2RHPZ
06-27-2004, 04:38 PM
The Czech Legion’s Crusade For Freedom
" Move the maximum of workers from Peter (Petrograd), otherwise we will fall, for the situation with the
Czechoslovaks is quite bad." –Lenin, July, 1918
It was the middle of July, 1918 and the lights in the Kremlin were burning far into the night. For the
Bolsheviks, newly installed amid the corridors of power, it was proving to be a long, hot summer. Like an ill
wind blowing in from the east, reports of recent alarming reversals in Siberia had cast a pall over the freshly
minted Soviet capital that no amount of sunshine or sloganeering could disperse.
For Lenin and the other coup leaders, the massive walls of the venerable old fortress were of little comfort.
Huddling together with his inner circle in an atmosphere of pessimism and dread, the acknowledged plotter-inchief
was like a man presiding over his own wake. There, in the ancient red-brick citadel of the old Muscovite
Tsars, a bunker mentality had begun to set in, as each new click of the telegraph triggered a fresh spasm of
acrimonious finger pointing before settling down, invariably, to yet another round of endless, anxious scheming.
It was a galling reversal of fortune. The revolution they had so carefully and so ruthlessly fostered was teetering
on the brink of oblivion.
Only nine months earlier, looting and shooting for all they were worth, Lenin’s Bolshevik minions had
stormed out onto the streets of the capital like human battering rams. Hurling themselves at the offices of
power, they had stunned the world with the speed and ferocity of their takeover. The squabbling parliamentarians
of the Provisional Government who had ruled, or tried to rule Russia in the wake of the forced abdication
of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March, had proved no match for the pent-up fury of the mob that Lenin had
unleashed upon them. Almost overnight, as the arrest orders went out and the round ups began, all serious
opposition seemed to have melted away as Lenin proclaimed, in a mixture of vengeful jubilation and hissing
defiance, the birth of the Soviet Era.
Now, the whole vicious business was threatening to come crashing down upon their heads. In Moscow that
July, as in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and the other cities and towns of European Russia where the red banner
held sway, the men of the hammer and sickle were unhindered as they went about their brutal tasks, tearing the
fabric of Russian Society to pieces in their grimy hands. But, far to the East, across the vast, limitless expanses
of the Siberian plain, it was an entirely different story. There, stretched out across 2,000 miles of strategic railroad
track in a line running due east, from the bridges over the Volga to a point deep within Western Siberia,
the Czech Legion, an army made up of men fighting for a nation that did not yet exist were giving the comrades
fits.
As Lenin and his inner circle in Moscow could only look on impotently from a distance, this relatively small
force of non-Russians were systematically seizing control of the vital railway line depot by depot, beating back
hostile Bolshevik forces at every turn in a single-minded drive east –to Vladivostok, Russia’s gateway to the
Pacific Ocean. What’s more, by severing the rail link- the arterial lifeline connecting European Russia with it’s
far-flung eastern dominions, with a single bold saber stroke they had managed to cut off huge swaths of territory
in the Siberian hinterland from the command and control centers of the Commissars in Moscow. Worse still,
for Lenin and his cadres, as their unlikely foes continued to range up and down the tracks in their fortified
armored trains, jealously safeguarding the rail line against any and all comers, they effectively became masters
of the surrounding countryside through which they were passing – and in the bargain, a natural rallying point
around which an emerging anti-communist resistance movement in Siberia was beginning to take shape. All
this, while continuing to roll ever eastward, towards the distant shores of the Pacific and an uncertain future.
The story of the Czech Legion, the word of whose exploits crackled so ominously over the telegraph wires
that balmy July, and how they came to find themselves in Russia in the first place, fighting their way across
one-sixth of the world eighty-three years ago this Summer, remains one of the strangest sagas in the annals of
military history, and one of the greatest might-have-beens that ever was.
A Captive People
For field marshals and students of geography alike in 1914, the map of Europe was a relatively simple affair.
In the center, between France in the West and Russia in the East, the continent was dominated by a newly
resurgent Germany and the vast domains of the Hapsburgs. Squatting like a giant turtle in the heart of Central
Europe, the great Empire of Austria-Hungary stretched across the length and breadth of the European landmass
like a colossus . For hundreds of years, the double-headed Austrian Eagle had held the destinies of many captive
nationalities tightly within it’s taloned grasp. To be sure, so too, did the empires of Russia, Germany,
France and Great Britain. So much so, that when the Great War broke out in August of 1914, the conflagration
Woodrow Wilson would later describe as a fight "to make the world safe for democracy", was really little more
at the outset than the inevitable clash of empires.
As a result, when the great powers mobilized their armies that summer, many subject peoples filled their
ranks. Nowhere, perhaps, was this more true than in the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, where a great multitude
of ethnic Italians, Croats, Slovenians, Bosnians, Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians and
Czechs-countless millions of people separated by language, religion and cultural history- were corralled together
under the oppressive Germanic yoke of the Austrians. The most restive of these minorities were the Czechs,
whose tiny ancestral homeland had languished under Austrian vassalage for centuries. Though more or less
resigned to their situation, by the beginning of the twentieth century, resentment towards their heavy-handed
Austrian overlords was both deep-seated and palpable.
Consequently, the Imperial Government in Vienna viewed their Czech subjects with an alarming and ever
increasing degree of paranoia, suspicion and mistrust. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Russia’s Tsar,
Nicholas II, regarded himself as the natural father of all of his fellow Slavs. His frequent ****ouncements on
the subject of solidarity with his "little Slavic brothers" made the Austrian authorities understandably edgy.
Enticed by the Tsar’s offers of slavic hospitality, over 100,000 Czechs had emigrated to Russia at the turn of
the century, settling mostly in the areas surrounding Kiev, in the Ukraine. When the war clouds began to appear
on the horizon following the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne
on the 28th of June, 1914, these Czech emigres -many of whom were still technically Austro-Hungarian nationals
on Russian soil- were anxious to prove their loyalty to their new home and avoid deportation or classification as
enemy aliens in the event of hostilities. When Russia declared war on Austria on August 2nd following Austria’s
declaration of war against Russia’s ally Serbia, it must have seemed as if all their worst fears were about to be realized.
With visions of internment camps yawning before them, committees were formed in Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow
and St. Petersburg from among the sizable emigré communities there, to represent their interests. Delegations
from each appealed to the Tsarist government, declaring their allegiance to Russia in a series of public demonstrations
of loyalty to the Tsar. It was around this time that the leaders of the Czech communities in Moscow
and St. Petersburg hit upon the idea of organizing a more convincing and substantive demonstration of their
Pro-Russian sympathies and Slavic solidarity by forming a military unit made up of Czech emigre’s to stand
shoulder to shoulder with their Russian "cousins," against their mutual enemy, Austria.
On the 22nd of August 1914, Tsar Nicholas II visited Moscow, where he received a delegation of Czechs representing
their brethren who had settled in his domain. Much to the relief of the Czech delegates, the Tsar
warmed to their ideas almost immediately.
The Tsars’ own Imperial government however, was somewhat less keen on the idea. Likewise, The High
Command of the Russian Army, the Stavka, took a similarly less than enthusiastic view of arming the Czechs.
Nonetheless, the historical record clearly shows that even before the Tsars’ visit to Moscow, the Stavka had
already decided that the formation of a small force, the Czech druzina, as the volunteer unit would be called,
closely monitored under strict Russian control and limited to about one thousand men, might indeed prove useful
to them in the war with Austria-Hungary.
Strangers in a Strange Land
In that first year of the war, with the actual approval of it’s formation tentatively secured, the Czech druzina
began fighting it’s first battle -against the bureaucratic maze of Imperial Russia that appeared for all intents to
be working at cross purposes with the hundreds of would-be volunteers, to whom it seemed they might never
be more than an illusory force existing only on paper. Meanwhile, when news of the activities of the Czech
community in Russia reached the Austrian authorities, their reaction was predictably apoplectic. Turning the
full fury of their wrath against their Czech subjects in Bohemia and Moravia -the traditional Czech homelandtheir
rule henceforth was marked by an attitude of undisguised hostility and contempt.
