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A STORM IN THE EAST – PROLOUGE



It was perhaps not all that surprising that the Soviet Union and Japan, two expansionist powers who just happened to be close neighbours, often butted heads in the Mongolian borderlands.
Tensions between the two had been high for decades, and had erupted into open conflict on a number of occasions. Japan had decisively defeated Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, and had occupied Vladivostock for several years during the Russian civil war. For the Imperial system of Japan it was only natural to despise their northern communist neighbour

But, by the 1930s, the Soviet Union was a resurgent power, and had become a major regional rival to the Japanese. Under Stalin the Red Army had enjoyed high military spending and by 1938 had began to match Japanese troops in terms of numbers and outnumber them in armour. The Japanese High Command were particularly concerned about the threat Soviet submarines posed to Japanese shipping, and the ease with which Soviet bombers, operating out of Vladivostok, would be able to reach Tokyo.

The border between Soviet backed Mongolia and the Japanese puppet of Manchuko was hotly disputed and had led to violent skirmishes more than once.. Japanese backed Manchuria claimed that the border ran along the Khalkhin-Gol river, whereas the Mongolians argued that the border actually ran just east of Nomonhan village.
The most notable of these shirmishes had been the battle for Lake Khasan in North Eastern China. The conflict started on July 15, 1938, when the Japanese attaché in Moscow demanded the removal of Soviet border troops from the Bezymyannaya Hills to the west of Lake Khasan in the south of Primorye, not far from Vladivostok, claiming thiswas Japanese. The demand was promptly rejected.


Soviet soldiers on Zaozyornaya Hill.

The first Japanese attack on July 29 was repelled, but on July 31 the Soviet troops had to retreat, bring the Japanese uncomfortably close to Vladivostock. However under the command of the chief of the Far East Front, Vasily Blücher, additional forces were moved to the zone of conflict and after several brutal engagements the Japanese forces were repulsed and the Japanese prime minister was sent to the United States[citation needed] to ask for peace.
Although the Japanese had been soundly whipped the small skirmishes continued however Lake Khasan was hoped by both sides to be a one off failure in communications and that no other large scale engagements would take place.

But merely 7 months later the skirmishes would get severely out of hand once more, when a few Mongolian cavalrymen would unwittingly change history...

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IBC and I came up with the idea for his little TL a few days ago, we hope you enjoy it :)
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