Ataman Grigory Semyonov

Grigory Mikhailovich Semyonov was born in 1890 in the Transbaikal to a Cossack family of partly Buryat descent, spoke Mongolian and Buryat from childhood, and was commissioned into the Transbaikal Cossack Host. He served in the First World War with distinction and was sent back east in 1917 by the Provisional Government to raise volunteer units among the Buryats and Mongols — an assignment that put him in position, when the Bolsheviks seized power, to convert a recruiting mission into a private army.

From late 1917 he built the Special Manchurian Detachment on the Chinese Eastern Railway, funded principally by Japan, which saw in him a usable client on the Siberian frontier. By 1918 he controlled Chita and long stretches of the Trans-Siberian, running his territory through armoured trains, seizures of freight and cash, and the notorious killing stations at Adrianovka and Dauria, where the garrison commander was Baron Ungern. Admiral Kolchak, the nominal White supreme ruler, spent much of 1919 unable to control him; in January 1920 the collapsing Kolchak government transferred authority in the Far East to Semyonov anyway.

The relationship with Ungern deteriorated through 1920. Ungern regarded Semyonov as corrupt and unserious about monarchy; Semyonov regarded Ungern as uncontrollable. When Chita's position became untenable, the Asiatic Cavalry Division separated and rode south into Mongolia while Semyonov withdrew east. His regime ended in late 1920 with the advance of the Far Eastern Republic and Red partisans, and he left for Manchuria.

He spent twenty-five years in exile in Japanese-controlled Manchuria and Japan, associated with émigré fascist and anti-Soviet organisations and with Japanese military intelligence. When the Red Army entered Manchuria in August 1945 he was arrested at his home near Dairen, tried in Moscow in a public trial, convicted of terrorism, espionage and armed struggle against the Soviet state, and hanged on 30 August 1946.