Commonplaces in Buzuluk

MARCH, 1919

BY JOHN RICKMAN

I

FROM the time of the great Revolution in February, 1917, until the end of April, 1918, it seemed to us in Buzuluk that, whatever might happen elsewhere, there was no possibility of war in our part of Russia. The Bolsheviks, apparently owing to orders from headquarters in Moscow, were trying to raise an army of several thousand men in the Buzuluk Department. Some said that it was necessary to have the Bolshevik force, in order to keep down the Cossacks of Orenburg and Uralsk. Owing to the secrecy which the Bolsheviks maintained by the censorship of telegraphs and newspapers, and owing to the mental confusion which seemed to exist in the minds of most of the people, the idea of the possibility of a Cossack uprising passed from our minds. Meanwhile, from various causes, among the most important of which were the high wages and good food given to the troops, the Bolsheviks were able to raise a fair collection of not very seriousminded, but, so far as we could judge at that time, not bloody-minded, young men, who enlisted in the Red Guard. Thenumberof prisonersof warwho joined up was comparatively large, and we thought that they for the most part were driven into the Red Guard by hunger.

In the last week in April we heard with great surprise of a skirmish that had taken place between the Cossacks of Orenburg and our Red Guard. The people regarded this more as a brawl than as a serious battle. The next we heard of any disturbance was a rumor that the Cossacks had found sixty of the Red Guard asleep while guarding a bridge. The bodies of the victims, in some cases decapitated, in others limbless, were dumped in a large field, to be then sorted out and buried by relations. This action filled the Red Guard with fear and immediately made them terrorists. They set up martial law, and took immediate possession of the railway, bridges, and roads. At that time trains were running freely to Samara, and even to Orenburg (with permission of the Cossacks). We all expected the affair to blow over; but toward the middle of May we began to hear disconcerting rumors that there was to be an uprising, and the Cossacks were to be overthrown. At that time the Germans, we were told, had commercial occupation of Saratoff, and we expected that they would give assistance to the Cossacks.

In the third week in May we were startled to hear that the great bridge over the Volga at Suizran had been captured by some rebel prisoners of war called Czechs, who, we were told, were pro-Ally and pro-Russian. At first we thought that the Czechs had captured Suizran from the Germans, but later we heard that their enemies were the Bolsheviks, and that real civil war had broken out in earnest. The railroad service to Samara was suspended. The trains ran as far west as Kin el and as far east as Totskoe. Within two days we heard that Samara had fallen. Both CzechoSlovaks and Cossacks had spies and agents in our community, who kept us supplied with information. We heard circumstantial accounts of the fall of Samara, and were told that soon Buzuluk would fall as easily into their hands.

For five weeks we were ‘cut off from the outside world.’ In the meantime we heard rumors of the wonderful success which followed the Czecho-Slovaks in their military operations. Kinel fell into their hands, and very slowly, day by day, a few more miles of the railroad line between Kind and Buzuluk would be captured by the Czechs. A few of the Red Guard were posted in the outlying villages, and we heard, though it is doubtful, that in Loobimovka they were disarmed by the peasants they were sent to protect. In more villages they were disarmed by the Cossacks, who carried off their rifles and gave the soldiers a flogging.

The Cossacks did not proceed against us from Orenburg. During those five weeks the nerves of the Red Guard became severely shaken. Rumors reached us that the Czecho-Slovaks were executing Bolshevik commissars and the heads of civil government. The Commissar of War for the Buzuluk Department issued orders of which this is a type: —

HEADQUARTERS, BUZULUK-URALSK FRONT

COMRADES IN ARMS

You must remember that we are engaged in a serious military campaign. The whole of the military and civil population must be mobilized to a war-footing. I have been distressed to see that my comrades in arms, as well as the civil population, have not realized the seriousness of the situation. . . . I strictly order that the munitions of war shall be used solely for military purposes. There is to be no shooting of sparrows, and no random shooting at night. Every comrade is to account for every cartridge used.

COMRADE COMMISSAR OF WAR.

