The origin of a conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak Legion

Front matter

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DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO IN RUSSIA IN 1918 DEMONSTRATED HOW TO ACT IN THE FACE OF COMMUNIST DANGER, WITH REGRET THAT THE EXAMPLE THEY SET WAS NOT FOLLOWED THIRTY YEARS LATER, DURING THE FEBRUARY DAYS OF 1948.

THE ORIGIN OF A CONFLICT

Introduction

The Fortieth Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution seems to be a good opportunity to bring to light again incidents which once made history but which in the course of time were buried under the flood of fresh events. One of such forgotten incidents is the origin of the Soviet-Czechoslovak conflict which, in the spring of 1918, plunged Russia into the flames of a protracted civil war, not extinguished until the summer of 1920.

While a great deal has been written about the closing phases of this conflict, its origin never received a full historic inquiry and is still veiled in obscurity. First, because the great debate on the topic which began in liberated Czechoslovakia during the first post war years, although producing a number of important monographs, did not culminate with any definite work focused on the opening phase of the conflict. And it is indeed unfortunate that full use was not made of the wealth of unique documentary material contained in the complete archives of the Czechoslovak Legion which was deposited in the Památník národního odboje in Prague. For it is rather doubtful that these documentary sources, containing so much evidence unfavorable to the Soviet Union, are still in Prague. Secondly, because the early Soviet accounts of the event and the recent works published by the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia misled even some serious scholars in the free world as to who was at fault by covering the whole issue with a thick layer of distortions, conjectures and ouright fabrications.

Almost all the works published in the Czech language during the twenties and thirties indicate that the Legion was not at fault. In this point they seem to be supported by the lack of documentary evidence to the contrary in the voluminous literature on the topic published now in the Soviet orbit. Therefore the special contribution of this study must be seen in its attempt to throw some light upon the motives which might have made the Bolsheviks change their initially friendly attitude towards the Czechoslovaks. Here the study breaks new grounds which were neglected in previous inquiries.

The student of the topic will moreover appreciate the translation of many relevant documents which are here made available in the English version for the first time.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Chapter 1

I. THE PLACE OF THE CONFLICT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CIVIL WAR.

In every study on the civil war in the Soviet Union the Soviet-Czechoslovak conflict plays an important role, its discussion being vital in particular to the understanding of the opening phase of this great drama. It can safely be said that the treatment of the origin of the conflict presents some sort of testing stone for students dealing with the Civil War, much of their interpretation depending on the amount of effort they expended on its study and documentation and on what material they had at their disposal.

The core of the issue is as follows: During the spring of 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion, an Army Corps of about 50.000 men, was transported from the Ukraine through Central Russia to Vladivostok, to embark for France in order to join there the Entente forces against Germany. All the principal parties concerned agreed to this transportation: the Allies needed the Legion on the Western Front; Masaryk agreed on behalf of the Czechoslovak political leadership, under which direction the Legion was operating; the soldiers themselves hurried to get out as soon as possible from the Russian turmoil; the Bolshevik Government also gave its consent.

The events, however, took quite different a course. In spite of all agreements concerning the departure of the Legion from Russia by May 25th, 1918, the Soviet Government and the Czechoslovaks found themselves engaged in a life and death struggle, in a conflict the consequences of which are called by the Soviet historians "the Great Intervention".

The conflict had not only great internationl implications because it revealed to the Allies the possibility of setting up a new Eastern front against Germany on Russian soil after Russia has been taken out of the war by a separate Soviet-German peace treaty of March 3, 1918. Its impact upon the internal developments in Russia is even of much greater significance, for it gave an impetus to the Russian anti-Bolshevik forces, which wanted to continue to wage war against Germany on the side of the Allies, to rally, organize and express themselves politically and also militarily. The activities of the Samara, Ufa and Omsk democratic anti-Bolshevik provisional governments and, later, of the Russian Volunteer Army, were greatly enhanced by the preoccupation of the Bolsheviks with the Legionaires and by the fact that the Czechoslovaks' control of vast eastern territories created conditions conducive to their independent existence and activities.

