http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol#Afterma...
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" Historians rethink key Soviet role in Japan defeat (google.com) "
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608923
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=11402184
The impact of the lightning Soviet advance comes through in the words of Japan's wartime prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki, urging his cabinet to surrender.
He is quoted in Hasegawa's book as saying, "If we miss (the chance) today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, but also Hokkaido. We must end the war while we can deal with the United States."
V-J Day, the day Japan ceased fighting, came on Aug. 15 (Aug. 14 in the U.S.), and Japan's formal surrender followed on Sept. 2.
Dominic Lieven, a professor of Russian government at the London School of Economics, said anti-Soviet sentiment in the West tended to minimize Soviet military achievements.
Also, "very few Anglo-Americans saw the Soviet offensive in the Far East with their own eyes, and Soviet archives were not open to Western historians subsequently," he said.
More surprising, even in Russia the campaign was largely ignored. Although the scale of the Soviet victory was unprecedented, 12,000 dead against Japan hardly compared with the life-and-death struggle against Nazi Germany, in which 27 million Soviets died.
"The importance of the operation was huge," said retired Gen. Makhmut Gareyev, president of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, who took part in the 1945 campaign. "By entering the war with militarist Japan ... the Soviet Union precipitated the end of World War II." ''