The terms of martial law stated that no one was to leave his home or to be on the streets of Buzuluk between the hours of 5 P.M. and 5 A.M., and yet we saw notices of evening promenades, which were well attended. In their endeavor to obtain transport, the Red Guard without notice one day requisitioned some horses and carts from the peasants who were proceeding to Buzuluk with market-produce. News of this spread rapidly among the peasantry in the outlying districts, who, after this, became afraid to take their farmproduce into the town. As a consequence, the town went without dairy products and fresh vegetables for several weeks. The peasantry did not associate these high-handed actions with Bolshevism: they blamed chiefly the Red Guard; and when the Red Guard, after due notice, made legitimate requisitions on the villages for men and horses, the peasantry, so far as they were able, refused to comply. Notices such as the one given below, which was posted in the railroad station at Buzuluk, were widely distributed: —

FELLOW CITIZENS

Fight for your land! The enemy is attacking us, and he will take from you lands which you have grabbed from the rich — and so forth.

The peasants were unmoved by these notices, because they did not believe that the enemy was doing anything but fight, against the Bolsheviks; and rumors propagated by Cossack and Czech agents assured the people that in the territory of Czech occupation the peasants were better treated than in that occupied by Bolsheviks.

On Sunday, the 23rd of June, we heard from up the railroad line a noise which we took for thunder. In the evening, as the noise continued fairly persistently, we concluded that it must be guns. Prudence directed that two of us should pack our knapsacks with portable provisions and barest necessities. Next morning all was quiet, and several of the party had made arrangements for that evening to go to the monastery orphanage, which lay at the foot of the hills on the other side of the river, to see about our relief work there.

II

Buzuluk under the old régime was a military centre on the Tashkent Railroad. In the town were barracks capable of holding during the winter about ten thousand soldiers (more than onethird of the population of the town). It also had magazines, stores, and several batteries of field artillery. Traversing the department from east to west ran the railroad; and from north to south a large and important military highway connecting Uralsk with Biuguloslan. Measuring in each case from the centre of the town, the railroad station lay about one and a half miles to the south; half a mile to the north ran the river Samara, a stream swift enough to make its passage by swimming difficult, deep enough to inconvenience cavalry, and with such wide, sandy shores on one side as to offer least protection to any force trying to cross it. On the other side, the banks were for the most part wooded and parallel to the river; and some distance from it, screened by trees, was one of the best roads in the district. Beyond the road low hills rose to the height of two hundred to three hundred feet, in places wooded to the top, in others bare. These hills were cut by numerous gullies, and down some of these gullies ran roads from the villages on the tableland above.

The Samara River was crossed by one large iron bridge just opposite the town. The bridge and causeways which led up to it were exposed on either side to possible machine-gun fire. When we first heard firing we expected that the attack would come along the railroad and that the Bolsheviks would keep control of the hills and the bridge. From our point of view the importance of this lay in the fact that the orphanage and the centre of our work in the town of Buzuluk would remain in the same hands.

On the Monday evening, about seven o’clock, Mrs. R——, Mr. K——, and the writer set out in a peasant’s cart to cross the bridge on our way to the monastery orphanage. On the causeway that led up to the bridge we were stopped by the guard, who demanded to see our passports. We handed him letters of identification and recommendation, which we had received from the Bolshevik authorities. The guard at the bridge consisted of a group of about twenty men. Our arrival drew most of them away from their camp-fire, and the group closed around us, some carrying hand-grenades or revolvers, some carrying bread, some carrying both. They asked us who we were, what uniforms we wore, and why we wished to cross the river.

We explained briefly the work we had been doing in the district for the last two years; but they appeared not to have heard of it and to disbelieve us. One man said that we were foreigners importing foreign gold to aid the Cossacks. As he said this, we heard rifleshots on the other side of the river, and the whiz of bullets. Almost immediately a horseman galloped over the bridge and cried out in a voice husky with fear, ‘I have been shot at by the Cossacks!’ This produced consternation in the group that was surrounding us. They darted about like ants in a nest thal has been disturbed. A few stayed by us and, calling us spies, recommended their comrade, who acted more as a chairman of committee than as officer commanding, to have us shot. He seemed in doubt as to what to do. Eventually he handed us over to a guard of four older and steadier men, and giving them our papers and a penciled note to the Comrade Commissar of War, directed that we should be taken to the military prison.

The four men of our guard seemed to be glad of an excuse to get away from a military outpost that appeared to be getting dangerous; consequently they were genially disposed toward us. We three sat in a peasant’s cart, and beside us were placed hand-grenades with the safety catch slipped off— ready for immediate use. The four guards sat at the four corners of this cart dangling their legs over the edge, with their rifles and bayonets pointing into the air. We passed in the street many of our friends, who recognized us, but dared not show it lest perchance they should be called to account.