General Frunze once expressed the view that had not the Bolsheviks split their forces in the initial stage of the conflict with the Legion by a side-thrust to fight the Ukrainian Kossacs in the south, the terrible and costly Civil War could have been shortened by two years , i.e., it could have been finished in the summer of 1918. This statement of Frunze invites a number of questions: Without the Soviet-Czechoslovak conflict would there have been no Civil War in Russia? Were the Russian democratic and anti-Bolshevik forces, as they were dispersed in the spring of 1918, in a position to challenge the Bolsheviks? Could they offer any effective resistance to the advance of the Bolshevik armies into the regions under their nominal control? How and in which direction would have the Soviet system evolved without being shaped by the stern political and economic measures imposed upon it by the maxims of the struggle for survival? On the other hand, could the new Soviet regime have consolidated its power without a strong Red Army, which in fact was created only under the impetus of the Soviet-Czechoslovak conflict which transformed the irregular armed Red bands into a fighting force under one command? As for the conflict itself, a question is in order as to whether it was planned and prepared long in advance by the Allies and later, on their orders, executed only by the Czechoslovaks, as the official historiography contends. Or could it be possible that the Bolsheviks themselves brought this disaster upon their heads?

As the few questions indicate, a proper understanding of the origin of the conflict seems to be of fundamentalimportance in order to grasp the vicissitudes of the entire Civil War. And yet, unfortunately, the whole matter received only passing attention in academic inquiry.

Being well aware that the conflict was the prima causa of the protracted Civil War, the Soviet Government hurried to proclaim its own version of the whole affair, absolving itself of any responsibility. Thus in July 1918 Lenin and Trotsky attempted to prove that the conflict was planned, organized and financed by the English and French Governments and that it was in fact only a small part of a larger plan for a general offensive against the Soviet Government. This version has been further developed by Soviet authors and, strangely enough, though in different variations, it has been repeated ever since by many Western historians. The core of the Soviet version attempts to prove that the Czechoslovak forces were but an instrument of Allied policy which, on the one hand, in order to deceive the Bolsheviks, spoke of the transportation of the Legion from Russia, while, on the other hand, ordered the Legion to seize the whole Trans-Siberian line as a preliminary strategic step for an all-out attack upon the Soviet power. This had to be followed by a landing of large expeditionary forces on the shores of European Russia as well as on the Far Eastern shores.

The main reason why this Soviet version was accepted to a certain extent even by some western writers is that the Soviet Government published no other documents pertaining to this period and that the Czechoslovak sources, although throwing a completely different light upon the whole matter, were not as yet translated from the Czech language and are therefore inaccessible to a wider international scholarship.

As for the immediate causes of the conflict, the documentary evidence published by the Czechoslovak side tells the strange story that it is the Soviet leadership and, in particular, Stalin and Trotsky upon whom falls a great deal of responsibility for a conflict of the Bolsheviks with an armed group which could have brought down the Soviet Government, were this its purpose. It was the very modus operandi through which the Bolshevik leadership attained power, a pattern of double play so successfully applied against the Russian workers and the peasants, against the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries and against the Allies and the Germans, which now backfired with unexpected ferocity when attempted against the Legion.

The documents available and the detailed day-to-day study of the origin of the conflict clearly show that it was the premeditated attack of the Bolsheviks upon the Legion and their attempts to disband and incorporate it into the Red Army and into the Labor Batalions, carried out while negotiations for a peaceful settlement were in progress, which triggered the armed clash. The records make it abundantly clear that the conflict was not instigated by the Allies, especially by France. For in fact the French most vigorously opposed any resort to arms on the part of the Legion to force its way out of Russia when the Bolsheviks stopped the transportation and began to encircle the Czechoslovaks. And when the fighting flared up the French and Americans advocated a settlement with the Bolsheviks even at the cost of complete disarmament of the Legionaires, hoping that this would ease up the transportation to France.

Although the talks between the Allies and the Bolsheviks with respect to the re-opening of the Eastern front had been in progress since 1917, the published documents and diplomatic correspondence make it clear that at the time of the beginning of the conflict on May 25th, 1918, there were no practical possiblities for setting up such a front and that the project was practically shelved away. The promised Bolsheviks' invitation to such a project was not forthcoming for several months and after the Soviet Government, by ratifying the in March 1918, committed itself too deeply to the German side the hopes and expectations that it would ever come rapidly vanished.