In the Austrian army, it was even worse. The already draconian discipline with which Czech conscripts were
routinely treated became harsher still, as they were now regarded as a dangerously disloyal element within their
midst. Brutality and savage reprisals for the slightest infractions were routinely meted out to them, which in
turn, had the unfortunate but, understandable effect of creating rather than discouraging the very elements of
disaffection and disloyalty the Austrians were so spitefully determined to root out. Throughout the first year of
the war, the rate of attempted desertion that had started out as a trickle at the outbreak of hostilities rose to near
endemic proportions by years’ end. By 1915, as the morale of Czech soldiers in Austrian uniform reached a
critical low, their disillusionment and disgust began giving way to the unthinkable as again and again, large
numbers of Czech soldiers, tormented beyond the limits of human endurance had learned to hate their own officers
even more then they feared the Russian guns.
Driven to a desperation, many simply tossed their weapons aside and leapt half-crazed from their trenches in
futile attempts to give themselves up to the enemy, rarely getting very far before being shot to pieces. One
thing was certain: if the Russians didn’t get you, the Austro-Hungarians most certainly would.
When one regiment the 11th Austrian -a unit comprised mostly of Czechs and Slovaks-balked at doing battle
against their fellow Slavs, the Serbians, their pointed refusal to obey their marching orders was promptly
answered by a hail of Austrian bullets. Elsewhere, another Czech regiment, the 8th, behaved in a similar fashion
and was likewise obliged to take it’s place in the line under threat of German bayonets. Transferred to
another sector, nearly half the men of this regiment would later attempt to desert under fire. Another regiment
the 36th Austrian ( another misnomer) attempted to mutiny as well, only to end up butchered in their own barracks
by Austrian troops loyal to the Emperor. Incredibly, as the situation at the front continued to deteriorate,
it wasn’t long before entire regiments, such as the equally misnamed 88th Austrians and the 13th and 72nd
Slovaks were all attempting wholesale surrender. This of course, was tantamount to mass suicide, as in each
case, the dumfounded Russian reaction to the sight of waves of enemy soldiers (unarmed though they were)
rushing towards them pell mell from the opposing trenches was to open up on them with a murderous fusillade,
even as enraged Austro-Hungarian commanders were giving the order to fire on them from behind.
Providentially though, for the Czechs, there soon appeared on the scene a guardian angel, working tirelessly
on their behalf. This ‘angel’ was busy lobbying the governments of Russia’s western allies, the British and the
French. They in turn, were called upon to use their influence with the Tsars government to enlighten them as to
the true situation on the Russian front lines vis a vis the Czechs. The guardian angel, as it turned out, was a former
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Prague named Thomas Masaryk, a Pan-Slavist and ardent Czech patriot.
In the years before the war even as the Austrian secret police were combing the streets and steaming open correspondence
all over Prague, the never realized that a clandestine revolutionary cabal whose existence they
could never quite confirm but, nonetheless never doubted, was in fact, operating right under their noses, albeit
in a benign, not-violent, passively wishful sort of way and that the scholarly Professor Masaryk, who was also
a distinguished member of Parliament, was it’s ringleader! The advent of the Great War however, would change
everything.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Masaryk suddenly saw a way to finally help his people shed the despised Austrian yoke and began using his
eminently respectable social standing and impeccable credentials to gain permission from the unsuspecting
Austrian authorities for a number of specious ‘fact-finding’ trips abroad to neutral European countries such as
Switzerland, The Netherlands and Italy. There he ment secretly with many of his contacts in the allied camp,
particularly the British. In one spectacular success, on of his operatives managed to convince an English newspaper
correspondent that the truth of the situation on the Eastern front was that thousands of Czech soldiers
were willing and wanting - indeed, longing to desert and give themselves up to the Russians, if only they could
be given some assurance that the Russians would refrain from shooting at them every time they tried to do so.
This information was brought to the attention of the Russian ambassador in London, who soon passed it on
through secret diplomatic channels back to his superiors in St. Petersburg. The Russian troops at the front were
duly informed and a simple, if somewhat melodramatic code was arranged thereafter, whereby it was understood
that if the Russians could hear the strains of a pan-slavic hymn, "Hej Solvani", emanating from the direction
of an enemy trench at midnight, then they would know that there were Czech soldiers there that were prepared
to surrender.
The test case came on the 3rd of April, 1915 when an entire regiment, the 28th Prague Infantry, complete
with packs and equipment including all of their rifles, ammunition and heavy weapons, managed to sidestep
the watchful eye of the Austrians and successfully surrender to the Russians without so much as a single shot
fired. Recognizing the special status of the Czechs, the Russian authorities began placing them in separate bar-
racks, separating them from their Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners. Incensed and humiliated, the
Austrian High Command soon took steps to end regional recruiting and began integrating their Czech conscripts
and other minorities within the Empire into regiments of mixed ethnicity. They also heightened the state
of martial law already in effect to include summary executions for even the most innocuous offenses. In the
provinces of Bohemia and Moravia- the Czech homeland itself, the people fared little better, as there too, a
state of martial law was soon declared and strenuously enforced for the rest of the war.
Nevertheless, buoyed by the success of their secret diplomatic coup, Masaryk and his fellow conspirators
back in Prague, ‘The Mafia’, as they sardonically dubbed themselves, continued to wage their clandestine
diplomacy, orchestrating a kind of propaganda war on behalf of the Czech people. Eventually, with the
Austrian Secret Police hot on their heels, Masaryk and several of his most important confreres were obliged to
remove themselves from the danger zone in Prague altogether, repairing to the tranquil neutrality of the Swiss
border and the safe haven of the allied capitols for the duration, where, to the everlasting chagrin of the
Austrian authorities, the good professor from Prague became in time, the universally acknowledged leader of a
kind of government-in-exile for a country that was yet to be.
By this time, things had begun to change for the so-called ‘Russian Czechs’ as well. The men of the Czech
druzina, having successfully navigated the bureaucratic mine fields strewn along every step of their path by the
various organs of the Tsarist government, were now well into their sixth months of service attached to General
Inanov’s army group on the Southwestern front in what is now Poland.
On the 14th of October, 1914, four companies of Czech volunteers had re-entered Austrian territory as part of
the Third Russian Army. As such, the druzina was far too small to warrant their own sector of operations along
the front and so, were divided up into several recon units where they served as army scouts. Their valor and
discipline however, was of so high a caliber that they quickly distinguished themselves as first-rate soldiers. In
the eyes of their officers, standing head and shoulders above the majority of the Russian conscripts. They
proved particularly useful when it came to the capture and interrogation of enemy prisoners, where their language
skills, (for many Czechs, German was like a second tongue to them) served them well. Their nightly forays
into the snow covered no mans’ land between the Russian and Austrian trenches had for them, an additional
appeal as well, as they were always on the look-out for fellow Czechs among the enemies ranks who might be
persuaded to surrender or even ‘defect’.
Unfortunately, even as early in the game as the summer of 1915-scarcely a year since the outbreak of hostilities-
it was painfully obvious to everyone that the war was going very badly for the Russians, whose failed
offensive in Galicia was one the the most catastrophic defeats ever inflicted on a modern army. Although the
Druzina, originally conceived as a thousand man force, had swelled by then to seventeen hundred men, they
were still confined to their role as scouts in the comparatively moribund theatre of operations assigned to the
Third Army.
Moreover, most of the Czechs who had surrendered to the Tsars’ forces had no interest in exchanging
Austrian uniforms for Russian ones. Their decision to quit the Austrians was more a reaction against Hapsburg
tyranny than of love for the Russian Tsar. For them, the decision to surrender was viewed as an act of basic
self-preservation. Languishing in the prisoner-of-war camps inside Russia, the Czech p.o.w.’s were more concerned
with their own survival and the safety of their loved ones back home in Austrian controlled Bohemia
than with preserving the Romanov Dynasty, nor were they interested in trading one foreign prince for another.
What’s more, as the situation continued to deteriorate for the Russian Army in the field, the Czech p.o.w.s’
became increasingly loathe to revisit the inhuman slaughter at the front -albeit this time in the service of
Nicholas II. They had had their fill of Emperors.
Despite the formation of a fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Druzina company, with the prospects for a Russian
victory over the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary becoming increasingly dim, even some of
the Czechs in the emigre community in Russia, once so eager to volunteer for service, were now rethinking the
wisdom of such a decision. For a time it seemed as if the men of the Druzina would have to soldier on alone,
fighting the good fight on their own-and fight they did -doing everything they could to earn the respect of their
superiors and attract the attention of the Stavka, the Russian General staff. Eagerly volunteering for the most
dangerous reconnaissance patrols, there courage and professionalism continued to garner them a reputation as
something of an elite force-perhaps, the finest in the Russian Army-an embarrassing irony not lost on the generals
commanding the Third Army.
