Russia during the early 20th century

pmaitra

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@Peter, @Razor asked a question, and you have given your answer. Let's leave it up to the readers to decide where they want to stand. Let us move on instead of repeating the same thing, as it only increases the thread size, but the discussion stagnates.
 
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asianobserve

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I think you should read the first post of this thread. I clearly mentioned that unsupported claims should not be made more than once. Including posts by @Peter and you, we have had plenty of such claims.

@Razor asked how those numbers were arrived at, and we are looking at a range of 3-60 million, with an error-delta of 57 million.

I don't care whether it is a fact that literature is readily available. I care about whether the content in that literature is a fact or guesstimate.

If you can, answer the question asked by @Razor.

In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin's rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.

''It's important that they published it, although the numbers themselves are horrible,'' Medvedev told the New York Times at the time.

''Those numbers include my father.''

Medevedev's grim bookkeeping included the following tragic episodes: 1 million imprisoned or exiled between 1927 to 1929; 9 to 11 million peasants forced off their lands and another 2 to 3 million peasants arrested or exiled in the mass collectivization program; 6 to 7 million killed by an artificial famine in 1932-1934; 1 million exiled from Moscow and Leningrad in 1935; 1 million executed during the ''Great Terror'' of 1937-1938; 4 to 6 million dispatched to forced labor camps; 10 to 12 million people forcibly relocated during World War II; and at least 1 million arrested for various "political crimes" from 1946 to 1953.
Indeed, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the literary giant who wrote harrowingly about the Soviet gulag system, claimed the true number of Stalin's victims might have been as high as 60 million.
In his book, "Unnatural Deaths in the U.S.S.R.: 1928-1954," I.G. Dyadkin estimated that the USSR suffered 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" during that period, with 34 to 49 million directly linked to Stalin.
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, a Soviet politician and historian, estimated 35 million deaths.
How Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?


The figures quoted above by IBT from various Georgian and Russian historians comfortably puts the deaths directly attributable to Stalin to 20 Million.
 
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nrupatunga

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@Razor @pmaitra @Peter and others.

Before saying that post WW-I USSR/Russia lost lands, we should look at the general mood in europe. From mid-19th century till beginning of WW-I it was time of nationalism and from maybe early 20th century till end of WW-II it was time various ideologies like nazism, fascism, even communism. Communism outlasted other political ideologies of 20th century as it also a victor of WW-II.

So saying in early period of USSR it lost lands which could not have been theirs(finland, baltics, ottomons/turks etc) given the mood/situation, can not be actually termed as "lost lands". Also what was the lands that russia lost out to ottomons/turks who themselves were in huge churn during that time?? Finns aren't slavs. Grand duchy of finalnd didn't have absolute rule by moscow/st.petersburg. Also for USSR, more than finlnd, it was caucasus esp baku with its oilfields which were important for survival of USSR. Even lenin has said so, oilfields in caspian are No.1 priority. Also it should be noted that even though tsar's were driven out, it took some more time to drive/purge non-Bolsheviks (pure russian nationalist, royalists etc).

Even at the begining of WW-II, stalin's main concern of securing of leningrad/st.petersburg rather than having entire finland for USSR. He went to war against finland for this objective in 1939-40.
 
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pmaitra

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@asianobserve, thank you for responding to the question about the methodology used in arriving at the number. We'll leave it to the readers to decide.

@nrupatunga, yes, indeed. Many ethnic minorities are too much trouble to have, and are better let go. Some of that figured in Lenin's calculations. Having them in control would mean a buffer against the west, but also constant insurgencies would bleed the system from within. Just like India lost Pakistan, and I say good riddance, but also, if we controlled that territory, we could build an oil or gas pipeline from Russia and Kazakhstan. We can look at it different ways. The Finns are not homogeneous, and the ancient Rus people actually have Teutonic heritage, and are also cousins of the Danish people. Russians and Finns are related, albeit different.
 
