From the north came amateur politicians, officers in mufti, businessmen, policemen, proprietors escaping from burning estates, adventurers, actors, writers, government officials, adolescents who felt that the times of Fenimore Cooper were returning—in short the population, only lately so noisy and varied, of both capitals, fleeing from the chaos prophesied in the Apocalypse, to the rich grain districts of the Don, the Kuban, the Terek.
From the south they were met by the immense Transcaucasian Army, pushing north with arms, machine guns, ammunitions, and truckloads of salt, sugar, and textiles.
When these streams met, there was a dense crowd, in which White-Guard spies got to work.
The Cossacks came from their villages to the trains to buy arms, rich peasants exchanging grain and lard for textiles.
Everywhere were bandits and pick-pockets.
Those who got caught were "liquidated" on the spot, right on the rails.
The Red Guard covering detachments were quite ineffective, and were swept away like cobwebs.
Here was the steppe and freedom , Cossacks had been striding about here from time immemorial.
All was flimsy, all was in a state of flux, indefinite....
Today, outsiders and landless peasants prevailed and elected a Soviet, the next day the Cossacks from the villages drove back the Communists with cold steel and sent a messenger with a. dispatch hidden in his cap to Ataman Kaledin in Novocherkassk.
Nobody gave a fig for the Petrograd authorities here.
But towards the end of November Petrograd was beginning to make its power felt.
The first revolutionary detachments were created—sailors, workers, homeless soldiers from the front—travelling from place to place in dilapidated troop trains.
They were undisciplined and riotous, and though they fought savagely, they retreated at the slightest failure, and threatened, at the stupendous meetings held after a battle, to tear their commanders limb from limb.
The plan drawn up provided for the encirclement of Don and Kuban districts in three main directions: Sablin was to advance from the northwest, cutting the Don off from the Ukraine, Sievers' troops were to approach Rostov and Novocherkassk in a semicircle, and detachments of Black Sea sailors were to press on from Novorossiisk.
In the interior, a rising was being prepared in the industrial and mining districts.
In January the Red detachments approached Taganrog, Rostov, and Novocherkassk.
The breach between Cossacks and outsiders had not yet assumed threatening dimensions in the Don villages.
The Don was still passive.
The sparse troops of Ataman Kaledin abandoned the front without putting up a fight, under pressure from the Red troops.
The Red forces were a desperate menace to the foe.
The workers in Taganrog rose and drove Kutepov's volunteer regiment out of the town.
Sergeant Podtelkov's Red detachment completely routed the last ataman covering force at Novocherkassk.
Then Ataman Kaledin made a last desperate appeal to the Don Cossacks to send Cossack volunteers to the only stable military formation—The Volunteer Army, formed in Rostov by Generals Kornilov, Alexeyev, and Denikin. But no one responded to the Ataman's appeal.
On the twenty-ninth of January Kaledin summoned the ataman government in the palace of Novocherkassk.
The fourteen Don Cossack colonels, famous generals and representatives of the "Moscow Centre for the Struggle Against Anarchy and Bolshevism," sat at the half-moon table in the white hall.
The Ataman, a tall morose individual with a drooping moustache, said with sombre tranquillity:
"I have to inform you, gentlemen, that our position is hopeless.
The forces of the Bolsheviks are increasing from day to day.
Kornilov is withdrawing all his troops from our front.
His decision is irrevocable.
Only a hundred and forty-seven men responded to my appeal for the defence of the Don district.
The population of the Don and the Kuban not only refuse us their support—they are hostile.
Why is this?
How are we to account for this shameful state of affairs?
Corruption has been our ruin.
There is no more sense of duty, no more honour.
I propose, gentlemen, that you resign and hand over your authority to others."
He took his seat, and added, not looking at anyone: "Be brief, gentlemen, time presses...." ' Mitrofan Bogayevsky, the Ataman's assistant, cried out furiously:
"In other words you propose handing over the power to the Bolsheviks!"
To this the Ataman replied that the Cossack government could do as it saw fit, and left the meeting on the spot, going out with heavy footsteps through a side door to his own quarters.
There he gazed through the window at the bare swaying tops of trees in the park, and dreary snow clouds, and called to his wife. She did not reply.
Then he went into the bedroom, where a fire was glowing in the open grate.
He removed his jacket and cross, and, for the last time, as if he could not yet quite believe it, stared hard at the war map hanging over the bed.
The Don and Kuban steppes were surrounded by thick clusters of tiny red flags.
The only place which bore the tricolour was the black point marking Rostov.
The Ataman drew the warm, flat Browning gun from the hip pocket of his blue trousers with the officers' stripes and shot himself in the heart.
On the ninth of February General Kornilov led his small Volunteer Army, composed entirely of officers and cadets, accompanied by cartloads of generals and some of the most important refugees, out of Rostov into the steppes, beyond the Don.
The General, a short, angry-looking man with Mongol features, marched at the head of the troops, a soldier's knapsack on his back.
On one of the carts in the line the unfortunate General Denikin lay beneath a stripy rug, struck down by an attack of bronchitis.