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
Secret police NKVD, NKGB, MVD, and KGB. In Nazi Germany, the "Geheimstaatspolizei" (Secret State Police, Gestapo) (1933-1945) was used to eliminate opposition; as part of the Reich Main Security Office, it also was a vital organizer of the Holocaust. Although the Gestapo had a relatively small number membership (32,000 in 1944), "it maximized these small resources through informants and a large number of denunciations from the local population." After the defeat of the Nazis, the East German secret police, the Stasi, likewise made extensive use of an extensive network of civilian informers. Ilan Berman and J. Michael Waller describe the secret police