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the main object of intervention came to be support of theRussian Whites in the Civil War.Both the anti-Bolsheviks and the Allies proved toodivided among themselves to prevent the general driftinto local and sectional anarchy and to withstand theunflagging offensive of the new Red Army. After almostlosing the middle Volga, it drove its opponents fromrailway centre to railway centre right across the Uralsand Siberia to Lake Baikal. The Allies had recognizedas head of the Whites throughout Russia the right-winggovernment in Siberia of Admiral Kolchak, a distinguishednaval officer of great personal bravery but withnothing else to recommend him. Its reactionary policyalienated almost all sections of the anti-Bolsheviks andat the end of 1919 it utterly collapsed. Kolchak himselfwas handed over to the Bolsheviks and shot (January1920). Siberia was theirs.The Far Eastern region, from Lake Baikal to thePacific, hung in doubt for another two years whiledifferent brands of Pinks, Reds, and various Cossackadventurers contended for local mastery, alternatelysupported and opposed by the Japanese. The American,British, and French troops, all of them very few innumbers, had been withdrawn early in 1920, but theJapanese remained in large force on the coast, suspectedon all hands of aiming at the permanent exclusion ofRussia from the Pacific. At length, in 1922, they didevacuate the mainland, largely owing to Americanpressure, leaving the field clear to the Bolsheviks.Three years later Japan recognized the Soviet regimeand evacuated the Russian half of Sakhalin (1925). Inreturn she gained important fishing rights and oil concessionsin the newly discovered Sakhalin oilfield, bothof which became fertile sources of dispute in the subsequentyears. Almost at the same time the Sovietgovernment secured from the Chinese special agreements(1924) in regard to the Chinese Eastern Railway whichbrought it on modified terms largely under Sovietcontrol. Everywhere the Soviet Union was back wherethe Russian empire had been. Four years before, atthe time of the Washington Far Eastern conference, the307