ABSTRACT
By early September 1918, less than a month and a half after Sergei Lazo’s Daurski Front cornered OMO near Manchuli and almost drove it completely out of Russia, Grigorii Semenov was back in Chita. While detractors would later try to pass off Semenov’s conquest of Transbaikalia as an unremarkable occupation on the coattails of the Czechoslovak Legion, the opposite view was equally true, that the Czechoslovaks may never have been successful if OMO had not pinned down so many Reds on the Daurski Front. ‘One without the other would not have been successful’, admonished OMO propaganda. ‘Both together brought victory’. This victory had not come without a cost: Semenov had lost about 1,500 men killed and wounded, with the biggest losses occurring among ‘Chinese and Mongolian infantry detachments’. OMO officers attributed their losses not to any lack of bravery, but to poor comprehension of the Russian language of their officers, which led to fatal misunderstandings on the battlefield. About 100 officers had also sacrificed their lives during the eight-month campaign.1
