The Nikolayevsk incident or Nikolaevsk incident (Russian: Николаевский инцидент) was a series of mass killings that took place in the region of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur during the Russian Civil War. The massacre and terrorism perpetrated by the Red Army under Yakov Tryapitsyn (a group of Russian Bolshevik-anarchist, Chinese and Korean guerrillas led by Ilya Park) killed thousands of Russians in Nikolaevsk and devastated the region.
In general, historians agree that the event was a massacre in which there was "unprecedented and unprovoked brutality" that killed and devastated many people. Following a hastily prepared court-martial, Tryapitsyn and 29 of his colleagues were executed, while another 33 received prison terms.
According to Bolshevik documents and trial verdicts, half of the population was killed in the massacre, of which the majority were Russians. At the time of the massacre, Japan deliberately omitted facts about the thousands of Russians slaughtered by the Red Army and exaggerated the number of Japanese killed. As a result, the Nikolayevsk Massacre is often mistakenly perceived as a 'massacre against the Japanese'.
Prelude: Red Terror in the Russian Far East
According to Dr. Alexey Teplyakov, episodes of Red massacres were not new to the inhabitants of the Russian Far East until 1920.
In March 1918, Red Guards seized Blagoveshchensk after Ataman I. M. Gamov's mutiny, resulting in over a thousand resident deaths. Chekist I. P. Pavlunovsky reported in 1922 that mine workers stormed the city and massacred perceived bourgeoisie, killing those suspected of rebellion or sympathy, including most of the city administration and mining office staff.
Press reports in spring 1919 detailed Red atrocities in Blagoveshchensk, stating over 1,000 locals were shot, and grave excavations began. After the city's capture, many students reportedly joined anti-Red forces.
In early April 1920, P. V. Volgodsky, Kolchak's former head of government, met officers who escaped Red Terror in Vladivostok. They claimed that despite a socialist coalition government, Bolsheviks were active, arresting and torturing White officers before killing them, often staging fake escape attempts.
Far Eastern Socialist-Revolutionary-Maximalist I. I. Zhukovsky-Zhuk noted that many revolutionaries in the Far East, particularly in Blagoveshchensk, employed "ragtag" methods of ruthless revolutionary struggle, including frequent extrajudicial killings. He cited Amur authorities like Matveev and S. Dimitriev, who executed numerous suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial, a practice widely known but largely unopposed, except by Blagoveshchensk anarchists.
However, according to Dr. Alexey Teplyakov, Tryapitsyn's band members managed to carry out the Red Terror in its most ruthless form, when almost all socially and nationally alien elements were physically exterminated, along with a considerable number of "socially close" people.
Massacre
The march to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur
Anarchist Yakov Ivanovich Tryapitsyn, a Red Army Partisan leader who came from Petrograd, was a World War I volunteer who rose to the rank of non-commissioned officer. In the Russian Far East, he worked in the Olginsky district and the Suchan valley of Primorye. At the end of 1919, Tryapitsyn was sent by the Military Revolutionary Staff of Red Army Partisan detachments and revolutionary organizations of Khabarovsk and Nikolaev districts to the lower reaches of the Amur River to organize an insurgency there. There is a version that Tryapitsyn left with the detachment arbitrarily, dissatisfied with the passivity of Red Army Partisan command. Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko, an active Socialist-Revolutionaries-Maximalist from Blagoveshchensk, left with him as commissar.
The movement of about two thousand troops of Tryapitsyn and Lebedeva down the Amur River was accompanied by the almost complete extermination of rural intellectuals (for revolutionary "passivity") and anyone who looked like a town "bourgeois"; priests were drowned in ice-holes, taken prisoners, including those who voluntarily went to the partisans, were shot.
One of Tryapitsyn's assistants, Ivan Lapta (Yakov Rogozin), organized a Red Army detachment that "raided villages and camps, robbed and killed people," destroyed those who did not give up gold at the Limursk mines, and looted the Amgun gold mines and surrounding villages. Lapta's detachments, together with the Tryapitsyns Zavarzin, Bitsenko, Dyldin, Otsevilli, and Sasov, killed hundreds of Indigenous peoples of Lower Amurian even before the occupation of the regional center.
There were about 200 Chinese in Tryapitsyn's detachment, and the same number of Koreans. The Koreans were commanded by Ilya Pak. The Chinese and Koreans were recruited from the gold mines of the taiga. Tryapitsyn paid them generous cash up front, promising them gold from the mines and Russian women. Recruited from the gold mines, these troops were criminal and brutal. Partisan chiefs were appointed by the most determined and cruel personalities, who kept the units in submission by giving them the right to plunder and kill.
Lepers were also victims of an incident in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur. In December 1919, the army of the anarchist Tryapitsyn invaded the living quarters of the Leper colony. For two days the Tryapitsyns captured and robbed people who passed the leprosarium on their way to and from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur and Krasnoye. Paramedic had to leave the place.
March
The town of Nikolaevsk-on-Amur was located some distance from the main events. However, as part of the 1918 intervention, a Japanese garrison was stationed there because of the city's strategic location at the mouth of the Amur River, opposite Sakhalin Island. In addition, Nikolaevsk-on-Amur had been a gold mining center since the late 19th century. In addition to the small garrison stationed there in 1918, Japanese citizens, including the consul and his family, lived in the town.
When the Japanese occupied Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in September 1918, the Japanese navy quickly withdrew, leaving only the Japanese army behind for fear of the river freezing over. In addition to the original Russian and Chinese inhabitants, the town was also home to Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilian immigrants. Nikolayevsk-on-Amur was cut off from the sea by the frozen river, making overland transportation difficult. The Japanese troops tyrannically controlled Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.
