Regional Cu1tur;l History Project

Paul Dotsenko

An Interview Conducted by Richard A. Pierce All use's of this rimuscript are cover'ed by an a~reementbetxeea. the ~e~ents'of the University

of California ar~dPaul Dotsenko, dated June 30, 1959. The manuscript is thereby made available for research

purposes.. . All literary rights in the manuscript, in- ,clubing the rL@t to publish, are reserved to the . i 3 * General Library 3f .the University of ~aliforniaat :j $ . ,-9 f Serkeley. No ?e~t of the :manuscript may be quoted, -.j / . . for p~lication u2t5out the written permission of 1 1 . . 2 4 L the University ~i3~arianof the University of Califor- i 1 I i. ' nia at Berkeley. 3 i . , .j ' . . i . . . i 1 .'1 I . . i 1...... i f >i . - i i . . 1 3 . . f ! ? 1 . i I . . .1I .I. . . . - '. ' I . . . . .$ ...... , . . ! . .

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- --,- The Rus sian-Aner icens, although numerically a small J f proportion of the population, have for long been a con- r: . . iI 5. spicuous and picttu-esque element in the cosmopolitan 1 1 make-up of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sone cane here . f prior to the Russian evolution, but the major ity were refugees from the Revolution of 1917 t!ho came to California throu,gh Siberia and the Orient. Recognizins the historical i value of preserving the remin.iscences of these Russian i i refugees, in the spring of 1958 Dr. Richard A. Pierce, a author of Rupsian Central Asia, 1867-1912, (U. C. Press,

I2 , Spring 1960) then a research historian at the University i 1 working on the history of th6 Communist Party in Central Asia, made the f ollouix proposal to Professor Charles . i1 Jelavich, chairman of tkie Center for Slavic Studies: 1 I would like to start on the Berkeley campus, under the auspices of the Center of Slavic Studies, an 3ral history project to collect and preserve fhe recollections of meabers of I the Russian c~lomof the Bay Regi~n. We have in this mea the second largest community of Russian refugees in th U. S., some 30,000 in Ssn Frcncisco alone. These represent an in- veluable ana up to now alnost entirely neglected

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Firet Series: Interviewe conducted by Richard A. Pierce and Alton C. Donnelly.

Dotsenko, Paul The Struggle for the Liberation of Siberia, 1918-1921. 114 pages, 1960 [Pierce] Maloeemoff, Elizabeth The Life of a Russian ~eacher. 444 pages, 1961 [Donnelly] Shebeko, Borie Russian Civil War, 1918-1922. 284 pages, 1961 [Pierce] Shneyeroff, Michael M. Recollections of the Russian Revolution. 270 pages, 1960 [Pierce]

Second Series: Interviews conducted by Boris Raymond (Romanoff) under the auspices of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies.

Fedoulenko, Valentin V. Ruseian Emigre Life in Shanghai. 171 pages, 1967 Guins, George C. Professor and Government Official: Russia, China, and California. 364 pages, 1966 Lenkoff, Aleksandr N. Life of a Russian Emigre Soldier. 64 pages, 1967 Volume also contains: Report to Subcommittee on Russian Emigre Project. 4 pages Bibliography of Works on Far Eastern Emigration. 16 pages

Third Series: Interviews conducted by Richard A. Pierce and Boris Raymond (Romanoff) under the auspices of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies.

Guins, George C. Impressions of the Russian Imperial Government. 95 pages, 1971 [Pierce] Marschak, Jacob Recollections of Kiev and the Northern Caucasus, 1917-18. 78 pages, 1971 [Pierce] Moltchanoff, Victorin M. The Last White General. 132 pages, 1972 [Raymond] Nagy-Talavera, Miklos Recollections of Soviet Labor Camps, 1949-1955. 100 pages, 1972 [Pierce] Pacl Dotaenko, Russian emigre, was en active perticf- F pant in ths Russian revolutionary rnovexint from 1910 to I \ 1923, In ",he followlng tape orecorded istezview he recounts J his experiences as a mmber of the Socislist Revolutionary i i Party, Ws party, successor to .the Poplists (narodniki) of the L?tfi,century, placed its hopes on the awakening and 1 i cducaticr of the peasontry, and for s=ae tine enjoyed i gz-eater pmstige than the smaller but more ruthlessly t 5 !I R~ssirn '1 disciplf=e3 Bolshevist wing of the Social Democratic i # Labop Perttg, which ulti~atelyseized power,

1 4 Dot~enko, the son of a farmer who ovned the land he 3 1 cultivate2, was born in the Ukraine aad educated in the f!i 1 1 North Cezeasus, Nhile yet a boy he okserred and sympathized 1 . . :1 with a mcaement resulticg In a wave cr reilroad strikes .I . :I I i based on dexands more substantial than higher wages: t I demnds Car the granticg of such liberties as freedom of . I4 1I speech, freedom of assembly, and elections. These strikes, t Q 8? 3 in which Usbrother and cousins took part, were met with S i $ f brutal suqgression. In 1910, at the age of 19, he was 4 I elreaCy wsrking as an orator-propagandist for the Socialist Revolutksary Party, which resulted In arrest and prolonged .i .inpriaament, and the threat of pemnent impaimnt of 1 * I despite austere living conditions, he we8 able to reoover his health, he became an underground worker in the 1i 1 pre -Revolutionary cooperative movement in Sibgria, I . ; Following the Revolution of February, 1917, Mr. r Dotsenko was granted amnesty and worked in Siberia during the difficult period of "dual power" in which authority was iJ contested between the Soviets and the organs of the i i l Provisional Government. He tells of the ,Bolshevik Revolution P of October 1917, of 0 revolt sgainst the Communist power : in the spring of 1918, and of how 'the anti-Bolshevik Ufa ! - regime was supplanted by the supporters of Admiral Kolchak. This government, losing popular support, finallg collapsed -. -. before the Red onslaught. 1 ! ; From February to April 1920 Mr. Dotsenko served aa 1 d ' chief of the instruction section of the cooperative union . i : in Vladivostok, and in April assumed the position of Second ? : Assistant Minfster of the 1nteri6r in the Medved'ev, or i I Zemstvo government. In August he left for the Zone of 1 ' Delimitation in Fanchuria, working there as instructor for j f ; the cooperative on the railroad for two years, ? i Mr. Dotsenko and his wife cane to the United Stetes i4 1 in September 1923. He has engaged for some years in the i I. importing of Italian antique end period furniture, Keenly 1 interested in current affairs, he subscribes to Time and

the New York Times. He wes in the American Socialist Party .

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...... -" - ...... - ...... ,...... :...... in the 1930'8. He and his wife take part in activities of the local Russian Orthodox St, John's Church in Berkeley. Mr. Dotsenko recounted these reminiscences in five interviews granted me during the period January-Xay 1959, I tape -recorded them in the pleasant, well-furnished Berkeley home of the narrator where he lives with his wife and daughter, His uife makes excellent pirozhki and other

Russian delicacies, asd he always served Rhine wine so potent that 'I almost vent to sleep in the middle of the first interview,. so tktat thereefter' I alweys asked to have , it after the ihtemien was over, The niateriel wes sivefi in ~ussian,translated by me and carefully gane over by Mr. Dotsenko, The material here is substantially as givsn originaily. Very' little rearranging was necessery.

Richard Pierce . Interviewer . iv TABU OF CONTENTS vii !

PAST I: 1910-1918 . . . .

.: . ' . -. .i' Yoath and Imprisonment Prison in Central Russia and-Exile in Siberia .10 i Cooperative Movement in Siberia 15-b

Fe5ruary and October Revolutions and the Struggle for Power 16 Plans for Revolt Against the Bolsheviks 30 Krasnoiarsk Uprising. and Overthrow of the ~olsheyiks. . 39 Struggles to Establish a Stable .Government 46

Overthrow by Kilitary - '

Kolchak Coup d'etat and Kolchak' s Policies Ball of Kolchak and Political Xork in Irkutsk and Vladivostok 1 i 3 To the United States of America . . 90 . ? ! . e 3 APPENDIX "Fight for Freedom in Siberia: Its Success . 2' . and Feilure," a speech delivered by Paul . . Dotsenko in Hew York, June 1954 94. j i . . 1. ? . . I ' ...... : ... -. : . . . .: . R ...... :-, ..... :...... ;I . ---_.. -.- . i :I...." ...... J ... - .... .- 1 ...... ,......

...... : .:...;...... '.: -:.- PART I: 1910-1918 1 . . . . i3 . . Dotsenko: , I was born ir, 1894 in Chernef Gtioern1a*, in I . . . .

1 the Ukraine. My father omd.land and udrked as a-farmer. . '

I When I was six months old he decided to move to the Caucasus. i There he worked first as a laborer and then acqutred a home, In the last years before his death he did not work, and we + 5 lived on income obtained from renting houses. L a My elder brother was an expert in wine production. i 4 He produced wlne and sold. it to groceries and delicatessens, !I and we also had our own vIne store (vinp-gastronomicheskRussian Empire were, 1 in descending order, called guberniia, -uezd, volost. Okrw 1 was a tern used for certain special areas. as for example in the a4 4 Caucasus, Siberia, and Central Asfa, which had not been completely 1

I incorporat ed into the routine governmental system, A military 3 1! olcrug was a military district separate from the civil admin- ] istrative divisions. Oblast is the term used by the Soviets for a province or district, X studied in Wovoros siisk, in the North Caucasus, In

1902, while I was still a boy, there was a railroad strike, t and to stop the mvement of trains the workers lay on the I . rails, The heads of the administration called out the Cossacks, *o ordered the strikers to disperse, They did not, and the Cossacks opened fire, Some were killed, some were wounded, and since our house was in a workers district, I saw .

,on the next day one acquaintance who had been shot ixl the arm, another who had been shot in the leg, and heard that several others had been killed, Three days later a funeral was held, but the funeral was civil and speeches were made there, In other words, a meeting was held at the cemetery. The governor sent troops to break up the meeting. Those present refused to disperse; looking through the wicket, I saw the troop of Cos- . sacks come past our uindow and heard the off icer in command give the order to turn back to the cemetery and open fire, I This made a deep impression on me, The strike was put down and life returned to a mare or less normal course, In 1904 and 1905 a new wave of strikes arose, but already there were more. substantial demands not only for a raise in pay for the railroad workers, but demands for the granting of liberties: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, artd elect ions. The gubernia administration was unable to cope with the situation and the entire gubernia.fell into the hands of the rebels, although there waa no shooting. My elder brother and my cousin took pa? t in this move- ment. Then after several months the movement was put down, and the majority of the participants were arreated. My brother was arrested; but there was not enough evidence to 1 i briw him to trial, so he was exiled to Siberia instead, ?: Q father was put In prison because he had not informed 1 i against his son, and tlrg cousin who had taken an active part in 1 this inovement was sentenced to twelve years at hard labor. Two 3 i weeks later my aunt died because of tuberculosis of the throat ~ichshe had contracted through nervous strain and worry. :< > All these occurrences forced me to think of what I would L ! do next, Although I was still young and had taken no part in

'2 it . the movement, I was an observer and in keen sympathy with it. 3 After several years I established connections with those who 7 had worked with my brothers. Through them I began to receive literature of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries. I dis-

7. tributed it, and early in 1910 at the age of nineteen, I was 4 2 already working as an orator-propagandist. I made speeches 4: I at night sometimes in the woods, and by day worked among the workers in the railroad repair shops and in the cement factory,

4 I carried on this work for more than a year. Several times I it was arrested, but because they found nothing on me I was freed, i In 1911 I was assigned to Sevastopol to work among the I sailors of the war fleet. For instructions I had to go to I i Batum, where I met the representatives of the district (raion) 4 , . . :

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. ,. . . . committees from abroad who were then in Constantlnople. From them I received instructions for my fu-ther work, and how to proceed illegally to Sevastopol. But while I was in Batum i j the secret police (okhrrannoe otdelenie) received orm mat ion 6 f I through a provocateur that I was going to Seuastopol, and of ! f , my whereabouts, and they arrested me. i 4 =ter holding me several months in Batum, they sent me to I 3 Odessa where arrested persons from the entire Black Sea region I were collected. Inasmuch as no documents were found on me-- i only a code, but no coded writings--they could not indict me, ? but tbfs did not deter them from holding me in solitary for , severel months during preliminary confinement.

