The Czechoslovak anabasis across Russia and Siberia

Front matter

ACROSS RUSSIA AND SIBERIA

BY Rudolf Medek

LONDON THE CZECH SOCIETY

Chapter 1

I

The birth of the legions

IN his delightful play “The Winter’s Tale,” Shakespeare imagined the “kingdom of Bohemia” to lie somewhere in the South, on a charming shore. This pleasant though somewhat fanastic conception indicates that even in the 16th century Western Europe was ignorant of the geographical situation of the Czechoslovak nation. Nor does the fact apply only to the 16th century. In the autumn of 1914 the general public of Western Europe had no very clear ideas about the Czechoslovak nation and what it expected from the War.

Nevertheless, the English newspapers of the period printed reports of riots in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, and though these reports were not always accurate, they opened the eye of the world to the fact that the Czechoslovak nation was not content to remain within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The Slavs of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia were not satisfied, either with the German policy of Vienna or with the Magyar policy of Budapest, which resulted respectively in the oppression in the non-German majority of Austria and of the non-Magyar majority of Hungary. The old Habsburg monarchy which had arisen at the time of the Turkish invasions of the Balkan peninsula and Central Europe as a bulwark guarding Europe against the menace of the Janissaries, had become, in modern times, an antiquated political formation held together only by the army and the bureaucracy, and not by the mutual interests and cultural and economic development of its component nationalities. Moreover, the behaviour of the dynasty, which was noted for its faithlessness, filled the nationalities with disgust for an Empire which was to them not a mother but a cruel stepmother. In the second half of the 19th century the Emperor Francis Joseph had undertaken to acknowledge, at his solemn coronation as King of Bohemia the time-honoured rights of the people and lands, which together with Hungary and the Austrian lands, had in 1526 laid the foundation of the later Austria-Hungary by uniting of their own free will. Yet shortly afterwards the same ruler revoked the confirmation, given under his own hand, of the royal rescript and refused justice to the Czechs, in spite of the fact that the brutally-exploited Bohemian lands with their flourishing agricultural and industrial life, formed one of the most valuable parts of the territory of the Monarchy.

Shakespeare’s “kingdom of Bohemia” did not border on the sea even in mediæval times; it lay in the very heart of Europe and preserved for centuries its own special character, tradition and independence. A thousand years ago (in 929) a Bohemian prince, Saint Václav (Wenceslaus), the patron saint of the nation, laid the solid foundation of a Christian civilization which spread eastward into the Slav countries of Poland and Russia. The Czechoslovak nation, the westernmost branch of the Slavs, maintained its own language in the face of the powerful German influence which, forcing its way to the east and south, engulfed the Slav tribes on the Elbe and in the Baltic region. The Czechoslovaks developed a national civilization, and, under their king Charles I, who as Charles IV was also Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, their country became the centre from which the Renaissance spread through Central Europe; largely owing to the influence of the celebrated University of Prague, which is the oldest of all the German and Slav universities. Under Charles’ son and successor, Václav IV, and long before the appearance of Luther and Calvin, the rector of Prague University, Jan Hus (John Hus), gave the first powerful impulse to the Reformation, of which he was the first great martyr. For fifteen years the Czech Hussites held out against the overwhelming forces of mediæval Rome and defended their country by force of arms. Later, their distinguished king Jiří (George) of Poděbrady by his wise policy reconciled the Pope and the rest of Europe with the “heretics” and laid the foundations of a new and peaceful evolution of the Kingdom of Bohemia. At his death a Habsburg became king by popular election, but the family soon displayed such religious intolerance that they drove the nation into rebellion, and finally into open revolt, which was crushed in the Battle of White Mountain, near Prague, in 1620. Czech autonomy was almost completely abolished and the idea rose at Vienna that the former independent state might be converted into a province of Austria-Hungary, into a province without political rights, at the mercy of bureaucrats, and surrendered to forcible Germanization.

