Russian painting showing the Soviet victory over the Japanese during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945. by Frank Aker III The "mini-war" fought by Japan and the Soviet Union in the Far East in the summer of 1945 had its origins in long-standing grievances between the two powers. Because of these grievances each party to the war read the other's motives antagonistically. For Japan, the war became a historic turning point in what had been a relatively successful seventy-year effort to establish the Japanese political and military dominion on the continent of Asia. For the Soviet Union, heir to the policies of the Czars, the war placed a capstone on the enduring Russian/Soviet "Drang nach Osten" that was designed to secure the empire's eastern flanks. The history of the Japanese-Soviet rivalry over Manchuria and other regions of eastern Asia began with Japanese victories over Russian forces in 1875 and 1904-1905. Japan saw those wars as se...