ABSTRACT
In the meantime, the war was drawing to a close. Russia had suffered defeat. Although she could have continued fighting, the simmering revolution prompted her to seek a compromise. As the Russian army was demobilized, the Japanese released their prisoners of war, many of whom they had indoctrinated in revolutionary thinking. Polish nationalists had deeply influenced Polish soldiers. With the financial help of a few American capitalists, George Kennan, an American newspaperman, had been distributing revolutionary brochures to imprisoned Russians and Ukrainians. Angered by treachery and defeat, irrascible after captivity, and aroused by new, stirring national, social, and political ideals, the soldiers were streaming back through Siberia into the heartland. Wherever they went unrest was precipitated.
