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
Polish Operation of the NKVD it was called in NKVD circles). The long lists of Poles condemned by a lower NKVD organ (so-called "dvoika", a two-man team) during early meetings, were then collected into "albums" and sent to the midrange NKVD offices for a stamp of approval by a "troika" (a three-man team; a communist official, NKVD leader, and party procurator). Poles were the first ever major Soviet population group to be sentenced in this manner. After the approval of the entire "album", the executions were carried out immediately. This procedure was also used later on in other mass operations of the NKVD. The "Polish