sent a detachment to Irkutsk, which had been the last city west of Lake Baikal still nominally under Kolchak's rule until a coalition of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries seized control. The detachment reached Irkutsk, but did nothing except take 30 men and one young woman hostage. They took their hostages abroad an icebreaker on Lake Baikal, where, on 5 January, they clubbed them to death with a wooden mallet, one by one, and threw them overboard - all except for one man who put up a fight and was thrown alive into the freezing water. When Kolchak resigned on 4 January 1920 he transferred his military forces in the Far East to Semyonov. However, Semyonov was unable to keep his troops in Siberia under control: they stole, burned, murdered, and raped, developing a reputation for being little better than thugs. In July 1920, the Japanese Expeditionary Corps started a limited withdrawal in accordance with the Gongota Agreement, which was signed on 15 July 1920 with the Far Eastern Republic and undermined support for Semyonov. Transbaikal partisans, internationalists, and the 5th Soviet Army under Genrich Eiche launched an operation to retake Chita. In October 1920, units of the Red Army and guerrillas forced Semyonov's army out of the Baikal region. He escaped by plane to Manchuria. In late May 1921 Semyonov travelled to Japan, where he received some support. He returned to the Primorye in the hope of continuing to fight against the Soviets, but was finally forced to abandon all of Russian territory by September 1921. In exile He eventually returned to China, where he was given a monthly 1000-yen pension by the Japanese government. In Tianjin, he made ties with the Japanese intelligence community and mobilized exiled Russian and Cossack communities that planned an eventual overthrow of the Soviets. He was also employed by Puyi, the dethroned Emperor of China, whom he wished to restore to power. While he was an exile in China, he was still backed by the Japanese. His influence was such that when Anastasy Vonsiatsky, the self-styled vozhd of the Russian Fascist Party wanted to visit Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, he needed Semyonov's help in getting a visa. Vonsiatsky, however, saw Semyonov as a threat to his dream of being Russia's Mussolini, and declared that he should be shot, an outburst that led to the Russian Fascist Party splitting in two. Konstantin