It's my belief that the complete ban on fighting of any kind in schools has only led to more bullying. There is something to be said for a kid who stands up to someone who has been pushing him around. That usually defused the situation. Now we have generations of adults whose only knowledge of fighting is what they see on TV, which can be really twisted and violent.
And because we don’t let kids fight, kids today don’t know how to fight. Seriously. There was a concept of the “honorable fight” back when I was a kid. You beat the crap out of each other, there was a winner and loser, and the issue was settled.
Today, the kids either don’t know when to quit, by repeatedly kicking someone in the head when they are down and the fight is over, or they go with the nuclear option and use a gun. Neither of those situations were even considered when I was growing up. And the outcomes today are tragic.
I’ve done my research, primarily from Frank’s “Downfall” and Glantz’ “When Titans Clashed” and I’m going to call it a draw. For the Manchurian Operation, the Soviets assembled three Fronts:
Transbaikal Front under Rodion Malinovsky, 654,000 men with 6th Guard Tank Army, four combined-arms armies and two cavalry-mechanized groups. Malinovksy had been a Front commander since 1943 and led Soviet armies across the lower Dneper and did the conquest of the northern Balkans.
Second Far Eastern Front under Kirill Meretskov with 586,000 men in four combined-arms armies and one mechanized corps. Merestkov had been a commander along the northern sector of the Russo-German Front.
First Far Eastern Front under Maxim Purkayev with 337,000 men in eleven rifle divisions and various independent and tank brigades.
Glantz puts the total Soviet force as 1,600,000 men, and Frank states the armored component was 3,704 tanks and 1,852 self propelled guns. Frank states that the Soviets moved 403,000 men and 2,100 tanks and self-propelled guns to the east.
So from looking at the map of the deployment, with the two Far Eastern Fronts being deployed on the eastern face of the Manchurian bulge, and the Transbaikal Front on the western face, I have concluded the following:
1. The two Far Eastern Fronts conducted the operation with what was already on hand. Given the extra distance and the timetable for the operation, it made sense to not ship most reinforcements to them.
2. On the western face of the Manchurian bulge, the Great Kinghan Mountain Range was considered impassible by the Japanese, and on the other side lay the vast Mongolian desert. The Soviets would have left this area more or less undefended until May 1945.
3. The Soviets created the Transbaikal Front almost entirely from forces shipped from the west. That would have been the shortest route logistically along the Trans Siberian Railroad. Also, the preponderance of commanders in that Front who had recently fought in the Balkans (Malinovsky, Kravchenko, Pliev) leads me to that conclusion. That Front was intended to be highly mobile to get across the marshy passes of the Great Khingan range before the Japanese knew what was afoot.
So for the eastern half of Soviet operations, it was forces on hand. The western half was entirely transferred units.