Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

In answer to my suggestion that the Siberians of Chita should have gathered to discuss government in their sobranias, they might well state that if they attempted to discuss government in any way than to pass resolutions in favor of Semenoff’s government, they stood a good chance of being executed with dispatch. It would be a fairly good answer. Especially, as the United States merely showed mild interest when Semenoff executed a batch of people. If the United States as represented by the Siberian expedition, the commander being so instructed and properly backed up, had told Semenoff that he had not yet acquired the right to execute anybody and that he would not be allowed to usurp that right, that would have been coöperation with the people of Siberia. But coöperation of that kind might be interpreted as interference, and we were pledged by somebody not to interfere with the Siberians.

So the Siberians took good care, and wisely, not to interfere with Semenoff. But we remained in Siberia with our forces, and proved ourselves to be so gentle and considerate of others, that certain Siberians have dared to interfere with us to the extent of killing some of our officers and soldiers.

The Semenoffs and the Kalmikoffs did not love us any more because we did not interfere with them; the Siberians did not love us because we did not interfere with these petty tyrants; but we would have won the love of all hands if we had done something—that is, all hands but the Bolshevists, and since we have probed into their works at home, I doubt if we seek their love. At least the Bolshevists would have learned to respect us if we had done something beside invite them to the Prinkipo conference, an invitation which they greeted with loud laughter and other demonstrations of their scorn for our good intentions.

So the sobranias of Chita, and other cities in Siberia, served to while away the time for the populace, while they waited for the United States to make up its mind about what to do in Siberia. If we had taken a definite stand, and demanded that the Siberians show us what they could do while we protected them from themselves and the Cossacks, the sobranias might have been filled with committees, and delegates, and people learning something about what they must do to have a government, instead of being filled with revelers.

If we think we can wait till these people meet our ideas of what government is, we are making a great mistake. We must show them. They have been kept ignorant for centuries, in order that they might be kept in subjection. They have not been educated, because the ruling class wanted cheap labor. Cheap labor becomes very expensive labor when it destroys the employer, the factory and the government. Cheap labor that listens to such arguments as the Bolshevists give it, is a mighty costly commodity to any nation, whether that labor is native or imported.

XXI
POLITICS AND PRINKIPO

All the time that I was in Chita, Ataman Semenoff and Kolchak were at odds. Kolchak, accusing Semenoff with interfering with railroad traffic at Chita and so hampering Kolchak’s “All Russian Government” in Omsk, issued his famous order in which he denounced Semenoff as a traitor. And while that order stood, Kolchak or Kolchak’s officers, asked Semenoff to send his forces to Irkutsk and other points toward Omsk to anticipate Bolshevist uprisings which were threatened.

Semenoff declined to lend his forces so long as Kolchak branded him as a traitor. He denied that he had interfered with trains bound to or from Omsk, and denied that he had cut telegraph wires or held up messages.

On January second, Ivanoff-Renoff (Ivanov-Renov), “Commanding General of the Siberian army and Ataman of Siberian Cossacks,” according to the card I got from him, arrived in Chita in a special train with a staff. He had come from Kolchak to treat with Semenoff, and find out on what terms Semenoff would join Kolchak against the Bolshevists.

I called upon General Ivanoff-Renoff. He was at tea in his dining-car, with three or four of his staff. He is a tall, soldierly man, with thin face, clean-cut jaws, and most alert and intelligent. He impressed me as being the ideal type of Russian general in appearance. Proud without being haughty, frank without conveying the idea that he sought the good graces of anybody for the purpose of misleading them, a manner of quiet determination which suggested that he would not hesitate to be cruel if necessary to gain his ends, he looked every inch the commander. He wore several imperial orders.