On 30 January 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to launch the largest resettlement operation in the entire history of the Soviet Union, still referred to today as the 'kulak deportation'.

On 23 July 1920, the first ship from Vladivostok with Polish children evacuated from Siberia arrived in Tsuruga, Japan. By 1922, a total of more than 700 kids had arrived in the Land of the Cherry Blossom. Their first stops were the cities of Tsuruga and Osaka.

Volunteer Polish units in Siberia began to organise as early as the turn of 1917/1918.