Revolt and Invasion
1932(Cont.) – The supply lines of guns, bombs and grain had been flowing into the southern SSR’s for days now. The order for the OMB to initiate the revolt came on the 5th of November, 1932. Armed peasants, most of whom were paid in grain from the Baron’s farms, stormed rural village and town centers, overpowering the lightly armed commissars and secret police. Soon, the cities were besieged by peasant militias where they were soon joined by urban militias, also paid in foreign grain. The Red Army was deployed first from bases within the Ukraine and Central Asia, then, were followed by reinforcements from elsewhere. OMB saboteurs did everything they could to hinder and slow down the Red Army’s mobilization by destroying bridges, mining roads and committing arson on a vast scale, continuing their practice of burning down forests and farms. The peasant attacks were mostly ill-prepared and badly planned but still succeeded in some places.
The revolt in major cities like Kiev, Odessa, Kharkhov, Astrakhan, Astana and Baku were put down immediately but massive street fighting and looting ensued. In some small cities however like Tselinograd, Voroshilovgrad, Dushanbe and Leninabad, the mob succeeds in taking over. In the next few days, the tide in some major cities had turned as Kharkhov, Odessa, Poltava and Astrakhan fell to rebel forces. By this time, Stalin had declared a state of marshal law in the southern SSR’s but the whole revolt was downplayed by Soviet propaganda. Fighting between rebel forces and the Red Army continued until several cities like Odessa and Astana were reclaimed by the Red Army on the 11th but these cities were still inhabited by armed hostile populations who had to be subjugated. Also, much of Kiev’s inner city was damaged extensively by a large fire, one that could have been started by either the mob or the OMB. Similar fires had spread across the other cities embroiled in the revolt. Two major turning points in the revolt happened on the 13th and 14th when soldiers of the Red Army joined rebel forces in Kirovograd. These soldiers were soon joined by their comrades-in-arms in the nearby cites of Donelsk and Zaporozhye. The next turning point happened aboard the Battleship Dzherzhinsky which was called to service in Baku, a city that had just fallen to rebel forces. Upon reaching Baku harbor, the Red Navy officers had mutinied throwing their captain overboard. The Dzerzhinksy then took part in the revolt by providing naval shelling, something which it was supposed to do to squash the revolt. A similar incident occurred with two ships, the Poltova and the Lenina in the Crimea.
The Baron’s armies along with the armies of Japan and Poland invaded on November 19, when the revolt was in the last throws of major armed resistance. Operation Mahakala started out in the East when the Baron’s tank divisions along with Japanese ones crossed the frontier into Soviet territory. The towns of Novosibirsk and Tomsk fell immediately. The small chunks of Taymyrsky and Yakutia belonging to the Soviets also fell without a fight. The first major battle took place in Omsk where the Baron’s tanks battled the Red cavalry, still on horseback. Omsk fell on the 22nd as the Baron met up with rebel forces from Kazakhstan’s northern most towns. The newly supplied and replenished rebel armies marched south to Dzezhkhazgan, where the Red Army was defeated the next day, as the Baron’s armies marched toward Tyumen and Kurgan. Also, the Japanese Air Force, repeating tactics from the Manchurian war flew into the USSR and annihilated the barely existent and obsolete Soviet Air Force and started a grand bombing campaign that supported both the invading land forces in western Siberia and the rebel forces in Central Asia. Soon, all of Central Asia except a few coastal cities fell to the rebels, all other cities that remained in Soviet hands were bombed into submission by the effective Japanese bombing campaign. The Red Army POW’s were either imprisoned or recruited to fight their former government in the newly created Russian Liberation Army. Sepailoff and Prince Daichin, who commanded tank divisions in the westernmost parts of Siberia, succeeded in crossing into Archangelsk beginning a battle on the 26th.
In the west, Polish forces crossed a day after the war began in the east, creating two fronts, the Northern and Southern fronts. The Southern Front was characterized by initial success in battles in near Zhytomir and Vinnitsa, resulting in the Polish capture of those cities by the 24th. However, the Polish still had to consolidate those gains by winning a battle in Berdychov which lied in between. They did this by the 26th and soon moved on into Cherkasy and Yelisavetgrad were they were assisted heavily by the rebels. After these victories, Polish forces encircled Kiev which was already being besieged inside by the rebel mob. Kiev fell after a week. Kharkhov followed suit by the beginning the 4th of December. The Ukrainians had greeted the Poles as liberators, a sentiment which would be exploited with the creation of the Ukrainian Liberation Army, a puppet Ukrainian Army similar to its Russian counterpart. Ukrainians joined the Army with pride as they went to battle in the Northern Front. This front told a different story. Where in the South, it was success after success; the Northern Front began with the epic, bloody Siege of Minsk. The first phase of the siege saw Polish artillery and bombers pound Minks to the ground. The second phase saw bloody urban warfare that eventually led to Soviet defeat on the 7th of December. The Polish Armies of the Northern and Southern fronts along with the ULA joined together in Novgorod, where the Soviet enemy was encircled and annihilated, and headed toward Stalingrad.
In Moscow, Stalin, in a paranoid frenzy, arrested Kamenev, Zinoviev, Rykov, Bukharin and all of his remaining political rivals under accusations of being part of an internal Polish-Japanese sponsored Anti-Party Terrorist Center. He summoned all of his marshals to a meeting where they convened to discuss a possible defense strategy using what was left of the Red Army. As the marshals talked amongst themselves and made busy with a large map on the table, Stalin disrupted them with the words “We inherited Lenin's legacy and we fucked it up”. 1932 was coming to a close and as shown by the progress of the invasion, so too was Soviet history.
The Red part is Sternbergia.