Green Ukraine never really took off, and then was taken over by the Red Army in 1922.Įncompassing the entire Pacific seaboard of the former Empire, the Far East Republic was set up by the Soviets themselves to serve as a buffer against Japanese expansionism in Siberia. Nevertheless, the Siberian Ukrainians who founded the state foresaw a union with independent Ukraine.
‘Green Ukraine’ was nowhere near actual Ukraine. The military dictatorship of Mughan was led by a White general and supported by an expeditionary force composed of British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand troops while the Soviet republic of Gilan saw the revolutionary fervour catch fire in northern Iran, only for the Soviets to withdraw their support, leading to the state’s swift collapse. Their ceding control to the Armenians contributed to the start of the Turkish-Armenian War. The Kars Republic was an Ottoman puppet state, invaded by the British in 1919. Ruled by an emir aligned with the Ottomans, but dependent on the Reds for military support, the North Caucasian Emirate turned into a Soviet republic upon the emir’s death. Following a British proposal to cede the area to Armenia, a local Azeri officer in December 1918 proclaimed the Aras Republic, aligned with Turkey. As Turkey advanced, the Federation fell apart within a month. The Transcaucasian Federation was formed in April 1918 to counter Turkey’s claims in the region. The Republic had the distinction of being defeated by both sides in the Russian civil war – first by the Reds, in March 1918, then by the Whites, in May 1919. In November 1917, a local oil baron united Chechen, Ingush and Ossetian peoples in a Mountain Republic, allied with Germany. In the Caucasus, the situation was – as always – extremely complex. Perlojos respublikas had its own court, police, prison and currency, the litas, as well as an army 300 men strong. Numbering less than 1,000 inhabitants, the Lithuanian town of Perloja nevertheless made history when it declared its independence in 1918. When both Baltic countries declared their independence in the closing months of 1918, its window of opportunity had closed. Courland was soon subsumed by the Baltic Duchy, which thus coincided with present-day Estonia and Latvia combined. It was their ambition that both would be governed in personal union with the Kingdom of Prussia, thus effectively becoming protectorates of the German Empire.
Using the power vacuum towards the end of World War I, Baltic Germans proclaimed the independence of a Baltic Duchy and a Duchy of Courland. Stepan Petrichenko, the leader of the sailors, fled to Kronstadt, where in 1921 he would play a role in the unsuccessful Rebellion against the Bolsheviks. After two months, German forces chased them away. The sailors set up a government and started collecting taxes from the locals. In December 1917, the fortress on the Estonian island of Naissaar was commandeered by a few dozen Russian sailors, who proclaimed a ‘Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress-Builders’, surely the only time the latter nomenclature was used for a socialist republic (typically said to be composed of ‘soldiers, workers and farmers’). The mapmaker put several other short-lived Soviet republics on the map, but “since they all have the same all-red flag and pretty much the same story (Bolsheviks rose up, got overturned again), I focused on (ephemeral countries) with more colourful stories”. All North Ingrians were later deported to Central Asia.įinland itself, or parts of it at least, saw the short-lived Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic – a.k.a.
By October 1920, both movements – each donned with a flag sporting the distinctive Nordic Cross – had been crushed. Let’s turn first to the northwestern corner of the former Empire, where the Republics of Uhtua and North Ingria were proclaimed by ethnic Finns hoping to join Finland, itself newly independent from Russia.
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