Indeed, the Bolsheviks themselves initiated the pourparlers with the Allied representatives in Russia for military assistance and, eventually, for such a front shortly after they came to power in November 1917. In his letter of January 20th, 1918, Sadoul had written to Thomas:

In the meantime, however, the Bolsheviks were cunduct-ng ing parallel negotiations with the German General Staff for a separate peace and, as their fortunes at the conference table changed, the sincerity and intensity of the Bolsheviks desire for Allied assistance against Germany fluctuated according to the ebb and flow of these negotiations.

From the Allied side the negotiations were carried out by Lockhart, Robbins and Sadoul, reaching a considerable degree of intensity during the period following Trotsky's walk-out from the peace conference on February 10th, 1918 with a thesis of "no war - no peace", until the final ratification of the Peace Treaty on March 14th, 1918, by the Congress of Soviets.

According to another letter of Sadoul to Thomas the Soviet Government was willing to extend its invitation to the Allies to intervene, provided that it was an all-Allied undertaking and a purely military intervention not interfering in the internal affairs of Russia.

The highest point of the Soviet-Allied negotiations for military aid and eventual intervention against Germany was reached on March 5th, 1918, when both Robins and Lockhart had their interviews with Trotsky. During the conversation with Lockhart Trotsky indicated that

To be sure the Soviet leadership itself was badly divided as to whether to accept the aid from the West or not. The offer, cabled on February 20th, 1918, by the French Government to Noulens in Petrograd, that he had to

revealed the existence of a deep cleavage between the leading Bolsheviks when, on February 22nd, this offer was referred by Trotsky to the session of the Central Committe. Trotsky himself and some of his colleagues favored acceptance; Bucharin and others opposed it. It was, however, the position taken by Lenin which in the final analysis decided the fate of the Allied military aid and of the Second Front as well.

According to Kennan's interesting account, Lenin in principle was in favor of accepting the Allied aid. At the end, however, it must have been the two following considerations which shaped his decision to come to final terms with Germany and which allowed the Soviet-Allied prospects for co-operation fall into obscurity, ever since causing so much trouble to students of the problem.

In fact the secret resolution drafted personally by Lenin and adopted by the Congress which ratified the separate peace with Germany did not even mention the Allied aid as a factor at play, placing frankly the entire hope for the survival of the Soviet regime on the necessity to transform the "imperialist war" in the West into a civil war, and on the spread of the proletarian revolution beyond the Russian confines.

As much as the Allies greatly needed the Second Front /the Soviet-German armistice of November 1917, enabled the German High Command to transfer about 20 divisions from the Russian to the French front in preparation for the spring offensive/, it was only when the Legion seized the whole Trans-Siberian railway and when the numerous democratic governments in the area under its control proclaimed their determination to resume war against Germany, that the Allied Supreme Council began to see the existence of conditions for such a front even without a Bolshevik invitation and without their participation.

Thus the historical situation is quite contrary to that portrayed by the official Soviet accounts. Students relying due to lack of other sources, primarily on the diplomatic correspondence, find not only some support for the Soviet contentions, but also remain inconclusive on the origin of the conflict. This is due to the fact that the seizure of the railway line and the ensuing new distribution of power in Russia became the toppriority item of the diplomatic exchange following the end of May 1918, without, however, rendering adequate evidence as to the way in which it happened. And it is only natural that many observers in their efforts to explain the beginnings of the Allied intervention in Russia easily link the fait accompli of the seizure of the line as it took place in May 1918, with the intentions and needs of the Allied for the Eastern Front, the very topic of the diplomatic exchange in February and at the beginning of March, 1918. With no evidence to the contrary this link seemed to have established for many the desired casual relationship between the needs of the Allied and the action of the Czechoslovaks.

The origin of the conflict must be sought, however, primarily in the interaction of the Soviet leadership with the Legion. On the Soviet side this interaction was shaped by a number of domestic and international contingencies which pressed the Bolsheviks into changing their initial attitude of friendliness and understanding in February, into hostility in April. The desperate need of the Soviet Government for trained and readily available manpower, the increasing preasure exercised upon the new regime by the preponderant German power and, above all, the Bolsheviks' successes in enlisting the former Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners of war in great numbers into their service, – all these factors impelled the Bolshevikleaders to make an attempt to prevent the Legion from leaving Russia.