Soon, the Druzina received a new commander, a Russian Lieutenant Colonel named Trojanov, who clashed
with his superiors in a futile effort to expand the role of his hamstrung troops beyond their duties as reconnaissance
and intelligence units. Trojanov championed his men so relentlessly in the face of stubborn resistance
from the Third Army’s High Command, that eventually, the men of the Czech Druzina were transferred to a
more active sector of operations on the Southwest front where they became part of the Seventh and Eleventh
Russian Armies and quickly distinguished themselves in several fierce actions.
Heartened by these events, the Czech emigre community in Russia, still eager to remain in the good graces of
the Tsarist government, applied for and received permission to begin attempting to persuade the Czech prisoners
in the camps to volunteer as skilled workers in the various industries related to the Russian war effort.
25,000 p.o.w.’s answered the call. While still unwilling to die for Nicholas II, they agreed to labor on his behalf
in coal mines, farms and factories, in the hopes of securing better treatment for themselves and their comrades
still in the camps.
As the war bled into it’s second year, word arrived that as a result of Professor Masaryk’s diplomatic initiatives,
the drive to establish a fully independent Czech state was officially married to the success of the Allied
cause. This changed everything. The future of their homeland now hinged completely upon an Allied victory.
Moreover, Masaryk was convinced that only through their own force of arms could his countrymen hope to
gain a place for themselves at any future peace table. He also knew that between the emigres, the druzina- and
especially the p.o.w.’s- there were perhaps as many as 300,000 Czechs in Russia in 1916.
Fall of Eagles
While Masaryk spent the balance of that year trying to convince the Russian bureaucrats to allow him to raise
a Czech army in Russia, time itself was fast running out for the Tsar and his government. Battered on all sides
by the tides of history, Imperial Russia was like a sandcastle collapsing in upon itself. The death knell sounded
two and a half months into the new year when on March 10, 1917, wartime shortages provoked food riots in
Petrograd that quickly escalated into full-scale revolt against the government. The following day, the Tsar
issued an Imperial decree dissolving the Duma, Russia’s fledgling parliament, but, the ministers refused to be
dissolved and on the following day, March 12, they declared the formation of a provisional democratic government.
Within seventy-two hours, Nicholas II, Tsar of all the Russias was compelled to abdicate. The Romanov
Dynasty was finished.
Two months later, Masaryk made his move. Dodging German U-boats all the way, he arrived in Russia on the
15th of May to try his luck with the new government. He quickly came to the conclusion that their position was
far from secure and that they wouldn’t last long. All the same, while a government that appeared to be at the
mercy of the four winds could do little to help the Czech cause, there wasn’t much they could do to hinder it
either. In fact, even before Masaryk’s arrival, the Provisional Government, still determined to prosecute the war
against Germany and Austria, had already decided that it would not stand in the way of the formation of a
Czech Army on it’s soil. They needed all the friends they could get. In the anarchy of the times, everybody
went breathlessly about their own agenda -including the Czechs.
Soon, doubling and tripling in size, the Druzina became the core of a planned 1st division. Christened the
Czech Legion, their official military headquarters was established in Kiev, in the heart of the Czech emigre
community, the Ukraine. At nearby Borispol, the Czechs took over an old Russian army camp, and in the
weeks that followed, arrangements were made for the release and transport of Czech p.o.w.’s who soon began
flooding the camp, eager to volunteer for this infant Czech army.
In a very short time, a second and later a third regiment were being trained for battle there -this time, with
every man eager for action. They would not have to wait long. Although the Russians were extremely uneasy
about the growing strength of the Czech military presence in the Ukraine, when the new Russian government’s
Minister-for-War, Alexander Kerensky unveiled his eleventh hour scheme to throw back the Germans and the
Austrians, he turned to the only soldiers in Russia that could still be counted on to fight.
Gambling everything on one last attempt at a breakthrough, a final offensive would be mounted in Galicia,
concentrating on the Southwestern Front. Both Kerensky and his generals knew that only hand-picked, highly
disciplined troops might succeed. Tragically, they were equally aware that there were precious few soldiers of
that caliber left in the Russian army. Almost grudgingly, they were compelled to call upon the Czechs.
Transferred to the Eleventh army, the Czechs, now numbering over 7000 men, were still under overall
Russian control, but led at the company level by their own officers. They were also asigned their own section of
the front for the first time. The opening shots of the offensive took place in the early morning hours of the 19th
of June, 1917. The task of transforming Kerensky’s brainchild into a workable plan of attack fell to the veteran
commander, General Brusilov. A great admirer of the Czechs, Brusilov was one of the few senior Russian officers
who appreciated their worth.
Three Russian armies, the Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh were to advance into Eastern Galicia in the direction
of Lvov, with the Seventh attacking the Austrian positions at Berezan in an attempt to gouge a hole in the
enemy lines through which men and materiel might pour. The Eighth Army was to move south against the
Austrian fortress of Galic, hoping to capture both it and the city of Lemberg beyond.
As for the Czechs in the Eleventh Army, they were assigned the less than glorious task of supporting two
Finnish divisions executing an elaborate diversionary attack -a pincer movement north and south of the frontlines
at Zborov. Though the Czechs were three regiments strong by this time, they were not to engage the
enemy in earnest, but to follow in the wake of the Finnish advance, consolidating captured territory and mopping
up any leftover resistance as they went. The Czechs however, had other ideas about what their role should
be and would not be restrained.
Rather than wait for the Finns to move out first as the battle began, they charged out across the hellish, shelltorn
landscape before the opening artillery barrage had even ended and dashed headlong into the teeth of the
Austrian trenches while the shells continued to rain down all around them. Many of the soldiers in the enemy
trenches were slavs like the Czechs. They were so stunned that they laid down their arms almost immediately.
Over 4000 prisoners were taken and twenty heavy guns captured in the bargain.
Elsewhere though, in the other sectors, the offensive stalled as the Russian troops failed miserably in their
attempts to capture their assigned objectives. Galled and embarrassed, the Russian generals ordered the Czechs
to the rear and brought their own countrymen forward to replace them. Unfortunately, the three regiments sent
in to take over for the Czechs were a miserable, mutinous lot who no longer had the stomach for battle. They
ignored the exhortations of their officers and simply refused to fight. By the 24th of June, the situation had
become so perilous that the generals were compelled to bring the Czechs back up into the line to bolster the
Russian positions. Originally envisioned as minor players in the offensive, the Czechs were now being called
upon to save the beleaguered, demoralized Russian army from complete and total collapse.
Time and again, at points in the battleline with names like Tarnopol and Jezerna, the Czechs were sent in like
human corks to shore up various sectors of the front and salvage what remained of the grand offensive, even as
the Russian troops continued to buckle, eventually reeling back in utter disarray in the face of a combined
Austro-German counterattack launched against them in the first week of July. In the end, it fell to the Czechs to
cover the limping columns as they made their disordered, ignominious retreat. By doing so, entire regiments
were saved from almost certain destruction.
When news of the ensuing debacle reached the Czechs back at their encampment at Borispol, a detachment
of 274 men raced to what was left of the Galician front. Even as the Russians were hurriedly making their way
back in the other direction, the Czech task force pressed forward, reaching Tarnopol one step ahead of the
advancing Germans. In their frantic efforts to escape the enemy, the retreating Russians had abandoned not
only their field guns, but, most of their equipment as well-including their rifles and ammunition. The fact that
there was enough equipment lying scattered about the ground to supply an army was not lost on the Czechs.
The Germans were coming on so fast however, that they could only gather up as many rifles and as much
ammunition as each man could carry and hightail it back into the Ukraine as fast as they could.
Whatever else may be said about the Brusilov Offensive, for the Czechs, it was the turning point. They would
no longer be hamstrung by the Russian government. Recruiting continued in earnest until there were two full
divisions with a combined strength of 40,000 men. On September 26, 1917, the Provisional Government, now
led by Alexander Kerensky, agreed to recognize these divisions as a separate corps within the Russian army, the
Czech Legion.
It was becoming more and more obvious however, that as an institution, the dissention racked, desertion
plagued Russian army would very shortly cease to exist and that the Provisional Government was itself, dying
a slow death. In Saint Petersburg, Masaryk, by now universally regarded as their spokesman, began negotiating
with the representatives of the Allied governments in the hopes of initiating an evacuation of the Legion by sea
via the northern port of Archangel.