To delay the intervention in the south of the Far East (mainly in Primorye, Priamurye and northern Sakhalin), Japan used as an excuse the actions of extremist guerrilla groups of looting and outright terror against the population (mostly wealthy) and foreigners (Japanese, Americans). Dr. Azarenkov said, For these extremist guerrillas, "red" was a guise.
In 1920, Soviet Russia and Japan discussed a buffer state in the Russian Far East. Recognizing that Kolchak's government had collapsed, the Japanese agreed to allow the Red Army to enter Vladivostok in late January 1920. With so many foreign troops stationed in Primorye, the Bolsheviks were forced to accept the socialist zemstvo. At the same time, Tryapitsyn besieged, and after an artillery bombardment at the end of February, captured Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, where a Japanese battalion (350 men) and about the same number of white garrisons were stationed. There were no roads to it before the ice drift, so the defenders of the almost 20,000-strong city could rely only on their own forces. The Red Army entered the area after promising the Japanese garrison and the white garrison that it would not commit atrocities. The Red Army signed a pact with the Japanese garrison on February 28, 1920, promising to abide by the agreement. Nevertheless, the Red Army immediately began looting and killing.
Survivor M. V. Sotnikov-Goremyka recalled detainees being hastily shot near the prison, stripped to their underwear. He noted that bodies piled up, many men fainted, but women faced death bravely. The militia killed 72 people. The next day, their naked corpses were taken by sledge and drowned in ice holes, with the perpetrators saying, "Let's send them to Japan."
Based on Nikolaev S. I. Burnashev's testimony, guerrillas agreed with the Japanese military not to make arrests or retaliate. However, on the night of March 8–9, they killed 93 people taken from prison. Burnashev saw the bodies on the shore near Kuenga on March 9. On March 10, the Japanese issued a flyer stating they would take shooting measures due to the Reds "ruining the people," yet arrests continued to increase. On the evening of March 11, the Reds demanded the Japanese commanders surrender their arms by the next morning. That night, around 2 a.m., shooting began as the Japanese advanced.
The red guerrilla forces entered the city after agreeing to peace with the Japanese garrison, but once inside, they ignored the agreement and killed residents. The red guerrilla forces arrested and executed civilians sympathetic to the White Movement and even wealthy civilians. Since then, red guerrilla units have provoked the Japanese garrison. The red guerrillas gave the Japanese garrison an ultimatum to disarm. The Japanese garrison refused the ultimatum. This led to the armed conflict on March 12. The Japanese realized that they were dealing with a Red Army that did not recognize any agreements, and that Tryapitsyn wanted to provoke the Japanese into action with this ultimatum. And when the Red Army gave the Japanese garrison an ultimatum to disarm, Major Ishikawa, the Japanese garrison commander, refused. He launched a preemptive strike on 13 March. Tryapitsyn received two wounds in the surprise attack but was able to organize resistance, and after a fierce battle, the Japanese garrison was crushed in numbers, and the consul and all the staff died in the consulate set on fire by the guerrillas.
Survivor S. Strode described horrific piles of mutilated prisoner corpses found during the Japanese intervention. He searched through a heap of 350-400 bodies, recognizing many familiar faces like Kvasov and engineer Komarovsky, who showed signs of severe torture. He noted Komarovsky's twisted jaw and nose, and Vishnevsky with hands tied and chest bayoneted. Strode also saw a completely broken head of Michael Andrzhievsky, a Japanese soldier with a hanging tongue, and the shipowner Nazarov, eyes gouged out but with a laughing face. Many corpses, both male and female, were dismembered or had visible bayonet wounds to their genitals, and one woman had miscarried. Strode saw the undressed bodies of women like Pluzhnikova, Kukhterina, and Klavdia Meshcherinova. Chinese workers then used poles to push these corpses into an ice-hole with "gyrating laughter." A third pile of 75-100 bodies reportedly included Mrs. E. S. Lurie and engineer Kukushkin.
Another eyewitness reported that by March 11, 1920, prisons and detention facilities held around 630 arrestees (500 in prison, 80 at the militia, 50 in the brig). On March 12 and 13, partisans killed all Russians in these facilities, totaling over 600, mostly intellectuals. Arrests, searches, property confiscations, and murders continued daily. Victims were brutally killed with checkers, axes, bayonets, and logs, often by Red Army partisans specifically aiming to "kill at least one bourgeois."
The archives speak of the numerous sincere complaints of both Red Army Partisan and the newly born Soviet authorities in the affluent Siberian and Far Eastern regions about the bourgeoisie of the population, poorly enriched with a proletarian layer. The authorities assessed the composition of the urban population of Novonikolaevsk as petty-bourgeois and speculative. According to the assessment of the local revcom, half of the population of Pavlodar, Semipalatinsk province in 1920 was "counter-revolutionary Cossacks", and a third was bourgeoisie. Secretary of the Altai provincial committee of the RCP (b) Ya. R. Yelkovich noted in the spring of 1921 that "most of the population of the province was kulak peasantry". In March 1921, the staff of the Gosudolitohrana of the DVR characterized Zabaikalsk Nerchinsk as "a center of counterrevolution and speculation". D. S. Buzin (Beach) noted that Nikolaevsk-on-Amur's population primarily consisted of "fishermen, goldsmiths, steamship owners, speculative traders, and bourgeoisie officials," with very few workers or supporters of the revolution. But a native resident of the city wrote about the labor layer differently: in 1919, the booming fishing industry attracted "new entrepreneurs and masses of workers" to the city. However, the latter negatively perceived the Bolshevik agitation to join the Red Army Partisan, because they received good salaries and were afraid of the Japanese.