Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/171

Rh sense of the dramatic and of the humorous had so abruptly dissolved, hid itself in fear of the responsibility for which all the leaders in our movement were now to have to answer. Nevertheless, secret printing houses issued numerous pamphlets, accusing the Central Committee of having enticed the working masses into the revolution and of having thus exposed them to the punitive measures threatening. It was not difficult to trace the authorship of these pamphlets to the monarchists and political police, who were acting behind the mask of the workers' organization. Our Central Committee, foreseeing clearly the revenge in store for it on the part of the St. Petersburg Government, ended its existence and began to scatter quickly, some going away while others simply gave up their public positions and returned to their private occupations.

In this way the administering organizations of the life of the Russian Far East during the time of chaos following the war passed out of existence, while the former ones, with their authority weakened and their personnels intimidated by the revolutionary changes, which had been so violent, had not yet the courage to exercise their previous rights and functions. In the towns and in the army this situation at once evidenced itself, in that various town councils and the High Command made strong representations to the leaders of the Central Committee, asking them not to terminate abruptly their activities, which influenced and regulated the military as well as the civil life of the Far East and which served as the only common point of contact between the different conflicting elements of society. The High Command hesitated to assume again the full responsibility for the evacuation, inasmuch as they feared, from what they had previously seen of the soldiers' attitude, that the troops