Of course, this met with violent opposition from the Czechoslovak side. An internal revolution on the eve of the conflict removed from power all those leaders who being too soft to ward of the Bolshevik advances, jeopardized the secu- rity of the organization. In protest that the Legion was left at the mercy of the Bolsheviks without even diplomatic intervention on the part of the Allies, the newly elected political leadership of the Army Corps severed all ties with the representatives of the Western Powers and also with Masaryk's National Council in Russia. Reaching for the arms, the Legion took its fate into its own hands, determined to fight its way through to Vladivostok.

Thus the groundwork for the conflict was laid on Russian soil and not in the foreign chancelleries. The purpose of this paper will be to inquire how did this happen.

Chapter 2

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOVIET ATTITUDE.

A. The Early Soviet Position.

On October 9th, 1917, about 50.000 former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war of Czech and Slovak origin proclaimed their scattered military units to be a part of the First Czechoslovak Army Corps. At a congress held on May 6 to 14, 1917, in Kiev they elected their political leadership, recognizing Masaryk as supreme commander and political leader of this revolutionary army. The Bolsheviks' overthrow of the Provisional Government of Kerensky prompted Masaryk on November 7th, 1917, to instruct P. Maxa, his personal representative for Russia, to keep the Legion neutral and not to get involved in the turmoil of Russian internal affaires and factional strife by lending its support to one or the other group contending for power.

Since in the summer of 1917, it became quite obvious that the Russian Imperial Army, undermined by the Bolshevik agitation and its propaganda of peace and broad, ceased to be an active partner in the war against the Central Powers, Masaryk reached an agreement with the Allies that the Legion should be transferred to France and, according to this agreement, the first Czechoslovak units landed in a French port on November 12th, 1917. To facilitate this transportation by giving the Legion a international status the French Government, on December 19th, 1917, decreed the establishment of a Czechoslovak Army which in all military aspects would be under the French High Command while being subordinated to Masaryk with regard to all political matters. The legal groundwork was thus laid for the proclamation that, although the Czechoslovak Army Corps in Russia was an autonomous unit, it was an organic part of the Czechoslovak Army with its headquarters in France.

Although the Bolsheviks, on January 18th, 1913, concluded with the Legion an agreement of neutrality on February 10, 1918, their Ukrainian War Commissar Kocjubinsky and the Supreme Commander of the Red Army Muraviev agreed to Legion's transfer, giving Masaryk written authorization to this effect on February 16th, 1918 — attempts to persuade Masaryk to leave the Legion in Russia were the order of the day.

"This /Muraviev/ complimented Masaryk, posing almost as if he were his disciple. Muraviev imagined the Czechoslovak Army as a crystallizing centre for the new Russian Army against Germany. Also Krilenko showed generosity and ordered that the Legion be supplied with all kinds of provisions as a token for maintaining order in those places which were under its control…" The Czechoslovaks were hard to persuade to stay in Russia, refusing attractive offers from both the Bolsheviks and their White opponents to throw their weight behind one or the other group. The situation became unbearable after the Soviet Government concluded a separate peace with the Central Powers, on March 3rd, 1918, and when the Legion as an armed detachment of the Entente, according to the peace terms had to be stripped of its arms and detained in prisoner of war camps. To speed up the transportation the men of the first 60 trains upon reaching Kursk on March 16th, 1918, voluntarily surrendered their arms. For this they were thanked by the Bolshevik Commander Antonov-Ovsienko, whose declaration has ever since been repeatedly cited by the Soviet sources to prove how generous and friendly the Bolsheviks were to the Czechoslovaks.

In spite of the apparent consent to the Legion's departure from Russian soil the Bolsheviks were striving for quite a different goal. Their attitude towards the Legion followed the already well established pattern of their operation in which the diametrically opposed actions on their part do not necessarily contradict each other, but that they could be in fact fused by a dialectic synthesis and thus utilized to their advantage. As the Soviet leadership could simultaneously negotiate with both the Germans and the Allies, similarly there did not seem to be any contradiction between its willingness to permit the Legion to depart for France and its scheming to keep it in Russia.

