Page:Yevgeni Alekseyevich Preobrazhensky - Third Anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (1921).djvu/12

 12 Social-Revolutionists had made their capital, and where they had convened the Constituent Assembly, dissolved by the Bolsheviki in January, 1919.

The Volga was cleared of the Whites, and our Red troops marched upon Ufa and Orenburg. Our success was favoured by the quarrel which at that time had sprung up between the Siberian White Guards and the Social-Revolutionaries, who had hitherto been firmly established on the Volga. The former offered no assistance to the latter, and the White Guards stuck in the Ural mountains, where the workers were stubbornly defending every- inch of ground. The heroic resistance of the Ural workers kept at one time in check all the forces of Kolchak.

However, by the end of autumn, towards the beginning of the winter, the Soviet Government had to succeeded in organising a strong Cossack army, and turn its attention to the South. General Krasnov had moved in two directions—to the North and to the Volga. For a time we were obliged to leave Kolchak and concentrate our main forces on the Southern front.

By that time the Soviet Government had passed from the mobilisation of the workers to the mobilisation of the peasants, which proved quite successful. Although the peasantry had not sufficiently rested after the war with Germany, it nevertheless answered the call, being afraid that the generals and landlords would take back from them the land of the nobility, given to them by the Soviet Government. The first regiments, composed largely of mobilised peasants and commanded by officers of the old army, were not