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236 West, and from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea on the south. While these gentlemen were not very modest, they were most discreet. They did not set foot upon any of their vast domains. Had they ventured to do so they would have been locked up as common criminals, by the government really functioning—the Soviet.

From the safe confines of Manchuria they issued their glowing manifestos. There all the conspiracies against the Soviet were hatched. After the defeat of Kaledin, the Counter-Revolutionists, egged on by foreign capital, put their hopes in the Cossack Semyonov. Under him were organized regiments of Hun-Huz bandits, Japanese mercenaries, and monarchists rounded up from ports down along the Chinese coast.

Semyonov declared that with an iron fist he was going to drive decency and common sense into the Bolsheviks. He announced his objective as the Urals, 4,000 miles away, then a descent upon the Muscovite plain, with Petrograd opening its gates, and the whole countryside rising up to welcome him.

Raising his standards amid great plaudits from the bourgeoisie, he crossed over into the Siberian border twice, and twice came hurtling back again. The people did rise up to meet him. Not with flowers, however, but with guns and axes and pitchforks.

The Vladivostok workers helped in this defeat of Semyonov. After five weeks they came back