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Peter

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[MENTION=8025]
Also what was the lands that russia lost out to ottomons/turks who themselves were in huge churn during that time?? .
The provinces which border Armenia were Russian. Lenin was forced to give them away during the peace deal.(It could have been intentional too. Lenin was in all probability an agent used to destroy Russian Empire. You can google up Russian gold bullions given away to Britain.)
 

pmaitra

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The provinces which border Armenia were Russian. Lenin was forced to give them away during the peace deal.(It could have been intentional too. Lenin was in all probability an agent used to destroy Russian Empire. You can google up Russian gold bullions given away to Britain.)
That is a good learning opportunity. Please post a link.
 

Peter

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An interesting read. I had learnt about this stolen gold when I watched a History Channel documentary. I never cared to google up the entire story. However it seems I have found out the story now.

KOLCHAKS GOLD

Kolchak's Gold: The End of a Legend
"Kolchak's gold" was the name given to a major portion of the Russian Empire's gold reserve which came into the possession of Admiral A. V. Kolchak's government during the Civil War. Originally housed in Petrograd, the gold was evacuated to the city of Kazan in 1915 owing to the threat that the capital city might be occupied by German troops. For various reasons, gold stored in the Moscow and Samara offices and the Tambov branch of the State Bank was also moved to Kazan'. By the summer of 1918 the State Bank's vaults in Kazan' held more than half of all Russian gold reserves. In time, however, the Volga region, which had been deep in the rear during the First World War, became a major epicentre of the Civil War. Fearing that the bullion would be seized by troops loyal to the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), the Bolsheviks tried to move the reserves, but only managed to ship 100 boxes of gold (valued at 6 million rubles) from Kazan'. At the beginning of August 1918, Kazan' was captured by units of the Czechoslovakian Legion and portions of the Komuch People's Army under the command of Lieutenant Colonel V.O. Kappel' (who would later became one of the most celebrated White Army commanders). The gold was brought to the State Bank's Omsk branch on 13 October 1918. Just over a month later (18 November), Admiral Kolchak was pronounced Supreme Ruler of Russia. The gold that had previously arrived in Omsk would henceforth be known as "Kolchak's gold."

The total amount of gold at the admiral's disposal was valued at 645.4 million rubles. In physical terms the gold, consisting mostly of coins and ingots together with a small quantity of blanks, weighed approximately 1,080 lbs (490.448 kg). Along with Russian currency, the horde was comprised of coins from fourteen other nations including 24,080 German marks (valued at 11.2 million rubles), Spanish alfones, and 532,000 British sovereigns (equivalent to 5.02 million rubles). American dollars, French and Belgian francs, Japanese yen, and Greek drachmas were also present. The most "exotic" part of the collection were 36,000 Chilean condors valued at just over 2.78 million rubles.1

At 9:55 pm on the night of 15 January 1920, Allied forces at the Innokent'evskaia railway station delivered the former "Supreme Ruler of Russia," Admiral A.V. Kolchak, to the plenipotentiary representative of the Irkutsk SR-Menshevik Political Center. In addition to the admiral, the Polical Center also took possession of "Kolchak's gold." Soon, both the admiral and the gold were in Bolshevik hands.

Kolchak was shot on the night of 7 February 1920. The gold that had reached the Bolshevik (approximately 409.6 million rubles worth) was transferred to Kazan'.

But what had become of the remaining gold, valued at almost 236 million rubles?

This question has given rise to a substantial non-academic literature. "Kolchak's gold" has been sought in an abandoned mine and in the vaults of Japanese, British, and American banks. Both the Czech Legion and Japanese militarists have been accused of stealing it. Russian and British novels have been written about it. Films have been dedicated to it and dozens (if not hundreds of articles) have been written on the subject. There has probably never been a feature about Admiral Kolchak in the Russian mass media that does not mention the riddle of "Kolchak's gold."

Indeed, what could be more intriguing than a real-life story about lost treasure?

