Versailles delusions of overwhelming power over the world. The incoherence and vacillations of Entente policy might not have been so pernicious if Russian patriots had been able to muster an overwhelming array of anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia itself. Unfortunately this was not the case.
Anti-Bolshevik Governments. During the first months of the Soviet regime, while the power of the proletarian dictators was still shaky and unorganized, several concentrations opposing them were formed in the East. First, Colonel Semenov, a leader of Transbaikalian Cossacks, had started a guerrilla war- fare on the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria, advancing in the direction of Chita when luck favoured him and retreating across the Chinese frontier when he met superior forces of the Bolsheviks, together with the Magyar, Austrian and German prisoners of war mobilized by the latter. In May 1918, he succeeded in forming a provisional government in Chita. Soon afterwards, Admiral Kolchak, a brilliant naval officer, who had distinguished himself in the Japanese War, organized another Provisional Government in Novo Nikolayevsk at the junction of the Siberian railway with the Maritime province line. The Japanese, who had landed a detachment in Vladivostok, sup- ported him in a general way.
About the same time, in the spring and early summer of 1918, there occurred another startling event. Czech detachments which had been formed to fight for Russia from among prisoners of war, and who had fought gallantly against the Central Coali- tion in the last campaign, demanded to withdraw after the debdde of the Russian army and the advent of the Bolsheviks. They were allowed to do so by the Soviet authorities, but they were to be disarmed, and in the course of their movement east towards Vladivostok they were subjected to offensive and treacherous treatment. Some of them refused to give up their arms; others, after having been disarmed, broke away, recovered arms and munitions, and turned on the undisciplined rabble of the Rd troops. As a result of encounters of this kind, the Czechs, and some Slovak detachments which had joined them, seized great tracts of the Siberian railway line near the Volga, near Irkutsk, and by Vladivostok. Eventually, after many vicissitudes, these corps made their junction along the whole line. The total number of troops who effected this coup de thedlre averaged some 80,000 men. It would be useless to follow in detail the swaying fortunes of these detachments. Their daring exploits would hardly have achieved success if a considerable portion of the population of eastern Russia had not sympathized with them. As it happened, these disciplined troops succeeded in creating the backbone of resistance against the Moscow dictators: in Siberia, Provisional Governments were formed in Vladivostok, in Harbin (General Horvath), and in Tomsk, besides the centres of military administration started by Col. Semenov and Admiral Kolchak.
Unfortunately the various governments comprised different and mutually hostile groups, which could not be prevailed upon to act loyally together. The Vladivostok concentration reflected the Socialist ferment in the country, and worked for an inde- pendent Siberia. The Government formed in Tomsk was an Executive of a Siberian Duma, composed of delegates from various organizations zemstvos, municipalities, political parties, social groups (workmen, students, cooperative associations). The majority of these constituencies followed a socialistic orientation, but their Executive adopted a more conservative policy and admitted several Cadets into its ranks. From Samara came yet another political tendency: some thirty fugi- tive members of the Constituent Assembly, dismissed by the Bolsheviks, had assembled there, and their political creed was expressed in the demand for a restoration of that Assembly, which they considered as the only body constitutionally entitled to wield power in Russia. Their aim was to reconstitute an All-Russian State, which would include Siberia as an autono- mous part of its organization. On the other hand the adminis- trations of General Horvath and Admiral Kolchak, while reserving the ultimate decision as to the system of Government to a new Constituent Assembly, discarded the authority of the
one elected in December 1917 as not representative of Russian opinion. These administrations favoured the propertied classes and built up their personnel from the remnants of the military and civil bureaucracy of the monarchical period. Even in the face of the enemy all these groups found the greatest difficulty in establishing cooperation. The Vladivostok Government sub- mitted to the authority of the West Siberian one, but the nego- tiations with Horvath were protracted and fruitless. A coup d'etat on a small scale was attempted in Vladivostok by Hor- vath's lieutenant, Gen. Pleshkov, but the Allies intervened to reestablish the Socialist administration because it was approved of by the Vladivostok zemstvo.
In the west a conference held in Ufa laid down the founda- tions of an All-Russian scheme in connexion with the Constit- uent Assembly of 1917, and succeeded in persuading the Siberian Government in Omsk to recognize its authority. The moving element in this case came from the Moderate Sociah'sts, chiefly Social Revolutionaries, but Social Democrats of the Plekhanov persuasion and some Cadets were in agreement with them. A directorate of five consisting of Avksentiev, Zenzinov, Vologodsky, V. Vinogradov and Gen. Boldyrov was established. Admiral Kolchak accepted the portfolio of War in the Ministry which was to conduct the actual administration. This amalga- mation of Governments was arranged in the beginning of Oct., and a mobilization of certain classes of the Siberian population which had been started somewhat earlier was carried out on a more extensive scale: it yielded some 150,000 men, whose mili- tary instruction had to be taken in hand under very difficult conditions. Many delays and mistakes occurred, and the differ- ent sets of people who had been brought together with such difficulty quarrelled over the task, suspected and accused one another. The officers who had served under the old regime were displeased with the policy of the Directors, whom they accused of indecision and vain talk; the Socialists chafed at the high-handed way in which they were treated by the military chiefs and the employees of the Ministries. In the night of November 18 these dissensions came to a head. A party of soldiers led by officers of the Omsk garrison arrested the Social- ist members of the Directorate, Avksentiev and Zenzinov, and two of their assistants, while a third Director, Vologodsky, joined a meeting of Ministers which elected Admiral Kolchak as Supreme Ruler. In the communique issued on the occasion by the newly constituted Government, it was explained that " wide social circles had been discontented with the wavering behaviour of the Provisional All-Russian Government in re- gard to certain tendencies of the Left leading to the renewal of a destructive policy. While condemning the coup d'ttat as an illegal act the new Government endorsed it by taking advan- tage of the accomplished fact: Avksentiev and Zenzinov were allowed to escape and the two remaining Directors, Boldyrov and Vinogradov, retired.
Such a start did not augur well for the future of the reconstruc- tion movement: it showed that the enemies of the Bolsheviks were still irreconcilably divided by the old feud between Con- servative Nationalists and Socialistic idealists. These conflicts helped to keep alive in the mass of the people a spirit of lawless- ness and distrust. And yet nothing was more needed in those days than steadiness and forbearance as regards details; those who had assumed the task of restoring order were least able to lay claim to efficient administration the lack of experience and even honesty was felt everywhere. The mobilization, for example, was carried out in the most haphazard fashion, crowds of conscripts being left even without accommodation.
The fact that the Bolsheviks in Siberia were drawing largely for support on the Austrian, Magyar, and German prisoners, of whom about half a million were dispersed in various localities of the wide country, and the difficult situation of the Czechs astride the Siberian railway, had provoked an intervention of the Allies. Japanese, American, British and French detach- ments were landed in Vladivostok with instructions of varying intensity: all the intervening Powers gave assurances of their disinterestedness, of their friendship for the Russian people, of
