In his rule over this region, he has been described as a 'plain bandit drew his income from holding up trains and forcing payments, no matter what the nature of the load nor for whose benefit it was being shipped.' As a part Buryat Mongol, Ataman Semyonov declared a 'Great Mongol State' in 1918 and had designs to unify the Oirat Mongol lands, portions of Xinjiang, Transbaikal, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia, Tannu Uriankhai, Kobdo, Hulunbei'er and Tibet into one Mongolian state. In August 1918 he managed to consolidate his positions in the Transbaikal region with the help of the Czechoslovak Legions and imposed his ruthless regime. The Russian Civil War in Transbaikal Īfter the October Revolution Semyonov stirred up an anti-Soviet rebellion, but was defeated and fled to the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin.

In July 1917 Semyonov left the Caucasus and was appointed Commissar of the Provisional Government in the Baikal region, responsible for recruiting a regiment of Buryat volunteers. He and Sternberg tried to organize a regiment of Assyrian Christians to aid in the fight against the Turks. While serving in the Caucasus in World War I he met another officer shunned by his peers, Baron Ungern-Sternberg, whose eccentric nature and disregard of the rules of etiquette and decorum repelled others. He was somewhat of an outsider among the his fellow officers because of his ethnicity. I have never been able to understand how he came to play a leading role. Though capable and ingenious, he had received no education, and his outlook was narrow. He knew how to make himself popular with Cossacks and officers alike, but he had his weaknesses in a love of intrigue and indifference to the means by which he achieved his ends. His intelligence was of a specifically Cossack calibre, and he was an exemplary soldier, especially courageous when under the eye of his superior.

Semenov was a Transbaikalian Cossack – dark and thickset, and of the rather alert Mongolian type. He was commissioned as a yesaul (Cossack ensign) and distinguished himself in battle against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians in World War I, earning the Saint George's Cross for courage.

He joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1908, and graduated from Orenburg Military School in 1911. Semyonov was a fluent Mongolian and Buryat language speaker. His father, Mikhail Petrovich Semyonov, was of partial Buryat descent. Semyonov was born in the Transbaikal region of eastern Siberia.

White Terror by Jamie Bisher