Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Powers to withdraw from North Russia and Siberia in 1920, though Japanese forces occupied parts of Siberia until 1922 and the northern half of Sakhalin until 1925. In 1917, Russia was in a state of political strife, and public support for World War I and the Tsar was dwindling. The country was on the brink of revolution. The February Revolution changed the course of the war; under intense political pressure, the Tsar abdicated and the Russian Provisional Government was formed, led initially by Georgy Lvov and later by Alexander Kerensky. The Provisional Government pledged to continue fighting the Germans on
Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia) the under-secretary, who remained only at the head of the corps of gendarmes; but by a law of 24 September 1904 this was again reversed, and the under-secretary was again placed at the head of all the police with the title of under-secretary for the administration of the police. By World War I, the Department had spawned a counter-intelligence section. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Gendarmes and the Okhrana were disbanded as anti-revolutionary. Having won the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks disbanded the "tsarist" police forces and formed an all-proletarian "Workers' and Peasants' Militsiya" under the NKVD of the