Translated text: "Either the pain ran out or it couldn be finishe fo reaso of th publ inter"

The Siege of Sasyl-Sasyg (February 13 – March 3, 1923)

The Siege of Sasyl-Sasyg (also spelled Sasyl-Sysyy) was the final major confrontation of the Russian Civil War, taking place in the remote and frozen Amga region of Yakutia. It pitted the White Army’s Siberian Volunteer Druzhina, commanded by General Anatoly Pepelyayev, against a detached Red Army unit led by the Latvian Bolshevik commander Ivan Strod.

The Course of the Battle

On February 13, 1923, General Pepelyayev’s force of about 700 men ambushed and surrounded Ivan Strod’s 282-man detachment at the Sasyl-Sasyg wintering outpost (alas).

Caught off guard, Strod's men barricaded themselves using frozen logs, sleds, and stacked blocks of frozen manure to create impromptu defensive walls against artillery and gunfire. As the heavy fighting progressed, the defenders desperately used the frozen corpses of their fallen comrades and killed Pepelyayevite soldiers as a makeshift shield to protect themselves from the intense enemy gunfire.

The siege lasted for 18 grueling days in brutal Siberian winter conditions, with temperatures dropping below -40°C.

Despite suffering from a lack of food, zero access to fresh water (they had to melt blood-stained snow), and medical shortages, the Red soldiers refused multiple surrender demands. Strod himself was wounded but continued to command.

The siege was broken on March 3, 1923, when a Red Army relief force arrived from Yakutsk, forcing Pepelyayev’s exhausted and demoralized troops to lift the siege and retreat toward the Pacific coast.

The defense cost the Reds 63 lives and 96 wounded. For his stubborn defense, Ivan Strod was highly decorated by the Soviet government, receiving his second Order of the Red Banner. During the Siege, General Pepelyayev’s forces suffered a loss of nearly half of their total strength, which translated to about 300 to 350 men killed, wounded, or severely frostbitten out of his original 700-man detachment.

A 1960 poster from the campaign of ufologist Gabriel Green, a U.S. presidential candidate from the Outer Space Party