Cherepanov returned to the Soviet Union in 1927, following Sun's death in 1925 and subsequent breakdown in Sino-Soviet relations with the Kuomintang's new leader, Chiang Kai-shek. (In spite of the ongoing Soviet assistance to the Kuomintang, the anti-communist Chiang had arranged a massacre of communists in Shanghai and expelled his Soviet advisers.) Cherepanov took part in the 1929 Soviet intervention in Inner Manchuria as commander of the Red Army's 39th Rifle Division in the Soviet Far East.