This is the gripping story of a forgotten Russia in turmoil; when the line between government and organized crime blurred into a chaotic continuum of kleptocracy; vengeance and sadism. It tells the tale of how; in the last days of 1917; a fugitive Cossack captain brashly led seven cohorts into a mutinous garrison at Manchuli; a squalid bordertown on Russia's frontier with Manchuria. The garrison had gone Red; revolted against its officers; and become a dangerous; ill-disciplined mob. Nevertheless; Cossack Captain Grigori Semionov cleverly harangued the garrison into laying down its arms and boarding a train that carried it back into the Bolsheviks' tenuous territory. Through such bold action; Semionov and a handful of young Cossack brethren established themselves as the warlords of Eastern Siberia and Russia's Pacific maritime provinces during the next bloody year. Like inland pirates; they menaced the Trans-Siberian Railroad with fleets of armoured trains; Cossack cavalry; mercenaries and pressgang cannon fodder. They undermined Admiral Kolchak's White armies; ruthlessly liquidated all Reds; terrorized the population; sold out to the Japanese; and antagonized the American Expeditionary Force and Czech Legion in a frenzied orchestration of the Russian Empire's gotterdammerung. Historians have long recognized that Ataman Semionov and Company were a nasty lot. This book details precisely how nasty they were.
#1022135 in Books imusti 2011-07-14 2011-07-06Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.69 x 1.19 x 6.85l; 1.95 #File Name: 0415455057528 pagesRoutledge
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