from the position of Kolchak's men, and the transfer of letters and gifts from their relatives had a strong demoralizing effect on them. During the negotiations, Witz responded to Tryapitsyn with a refusal to surrender, but, realizing that his detachment was disintegrating, gave an order to retreat to De-Kastri Bay, as the road to Nikolayevsk was cut off. However, this order was carried out by only a few, the bulk of the soldiers subsequently defected to the side of the Partisans of Tryapitsyn. As a result, the Partisans detachment began to number about 1,400 soldiers. Command of the Nikolayevsk Front In the village of Lyci, a council of Red Army commanders was convened, at which a number of decisions were taken on regarding the transformation of the Partisan army into a Front of the regular Red Army, subsequently known as the Nikolayevsk Front. The staff of the Red Army headquarters of the Nikolayevsk Front included Yakov I. Tryapitsyn as Front Commander, D.S. Buzin-Beach as Deputy Commander, T.B. Naumov-Medved as Chief of Staff, A.I. Pokrovsky-Cherny as Staff Secretary, and F.V. Zhelezin, A.I Komarov, and S.I Sheriy as senior staff members. It was this headquarters that began to reorganize Partisan detachments into regular regiments of the Red Army. Since September 1918, Nikolayevsk was occupied by Japanese troops during the intervention in the Far East. By early 1920, in the city, in addition to the Russian population of around 15,000, and White detachments of about 300 men, a Japanese garrison of 350 men from the 14th Infantry Division of the Japanese Imperial Army under the command of Major Ishikawa was stationed, in addition to about 450 Japanese civilians. On 10 February 1920, the soldiers and partisans of the Nikolayevsk Front, with the assistance of some former soldiers and officers of the former fortress of Chnyrra, who controlled the approaches to Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, captured and transferred it to the Sakhalin Revkom, together with its weapons. After the shelling of the positions of the Japanese units near Nikolayevsk from the guns captured by the Red Army in the fortress of Chnyrra, under the pressure of foreign consulates, the Japanese recalled the declaration of Lieutenant General Shiroodzu, commander of the 14th Japanese Infantry Division, on the observance by the Japanese army of neutrality in the civil war in Russia from 4 February 1920, and they sent representatives to the negotiations that took place on 25-28 February 1920.