The Russian civil war did develop as Long Qian had predicted.

While the Battle of Kazan was still raging, south of Moscow, Denikin's Allied Southern Army and Frunze's Red Army launched a brutal offensive and defense around Kursk, which lasted until the end of May, when Denikin's troops finally failed to hold Kursk and implemented a general retreat in the direction of Kharkiv. The 1st Cavalry Corps of the Red Army, commanded by Budyonny, made a beautiful interlude and inflicted heavy losses on Denikin's headquarters north of Kharkov. After this battle, the plan of the coalition forces to capture Oriel and Tula to force Moscow was considered a failure.

The Battle of Kharkov-Kursk was as bloody as any other battle in Europe, with extremely heavy losses on both sides. According to the battle reports disclosed by both sides, the total number of killed, missing, wounded on both sides in this battle exceeded 500,000. This figure may not be much compared to the heavy battles of the European war, but it is unbearable for two fledgling armies. Sadly, the brutality of the Civil War was on full display, when Denikin's troops executed captured Red Army officers and wounded soldiers, and on both sides of the road from Kursk to Kharkov, gallows hung with executed Red Army officers. The report of a French journalist who followed Denikin's army on a battlefield interview reproduced the brutality of the Battle of Kursk, and the real details were too chilling to read.

The defeat of Denikin's troops at Kursk objectively accelerated the pace of statehood of the Russian Patriot Union. Previously, there had been huge differences between Denikin and Kolchak on the issue of statehood and strategic cooperation, and now Denikin's capital has shrunk. Aware of the strength of the party, the two sides finally made concessions to each other, and the main differences in the founding of the country were temporarily eliminated.

At the end of May, at the instigation of China, the main leaders of the Patriot League gathered in Samara, south of Simbirsk, to convene a congress of the Patriot Union. Denikin abandoned the long-insisted demand for the restoration of Nicholas II, and instead agreed to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, the name of the state was determined to be Great Russia, and Nicholas II was honored as Emperor of Great Russia. This is the result of a compromise between the parties. The Conference drafted an interim constitution. Nicholas II, who became Emperor of Great Russia, appointed Kolchak as Prime Minister and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and Denikin as the Supreme Governor of the South Russian Special Administrative Region and Commander of the Southern Army.

The main outcome of the Samara Conference was not the election of the head. Rather, the capital is determined. The selection of the capital meant the determination of the strategic center of gravity of the Great Russian State. Right now. All of South Russia and Siberia were under the control of the Patriot Union. There are indeed many places where the capital can be built, but none of them are ideal, such as the construction of the capital in Vladivostok by General Artemyev, who was the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Great Russia, which was opposed by everyone, including the Chinese representative, General Fan Deping. The location is just too far away! Denikin wanted to have the temporary capital in Rostov, but Kolchak advocated building it in his old nest of Omsk. When Van der Ping affirmed that the Chinese expeditionary force would withdraw from South Russia, Kolchak's opinion prevailed. Omsk was more beneficial to the economic and military assistance of China, and if the capital was to be built in Rostov, in the event of a military defeat, external assistance from the new empire would be cut off.

As the plenipotentiary representative of Long Qian, Fan Deping participated in the whole process of the Great Russian State Founding Conference. For the time being, everyone including Denikin realizes that the war can only be sustained by relying on Chinese military and economic assistance.

This question was eagerly asked by Kolchak. In this regard, Fan Deping proposed a prerequisite for China's economic and military assistance, that is, to first resolve the question of the ownership of the Eastern Railway Line, which was built during the imperial Russian era. Fan Deping pointed out that the China Eastern Railway was a product imposed on China by Imperial Russia and should be returned to China free of charge as a sign of the friendship of Great Russia to the Republic of China. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the Chinese people to understand why they should provide large-scale military and economic assistance to Great Russia when their own national strength is still weak.

This is a problem that would have been difficult to communicate before. In 1916, when China decided to join the side of the Entente and send an expeditionary force to support Russia, it was proposed to Russia, but the imperial Russian government categorically refused. As time passed, the ownership and management of this main railway line, which was de facto in the hands of the Chinese, was not a big problem, and it was not worth mentioning compared to the victory of the new empire in the civil war and the occupation of Moscow and Petersburg. The negotiations lasted only two hours before the principles were finalized, and the new empire agreed in principle to return ownership of China's Eastern Railway to China in exchange for up to $100 million in economic and military aid from China. The details were further agreed upon, and the remaining issues were mainly the question of the ownership of the large number of Russian citizens who managed and operated the railway line, but it was no longer relevant.

The Samara Conference announced the establishment of Great Russia, and China was the first to recognize the Great Russian State. A few days later, the US government announced the recognition of Great Russia as the sole legitimate government of Russia. Under the mediation of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, and other countries successively recognized the Kolchak government, and a Russian regime that confronted the Bolsheviks was finally established.

