Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/208

196 among its members in 1905 none other than Leo Bronstein, known better as Trotzky and until recently the actual Tsar of Soviet Russia. Fiedorenko so persistently distorted all my answers and continued to affirm our union with the Council, that I finally became disgusted and said with impatience:

"The Central Committee and the Board of the Union of Workers, during the whole term of their existence, issued bulletins, from which you could have learned, Colonel, that we organized in response to the orders of the League of Unions in Moscow. Once launched, we worked out plans of our own, as the conditions of life in Manchuria and the Far East were quite unique. I feel sure that, if the working principles which we put into the life here had been successfully introduced into European Russia, the Government of Tsar Nicholas II would have by now disappeared, as well as the political police, whose representative I am now addressing. Also, if we had adopted here in the Far East the plans and methods of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers and Soldiers, a bloody anarchy would have reigned that would have engulfed the army and the towns, and first of all you, Colonel, and the other leaders of the old regime, who are sowing the seed for a most terrible harvest of revolution in Russia. Please keep this in mind and do not bother yourself to trump up non-existing elements in our trial. We acted entirely openly, hid nothing and will hide nothing!"

My comrades, who were questioned after me, deposed in this same strain. After this first inquiry we were compelled to go several times more to be catechized by Fiedorenko, who had not the desire nor the ability, as a matter of fact, to be a close-thinking, logical judge. Also we were summoned before the Prosecutor and in due