But the Czechoslovak people forgot neither their language nor their former independence. During the Great War, which was started by Austria-Hungary without the consent of her Parliament and without the slightest enthusiasm on the part of her non-German and non-Magyar peoples, they gave the world clearly to understand that their sympathies lay with Britain, France, Serbia, and Russia, and not with their own government, which for them meant nothing but political thraldom and economic exploitation. In Russia and France, in England, Serbia, and all the Allied countries to which before the War fate had led Czechoslovak labourers, these men, artisans, engineers, and other workers, young and old, volunteered for service in the armies of the Allies. They were not acting as traitors to the Monarchy which had so often broken its pledged word, but were struggling for the freedom of their own nation, for the recovery of its former political independence, and for its liberation from the “gaol of nationalities,” as the Austro-Hungarian Empire was called by the whole civilized world. In Russia and France Czechoslovak legions were formed and fought under their own national colours on the side of the Allies, sharing their aims for a more equitable reorganization of Europe and of the world. They were opposed to the Prussian militarism of the Emperor William II and his imperialistic dreams of a Germany extending from Berlin to Baghdad, and they ardently desired the independence of their nation. The Czechs and Slovaks, by the compulsory Austro-Hungarian mobilization, were called to colours alien to their hearts and as prisoners in Austro-Hungarian uniforms, came to Russia or France, or later to Italy, in each of which countries they found military units of their countrymen already formed. Can they be blamed for wishing to join their ranks and fight for a happier future for their native country? Soldiers, who as prisoners of war, had the opportunity of staying safely in their camps until the end of the War, volunteered to fight on the side of the Allies for the common ideal. In Russia the Czechoslovak legions grew from a battalion of the first volunteers in August, 1914, to a regiment in 1915, a brigade in 1916, and at last in 1917 to a whole army corps of two divisions and one reserve brigade. This corps formed a miniature army complete with all the various branches, with its own staff, and with all the words of command in Czech. The demoralization of the Russian army after the first revolution did not affect it. It did not succumb to the Russian revolutionary chaos and disorganization. It became an island in the storm, an island of discipline and order in the wild confusion which shook the old Russian Empire to its very foundations. Even when Kerensky’s army became disorganized, the Czechoslovak army of volunteers continued to grow under the command of T. G. Masaryk, who was in Russia in those stormy days during the summer and winter of 1917.

It was not easy to resist the formidable impact of the Russian revolution and its influence on the Slav mind. But in the face of Russian anarchy the Czechoslovaks involved their ideal of an independent, coherent and creative democratic state, founded on justice for all, which was to be an important factor of peace and equilibrium in Central Europe, and a bulwark against the mania for imperial expansion. They remained true to their ideal, even when Kerensky’s government was overthrown by the impact of the Bolsheviks, who gained the upper hand in Russia in the early days of November, 1917.

The Bolsheviks cancelled the Russian treaties with the Allies and began at once to treat with the Central Powers on the question of a separate peace. Yet to the last moment the Czechoslovak army held out on the Russian front against the Germans and were ready to fight against the common enemy. Not until the ignominious and, for Russia, humiliating peace of Brest-Litovsk and the great invasion by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies of the Ukraine and Western Russia which ensued in the spring of 1918, was the small Czechoslovak army corps forced to beat a retreat eastwards, a retreat that was not uncontested. At Zhitomir in Volhynia and at Kiev the rearguard had many fights against the Germans. In the great battle at Bakhmach the whole Czechoslovak army corps fought its way after a hard struggle, but without incurring heavy losses, through the surrounding lines of the enemy. From there it was able to continue by rail in a huge convoy of about eighty trains, and to leave the Ukraine, which at that time was under the control of the Central Powers, for what was already Soviet territory farther east. As early as the autumn of 1917 the commanders of the Czechoslovak troops declared their neutrality in the party strife and civil war in Russia. It was emphasized that their aim was to recover Czechoslovak independence, and that they hoped to realize it by fighting on the side of the Allies against the Central Powers. They assured the Soviet Government, on whose territory they were, that they were not enemies, and asked only for permission to proceed through Soviet territory to Vladivostok, whence, according to previous agreements made with the Allies and especially with France, they were to be brought to the western battle-fields of Europe, there to continue their struggle for the freedom of their people and for the common interests of all the Allies.

