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Finding Allied jealousy so great as to render all their efforts impotent, first General Bolderoff and then his successor, the Supreme Governor, began to organise armies on their own for the protection of the people and their property.
Some time after this the Japanese representative at Omsk made a request to be informed whether General Bolderoff had been forced to leave the country, or had left voluntarily. This was answered in a definite way in accordance with the facts.
From this position they never retreated, but Allied bungling had landed General Ganin, who is himself an able and excellent officer, in a not very dignified position. Bolderoff, as I have stated, was at the Ufa front when Koltchak assumed supreme power.
The old Directorate, with Avkzentieff, Bolderoff & Co. standing sponsors for the Russian Convention, were supposed to control Russian affairs at this time. Directly the commandant refused to agree to the Japanese demands they transferred their claims to the old Directorate. The Directorate sent Evanoff Renoff to "Vlady" to conduct the negotiations, and I suppose to collect the money.
Bolderoff and the people at Omsk were unaware of the presence of the British escort or its numbers, and while they may have discovered our joint appearance at the Ekaterinburg function, there had been no original decision to accompany the admiral to Chilliyabinsk. That was only arranged the previous day.
The front line was kept denuded of arms and equipment of which it was in greatest need, while the militia in the rear, and under the Social Revolutionary control, were being regimented and fitted out with everything they required. The appeals of the front-line generals to Bolderoff, the Social Revolutionary Commander-in-Chief, fell on deaf ears, and things were getting into a serious condition.
When I was at "Vlady," in June, 1919, huge stores of iron were being collected, and some of it had already been shipped to Japan. Avkzentieff was exiled and Bolderoff was living in comfort and safety in Japan. These were the things that were above and could be seen; what happened to the other part of the first instalment of Japanese proposals for "helping" Russia will doubtless be known later.
Bolderoff never thought of effectively organising the new Russian army, but suggested that things were so critical, and that England, France, and America were so slow, that the only alternative was to invite the Japanese to push their army forward to the Urals.
Bolderoff and the Directorate boggled at this for a time, but as the Bolsheviks began to get close to Ufa, and also concentrated an army of about one hundred thousand men for an offensive towards Ekaterinburg, the situation became so pressing that the Directorate gave way, and a few days before the coup d'état Bolderoff had sent word to the Japanese that their terms were accepted.
I sent mine direct to the admiral for his signature, and when he automatically passed it to General Bolderoff I said "Neat," and it was returned with the solitary name of this solitary man. I was now absolutely satisfied that the new Government was a combination that refused to mix, and took the most stringent precautions to see that my unit did not become involved in its impending overthrow.
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