Petersburg immediately reacted violently by shooting all the dependents of Nicholas II, who were imprisoned in prison, young and old. The crime is treason. Hearing this bad news, Nicholas II immediately fell ill, anyway, he was just a puppet and did not play a role in the internal and foreign affairs of Great Russia.

The Central Committee of the Buenos Aires Party strongly condemned the criminal acts of Kolchak Denikin and other "bandits" in splitting Russia and betraying the interests of the motherland, and vowed to unify Russia by force, establish a new state in which the people are truly masters of their own affairs, and arrest all traitors. The Kolchak government ridiculed the opposite, citing the Brest Treaty as an example, pointing out that the Bolsheviks were the enemies of all Russia, and calling on the Russian citizens under the rule of the Brest Party to take action to completely eliminate the evil Bolsheviks and rebuild a democratic, free and happy Russia.

The war in Western Europe is still raging, and the major countries that dominate the world have no time to take care of the great changes in Russia. Only the Japanese media strongly criticized China's act of "splitting" Russia, pointing out that China has become a scourge in East Asia and even the world, and the Chinese media immediately launched a pen-and-ink war against Japan, and the already tense relations between the two countries have become even more tense.

The emergence of two parallel regimes in Russia is in the interests of Britain and the United States, and if it continues for a long time, the vast majority of countries in the world are happy to see it, especially in Europe, which has been threatened by Russia for more than a century. So, except for Japan, no one has come forward to accuse China. The mainstream media in Britain, the United States, France and other countries lamented that the war in Europe was a genuine disaster, and the traditional powers had fallen. Some emerging countries have taken advantage of the situation. The latter undoubtedly refers to China, which has played an important role in the great changes in Russia.

However, everyone knows that the real division of Russia can only be established on the premise of military equality between the two sides, otherwise a unified Russia will still appear. In the summer of 1918, were the two sides really equal in strength?

The Bu Party began to answer the offensive of Yudenich's troops.

After the Battle of Kursk. For the time being, the Parti army did not continue to launch a large-scale march to the south. But the forces of the Southern Front under Frunze's command were constantly strengthened. Everyone could see that the party was ready to settle the southern problem first. The main reason for the strict control of the economy in the areas under its rule is the shortage of food, and it is necessary to solve the food problem in the long run. South Russia must be captured. This is something that anyone with a little discerning can tell.

With the main force of the Chinese Expeditionary Force still remaining in eastern Ukraine, whether the Brucella had any scruples became the focus of debate among the British and French military delegations. Now the Anglo-French military delegations had withdrawn from Petersburg and Moscow with the break between their governments and the Bolsheviks, and most of them had gone to the territory controlled by the Chinese expeditionary forces, except for a part that had returned to the country via Finland and Sweden. The reports they sent back to their respective countries almost unanimously agreed that the next battlefield of the Russian Civil War (now called the war between Soviet Russia and Great Russia) would be South Russia, where fate would make its final decision.

No one expected that Trotsky would not move south, but secretly gathered 140,000 men in June to launch a general offensive against Yudenich's troops. After 16 days of fierce fighting, by the end of June, the Red Army inflicted heavy losses on Yudenich's troops, drove the Northwestern Front of Great Russia out of the border to East Prussia, and completely lifted the threat from Petersburg.

By June 1918, the Red Army under Trotsky's command had been organized into 26 armies on three fronts, with a total strength of more than 800,000 troops, and the reserve forces were still being formed. Not only did it basically master the Imperial Russian Navy, but it also built its own air force on the weak basis of Imperial Russia. The party's outstanding organizational skills were perfectly demonstrated by the fact that they not only thoroughly mastered the cities of the occupied territories, but also organized large numbers of task forces to go to the countryside to carry out the harsh class struggle according to their theory, to suppress the landlords and kulaks, to collect surplus grain, and to mobilize the poor peasants to join the Red Army. Under the strict economic blockade and military intervention of the Entente, a miracle was created that stunned everyone, confirming Long Qian's prediction to Lan Sing that it would be difficult to destroy the Bolsheviks militarily.

Admiral Wang Mingyuan, who was still in Kiev, wrote a report to Long Qian in early June, in which he was very concerned that the armed forces of the Bu Party would attack on the southern front, and that the expeditionary force would inevitably have a full-scale clash with the Red Army. At present, the deployment of the expeditionary force is very unfavorable to deal with a possible war with the Bruxun, the 1st Army commanded by Xiong Xun and the 2nd Army commanded by Shi Dashou are still in a posture of fighting the German army, and in the rear of the two group armies, a large blank area has appeared, and once the Red Army occupies Kharkov and continues to move south, it may cut off the communication between the main force of the expeditionary force and Wu Nianzhi's 3rd Army. Therefore, Wang Mingyuan abandoned Vinnytsia, withdrew the 2nd Army across the Dnieper, filled the vacuum between it and Samara, controlled the line of communication, and left the 1st Army on the right bank of the Dnieper to monitor the German army, as long as the Germans did not cross the Vinnytsian line, our army would not react. In the present situation, it seems that our army should be ready to fight the Red Army, and if the Red Army moves south to seize Kharkov and crush Denikin's main force, our army will have to react.