What have historians had to say about the matter? Unfortunately, historians in Russia never had access to all the documents that would allow the story of "Kolchak's gold" to be told. Available information concerning the funds raised via the sale of the gold or received in the form of gold-backed loans, indicated that toward the end of December 1919, P.A. Buryshkin (the last Minister of Finances for the Omsk Government) transferred money to the accounts of Russian financial agents located abroad. When Soviet special forces and archivists obtained the émigré Prague Archive in 1945, they discovered information concerning all sorts of things...but learned nothing about the missing gold. As it turned out, Russian diplomats and financial agents had been in no hurry to transfer their documents about financial operations to archives. When they did, they often sent them to archives far removed from Moscow. Some, like the former ambassador in Paris Vasilii Maklakov, kept the documents in their possession until death.

As a result, documents that would help us understand what happened to "Kolchak's gold," or, more accurately, the funds obtained from sales of the gold and gold-backed loans, ended up scattered in archives in Russia, the United States (the Hoover Archive at Stanford University and the Bakhmetev Archive at Columbia University) and Great Britain (the Leeds Russian Archive). Working in these archives, I have managed to piece together "the money trail."

According to my calculations, Kolchak's financiers sent a total of nearly 195 million rubles in gold abroad. Part of the gold, worth approximately $35.18 million, was sold between May and September 1919 to French, Japanese, and British banks. The bulk of the gold was deposited in Japanese, British and American banks to serve as collateral for loans. The largest loan (valued at 75 million gold rubles) was provided jointly by the British bank Baring Brothers and the American bank Kidder, Peabody & Co. The British portion of the loan was delivered in pounds sterling (£3 million). The American portion totalled $22.5 million. The gold also served as collateral for a Japanese-backed loan in the amount of nearly 30 million yen (the ruble-yen exchange rate at the time was virtually 1:1). The gold was also used for the acquisition on credit of rifles from the US government and the Remington company as well as Colt machine guns supplied by the Marlin-Rockwell Corporation. One gold shipment valued at $43.55 million rubles sent by rail from Omsk to Vladivostok was seized by Ataman G.M. Semenov. The ataman spent the bullion maintaining his troops and engaging in exotic missions such as trying to persuade the Mongols to fight against the Third International. For this latter mission, the ataman dispatched Baron R.F. Ungern to Mongolia along with seven million gold rubles.

The lion's share of the money received by the government of Admiral Kolchak and later "inherited" by his successors - Generals A.I. Denikin and P.N. Wrangel – was used for the purchase of arms, uniforms, and other military supplies. A sizable sum of money (over $4 million) was used to order bank notes in the USA. (The financiers of the White movement hoped to use the reliable American currency to stabilise the money supply in the regions under their control.) Ultimately, however, in order to avoid the high costs associated with storing the currency, the American notes were incinerated. The money was literally thrown to the wind.

Russian financial agents sold part of the gold to pay off loans. The last transaction was made in spring 1921 by S.A. Uget, a financial agent in the USA. Part of the gold used as collateral was released after the account with the Remington company was settled. This gold was then sold to the Japanese Yokohama Specie Bank for a sum equivalent to $500,000. Interestingly, Russia's foreign-based diplomats planned to keep this money for use by the future government of a post-Bolshevik Russia. In order to hide these funds from Russia's tireless creditors, the money was invested in shares and bills of exchange issued from the London and Eastern Trade Bank; a British bank backed by Russian capital that had been created by Russian entrepreneurs who found themselves in emigration after 1917. The person entrusted to hold the shares Gustav Nobel, nephew of the world famous chemist and prize-founder Alfred Nobel.

"Kolchak's gold," or, more precisely, the money obtained from it, was destined to have an unexpectedly long life following the end of the Civil War. The Russian diplomats who formed the Council of Russian Ambassadors in Paris and its Financial Council took responsibility for the treasure. They used the money to fund the resettlement of Wrangel's army in the Balkans and to help Russians in emigration. The tiny stream of funds gradually diminished but did not dry up until the late 1950s. I have managed to trace the history of "Kolchak's gold" up to the death, in 1957, of the last member of the Council of Ambassadors, V.A. Maklakov.