In a telegram dispatched by Stalin on March 26, 1918, the Soviet Government informed the Czechoslovak representatives then in Penza, south of Moscow, that it consented to the passing of the legions through Russian territory to Vladivostok. But it demanded their complete disarmament and made various other conditions. The Czechoslovaks, to prove their peaceful intentions, and to secure the means of leaving at the earliest opportunity a country for whose people they felt a brotherly love, accepted these terms, in spite of their disappointing nature. They yearned for a more civilized atmosphere; they were weary of the mad scenes of terrorism, anarchy and Asiatic savagery. And so their échelons began their long pilgrimage of nearly 6,000 miles.

But the Soviet Government did not fulfil its promises with regard to the transport of the legionaries. Soon after Stalin’s telegram was received hostilities began between the 70,000 Czechoslovaks and the Red Army.

Chapter 2

II

A government of workers and peasants?

OF the many bodies of national volunteers that had been organized in Russia, especially in 1916 and 1917, the Czechoslovak army corps was the only one to remain united to the last. The bodies of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes established in Odessa in 1916 were disbanded after the fighting in the Dobrudja at the end of 1917; those of the Transylvanian Roumanians organized at the same time, were taken prisoners by the Germans in their advance to Petrograd in the spring of 1918; while the Polish forces of General Dowbor-Musnicki evaporated. After the November revolution the Lithuanian levies joined the army of the Soviet Government. But the Czechoslovaks thought only of one thing of serving their own people. And it was this force that made them harmonious, well disciplined and incorruptible.

It then occurred to the Soviet Government to endeavour to induce them to join the Red Army, after the example of the Lithuanians. For this purpose it organized an intensive propaganda in their ranks, but with very small effect. The Czechoslovak soldiers did not join Lenin’s colours; they remained loyal to Masaryk, who, in the spring of 1918, left Russia for America, there to work for the national ideal and to prepare in the West for the transport of his troops from Vladivostok to the French battle-fields.

This unsympathetic attitude towards the Soviet régime made a bad impression upon the leaders of Russian Bolshevism in Moscow, and especially upon Army-Commissar Trotsky, who, seeing the discipline maintained by the legionaries, had hoped that they would become the picked troops of the Red Army. In addition to difficulties of an international character, the existence in Russia, which had made peace with the Central Powers, of military forces marching eastward and intent on fighting later against these same Powers, produced a hostile attitude on the part of the Soviets towards the Czechoslovaks. The German ambassador in Moscow, Count Mirbach, and the commanders of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, resented the fact that there was, on Russian territory, a military body openly hostile to the two Central Powers, a body whose picked troops were formed from rebellious citizens of these very same Powers. No doubt their diplomatic representatives remonstrated in Moscow. In March and April, 1918, Russia was, in consequence of the peace of Brest-Litovsk, already full of German and Austro-Hungarian repatriation commissions, eager to recover at the earliest possible opportunity the million reserve troops of Germany and Austria-Hungary, represented by the war-prisoners in Russia and Siberia. In the eyes of these commissions the Czechoslovak army corps was but an armed band of rebel Austro-Hungarian war-prisoners.

Will the Government of Workers and Peasants in Russia be willing to act as a policeman for German imperialism and militarism? Will it hand over to the Austrians, Magyars and Germans those Czechoslovak volunteers who had decided to fight for the freedom of their country? These were the questions put to the Soviets by many Czechoslovaks who had heard of the Bolshevist revolutionary watchwords and of their oath in favour of the self-determination of nations. All they asked was that the Soviets should allow the Czechoslovak convoys to pass through their territory to Vladivostok and so to leave Russia.

The Soviet Government, however, turned an increasingly deaf ear to their requests, and in every possible way tried to avoid carrying out the agreements made for free transit through Russian territory. Along the whole railway line on which the Czechoslovak trains ran, the Soviet officials, intent on provoking conflict, exasperated and harassed the volunteers. They asked for complete disarmament and for the surrender even of the few arms which the trains carried as a protection against the revolutionary mob ravaging the country. Finally, at the end of May, on the pretext of a local conflict in the station at Chelyabinsk between a Magyar enlisted in the Red Army and a party of legionaries, the instant disarmament and disbandment of all the troops of the Czechoslovak army corps was ordered, and the railway management contrived to spread their convoys over the whole length of the Trans-Siberian line from Penza to Vladivostok. It was evidently expected that the Czechoslovak army, when once scattered in small bodies over a line many thousand miles in length, could be overpowered in detail, and that the unwelcome guest could thus be got rid of. It was also hoped that the majority of the legionaries would then join the ranks of the Red Army, which would thus be reinforced by picked soldiers. The remainder were to be sent into prisoners’ camps and handed over to their respective governments, while the staff were to be dealt with in the well-known Bolshevist manner, as “centres of reaction” and of counter-revolution.

The Government of “Workers and Peasants” had very quickly forgotten that the Czechoslovak volunteers had fought, as early as 1914, by the side of the Russian armies on the German front, that at the time of Kerensy’s offensive in July, 1917, they had defended the “Russian Revolution” against the reactionary and imperialistic armies of Wilhelm II in the great battle of Zborov, and that finally at Bakhmach in March, 1918, as the only disciplined army corps, they had even defended the Soviet State against German invasion. The fanatical Sovnarkom gave orders, in the diabolical and bloodthirsty decrees of Trotsky, Aralov and others, that all Czechoslovaks who would not submit to the Soviets were to be shot at sight. Red Army forces fell upon the unsuspecting and unarmed legionaries at Zlatoust in the Urals (the boundary between Europe and Asia), at Marianovets near Omsk in Siberia, and in the neighbourhood of Irkutsk.

Soon, however, all the calculations and plans of the Soviets were upset. Contrary to the expectations of Trotsky and Lenin, the Czechoslovak army did not surrender, but took up the gauntlet flung down to them. At the conference of Chelyabinsk late in May, 1918, their representatives decided to fight their way through to the East, even against the wish of the Soviets and at the price of a military conflict with the Red Army. They could not allow their army corps, which had been built up under the greatest difficulties and was the only visible and clear symbol of their desire for liberty at a time when the whole world stood in arms, to be treacherously destroyed by a usurping Power which, though calling itself a Government of Workers and Peasants, was then but a secret ally of the Central Powers. Nothing could be more convenient, especially to Austria-Hungary, than the disbandment of the Czechoslovak troops in Russia, as they were a living proof of the discontent of the Austro-Hungarian peoples with Vienna and Budapest, and their very existence proclaimed the imminent fall of the Danubian Monarchy.

Chapter 3

III

The longest front in the great war

THE men on the Czechoslovak trains which were had offered such a stout resistance that the Soviets clearly saw how sanguinary and severe would be the hostilities that they were provoking.

In Zlatoust the first Czechoslovak regiment, the clerks, bandsmen, bakers and artisans of the regiment, and even the disabled soldiers, fought tooth and nail against the Soviet machine-guns, with stones, cudgels, knives and revolvers. Though they suffered heavy losses they drove back the troops of the Red Guards, seized most of the machine-guns and, for a time, even occupied the station of Zlatoust. Seeing, however, that their feeble forces could hardly expect to reach Chelyabinsk and the stronger Czechoslovak forces then assembled there by rail, they left the railway and set out on their marvellous and heroic march across the Ural Mountains; they traversed wild regions for many nights and days, and surmounted countless obstacles, until at last they reached the small town of Miassa on the Asiatic slope of the Ural Mountains, where they joined the vanguard of the Czechoslovak forces in Chelyabinsk.

In Marianovets, where in their attack upon the train the Red Guards had murdered a great number of volunteers, the unflinching legionaries drove back their forces and continued to Omsk, the centre of the Soviets in Siberia.

Soon hostilities were opened all along the Siberian Railway from the Urals to Vladivostok, and also in European Russia, especially in the Volga district. A large unit of Czechoslovak volunteers was formed by the group stationed in Penza and its environs; this was the westernmost group, cut off almost completely from the main body of the Czechoslovaks in Siberia. Here operations were directed by Čeček, who later became a general, and by Colonel Švec, one of the greatest heroes of the Czechoslovaks. Their objective was to fight their way through the Soviet territory to the east and join the Czechoslovak groups in Siberia. Of these the strongest were the Chelyabinsk group under General Syrový, the Ano group under Colonel Hanuš, the Novonikolayevsk group which was pushing on to Irkutsk under General Gajda and General Kadlec, and the Vladivostok group under the Russian General Dietrich. It was obvious that the scheme of the Soviets, which had been to scatter the Czechoslovak army in small groups all along the railway line so as to weaken and defeat them in detail, had not been successful, since all these groups had displayed great powers of resistance and unusual energy. They realized that they were engaged in a desperate struggle for the existence of their army. The Red Army of the Soviets, which was then not fully organized, employed cruel methods of warfare. The Chinese mercenaries, Magyars enlisted from the prisoners' camps, and various other predatory bands, proved cruel and ruthless foes. To be taken prisoner at their hands meant not only death but often a horrible death by torture. In Serdobsk, west of Penza, where in the struggle for a locomotive a number of Czechoslovaks had fallen into the hands of the Soviet soldiers, the local Soviet put these prisoners into a special sealed railway van labelled “Flour,” and sent them to the Austro-Hungarian forces in the Ukraine. But on the way all the prisoners escaped, and, crossing the Bolshevist front in disguise, rejoined their regiments at Penza.

In the course of these struggles the Czechoslovaks were able not only to preserve their numbers, but even to replenish their stock of arms and their outfit. All the attacks of the Red Army were repulsed and in many places whole divisions of the Soviet army were crushed. Often the Czechoslovaks were obliged to forestall the enemy by assuming the offensive, and thus many important Red towns in the Volga district and in Siberia were captured, such as Penza, Samara, Ufa, Kazan, Orenburg, Omsk, Tomsk, Tobolsk, Irkutsk, Chita, and finally the seaport of Vladivostok. In the spring and summer of 1918, the Czechoslovak army in Russia and Siberia thus held the longest front in the Great War, a front at least 3,000 miles in length and running through Siberia from end to end. Its axis was the Siberian railway, which was held and controlled by the legionaries who had also taken possession of the rolling-stock. Not only did the stations and towns directly on the line fall into their hands, but the country north and south of the line was also gradually pacified and cleared of the Red Army. In the stormy year of 1918 the Czechoslovak army under its national commanders, young reservists risen from the ranks, cadets and lieutenants all inspired with the idea of fighting for the freedom of their nation and steeled by rigid discipline, did wonders; it conquered Siberia and the Volga district and controlled the great Trans-Siberian line, thus preventing for the time being the Bolsheviks of Moscow from carrying their propaganda into Asia, and particularly into China and India.

But how was it possible for the army to fight in a hostile country, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements? How could it forage, and use railways and roads through steppes and woods if the Government of Workers and Peasants really called to arms against it the workers and peasantry?

The Czechoslovak struggle with the Soviets met with the spontaneous sympathy of almost all the Russian inhabitants of the regions conquered by the legionaries. The Czechoslovak army was everywhere hailed as a deliverer from the tyranny of the Soviet commissioners, most of whom had terrorized whole districts. Wherever the power of the Red Army was broken, the Soviet régime also broke down, since its only support was the bayonets of the Red Guards. And the population, which welcomed the victors with the ringing of bells and thanksgiving, rejected all thought of reinstating the Soviets in the liberated regions. Moreover, the deliverers were welcomed not only by the townspeople but also by the factory hands and by the peasants in the villages. Without the effective and voluntary services of the Russian railwaymen they could not have run their trains, and without bread supplied by the peasants the provisioning of the army would have been impossible. Without the use of violence or requisitions the army, well armed and provisioned, was able to turn to new tasks. New volunteers joined them from the prisoners’ camps in Siberia, most of which were now in Czechoslovak hands. The original army corps was reorganized as “The Czechoslovak Army in Russia” and was divided into three divisions, each with a regiment of light and batteries of heavy artillery. In addition it included a cavalry brigade, technical and victualling columns, and in fact all branches required for a regular army in warfare. The command of this army in Russia was taken by General Jan Syrový, who had lost an eye; he was the hero of the battle of Zborov and one of the oldest Czechoslovak soldiers. General Stanislav Čeček, at first commander of the army in the Volga district, was in command of the first division; General Gajda, who was the victor over the Bolshevist forces in Central Siberia and very popular among the Russian people, owing to his operation in the Baikal region and in Transbaikalia, where he dislodged the Red Army from the tunnels, commanded the second division; Colonel (now General) Lev Prchala, formerly an able regular officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, was in command of the third and youngest division. The political representative of the Czechoslovaks was M. Bohdan Pavlů, a man of unusual political and personal qualities, now Czechoslovak Minister in Copenhagen. He was afterwards replaced by Dr. Václav Girsa, now Minister in Warsaw.

