DVR

Abbreviation for the Russian name of the Far Eastern Republic (Dal’nevostochnaia Respublica) – a short-lived “buffer” state, which existed in the Russian Far East from late March 1920 to late November 1922, when it was absorbed into  the RSFSR. With capital in Verkhneudinsk and later in Chita, it included vast regions of Baikal, Amur, Maritime Region, Sakhalin and the neutral zone of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Frankly described in the Soviet records of the period as “a buffer for international consumption,” it was created with the purpose to avoid direct military confrontation with Japan, which at the time occupied large parts of the Russian Far East, and to achive withdrawal of the Japanese military forces by political means. Although under political control of Moscow, the DVR was a democratic republic with center and right-wing socialist parties sharing the government with the Bolsheviks, private property and democratic laws. However, after the Japanese withdrawal of its forces from the Russian Far East, the DVR was immediately absorbed into the RSFSR and subjected to enforced “sovietization.”