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
Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–1946) of the Republic of Poland after re-locating to Lublin. After moving to Warsaw in January 1945, and with full political control by Stalin and Soviet sponsorship, the communists abandoned the parliamentary system of prewar Poland and ignored the wishes of the Polish people, basing their new government's power solely on the Red Army's occupation of the country. Meanwhile, acting together under the command of Soviet General Ivan Serov, the forces of the NKVD, SMERSH and the Polish communist secret service (UB), which was modeled on the Soviet secret police, began countrywide operations against the members of the Armia Krajowa and