We arrived at the headquarters of the Bolshevik army on the Buzuluk front. At the same time that we arrived, there also came several Tartars who had been caught at another bridge some ten miles up the river. We asked to see the Comrade Commissar of War, but were told that he had disappeared and had not been heard of for two days. His work was being done by his secretary, a very capable married woman of about thirty. The Tartars’ case was taken first. She explained to them that the memorandum which had been sent up from their place of captivity had ordered that they were to be put in prison until they were sentenced by the Commissar of War. She regretted that it did not lie in her power to release them at once. The quiet Tartar farmers burst into tears and asked her if she could not extend to them any mercy. One of the sentries of the Red Guard standing in the room went up to one of them and said in a gentle voice, ‘Never mind, dad. It will only be for a day or two, and the prison is not bad, and the food is quite good.’ So they wore led out and everyone in the room felt sorry for them.

Our turn came next, but the secretary was interrupted by several small matters. A shell, I think the first, came into the town and burst not far from the building. The secretary’s charming little daughter, of about nine, who had been all the time in one of the big leather armchairs, took her mother by the arm and said, ‘Oh, mother, do come to the window and see what a huge hole it has made!’ Mother and daughter looked. Then some great, rough country boys of the Red Guard began to question the secretary about some small points. She answered them or put them off with admirable tact and decision. In the meantime another shell had fallen farther up the street, and the daughter said, ’Mother, do come to the window and watch them as they arrive.’

The secretary turned to us and, lighting a cigarette, read our papers and the penciled memoranda that had been sent up from our place of capture. She said, ‘I am very sorry, but I am quite unable to release you. This is a matter for the Commissar, and he has gone. And yet I don’t quite like to put you in prison. You say that you have been doing philanthropic work, and I quite believe you. If you can produce some evidence which I may keep, I will release you on parole. You must stay in your house, however, and I will send a man to guard it.’

We had then to produce satisfactory evidence. Mr. K-turned round in his chair and looked at the sentries in the room, who were sitting on the tables, rolling cigarettes, gossiping, playing cards, or reading. One man came to us, and Mr. K——, recognizing him, said, ‘You searched our house last November. Did you find anything compromising in it?’ The man replied, ‘I know you at 27 Orenburg Street. You have been doing philanthropic work these two years past for refugees.’ The secretary considered that conclusive, and we were ordered by her to proceed home at once. Our friends among the civil population, seeing us this time without a guard, did not fail to recognize us and let their recognition be known.

That evening at about nine o’clock a horseman rode through the town telling everyone that all doors and windows must be fastened, and that anyone seen on the streets would be shot at sight. There would be no exceptions, no excuses taken. The day and night were baking hot, and the stuffiness of that closed-up house seemed far worse to us than shells. On Tuesday morning at about 4 A.M. we were all wakened by what seemed to be an earthquake. The Bolsheviks had planted a battery about a hundred and fifty yards up the street, and it had begun action. Immediately following the explosions of t he art illery was the tut-tut-tut-tut of a machine-gun, which was mounted on a wooden tower about a hundred yards away. Firing continued from these two points intermittently for several hours. There was almost continual firing at these two points for more than a day. Every now and then we heard little bursts of rifle-fire, either in the street or by the bridge, which was about a quarter of a mile away. We came to the conclusion that the Cossacks or the Czechs must have taken possession of the hills on the Monday afternoon, and had mounted guards there and were shelling the town and the railroad station. About nine o’clock we heard that it was forbidden for anyone to light domestic fires lest, should a house be struck by a shell, there would be a serious conflagration.

We heard that the Red Guard were ‘combing the town for counter-revolutionists.’ In one instance a family well known under the old régime had taken refuge in the cellar; one of the Red Guard stood at the cellar-door and said, ‘I shall throw in hand-grenades until-comes out.’ The person referred to came out at once, and was shot down with a revolver. In another case the soldiers went into the house of another family which, because of its prominence under the old régime, was believed to be counter-revolutionary. They demanded that certain young men who had been army officers should be handed over, or else their addresses given. The young men had not been heard of by their family for days; accordingly, as the information was not forthcoming and as the family was unable to deposit a money security by way of bail, an old man and his wife and two younger women relations of these officers were marched into the out-house and there shot.