"… These discussions of collaboration with the Soviets continued even after the signing and ratification of the Breast-Treaty. Sadoul, Lockhart and Robins – and even Ambassador Francis for a time – proceeded on the theory that they could still secure Bolshevik cooperation in the war against Germany. Trotsky, alarmed at both the German and Austrian advance into Southern Russia and the possibility of Allied intervention directed against the Bolsheviks, encouraged the consideration of such cooperation. He welcomed the landing at Murmansk early in March of a small British force which was sent to oppose the Germans and Finns, who were threatening the Murmansk railway. Moreover, he suggested to Sadoul and Lockhart the possibility of using the Czechoslovak Legion, then stationed in the Ukraine, for the same purpose. Trotsky's chief aim was, however, to secure the assistance of Allied military experts in the organization of the Red Army…"

This Bolshevik method of dealing with any problem by the dialectics of the opposites was very soon felt also in their attitude toward the Legion, and, in spite of all assurences and proclamations of safe cunduct, activities contrary to these became increasingly apparent.

To dispel any misgiving and apprehension by Moscow, the leadership of the Legion offered that the men would surrender all their arms, except those necessary for self-defence. As the neutrality clause of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty provided that there must be no foreign armed forces on the Russian soil, this proposal of self-disarmament was welcomed by Moscow and, with Stalin's carefully worded telegram of March 26th, 1917, the Kremlin granted another permission for the Legion to leave. A subsequent agreement concluded on March 27th, 1918, between Moscow and the political leadership of the Legion stipulated that each train could retain 168 rifles and one machine gun, the rest of arms to be surrendered in Penza, through which station the entire train-columns would have to pass.

This arrangement suited the Bolsheviks very well indeed. As long as the men were armed it was difficult to do anything either way – peacefully or with force – in order to make the rank and file soldiers change their minds. With the Army Corps disarmed, it was a long way to Vladivostok. This became quite obvious when on the very next day the Bolsheviks forgot all about the disarmament agreement:

"The first train after it had surrendered its arms left Penza on March 27th. In spite of clear agreements and promises which the Soviet Government in Moscow gave us that it will inform all the concerned local Soviets, not far from Penza we met with obstacles in our transportation. This very first train if it wanted to continue on its way, had to surrender additional numbers of arms in Syzran, Samara, Uffa and in Omsk, where the last machine gun was surrendered..."

The political leadership of the Czechoslovaks was in possession of a cable from its Moscow representative Klecanda dated March 23rd, 1918, which warned the Legionaires that

"… an order to stop all our trains and to disarm them, not to sell us any foodstuffs and not to permit telegraphic connection with us in Moscow was issued on March 20, 1918. The order was put on the wires by Muralov. Penza, however, answered that it is impossible to disarm us because we are stronger and better equipped. The cables which I read with my own eyes convinced me about the absolute necessity to keep all your arms. The dealing of the Bolsheviks is not only insincere, but I would say that it is a fraudulent double play and a swindle. The plan was to disarm us and not to let us go further as happened to the Serbs in Samara…

Nevertheless, the Legion's leadership entered into the disarmament agreement with the Sovict Government in good faith. And now suddenly it realized that Klecanda was, after all, correct, Also a number of documents captured later by the Legion show that, while Stalin was permitting the Army Corps to leave Russian soil on the basis of partial disarmament proposal, at the same time he was instructing the Siberian Soviets to stop the trains and to disarm the Legionaires completely.

This operational cable originated from the Centrosibir Soviet in Irkutsk a day after the conclusion of the Penza agreement, being received on March 23th, 19, at the station where it was later seized by the Czechoslovaks,It was adressed for execution to all stations along the central railway line on which the Army Corps was moving. Another cable dated March 28th, 1918, was sent by Commissar Krutilov from Omsk to Kazan, apparently in response to the previous cable of the Centrosibir, stating:

Facing the well organized and disciplined Legion which greatly outnumbered the armed Red bands commanded by the local Soviets, these local Bolshevik administrators could not possibly carry out orders of the Centrosibir to disarm the Legionaires. What they could do, however, was to place various technical obstacles and difficulties in the way the train column was moving. They succeeded so well, that at the beginning of April the transportation of the Army Corps was brought to a standstill. Thus Moscow's preliminary objective was achieved: the almost complete disarmament of the Legion and its belt after a number of previous futile attempts to win the Legionaires peacefully created a new situation which seemed to offer an opportunity for a new advance – this time, however, from a position of strength. A number of radical Czechoslovaks who did not join Masaryk's political movement and therefore did not enlist in the Legion were to be used to make at least the rank and file remain in Russia.

