Asiatic Cavalry Division

The Asiatic Cavalry Division (Russian: Азиатская конная дивизия, romanized: Aziatskaya konnaya diviziya) was a White Army cavalry division during the Russian Civil War.[1] The division was composed of Russians, Buryats, Tatars, Bashkirs, Mongols of different tribes, Chinese, Manchu, Polish exiles and many others.[1][2]

Asiatic Cavalry Division
Flag
Active28 May 1919 – August 1921
Country White Russia
(until 29 September 1920)
Bogd Khanate of Mongolia
(after 29 September 1920)

Formation

The division was formed in Transbaikal by Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg on 28 May 1919.[3] It consisted of the remnants from the White Army's disbanded Native Horse Corps.[3] It was 8,000-man strong.[3]

History

Since 18 March 1920, it was directly subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of all the Russian Eastern Regions' armed forces, Ataman Semenov, and from 21 May 1920, in the Far Eastern Army.[3]

On 7 August 1920, it was reorganized into a guerilla detachment.[3][4] Later that same month, the unit crossed the Mongolia–Russia border due to the Red Army's and the Far Eastern Republic's People's Revolutionary Army's attacks.[3] This move to Mongolia was unauthorized by Semenov.[4] In Mongolia, the detachment united with other forces of the White Army, e.g. the units of Colonels N. N. Kazagrandi and A. P. Kaigorodov, in order to combat the Chinese and Red forces.[3] On September 29, the division was excluded from Semenov's Far Eastern Army.[4] During the evacuation of the Far Eastern Army from Transbaikal to Primorye along the CER, the division went a different route.

On 2 October 1920, the division, totalling 900 men,[5] with its four regiments and artillery,[6] entered Mongolia when Bogd Khan agreed to von Ungern-Sternberg's offer to liberate Mongolia from the Chinese occupiers.[7][8] The division's fighting core were eight Transbaikal Cossack squadrons.[6][8] The division freed the Mongolian capital Urga from the Chinese and tried twice to break through in Transbaikal, but suffered heavy losses.[3] In June 1921, she numbered 3,500 sabers but lost up to 2/3 of the composition in the battle of Troitskosavsky.[3] In the final clash, von Ungern's forces numbered about a thousand soldiers.[9] During the retreat, outraged by the cruel treatment of the commander, the officers expelled Ungern, and the division with 2 brigades: under the command of Esaul Makeev and then Colonel Ostrovsky (under the actual leadership of Colonel M.G. Tornovsky) moved to Manchuria where in the August of 1921 was disarmed.

References

Citations

  1. Weirather 2015, p. 101.
  2. Kuzmin 2011, pp. 94–96.
  3. Smele 2015, p. 149.
  4. Sablin 2016.
  5. P. Atwood 2004, p. 573.
  6. Wieczynski 1985, p. 168.
  7. Pratt Atwood 2004, p. 270.
  8. Guber 1973, p. 283.
  9. Patrikeeff 2002, p. 145.

Sources

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