Nikolayevsk and assumed leadership of the fighting in the city. The fighting lasted several days and ended with the victory of the Red Army. By the evening of 14 March, the main forces of the Japanese were defeated, and on 15 March at noon the last group capitulated, only surrendering when the Japanese High Command ordered them to do so. Most of the Japanese died in battle, while 117 soldiers and 11 women were taken prisoner. Even so, Tryapitsyn decided to take revenge, which resulted in the execution of the surviving garrison along with many Japanese civilians. After this, Tryapitsyn was free to start a reign of terror and execute all those he deemed dangerous to his forces. Among foreign citizens, the British manager of one of the largest fisheries in the town was arrested and shot on the charges of counter-revolutionary activity. Tryapitsyn believed that the attack on the Red Army in Nikolayevsk was in fact a rehearsal for Japan for the coordinated attack of its occupying forces in the Russian Far East on Soviet authorities and military garrisons of the Far East. During the formation of the Far Eastern Republic, Tryapitsyn expressed his disagreement with this decision. From a telegram to Moscow: Despite the vehement disagreements of Tryapitsyn with the decision to establish the Far Eastern Republic, on 22 April 1920, according to the order No. 66 of the Commander-in-Chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, he was appointed Commander of the Okhotsk Front. By the same order, Sergey Lazo was appointed commander of the Primorsky Front. Nikolayevsk incident and death In late May, as a Japanese relief expedition approached, Tryapitsyn ordered the evacuation of all Red Army soldiers, staff, and Soviet personnel from the city, and subsequently executed all of the remaining inhabitants of the town, both Japanese and Russian, including children and the elderly, and burned the town to the ground. All Japanese still in Nikolayevsk were massacred. Being short with ammunition, one of the methods to execute the victims was to stab them with a bayonet and thrust them in a hole under the ice of the river Amur. Several thousand inhabitants of the town were killed in this fashion, many others were beaten to death with rifles. Hundreds of others were shot on the banks of the Amur. The buildings of the town were set on fire or blown up with explosives following the massacre,