1 i In 2.912 the comnrandant of the secret police detachment at ? Odessa, Colonel Karaulov, sailed on a naval cruiser into the t I Mediterranean Sea; and at Alexandria, Egypt, which at that time was a Srifish protectorate, directed the kidnapping of several ! 1 comrades who had worked with me earlier in Russia. On them ! I were found documents stating that "our comrade so-and-so who 1 worked there was arrested, " and this letter they used as

41 1 evidence for an indictment against me. .i: : They held me in prison for awhile longer and then took i

S: S: me to the gendarmerie headquarters (zhendarmskoe upravlenie ) -3 where after a week the commandant of the gendarmes (nachal'nik 1 ! zhendarmako~

I connected myself with the revolutionary movement, there would be . . for me only hard labor and exfle, and that ,my whole life would be thrown away. I replied.that I had chosen this path because . . I s I considered it the true one, and no one and nothing could in- duce me to give it'up. i Their re ply was that "With luck you might come to power in ? twenty-five years, but until that time we- will rule." i . : .1 -. t "From your point of view," I said, "this is a great con- , cession, inasmuch as you recognize that you will not be eternal. i: A Even if it is twenty-f ive years, as you say, this is the maxi- I 4 mum that you will be in power. Actually our only difference of I4 opinion is the period, You think that you will be in power for 4 4 I twenty-five years; I thinkyou will be in power for leak. Thls ii I is our only difference." This frank conversation which I had with the chiefs of the

' : omana and the gendarmerie was of great influence on my stay in P the prison. They ordered me Golated fiom all other 'priDners. .$

. Usually they permitted relatives and friends of prisoners to send . - Y . . f . .': :...... -...... l ...... 3 ...... 4 ... j ...... 2 . . . :. < ...... i\ ...... - ...... : 5 ... - ...< ... , . . :...... :...... 1,. : .: .:...... j. ..; ...... :;...... -...... : ...... :...... ' . , . .. , ...... 1 -...... '...... :...... ,'. . . < ...... b , . something to them, but for me no such parcels were permitted. And although I was a political prisoner and had already been in 1I i j nry c ivilian clothing for a long time (we had the right to wear 1 I -! OW civilian clothing before trial) they now took this away. j I 3 I wrote of this to my brothers in the ~hcasus. They sent m. i 4, clothing but the gendarme administrat ion sent it back, And f 1 3 ! I when, after they sentenced me, my mother made the thousand mile 1 .j i journey to visit me, they allowed her to see me twice through 4 two sets of bars, alld no more. All in all, followirgmy arrest ? ? . I was conf'ined in solitary in the Odessa prison for throe and 1 l a half years, from the beginning of 1911 to about 1915, j In 1915 the court--the Odesskaia sudebnaia palata--fomd -. me guilty and sentenced me to four years of hard labor (katorga) a P in Siberia, But taking into consideration that I was not yet S

1 twenty-one when I comitted the crime of which I was accused, 5 I 1e and that I had spent a long time in solitary confinement, and t that my state of health was poor (I already' had tuberculosis), they substituted for hard labor perpetual exile in Siberia with deprivation of all rights and privileges including the right to

. . education. -Pierce: Was this treatment typical of that accorded political prisoners? Dotsenko: Of course no sympathy was extended to us, because we were against the existing order, ,When they sent me from Batum

t.0 Odessa they took me through the town where my younger brother

. . . . and my mother lived. I sent a telegram so that my mother . . could come to the prison and see me there, but my mather . never received this telegram, In the Odessa prison I sat . in solitary on the fourth floor. I sat entirely alone for a year and a half and went out fer a walk only fifteen minutes a day. Durin& the first part of. this period, when I was taken . . out, I saw no one with whoa I 'could talk, Later they let llae

out together with others, but we had to walk in a clrcle so , . that I could talk with only two persons and no others. . . In the Odessa prison there were about 110 or 120 political . prisoners at that time ard 800 ordinary criminals. For this population they provided the following food (around the prison there was a garden where they grew all manner of vegetables, but these vegetables were not for the prisoners, but were f or sale in the bazaar): We had only the outer leaves, These outer leaves were taken t,o the kitchen in carts and thrown on the ground. Later they put the cabbage in a big kettle and then.threw in one head of a cow, This was soup for a prison population of nearly one thousand. The cabbage had lain on the ground during the rains until the beginning of the hot weather, and when they brought me a plate of the so-called soup there were maggots floating in it, I had to pick out these maggots, throw them away, and eat the rest, because there was nothi% else, This was all we had for our noon-day meal, 1 . . . . 8

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-,. ,. For breakf'ast they as bread an8 hot water. If there .I . . ' . . . . was... no tea, they gave us ~nlyhot water. And because for a', I, . 4.j . . ... if . .< year a.?d a half I had no poss5bility of obtaining either money 7 -3 0 i a with mustard 4 or parcels from relatives, Pfttle bread salt and in hot water was a 11 I had for breakfast. We were given one and a half funt of white bred or two and one half funt of black bread [one funt equals a~proximatelyone pound], but the black bread was so damp it was inpossible to eat it until we had let it dry for a day. Sbce there was insufficient white bread, we took white one 8ay md blackthe other, When I ob- tained my pound and a half of white bread, I at once divided it into three parts: breakfast, .lunch and supper. In the evening they gave us, at four otclock, a watery porridge of millet [kasha pshena]. With this and hot water, if someone had sugar and tea, we oould have tea. This was what we had to eat, After they sentenced me to hard labor, they permitted us to send one letter per month and to receive one letter per month. There were no exceptions, Also, I could only receive letters from nearest relatives, firom my brother or f'rom my mother, and nothing from friends. If I ~~otea letter to both my brother and mother, only. one could be sent a& the other lay until the next month. And the next mnth I could also answer only one,

. . not two le ttem . . When they sent me to hard labor (katorzhnyi otdelenla) . rqg health was very bad; I had a strong cough, with blood, In 1 ' confinement with me at this time was Adolf Ioffe, who later 7. signed the Treaty of Best-Litovsk. Re was by education a doctor; and, as he came from a rich family and had suffici&t connections through his wife, he persuaded the prison commandant I J to put me with him, so that instead of being alone, we were two. The prison commandant finally agreed, and then Ioffe's wife be- gan to send him all sorts of extra food: milk, cheese, lard. J . . : He gave this to me so that I muld get better nourishment. I owe my life to that, because by the time I was sent to Siberia

9 ; my tuberculosfs was arrested.' . ., :.r' 1. ii , I . .. While IoPf e and, I were cell-mates, .we talked about many things. Strangely enough, although he had recently graduated from the University of Vienna and had an excellent knowledge 3 of the German language, he was at that time anti-German and i, was for a war .with Germany to a victorious conclusion. 1 .. i s? 4 * PRISOhT IN CEXTRAL RUSSIA AND EXILE IN SIBERIA 2

I wag sent into exile about the end of 1915, Russia waa J war 'I then at with Germany, They sent us through a whole series of towns in the Ukraine--Kiev, Poltava and many others, In these we mingled with Austrian war prisoners who had been . . taken at the front and for various reasons .sent to priaon instead

of to military camps. . And because no ifispection of their living conditions was made for several months, lice appeared in their clothing. We were sent through these same prisons, and in some places, as at Kiev and Poltava, there were not even places to lie down. If one wanted to sleep, he could do ao only in a 1 sitting position, There was terrible filth, and all manner of 3

I insects so that when we arrived in those deportation centers ?

1 (oeresylnse) after being sent from prison more or less clean, B

j the insects fell upon us in an instant, I was shackled, so I 1 - could do nothing and the insects simply ate me alive. The only i 1 relief was, if once a week they gave us a hot bath, to t& the f ; hottest bath possible. ai .3 At Cheliabinsk we were required to perform natural functionsi - -

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within the cell because the door was locked at that time, Each morning someone in turn had to carry it out; but because there were very many in this roon which was supposed to 7 contain twenty or thirty men and which actually had'over a 9, 1 hunetred, this thing was unbelievably.heavy. While I was carry- ing it I was ruptured. After this I was freed from certain heavy work, although it xas not possible for me to obtain a I i truss. Liter several weeks we finally arrived in Krasnoiarsk, I in central ~iberia. There they unsheckled me, and I had a 1 chame to rest a little, regain ny strength, and recover a little 1 i from all the unpleasantness which I had suffered while in the 91 I deportation prisons (neresylnye tiurray). I also had a chance to i 'com?micate w ith tb outside world, n9t very often, but at least -1 i occasionally. ' L -4 i; f ter a final assigment by,the governor they sent me along 3'3 it .,i the Angara River to the northern part ofEniselsk Gubernia. I ir # . 4 i The group consisted mainly of crizi.?als and as soon a3 we left J E 1 i the prison, the other political prisoners and I were put .into .{ . L ., 2 t' b ' ! I prison clothing (arestantskie odezhdv), including the so-called j - I "special boots." Having been sentenced to hard labor I did not I % have the right to wear civilian clothes. Just as we lert tb t1 1 j Eniseisk prison my boots were stolen, so I had to cut a piece 4. I j i ot thick wool f sherkt) from my coat (blat) and sew myself i b[ warsted stockings (chulki) and gc 800 versts [.66 or a mile] ln 1 12 ...... 5 ...... : . . ' . < ...... :...... :.. : , ...... :...... -... . . : .J .:... .: ... .,...... :...... I ...... - . :...... : ...... , - ...... those, - . .., ...... i % ' ,.: . . 1 There were twenty prisoners and one guard (strezhnik) to a,...... 1 '2 . . ? ; r 1 boat, Aswe weregoingagainst the current of.theriver, which'- . ... .j j ; was very rapid, only th; ick an6 ow f e'u possessions could be i '1 carried 'in tlx boat. The rest of,us went along the bank of the .:

river; one or two in turn pulled with a rope, and the others . ' . :. ;i2' . . simply walked. Only .where there were great rocks along the shore and no place to walk did they carry us in the boat, Thus, in the beginning of 1916 I arrived in the north of Eniseisk Gubernia and was unshackled. Three of us were assigned to a village of about eighty houses. Other political exiles

lived in another house. The government paid us nothing of any ' sort. It paid far the keep of those exiled by so-called "ad- ministrative order," that is, by mder of the secret police 4 .Ia (okhrannoe otdelenie) for the minister of the interior, but those who were sent to perpetual exile received nothing, 1 Left to our own devices, we fortunately found there several I 52 persons who had been exiled earlier. Through them the three of f us fomd a place to live, and we began to occupy omselves with d I making a living. A peasant gave. us a piece of ld, and I began to occupy myself with gardening (o~orodnichestvo),while one of my fellow exiles caught fish and the other hunted for birds, alth~ughfirearms uere .officially prohibited to us. !Ikus began my life in Siberia. It was indeed a hard life, but in the fresh air, the virgin forest, drinking buttermilk, eatizg bear meat ard the abundant fish, I was finally cured of my lung condition; and when I hear what they have for concentration camps at the phesent time in Soviet ~ussia,I think what we had I . at that time was like being in a good hotel. I have met several people who were in the Soviet concentra.9 tion .camps there and hve asked them about the conditions. What is different is that durirq that period the gendarmes had respect for the political prisoners. If we asked for books, for instance, they didnl t give us new books, but they might give us a magazine printed a year before. But under the Communist regime they don't respect any human being. This is the main

, difference. Before the revolution the gendarmes respected ! i the piLitical prisoner because he might be a prisoner today, I 1 but tomorrow he might be on top. The Communist Party is dif- 1 ferent; they try to destroy everything. I Soon after my arrival we opganized a small local organi- . I za,t ion of exiles (organizatsiia ssyllnykh). We collected funds to help the people who for one reason or anather had to live in

I . . I Siberia, just means to exist. It was also our task through . connections w ith publishers in Moscow, Petograd, etc. to build I up a library of all published in Russian which I could be used by the exiles, ard to obtain whatever was needed I Flights were organized thus: inasmuch a8 we were under I constant s urveillance, a policeman came every morning to see it I we were at home. The only means for flight u as the river, our I only means of communication. The distance by, river from om I village to another was about forty versts, and we could not go * ...... , more than about eighty. . vefsts. .. . . ;I .. .

