Page:Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky - Third Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (1921).djvu/10

 10 tured Omsk, Cheliabinsk, and took Ekaterinburg, the capital of the Urals. The rebel Czecho-Slovaks in the Volga. provinces captured Samara, Simbirsk, and then Kazan, and were approaching Nijni.

The summer of 1918 was the most difficult period in the life of the young and rather weak Soviet Government. Of the huge territory of Soviet Russia there remained not more than 25 provinces of famished central Russia, shorn of its corn granaries, of the Donetz coal, of the Baku oil, of the Ural and South Russian iron, and of the Turkestan cotton. And the country itself was torn by White Guard risings and risings of the rich peasantry. At one time the White Guard officers took Yaroslav, intending to join the English, who were operating from the North, their object being to capture Moscow. It was the only time when the Soviet Government might have fallen under the blows of its numerous enemies. Fate, however, decided otherwise. The deadly danger forced the workers to take up arms with renewed energy.

Until the summer of 1918 the Soviet Government had carried out no compulsory mobilisation. The masses of the people were sick and tired of the war with Germany and needed peace and rest. The Soviet Government carried on its struggle against the counter-revolution almost exclusively with the help of volunteers draw from the ranks of labour. The first regiments of the Red. Army were largely composed of volunteers, previously organised hastily in Red Guard detachments. But the number of volun-