rnished many recruits. Even more
valuable were the exiles who flocked to Russia from Turkey, Persia,
India, and elsewhere at the close of the Great War. Practically all the
leaders of the Turkish war-government--Enver, Djemal, Talaat, and many
more, fled to Russia for refuge from the vengeance of the victorious
Entente Powers. The same was true of the Hindu terrorist leaders who had
been in German pay during the war and who now sought service under
Lenin. By the end of 1918 Bolshevism's Oriental propaganda department
was well organized, divided into three bureaux, for the Islamic
countries, India, and the Far East respectively. With Bolshevism's Far
Eastern activities this book is not concerned, though the reader should
bear them in mind and should remember the important part played by the
Chinese in recent Russian history. As for the Islamic and Indian
bureaux, they displayed great zeal, translating tons of Bolshevik
literature into the various Oriental languages, training numerous secret
agents and propagandists for "field-work," and getting in touch with all
disaffected or revolutionary elements.

With the opening months of 1919 Bolshevist activity throughout the Near
and Middle East became increasingly apparent. The wave of rage and
despair caused by the Entente's denial of Near Eastern nationalist
aspirations[299] played splendidly into the Bolshevists' hands, and we
have already seen how Moscow supported Mustapha Kemal and other
nationalist leaders in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, and elsewhere. In the
Middle East, also, Bolshevism gained important successes. Not merely was
Moscow's hand visible in the epidemic of rioting and seditious violence
which swept northern India in the spring of 1919,[300] but an even
shrewder blow was struck at Britain in Afghanistan. This land of
turbulent mountaineers, which lay like a perpetual thundercloud on
India's north-west frontier, had kept quiet during the Great War, mainly
owing to the Anglophile attitude of its ruler, the Ameer Habibullah
Khan. But early in 1919 Habibullah was murdered. Whether the Bolsheviki
had a hand in the matter is not known, but they certainly reaped the
benefit, for power passed to one of Habibullah's sons, Amanullah Khan,
who was an avowed enemy of England and who had had dealings with
Turco-German agents during the late war. Amanullah at once got in touch
with Moscow, and a little later, just when the Punjab was seething with
unrest, he declared war on Eng