Konstantin Petrovich Nechaev

Konstantin Petrovich Nechaev (Константин Петрович Нечаев, ? – 1946) was an Imperial Russian Army officer and White movement leader, who commanded a large Russian mercenary army in China from 1924 to 1929. Fighting for the Fengtian clique warlords Zhang Zuolin and Zhang Zongchang, Nechaev took part in several wars of the Chinese Warlord Era until his mercenary force was destroyed in the Northern Expedition. Thereafter, he mostly retired from military service and became a White émigré community leader in Manchuria. Captured by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Nechaev was executed by Soviet authorities in 1946.

Russian Civil War and relocation to Manchuria
Originally an officer in the Imperial Russian Army, Nechaev fought with the White movement against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, and had joined Ataman Grigory Mikhaylovich Semyonov's White army in Transbaikal by 1920. He served as major general and later lieutenant general in Semyonov's army, commanding one of its divisions. The last White regime in Russia, the Provisional Priamurye Government, collapsed in 1922, and the Russian Far East was occupied by the Red Army. Nechaev and thousands of other White Russian soldiers subsequently fled from Vladivostok to China rather than surrender to the Communists. The White ex-soldiers often kept their military equipment, and even took their armoured trains with them to China. Nechaev came to stay in the Manchurian city of Harbin.

At the time, the Republic of China was engulfed by civil war and factional violence. Its central government in Beijing had become largely powerless, while warlords controlled much of the country and fought each other for supremacy. One of the most powerful Chinese warlords was Zhang Zuolin, leader of the Fengtian clique and de facto ruler of Manchuria, where many of the White Russian ex-soldiers had settled down. Zhang considered these Russians to be veterans who were experienced in modern warfare, and consequently decided to recruit them into his armed forces. He ordered one of his Russian assistants, Colonel Chekhov, to mobilize a foreign legion in Mukden in 1924. In turn, Chekov contacted Nechaev and asked him to raise a unit in Harbin.

Operations of the foreign legion 1924–26
Nechaev accepted, and recruited about 150 White Russians as mercenaries for Zhang's army, organizing them into two companies and leading them to Shanhaiguan District in August 1924. Mercenary service was attractive for White émigrés due to the fact that many of them had problems finding stable employment, and the warlords at least offered an regular income. Nechaev's unit was quickly expanded, and counted about 700 Russians by the start of the Second Zhili–Fengtian War. In this conflict against Wu Peifu's Zhili clique, the Russians fought as part of the Fengtian foreign legion which also included 300 Japanese mercenaries and two Chinese companies. Nechaev commanded both the White Russians as well as the Chinese, while the Japanese operated under their own leaders. The foreign legion also included several armoured trains that the White Russians had brought with them from Russia. Nechaev and his troops fought as part of General Jin's First Army during the Second Zhili–Fengtian War, and took part in the breakthrough of the Fengtian armies at the Great Wall. In course of these operations, Nechaev and several other White Russian mercenaries were featured in the propaganda film Modern Wafare in China which was produced by the Soviet Union. As the Soviet government was opportunistically supporting the anti-Left Fengtian clique at the time, the White Russian general and his fellow anti-communist soldiers were portrayed favorably and sympathetically by the film's director, a Red Army colonel named Grinevskii. The "honeymoon between Zhang and the Soviets (...) was brief in the extreme", however, and had already ended by mid-1925. The Soviet government instead increased its support for forces opposed to Zhang, such as warlord Feng Yuxiang and the Kuomintang in southern China.



Following the Fengtian clique's victory over the Zhili forces in November 1924, Nechaev led his mercenary force to Jinan, where he was placed under the command of Zhang Zongchang, the ruler of Shandong and a subordinate of Zhang Zuolin. Zhang Zongchang served as Nechaev's direct superior for the following years, and allowed the Russian lieutenant general to operate largely autonomous. Nechaev selected several veteran White Russian officers for his staff, and some Chinese officers as interpreters. Nechaev and his troops next took part in an expedition to conquer Shanghai from warlord Qi Xieyuan for the Fengtian clique. By this time, the foreign legion already counted 800 officers, and 2,000 regular soldiers who had previously fought in the armies of Semyonov and Alexander Kolchak. The Russians fought with distinction at Wuxi and in the conquest of Shanghai in January 1925, and then again when Sun Chuanfang, Qi Xieyuan's superior, attempted to retake Shanghai soon after. As his forces were overextended, however, Zhang Zuolin had to withdraw from Shanghai. Following the retreat, Nechaev suffered a major defeat, when he and one armoured train under his command were trapped near Suizhou. Their Chinese adversaries had pulled up the rail, and took this opportunity to massacre almost all mercenaries on board the train. Nechaev managed to survive the incident, but lost a part of his leg during the bitter fighting. Overall, the Russians earned a reputation as extremely capable fighting force, becoming "Zhang Zongchang's crack troops", but were also feared due to their high indiscipline and extreme brutality against civilians and prisoners of war. In November 1925, Leon Trotsky mentioned Nechaev in a speech to the Kislovodsk Soviet, claiming that he and his troops were paid by Great Britain to support Chinese monarchism.

