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 victims were ethnically Polish, but not all, wrote Timothy Snyder. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry, or classed as possibly having pro-Polish sympathies. In order to speed up the process the NKVD personnel reviewed local telephone books and arrested persons with Polish-sounding names. The Polish Operation was the largest ethnic shooting and deportation action during the Great Terror campaign of political murders in the Soviet Union, orchestrated by Nikolai Yezhov.<ref name="B/E/F"></ref> It is also the largest killing of Poles in history outside any armed conflict. The top secret NKVD Order No. 00485, titled ""On the liquidation