In his report, Wang Mingyuan analyzed the southern Russian form and concluded that the situation was not optimistic for the coalition side (which he was still not accustomed to calling by its new name). He believes that Denikin's troops are no match for Frunze, "The Battle of Kursk showed that the Red Army fought extremely bravely, the sacrifice of its subordinate commanders was admirable, the Denikin troops did not possess the sacrifice of their opponents at all, and the increasing logistical pressure of the Union Army, coupled with the fact that the internal contradictions of the Union Army had not been eliminated by the establishment of the state, the prospects of the Union Army were bleak."

Wang Mingyuan focused on the analysis of the Denikin group, "Kornilov lost ground in the infighting with Denikin, but the Southern Army of the Union still had Kornilov's old troops who were not satisfied with Denikin, one of them. The second is that the 100,000-strong Petliura army has become the biggest unstable factor, and the refusal of Petlira to participate in the Samara conference has shown the signs of civil strife, Petliura and Hetman have colluded together and have been plotting for the independence of Ukraine, and they are becoming more and more estranged from Denikin, and there is news that Petliura is colluding with the Germans, although it cannot be verified, but preventive preparations must be made. After the Battle of Kursk, Petliura's troops became the main force of Denikin's Southern Army due to their small losses, but they have been relegated to Eastern Ukraine to rest and replenish, and they are unwilling to take over the Kharkov front in the name of Denikin, which proves the crisis within the Southern Army of the Alliance, and I have personally reminded Denikin of Petliula, whether he will take the necessary measures is unknown. ”

At the end of the report, Wang Mingyuan pointed out Denikin's anti-Chinese thoughts, "Because the expeditionary force carried out domestic instructions (referring to the relocation of Ukrainian industrial facilities), Denikin showed hatred for our army and regarded the expeditionary force as an aggressor." He once said to his close officers, 'Chinese are not here to help us at all, they are robbers, they have robbed South Russia, and the industrial base of South Russia has been set back by twenty years...... this information is accurate, so it is necessary to be vigilant, and in the long run, if it is judged that the alliance cannot stabilize South Russia, it is better to abandon it and focus on Siberia. ”

Long Qian replied to Wang Mingyuan: Before Germany is defeated, the main force of the expeditionary force should not retreat significantly, and it should still remain on the front line of Ukraine. Agree to adjust the deployment of the expeditionary force, and the specific deployment will be made by you according to the actual situation. The stay of the expeditionary force in South Russia will be of direct help to New Russia, and the support of the alliance will continue to be carried out according to the original strategy, but it should be treated differently and with kindness, and any act of provoking our army should be dealt with sternly and without false tolerance. The end of the European war is imminent, and I hope to boost morale and achieve full success.

The battles in Western Europe were one after another, and Wang Mingyuan could not see the defeat of Germany at all. However, according to Long Qian's instructions, Wang Mingyuan quickly made adjustments to the various units of the expeditionary force, leaving the 1st Group Army (under the jurisdiction of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Armies) under General Xiong Xun on the right bank of the Dnieper River, and the 2nd Group Army (under the jurisdiction of the 11th, 15th, and 16th armies and 1 railway division) under the command of General Shi Dashou to cross the Dnieper River and control the line from Kiev to Luhansk to ensure the safety of the communication line. Wu Nian's 3rd Army was responsible for the area east of Luhansk. For the convenience of command, Wang Mingyuan decided to withdraw the headquarters of the expeditionary force west to Donetsk, and the headquarters of Xiong Xun's 1st Army was stationed in Kiev. Correspondingly, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th armies of the 1st Army made a limited retreat, and the main forces were assembled near Kiev to return Vinnytsia to the coalition forces.

From Kiev to Luhansk, there are two lines of communication, one is the northern one, namely Kiev-Poltava-Kharkiv to Luhansk. The other is the southern front, Kiev - Smera - Dnepropetrovsk - Donetsk to Luhansk. In order not to directly intervene in the Russian Civil War, the expeditionary force opened the northern front and handed it over to Denikin's troops, and firmly controlling the southern front in his hands was tantamount to placing the main forces in the rear of Denikin.

Just as Shi Dashou's 2nd Army abandoned Vinnitsa and crossed the Dnieper River eastward, a sudden event involved the Chinese Expeditionary Force in the Russian Civil War. (To be continued......)