These consultations became ever more frantic as the clock continued to tick away towards the inevitable
implosion of the Provisional Government. By October, in the absence of any contravening authority, Ukrainian
nationalists attempted to seize power for themselves in the Kiev area. The Russian commander of what was left
of the Kiev Military District appealed to the Czechs, who, headquartered in the city and the surrounding towns
astride the rail lines soon found themselves embroiled in a civil war. For 48 hours they squared off against the
Nationalists before wisely deciding to adopt a posture of strict neutrality in Russian internal affairs.
Scouring the area, they began scooping up all of the rifles and ammunition they could find as the Russian soldiers
stationed in the Ukraine began deserting en masse in the face of a German counter-offensive that was now
driving deep into Ukrainian territory. Henceforth, the Czechs would devote their energies to looking after themselves.
Enemies Old and New
Meanwhile, the Germans, hoping to hasten the demise of the Provisional Government, arranged to smuggle
the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ulyanov (known as Lenin) and a number of other Russian radicals from their
Swiss exile onto a sealed train, ferry them east and inject them like bacillae into the state of chaos that was now
Russia. In short order, Lenin and his followers gathered their forces in Saint Petersburg and proceeded to hijack
the government by force. By November 8th they were confidently declaring themselves to be the sole governing
authority in Russia.
Back in the Ukraine, the Czechs commandeered a train for each of their battalions, a task made easier by the
fact that their Russian crews, fearing the imminent arrival of the Germans, had obligingly abandoned them on
the sidings of several railroad depots in the vicinity of the Czech encampments in the Kiev area. Throughout
November and December, the Bolshevik leadership in Russia dispatched armed operatives to the Ukraine to
sideline the separatists. As the two factions fought each other for control of the rebellious province, it was the
Czechs who continued to resist the German advance.
On the 17th of December, the Bolsheviks, more interested in tightening their tenuous grip on Russia than in
pursuing an elusive victory over the German invaders, sat down with the despoilers of their country and agreed
to an armistice. They then took advantage of the cease-fire to settle the score with the Ukrainians. Towards the
end of January, they battered their way into Kiev and toppled the would-be government of the separatists. Not
to be outdone, the Ukrainians rushed to sign a separate peace of their own with the Germans and appealed to
the Kaiser’s army to save them from the Bolsheviks. One way or the other, the Czechs realized that they were
about to be betrayed. Faced with the prospect of being handed over to the tender mercies of their enemies, the
Austro-Germans, the situation for the Czech Legionaries in the Ukraine had now become untenable.
As the sword of Damocles hovered ominously over their heads, their old champion, Thomas Masaryk was
moving heaven and earth on the diplomatic and political fronts to save them. His newly created Czech National
Council, whom the Allies promptly recognized as a legitimate national and political body, unilaterally declared
independence from Austria-Hungary on behalf of the Czech "nation". The Czechs were now the respected partners
of the Allies in the struggle against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
By this time, evacuation to the west via the port of Archangel was no longer in the cards. The Germans were
simply to close to risk it. Masaryk and his loyal lieutenants, both in Russia and the west began wheeling and
dealing to secure permission for the legionaries to be brought out of Russia by the one feasible route still left
open to them: evacuation east by train over the Urals and across the whole of Siberia via the Trans-Siberian
Railroad to the port of Vladivostok, on the Russian Far East’s Pacific coast. From there, it was hoped, they
could be taken aboard Allied ships and ferried halfway around the world to France, to rejoin the struggle
against the Austrians and the Germans, this time fighting alongside the Allies in the trenches of the Western
Front.
It was a scheme born out of sheer desperation and the Czechs were nothing if not desperate. By February, no
less than three German armies were steamrolling their way into the Ukraine in a multi-****ged assault
designed to bring the recalcitrant Bolsheviks to heel at the peace table, effectively bully them into agreeing to
all of Germany’s terms at the formal treaty negotiations being conducted at Brest-Litovsk. Worst of all, one of
the ****gs was aimed directly at Kiev-and the Czech Legion. With the entire province about to be overrun by
the Kaiser’s forces, the legionaries could no longer afford to watch and wait, entrusting their fate to the machinations
of others, however well meaning -not even Masaryk. In this critical hour, they knew instinctively that if
they were going to save themselves from utter annihilation they were going to have to take matters into their
own hands and live with the consequences later.
In those last days of February, 1918, the various Czech units arrayed about Kiev gathered themselves up and
converged on the provincial capital. They were all scarcely one step ahead of the advancing Germans. In many
cases, the margin for safety was precariously slim, indeed. The 1st Division alone, slogging their way through
the warzone on foot from their encampment at Volhynia, narrowly survived several skirmishes with forward
elements of the German army as they raced towards the city and the hastily organized link-up. There, on the
28th of February, the 2nd Regiment hurriedly took up defensive positions along what would prove to be the
gateway to their escape route: the suspension bridge spanning the Dneiper river at the eastern edge of the city.
As they did so, the bulk of the 1st Division crossed over to the other side. The following day they began making
their way east to the Poltava region near the Vorskla river and the temporary safety of the central Ukraine.
That same day, March 1st, 1918, German scouts entered the ancient city of Kiev, where they were welcomed
by duplicitous Ukrainian nationalists as both liberators and friends. The Bolsheviks had wisely fled the city.
The Germans, rather typically, wasted no time. Within 24 hours, they had seized control of the Kiev side of the
bridge and were harrying the hard-pressed Czech defenders of the 2nd Regiment, who were still grimly buying
time for their comrades on the opposite end of the span. The legionaries stubbornly held their ground throughout
most of the following day before finally withdrawing from the banks of the Dneiper. Still, they continued to
cover the 1st Divisions retreat all the way to Poltava. The date was March 3, 1918. On that very day, representatives
of Russia’s embryonic Communist government, eager to get out of the war at almost any price in order
to consolidate their hold on power in the rest of Russia, agreed to all of Germany’s peace terms and duly
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By so doing, the Reds agreed to relinquish control of a huge swath of the
old Tsarist Empire, that included the Baltic States, Finland and the whole of the Ukraine.
With little love lost between the two sides however, and even less trust, the actual situation in the field
changed very little initially, with the Soviets, as the Bolsheviks were now calling themselves, displaying little
inclination towards actually quitting the Ukraine and the Germans, true to form, continuing to press their military
advantage, proceeding with their invasion campaign as if nothing at all had changed.
As for the Czechs, they continued their evacuation east by rail, trying their damnest to avoid hostilities with the
local Bolsheviks, who violated several negotiated agreements and stopped their trains at almost every station,
demanding food and weapons before allowing the legionaries to proceed. These the Czechs gave, until it
became obvious that the Reds would continue to extort weapons and supplies until there was nothing left -at
which point they would be at their mercy. And so, the decision was made to fight -and fight they did. All along
the railway across the length of Russia, in skirmishes great and small, at places like Bakhmach, Penza, Samara,
Ufa, Perm, Irkutsk and Lake Baikal they smashed their way through like a juggernaut, inflicting defeat after
defeat upon the Reds in their efforts to secure the escape route to Vladivostok, until the promised rescue ships
arrived. Meanwhile, Russian anti-communist forces in Siberia known as the White Armies, inspired and
emboldened by the Czech successes, began a military campaign of their own to beat back the Reds.
With this, the Allied governments took notice and ordered the Czechs to continue to hold the railway and assist
the White armies, serving as the vanguard of an anti-communist campaign that eventually culminated in the illfated
Allied landings in North Russia and the Russian Far East. For two years they did the Allies bidding, helping
to ensure the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia as a provision of the Treaty of Versailles, following
Germany’s surrender to the Allies on November 11th, 1918. Coming within a hairsbreadth of destroying
Russian Bolshevism in it’s infancy, the Czech’s efforts were undone by the cruelty and rapine of some elements
of the White armies, whose penchant for committing atrocities outshone even the Communists at times, and
had the effect of poisoning the hearts and minds of whole sections of the population of Siberia against the liberation
movement. It was a simple case of the fear of the known outweighing the fear of the unknown.
Finally, the Allied governments, in the face of growing Bolshevik strength, recognized the futility of the situation
and decided to leave Russia to her own devices. By April, 1919, the long awaited rescue ships had begun
arriving at Vladivostok, and by the end of May, nearly all of the Czechs were there, too, and the task of evacuating
the Czech Legion began in earnest. By August of 1920, the last of the legionaries were aboard ship and
leaving Russia forever, bound for the independent homeland for which they had fought so long. Six years to the
month since their strange odyssey had begun, the men of the Czech Legion were homeward bound at last.