Despite his severe wound, Nechaev returned to duty in 1926, and came to directly command the 65th Infantry Division, consisting of one Chinese and one Russian brigade. The latter was about 3,765 men strong, and was nicknamed the "Nechaev Brigade". He also remained the de facto commander of all Russian troops in the Fengtian foreign legion, who counted about 5,270 overall by this point. In early 1926 during the Anti-Fengtian War, Nechaev commanded one of his armoured trains in a battle against another armoured train in service of Feng Yuxiang. He managed to defeat Feng's train, which had been built by Soviet advisors. Due to the increasing Soviet support for several enemies of the Fengtian clique in the late 1920s, Nechaev and the White Russians under his leadership increasingly perceived their mercenary service as "continuation of the holy war against Bolshevism".

Northern Expedition and end of the foreign legion
Later in 1926, Nechaev led three of his armoured trains on a rampage through the Chinese countryside, "machine-gunning civilians and stealing everything moveable". In an attempt to stop the White Russians, locals pulled up the railways, but this only resulted in Nechaev's forces sacking the nearest town. Soon after, the 65th Infantry Division suffered heavy casualties in another armed conflict with Sun Chuanfang, so that "only several hundred" Russians were left in the unit by 1927, when war erupted between the Fengtian clique and the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang. Reduced in manpower, Nechaev and his forces mostly contributed to the Fengtian clique's resistance against the NRA's Northern Expedition by using their remaining armoured trains. In March 1927, the Communist Party of China launched an armed uprising in Shanghai against the local warlord garrison of Zhang Zongchang and Sun Chuanfang, who had allied himself with the Fengtian clique to resist the NRA. Nechaev's troops were among the 3,000 defenders of Shanghai's Zhabei district, and were only ousted from the city following heavy fighting with the Communist insurgents and NRA reinforcements. Furthermore, two Russian-manned armoured trains were destroyed by the NRA in the surroundings of Shanghai in the following summer.

The war increasingly turned against the warlords, and the White Russians as well as their Chinese allies were steadily driven north by the NRA. Following Zhang Zuolin's death in June 1928, his son Zhang Xueliang, the "Young Marshal", took over leadership of the Fengtian clique. He wanted to make peace with the NRA, and eventually fell out with Zhang Zongchang over this issue. Nechaev's men still had at least three armoured trains under their control at the time, and initially assisted Zhang Zongchang in invading Manchuria to topple Xueliang. After crossing the Luan River, however, Zhang Zongchang was trapped by the now-allied troops of the NRA and the "Young Marshal"; realizing that the position of their superior was lost, the White Russians defected and turned the guns of their trains on their former allies. Zhang Zongchang was defeated, and the White Russian mercenaries were mostly demobilized thereafter.

Later years in Manchuria and death


Following the Fengtian foreign legion's end, Nechaev returned to Manchuria to retire. Nevertheless, there were rumours in early 1929 that Nechaev had assisted Zhang Zongchang during a rebellion to retake Shandong. Though these rumours were not confirmed, historian Philip S. Jowett considered it plausible that Nechaev had assisted his old superior. In any case, the uprising failed. In late 1929, conflict erupted between the Chinese Nationalist government and the Soviet Union. The Chinese promptly rearmed the White Russians living in Manchuria to assist them against the Red Army; Soviet authorities believed that Nechaev was among the commanders of the White Russian troops fighting with the Chinese Northeastern Army.

Thereafter, Nechaev fully retired from military service, and became head of two White émigré community organizations: The "Russian National Community" in 1930, and later the "Bureau of Russian Emigrants in Manchuria". He continued to live in Manchuria after the Japanese invasion, and the establishment of Manchukuo. The Soviet Union invaded Manchuko in 1945, and arrested numerous White Russians living there. Nechaev was among those captured and sent to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic; he was subsequently executed by hanging in Chita in 1946.