With the downfall of Kolchak's administration the Political Centre -a loose combination of Mensheviks and SRs - formed a temporary government. This group enjoyed the nominal support oflocal Bolsheviks, prominent among whom was A. Krasnoshchekov (Tobelson), former head of the Far Eastern Soviet of People's Commissars in the Amur region in February 1918. Intervention had put paid to this body and its small armed force, but Krasnoshchekov had never abandoned his ideas of the unsuitability of Communism for Eastern Siberia and his conviction that the Allied powers

would never consent to the establishment of an outright Communist state here.' The opponents of the scheme for a democratic buffer state came from the extremist Bolsheviks, who desired nothing short of full Soviet power fastened on the liberated areas. As Red troops drew near to Krasnoyarsk, Krasnoshchekov proposed a mission to the Soviet command in order to discuss this plan. Gaining permission from Czech units still deployed west of Irkutsk, on 11th January, 1920, this mission left Irkutsk, reaching Soviet head-quarters on the 18th.5 The plan was then discussed between Krasnoshchekov, the Revvoensoviet of the vth Red army and the Siberian Revolutionary Committee (Sibrevkom) of the Russian Communist Party.6