Photo archive:
http://drfaltin.org/archive.htm
" Move the maximum of workers from Peter (Petrograd), otherwise we will fall, for the situation with the
Czechoslovaks is quite bad." –Lenin, July, 1918
It was the middle of July, 1918 and the lights in the Kremlin were burning far into the night. For the
Bolsheviks, newly installed amid the corridors of power, it was proving to be a long, hot summer. Like an ill
wind blowing in from the east, reports of recent alarming reversals in Siberia had cast a pall over the freshly
minted Soviet capital that no amount of sunshine or sloganeering could disperse.
For Lenin and the other coup leaders, the massive walls of the venerable old fortress were of little comfort.
Huddling together with his inner circle in an atmosphere of pessimism and dread, the acknowledged plotter-inchief
was like a man presiding over his own wake. There, in the ancient red-brick citadel of the old Muscovite
Tsars, a bunker mentality had begun to set in, as each new click of the telegraph triggered a fresh spasm of
acrimonious finger pointing before settling down, invariably, to yet another round of endless, anxious scheming.
It was a galling reversal of fortune. The revolution they had so carefully and so ruthlessly fostered was teetering
on the brink of oblivion.
Only nine months earlier, looting and shooting for all they were worth, Lenin’s Bolshevik minions had
stormed out onto the streets of the capital like human battering rams. Hurling themselves at the offices of
power, they had stunned the world with the speed and ferocity of their takeover. The squabbling parliamentarians
of the Provisional Government who had ruled, or tried to rule Russia in the wake of the forced abdication
of Tsar Nicholas II the previous March, had proved no match for the pent-up fury of the mob that Lenin had
unleashed upon them. Almost overnight, as the arrest orders went out and the round ups began, all serious
opposition seemed to have melted away as Lenin proclaimed, in a mixture of vengeful jubilation and hissing
defiance, the birth of the Soviet Era.
Now, the whole vicious business was threatening to come crashing down upon their heads. In Moscow that
July, as in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and the other cities and towns of European Russia where the red banner
held sway, the men of the hammer and sickle were unhindered as they went about their brutal tasks, tearing the
fabric of Russian Society to pieces in their grimy hands. But, far to the East, across the vast, limitless expanses
of the Siberian plain, it was an entirely different story. There, stretched out across 2,000 miles of strategic railroad
track in a line running due east, from the bridges over the Volga to a point deep within Western Siberia,
the Czech Legion, an army made up of men fighting for a nation that did not yet exist were giving the comrades
fits.
As Lenin and his inner circle in Moscow could only look on impotently from a distance, this relatively small
force of non-Russians were systematically seizing control of the vital railway line depot by depot, beating back
hostile Bolshevik forces at every turn in a single-minded drive east –to Vladivostok, Russia’s gateway to the
Pacific Ocean. What’s more, by severing the rail link- the arterial lifeline connecting European Russia with it’s
far-flung eastern dominions, with a single bold saber stroke they had managed to cut off huge swaths of territory
in the Siberian hinterland from the command and control centers of the Commissars in Moscow. Worse still,
for Lenin and his cadres, as their unlikely foes continued to range up and down the tracks in their fortified
armored trains, jealously safeguarding the rail line against any and all comers, they effectively became masters
of the surrounding countryside through which they were passing – and in the bargain, a natural rallying point
around which an emerging anti-communist resistance movement in Siberia was beginning to take shape. All
this, while continuing to roll ever eastward, towards the distant shores of the Pacific and an uncertain future.
The story of the Czech Legion, the word of whose exploits crackled so ominously over the telegraph wires
that balmy July, and how they came to find themselves in Russia in the first place, fighting their way across
one-sixth of the world eighty-three years ago this Summer, remains one of the strangest sagas in the annals of
military history, and one of the greatest might-have-beens that ever was.
A Captive People
For field marshals and students of geography alike in 1914, the map of Europe was a relatively simple affair.
In the center, between France in the West and Russia in the East, the continent was dominated by a newly
resurgent Germany and the vast domains of the Hapsburgs. Squatting like a giant turtle in the heart of Central
Europe, the great Empire of Austria-Hungary stretched across the length and breadth of the European landmass
like a colossus . For hundreds of years, the double-headed Austrian Eagle had held the destinies of many captive
nationalities tightly within it’s taloned grasp. To be sure, so too, did the empires of Russia, Germany,
France and Great Britain. So much so, that when the Great War broke out in August of 1914, the conflagration
Woodrow Wilson would later describe as a fight "to make the world safe for democracy", was really little more
at the outset than the inevitable clash of empires.
As a result, when the great powers mobilized their armies that summer, many subject peoples filled their
ranks. Nowhere, perhaps, was this more true than in the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, where a great multitude
of ethnic Italians, Croats, Slovenians, Bosnians, Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians and
Czechs-countless millions of people separated by language, religion and cultural history- were corralled together
under the oppressive Germanic yoke of the Austrians. The most restive of these minorities were the Czechs,
whose tiny ancestral homeland had languished under Austrian vassalage for centuries. Though more or less
resigned to their situation, by the beginning of the twentieth century, resentment towards their heavy-handed
Austrian overlords was both deep-seated and palpable.
Consequently, the Imperial Government in Vienna viewed their Czech subjects with an alarming and ever
increasing degree of paranoia, suspicion and mistrust. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Russia’s Tsar,
Nicholas II, regarded himself as the natural father of all of his fellow Slavs. His frequent ****ouncements on
the subject of solidarity with his "little Slavic brothers" made the Austrian authorities understandably edgy.
Enticed by the Tsar’s offers of slavic hospitality, over 100,000 Czechs had emigrated to Russia at the turn of
the century, settling mostly in the areas surrounding Kiev, in the Ukraine. When the war clouds began to appear
on the horizon following the Sarajevo assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne
on the 28th of June, 1914, these Czech emigres -many of whom were still technically Austro-Hungarian nationals
on Russian soil- were anxious to prove their loyalty to their new home and avoid deportation or classification as
enemy aliens in the event of hostilities. When Russia declared war on Austria on August 2nd following Austria’s
declaration of war against Russia’s ally Serbia, it must have seemed as if all their worst fears were about to be realized.
With visions of internment camps yawning before them, committees were formed in Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow
and St. Petersburg from among the sizable emigré communities there, to represent their interests. Delegations
from each appealed to the Tsarist government, declaring their allegiance to Russia in a series of public demonstrations
of loyalty to the Tsar. It was around this time that the leaders of the Czech communities in Moscow
and St. Petersburg hit upon the idea of organizing a more convincing and substantive demonstration of their
Pro-Russian sympathies and Slavic solidarity by forming a military unit made up of Czech emigre’s to stand
shoulder to shoulder with their Russian "cousins," against their mutual enemy, Austria.
On the 22nd of August 1914, Tsar Nicholas II visited Moscow, where he received a delegation of Czechs representing
their brethren who had settled in his domain. Much to the relief of the Czech delegates, the Tsar
warmed to their ideas almost immediately.
The Tsars’ own Imperial government however, was somewhat less keen on the idea. Likewise, The High
Command of the Russian Army, the Stavka, took a similarly less than enthusiastic view of arming the Czechs.
Nonetheless, the historical record clearly shows that even before the Tsars’ visit to Moscow, the Stavka had
already decided that the formation of a small force, the Czech druzina, as the volunteer unit would be called,
closely monitored under strict Russian control and limited to about one thousand men, might indeed prove useful
to them in the war with Austria-Hungary.
Strangers in a Strange Land
In that first year of the war, with the actual approval of it’s formation tentatively secured, the Czech druzina
began fighting it’s first battle -against the bureaucratic maze of Imperial Russia that appeared for all intents to
be working at cross purposes with the hundreds of would-be volunteers, to whom it seemed they might never
be more than an illusory force existing only on paper. Meanwhile, when news of the activities of the Czech
community in Russia reached the Austrian authorities, their reaction was predictably apoplectic. Turning the
full fury of their wrath against their Czech subjects in Bohemia and Moravia -the traditional Czech homelandtheir
rule henceforth was marked by an attitude of undisguised hostility and contempt.