By February 1918, the Bolsheviks had organized these dissenting radicals into the Czechoslovak Red Army, enlisting a number of them as propagandists and agitators. These men were now dispatched to the places where the Legion was hopelessly pinned down, their task being to lure the rank and file with money, threats, propaganda and promises. As the Bolsheviks were able to incorporate thousands of their former enemies, the German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war into the Red Army, to win over the Czechoslovaks did not seem to be such a problem: a) because they were Slavs and b) because about 80% of then were workers and peasants.

To understand why the Soviet government embarked upon this course of action, in spite of all formal assurances of free exit for the Czechoslovaks, it is necessary to inquire into the military situation in which the new regime found itself at this particular period of time.

B. The Military Position of the Soviet Regime.

At the beginning of 1918, the fate of the Soviet Regime was hanging in the air due to political and economical difficulties and in particular to lack of trained manpower able and willing to defend the regime both from foreign and domestic enemies. After being catapulted to power by slogans of peace and land the Bolsheviks were now confronted with the danger that their regime itself might become a victim of the disintegrating effects of these slogans, for the Russian masses were now refusing to fight for the Bolsheviks, just as they refused to back up the Provisional Government. After the conclusion of the Brest Litovsk Treaty this became a dominant element for the Russian scene. The old Imperial Army rapidly disintegrated into a sea of dissatisfied individuals who hurried home to capitalize on the Bolshevik's promises of peace and land. On March 2nd, 1918, the Soviet Government had to acknowledge this fact by a formal demobilization decree, which liquidated the remnants of a formidable army which, only a year ago, had been about 15 million men strong.

The grave danger that the Soviet Government itself might now succumb to the paralysis which the Bolsheviks so successfully incubated into the whole Russian armed forces was soon realized, and, as early as January 18th. 1918, the Bolsheviks began to organize their own army, its core being formed of a few thousand former Red Guards from the October days. At the beginning of 1918 there was practically no organized military power in the whole of Russia upon which the Soviet Government could call for support, and it was not until the Germans began their advance on Petrograd on February 23rd, 1918, after which the Bolsheviks left the conference table with a thesis of "no war – no Peace ", that the organization of the Red Army received a powerful inducement.

To be sure, it was not sympathy with the Bolsheviks which induced the Russian muzhiks to take up arms again but rather the external danger to their Motherland. This seems to be one of the greatest ironies of the whole Bolshevik Revolution: when the Bolsheviks found themselves with no organized military support in the face of the crushing German power the nationalistic Russians threw in their support behind the Soviet Government seeing no other alternative to a foreign rule.

However, in the very moment when the Bolsheviks reached an understanding with the Germans, on March 3rd, 1918, this last element of their armed strenght evaporated. Such was the fate of the whole Ukrainian Red Army which under Antonov-Ovsienko consisted at the end of February, 1918, of 1.800 men of infantry and 300 cavalry and, which under Petrov on March 19th, 1918, had only 800 men and 200 cavalry. A similar disintegration affected all Bolshevik Army Groups; after Brest-Litovsk many completely disappeared, as did the Army Group under Remenov. Thus after Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks found themselves again without military support in the face of about one million Germans who remained on Russian soil. Unable to command any substantial backing for their regime from the Russian nationals the Bolsheviks thus reached for the volunteers from the former prisoners of war, for the Letts, Chinese and others; these after being armed, were organized into the Red Army units. And this is exactly the time when the Bolsheviks began to reach also for the Czechoslovak Legion, the only fighting force of military significance in the whole of Russia. The 50.000 organized, concentrated and well disciplined men in the military power-vacuum of Russia in the spring of 1918, was a force which, if engaged in the internal strife of competing factions for power, could tip the balance in any direction. This might have been one of the decisive factors which made the Soviet Government want to have the Legion on its side. The available documentary evidence suggests that this was one of the factors which shaped the Bolshevik attitude toward the Legion. The following figures speak for themselves: