RUSSIAN CRISIS ATTEMPT ON STATE BANK

FARCICAL PROCEEDINGS

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. PETROGRAD, WEDNESDAY.

This combination of the 16th and 20th centuries grows disconcerting. One has to develop new mental kinks to secure a grip on the situation. Russia is now incoherent, complex, diverse political units, which are neither at war nor at peace with each other, which are connected by the old administrative and economic mechanism, but which recognise no central government. The habit of thinking in terms of Russia continues and is not easily eradicated, even by the whirlwind that has dissipated the central authority. Transcaucasia, governed by a local committee of Moderate Socialists and the Caucasian army, has just won a considerable victory over the Turks on the Diala river, on the border of Mesopotamia, taking 1,600 prisoners. General Kaledin’s government is master of the South-eastern Cossack territories. In Kieff, after a few days’ fighting, the staff escaped from the town and the Ukrainian Rada took entire political and military charge of Ukraine, their war minister promising to see to supplies for the South-western front. In Helsingfors during the general strike the Socialists seized all the government institutions, and have established what they call a “Red” government. And here in Petrograd we are living in wonderland. That elusive and variable quantity, the Bolshevik “government,” daily issues, proclamations and decrees. Their latest effort is a decree establishing a “government monopoly of advertisements,” that is to say advertisements are only to be published in the Soviet organs, and the penalty for disobedience is the entire confiscation of the property and three years’ imprisonment. Yet, in spite of all stern prohibitions, the papers are creeping out one by one. All the Socialist papers are published daily, a Cossack paper has reappeared, the popular non-party sheets, Listok and Gazeta, are now immune, and it is only the big non-socialist organs, the Rech, the Bourse Gazette, and the Novoye Vremya, that are still under ban. But the Printers’ Union threatens a general strike if the ban is not removed, so even in this respect the bayonet is not all-powerful.

SCENES AT THE BANK

The State Bank continues to be the scene of bloodless warfare. At two o’clock yesterday afternoon the Bolshevik “minister of finance” came to the bank with four soldiers and an order from the Military Revolutionary Committee for 10,000,000 roubles. One of the soldiers of the guard told him “This is brigandage,” to which the “minister” replied, “that is a strong expression.” Soon a detachment of soldiers, sailors, and Red Guard appeared with a band playing, and tried to enter the bank. But the Bolshevik “commander-inchief,” Colonel Mouravieff, was summoned, and agreed that the guard be not removed. Delegates from the Regimental Committees met in the bank, where two documents were read, one an order from Colonel Mouravieff, appointing Captain Mironoff “commander of the detachment sent to open up the bank,” and the other a proclamation from the Military Revolutionary Committee to the bank employees. Finally Mouravieff went to the Smolny Institute, explained the circumstances, and returned with a resolution from the Bolshevik “government” to the effect that in view of the fact that the demand for the money was not legally formulated, the question was left open and the demand would not be repeated until it can be made in legal form. The soldiers on guard declared that they would only admit to the bank persons legally authorised, The minds of Bolshevik followers are exercised by the question of the promised immediate peace. To calm them a long and confused report on the peace situation was issue in the Pravda today by a new arrival, Radek, representative of the Stockholm Bolsheviks and an intimate associate of Parvus. The report includes a proclamation from the German Independent Socialists, urging a mass demonstration in favour of immediate peace, and a leading article from the Leipziger Volkszeitung in the similar sense. More important is the assertion, for the entire accuracy of which it would be unwise to vouch, that the Scheidemann group has sent a delegate to Stockholm to confer with the Russian Socialists there, and that as a result of the negotiations the delegate declared that the German Majority Socialists wished the Russian workers to know that the majority party were prepared to support a demand for an armistice and peace negotiations on the lines laid down in the Bolshevik decree. Scheidemann and Ebert were to begin a campaign on these lines last Sunday.

LENIN’S “ARMISTICE” GENERAL REJECTS ORDER

General Dukhonin, the patriotic Russian commander-in-chief, who was chief of the staff under M Kerenski, has bluntly refused to obey the order of Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolshevik so-called “cabinet,” that he should open up immediate pourparlers with the enemy for an armistice. In revenge for this rejection of their treacherous design, the Soviet “government” have “deposed” General Dukhonin from his post, and have appointed a hitherto unknown ensign (i.e., a second lieutenant) named Krylenko as commanderin-chief.