In the Austrian army, it was even worse. The already draconian discipline with which Czech conscripts were
routinely treated became harsher still, as they were now regarded as a dangerously disloyal element within their
midst. Brutality and savage reprisals for the slightest infractions were routinely meted out to them, which in
turn, had the unfortunate but, understandable effect of creating rather than discouraging the very elements of
disaffection and disloyalty the Austrians were so spitefully determined to root out. Throughout the first year of
the war, the rate of attempted desertion that had started out as a trickle at the outbreak of hostilities rose to near
endemic proportions by years’ end. By 1915, as the morale of Czech soldiers in Austrian uniform reached a
critical low, their disillusionment and disgust began giving way to the unthinkable as again and again, large
numbers of Czech soldiers, tormented beyond the limits of human endurance had learned to hate their own officers
even more then they feared the Russian guns.
Driven to a desperation, many simply tossed their weapons aside and leapt half-crazed from their trenches in
futile attempts to give themselves up to the enemy, rarely getting very far before being shot to pieces. One
thing was certain: if the Russians didn’t get you, the Austro-Hungarians most certainly would.
When one regiment the 11th Austrian -a unit comprised mostly of Czechs and Slovaks-balked at doing battle
against their fellow Slavs, the Serbians, their pointed refusal to obey their marching orders was promptly
answered by a hail of Austrian bullets. Elsewhere, another Czech regiment, the 8th, behaved in a similar fashion
and was likewise obliged to take it’s place in the line under threat of German bayonets. Transferred to
another sector, nearly half the men of this regiment would later attempt to desert under fire. Another regiment
the 36th Austrian ( another misnomer) attempted to mutiny as well, only to end up butchered in their own barracks
by Austrian troops loyal to the Emperor. Incredibly, as the situation at the front continued to deteriorate,
it wasn’t long before entire regiments, such as the equally misnamed 88th Austrians and the 13th and 72nd
Slovaks were all attempting wholesale surrender. This of course, was tantamount to mass suicide, as in each
case, the dumfounded Russian reaction to the sight of waves of enemy soldiers (unarmed though they were)
rushing towards them pell mell from the opposing trenches was to open up on them with a murderous fusillade,
even as enraged Austro-Hungarian commanders were giving the order to fire on them from behind.
Providentially though, for the Czechs, there soon appeared on the scene a guardian angel, working tirelessly
on their behalf. This ‘angel’ was busy lobbying the governments of Russia’s western allies, the British and the
French. They in turn, were called upon to use their influence with the Tsars government to enlighten them as to
the true situation on the Russian front lines vis a vis the Czechs. The guardian angel, as it turned out, was a former
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Prague named Thomas Masaryk, a Pan-Slavist and ardent Czech patriot.
In the years before the war even as the Austrian secret police were combing the streets and steaming open correspondence
all over Prague, the never realized that a clandestine revolutionary cabal whose existence they
could never quite confirm but, nonetheless never doubted, was in fact, operating right under their noses, albeit
in a benign, not-violent, passively wishful sort of way and that the scholarly Professor Masaryk, who was also
a distinguished member of Parliament, was it’s ringleader! The advent of the Great War however, would change
everything.
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Masaryk suddenly saw a way to finally help his people shed the despised Austrian yoke and began using his
eminently respectable social standing and impeccable credentials to gain permission from the unsuspecting
Austrian authorities for a number of specious ‘fact-finding’ trips abroad to neutral European countries such as
Switzerland, The Netherlands and Italy. There he ment secretly with many of his contacts in the allied camp,
particularly the British. In one spectacular success, on of his operatives managed to convince an English newspaper
correspondent that the truth of the situation on the Eastern front was that thousands of Czech soldiers
were willing and wanting - indeed, longing to desert and give themselves up to the Russians, if only they could
be given some assurance that the Russians would refrain from shooting at them every time they tried to do so.
This information was brought to the attention of the Russian ambassador in London, who soon passed it on
through secret diplomatic channels back to his superiors in St. Petersburg. The Russian troops at the front were
duly informed and a simple, if somewhat melodramatic code was arranged thereafter, whereby it was understood
that if the Russians could hear the strains of a pan-slavic hymn, "Hej Solvani", emanating from the direction
of an enemy trench at midnight, then they would know that there were Czech soldiers there that were prepared
to surrender.
The test case came on the 3rd of April, 1915 when an entire regiment, the 28th Prague Infantry, complete
with packs and equipment including all of their rifles, ammunition and heavy weapons, managed to sidestep
the watchful eye of the Austrians and successfully surrender to the Russians without so much as a single shot
fired. Recognizing the special status of the Czechs, the Russian authorities began placing them in separate bar-
racks, separating them from their Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners. Incensed and humiliated, the
Austrian High Command soon took steps to end regional recruiting and began integrating their Czech conscripts
and other minorities within the Empire into regiments of mixed ethnicity. They also heightened the state
of martial law already in effect to include summary executions for even the most innocuous offenses. In the
provinces of Bohemia and Moravia- the Czech homeland itself, the people fared little better, as there too, a
state of martial law was soon declared and strenuously enforced for the rest of the war.
Nevertheless, buoyed by the success of their secret diplomatic coup, Masaryk and his fellow conspirators
back in Prague, ‘The Mafia’, as they sardonically dubbed themselves, continued to wage their clandestine
diplomacy, orchestrating a kind of propaganda war on behalf of the Czech people. Eventually, with the
Austrian Secret Police hot on their heels, Masaryk and several of his most important confreres were obliged to
remove themselves from the danger zone in Prague altogether, repairing to the tranquil neutrality of the Swiss
border and the safe haven of the allied capitols for the duration, where, to the everlasting chagrin of the
Austrian authorities, the good professor from Prague became in time, the universally acknowledged leader of a
kind of government-in-exile for a country that was yet to be.
By this time, things had begun to change for the so-called ‘Russian Czechs’ as well. The men of the Czech
druzina, having successfully navigated the bureaucratic mine fields strewn along every step of their path by the
various organs of the Tsarist government, were now well into their sixth months of service attached to General
Inanov’s army group on the Southwestern front in what is now Poland.
On the 14th of October, 1914, four companies of Czech volunteers had re-entered Austrian territory as part of
the Third Russian Army. As such, the druzina was far too small to warrant their own sector of operations along
the front and so, were divided up into several recon units where they served as army scouts. Their valor and
discipline however, was of so high a caliber that they quickly distinguished themselves as first-rate soldiers. In
the eyes of their officers, standing head and shoulders above the majority of the Russian conscripts. They
proved particularly useful when it came to the capture and interrogation of enemy prisoners, where their language
skills, (for many Czechs, German was like a second tongue to them) served them well. Their nightly forays
into the snow covered no mans’ land between the Russian and Austrian trenches had for them, an additional
appeal as well, as they were always on the look-out for fellow Czechs among the enemies ranks who might be
persuaded to surrender or even ‘defect’.
Unfortunately, even as early in the game as the summer of 1915-scarcely a year since the outbreak of hostilities-
it was painfully obvious to everyone that the war was going very badly for the Russians, whose failed
offensive in Galicia was one the the most catastrophic defeats ever inflicted on a modern army. Although the
Druzina, originally conceived as a thousand man force, had swelled by then to seventeen hundred men, they
were still confined to their role as scouts in the comparatively moribund theatre of operations assigned to the
Third Army.
Moreover, most of the Czechs who had surrendered to the Tsars’ forces had no interest in exchanging
Austrian uniforms for Russian ones. Their decision to quit the Austrians was more a reaction against Hapsburg
tyranny than of love for the Russian Tsar. For them, the decision to surrender was viewed as an act of basic
self-preservation. Languishing in the prisoner-of-war camps inside Russia, the Czech p.o.w.’s were more concerned
with their own survival and the safety of their loved ones back home in Austrian controlled Bohemia
than with preserving the Romanov Dynasty, nor were they interested in trading one foreign prince for another.
What’s more, as the situation continued to deteriorate for the Russian Army in the field, the Czech p.o.w.s’
became increasingly loathe to revisit the inhuman slaughter at the front -albeit this time in the service of
Nicholas II. They had had their fill of Emperors.
Despite the formation of a fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth Druzina company, with the prospects for a Russian
victory over the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary becoming increasingly dim, even some of
the Czechs in the emigre community in Russia, once so eager to volunteer for service, were now rethinking the
wisdom of such a decision. For a time it seemed as if the men of the Druzina would have to soldier on alone,
fighting the good fight on their own-and fight they did -doing everything they could to earn the respect of their
superiors and attract the attention of the Stavka, the Russian General staff. Eagerly volunteering for the most
dangerous reconnaissance patrols, there courage and professionalism continued to garner them a reputation as
something of an elite force-perhaps, the finest in the Russian Army-an embarrassing irony not lost on the generals
commanding the Third Army.
