ABSTRACT
The second phase of imperial transformation, which began with the collapse of the Tsarist government in 1917 and ended in much of European Russia and Western Siberia with the consolidation of the Bolshevik control in 1920, showed left-liberal nationalism incapable of keeping the country together. The advances of the Central Powers in the Western peripheries, theradical particularisms of the Bolsheviks and their opponents in the White Movement, secessionisms, and the Allied Intervention (1918–1922) contributed to the empire’s breakup. Unlike in parts of European Russia, until very late into 1917 the majority of politicians in the Russian Far East shared the hopes of reassembling the Russian state through the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. The early Soviet regime in the region also proved relatively moderate. Regional Bolshevik leaders seemed open to regionalism, proclaiming the Soviet Republic of the Far East and the Amur Socialist Republic, which made the region similar to other peripheries. The Bolshevik takeover gave rise to anti-Bolshevik secessionisms across the former empire. In the region, the Allied Intervention became a catalyst for defensive Russian nationalism which did not view the Bolsheviks as the main enemy.
