As I stated before, Pankratoff personally would not have done any harm to the imperial family, but nevertheless it turned out that, both being politicians, they were the cause of a lot of trouble. Not understanding life, and being true members of the Social-Revolutionary party, they insisted upon everybody joining the party and began to convert the soldiers to their faith. They started a school where they taught soldiers literature and all sorts of useful knowledge, but after every lesson they talked politics to their pupils, telling them the program of the Social-Revolutionary Party. The soldiers listened and understood it in their own way. The results of these lectures were that the soldiers were converted to Bolshevism. They also wanted to print a newspaper and call it _Zemliai Volia_ (Land and Freedom). There was a man by the name of Pisarevsky who lived during this period in Tobolsk. He was a wild social democrat and therefore an enemy to the S. R.’s. This Pisarevsky started his campaign among the soldiers against Pankratoff and Nikolsky. Pisarevsky was publishing a Bolshevik newspaper called _Rabotchaya-Gazeta_ (Workmen’s Newspaper). Seeing that Pankratoff had a certain influence amongst the soldiers, Pisarevsky began to invite the soldiers to his home and demoralise them. Shortly after the arrival of Pankratoff and Nikolsky our detachment was divided into two groups--the Pankratoff party and the party of Pisarevsky--in other words, Bolsheviks. This Bolshevik party was composed of the soldiers of the second regiment who were the poorest and had a very low morale. A very small number of men formed a third group, I should say, neutral, and most of its members were soldiers that were mobilised in 1906 and 1907. The result of these political campaigns was the demoralisation of the soldiers, who began to act like ruffians. Formerly they did not want to make trouble for the imperial family. Now they did not know what next they should demand for themselves. They followed only their own interests, but the result of it was always that either a member of the imperial family or some of the persons attached to them had to suffer. At first the soldiers came to me under the influence of the political struggle and said: “We have to sleep in bunks, our food is bad, but ‘Nicholashka’ (a slang name for the emperor that was popular during the revolution) who is arrested, has such an amount of food that his cooks throw it in the waste bucket.” At this time life in Tobolsk was not expensive. Though Kerensky had not fulfilled his promise and we received Omsk allowances and not those of the Petrograd district, the allowances were large enough to obtain very good food for the men. For the purpose of avoiding new protests from the soldiers it was necessary to take up money matters with Pignatti, the district commissar, and increase the allowance to one thousand roubles, substituting the good food of the soldiers for the unnecessary and luxurious.