We arrived at Verkni-Udinsk at 11 A. M. the next day and the Commissar Krassnochokoff’s aide-de-camp met me at the station with a motor car and conducted me to the Commissar’s house. I found Krassnochokoff, who had spent many years in America as the head of a Jewish orphanage in Chicago, living in a small room modestly furnished with a deal table, a few chairs and a truckle bed. He made a very pleasant impression upon me. When, however, he asked questions concerning the conditions in Chita and the intentions of the Japanese, I had to decline to answer them. He was at some pains to impress upon me that the Bolsheviki I had known in 1917 and 1918 had changed decidedly for the better since that time. He went on to say that he realized, however, there was still a strong disinclination on the part of the Entente and America to have trade relations with the Far Eastern republic, and he therefore felt that the establishment of the Far Eastern Republic, extending from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, would provide a medium for trading with the Soviet. He assured me that there would be no confiscation or requisitioning of private property and that the communistic system would not be indulged in. Buffer State Only a Fiction; Is Part of Soviet Russia Krassnochokoff, who is certainly a man of some ability, spoke of his plans in a sincere and convincing manner, and I really think that at that time he believed the scheme would be carried through just as he outlined it to me. However, I must admit I was sceptical. I had seen, drawn up in the station, the Bolshevik propaganda train, in charge of Dvornik, who had been employed as an interpreter by the American Railroad Corps until he was imprisoned by the Kolchak Government for propagating Bolshevism. It did not augur well for a truly democratic state. Subsequent events have shown that my estimate of the situation was correct. The buffer state exists only in name. It is part of Soviet Russia, administered by Moscow on the communist system. The population is embittered, being half starved. All industry has died and so have men and women at the hands of firing squads, because they unwisely expressed their disapproval of commissar rule. Krassnochokoff was in Moscow this summer. His efforts to persuade Lenine and company to moderate their policy in the Far Eastern Republic met with fierce disapproval, and for some weeks he walked on thin ice. The butcher Dzherjinsky, of the extraordinary commission, was thirsting for his blood, but he weathered the storm and eventually returned to his job at Verkni-Udinsk.