Soon, the Druzina received a new commander, a Russian Lieutenant Colonel named Trojanov, who clashed
with his superiors in a futile effort to expand the role of his hamstrung troops beyond their duties as reconnaissance
and intelligence units. Trojanov championed his men so relentlessly in the face of stubborn resistance
from the Third Army’s High Command, that eventually, the men of the Czech Druzina were transferred to a
more active sector of operations on the Southwest front where they became part of the Seventh and Eleventh
Russian Armies and quickly distinguished themselves in several fierce actions.
Heartened by these events, the Czech emigre community in Russia, still eager to remain in the good graces of
the Tsarist government, applied for and received permission to begin attempting to persuade the Czech prisoners
in the camps to volunteer as skilled workers in the various industries related to the Russian war effort.
25,000 p.o.w.’s answered the call. While still unwilling to die for Nicholas II, they agreed to labor on his behalf
in coal mines, farms and factories, in the hopes of securing better treatment for themselves and their comrades
still in the camps.
As the war bled into it’s second year, word arrived that as a result of Professor Masaryk’s diplomatic initiatives,
the drive to establish a fully independent Czech state was officially married to the success of the Allied
cause. This changed everything. The future of their homeland now hinged completely upon an Allied victory.
Moreover, Masaryk was convinced that only through their own force of arms could his countrymen hope to
gain a place for themselves at any future peace table. He also knew that between the emigres, the druzina- and
especially the p.o.w.’s- there were perhaps as many as 300,000 Czechs in Russia in 1916.
Fall of Eagles
While Masaryk spent the balance of that year trying to convince the Russian bureaucrats to allow him to raise
a Czech army in Russia, time itself was fast running out for the Tsar and his government. Battered on all sides
by the tides of history, Imperial Russia was like a sandcastle collapsing in upon itself. The death knell sounded
two and a half months into the new year when on March 10, 1917, wartime shortages provoked food riots in
Petrograd that quickly escalated into full-scale revolt against the government. The following day, the Tsar
issued an Imperial decree dissolving the Duma, Russia’s fledgling parliament, but, the ministers refused to be
dissolved and on the following day, March 12, they declared the formation of a provisional democratic government.
Within seventy-two hours, Nicholas II, Tsar of all the Russias was compelled to abdicate. The Romanov
Dynasty was finished.
Two months later, Masaryk made his move. Dodging German U-boats all the way, he arrived in Russia on the
15th of May to try his luck with the new government. He quickly came to the conclusion that their position was
far from secure and that they wouldn’t last long. All the same, while a government that appeared to be at the
mercy of the four winds could do little to help the Czech cause, there wasn’t much they could do to hinder it
either. In fact, even before Masaryk’s arrival, the Provisional Government, still determined to prosecute the war
against Germany and Austria, had already decided that it would not stand in the way of the formation of a
Czech Army on it’s soil. They needed all the friends they could get. In the anarchy of the times, everybody
went breathlessly about their own agenda -including the Czechs.
Soon, doubling and tripling in size, the Druzina became the core of a planned 1st division. Christened the
Czech Legion, their official military headquarters was established in Kiev, in the heart of the Czech emigre
community, the Ukraine. At nearby Borispol, the Czechs took over an old Russian army camp, and in the
weeks that followed, arrangements were made for the release and transport of Czech p.o.w.’s who soon began
flooding the camp, eager to volunteer for this infant Czech army.
In a very short time, a second and later a third regiment were being trained for battle there -this time, with
every man eager for action. They would not have to wait long. Although the Russians were extremely uneasy
about the growing strength of the Czech military presence in the Ukraine, when the new Russian government’s
Minister-for-War, Alexander Kerensky unveiled his eleventh hour scheme to throw back the Germans and the
Austrians, he turned to the only soldiers in Russia that could still be counted on to fight.
Gambling everything on one last attempt at a breakthrough, a final offensive would be mounted in Galicia,
concentrating on the Southwestern Front. Both Kerensky and his generals knew that only hand-picked, highly
disciplined troops might succeed. Tragically, they were equally aware that there were precious few soldiers of
that caliber left in the Russian army. Almost grudgingly, they were compelled to call upon the Czechs.
Transferred to the Eleventh army, the Czechs, now numbering over 7000 men, were still under overall
Russian control, but led at the company level by their own officers. They were also asigned their own section of
the front for the first time. The opening shots of the offensive took place in the early morning hours of the 19th
of June, 1917. The task of transforming Kerensky’s brainchild into a workable plan of attack fell to the veteran
commander, General Brusilov. A great admirer of the Czechs, Brusilov was one of the few senior Russian officers
who appreciated their worth.
Three Russian armies, the Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh were to advance into Eastern Galicia in the direction
of Lvov, with the Seventh attacking the Austrian positions at Berezan in an attempt to gouge a hole in the
enemy lines through which men and materiel might pour. The Eighth Army was to move south against the
Austrian fortress of Galic, hoping to capture both it and the city of Lemberg beyond.
As for the Czechs in the Eleventh Army, they were assigned the less than glorious task of supporting two
Finnish divisions executing an elaborate diversionary attack -a pincer movement north and south of the frontlines
at Zborov. Though the Czechs were three regiments strong by this time, they were not to engage the
enemy in earnest, but to follow in the wake of the Finnish advance, consolidating captured territory and mopping
up any leftover resistance as they went. The Czechs however, had other ideas about what their role should
be and would not be restrained.
Rather than wait for the Finns to move out first as the battle began, they charged out across the hellish, shelltorn
landscape before the opening artillery barrage had even ended and dashed headlong into the teeth of the
Austrian trenches while the shells continued to rain down all around them. Many of the soldiers in the enemy
trenches were slavs like the Czechs. They were so stunned that they laid down their arms almost immediately.
Over 4000 prisoners were taken and twenty heavy guns captured in the bargain.
Elsewhere though, in the other sectors, the offensive stalled as the Russian troops failed miserably in their
attempts to capture their assigned objectives. Galled and embarrassed, the Russian generals ordered the Czechs
to the rear and brought their own countrymen forward to replace them. Unfortunately, the three regiments sent
in to take over for the Czechs were a miserable, mutinous lot who no longer had the stomach for battle. They
ignored the exhortations of their officers and simply refused to fight. By the 24th of June, the situation had
become so perilous that the generals were compelled to bring the Czechs back up into the line to bolster the
Russian positions. Originally envisioned as minor players in the offensive, the Czechs were now being called
upon to save the beleaguered, demoralized Russian army from complete and total collapse.
Time and again, at points in the battleline with names like Tarnopol and Jezerna, the Czechs were sent in like
human corks to shore up various sectors of the front and salvage what remained of the grand offensive, even as
the Russian troops continued to buckle, eventually reeling back in utter disarray in the face of a combined
Austro-German counterattack launched against them in the first week of July. In the end, it fell to the Czechs to
cover the limping columns as they made their disordered, ignominious retreat. By doing so, entire regiments
were saved from almost certain destruction.
When news of the ensuing debacle reached the Czechs back at their encampment at Borispol, a detachment
of 274 men raced to what was left of the Galician front. Even as the Russians were hurriedly making their way
back in the other direction, the Czech task force pressed forward, reaching Tarnopol one step ahead of the
advancing Germans. In their frantic efforts to escape the enemy, the retreating Russians had abandoned not
only their field guns, but, most of their equipment as well-including their rifles and ammunition. The fact that
there was enough equipment lying scattered about the ground to supply an army was not lost on the Czechs.
The Germans were coming on so fast however, that they could only gather up as many rifles and as much
ammunition as each man could carry and hightail it back into the Ukraine as fast as they could.
Whatever else may be said about the Brusilov Offensive, for the Czechs, it was the turning point. They would
no longer be hamstrung by the Russian government. Recruiting continued in earnest until there were two full
divisions with a combined strength of 40,000 men. On September 26, 1917, the Provisional Government, now
led by Alexander Kerensky, agreed to recognize these divisions as a separate corps within the Russian army, the
Czech Legion.
It was becoming more and more obvious however, that as an institution, the dissention racked, desertion
plagued Russian army would very shortly cease to exist and that the Provisional Government was itself, dying
a slow death. In Saint Petersburg, Masaryk, by now universally regarded as their spokesman, began negotiating
with the representatives of the Allied governments in the hopes of initiating an evacuation of the Legion by sea
via the northern port of Archangel.