The story of "Kolchak's gold" is an intriguing chapter in the history of Russia's Great War and Revolution and the subject of my book, Money of the Russian Emigration: Kolchak's Gold, 1918-1957 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008) [Деньги русской емиграции: Колчаковское золото, 1918-1957. Москва: Новое литературное обозрение, 2008]. Newly uncovered archival materials have finally allowed us to put to rest debates that had lasted for almost ninety years.

Oleg Budnitskii, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia)
http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/international/kolchaks.shtml
 

asianobserve

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@asianobserve, thank you for responding to the question about the methodology used in arriving at the number. We'll leave it to the readers to decide.

Why are you so concerned about methodology? I'm sure these Georgian and Russian historians did their counting. The figures that they separately arrived at are pretty horrific whichever you look at it. Comfortably, the figure of 20 Million is arrived at based on these computations.
 
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Razor

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The provinces which border Armenia were Russian. Lenin was forced to give them away during the peace deal.(It could have been intentional too. Lenin was in all probability an agent used to destroy Russian Empire. You can google up Russian gold bullions given away to Britain.)
I wouldn't go so far as to say he was an agent.
A(n) Tool/instrument seems to be a better description.

I'll read that Kolchaks Gold article later (for want of time) and poke holes if I can.
 

pmaitra

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Oh, the Kolchak All Russian Republic, which was different from Soviet Russia. I knew about that, but I need to read this article. Thanks for sharing.

Soviet Russia at one point was one third of what Russian Federation today is. The other two third was the middle to eastern Siberia, up to Kamchatka. Later on, everything became the RSFSR. RSFSR is also called Soviet Russia. In reality, the borders and regions of control were blurred many a time during those years.
 

Peter

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Daily Mail which is actually famous for celebrity leaks and other nonsense has this to say. I advise going to the original article as it has pictures of the Russian noble family.

Search is on for Russia's £50billion of 'missing' gold but it might be at the bottom of world's deepest lake | Daily Mail Online
Fresh attempts are to be made to find the 'missing' gold of the last Tsar of Russia - worth 'up to £50 billion' at today's prices - which is believed to be stashed or lost in Siberia.
Some 95 years after Nicholas the Second and his family were shot by a firing squad loyal to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, six sites have been identified where the royal treasure may be located.
Two of them are in the world's deepest lake and another is in a region notorious for its gulag prison camps during the Stalin era.
Gold from the Russian Imperial state was moved eastward during the First World War and initially held in Kazan on the Volga River.
'One of Britain's most legendary spies, Sidney Reilly, and the colourful, womanising diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who with his lover Baroness Moura Budberg, Russia's 'Mata Hari', was accused of plotting to assassinate Lenin, were directly involved in this operation to prevent the gold falling into Communist hands,' said the Siberian Times .
The bed-hopping baroness - who also slept with writers HG Wells and Maxim Gorky - was the great great aunt of deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.


After the Reds seized power in the capital, Petrograd, now St Petersburg, the anti-Communists moved it by train into Siberia.
Here it was under the control of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the White Russian forces loyal to the royal family during the civil war which engulfed the country from 1918-20.
Certainly some of the treasure was used to buy arms to use against Lenin's forces, but historians are divided over how much was later grabbed by the Communists. Doubts also remain on the quantity of Tsarist gold sneaked abroad or hidden or lost in Siberia

'Groups of intrepid searchers have not given up hope of finding this treasure, convinced that it never fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities, and hoping this will be the lucky year for the royal gold rush,' said The Siberian Times.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the fallen House of Romanov.
'I am convinced that at least some of the tsar's gold remains in Siberia and I continue to hunt for it,' said a researcher working at two of the suspected sites where the Romanov bullion is hidden.
'I will not divulge the locations I am searching but modern technology makes it more likely than ever before to be able to find the gold stashed beneath the surface.'
A Mir-2 mini-submarine in 2010 located allegedly 'shiny metal objects' some 1,300 feet below the surface of Lake Baikal in an area close to where a train carrying gold was rumoured to have crashed are the time of Kolchak's arrest and execution by the Soviet authorities in 1920.
More dives are expected for bullion at this site, but another theory is that White troops carrying gold tried crossing ice bound Baikal - the world's deepest lake - in winter but perished on as temperatures slumped to minus 60C.