I'1 When we learned that ' someone was preparing an escape, -- !.3,:.I

', i it was our task to supply him with money and documents and ¶ to organize the journey, so that although we could not go i beyond a certain area, we auld conduct the fugitive to 1 1 another village where others would ald him on farther, It was not 'possible for us to hire the peasants, because they would have at once notifled the authorities. However, we

vent for provisions regularly &o neighboring villages, notifying .the policeman (strazhnik) that on 'such and such a date we were going to such an3 such a village for flour. And since this was the usual thing, he in no way forbade us.

Then goiw as if for flour, we would contact someone .farther on who would quickly send the fugitive to the next place, i He did this as f& as possible by river, going about three :* > hurdred to five hundred versts, arid then went the rest of

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t I L the way to the railroad on horses. During the winter there 1 i r was a road over the ice pn the river, but in the summer one i ' 1 !. I hadto go by water. North of where we were staying there i i II- I : was only one more village, about eighty miles away, and aPter. 9 I i 3 i that there were only the ~un~us--nomadichunters moving from i i one place to another--so it was useless for us to go north. We tried to go west or .south where the railroad was. So we ? ..:., . . . t . # , ' . ., worked there an3 organized, ad I myself did a few good jobs. :$ ' f . . If.people wanted to run away we gave them all the assistance ! .j . . .9 . - ' iI . . ! could. . .

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\ . . . , . - . i ...... -3 . . . '4 . - .. . I ...... 3 ...... '~::,"..... ~

...... :J ... '4 . . ', The f'ug itive ,'having been provided with false documents,: i:;-::,: :,.: :: .: ...... - ...... * . . .:. . :. .

: ' , arrived at the railroad and could then travkl by kail. I... : .'':.; "1. .: . ir , would say that fully ninety percent of such flights succeeded. Only in rare cases, when there was perhaps betrayal, or if by some sort of carelessness the fugitive revealed himself,

was anyone. ca%ht. ' Thus we had it sufficiently well organ-

ized SO that whoever went on his false documents to central . . Russia could work there, or if he went to Vladivostok and through China he could go to the United States and from there to Europe. Our organization covered just that region; other regions had their organizations, too. At the end of 1916, when the atmosphere was a little better,. I asked permission to move closer to the railway. I was permitted to move to Iiansk, but I had to live in a village across the r iver about five miles from the town. It was impossible for me t~ fin2 a job because we were forbidden to work at anything 'except as common laborers. One could not be a private teacher, for example. When I was in the north some of my friends in Irkutsk observatory had me put in charge of the local weathr station. Usually the pay for this job was twenty-f ive rubles per month, but because it was considered that I was without any rights, I was paid only half that. As I was deprived of all rights, I could not even claim a normal salary which was in accordance with my edugation qualifications......

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. . . .

...... I. . . . . ', be present in my dwelling when the inspection was. made. Otherwise they maht take me into Kansk and send me back to the north again for breaking my parole. Those amo% whom I worked in that period were not hungry

:.t .I workers; they were what we called the intelligentsia-- engineering and medical students, students at the military school (lunkera), some public fipures, doctors, etc. We had a few workers, but as they were usually sent somewhere for texgorary exile of several years only, most of them were not sent far. Thus I worked in the Kansk area in the cooperative move- nent mtil the Revolution of February 1917. ;1

...... 15-b. . . ' ...... : ...... r. ..:.:,.:-., . . . . - . .. :...... :,,. ..:..:...... ;:,:;, ,: . r. : . . . .. , ...... I...... 3 ...... :: : . . . , . . 13...... , .- . . . :.: ...... _ ...... - . . . - ...... :. ,...... ;-,I .- . . . . , ...... , , ...... >. . , . . ' ...... _ ...... :. ..;...... : ...... : . . .. I ...... ,, ...... ~ .. , . :...... , .. 1...... - . ....

.* > I 5

WORK IN THE COOPERATIVE MOVEl4J3NT IN SIBEFtIA 7

With regard to my work in the cooperatives, I worked , as a bookkeeper in a small consumer cooperative (potrebitel' I -ski1 kooperativ), organized for the sale of foodstuffs. Later I worked in a gubernia cooperative, which had a stock

J of all goods and also sold by gross. I worked there as ., bookkeeper ard as assistant manager until the Revolution. L -i This was an official post and for this work the cooperative - 1

,.% paid me a full salary, as at that time the cooperatives did not conform fully to all denaads of the authorities in . Y b this regard. The only thing required of me was that I :i should not live in the town of Kansk, but a village 'i in + 1 ? (derevnia) on the other side of the river. For me this .:1 3 . I offered a risk. If the administration arrested me, it .cP. '3 :i could send me back to the place where I had been, but not I.! ,.6 :'. 300 -1 directly. On horses the distance was about versts, but ;:> .."Z,. '{y.1 they would have sent me by a roundabout route of about ,800 z versts via Krasnolarsk and Eniseisk, and this was an operation I d taking from two to two and a half months. But this did not -...... occur...... 8 ,. ;' . One may state that besides the ideological cooperators .:3..* ......

...... ,...... : . ... : .".. .

1....,.> . . . ,. 1s-c \I . .> ...... ;$ ;$ . . . . !1 . . . . :. $ in the cooperative movement in that period there were also ..I . . . .- . L.. . nany bureaucrats who occupied govdrmnent posts. They had - : ...... !.-.i .I.! . I connect ions, and if a pristav (villa?e policeman) or anyone .. rj , .I 't else would move to arrest us an official of another govern- < .,, ment institution might state, "He is a ..good worker for the ... cooperative movement," and we would not be touched, , . ...!... i . . . :,..: In ~eneral,the cooperative movement was very stro,ng In Siberia before the Revolrttion.' There were many persons In ;. . . ..,. ..-

the movexent ,. srJd in it we saw an institution which could prepare the people for deffiocratic forms of gover-merit, This was our approach to.the movenent. So thsreTore when we went t.o work in +,he movsmct as Socialist Remltrtionarfes-- the Social Denocrats had another approach to the niatter--we

looked upon it as a parat of our work. . ! t The movement was organized as follows: regardless of . i . 1 whoever put how much money in it, he had only one vote in a r I I meeting. This is in contrast to a stock coqany, in which

1 Secondly,eachmemberhadtheright tooccupyanelective post. Thbdlp, we always tried to have the prices in ths f [ 1 cooperative no higher than those in private enterprises. Xoreover, at the end of a year, where there was some prof It, that which was not used for cultural-educational purposes 3 such as the library was distributed proportionately as a bonus to those who had ptzrchased so much. If a member had - ......

...... , ...... -...... - .- ...... - ...... - ...... - ...... , . . . . .? . . purchased one hundred rubles worth of goods ke received :ast 2 .* 4 one sun! as a bonus; if someone bad pwhhasea 4x0 hundred 5 rubles worth he received twice as rcuch premium, While I was doing statistical work we co~lsfdered.that

tb. general mark-up of goods should be not -re than ten' to eleven percent. This will show the degree of efficiency . - in the organization. And in the gubernia =operatives union in which I worked, we considered that o?ly three percent had to be put aside to cover expenses, leaving a laree sum which we expended on tke cultural-educat ion work of the instruct ion sectiqn (irstruktorskii oteel). Out of. these funds the all-Siberian mvement against the Bolsheviks was subsidized, Pierce: Bow do you account for the fect that the cooperative xoveznt had such a rapid grsxtfi in Siberla? Would -you ascribe it to the economic condftions there, or would you

' I sag it came aore from the tr &Ztional tendencr of Russians to work together? D~tsenko: There were two reasons, First, tbre was always , a striving for communal action in Russia. Seeonsly, after

. seeing the success of the first attempts the population < . began to take part in these ent.erprisee. :

Jw There were *I We had many forms of cooperatives, consumer .7 cooperatives. In Siberia there was a great 2evelopment of ;j . tter artels (cooperatives~)sueh as here in the state of ......

. . . .

. .I - .f ...... , . - ...... g ... d . . ' ...... - ...... i . . ... ;i . . . . -. 4 . Wisconsin. Throughout Siberia there was a great develop- 'f 4 i ment of cooperatives for the production and distribution of i i 1 butter, milk and cheese. Credit cooperatives, which sub- i! sidized the purchase of machinery, were also strong. They I 1 bowht machines abroad--mainly PhcCcrmack and other agr i- ! cultural machinery--and these cooperatives had the same

node of payment as we have here in the United States in the fnstallment plan. Ilowever, the.y gave credit at very ad- vantageous conditions, at very low interest rates. There was also another difference : when someone here buys something on the installment plan and after a time has perhaps paid half

and . cannot pay the rest, they s imply take it away from him and he loses all that he pqld in. In Russia under the coopera- tive movement this was not 'done. If the purchaser was not in a condition to pay they gave him a delay. If someone in

' the family died or sornething, the members of the cooperative decided e.ither to place a moratorium on pay~entfor the machines or to take them back and give the purchaser back the money which .:.

; he had paid. There was absolutely no loss. . . . . Independently of this' the cooperative movement was furthered in European Russia by the zemstvos. (These did not exist in ~iberia.) The cooperative movement was the sole democratic , institution which could then exist. Therefore around it united .': :i '! both the socialist, who entered it to work for their ideological ,A views, anci liberal elements, like the burea~cratswho occupied ,, .b high positions in .its adnmtrative apparatus. Some of ...:... ':j ...... :-f . ' ' i . . these looked 'upon it as an octlet for revolutionary dis- ,, .:. ,i. . . '1. content in the hope that it would provide a peaceful i transition so that there uo-ild be less of an upheaval. ---Pierce: What was the attlIt.~Beof the Bolsheviks toward the coo2erat ive movement befohe ths Revolution?

Dotsenlro: They worked only ;tn the consumer cooperatives, not in the credit or butte? ~roducingcooperatives, or others. They worked only a the consumer cooperatives in

I the workers1 centers. Thex t~okpart in those only with *

i the idea that it was a trszsttion period in which they could I . thereby have closer contact =fth the workers. But they had. little use for the ideals oZ the cooperative movement. At Krasnoiarsk the future niinister of trede of the Bolsheviks, Frumkin, worked in the conscaer cooperative. I knew him before and after the evolution. But his participation i even in the consumer cooperative might have compromised him I. to a certain degree because Zn the end they liquidated him. They likewise liquidated 2szatskii, for a time minister of , finance. He also worked iri the cooperative movement, in the union center, I knew him ZE Omsk, and knew him in the Far East. Then he went to Y~seau,worked there a year, and after ! that they liquidated him. They did this because they found i that those Conununists wba warked ir, the cooperative movement, affected by the ideals of the movement were tosome degree ......

...... , ...... , . . . . , ...... :...... :...... :.. - , , ...... ,.: . . . . ,i ...... , ...... , ...... , ...

FEBRUARY AND OCTOBER ~VOLTPTIONSAND THE STRUGGLE FOR POWW

. . The February Revolution, strange as it may seem, came as a surprise to those of us tho had been working all ths time underground at~ugglingagainst the tsarist government. And we were not rsad~for it. In my opinion, all later steps and errors stem-ed from this unexpectedness. Prom the beg,inning, until the Revolution, our Party always had its roots in, and depended on the peasantry. In the towns ue had less support aaaong the workers, among whom worked mainly the Social Democrats, both of Menshevist and Bolshevist persuasions, They worked mainly In the trade unions .and among the worhrs, ereas the peasantry and the intelli- gentsia were more our sphere.

