6 The Caucasus Group and Japan
The year 1931 marked an important turning point in the interwar history of the world.
In September of that year, the Kwantung Army of Japan faked an attack on the rail-
ways under its control, then blaming the Chinese, began a full-scale military invasion
of Manchuria. Although the Mukden Incident (or Liutiaohu/Jiuyiba [September 18]
Incident) was not engineered or even sanctioned by Tokyo, the radical conspirators
who staged it enjoyed enough support in the government and army for it to succeed.
Their long-held ambition was to capture Manchuria in order to force it to serve the im-
perial needs of resource-poor Japan. Such blatant imperial aggression was bound to
complicate Tokyo’s international standing to the extreme. Once presented with a fait
accompli, however, Tokyo went along, willingly or not, with the military conspirators,
who escaped very lightly as Japan struggled with the political, diplomatic, and mili-
tary consequences of the invasion. Ultimately, in February 1932, Tokyo let the radical
military wing set up a puppet government in Manchuria, known as Manchukuo (or
Manzhouguo), with Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, installed as its nomi-
nal emperor. Seven months later Tokyo “recognized” the new state with its capital in
Changchun (now renamed Xinjing, “New Capital”).
Manchukuo encompassed not only Manchuria but also part of Inner-Mongolia
(Hsingan or Xing’an or Barga). The foundation of Japan’s puppet state thus brought
Japan and the Soviet Union face-to-face over borders stretching some 4,000 kilometers
(2,500 miles). (In addition, Manchukuo shared several hundred kilometers of borders
with Outer Mongolia, or the Mongolian People’s Republic, the rst satellite state of
the Soviet Union.) Moscow’s oers of a nonaggression pact were refused by Japan. As
tensions mounted in the east, Moscow fought hard to ease tensions in the west. In
1932 Moscow concluded a nonaggression pact with Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Poland
and France, followed in 1933 by a similar treaty with Italy. The sharp realignment of
international relations led inevitably to a realignment of émigré forces against the So-
viet Union. Poland and the Polish-sponsored Promethean movement gave way to the
rightist movements sponsored by Japan and Nazi Germany (after Hitler’s ascension to
power in 1933). The “Caucasus group” led by Haidar Bammat and nanced by Japan
now became the most active in subversion against Moscow.¹
6.1 Moscow versus Tokyo
Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and the foundation of Manchukuo were the cause of
the instability that led eventually to the Paci c War. In this Moscow played a promi-
1 See Georges Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens entre URSS et puissances oc-
cidentales: Le cas de la Géorgie (1921–1945)(Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), ch. 3.
©2016 Hiroaki Kuromiya and Georges Mamoulia
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