Thus the attack upon the modest and unassuming Czechoslovak échelons, which only wished to pass quietly through Russian and Siberian territory in order to join the Allies in Western Europe, developed, owing to their unforeseen resistance, into an important mili- tary situation. The Great War formed a new front in Siberia and the Central Powers discovered a new, if somewhat reluctant, ally in the Soviet Government, which, by its attack upon the Czechoslovaks and its whole political tendencies, adopted a hostile attitude towards the Allies.

The Allies could not allow all this to pass unnoticed. They proclaimed the cause of the Czechoslovak army in Russia to be also their own, and promised assistance; their naval forces took an active part in the occupation of the town and harbour of Vladivostok and, later, a force of infantry was sent to Siberia by the Allies. Two regiments of Canadians arrived, in addition to Japanese, American, French and Italian troops. The forces of the British General Pool, in Archangel, also took part in this expedition. The chief command of the Allied and Czechoslovak armies was in the hands of the French General, Maurice Janin, and it was due to the efforts of the English General Knox in particular that the Siberian armies were supplied with provisions. It should be added that the Press throughout the world referred in eulogistic terms to the Czechoslovak exploits in Siberia and their political and military achievements.

Chapter 4

IV

The attempt to reconstruct in Russia the former eastern front against the Central Powers

THE interest of the Allies in the events in Russia and in Siberia, the enthusiasm of patriotic Russians over the fall of the Soviet régime in the liberated regions, and the hope of its abolition in all parts of Russia, led to a decision regarding the further sphere of action of the Czechoslovak army. It was no longer to be brought to France, but was ordered by the Allied Supreme Command, the authority of which it had always loyally acknowledged, to remain in Russia. Its task was to hold as long as possible the occupied territories and regions, and the Trans-Siberian Railway, and to form the nucleus of an army which was to build up a front in the Volga district from the steppes of Orenburg to Kazan and Penza, and then advance westward to the frontiers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The destruction of the Soviet régime would have followed, the attitude of the Russian population at that time being what it was. Everywhere the Russians joined the colours of the Constituent Assembly which in January, 1918, in Petrograd, had been forcibly dissolved by the Bolsheviks. This Constituent Assembly was to be convoked again in Moscow and was to decide on the new forms of political life and of administration in Russia.

In the autumn of 1918, when the whole railway was already securely in their hands and Siberia freed from the Soviet reign of terror and purged of the Red Guards, the forces of the Czechoslovak army, which till then had fought victoriously in Central Siberia and in the Far East, were sent from east of the Urals to the Volga district. The principal centres of the new front in formation were the towns of Samara on the Volga, and of Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk in the Urals. At that time the co-operation of the Russians became more intensive.

As in the course of the struggle one region after another was freed from the Soviet régime, various attempts were made to reorganize the political and administrative life of Russia. Local influences, the character of the population and their economic significance, and in some cases the military situation, influenced the structure and nature of the Governments then coming into power in the Volga district, the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. Briefly, we may say that from west to east the genuine elements of the Russian political community gradually asserted themselves. In Samara, for instance, the Government was in the hands of a committee of members of the Constituent Assembly, and authority rested almost entirely with the Social Revolutionaries. The Government in Omsk was at first rather in favour of Siberian separatism, and was backed in this by the Regional Duma of Siberia, and especially by the towns and the Siberian Cossacks. In Chita and in Manchuria the despotic Hetman Semenov strove after power even before the arrival of the Czechoslovaks, and in Vladivostok and the Far East a shareholder of the Manchurian Railway, General Horvat, had asserted himself. It was clear that such complicated conditions were not very propitious for further attempts to renew a democratic and national Russia and an anti-German front, this being of course of the greatest importance to the Allies.