861.00/6029: Telegram
The Chargé in China (Tenney) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 30, 1919, 12:05 p.m.]
[From Harris at] Irkutsk:
[“] 424, December 28, 9 a.m. Referring to Department’s telegram December 18, 5 p.m. Kolchak’s government is finished. Attitude the Bolsheviki in general has not changed. Attitude toward Cossacks and peasants western Siberia technically lenient in order to procure food supplies. Bolshevism exists today from Lake Baikal westward to Moscow. Bolsheviki power still held by terrorism. Trotsky has been at Omsk. Not the slightest arrangements have thus far been made for election of delegates to general constituent assembly on the part of Bolsheviki. Unfortunately Czecho soldiers have assisted in breaking up the Kolchak government thus helping the Bolsheviki. It is impossible to do constructive work with Bolshevikism, as now constituted, for reason that sound economics and [Page 236] finance can not exist under their rule. Social Revolutionaries now in charge of Irkutsk station are exploiting [exactly?] the same band of Bolsheviki which I knew one year and adopted [a half?] ago when I was shut up in Irkutsk under the Bolshevik regime. Harris.”