcements was a contingent of the Far Eastern Republic, led by Nestor Kalandarishvili, which arrived to assist in counter-insurgency operations in January 1922. In March 1922, the Whites established the Provisional Yakut Regional People's Government in Churapcha. On 6 March, Kalandarishvili's unit was ambushed and he was reportedly killed by the insurgents. However, historians have also proposed that he may have been murdered in an internal purge by local
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...
who regarded him as a potential threat to their power or politically unreliable. On 23 March, Korobeinikov's Yakut People's Army, armed with six machine guns, captured the major town of Yakutsk. The
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
garrison was decimated. In April, the White Army contacted the Provisional Priamurye Government in Vladivostok, asking for help. On 27 April, the Russian Bolshevik government declared the Yakut ASSR and sent an expedition to put down the uprising. In summer 1922, the Whites were ousted from Yakutsk and withdrew to the Pacific coast. They occupied the port towns of Okhotsk and Ayan and again asked Vladivostok for reinforcements. On 30 August, the Pacific Ocean Fleet, crewed by about 750 volunteers under
Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was norma ...
Anatoly Pepelyayev, sailed from Vladivostok to assist the White Russian forces. Three days later, this force disembarked in Ayan and moved upon Yakutsk. By the end of October, when Pepelyayev captured the locality of Nelkan, he learned that the Bolsheviks had wrested Vladivostok from the White Army and the Civil War was over. When the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
was formed on 30 December 1922, the only Russian territory still controlled by the White Movement was the region of the Pepelyayevshchina ("пепеляевщина"), so-called in the Soviet historiography, that is, Ayan, Okhotsk and Nelkan. A unit of Bolshevik forces under Ivan Strod was sent against Pepelyayev in February 1923. On 12 February, they defeated Pepelyayev's forces near Sasyl-Sasyg; in March, the White Army retreated from Amga. On 24 April 1923, the ships ''Stavropol'' and ''Indigirka'' sailed from Vladivostok for Ayan. They contained a contingent of the Red Army under Stepan Vostretsov. Upon his arrival in Ayan on 6 April, Vostretsov learned that Pepelyayev had evacuated to Nelkan. The remainder of the White Army were defeated near Okhotsk on 6 June and near Ayan on 16 June. 103 White officers and 230 soldiers were taken prisoner and transported to Vladivostok. Pepelyayev himself was captured after the battle of Ayan, and he would spend the next 13 years in the
gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
camps before being executed during the Stalinist purges in 1938.


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Works cited

* * * * * * {{Authority control Military operations of the Russian Civil War in 1921 Military operations of the Russian Civil War in 1922 Conflicts in 1923 Anti-Bolshevik uprisings Sakha Republic Khabarovsk Krai 1921 in Russia 1922 in Russia 1923 in Russia 1922 in the Soviet Union 1923 in the Soviet Union 1921 in Asia 1922 in Asia 1923 in Asia History of the Russian Far East Military history of the Arctic Battles involving Soviet Russia (1917–1922) White movement