When the ice melted in spring, the gold sank to the bottom of the lake.
Other theories link stashes of the the 1,600 tons of gold to two sites in Omsk, where Kolchak had his headquarters. One is in labyrinthine passages under the city, another close to a nearby village, Zakhlamino.
A further possible site is in the former gulag region of Krasnoyarsk, where a mysterious graveyard of some 500 White soldiers is alleged to have been found. Local folklore suggests the forces stashed the gold shortly before they were slaughtered.
Meanwhile author Valery Kurnosov believes MI6 has information on a separate collection of gold and treasures from a tsarist-era bank close to Kazan.
A British secret agent called Roger Gariel was involved in a joint operation in 1928 involving the Soviet government and Western figures to find the gold in a forest near the city. The operation failed and the Soviet government later continued the hunt but never found it, he said.
Historian Oleg Budnitskii, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has disputed the value of the 'Kolchak Gold' inherited from Imperial Russia, saying it was worth £3 billion maximum. He also claims none remains hidden, arguing it was all accounted for.
 

pmaitra

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Why are you so concerned about methodology? I'm sure these Georgian and Russian historians did their counting. The figures that they separately arrived at are pretty horrific whichever you look at it. Comfortably, the figure of 20 Million is arrived at based on these computations.
When I was doing my graduate school, I would go to my professor with the results, happy knowing they are correct. He would dismiss my "correct" results, and insist on knowing how I arrived at those results.

I do not wish to get into any further detail.
 

Peter

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Oh, the Kolchak All Russian Republic, which was different from Soviet Russia. I knew about that, but I need to read this article. Thanks for sharing.

Soviet Russia at one point was one third of what Russian Federation today is. The other two third was the middle to eastern Siberia, up to Kamchatka. Later on, everything became the RSFSR. RSFSR is also called Soviet Russia. In reality, the borders and regions of control were blurred many a time during those years.
My belief is Kolchak and Lenin were all the same. Both the British govt and France wanted to divide up Russia. It is interesting to note that the British funded Lenin and yet when he was in power they denounced the Bolshevik Revolution.
 

Razor

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Why are you so concerned about methodology? I'm sure these Georgian and Russian historians did their counting. The figures that they separately arrived at are pretty horrific whichever you look at it. Comfortably, the figure of 20 Million is arrived at based on these computations.
"Why are you so concerned about methodology?": This is sad at best.
Why am I concerned about methodology ? Exactly because numbers/figure/stories can be manipulated and have been manipulated.
Anyway I'll stop with this as me and Peter don't seem to be reaching an agreement and are wasting time on this. Let readers reading posts (like this)decide themselves or whatever.

Also more that one user seem to want to move on to other topics.
 
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Razor

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@Razor @pmaitra @Peter and others.

Before saying that post WW-I USSR/Russia lost lands, we should look at the general mood in europe. From mid-19th century till beginning of WW-I it was time of nationalism and from maybe early 20th century till end of WW-II it was time various ideologies like nazism, fascism, even communism. Communism outlasted other political ideologies of 20th century as it also a victor of WW-II.

So saying in early period of USSR it lost lands which could not have been theirs(finland, baltics, ottomons/turks etc) given the mood/situation, can not be actually termed as "lost lands". Also what was the lands that russia lost out to ottomons/turks who themselves were in huge churn during that time?? Finns aren't slavs. Grand duchy of finalnd didn't have absolute rule by moscow/st.petersburg. Also for USSR, more than finlnd, it was caucasus esp baku with its oilfields which were important for survival of USSR. Even lenin has said so, oilfields in caspian are No.1 priority. Also it should be noted that even though tsar's were driven out, it took some more time to drive/purge non-Bolsheviks (pure russian nationalist, royalists etc).

