Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/160

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148
FROM PRESIDENT TO PRISON

consultation with some of my older and more experienced associates, especially Nowakowski, Lepeshinsky and von Dreyer, I accused the Committee at its next sitting, in the presence of the electors, of paralysing obstruction, following this with the announcement that the body as a whole was from that moment dissolved and only five of its leading members retained in a new Executive Committee to control and administer certain features of the social and public life in the Far East. Following quickly upon this radical move, there came to us expressions of confidence from the foreign population of Harbin and Vladivostok. Naturally we had made for ourselves new enemies but, at the same time, we had restored our ability to act quickly and effectually.

General Linievitch also expressed his approval of this turn of events, but General Ivanoff, who was sympathetic with the aims of The Union of the Russian Nation, began to agitate openly against us, fostering antagonism in the Little Committee and in the reactionary groups, while bombarding St. Petersburg with continuous telegrams urging the necessity of dismissing General Linievitch and of arresting our Committee of Five. Following these activities, we were obliged to inform General Ivanoff that his actions had occasioned such indignation that the Five could not be held responsible if his life were attempted by terrorists, as we knew that Vlasienko, referred to above as a very active former member of the Central Committee, had collected a group of daring individuals, who only awaited an opportunity to shoot down the reactionary Generals Nadaroff, Batianoff and himself, as well as all the agents of the political police with Fiedorenko, the Colonel of Gendarmes, at their head. The leaders of the local Harbin police, Colonel Zaremba and Captain von Ziegler, together with the Chief of Police at