_By Hector Boon._
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
At Irkutsk we found a small Japanese outpost under the command of a
junior officer who, although we presented our papers signed by the
Japanese Chief of Staff in Chita, declined to allow us to proceed until
he had first communicated with the staff. Eventually we were permitted
to go on, and reached the advanced Red position at 1 P. M. We called
upon the military commandant, who was careful to impress upon us that we
were not in Soviet territory but in that of the Far Eastern Republic, at
that time called the Buffer State. We were quite willing to take his
word for it, but we noticed with amusement that the entire population
was sporting hastily improvised red stars and rosettes. In the course of
the afternoon our wagons were attached to the post train which was
already running daily between Hilok and Irkutsk.
We arrived at Verkni-Udinsk at 11 A. M. the next day and the Commissar
Krassnochokoff’s aide-de-camp met me at the station with a motor car and
conducted me to the Commissar’s house. I found Krassnochokoff, who had
spent many years in America as the head of a Jewish orphanage in
Chicago, living in a small room modestly furnished with a deal table, a
few chairs and a truckle bed. He made a very pleasant impression upon
me.
When, however, he asked questions concerning the conditions in Chita and
the intentions of the Japanese, I had to decline to answer them. He was
at some pains to impress upon me that the Bolsheviki I had known in 1917
and 1918 had changed decidedly for the better since that time. He went
on to say that he realized, however, there was still a strong
disinclination on the part of the Entente and America to have trade
relations with the Far Eastern republic, and he therefore felt that the
establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, extending from Verkni-Udinsk
to Vladivostok, would provide a medium for trading with the Soviet. He
assured me that there would be no confiscation or requisitioning of
private property and that the communistic system would not be indulged
in.