About midday eighteen young men of the Red Guard, armed with rifles, revolvers, hand-grenades, swords, and bayonets, came into our yard, drew their revolvers, and ‘covered us.’ They said that as they walked down the street someone had shot at them, and they were going to search the premises. Several houses shared our large back yard, and they reserved ours till last. The young men scattered, and darted in and out of the houses, cellars, and stables like mice blinded by the sunlight. Our house was completely dark because shutters and doors were tightly closed. I opened our back door and said, ‘Now you want to search our rooms.’ Going from the bright sunlight into the doorway seemed like stepping into a gloomy cavern. One of the soldiers said, ‘All right, but you go first.’ I believe he was really afraid of being surprised, because, though I went in and began to light candles, he never got beyond the doorway. Mrs. R——, Miss W——, and Miss P—— stood in the middle of the yard while the young men of the Red Guard walked round them rather sheepishly, not knowing quite what to do under the circumstances, yet not quite liking to do nothing. Eventually they put up their revolvers and stood in the corner, with trembling fingers trying to roll and light cigarettes; every shell made them jump.

Mr. K——, being our best linguist and the head of the party, was personally conducting several young men through our storeroom. They found one pile of cases that reached nearly to the ceiling. ‘Ammunition!!’ ‘No,’ said K——, ‘not ammunition. They are cases of milk.’ This sounded like such an outrageous lie that, one of the young men raised his rifle and said, ‘Whoever heard of milk in boxes!’ Mr. K—— said, ‘Wait a minute, let me get a box and show you.’ So he lifted down one of the boxes and pried open the lid. ‘You lied! They are hand-grenades.’ ‘No, they are tins of milk.’ And taking the tip of a bayonet, he offered to spike one of them to show the milk inside. They would not let him do this. At last one of them said, ‘Well, I guess it is all right. I have heard they have milk in tins in America.’ The whole party then collected in the yard, and after another warning that if any of us were seen on the street we would be immediately shot, they filed out and continued their search elsewhere.

About five minutes later we heard a shot in the house just over the way, and soon a cart drove out of the yard carrying the dead body of a boy of about eighteen; he had been shot for impertinence. His mother accompanied the body.

When the bombardment became more severe, and the enemy seemed to be getting the range of the battery posted just up our street, we deemed it prudent to take to the cellar. Our cellar was a very big one and housed about fifty people: two Armenians, several Jews, two or three Greeks, one or two Poles, some Lithuanians, two or three prisoners of war, some peasants, small shopkeepers, a woman dentist and her Austrian assistant, a Ukrainian doctor, and, among the medley, ourselves. Each family brought its own mattresses, a trunk or two, and, most precious of all, its holy images— heirlooms or specially blessed ikons received on the wedding-day. Before the images, which were placed against the wall on trunks, burned little tapers, so that our cellar came to look like the crypt of the Church of the Saviour in Tzarskoe Selo on a festival. Before the holy images little groups were kneeling, murmuring prayers.

In the afternoon the house in the next block was hit by a shell, and burned down almost immediately. Toward nightfall the bombardment became lighter, so we decided to sleep in the house, though many of the cosmopolitan crowd preferred the cellar. Next morning, about four o’clock, the battery just up the street opened fire again. The enemy on the hills seemed to have got its range more accurately, for we heard the shells pass over, whereas before many of them had fallen short. At about six o’clock streetfighting began. Then we knew that the Czechs were actually in the town. For a few minutes the machine-gun which was posted just outside our front door was playing down the street. It was soon moved on toward the station and its place taken by a lean and weary soldier, a prisoner of war, a Magyar, who probably had joined the Red Guard because nowhere else could he get sufficient food. While he stood at the cross-roads, a bullet struck the hand-grenades in his belt, and he died horribly.

About half-past seven in the morning we ceased to hear firing in our street, though there was a terrible din by the station and at the bridge-head. When standing at our front door for fresh air, we saw three soldierly young men strolling down the pavement, carrying their rifles by the sling, wearing their shrapnel helmets somewhat tilted back on their heads. From their quiet bearing and their easy gait, we saw that this army had been recruited from a very different source from that of our recent defenders. They told us quietly that they were Czechs. They seemed shy, and aware of the fact that they had a professional relationship to us, and that their professional work was disagreeable and not yet done.

At eight o’clock Mr. K——, Miss P——, and the present writer drove in a cart to some refugee quarters of the town. It showed bad organization on the part of t he Czechs and Cossacks that, though the former had occupied the town for nearly an hour, they continued to sweep the streets with shrapnel from their own guns on the hills. We drove up to the first officer that we met, and explained our proposed work. He gave us a convoy. In the refugee quarters we found two slight cases of injury, — nothing more on the surgical side, — but calls on all sides for tincture of valerian, the universal favorite among Russians, lay and professional, in any time of emotion. After finishing our medical work at the refugee quarters, we were convoyed home.

