Asiatic Cavalry Division


The Asiatic Cavalry Division was White Army cavalry division during the Russian Civil War. It was formed as the Asiatic Brigade on 28 May 1919 in Transbaikal by Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg from the remnants of the disbanded Native Horse Corps. The brigade was renamed to the Asiatic Cavalry Division on 5 February 1920. The division was composed of Russians, Buryats, Tatars, Bashkirs, Mongols of different tribes, Chinese, Manchu, Polish exiles and many others.

History

Since 18 March 1920, it was directly subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of all the armed forces of the Russian Eastern Outskirts, Ataman Semenov, and from 21 May 1920, in the Far Eastern Army.
On 7 August 1920, it was reorganized into a partisan detachment, which in August voluntarily left for the Russian-Mongolian border and on 29 September was expelled from the Far Eastern Army. Having left for Mongolia, the detachment again became known as a division and at that time numbered 2,400 sabres.
During the evacuation of the Far Eastern Army from Transbaikal to Primorye along the CER, the division went to Mongolia, where it fought against the Chinese and red forces. The division freed the Mongolian capital Urga from the Chinese and tried twice to break through in Transbaikal, but suffered heavy losses. In June 1921, she numbered 3,500 sabers but lost up to 2/3 of the composition in the battle of Troitskosavsky. During the retreat, outraged by the cruel treatment of the commander, the officers expelled Ungern, and the division with 2 brigades: under the command of Esaul Makeev and then Colonel Ostrovsky moved to Manchuria where in the August of 1921 was disarmed.

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