Page:Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin - Two Years of Foreign Policy (1920).pdf/29

 hastily left for their own country, absolutely disregarding the clever plans of Kautsky, who was aiding the Entente imperialism and the counter-revolution. The evacuation of the occupied districts by the German troops took place in a very disorderly manner, and the German command devastated the evacuated district in the most barbarous way. Repeated encounters occurred between our troops and the German troops, who were incited against us by their counter revolutionary command, which had tried in every way to bring them into conflict with us. The Soviet troops, gradually clearing the territory which had been occupied by the Germans, acted with great caution and first of all tried to come into direct contact with the German soldiers whenever they succeeded in doing away with the obstacle of the counter-revolutionary German command. As a result the most friendly relations were established. The transfer to us of the evacuated districts occurred quite peacefully, and the mass of the German soldiers gave signs of a Spartacan state of mind. The evacuation of Ukraine occurred with the least trouble. The situation in the Western border provinces was more complex. In southern Livonia and Courland were created White Guard bands and volunteer detachments of various kinds—the "Iron Division", the "Landswehr"—and the German commissary Winnig soon concluded an agreement with the British marine command to continue the occupation of this district. The counter-revolutionary elements of the German army were concentrated mainly in Kovno, where the disintegrating remnants of the old German army were soon replaced by new volunteer units which did not long to return home.

Gradually the cloud of the Entente intervention was becoming denser. Russia was gradually closed in, isolated by the Entente blockade, by the so-called ring around her, of the "Cordon Sanitaire". The last months of the year 1918 were a period of