Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/458

 cessful attempts to bribe certain corps commanders brought about the exposure of the plot. Investigations will be continued with all possible thoroughness.

Lockhart and an officer of the Soviet's troops met for the first time at a private house on August 4th. They discussed the feasibility of arranging an uprising against the Soviet authorities in Moscow about September 10th, at which time the English troops would be advancing in the Murman region. The date of September 10 was considered as very important owing to the fact that Lenin and Trotzky were to attend a meeting of the People's Commissaires on that day. It was also planned to seize the Imperial Bank, the Central Telephone Exchange and the Telegraph station. A military dictatorship was to be established and all meetings prohibited pending the arrival of the English troops.

The Russian officer received from Lockhart the sum of 700,000 rubles to be spent in preparing the uprising. On August 22 another conference was held at which he received another 200,000 rubles and at which plans were elaborated for seizing all the papers in Lenin's and Trotzky's offices. On August 28 the Russian officer received another 200,000 rubles and it was agreed that he should go to Petrograd and enter into communications with the English military group and the White Guards.

The threads of the entire conspiracy converged in the British mission, the second in authority being the French Consul General Gresnard; then came General Lavergne, a French officer and several other French and English officers.

The negotiations between the Russian officer and the foreign plotters took place on August 29. The possibility of starting simultaneous movements in Nijny Novgorod and Tambov was discussed. Negotiations were carried on with the representatives of a number of allied powers with a view to paralyzing the resistance of the Soviet authorities to the Czecho-Slovaks and the Anglo-French forces, especially by bringing about an acute food shortage in Petrograd and Moscow. Plans were likewise laid for blowing up bridges and railroad tracks, for incendiary fires and the destruction of stores of foodstuffs.

The investigation commission holds 40 men. most of them Englishmen, who were arrested on August 31 in the British Embassy. Dzershinsky, chairman of the commission, had received important information on the relations existing between various counter-revolutionary organizations and the representatives of the British government.

Hiller, a member of the commission, was authorized to search in the