was landed In the Omsk prison, where the Prosecutor of the Soviet Republic scoffed at them, saying:
"I should demand the death penalty for them if they were a little more capable."
And it cannot be denied that the original plan, the one for which Kolchak stood, to organise a powerful Siberia as an independent republic, to enter into negotiations with foreign Powers, and to defend the western frontiers in the Ural Mountains, was perfectly sound.
But soon there began struggles to change this plan, started by a group of monarchist refugees who had arrived from the Volga, and comprised Prince Krapotkin, the millionaire merchant Sterladkin, and the lawyer Zardetsky. They were joined by the Cossacks with their hetman, General Ivanov-Rinov. The opposite camp, consisting of the social-revolutionaries, were opposed to the idea of creating a great and indivisible Russia, and the election of a monarch, desired by the Krapotkin group. The social-revolutionaries insisted on strengthening Siberia, and on making a bid for gaining the sympathies of the peasantry in support of the Government.
In the ensuing struggles the monarchists had recourse to terrorism. Some of the more prominent of the social-revolutionaries were murdered; when members of the Constituent Assembly, which was suppressed by the Bolsheviks, arrived with Avksentyev at their head, they were accused of treachery against the
