Late in May a new Government appeared the south of Russia. It claimed to represent the regions of Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, and Northern Caucasus, and was emphatically Bolshevist in its orientation. It was headed by a dictator, General Krasnoff, who had served under Kerensky up to the fall of the Provisional Government. His manifesto declared that the Don Government was a sovereign State, at war with the Soviet Republic, and on friendly terms with the Ukraine. This manifesto contained the following statement: "Yesterday's foreign foes, the Austro-Germans, have entered our territory in alliance with us to fight against the Red Guard and for the establishment of order on the Don."
Another anti-Bolshevist Government was formed, early in June, in Eastern Siberia. The new State, which proclaimed itself an independent republic, purported to include the entire territory stretching from Lake Baikal to the Pacific, as well as the district of Irkutsk and the Island of Sakhalin, comprising a population of 2,500,000.
Violent clashes occurred between the Soviet forces and the Czechoslovak troops, which had joined the Russian Army to fight for the allied cause. The Czechoslovaks defeated the Soviet army, which was trying to enforce Trotzky's order to disarm them, seized the railway stations at Penza, on the Volga, in an effort to force their way to Vladivostok, and penetrated into the Ural region.
DISMEMBERING RUSSIA
During the month under record Germany made further steps in pursuance of her policy of subjugating the membra disjecta of the former Russian imperium.
On May 13 it was reported that Berlin planned to turn Lithuania into a "semi-federal" German State. The next day Emperor William issued a proclamation declaring Lithuania a free and independent State, on the basis of the action of the Lithuanian Landsrat, which, on Dec. 12, 1917, had announced "the restoration of Lithuania as an independent State, allied to the German Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance, and by conventions chiefly regarding military matters, traffic, customs, and coinage, and solicited the help of the German Empire." The declaration assumed that Lithuania would "participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured her liberation." According to information made public by the State Department at Washington, the Germans were forcing the Lithuanian peasants to work for the landowners at a starvation wage and were taking stringent measures against city workers.
Similar conditions prevailed in Livonia. A message sent on May 21 by Tchitcherin to Ambassador Joffe stated that the Germans had created a reign of terror there, persecuting labor and assisting the Barons in suppressing their political adversaries.
In the Ukraine the Germans disarmed the troops of the overthrown Rada and backed Skoropadsky's dictatorial régime with bayonets. Sporadic uprisings of peasants against the Teutons continued. In the Province of Kiev the Germans used gas bombs against several revolted villages, and whole communities were asphyxiated. Revolts also broke out in the Governments of Podolia and Poltava. Resistance was offered mainly in connection with German food requisitioning. It was reported that the Germans had twelve army corps in the Ukraine. In the middle of May the Central Powers granted a loan of 4,000,000 marks to the Ukraine.
GERMAN ATROCITIES
The German atrocities in White Russia are thus described in a Russian Government dispatch received in London on May 14: