Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/197

Rh army, imprisoned, and banished beyond the frontiers of Siberia.

The social-revolutionaries started a powerful agitation among the peasants, and Siberia became the scene of a revolution of its own.

The dissolution of the Russian groups reached its climax when Kolchak fell ultimately under the influence of Krapotkin and his group, and began the war against the Bolsheviks by a march on Moscow. The peasants refused to supply recruits and mutinied; the workmen struck work and formed their own fighting organisation in preparation of an uprising; and Bolshevik agents worked incessantly in this dense atmosphere.

The armies were permeated with the revolutionary spirit, and offered but feeble support to the Government of Siberia. A further source of weakness were the intrigues of the Russian officers of the General Staff against the foreign troops, particularly against General Hayda, the Commander of the Czechoslovaks. The Czech Commissioner in Tomsk openly delivered revolutionary speeches of a strong Bolshevik flavour.

The atmosphere was heavily loaded, and had it not been for the Polish division, the rising of the peasants would certainly have broken out much sooner than after Kokhak's flight to the East.

At Kolchak's Court and in Government circles people behaved just as they had done at the Imperial Court in Tsarskoye Selo.