We shall
support the working Cossacks in all their actions.... The best way to
begin is to form Cossacks Soviets; you will be given representation
in the _Tsay-ee-kah,_ and then it will be _your_ Government, too....
The Cossacks departed, thinking hard. Two weeks later General
Kaledin received a deputation from his troops. "Will you," they
asked, "promise to divide the great estates of the Cossack landlords
among the working Cossacks?"
"Only over my dead body," responded Kaledin. A month later, seeing
his army melt away before his eyes, Kaledin blew out his brains. And
the Cossack movement was no more....
Meanwhile at Moghilev were gathered the old _Tsay-ee-kah_ the
"moderate" Socialist leaders-from Avksentiev to Tchernov-the active
chiefs of the old Army Committees, and the reactionary officers. The
Staff steadily refused to recognise the Council of People's
Commissars. It had united about it the Death Battalions, the Knights
of St. George, and the Cossacks of the Front, and was in close and
secret touch with the Allied military attach?s, and with the Kaledin
movement and the Ukrainean Rada....
The Allied Governments had made no reply to the Peace decree of
November 8th, in which the Congress of Soviets had asked for a
general armistice.
On November 20th Trotzky addressed a note to the Allied Ambassadors:
(See App. XI, Sect. 18)
I have the honour to inform you, Mr.
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