Chapter 3 Five Hundred Tons of Gold
PS: Subscription supports genuine glorious
It was late at night, the lights in the president's office were still on, and Song Xiaofei was sitting alone in a black swivel chair. ,, he stared at a large-scale map of the world on the wall. From the map, the whole of Siberia, like a broken maple leaf. It is sparsely populated, poorly defended, and has a long land border with Mongolia in China. If China takes advantage of the opportunity to destroy Russia and moves north to annex Siberia, China's territory will be expanded by half. In history, Song Xiaofei alone can go down in history for future generations to admire. But it wasn't easy at the time. Even if Siberia was empty of troops, China's logistical supply lines were too long to rely on the Siberian Railway, which China had repaired after the occupation of the Far East.
In addition to the 250,000 men of Xu Shichang's First Army, Song Xiaofei also ordered Feng Guozhang to lead the 200,000 men of the Second Army from Lanzhou, through the Central Asian Railway, and drive straight into Tyumen along the railway north, specializing in Yekaterinburg, which is the dividing line of Eurasia. As long as it occupies there, the squadron can organize a defensive line along the Ural Mountains, and at the same time, another part of its forces will go south to Astana and organize a defensive line between Astana and the Aral Sea, completely blocking the remaining Russia in the western part of the Ural Mountains.
Looking at the map, Song Xiaofei was very satisfied with China's entire military plan, and his finger swiped lightly on the location of the map in the Ural Mountains, and China's entire military operation, as if it was cutting butter with a knife, started from the northwest, lightly everything along the Ural Mountains, and divided the whole of Russia into two parts, if it went well. China's goals can be achieved in a few months.
At this time, there was a knock on the door, and Rong Rong was holding a cup of coffee. Walking in, he asked with concern, "Darling, haven't slept yet?" ”
Song Xiaofei smiled and said, "Aren't you too?" Is there any news from the Russian side? ”
Rong Rong has now become Song Xiaofei's intelligence officer, responsible for sorting out various battle reports for him. She said: "According to the intelligence sent back from Russia, it seems that Denikin and Kolchak, who originally supported the Kerensky government, have taken action, and both of them have a certain appeal and strength in Russia." At the moment Russia has a part of its forces near Yekaterinburg. ”
Song Xiaofei said: "These are all expected. ”
Rong Rong said: "It's a bit surprising that the British and French are also supporting Denikin. He was supported by England, France. He led the White Guards from the Don River to the south and north, and invaded Moscow in a big way, but the results did not seem to be good. ”
Song Xiaofei said: "This accident is very good. Telegraph to the 1st Army. The plan to send troops was postponed, and when Denikin's army was defeated, the First Army would attack Moscow. What about Kolchak's side? ”
"Okay. Do it right away. Rong Rong nodded and said, "Kolchak's White Guards have now retreated in Omsk. He was about to take away by train what the White Guards had brought from the treasury in Kazan. ”
"It's really vulnerable! Collapsed so quickly? Song Xiaofei felt that this happened too quickly.
"Yes." Rong Rong replied in the affirmative. "What he transported. Legend has it that it is gold. ”
Song Xiaofei smiled: "There is really gold!" Then order the First Army, help him receive it. ”
Rong Rong said: "Is this so good? If it is known by other countries, not really? ”
Song Xiaofei said: "There is nothing wrong, I can guarantee that now the British, the French and the Czechs all want to take possession of the train with gold." When we help them receive it, we save their lives. ”
Rong Rong asked, "Why are there still Czechs in Russia?" Aren't they from Austria-Hungary? ”
Song Xiaofei said: "The Czech Republic is ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but as a nation that is unwilling to be oppressed. Many Czechoslovakians threw themselves into the side of the Entente that was the hostile side of Austria-Hungary in World War I. to act as a fighter determined to bring down the oppressors of the nation. The number of the Czech Legion is now about forty or fifty thousand in Russia. We, the Chinese people, helped Kolchak accept more than 500 tons of gold from him, and he will be grateful to us. ”
The story of Kolchak with more than 500 tons of gold, Song Xiaofei is very familiar, he has seen it in the history books about the First World War: the more than 500 tons of gold is not a small amount, almost equivalent to a large country's financial revenue for a year, Kolchak was killed by these gold. This batch of gold is the bulk of the gold reserves of Tsarist Russia, which was transferred from Petrograd to Kazan for fear of German invasion, and was transported eastward into Siberia during the civil war.
Kolchak's full name was Alexander. Vasilyevich. Kolchak, looking at the surname "Alexander", you know that he was born into a noble family. Kolchak played a small and had a soft spot for his military career. He wakes up early every day to do gymnastics, take cold showers to strengthen his physique, and read the biographies of military commanders who have been famous in battle. In 1888, at the age of 13, he entered the St. Petersburg Naval School, where he read voraciously and knew four foreign languages, including Chinese, which was obscure to foreigners, and remained an admiral in Tsarist Russia, but he was not very loyal to the Romanov dynasty.