These consultations became ever more frantic as the clock continued to tick away towards the inevitable
implosion of the Provisional Government. By October, in the absence of any contravening authority, Ukrainian
nationalists attempted to seize power for themselves in the Kiev area. The Russian commander of what was left
of the Kiev Military District appealed to the Czechs, who, headquartered in the city and the surrounding towns
astride the rail lines soon found themselves embroiled in a civil war. For 48 hours they squared off against the
Nationalists before wisely deciding to adopt a posture of strict neutrality in Russian internal affairs.
Scouring the area, they began scooping up all of the rifles and ammunition they could find as the Russian soldiers
stationed in the Ukraine began deserting en masse in the face of a German counter-offensive that was now
driving deep into Ukrainian territory. Henceforth, the Czechs would devote their energies to looking after themselves.
Enemies Old and New
Meanwhile, the Germans, hoping to hasten the demise of the Provisional Government, arranged to smuggle
the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ulyanov (known as Lenin) and a number of other Russian radicals from their
Swiss exile onto a sealed train, ferry them east and inject them like bacillae into the state of chaos that was now
Russia. In short order, Lenin and his followers gathered their forces in Saint Petersburg and proceeded to hijack
the government by force. By November 8th they were confidently declaring themselves to be the sole governing
authority in Russia.
Back in the Ukraine, the Czechs commandeered a train for each of their battalions, a task made easier by the
fact that their Russian crews, fearing the imminent arrival of the Germans, had obligingly abandoned them on
the sidings of several railroad depots in the vicinity of the Czech encampments in the Kiev area. Throughout
November and December, the Bolshevik leadership in Russia dispatched armed operatives to the Ukraine to
sideline the separatists. As the two factions fought each other for control of the rebellious province, it was the
Czechs who continued to resist the German advance.
On the 17th of December, the Bolsheviks, more interested in tightening their tenuous grip on Russia than in
pursuing an elusive victory over the German invaders, sat down with the despoilers of their country and agreed
to an armistice. They then took advantage of the cease-fire to settle the score with the Ukrainians. Towards the
end of January, they battered their way into Kiev and toppled the would-be government of the separatists. Not
to be outdone, the Ukrainians rushed to sign a separate peace of their own with the Germans and appealed to
the Kaiser’s army to save them from the Bolsheviks. One way or the other, the Czechs realized that they were
about to be betrayed. Faced with the prospect of being handed over to the tender mercies of their enemies, the
Austro-Germans, the situation for the Czech Legionaries in the Ukraine had now become untenable.
As the sword of Damocles hovered ominously over their heads, their old champion, Thomas Masaryk was
moving heaven and earth on the diplomatic and political fronts to save them. His newly created Czech National
Council, whom the Allies promptly recognized as a legitimate national and political body, unilaterally declared
independence from Austria-Hungary on behalf of the Czech "nation". The Czechs were now the respected partners
of the Allies in the struggle against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
By this time, evacuation to the west via the port of Archangel was no longer in the cards. The Germans were
simply to close to risk it. Masaryk and his loyal lieutenants, both in Russia and the west began wheeling and
dealing to secure permission for the legionaries to be brought out of Russia by the one feasible route still left
open to them: evacuation east by train over the Urals and across the whole of Siberia via the Trans-Siberian
Railroad to the port of Vladivostok, on the Russian Far East’s Pacific coast. From there, it was hoped, they
could be taken aboard Allied ships and ferried halfway around the world to France, to rejoin the struggle
against the Austrians and the Germans, this time fighting alongside the Allies in the trenches of the Western
Front.
It was a scheme born out of sheer desperation and the Czechs were nothing if not desperate. By February, no
less than three German armies were steamrolling their way into the Ukraine in a multi-****ged assault
designed to bring the recalcitrant Bolsheviks to heel at the peace table, effectively bully them into agreeing to
all of Germany’s terms at the formal treaty negotiations being conducted at Brest-Litovsk. Worst of all, one of
the ****gs was aimed directly at Kiev-and the Czech Legion. With the entire province about to be overrun by
the Kaiser’s forces, the legionaries could no longer afford to watch and wait, entrusting their fate to the machinations
of others, however well meaning -not even Masaryk. In this critical hour, they knew instinctively that if
they were going to save themselves from utter annihilation they were going to have to take matters into their
own hands and live with the consequences later.
In those last days of February, 1918, the various Czech units arrayed about Kiev gathered themselves up and
converged on the provincial capital. They were all scarcely one step ahead of the advancing Germans. In many
cases, the margin for safety was precariously slim, indeed. The 1st Division alone, slogging their way through
the warzone on foot from their encampment at Volhynia, narrowly survived several skirmishes with forward
elements of the German army as they raced towards the city and the hastily organized link-up. There, on the
28th of February, the 2nd Regiment hurriedly took up defensive positions along what would prove to be the
gateway to their escape route: the suspension bridge spanning the Dneiper river at the eastern edge of the city.
As they did so, the bulk of the 1st Division crossed over to the other side. The following day they began making
their way east to the Poltava region near the Vorskla river and the temporary safety of the central Ukraine.
That same day, March 1st, 1918, German scouts entered the ancient city of Kiev, where they were welcomed
by duplicitous Ukrainian nationalists as both liberators and friends. The Bolsheviks had wisely fled the city.
The Germans, rather typically, wasted no time. Within 24 hours, they had seized control of the Kiev side of the
bridge and were harrying the hard-pressed Czech defenders of the 2nd Regiment, who were still grimly buying
time for their comrades on the opposite end of the span. The legionaries stubbornly held their ground throughout
most of the following day before finally withdrawing from the banks of the Dneiper. Still, they continued to
cover the 1st Divisions retreat all the way to Poltava. The date was March 3, 1918. On that very day, representatives
of Russia’s embryonic Communist government, eager to get out of the war at almost any price in order
to consolidate their hold on power in the rest of Russia, agreed to all of Germany’s peace terms and duly
signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By so doing, the Reds agreed to relinquish control of a huge swath of the
old Tsarist Empire, that included the Baltic States, Finland and the whole of the Ukraine.
With little love lost between the two sides however, and even less trust, the actual situation in the field
changed very little initially, with the Soviets, as the Bolsheviks were now calling themselves, displaying little
inclination towards actually quitting the Ukraine and the Germans, true to form, continuing to press their military
advantage, proceeding with their invasion campaign as if nothing at all had changed.
As for the Czechs, they continued their evacuation east by rail, trying their damnest to avoid hostilities with the
local Bolsheviks, who violated several negotiated agreements and stopped their trains at almost every station,
demanding food and weapons before allowing the legionaries to proceed. These the Czechs gave, until it
became obvious that the Reds would continue to extort weapons and supplies until there was nothing left -at
which point they would be at their mercy. And so, the decision was made to fight -and fight they did. All along
the railway across the length of Russia, in skirmishes great and small, at places like Bakhmach, Penza, Samara,
Ufa, Perm, Irkutsk and Lake Baikal they smashed their way through like a juggernaut, inflicting defeat after
defeat upon the Reds in their efforts to secure the escape route to Vladivostok, until the promised rescue ships
arrived. Meanwhile, Russian anti-communist forces in Siberia known as the White Armies, inspired and
emboldened by the Czech successes, began a military campaign of their own to beat back the Reds.
With this, the Allied governments took notice and ordered the Czechs to continue to hold the railway and assist
the White armies, serving as the vanguard of an anti-communist campaign that eventually culminated in the illfated
Allied landings in North Russia and the Russian Far East. For two years they did the Allies bidding, helping
to ensure the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia as a provision of the Treaty of Versailles, following
Germany’s surrender to the Allies on November 11th, 1918. Coming within a hairsbreadth of destroying
Russian Bolshevism in it’s infancy, the Czech’s efforts were undone by the cruelty and rapine of some elements
of the White armies, whose penchant for committing atrocities outshone even the Communists at times, and
had the effect of poisoning the hearts and minds of whole sections of the population of Siberia against the liberation
movement. It was a simple case of the fear of the known outweighing the fear of the unknown.
Finally, the Allied governments, in the face of growing Bolshevik strength, recognized the futility of the situation
and decided to leave Russia to her own devices. By April, 1919, the long awaited rescue ships had begun
arriving at Vladivostok, and by the end of May, nearly all of the Czechs were there, too, and the task of evacuating
the Czech Legion began in earnest. By August of 1920, the last of the legionaries were aboard ship and
leaving Russia forever, bound for the independent homeland for which they had fought so long. Six years to the
month since their strange odyssey had begun, the men of the Czech Legion were homeward bound at last.
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