A young Czech with us had heard us question the refugees at the barracks and seemed shy. I remarked to him, ‘You Czecho-Slovaks will be taking a great many prisoners in proportion to your numbers.’ He replied, ‘We don’t take prisoners.’ We could hardly believe our ears. We asked him to say it again because we could not have understood. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘of course we pick out Magyars and Germans.’ We asked him what they did with the Russians. He said, ‘That depends on circumstances.’ We told him that, if there were any Czechs wounded whom we could assist by personal attention or with drugs or dressings, we should be glad to do so; but we also told him that we could have nothing to do beyond that with an organization which behaved in such an inhuman way. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘It is war.’

Street-fighting continued in patches for an hour or so, then all was quiet. By half-past ten notices were posted in the streets, signed by the Military Commandant of the town, saying that that afternoon there would be an election for mayor and council. I was told that the phraseology of these notices was that in use under the old régime, and that the inhabitants remarked privately that it was reactionary and no good would come of it. It would not be fair to say that the public sentiment in the town in those first few hours of Czech occupation was divided in favor of or against the new order. The superficial observer might be inclined to think, if he confined his attention to the streets and cafés, that rejoicing at the new order was widespread and profound. The rich came out in pretty dresses for the first time in many months. Gay sunshades and silks for the first time that year distinguished rich from poor; and we who had come to think that a charm lay in everybody wearing fustian, realized that more was in the change than showed on the surface. We who had been working with the recent government, striving for improvement in hospitals, schools, and the courts, wondered what had become of our associates in this service, who had held positions under successive governments and who had been retained owing to the approval of the people and the manifest zeal and ability of the men themselves. The rumor which seemed authentic, and which had preceded the arrival of the Czechs, that all people connected with the Bolshevik government in whatsoever capacity would be shot, had the effect of driving out of the district and from their posts many who had served us well. Others had fled with the retreating Bolshevik armies, so that we were deprived of our best, as well, perhaps, as of our worst, administrators. We common people felt, almost to a man, that the government had got into the hands of ‘reactionaries.’

About noon Cossacks rode through the streets and were received with ovations by the wealthy, while the masses shuddered. Miss K-A-, a. Russian girl who has lived and worked with us for two years, and in whose integrity we have implicit trust, told us that she saw a Cossack driving a cartload of headless bodies through the street. Where they were buried, we do not know. I searched for them among the hundreds of Bolshevik bodies which were piled in a field for identification by the relatives. In the afternoon there was a service of thanksgiving in our parish church, attended by the Cossack and Czech officers, and by the mayor and council (though no one could tell me who had appointed these last officials); and the church offered up prayers and thanksgiving because it had been reëstablished by the government and the country had got rid of the enemy, and law and order had been restored. While the service was going on, the bodies of the Bolshevik soldiers lay in a field by the station, and many of their relatives dared not come to look for them because they were afraid that the new government might identify them with the Bolshevik government which had passed away.

On Thursday morning, twenty-four hours after the town had fallen into the hands of the Czechs, while walking to the refugee barracks to look at the two patients who had been injured, I was arrested by the Czechs on suspicion of being a German spy. A small party of Cossacks was nearby, so the Czechs handed me over to them. I was taken to the station. On the way there I began talking to my guard, asking them if they were Uralsk Cossacks. They said it was none of my business. I replied that it very soon might be, because if there were any such among their number, I would call on them to identify me, for I was well known in the Sobelova region.

I was taken into a little room in th station, and while waiting there heard shots on the other side of the wall in the little courtyard outside. I said to my guard, ‘You do not mean to say that there is fighting still in this station?' He replied, ‘No, there is no fighting. We are shooting our prisoners and spies.’ I said, ‘Do you try them at this station?’ He replied, ‘Yes, you will see the officer in a minute or two.’ In the minute or two while I waited, several more were tried and shot.

When my turn came, I was ushered into an office by the Cossacks, who stood on either side of me. The officer turned to one of the men and said, ‘ What have you brought him here for?’ He replied, ‘He was handed,over to us because he was thought to be a German spy by one of the sentries, and this sentry told me that he thought he recognized the prisoner as having been among the Bolsheviks and one of those who escaped when they were “ cleaning up” the town.’

The officer turned to me and said, ‘Who are you?’

I replied, ‘An Englishman.’

He said, ‘Well, now, I know that is not true, because there are no English in this district. We were told quite definitely that there were no Allies in the neighborhood, but that there were many Germans who were trying to pass for Allies.’