The tsar was forced to abdicate, and Kolchak was the first admiral to swear allegiance to the Provisional Government. For him. The most important thing is loyalty to the Motherland. Not a government or a person. "I am not serving the government of a certain person or a certain political party, but for the motherland, which I see above all else," he said. ”
However, he was somewhat disappointed by the outcome of the revolution, expecting the new government to establish order in the country, and in the end the Soviets reaped the fruits of the victory of the revolution, and representatives of the local Soviets came to the admiral and ordered him to surrender his weapons. Kolchak threw his gilded Georgi sword into the sea, telling the delegates, "You did not give me this sword, and you cannot take it away." Later, Kolchak led the gathering of more than 200,000 Russian troops in the Urals and Siberia to launch an attack on the Russian Red Army in St. Petersburg, and after the defeat, Kolchak decided to lead his troops across Siberia of more than 6,000 kilometers. fled to the Pacific coast, where he sought support from the countries of the East.
Kolchak was accompanied by more than 500,000 troops, along with 750,000 anti-Bolsheviks and exiles. Among them, bishops, monks and nuns accounted for 270,000; In addition, there are more than 200,000 noble ladies and their children. At that time, 500 tons of gold nuggets were unloaded from the train and packed into 28 armed transport vehicles. 1.25 million people embarked on a journey of 6,000 kilometers under the leadership of Kolchak, but no one expected that after just a few days of walking, the temperature dropped sharply from minus 30C to minus 60C at the time of departure. The bitter cold wind roared, and the blizzard pierced the body like a tug-of-war. It seems that the marrow of the victim is frozen, even wearing bear skins and wrapping seal skins is useless, and the extreme cold only makes bear skins act as ice masks on their bodies. Thousands of people froze to death. The extreme cold caused the Siberian stallions who were sledding to die one by one. This huge amount of treasure, inherited from Tsarist Russia, had to be thrown into the Siberian wilderness. The blizzard finally subsided, and a deathly silence enveloped all around, sadness, pain, sighs, whispers, hatred, and indignation. Everything disappeared with 250,000 undead. Kolchak was then betrayed as well. Shot by the Bolsheviks.
In Song Xiaofei's time and space, with the military support provided by China, Kolchak's more than 200,000 troops moved, much earlier than in history, and Denikin and the Allied forces that landed in northern Russia were also acting together, plus the German army, the Bolshevik government was attacked on all sides and faced a great defeat. It was even possible to defeat the forces of Denikin and Kolchak.
Therefore, Song Xiaofei was very disappointed in the combat effectiveness of the Russian ** team, and ordered the First and Second Army to seize the offensive in Russia. Let the Chinese First Army absorb Kolchak's defeated troops, reorganize them into a White Russian army, and hand it over to Zhang Zongchang to lead. Zhang Zongchang, although he is nicknamed "Dog Meat General" and "Demon King of the Mixed World" in history, but he is tall and tall, is a typical Shandong man, in his early years as a road construction worker on the Middle Eastern Railway, learned to speak fluent and accurate Russian, and later went to Siberia to pan for gold as the chief foreman, at this time he was recommended by Zhang Zuolin to enlist in the army, and then he was a brigade commander in Xu Shichang's First Group Army.
At the same time, Song Xiaofei had to reflect that he had indeed greatly underestimated the combat effectiveness of the Bolsheviks. His understanding of Bolshevism was further deepened: the dignity of the poor seemed to be inadmissible! In such an era of primitive capitalism in Russia, the contradictions between the landlords and the factory owners, the peasants and the workers were very deep, and such soil could almost be said to be the most suitable for the development of Bolshevism. Such a doctrine is extremely tempting, and it is easy to deceive people's hearts. Although China has now opened up the ban on newspapers, the people enjoy full freedom, and some professors are sympathetic to the Bolsheviks in Russia, Song Xiaofei thought about it and decided to completely restrict Bolshevism in the country. Because Song Xiaofei didn't want such evil things as the Khmer Rouge Massacre and the Russian Purges to happen in China.
Because of President Song Xiaofei's vigorous promotion, the National Assembly of the Chinese Empire soon passed a set of legal systems that restricted the development of Bolshevism in China, and built a comprehensive and systematic legal system involving election laws, criminal laws, education laws, etc. For example, at the time of the reform of the electoral law, the laws of the Chinese Empire stipulated that Chinese political parties must obtain more than 10 percent of the country's votes in order to be eligible to enter the Imperial National Assembly. Due to China's rapid economic development, Bolshevism had few supporters and it was difficult to gain more than five percent of the vote. Therefore, this institutional design prevented the emergence of extremist members in the Imperial National Assembly, thus preventing the Bolsheviks from relying on elections to come to power, and effectively guaranteed the stability of China's political system.
At the level of criminal law, China criminalizes Bolshevist words and deeds. Preaching Bolshevism in public is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years. In terms of education law, the Chinese Empire made the terrorist acts of the Russian Bolsheviks and Chekas, including the crime of mass murder of the Tsar's family and the Russian people, compulsory for young people.
Although there was some controversy in China, the majority of the Chinese people, greatly influenced by traditional Confucianism, were slow to accept the science and democracy that were propagated in the newspapers of the Chinese Empire. (To be continued......) u