Even at the begining of WW-II, stalin's main concern of securing of leningrad/st.petersburg rather than having entire finland for USSR. He went to war against finland for this objective in 1939-40.
By Russian land, I meant land under Russi administration.
Also you are right securing the oil fields were more important.
As was securing the areas around Petrograd.
Maybe I'll answer later in detail, for want of time now.
 
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Peter

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When I was doing my graduate school, I would go to my professor with the results, happy knowing they are correct. He would dismiss my "correct" results, and insist on knowing how I arrived at those results.

I do not wish to get into any further detail.
This is a bit offtopic but I will not comment on this again.
Well absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. The British too say that there was no famine in bengal during 41-42. Amartya Sen who is despised in DFI has stated that the famine was not the fault of the British. Yet we know the truth. However what methodology will we give to prove ourselves as the British had manipulated all the official records since they were in power.

The same goes for Stalin`s murders. @Razor said that the deaths were extrapolated and dubious techniques were used. If I accept that then I would have to accept that the deaths of Bengal famine were also extrapolated. Sadly I cannot do so.
 
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Peter

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I am not questioning you, but just want to know.


Russian Armenia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So russia/ussr didn't loose it to ottomons/turks rather in 1918, armenia(entire cauasus) became independent before falling to ussr again in 2-3 years.
No the provinces of Kars,Batum and Aradahan were permanently ceded to Turkey. This became an issue during the Cold War when Russia wanted to invade Turkey. As a result Turkey asked US for help and so US inducted Turkey in NATO and installed Nuke missiles there. You can google up the issue.

After the Bolshevik advance into Armenia, the Treaty of Alexandropol was superseded by the Treaty of Kars (October 23, 1921), signed between Turkey and the Soviet Union. The treaty allowed for Soviet annexation of Adjara in exchange for Turkish control of the regions of Kars, Igdir, and Ardahan. The Treaty of Kars established peaceful relations between the two nations, but as early as 1939, some British diplomats noted[citation needed] indications that the Soviet Union was not satisfied with the established border.
After World War II, the Soviet Union attempted to annul the Kars treaty and regain the Kars region and the adjoining region of Ardahan. On June 7, 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told the Turkish ambassador to Moscow Selim Sarper that the regions should be returned to the Soviet Union, on behalf of the Georgian and Armenian republics. Turkey found itself in a difficult position: it wanted good relations with the Soviet Union, but at the same time they refused to give up the territories. Turkey itself was in no condition to fight a war with the Soviet Union, which had emerged as a superpower after the second world war. By the autumn of 1945, Soviet troops in the Caucasus were ordered to prepare for a possible invasion of Turkey. Prime Minister Winston Churchill objected to these territorial claims, while President Harry Truman initially felt that the matter should not concern other parties. With the onset of the Cold War, however, the United States came to see Turkey as usefully ally against Soviet expansion and began to support it financially and militarily. By 1948 the Soviet Union dropped its clams to Kars and the other regions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kars
 
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Peter

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Oh, the Kolchak All Russian Republic, which was different from Soviet Russia. I knew about that, but I need to read this article. Thanks for sharing.

Soviet Russia at one point was one third of what Russian Federation today is. The other two third was the middle to eastern Siberia, up to Kamchatka. Later on, everything became the RSFSR. RSFSR is also called Soviet Russia. In reality, the borders and regions of control were blurred many a time during those years.
Also I just learnt that Lenin gave money to Germany in that Treaty of Brest Litovsk.

Russian-German financial agreement of August 1918
In the wake of Russian repudiation of Tsarist bonds, nationalisation of foreign-owned property and confiscation of foreign assets, Russia and Germany signed an additional agreement on August 27, 1918. Russia agreed to pay six billion marks in compensation to German interests for their losses.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lenin it seems did pay off his German investors. Sadly Stalin undid all of this.
 

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