I said, ‘I am sorry to say that you have been quite misinformed. A party of English has lived and worked in the Buzuluk Department since the summer of 1916. Here is my British Foreign Office passport.’

He refused to look at it and said that he was tired of looking over forged documents. I told him that I could produce within one hour, if he would give me a convoy, four more British Foreign Office passports and their owners, and in addition five Americans with American passports. He said, ‘I have no concern with them at all. I am dealing with you, and you only, and all your statements about other passports have nothing to do with me.’

I looked at this differently, so pressed my point. I told him that my passport was issued in September, 1916, that Mr. W——’s was issued in November of that year, Mr. K——’s and Mr. B——’s in the month following; that at the British Embassy in Petrograd the British Red Cross Commissioner had given me a letter of introduction to the head office of the Russian Red Cross, and that I had got a certificate of identification from them; that, owing to that certificate, I had received from the Provisional Government a free pass to travel with the posting-horses of the district.

He seemed to be very annoyed. I handed him all the papers in question. He would not look at them. He asked me if I had ever been to Germany and when. I gave him a circumstantial account of my traveling in 1914, which he considered extremely suspicious; and when he asked me whether in 1916 I had traveled to Russia via Germany, I burst out laughing. He seemed a little bit ashamed of this foolish question, and by way of recovering his dignity, examined my passport. I was particularly desirous that he should not see on it some notes of identification which the Bolshevik government had written on the back. He then ran through the other papers, and after long thought, said I was to go home. I told him that I was not satisfied with this, and demanded more than his mere word that I could go home in safety. He asked what I wanted, and I told him that, as the Czechs were shooting suspected spies without proper trial, I demanded proper protection by a document in his handwriting stating that I would be free to travel about and pursue my business. He demurred for some time, but eventually gave me such a paper as I requested. He then said, ‘Good-day, sir!’ dismissing me. But I stayed on, and said, ‘I want another such paper for my wife.’ He said, ‘Very well, I will put her name on this.’ I answered, ‘Her duties and mine lie in separate places, and I must ask for an equal protection for her too.’ He gave this almost without demur, and bade me good-day. I told him that it would be necessary for me to ask the rest of the English and Americans to fix some hour by appointment with him for receipt of permits. He seemed anxious not to meet any more English or Americans, and told me that he would give me then and there permits for all of them, which I told him was an unsatisfactory arrangement.

The same afternoon I was arrested again, but got off without difficulty owing to this permit. As far as I remember, we were troubled no further.

After the outburst of welcome to the Czechs had subsided, public sentiment was kept aflame by governmental activity, which, as many of the people said, looked well on posters and advertisements. The markets were ‘free,’the shops were permitted to sell anything at any price to anyone, and the rich felt quite at home again. But the poor grumbled that all this ‘prosperity’ was very hard on them, and we of the middle class (the professional people) and the peasants and poor people felt that with all this ‘order’ there would be again a struggle to get a government that did what we common folk wanted. The head of our railroad station, quite one of the biggest officials in our district, had expressed himself in days gone by as anti-Bolshevik. When we asked him what he thought of the new régime, he would neither declare himself in favor of nor against it, and from this we judged that, so far as he was concerned, either the new government did not meet his approval, or, if it did, he was afraid to say so because he realized that public sentiment was against it.

There was a glamour in those first few days of Czech occupation in the mere idea of order. Nearly everyone was a little tired of the excessive waste of energy and the impatient striving after better things under the Bolshevik government. Nearly everybody we met felt that somehow or other the Bolsheviks were right, but that what we all needed was a change of air, a little holiday, and then we should come back to work refreshed and happy, to take on again the task of developing the physical, spiritual, and mental resources of our country — Russia. In the spring we all realized that Bolshevism, as we then found it in our district, needed to be modified, but people said the change must not be sudden. When we asked how the change was to come about, they replied, by sending up different representatives at each election — wiser men, who were not to be exactly antiBolshevik, but would modify the Bolshevik programme by degrees. Above all, they seemed desirous of avoiding sharp conflicts, and dogmatic party programmes.

The triumph of the Czecho-Slovak arms killed Bolshevism for a time, and the new government tyrannized over their thought as forcibly as their predecessors under the Tsar. There was reason to believe that the government thought its hold on the people was secure. The people had tasted freedom and had seen their sons shot in defense of it. To them the professions of the new government sounded mocking. The people had resolved to modify Bolshevism because it was foolish and ill-timed. In the case of the new government, they became embittered because they thought it malignant and selfish, and therefore to be overthrown.