r a time it seemed as though the whole Russian army was
going to pieces. Ammunition was not supplied to the soldiers. The
situation was serious and called for a strong hand. Kerensky was made
prime minister and the members of the government and the council of
workingmen and soldiers voted him almost the powers of a Czar. He was
authorized to give orders that any deserters or traitors be shot, if
need be, without trial. Under his rule the Russian army began to
re-form, and the situation improved.

In November, 1917, a faction of the extreme Socialists called the
Bolsheviki (Bol-she-vi'ki) won over the garrisons of Petrograd
and Moscow, seized control of the government, forcing Kerensky
to flee, and threatened to make peace with Germany. These
people are, for the most part, the poor citizens of large cities. They
have few followers outside of the city population, for the average
Russian in the country is a land owner, and he does not take kindly to
the idea of losing his property or dividing it with some landless
beggar from Petrograd.

The revolt of the Bolsheviki, then, simply added to the confusion in
the realm of Russia. That unhappy country was torn apart by the fights
of the different factions. Finland demanded its independence, and
German spies and agents encouraged the Ruthenians living in a great
province called the Ukraine, to do the same. The Cossacks withdrew to
the country to the north of the Crimean peninsula, and the only
Russian armies that kept on fighting were those in Turkey. These
forces had been gathered largely from the states between the Black and
Caspian Seas. Having suffered persecution in the old days, they had
hated the Turks for ages and needed no orders from Petrograd to induce
them to take revenge.

Finally the Bolshevik government agreed to a peace with the central
powers which gave Germany and Austria everything that they wanted. The
Russian armies were disbanded and the Germans and Austrians were free
to turn their fighting men back to the western front. In the meantime,
the Ruthenian republic, now called the Ukraine, was allowed by the
Bolsheviki to make a separate peace with Germany and Austria. The
troops of the Germans and Austrians began joyously to pillage both
Russia and the Ukraine, hunting for the food that was so scarce in the
central empires. However, for a whole year hardly anybody in Russia
had been willing to do a stroke of work. The fields had gone untilled
while the pea