ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the great movement for the emancipation of man from military despotism came to the provinces of Asiatic Russia. The powers of darkness were tightening their grip upon Russia during the autumn and winter of 1916. The evil shadow of oppression and reaction, in the form of a corrupt and privileged ruling class, lay over the land. Arrests and deportations of intellectuals continued with unabated vigour, and every protest from the enlightened few was met with imprisonment or Siberian exile. The decisive factor which seems to have brought the revolutionary movement to a head, was the food crisis. March 18th was the great day in the Caucasus. The Revolution was then known to be secure in the Asiatic provinces; the old government had collapsed, and the hour for rejoicing had arrived. For the Cossacks, the Revolution was just as successful with them as with the other peoples of Asiatic Russia.
