ABSTRACT
Trotsky issued an official note demanding that the foreign military missions in Russia should cease to meddle in the Civil Wars, and threatening that if Germany did not agree to a democratic peace Soviet Russia would be obliged to wage a revolutionary war. The disorganization following upon the Civil War in European Russia prevented them from returning to their native country by the western route, and their leaders therefore determined to assemble and prepare them for fighting their way if necessary through Siberia. This advance began at the end of May 1918, simultaneously with the beginning of the Siberian Civil War. The mechanism of supply, exchange, and credit, damaged during the European war, was subjected to sudden and enormous strain immediately upon its cessation, partly from inevitable economic causes, but chiefly because the Bolsheviks, from political motives, heedless of economic consequences, had destroyed it wilfully and completely.