When the Revolution came the Bolsheviks and Social . Democrats muld organize soviets of workerst and soldiers' deputie's from the very start. We could organize no such soviets of peasants deputies because of the great area in- volved, It uaa necessary to have each volost [sub-district . of .anuezd) select repre sentatives, In ~niseisk'Gaernia, . .. for example, we ha& 121 volosts, and each had to have re- present~tion. Hatever, &en convening a peasant congress we always had to take into consideration how many peasants were free or not, because if they worked on the land they could'not . leave it.

The result was thus: at the end of February and early - in March the whole of Russia was organized. into soviets of workers1 and soldierst deputies. For each one hundred workers in Eniseisk Gubernia there was one deputy, and for each company of soldiers there were two. We, on the other hand, were able to organize the first Corgress of Peasents only at the end of June, four months later. During this period of time the Bolsheviks and ot'ner Social Democrats succeeded in seizing the apparatus of the cities by means of the workers, and in partially demoralizing the soldiers. After the werthrow of the Tsar, the basic differences between the Social Democrats (3olsheviks) and the Socialist Revolution- aries were that the Bolsheviks proposed .cessation of the war and division of the land, whereas ow position was for continuation

of the war, division of the land not by siezure but after legis- lation by the Constituent Assambly, that is,.legally

(zakonodatel~nomporiadke). .. . . Havirg taken these positions, our work was always handi- capped by the fact that the masses, especially the soldiers. and the workers, were not sufficiently educated politically to accept our point of view. Thus they were very easily attracted to all sorts of demagogic declarations by the Communists that they must abandon everything, abandon the front, give up all military service, return quickly to their villages, and seize and divide tb land. Othemise, they were told, if they remained lower on the front, when they returned home all the land might be gone and there mlght be nothing left, It appealed to their.naivate, and it had great influence. This was forty years. ago, but I rnus t say that iron what I have observed .among us, from what was said' regarding Formosa in the re cent election campaign, November 1959, such a

. primithe appro ach wlfortwately can still succeed. . Forty years have passed, and another people is involved, but the method

' &?d effect have changed but little, At the peasant congress which was convened at the end of June 1917, I took part as a delegate, and in this congress, inasmuch as ue d id not have a zenstvo (land assembly) organization in Siberia at that time, but only town organization, there was elected a provisional zemstvo board and a gubernia executive commit tee of peasant deputies (gubernskoe is~olnitel*nyle komitet krest1ianskikh devutatov). In all tbe se organizations and committees I was elected a permanent member (postoiannyi -chlen). After the election of the executive committee of the peasant deputies, we demanded of the Bolsheviks that there be formed a gubernia comrittee of urn kers, soldiers bpd peasant deputies together. 'This we did in an attempt to hinder eomewhat the

1 .J!' July 1917, they made no similar attempt tn Siberia, but 1 :: worked constantly for dismxption of the governmental ap- 7 paratus. While we were still in control we tried to liquidate certain units of the army which not submitted or which had I been dissolved by the Bolshevik representatives, to force them to submit to the Provisional Goverment and its representatives, i- The nearest town to Xras~oiarskwas Irkutsk, about a thou- f *, ' sad miles away, the center of the military district {okrug), under the command of Colonel Krakkrovetskii. In order to ob- tain information regarding our position in Frasnoiarsk he himself came at the head of several units of artillery, to pose definite conditions of submission to the Provisional Govern- ment and cessation of work toward iftssolution of the army. But

. si t - what happened? When the unit fro3 ~rk'utskarrived, the Bol- f ! i1 sheviks at once became the friends of everybody, disavowing all 5 i s thowht of preparing any revolt and coming out in favor of any i P j r measures which might be needed to -prevent bloodshed. t i .: .: . . I? - jj After the se negotiations Colonel fiakhovetskii returned to .:? P j Irkutsk with his units, hereupon not even ten days passed ! i C before the Bolsheviks resumed their former methods. This con- .; . . tinued until the October Revolution (perevorot) in the center, 4 ':j , . . When the Council of Commissars (~ovetkomissarov) concl~ded .j , ti 1.[ : :$ ...... ,. the Peace of Brest-Litovsk [Narch 1918] with Germany, in spite 3 .. 3 j ' ' of the fact that part of the soldiers in Siberia were dispersed, I . . .i. : the gemral mod was so much agahat any separate peace and for { I . . . S . . .i ...... - ...... , ...... ' ..':)' ...... , .'.: : ..~: . . . . . ,.;. . . . f ...... -. . . . . ? .: - ' , . , ,...... _ .... ; ...... ,. ::.. :...... :. . .., .. . . s ...... ,.: .-_..\ I...... - ...... :...... : ...... I.::. .... -...... :. , ...... ? . . :...... I,,...... , L forced out of fear to send a telegram to Lenin and the ? Council of Comnissars to the effect that they desired t~? i 1! . ' end to the war, but not by means of a separate peace with I: Germany. . . After a while they received new directives that t hey must adapt themselves to the situation, and if the popular I! mood did not permit them to carry out the directives all at f I once, they should do so gradually. I' After the October Revolution the Soviets began gradually 3 i to put .through new measures aimed at abolition of all town and rural self-government, They did not subscribe to these in- stitutions and they considered it best to abolish them because i they contained representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the so-called responsible (tsenzovykh) elements of I the population. They considered it necessary to exclude all of these elements and institutions and to have only the Soviets occupy themselves with legislation. In Siberia the Bolsheviks could not put through these measures all at once, bvt were forced to move their forces from one place to another, concentrating them where they were

I i . . most needed. The mosf important ]points in Siberia were the i ' 1 1 I i large towns and the strip along the railroad, Away from the f railroad the population was qu ite sparse, 1 . I - They began in Omsk. In Omsk there was a military

school ( iunkerskoe uchilishche ) which the Bolsheviks did not I +. recognize and which was against the Soviet. Therefore they i I proclaimed that the cadets had made an uprising, although they had done no such thing.. The Bolsheviks gave them an ultimatum that they must give up their weapons and disperse, otherwise they would open fire on all who refused, because they had drawn forces from all other regions of Siberia and concentrated them there they had a numerical predominance and succeeded, When they had finished in Omsk they turned on about the 8th or 9th of December to Irkutsk, where there was also a military school', and did the same; demanding disarma- ment and proclaiming that the cadets had made an uprising vhich required their imqediate liquidation. Af'ter this came the turn of Krasnoiarsk, hreI was. We had no military school, but we had Cossacks--Eniseisk Cossacks--and in the town of Krasnoiarsk at that time were four companies (rots) of them. So after liquidating the affalrs in Omsk and Irkutsk, on the 17th of January 1918 they appeared in Krasnoiarsk.

Cossacks did not know a-t do to, rad the ata- ot .. the Cossack voisko (arny), Ataman Sotnikov, asked me to help hj.m .decide the political problem which he faced, Hy opinion was that they had enough fcr ce and that if .they could.put up a fight we could liquidate the Bolsheviks, Eowever, the voisko administration (voiskovoe ~ravitel~atvo)was agalnst They proposed that it would be better for them to leave the town without offering a fight and to go to the south of Einse isk Gubernia, in Minusinsk Uezd (district), where there were Cossack stenitsas (groups), and convene a voisko meeting (krw) for a general decision, because the voisko administration did not want to take this responsibility on itself, After this there was little that I could do. I aaid that pending this decfsion the only thing left for me was to ac- company them and.provide necessary information. So they left toxn, not offering battle. But this was not unusual; for althoughthe Cossacks were very brave at the front during the war against Germany, the voisko ad- ministration was not prepared for operations in its own die- trict. They did not even know the topography, We left Krasnoiarsk in January 1918, in a temperature of . . thirty degrees below freezing, centigrade. We crossed'the River Enisei, travelled for several days, and then they found they could go no farther because there was a range of mountains before us and we were all on horses, with which we could not go* The Bolahev-iks had not come yet so we had to return to the town, go past it by night along the river, and go to the south, This operation took about three days. : As we went south and began to go through villages, . . I saw the following: as soon as We came to villages the Cossacks .who happened to be from that locality went no farther, They went home. I soon realized that after a while no one would remain, They would all stay at home. So after several days I declared to tha voisko administration "I can do nothing, because I think that after a while your Cossacks will hand me wer to the soviets," I then had to return to Xrasnoiarsk on foot, without horses or anything, through this tempeatme of thirty degrees below freezing, I could not stop in the villages and inhabited places along the way, so I and my partner, the advocate (prisiazhenn~ipoverennyi) Shepetkovski, spent the night in haystacks, the only way that we could keep warm. After several days of this I finally reached the town and home. When I arrived it was clear that I could no longer exist there legally. I had to go underground, but this was not altogether easy, for the simple reason that I still had the obligations of a member of the zemstvo board (zemskaia uorava). Aa long as that body existed I had to fulfill my duties in it and when we had a meeting (s'ezd) of the zemstvo I presided over the finance committee. The Bolsheviks knew this, and they followed and arrested me.- They arrested me by order. of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workeraf Soldiere' 25 1.6if and Peasant Deputies, although at that moment I was a vice I : { c president of this cam~ittee. They arrested me and proclaimed I f me a hostage (zalozhnik), If anything happened to thsm they would liquidate me. When my wffe came to them to ask for a pais to visit me in prison .they said what both th'33y 'and I knew: "Elena,, it. is. no use; it is only a question of time before he will be liquidated." So, under these conditions I found myself in prison. At this the I would like to show what, px'operly speak- ing, we undertook in the way of a public movement in Siberia. After the February Revolution 'many of the political exiles went to their homes or to the great centers, I remained in Siberia. I remained them in order to aid the elections to the Constituent Assembly; I remained there because I felt that there were not 'enough intelligentsia in Siberia; &d finally I considered that if I returned home I would not be known there; I had already been many years in ~iberia,and I would be for them an entirely new person, with little work that I.could do. Remaining at work in Siberia to help carry out the elections to the Constituent Assembly, I must say that after the seizure of power by the Communists in October there was already born in us' the fear that the Constituent A.ssembly would not be able to meet. We continued to work toward If we must prepare some second position so that if' the Constituent 5 Assembly was dispersed we could do something else. I; j In Siberia the so-called regional movement (oblastnoe i

' . dvizhenie), .headed by Potanin and Iadrintsev at the end of the '19th century, was very widely developed. The Socialist ~evolutionarieshad much in common with the viewpoints of the oblastniki (regionalists), inasmuch as we' considered that .the future organizafion. of ~ussi~should be on a federative basis, We d'id not believe In the Centralization of authority.

And fpr Siberia as ueil as fo~other parts of Russia we con-

sidered ' th.at c'ultur a1 .and. econo~icdevelopme ot . should be in . the hands of-the lo.cal population, while ratters of general state policy, suc2 .&s'finances, foreign affairs, and military I affairs should be in the hands of the central government. I Therefore In Siberia we had good relations with the oblastniki, I who were all mainly of the local intelligentsia, Some of I these served as officials in state service. They had de- veloped Siberia and loved it, while some of the off iciha who

i 1 came from central Russia regarded their stay there as only I temporary, Mter several years there most of' them went back, and without having developed any special ties; 'but a fairly I t I large percentage of the se officials settled in' Siberia and 1 . is this reSPect became like the oblastniki, considering that i 1 it was necessary to give. this area greater self-government I . .and that it should not de lboksd upon as a place of exile. Therefore the so-called Siberian Duma (duma sJbirskaia) 1 was organized in the following manner: At about the end of

November 1917 there was a meeting (slezd) of members of the . .

oblast duma (regional duma). This included representatives . . of the municipal and rural self-government, the cooperatives, the Soviet of Peasant Deputies, and even from the Soviets of Workers Deputies which recognized the autonomy of Siberia,

Before this meeting an oblast duma and provisional ;

government ' were elected for administrat ion. However, the Bolsheviks decided that this wa$ in opposition to their point of view and would hinder their further seizure of Siberia and, therefore,, began to take measures toward the dispersal

and arrest of the members of the Siberian Oblast Duma.. Under ., these conditions, at the end of January 1918 a second extra- ordinary meeting of the Siberian Oblast Duma (extrennoe sobranie sibirskaia ob1,astnoi dumx) was formed; and in one of the secret meetings of this body they elected a cornittee which should organize local authority in case the Constituent Assembly was dispereed. When the Constituent Assembly was dispersed, the.Siberian Oblast Duma elected special repre-. sentatives (uvolnornochennyi) to prepare for the seizure of

power, . . The Soviets, knowing that it had be'en decided to oppose the Soviet power, at this private meeting (chastnoe soveshchanie) of the oblast duma ordered the arrest early in'February 1918, . .

