NO PEACE WITH UKRAINE
The Bolshevist Government made efforts to come to terms with the Ukraine, and also with Finland. In the middle of May a Russian peace delegation arrived in Kiev. Germany appointed Baron Mumm von Schwarzenstein, Ambassador to the Ukraine, as its representative to the peace conferences, with almost dictatorial powers, especially in questions relating to boundaries. The efforts of the Soviet Government to make peace with the Ukraine remained ineffectual. The delegates were unable to agree regarding the frontier line. Repatriation of Ukrainians living in Great Russia was another stumbling block. The removal of property by repatriated Ukrainians, it was objected, would conflict with the Soviet regulation allowing only small sums of money to be exported from Russia. Besides, said the Bolsheviki, this would give propertied Russians a simple means of escape from the Soviet Republic.
According to a London dispatch, dated June 7, Germany was responsible for the delay in the negotiations. The German command at Kiev was reported to have declared Russo-Ukrainian peace inopportune before all important points in the Ukraine were occupied.
It was reported on June 10 that Germany and Russia had entered into an agreement under which Finland ceded to Russia the fortresses of Ino and Raivola, with the understanding that they were not to be fortified, while Russia surrendered to Finland a part of the Murman Peninsula, with an outlet to the ocean, thus bringing German influence to Russia's arctic ports and to the railroads connecting them with the interior of the country.
INTERNAL CONDITIONS
Upon the whole, conditions in Russia showed no signs of improvement. Famine existed in Petrograd and in other, particularly urban, districts of Great Russia, while civil war was still raging in Siberia and in some parts of European Russia. According to information made public by the State Department at Washington on May 21, cholera broke out in Astrakhan and in the Caspian Sea region. Observers of Russian life also noted the growing moral laxity of the population and its complete indifference to public affairs.
Reports from Eastern and Central Russia indicated that in many districts less than half the usual acreage was plowed. This was attributed to the shortage of seed, horses, and implements. Even where seed was available the peasants, uncertain of the disposition of the land and the crops, did not plant extensively. Breadstuffs were scarce even in grain centres, and prices were very high. The attitude of the farmers to the city people continued to be one of distrust and hostility, and the exodus of the city dwellers into the country continued.
A recent article in Maxim Gorky's daily Novaia Zhizn (New Life) speaks of the conditions prevailing in the Russian village in the following terms:
All those who have studied the Russian village of our days clearly perceive that the process of demoralization and decay is going on there with remarkable speed. The peasants have taken away the land from its owners, divided it among themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. And they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine struggle for the division of the booty. In certain districts the population has consumed the entire grain supply, including the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to chaos, destruction, and murder.
The article gives also a glimpse of what is going on in the remnants of the Russian Army: