The war with Japan, which began at dawn on August 9, 1945, is not remembered well in Russia. And this is not only because August is the traditional month of vacations. Simply in comparison to the victory in the Great Patriotic War, these military actions seem like a localized operation that had little practical impact on the majority of population of the Soviet Union.

But there is another reason why neither the Soviet nor the Russian leadership like to brag about the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Even despite the fact that this operation was in military terms a brilliant success and furthermore an act above and beyond the call of duty for a country that had borne the brunt of the war against Germany. 

As it turns out (and this is often mentioned by the Japanese), Soviet troops invaded Manchuria in violation of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact. Signed in 1941, it was a welcome relief both for us and for the Japanese, and in 1945 it became the last hope of Japan. Without a doubt, the Japanese violated the agreement on multiple occasions: unlawfully inspecting and even sinking Soviet merchant vessels, providing political and economic assistance as well as military intelligence to Germany, not to mention the numerous border clashes. And the Soviet Union had the right to denounce the pact. However, such acts are in any case morally questionable and, even if justifiable, are not becoming of a great power that has just won such a great moral victory. After all, saving face is one of the first priorities in propaganda and power politics. And this rule is just as relevant today as it was half a century ago.

Victory over Japan is perceived by many as an insignificant chapter in the context of the titanic history of the Stalinist era of the USSR: it was quick and was fought only on the turf of the opponent. However, in actuality, a great effort went into providing this victory. Three fronts were opened in the Far East: the Trans-Baikal Front, 1st Far East Front and 2nd Far East Front, which totaled over half a million troops. They faced the Kwantung Army of General Otozō Yamada with over one million troops, 6260 mortar guns and artillery pieces, 1150 tanks and 1500 airplanes. No small force even in comparison to the European battles of WWII.

At the same time, the Kwantung Army was substantially weakened by the summer of 1945, as the military had been forced to redeploy its best troops to battles against American forces. Many of them were untried conscripts and those considered too old for combat. Such troops accounted for nearly half of the soldiers at the time of the Soviet attack. According to Soviet history books, some groups of the Kwantung army lacked machine guns, antitank weapons rocket propelled artillery, and ordinary artillery was in short supply.

Nonetheless, this was no indication of an easy victory for the Soviet army. As the American led attack on Okinawa had shown, even in the most hopeless situation Japanese troops were capable of fearsome resistance. The battle for that one small island lasted 82 days and ended with 48,000 casualties for the American side, including 12,000 dead or missing in action. 

Thus, if the battle for Manchuria was won rather quickly, the reason is not that the Japanese army was relatively weak. Simply the Soviet military command managed to prepared and execute a military campaign in such a way that propagandistic pre-war films suggested could be done in Europe against Germany.

The launch of the attack caught the Japanese by surprise as the Soviet army began shelling Japanese positions from land and sea on the morning of August 9, 1945. In simultaneous attacks, command posts, headquarters and communications points were hit in bombing runs. As a results of the attacks, which were carried out by hundreds of Soviet bombers and attack planes, the communication lines between command posts and Japanese troop formations in Manchuria were practically severed in the first hours of the war, and the command of the Kwantung army lost control of its troops. The ground attack followed. The Soviet command employed the tactics of the German army, avoiding direct confrontation with highly fortified positions while maneuvering to cut off the enemy’s chance to send reinforcements.

During the Manchurian operation, the Soviet army was able for the first time to use massive airdrops, which they were not able to employ in the largely defensive war against Germany. Troops were dropped into Mukden, Changchun, Port Arthur, Harbin and Jilin. While the Soviet advance was slowed on August 11 due to fuel shortages resulting from extended supply lines, this issue was soon resolved through supplies by air and the assault continued forward. During the first six days of the war the 1st Far East Front advanced 120-150 km, the 2nd Far East Front advance 50-200 km and the Trans-Baikal Front 250-400 km. The Japanese were in a desperate situation – the Far East blitzkrieg was a success.

We can debate through and through what it was that brought Japan to its knees – the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, as our historians assert, or dropping of the atomic bombs by the Americans. It seems that along with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manchurian operation was one of the main factors that forced Japan to capitulate. The head of the Japanese Cabinet announced on August 9, “The entry today of the Soviet Union into the war places us in a completely hopeless situation and makes the continuation of the war unfeasible.” On that same day Emperor Hirohito instructed the foreign minister to inform the Allies that Japan is prepared to accept their conditions of surrender. 

Without a doubt, in 1945 the eventual defeat of Japan was only a matter of time. However, the entry of the USSR into the war undoubtedly sped up the capitulation, which saved the lives of tens of thousands of American and British soldiers and perhaps the lives of hundreds of thousands of American civilians (Unit 731 of the Kwantung Army was actively developing biological weapons of mass destruction). Following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese command started preparing for a retaliatory attack using biological weapons, but the Soviet advances put an end to this. Upon hearing of the rapidly approaching Soviet troops, the Japanese destroyed most of the laboratories and documentation.

In 1945 Japan didn’t and could not have threatened the USSR. However, it would be incorrect to say that the operations in the Far East were simply the Soviet Union fulfilling its obligations to Allies. The results of the war liquidated the insulting consequences of the Treaty of Portsmouth, returning Sakhalin along with most of the Kuril archipelago to Russia. Entering the war with Japan allowed Russia to influence the political environment in the Far East and above all else in China. And as the former Allies against Nazi Germany became irreconcilable enemies, this influence turned out to be no small thing.