Expeditions
of sailors, heavily armed, were sent out in groups of five thousand,
to the South, to Siberia, with roving commissions to capture cities
still held by the White Guards, establish order, and _get food._
Passenger traffic on the Trans-Siberian Railroad was suspended for
two weeks, while thirteen trains, loaded with bolts of cloth and
bars of iron assembled by the Factory-Shop Committees, were sent out
eastward, each in charge of a Commissar, to barter with the Siberian
peasants for grain and potatoes....
Kaledin being in possession of the coal-mines of the Don, the fuel
question became urgent. Smolny shut off all electric lights in
theatres, shops and restaurants, cut down the number of street cars,
and confiscated the private stores of fire-wood held by the
fuel-dealers.... And when the factories of Petrograd were about to
close down for lack of coal, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet turned
over to the workers two hundred thousand _poods_ from the bunkers of
battle-ships....
Toward the end of November occurred the "wine-pogroms" (See App. XI,
Sect. 7)-looting of the wine-cellars-beginning with the plundering
of the Winter Palace vaults. For days there were drunken soldiers on
the streets.... In all this was evident the hand of the
counter-revolutionists, who distributed among the regiments plans
showing the location of the stores of liquor.
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