28......

some of the members of the government 'and members of the ...... ;. . . oblast duma. Those arrested were imprisoned in var.ious ., . I places. The minister of justice and the chairman of the Siberian Oblast Duma, Yakushev, for example, were taken from. Tomsk and sent to Krasnoiarsk, where they szt in prison to- gether with me, I must also point out that it was not only the local oblastniki (regionalists), but the members of the All-Russian Const.ituent Assembly from Siberia, in Petrograd, after the , closing of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, who, in a private meeting, decided that it was necessary to resist, / The Siberians (Sibiriaki), in the person of the Cossack 1Jovoselov, a member of tha .consti tuent Assembly, and Pornin, from the Eniseisk Gubernia, said that they had lost authority in the center but that in outlying areas (okrainalsh) there I wzs very healthy soil for organization of a democratic order, -. i j and that organization aust therefore be carried on there, I mention these two persons, Fomin and Novoselov, for the reason ! 1 . i i .j !I . .:; that I will tell later of how under the Siberian government a : i i

I of Kolchak they were killed, Thus the idea of resistance. to the Bolsheviks and the organization of an uprising was not born to us at the tine of

I the uprising, as some have said, but began with us long before, already in December 1917 and January 1918, and our basic ideas, i

......

1' , 1 ...... ; - ..29 ...... :... , , .: ...... :...... :...... -,...... '...... 1 ...... 1 , : ...... were that we did not recognize the abolition' of democratic ":..::...... :.. . 1.r . . . '.. : 1 r ...... ,d . . i.I , self-government, we did not recognize the Treaty of Brest- ..."... 1 L.2 , Litovsk, an6 we vzre for a continuation of the war with Germany. We favored the latter for two reasons: one, because we considered tbt it was not advantageous for Russia to appear as an eneEy of the alliesi and two, because the con- ditions that the 3rest-Litovsk treaty laid down were absolutely inadmissible fro= either an economic or a geographic point of view. Therefore the idea of creating a second ,front, of which the so-called allies, England, France, and America, had begun to speak alrezdy at the end of 1918, and the idea of non-

recognition of tbs Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, had appeared to us locally long before this. During two months in prison, during which I was in

, % danger of being liquidated at any moment, strangesas it may ! I seem I gained weight for'the simple reason that previously I I , . 1' t . had been under a very great strain, especially on my nerves. i r i ..:I I t I.; Ye did not. have enough people for organizational work, and 4 L 1 I1 If 1:I. it was urgently necessary to carry on education work among ! I' i ; ! 9 i .. the soldiers who came to us in sotnias (groups of one hundred) t !I s' to join, for we knew that if we could not control and direct i 1;,, I ? I I them .they would engulf us. Besides that, it was necessary to 1 ." tk4 .+ !: ? work for the formation of new democratic organizations like i1 .El. I' the zematvo and city governments. All of this practical ir; ' work kept me occupied sometimes for nineteen or twenty hours 1-i: C1 ! ti a day, so I had weakened physically. jj ij i~ While in the prison I knew that they wanted to liquidate i g 1 me, but perhaps out of self-delusion I organized an infor- I ;I ,I nation net through my contacts in such a way that each day I I N ! ... ! knew of what was on outside. Next I and others had B made plans for escape, ,for .we knew that if they decided to.. , .. - - ,., ...... '. P ...... - . .. . . q ...... , ...... : . :.';. . . . $...... ,. $ . . : . . . - _)...... ,. , ...... ~ ...... -...... - : ...... 1 . . ,, ...... >- ...... -...... :. -... - .I:: .<...... ;. "...... I .: .'....:...... :...... : : ._., . . ...-.. .: ...... : ...... > .:...... ;. - .-.. . . . I...... :...... , .... . , ...... : ...... : ...;. .... : ...... ; ...... :...... : ...... : :. :...... !j .. . .-. .. : ,:...... :..... \.: ...... > ...... I ...... flight from prison would be successful because of the organi- zation which we had. Nothing happened until the beginning of March, when they began to talk about putting me in isolation. Under these t I- !. conditions the flight which we had planned could not be put into I effect. So we did otherwise. At eleven o'clock in 'the morning / 1 there came to the prison an order signed by the chairman of the executive comaittee directing that I would be freed. They freed me. At. one o'clock they discovered that the order was a fake, but by that time I had already left the prison, changed from a blond to a brunette, and boarded the train to Tomsk. I went to Tomsk to join my comrades to see what could be done to free from pris~nthe members of the Siberian government and the chairman of the Siberian Oblast Duma. However, in Tomsk I discovered that the situation was too complex, and that for the time being nothing could be done. Instead, I was appointed representative (upolnomochemyi) of the. Siberian government in the very area from which I had fled, in charge of military and political affairs and preparations for a revolt. I agreed to this proposa and after a week with the representatives of the Western Siberian Commissariat, Pave1 Hikhailov, and the future war minister, Grishin-Almazov, I returned to Krasnoiarsk,

where we oreanized the staff of a military organization of - I rl cd 4Q)g0054 4 v) id oo*, I-( k U) f3 d 4 (d I=! 2g3k h a r d a,. PC *, - V) -0. ld fn s 2 .k 0 $Q,2 2 .: ; a5-0d a 0 -6-4 -w ld a C o d A o m s -4 f3 er cn -4 4 0 fn a aer - doh0 -4 E C > -4 H O G M Q) * a s " 5 U , 5 .r( d cn .r: w o e it as a hopeless tning. The Cadet party also gave no money. because they believed that although the Constituent Assembly

was dispersed, the Communists woulSn't last long, that they ' ' .. would collapse and the power would transfer to then, and'they didn't want to tie themselves to democratic elements which would hinder them from restoratibn. Such money as we received we obtained from cooperatives. We didn't need nuch money because the majority of us vorked without any sort of reward, and ozly part of the fighting force which we had to hold in readiness hsd to be given certain means. This was the main thing, and secons, we had to have means for arns. It was one thing to form a zilitaiy organizati& and another thing to get arns. To all new members of our military organization we pro-' .claimed the following slogans: 1) they must accept the prin- ciple of the All-Russian Constitumt Assembly; 2) they must accept the Siberian Oblast Govermnt as the official repre-, sentative of local authority until the All-Russian Constituent Assembly could meet; 3) we did not recognize the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; and 4) they &st rscognize democratic means of administration in the army. The lstter must be organized so that the command must have full sathority, but soviet9 of soldiers' deputies were to extend the oblast administration certain cooperation which could help it to maintain discipline. In order to preserve conspiracy [secrecy] we organized on the following form: we adopted a principle of 10. We had a staff of 8 persons who knew the leader but did not know each other. Each of the members of these groups of 10 persons must find himself 10 other persons, each of whom knew him but nst the others. Each of the members of these groups of 10 persons must find himself additional 10 persons. Using this means we already had quite a considerable group throughout Siberia by the time of the so-called Czech uprising. The Czechoslovakian uprising,' provoked by Trotskii and the Soviet of Comissars (Sovet komissarov) took place at the end of May 1918. However, already on the 3rd of May we held an all-Siberian'meetins of our illegal organizations. At that tine we already had about 8000 members of military organizations ready to rise with arms at a moment's notice. It vas only that in regard tostrength the naindifflculty vas that our numerical strength.in various districts was not altogether uniform. In an area such 3s Omsk, where the Soviets. were weak, and there were Cossacks, the military organization was composed mainly of Cossacks. In such a Cossack area it was very easy to organize; they still had a representative of General Denikin, General Pflug. They had an organization of r about 3000 in that district, and the remaining 5000 of us were scattered in the districts of Tomsk, Novonikolaevsk, 1 Hariinsk, Irkutsk, and Krasnoiarsk. Thus, in the latter 1 I district, where I was, I succeeded in organizing about 600 I men, but of these I could actually count on only 362. The . Soviets, on the other hand, had 5000, including four machine gun companies organized from Hungarian war prisoners. There 1 were very large prison camps of German and other war prisoners I 1 in the Krasnoiarsk area, and these the Soviets made a part of 1 their armed forces. Under these conditions the Soviets felt that the ~rasnoiarskdistrict was their center, their citadel. I This hindered me u:ltil about the,beginning of April 1918, when the Soviets began to feel insecure, expressed this by proclaiming martial law throughout Siberia, and carried out wholesale arrests and executions. The arrested persons'were siaply taken from the prison or jail, shot in the back, and the next day it was proclaimed in the papers that, "For at- tempting to escape so and so was shot." Although they had seized the Soviets and the leading army units, the Bolsheviks had absolutely no support from the population. This was all a superficial set-up, very weak,

because in general the working elements were very few in 0 Siberia. It was mainly peasants. The soldiers who were there were from European Russia, and they had an altogether different

approach toward the land than the Siberian peasants. ' The . Siberian peasants had allotments of fifteen desiatinas of

land per person, while the peasants of central Russia had - only about one or tvo desiatinas (one desiatinas equals 2.7 acres). If in an average family there were three persons of male sex, the average in Siberia was 45 desiatinas of land per family of grain land. If they were engaged in cattle

\ . raising, itwas more--60 desiatinas. Therefore, tla psych- ology of the peasants of Siberia was altogether different than that,of the peasants and soldiers of European Rusa ia. This I want to make clear at the beginning, because it was the reason we managed to liquidate the Communist or Soviet . . power in Siberia with such comparative ease. At ths end of May 1918 the Soviets, under pressure from Germany, began to hinder the movement of the Czech units to- ward the Far East. They made a written agreemnt regarding this movement; but stipulated that the Czechs must be dis- armed and only gradually, in small units, move taward the

I Par East, where America was to send army transports to take this army to Rance, as units of the French army, for con- tinuation of the war with Germany. But it uorked out a8 follows: as soon as they gave up part of their arms 'in one town, and went 200 or 300 miles the local Soviet demanded still more. Thus for example in Penea they signed an agree- ment in which it was decided to allow an echelon thwty rifles and one machine gun. When they reached Novonikoiaevsk, or Omsk, the Soviet proclaimed that they must have only ten rules and no machine guns. When they reached Irkutsk it However, tb Czech units did not comply with these i demands, because they saw that in the end (they would be . \. absolutely disarmed and not in a condition to fight their way through, inasmuch as Germany, which looked on them as traitors who had deserted the Austrian army, was constantly pressing the Sovie t-s nat to let the Czechoslovaks go to the French front. Under these conditions the movement of the Czechoslovakian army was very slow. About the middle of May, although the Czechs had no desire to interfere in our internal affairs, In the face of Soviet pre asure they began to be more inclined to negotiate I with us. Iwas one or' those who carried on negotiations uith . them in the Krasnoiarsk area. I pltk 'fo~ththe question to them as follows: What could we. count on from them? They I said the following, thelr exact words: "We do not desire to interfere in your internal affeirs. If you will 0rganiz.e an uprising against the Bolsheviks you may do so, but we uill not extend you aid; the only thing which we .want, inasmudh as i we are moving along the railroad, is that the railroad be in

. . . . 1 our control, so t.hat the movement along it will not.be halted. " To this I replied: "A11 right, this can be arranged,

because under these conditions we will not have to worry about - . . 38 . . . . .:. .:...... ,. , .. . . .

. . And that was all there was. This was. the only thin. on . .. . . which we agreed. No other sort of combined operations with the Czechoslovaks were organized at that time, And when they received an order from Trotskii that they must immediately disarm, or else anyone on whom arms were found would be liquidated, the Czechoslovaks decided that they would not do this and turned to us asking what we muld do, We replied that we could cooperate, although the time of the revolt which we Intended was for us premature. We considered that we needed more t ine; but as they s aid that they needed to rise immediately, or otherwise be disarmed, we agreed. This :was atthe end of.May 1918. . ' I.. ,. 1...... ,.:'.::..-.'.. . , At this moment I rece1ved.a telegram . in. code, s%ned by Grishin-Almazov, to organize a revolt immediately. But in my district this would have been 362 against 5000, of *ich the latter included artillery and four Hungarian machine gun companies, so of course I could not fulfill this order. Elsewhere, Omsk, Tomsk, and Novonikolaevsk were seized,' and near us the Czechs seized the small town of Kansk, but Krasnoisrsk and Irkutsk remained in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

~1though.orderedto set about a revolt immediately, I decided to wait, because our t asks were 1) to' arrest all leaders of the Bolsheviks; 2) to preserve the integrity of the state bank; 3) to ar.n our organization; 4) to free all political prisoners; 5) to seize and preserve necessary means of transportation, such a s river steamers, locomotives,. .rail- road bridges, etc.; 6) to cause panic in the rear, the threat of a front, and in all ways .to draw off the strength of the enemy; and 7) of particular importance, to prevent the BOY- sheviks fmm freeing their German war prisoners from the . .. .:...... ; :. #, ..,.: .;;; ., .;.: : 40 ; ...... : ...... ,, :...... ~ . . :...... ;, ...... :" ...... , ..... 3 'm...... ' ...... , , ...... -...... I . :...... - , - ...... 1 . . . . . i , .. prison camps. With these tasks, having at my disposal . . , ...... -...... 362 men, whereas the Bolshevfks had 5000, I did as follows: '. " 1 I did not at once fulfill the order of the war minister to

make an upris-, . Instead I waited until our other groups seized power, causing the Bolsheviks to send a detachment of 800 or 1000 from Krasnoia~skto the station Klukvenaya, and another detachent of 3000, with artillery, to the station Wiinsk. This mde it easier for me and gave me some cause to hope that I could liquidate the remainder. The Bolsheviks bd ceased to be very threatening w ith regard to numbers, but every ntght there were patrols on all the streets; they s earched everyone, and would shoot at the least suspeicion. It was not possible to organize any sort of uprising at nQht, so I ado2ted the following plan: I had an organization not only among the military but also among the railroad xorkers, who consisted mainly of Red Army men, I told the mambers of the organization'in the railroad repair shops to ask the comrnaMer (nachalrnik) of the Bolshevik forces, Captain lhiakovskii, to come to a meeting of the

railroad workers at eleven 01 clock In the morning to make a report on the situation at the front, and then to open fire on the com~naeerhen he arrived, just when all the Bolshevik officials would be goins home after sitting in cornnittee all night. And at the a pgointed t lme we opened fire and created a panic. We arrested some of them, but the rest, headed by the chairman of the executive committee, seized the state supply , of ,gold, thirty-two poods of it (one pood -equals thirty-six I .; .; \ . pounds avoirdupois), and went down the Enisei on four steam- ships, heading for Tur=kbansk Krai Lo the north. And with then went the four companies of Hungarians. This did not trouble me; but what did trouble me were the nearest two fronts, on one side 3000 and on the other 800 men, There-. fore, I s ent representatives to look over the situation and report to me so I cotlld determine what action we should take, Those of my people who went in one direction established con- tact with troops under a Czech, Captafn Gaida (later he be- came -General Gaida) and' the representative of the insurgent / governnent, Fomin. They returned and informed me of the situation. However, all who went in the other direction were recognized by the Bolsheviks and shot oh the spot, Meanwhile we seized the town and occupied the post, telegraph, state. bank, and prisons. From the prisons I freed the members of the Siberian oblast government and the chair- man of the oblast duna, Yakushev, and thirty-two Czechs. We had no Czech detachraents; the few Czecbs tbre we- had been assigned to the railroad station, for communications, snd had been arrested and inprisoned by the Bolshevfka. The Czechs in this area did not liberate us; we ltberated them, / But I was not able to- occupy the milttary settlement (p-orodok)where t he German war prisoners were; md, having seized the town, at the eL?d of the day I learned that the detachment of Dubrovinskii, 800 men, was approaching and that they were ready to cross the Enisei., What could be done 4 I had one armored train, manned. by thirty-two volunteers from among the workers, which guarded the long bridge across the Enisei. I gave them the following order: "Proclaim to all your comrades among the railroad mrkers in the repair shops that I guarantee f'ull liberty to all who put down their arms. The ody thing I demand is that they surrender their com~anders(kommandngi sostav)," Within two hours the com- manders were hallded over to me, all workers laid down their arms and left for their homes, 'and the bridge on which .the Siberian railroad crossed the Enisei was saved,

. However, having liquidated. this group, there were still the 3000 on the other side. To deal wtth these I had to combine our troops with the Czechs of .Captain Gaida and the repre sentat ive (upolnomochennyi) of the Siberian government , Fomin. The remaining Bolsheviks, having heard by now that Krasnoiarsk was occupied, and that the detacbnt of Dubrovinskii had been liquidated, fell into. a panic and began to retreat in disorder', They knew that the town was occupied, so they did not approach it, but instead threw down their arms and fled into the forest. In their retreat they cut the railroad telegraph wires, but in their haste . they did not cut one wire which was direct from Krasnoiarsk to Mariinsk, so wer this wire I was able to talk to Fomin, . Me had won, but for three days I had no sleep. I knew what sort of a situation I was in. When we began tb revolt in the morning we had 362 men; by evening we collected ad- ditional men bringing the total up to 600; and this was all. For a day or two we did not have even enough people to t change sentries. Under such conditions we were under great

strain. : After about three days we united all ow forces, in- cluding 700 Czechs' comanded by Gaida, and 2,800 Siberians

comanded by Pepeliaev; but the majority of these . were. at once ordered to move to Irkutsk and to unite with those who were in the ~'arEast. Thus, strange as it may seem, only three days after the revolt they took 300 of my men into the Enisei regiment (Eniseiskil polk) under the command of Colonel Zinevich (later he was a general) to be a part of PepelPaev~s army, and they went to the East, Of all those who had worked with me very few, not more than 100 men, remained at my disposition, And under such

conditions it was necessary to administer the gubernia. , .-. The next task after we had seized the railroad was to take the gold reserve which the Bolsheviks had taken to the north, and to liquidate their army there. They had seized four large river steamers, while at our disposal remained only one small, not a1together serviceable cutter, on which we could seat in all 150 men. However, we knew the armament which the Soviets had, They had fled to their four boats in

such haste that they had taken along only machine guns. . ' They had no cannon, whereas we had one three-inch cannon on the cutter, We decided that this would be enough, so this

detachment of 150 men went out to liquidate a Communist. . army of about. 500 men. It was proposed to do this in about two wee-ks, 'It was necessary first to overtake them and not to frighten them. For this we did the foilouing: from talks aith on the conditions, our detachment knew how far away the Bolsheviks were, Therefore, in order not to alarn them the detachment went only during the night. It overtook the so-called flot.illa . . in ~urukhmsk,in very sparsely populated territory amid the taiga or impenetrable forest. Our detachment oame upon the enemy flotilla at four ofclock in the morning, just at dawn-- it was s ummertime. We opened fire with the cannon and hit

the stack of the largest steamer. - All on board were asleep; and in panic they at once turned the vessel to the shore and fled into the forest, leaving all the gold on the boat, Our detachment seized all the gold, moat of the Magyar war prisonera were taken; and in a day or two the Bolsheviks themselves -came and smrendered, because in the forest they had nothing to eat and were tormented by the swarms of mashka, tiny Plies which infest the Siberian Forest. Thus a detachment of 150 men

STRUGGLE TO ESTARLISH A STABLE GOVEZNMENT

. . With the transfer of part of my original force to the, Far East, an? with the despatch of the detachment of 150 men to the north to pursue the Bolshevik flotilla, there remained around me almost no one of those who had taken part in the preparatory work for overthrowing Communist rule. It was necessary to take in entirely new people EJIO had taken no part whatsoever in the preparations for the uprising, and who in many cases did not even share our principles for the organization of state authority. But we had to take them

because we had no others. My chief gf staff, Colonel Gulidov was appointed as chief of the garrison by order of the war rninis ter.

' Besides the military there had to be organized anew the zemstvo and city -governments which had been entirely broken up by the Soviets. In other words, the work for organizatio~ of a democratic system of gpvernment was now renewed. We also bad to pursue the Bolsheviks in the woods along the railroad, but the Eniseisk Gubernia, as other regions of Siberia, was very bQ; and on both sides to the north and \ the south, there were great areas ;here we had no orgs~ization I. whatscever, But tbre were Bolshevik adherants there and ue

had to liquidate them. ' However, In this case the peasants came to our aid, This especially was notable in Minusinsk uezd, the richest, most favored hezd, including the partof Eniseisk Gubernia which adjoined China, the Urianghai region (kral)- in which well-to-do peasants lived. When they heard that an uprising had oc curred in the town of Krasnoiarsk and that the Bolshevik power had been overthrown, the peasants, without any authorization fro= me, arrested all membersof the Communist Party committee and members of the .Soviet of Soldiersf Deputies and sent them all t, me, to the prison at Krasnoiarsk,- This is one more proof, that -our revolt was comparatively easy because we ha? ro'ots in the population, , and the people had faith in us, Later I will tell you what wok. place among this peasant

population itself. After the revolt some of the intelligentsia, part of whom were Social Demzrats, occupyillg a very individual position, began to state that they were against the presence of foreign armies and against fireign intervention. We replied 1 i that we d idnf t consider this Lntervention b ecauae we ourselves

' were opponents of intervention, but inasmuch as the Czech- I.' - oslovaks were earlier on our ter~itoryand had formed an army with permis sion of the Provisional Governmnt we mut . .

look upin them' as a separate organization and 'not as . .-...... representatives of England and Frame, Moreover, we "...... : .... pointed out, ue shared with the Czechs a con~onSlavic

origin, because in the past, before the First World-War, . . the Czechs had looked upon Russia as an 'elder brother

which would somtime help them form a government, because ' , in Austro-Hungary they did not have the political rights which others had. The Cadets (Konstitutsionnaia- Demokraticheskaia Partiia), who took no part in the str~glewith the Bol- sheviks., occupied a negative position with regard to us, .declariq that the Bov isional Government was headed by persons who by t'ne b ideology were not far removed fmm the Bolsheviks and who 'desired to exclude the ~aaets'from th government ,

. As we had a free press we could impose no restrictions on th is sort of talk; they could write what they ple ased, but this simply shows the .state of public opinion after the revolt.

Myof tlem believed that it would be easier to deal with

I tb Bolsheviks than wit21 the democratic elements which had . seized power inasmuch as they also knew that the Bolsheviks did not have popular support and we did. Believing them- selves tbeatened by this situation, they began to work on the army officers. I . At that .time there was a representative of General Denikin ,' in the Omsk area, General Pflug, His task had been to organize some sort of detachments in Siberia to make an uprising in favor orDenikin. But when he arrived.and saw that it was too late for him db anytning, and that the organization of the ucrising was in other hands, he adopted a waiting

policy and worked among the Omsk Cossacks--not the Uralfsk . Cossacks but the Omsk one,, because the former .were- mare. demcrat ically 'inclined than the ,Omsk Cossacks--cons idering that after the uprisin~the point of view which then pre- vailed among the 0fi'ice.r~would change"in his group's favor, The peasa-ltry supgorted us, but were occupied with purely routine usrk in their orgen?zations of rural self-government. At tb end of July 1918 the detachment which we had sent

to the Turukhansk region +& pursue the Bolsheviks returned, brixzing the prisoners and all the gola reserves which the Bolsheviks had taken from the .state bank. But by this time there had already been a charge. The commander of the

.~arrison- (nachal'nik parnizona) , Colanel Gulidov, previously my chief -of -staff in the illegal organization wh ich had carried out the uprising, received a promotion and was trans- ferred elsewhere, In his place was wpointed Colonel Liapunov, who had not taken part earlier in the organization

'. . of the uprising and who was himself exclus~velyunder. the . . . .

influence of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets)...... : ...... - ...... : ...... - .... .; ...... -...... ' . . : . "...... : ...... :...... - ...... :...... ~ ...... '...... -. . While the gold reserve and the arrested men were on the

...... ,.. . .,. . . road to the prison, several of them were be'aten.' ...... , ,. . Moreover, during the night, on the demand of the Cossack units and several Czechs, five of the pe.mns sent to the pris0n.w ere taken away and shot in the forest, At my order all of the arrested men had been placed at the disposition of the district attorney (prokuror). When the gmup of soldiers appeared at .the p-ison and demanded these arrested men, the comnandant of the prison telephoned the district attorney, but he was not at hone. The.district attorney and the cafma?dant of the garrison had earlier agreed on this. Wen I learned of this the next day, I ordared an investigation and at the sane time issued sn order that tb chief of the prison had no right to release anybody without my personal order. There was. great excitement among the population against this mob action ( samosud) and the social' Democratic newspaper print ed a low article which said that the Cossacks had done this with support of the interventionists, namely the Czechs, and made a great attack on the Czechs, Just then I received

through the c6m?lander of the Czeh army, Gaida, from the front, an order to give up bentyonine of the arrested persons

and to send them tothe front area (afrontovye polosu). , . I hew what this meant- Itmeant that they would be sent there either to a military court or no court at all, and shot. I told the commander of the Czech troops that I would not do this, and if Gaida desired it let him first ask the minister of the interior and the minister of justice, for

\ only if they agreed to it would I give up anybody. Gaidafs delnand was inspired by ths fact that on tbe eastern front, a littld farther than Irkutsk, a Colonel Us'nakov, commanding a Czech .detachment, was seized along with his adjutant by the Bolsheviks and both killed in a bestial fashion. Gaida thereupon issued the o~derthat as this had been done me arrested men at Krasnoiarsk should also be liquidated. Learning that a long article was being prepared for printing in the Social Democratic paper the next day, I went personally to the editor and explained the situation and asked that for tactical reasons, not because I justified these actions of the mllitary, but for tactical reasons, to soften his treatment of this affair. But the editor of the paper not only personally printed all that they had intended to at first, but also stated that I had come and tried to employ censorship. When this came out in the paper the Czech representative expressed the great annoyance of the Czechs against this editor and said that anything might happen. To prevent any incident I ordered .the .editor arrested and put ,in jail, as I considered that to be the surest place I to save him. But this only aroused the members of the Socia...... ,. .. ,.' ...... '.. .. . , . . . . ,. . . . Democratic Party against me and also some members of the 1 Socialist Revolutionary Party, who made a formal protest I against my action. I received this protest ard.se!nt it on to the minister, of the interior, and meantime I released the editor. . . Several weeks later there was a parade of army units,- including Chose which had come back f ?om the north after retrwing the gold taken bythe Bolsheviks. At this parade of Russian and Czech units,, the town commandant, Colonel Liapunov, greeted the army and then, instead of inviting me as the rxpresentative of the civil government to s-peak, he

called'upon the representative of the Constitutional. . Democratic Party. In view of this untactibal move by him, nothing remained for me to do but to give him a reprimand for his tactlessness in the presence of all the troops. My position among the army and officers was so firm that two weeks later the war minister, General Grishin-Almazov, had to replace him with another.

Liapunov was replaced by Captain of the First Rank . Fedorovich as commandant of the garrison of the town of Xrasnoiarsk and of the Eniseisk region. He already had definite connections with Kolchak. The next step, seizure of power, was alreadybeing prepared. At this moment Kolchak was in Harbin in the delimited strip (polos ochuzhdenii), *ere he had arrived on an English shLp, and in September he arrived in Omsk. Here I must point out that in Omsk, under influence of the reactionary Cossack circles around Colonel Ivanov-Rynov and Colonel Volkov, the so-called trade-industry elements all agitated for establishment of a dictatorship and abolition of all elective inotitutions. They aonsidered that because the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks ita members no longer had any authority, therefore did not have any right to pretend to represent the population, Nor did they recognize the Siberian Regional Durna (Sibirskaia

oblastnaia duma) whiuh had .electedp the Siberian govsrnmea%, because the duma had no representatives from the trade- industrial olass, particularly those who had come from central Iiuaaia. At this moment when the peasantry saw the political changes that were brewing they simply ceased to pay taxes, The commandant of the Krasnoiarsk garrison, Fedorovich, decided that it was necessary to take stern measures against them, Such measures in his view consisted of frightening them by sending a detachment of Cossacks, saying, "Pay taxes or we will use the whipw (nagaika), But it worked out as followst they at first sent a detachment of Cossacks, under the command of a young officer, to the moat prosperous uezd, Minusinsk, where they all became drunk and then assembled the peasants and demanded that they give them women, and thab if they did not, they would be shot, The peasant8 rose, disarmed the entire detachment of Cossacks, and killed the officer, Fedorovich next sent another detachment of Cossacks, but this time mom, a sotnia, but the peasants were by this time so reinforeed that they killed all of these and took their am, So theymt a whole regiment (polk) there to pacify the peasants, But by this time the peasants took over the entire uezd and occupied the major center of Minusinsk, My representative, the plenipotentiary for Minusinsk Uzed, came to Krasnoiarsk and made s report of what had happened there, In my official reports to the minister of the interior I constantly urged that in order to stop the disorders in Minusinsk we must recall the army, beoause they had provoked the population to uprising, the same population which several months befare had arrested all the Communists and handed them over to me, However, my reports to the minister of the interior had no influence on the course of events, The military decided to carry on operations there. They first asked the Czechs to help, but the Czechs refused; a detachment of Italian troops also refused to go, and they had to gather a large force from nearby area to send there. At this time, at the very begilning of September 1918, I had a conversation with Vologodskii, the chairman of the Council of Minister8 of the Siberian government, who had gone to the Far East. I described the situation in the area and directed his attention to the fact that if the military would adopt this taotiu we would not be Zn a position to maintain authority in the near future.

Vologodskii heard me out and replied, "1 believe that you must try to find some sort of coamon language with the military.n I replied, #The question is not in my getting on better terms with the military but whether this area is under the Siberian government or not, and this question not I, but you, must de~ide.~ At thi8 time there was a ahange in the Omsk government. From the very beginning of the uprising until the end of August 1318, the war miniater was Grishin-Almazov, He did a great work at the time of the uprising, but after that the situation became more complex, for the simple reason that on the one hand the Coasaek cireles in Omsk wanted to free them- selves from him bsuause he vas not their man. On the other hand he was opposed by the so-called Administrative Council (administrativnyi sovgt) which was established to help the C~unoilof Ministers, vhich vas under Gins. He and the ohairman of the Administrative Co1unci1, Ivan Mikhailov, occupied positions sharply opposed to Grishin-Almazov for other reasons. Properly speaking, this concerned Ivaa Mikhailov, vho had fallen in love with Mrs. Grishin-Almazov, and therefore through her he began to influenae Grishin- Aloparzor in order to make trouble between him and the repre- sentatives of the Siberian Regional Duma so that they would reaove him, So here were entwined tho personal interests of Ivan Mikhailov, a liberal and a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who now for personal reasons took this position against Grishin-Almazov, The Cossacks were adainst Grishin Almazov because they wanted to remove him and gut their own man there. Circum- stances aided them in this, I think it was on August 1918 that in the tovn of Cheliabinsk a banquet was held at which the French military attache Yetain spoke, In his speech he began to the effect that it was too bad that a Napoleon had not yet appeared among the Russians. Secondly, he said that of course he hoped for a rebirth of Russia, but Russia must remember that she had to exist with the support of the allies. At this time we knew that at the end of December 1'317 the English and French governments had made an agreement con- cerning a partition of Russia. They had deaided for their foreign policy after the var, which because of the entry of America would be victorious, that it would be much better to divide Russia into separate small groups. After sueh s declaration by the representative of France at this banquet, Qrishin-Ahzov, who had had quite a bit to drink, got up and deohared the folloving, "1 have heard it said that Russia oan exist only with the support of the allies, bu$ up to new we have had nothing from you exoept words. We have had no aorf of support. Instead of giving us onstridge8 with vhioh to oppoee the Uolshevika, you weary WI with fine werben Tho repreraatativer of Ery~landsrnd Franoe were very diasatisfird with this and the Administrative Counoil and the Ministry of Fare19 Affairs at one@deoided that in order not to ctorpliaate the interstional gosStioa and relations with the allies it would be neoessary to remove Grtshin-Alaazov, He uas removed, on the one hand because he had mda a taotless speeah against the Allies, and oa the other hand because he had spoken out against the members of the Regional Duma. In his plaee vas appointad tha Cossack, Colonel Ivanov-Rynov, OVERTHROW BY MILITARY

As soon as Ivanov-Rynov took up his duties as war minister the situation at once took another plane, inasmuch as all the military began to prepare for an overthrow. And when Vologodskii was in the Far East, already on 19 September 1918 the Cossack groups commanded by Colonels Volkov, Krasil'nikov and others arrested the members of the Siberian government, Krutovskii, Shatilov, and Novoselov. However it must be noted that Shatilov and Krutovskii had never been socialists and hadnever belonged to any sort of leftist party. These were Siberians (aibiriaki) and liberals. But because they were partisans of a democratic administration and stood for good relations with the Siberian Oblast Duma as a representa- tive organ, they were arrested and given an ultimatum, "Either you sign your resignation or you will be liquidated.ll Krutovskii and Shatilov signed, but Novoselov, a Cossack, refused to sign. So they took him to a park and killed him, This action, which took place still in the middle of 1918, shows that the Kolchak coup d'etat was not directed againat the Social Revolutionieta a8 such, but against all

who were demoeratically inclined, At the time when Nwosslov waa killed, and Krutovakii and Shatilov were removed from office, Vologodakii wae in the Far Eaat and the adminiettation of all affairsws in faat in the handa of Ivan Milchailov, head of tb so-oalled administrative counuil. Row there waa no body of minlatera, 9nu had been killed, two were in retirement, and another was abroad. Under tb se condition8

we could not organize nor paas any sort 3f legislative meaaurea. We had to get along wlth what we had, that is, to govern locally with the laws which we had had up to that time. In tha middle of October 1918, aemral Knox cam From the Far Eaat and on hia way to Omsk stopped at Fsaanoiarsk and had dinner in the quarters of the English vioe consul, Peacock. At this dinner were present the comgandant of the garrison, Fedorovioh, the repreaentative of the Czechoslovakian national caunail, Lelik, General Knox, and the vice consul, Although I was the representative of the government, the re-

presentatlvea of the f'orei~n powers did not trust ne and never had any contact with me. Vice Consul Peacock vtaited

me only once, when he came with a request that I f roe from jail a member of' the Comunist Party who worked with him as a bookkeeper, This warr my one relation with the diplomatic representatives. But I was at this the aatiqq as head (upravliaiuahchii) of the gubernia during the illness of the regular head, and had at my disposal infarmation sources as part of the organization of the struggle with the Sol- sheviks. These sources re?orted to me the content of all the conversations held at Peacock's d Inner. The conversat lone wepe as follower General Faox decla~edthat of course there could be no sort of d iscussion regardin? Ruas ia being ready for denoaracy, that the sole thing which Russia needed waa a diatator. Aa for Siberia, there could be no doubt of' this and there was only one questfon: who would be be~tfor this role? And he named two persona : Admiral Kolchak or General Ga ida. I could not put this information in written f orm, so I immediately sent one of my trusted aides to Omsk to report this to those to uhom this could be reported, so they could know what was being prepared. On 22 October 1918 a military misaion headed by Colonel Ward came through, and the commandant of the garrison organ- ized a banquet in his honor. For several weeks I had known that there wo~lldbe certain unpleasantness because I knew the mood of the off icerr mound the commandant of the garrison. Themfore, in order to revent that I went to Colonel Fedorovich and told him that I had information that there could be un- pleasantness and that he might be interested in this, and that to avoid a scandal he could take necessary measures. In reply thQ eonrmandant of the garrison declared, "If the regrsrentatives of your democracy aannot conduct themaelver properly, our off icera know the ir worth l" To this I replied, "This is all that I aan say to you, tt and I 16ft. I was p-cseen* at the banquet, held the next bay, 22 Qctober, and sent the following official report to the M inieter of the Interfor concerning it : I have the honor to report to you, Mr. Minister, that in the town of Krasnoiarsk, at the personal initiative of tb cornandant of the garrison, a banquet was organized on the 22nd of thi%month

in honor of the offioers of the aritish arny.

