The journey to Omsk was quite uneventful. We found the town a replica of Irkutsk, a superabundance of red flags, posters, soldiers and a scarcity of food. The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.
The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. I am confident that the Bolsheviki will never succeed in forcing the peasants to accept their theory of government and that if they resort to military measures the peasants will come out on top.
Method Embitters Peasants.
In the early summer of this year the Bolsheviki ordered the peasants in Western Siberia to deliver a certain stipulated quantity of grain to the railway stations nearest their farms. Only 25 per cent. of the quantity demanded was delivered, which represented the quota of those whose farms were in close proximity to the towns. The balance, despite blood-curdling threats, was not forthcoming. This method of requisitioning farm produce embittered the entire peasantry of Siberia, and the net result was nil. Owing to the lack of transport the grain obtained by the above method has not been sent to Moscow, for which it was intended.
We spent ten days in Omsk. We slept on the train and took our meals in a peasant’s house in which I had lived during the previous summer. At that time my full board and lodging cost me a dollar a day; this summer, however, dinner alone cost us $2 a head, and I doubt whether the landlady made any profit. At this house I met a great many peasants and small townspeople. All were without exception bitterly opposed to the Bolsheviki. The majority of them had already suffered from requisitions and they were terrified of the “Chika.”
I had a long talk with Smirnoff, the President of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee. I found him very moderate in his views and a man of heart and vision. He is regarded with suspicion by the ardent Communists on account of his humane and kindly qualities, and but for the fact that he enjoys the personal friendship of Lenine the “Chika” would make short work of him.
I found it impossible to do anything in Omsk for the simple reason that no one there had any authority to enter into trading agreements, and when Smirnoff invited me to go to Moscow I accepted.
Our wagon was attached to a service train conveying supplies for the Polisa front, and there travelled with us several Commissars and their wives and families. The journey, which the post train makes regularly in six days, took us twelve, as we broke down constantly owing to running hot boxes, and when we did not break down we laid up for hours at a stretch in order to arrive at search stations in the small hours of the morning when the militia would be too lazy to bother about us. These precautions were rendered necessary because our good Commissar’s friends had with them a good wagon full of contraband, chiefly foodstuffs, which they were taking to Moscow for their own use and also as a speculation.
On one occasion, when, owing to some miscalculation on the part of our master speculator, the train commandant, we arrived at a search station in the early afternoon a most amusing incident took place. The search party consisted of an officer and six men. The officer informed our commandant that he intended to search the train, whereupon our man called out his guard of two N. C. O.’s and fourteen men, gave the order to load, and then with a twinkle in his eye invited the officer to commence his search. Thanks to our superior numbers no search took place, but the militia got some white flour and sugar to help them keep their mouths shut.
The heat throughout the journey had been intense, so that when we arrived in Moscow we heaved a sigh of relief and were indeed glad to have got there. We arrived on the afternoon of the 22d of June. As we pulled into the goods station I noticed with mixed feelings a number of British general service wagons and other British stores which had been captured by the Bolsheviki in Archangel.