To the banquet were invlted representatives of

various departmnta, of the town ad rural (-0 -stvo) self-government, of the exchange (birzhevgl) oommittee, and as honored quests the British officers, headed by Colonel Ward, the Eritish Vice Consul Peaoock, the representative of the Czecho- slovak natfonal council Praporshahik Lellk, and othar otficers of the Crteehoslovaklan Army. Ths majority of those attendfng the banquet were officers of the Rusalan Army. In view of the umriae issuance of Lnvitations, nany persons attended the banquet who should not have been there, And as a result the banquet tlrjrned into

a drunken debauch. Even before a toast was proposed various persons got up indifferent parts of the hall and tried to speak, but were put out, (They were drunk,) Toward the elid of the banquet many of tbRussians felt very gay by reaoon of the excessive consumption of -drinlca, and when the chairman of the Gubernia Zernatvo '3oard (gubernskaia zemskaia uppava) began to propose a toast in honor

of %be 3ritish democracy his speeah was cut short by the noise and cries of "~noughtSit dawnJv The noise was so great that the Sritish colonel through hia translator then said the following: "I see that the aajority of those here 'lave officerst epaulettee. 3ut to them are also attached certaln

' obligatlons, The first obligation of all 1.s to remmber d iacipline. We in England are accustomed to hearing only one orator at a tine, not aeversl." ~iththe remark of the Enqlishnari the noise ceased and they continued to ppopose toasts, After several toasts they besan to play the old pre-revolut ion-

ary hymn, nQlory, Glory to our Ruseian Tsar, M (Slaytse, slavtae na ruaskikh tsar) at *ich the chai~manof the Gubernia Zenstvo Soard rose to grotest. At the protest several of the Ruasian offiaerr did not conoeal thew anger. At the end, while the in$erpPeter wan translating the apeeoh of Colonel Ward into Czech, a group or Russian offloers made the hall resound wZth the hymn ''Swear to Protect the Tsar!" (& bozhitse -zaria khrani), The chairman of the Town and Rural Self-Governments protested and left, The repreaentat Lve of the Czechoslovakians, Praporshahik Lelik, accompanied by the Czeaho- alovakian officers, also left the hall, Aft*-

ward the noise increased, Neither the pmsence of the guests, nor requests, could atop the

noise, To reatore order tb commandant of the

garrison had to order then several tines, "J3e quiet ln (Smirno), Soon after thfs the official part of the banquet ended. Not a sinqle toast

was propoaed by the hono~edEnglish auests. (signed) The Governor of Eniseisk, notsenko, In such a politfcal situation, the dtrectorg elected in

Ufa had to deaide where to go--to Ekaterinburg or Tomsk.

Knowing the political sit~iatlonin Omsk, we insisted that the direotoq ahould not go to Omak; theg shoul-d establish reaidenoe Ln Tomsk If theg wanted to be in Siberia, or in the Ural town of Ekate~inbury,but in no circumstance should they go to Qmsk, However, because of a combination of shortaightednesr and weak will, Avksentfev and Zenainov agreed with the other members of the directory to go to

Omsk, motivated by the faot that there already existed there a ready-made administrative appratus, With the tranafer of the directory to Omsk It becam quite clear that It was only a queation of time before the directory would be liquidated. At that tine all our units-- the units under Pepel' iaev, t3e units of the Enieeisk regi- ment, and those of the Tonak reqlment--rere already fighting with the Bolsheviks on the other side of the Urals, and we in the rear could give them little support. There was still one way out, which several membera of our group wanted to put into effect. This plan consisted of the followingr notwithstarding the fact that all thd members of the military organization, particularly of the towns, had been mobilized and put in the rrew Siberian army to be sent to the front, to Poremost positions, the Onak Cossack group headed by Colonels Volkov and Kraail'nikov had not been to the front. Thqremained in the rear, And we had a def inite plan which until then had not been triedt an attaak on the front was planned for the end of November 1918; and Pepeliaev ?athered supplemental units of the army, so that on the railroad in the area of Omak and Movonikolaivsk were several units faith- ful to Pepeliaev. At She sana 'tima Ivanov-Rgnov, the war minister, was in the Far East with Vologodskii, and the chairman of the directow for military affairs, General Boldyrev, had left

Cheliabinsk for Wfa. We proposed to Avktsent'ev that aa a representalii~eof the dtrectory he should eonvem an extra- ordinary meeting zlnd order the removal of Ivanov-Rynov as-- war minister and the appofntment of Gaida in his olace.

In the beginning we spoke of fepell laev for this post. Be

agreed that it was a necessary stop, but d id not want to be war minister hinseaf. Ee spoke of' this with Gaida, and Gaida aqreed. Thus there could have been in 3nsk an. officer from the Ekaterinburg fr9n-t r,~ithplenZ?okentiary powers of

t3e follow Ins character : If Avkt se~t'ev and the d lrectary

ap;;rsed to a shaqe of war minfsters, the now war ?Iiniister,

Gaida, already was prepaped to give an order to a11 the

units at Omsk, ~~hlchfor a Ions time had no5 Seen to the

front, to po there to fight the 3olsheviks. If they refused

tc; s.l.j.nlt t2 the order of the war n-Entster they ~ovldhave Seen in the posTtfon of mutineers,

But Avktsent 'ev replied to this, "General Eol.dyrev .is

nat here; 9.M 1 do not want to interfere in his military arfairs. " Su,c'n coasf deration for other members or the directory was perba~snqentrenanlg" but in nrg opfnion, it was not

the time to take such a pos2tlon. With Avktsenttevls fallure to agree to do this the

cuestion was already decided, At the en3 of 3ctober 1918 the members of the Conlstrtttxent Assembly, located at that aoment in Ekaterinburg, Pelt that there was llttle that they c0111d do in these conditlona. The central cornittee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party con- sidered the queatton and the opinions were d lvided, One

po1n.t of view, of which I wa3 a partisan, wap that we could

still save the situatfon if we would act, The others, headed by Chernov, held that we could do nathing because

d the mass of the officers were a~ainstus, and we co1:ld not take the army fro- the front, In these conditions the Central Committee fss1led a circular order to the Party members

which they ~ublishedand distributed, to the effect that all the ?arty menbers munt be ready for pr~~aratorywork for the

future, because If there was an overthrow there was nothing to be hoped for from the directory, When General Knox learned of this, in spite of the fact that ha was on his own alss.Lon and wa8 not an official re-

preaentatlve in the d-iplomatic coros, he asked an audience

fram Avktsent'ev, the chafrman of the directoq, and spoke very sharply to him about this, and said that Avktsentf ev should order that Chernov be immediately shot, 3ut Avktsent'ev replied that although he did not subscribe to

the content of this circular, inasmuch as it was to the members of the Party and did not d.ireotly oall for any actton regarding the exieting order, he could do nothing about it,

On 11 lOovembsr 1918 came the Armistice In Europe with Germany. This was the turning ooint for General Knox. The creation of a second front against Germany was now no longer in qm etion, Rarller , in negotlat ion8 about the creation or a aecond front, the alliea--England, France, the Czecha, and America--began to apDear only in July or Ausust, but except for the declarat Lon of the formation of a second front, there was no tanqfble support, All the arma that we had were those that we acquired through our own means, but from the allfehi there cam no arma, Suah arms as were sent were held up by Sernenov by order of the Japaneae. When the Armistice came, the creation of a second front for the allies was nc, longer in question, and General Knox decided that th time had come to act, He feared that the ih"itish Nlniatry of Forei,qn Affairs would reco~nizeAvktsent'ev, which would be fro3 his point of view an errw, s3 he decided throqh a military group in London to hold up the recoqnftion and harsten thB overthrow in Siberia, 3n the second day after proclamation of the Armistice, the chief of thp gmrlson gave an order proclaiming the town of Krasnoiarsk and the entire district in a state of aiege, No 3ne was to be allmsd on the street after e ight of clock; anyone found bearing arms without permission waa to be shot on the spot w Lthout trfal; there were to be no meeting8 or gatherings of any sort; and all papers were to aubmit to censorship, I kmw that there was no Bolshevik threat of any sort in the diatriot, sa I proterted againat thia action. When there waa no atate of siage I was the chief person in the district, but if there was a state of rrieg6 then all power went to the militam. However, aince I ha&my own weapon, and had to be out after eight olclock, to avoid any mis- understanding with the patrola, I asked pe~misarionto do this, I aent my searetary to get a certificate of my right to carry a weapon during this period; but they did not give me this permission, declaring that the head of the gubernia should give up his weapon8 to thea. This I refused to do, and I ~eportedthe matter to the government in the following telegrams Omsk, 13 November 1918. To the Chairman of the Provisional Government Avktsentt ev, Chairman of the Counofl of Ministera Vologodskii, and Minia ter of Interim In spits of the order of the Cotmcil or Ninistera of 15 July the town is declared by the Chief of the Garrison to be in a state of siege. The ardor of the Council of Miniartera of 15 July included the following, that *no locality in Siberia mar be declared under martial law except by agreement of the Ministar of

Interior and the Minister of War with the approval of the Chairman of the Council of Miniatspa." But here the Chiaf of the Garrison has arbitrarily dealared a state of siege, Referring to the above decree, I hare prote~tedagainat this action. For "orinma" oomitted in the execution of official duties the Chief of the Garrison imposes disciplinary proceedings on persona

subordinate to me UD to and incloding arreat, A1though guaranteeing me personal aecur ity, he has nevertheless ref used to grant per- mission requested by m to carry a revolver during the state of siege and has asked me to give it up, f have refused to comply with this demand. Today I learned from the papers that by an ardor of 12 November the Chief of the Garrison has fined me 500 rubles for carrying a weapon without permission. The execution of this decree haa been entrusted to the Chief of tb Militia, to whom I am not subordinated. Looking on the action of the Chief of the Gar- rison as being in excess of authority I ask you id the interests of the maintenance of authority to issue an order excluding my aubordinatee and me from thd illegal aations and arbitrary ordms of the looal military authorit lea.

I sent thin telegram on 13 November 1918, I never re- oeived a reply, On 18 November there was a coup dcetat in Omsk, Members of tb directory were arrested, aent to Japan, and their places were taken by military personnel aubordinate to Kolchak, In these conditions I could no lower fulfillmy obligations, Even earlier, at the beginning of November, I had sent a teleeram to Omsk and asked them to relieve me, but knowtng thatthis kuld be fairly complicated I did the followingi I enlisted as a volunteer in the Czech part of the army and on the baaia of thia asked them to free m as 8 soon as possible so that I could appear in the ataff of the army in ~katerinburg, 111 apite of my reque at to be freed. from my duties, I received no ward of any sar t conerntng this from the central aovernment. I deoided that there was no sense in my remaining any longer, 'm on 13 December 1918 I transferred authority to the head of the section of the Ministry of Agriculture, by law the next after me in auccesaion. after 1: had tranafer~ed authority to hlrn I sent a telegram to Omsk regardlna th.18, and they informed me on the 19th that by order of thf: Mlnister of the Interior was appointed in mg place the chalrman of the distriot (okrug) comt Troitskii to fulfill duties of head of the gubernia (upravliaiuahchii gubernii).