Archive 17

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN SIBERIA

The struggle for domination in Siberia during and after the Russian Revolution is one of the bloodiest and most confusing chapters of military history. At the height of the struggle, more than twenty-four separate governments had been established between the Ural Mountains, which mark the western border of Siberia, and Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. This was not merely a fight between Bolsheviks (Reds) and anti-Bolshevik (White) Russian forces. It also involved troops sent from the United States, Britain, France, and Japan, all of whom saw heavy fighting, in some cases against the very people they had been sent to protect.

Central to this conflict was the role played by the Czechoslovakian Legion, whose extraordinary journey across the entire length of Russia is not only inspiring but almost incredible.

What were Czechs and Slovaks doing in Siberia, thousands of miles from their native country? The answer is that prior to 1919 they didn’t have a country. Instead, Czechs and Slovaks represented only two of dozens of different ethnicities which made up the Habsburg Empire, also sometimes called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, since these were the largest and most dominant nationalities.

The Habsburg Empire had been founded back in 1526, and had, for generations, served as a barricade of Christianity against the Muslim countries to the south and east. At the height of its powers in the sixteenth century, the Habsburg Empire controlled a large portion of Europe.

By 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the empire was in serious decline. It was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, a member of Habsburg royalty, that would propel the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a conflict which it would not survive. By the time the guns of the Great War ceased firing, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the ties which bound together the many countries of the Habsburgs had been permanently severed, and their empire ceased to exist.

One of the new countries to emerge from this collapse was Czechoslovakia, which existed from 1919 until 1993, when it divided into two separate nations, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

In 1914, although many Czechs and Slovaks wanted independence from Austria-Hungary, the chances of achieving this must have seemed remote. The First World War gave them the chance they had been waiting for. As subjects of Austria-Hungary, they were expected to fight under the banner of the Habsburgs, joining with Germany and Turkey in an alliance which became known as the Central Powers.

Knowing that their only hope of independence was the defeat of the very country for which they were expected to fight, many Czechs and Slovaks chose instead to take up arms against Austria-Hungary. The result of this was the Czechoslovakian Legion, whose soldiers fought alongside not only the Russians but also the French and the Italians.

It is, however, for the exploits of those Czechs and Slovaks fighting among the Russians that the Czechoslovakian Legion is best known.

Although the Russian Tsar Nicholas II did not encourage their independence, many Czech and Slovak soldiers chose to desert from the Austro-Hungarian army in order to fight for the Russians. Another source of manpower came from those Czech and Slovak troops who had been taken prisoner by the Russians and opted to serve in the Russian army. A third group was made up of men who, although they lived within the boundaries of Russia, felt themselves to be ethnically Czech or Slovak.

After the March Revolution of 1917, when the Tsar officially stepped down from power, the interim government of Alexander Kerensky proved to be more sympathetic to the cause of Czechoslovakian independence.

Up until this time, Czechs and Slovaks serving in the Russian army had not been formed into a single fighting force. With Kerensky’s approval, and thanks to the efforts of two men who would go on to become leaders of the Czechoslovakian movement for independence, Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes, the Czechoslovakian Legion was founded in the spring of 1917.

In October of that year, following the Soviet government’s “Decree of Peace,” the legion found itself in a serious predicament. Having taken up arms against the Habsburg Empire, they could not return to their homeland, since the Central Powers had not yet been defeated. To make matters worse, the well-trained, heavily armed Czech Legion was now perceived as a threat by both the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers.

Unwilling to abandon the cause of Czechoslovakian independence, Masaryk suggested that the Czech Legion now be placed under the nominal command of the French army, which was still heavily engaged against Germany, the dominant partner in the Central Powers alliance.

This transfer of command was accomplished in December 1917, but that was by no means the end of difficulties for the legion. The greatest problem was one of geography. How were more than thirty thousand men of the Czechoslovakian Legion supposed to get from Russia to France? The two countries were separated by their archrival, Germany.

It was then that the Czech Legion made the monumental decision to travel not west towards France but east, across the entire length of Russia, to the port of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. From there, they would board ships that would take them to France, halfway round the world, so that they could continue the fight against the Central Powers.

Meanwhile, faced with the threat of renewed attacks, the Bolsheviks signed a peace accord with the Germans, known as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in March of 1918. This treaty was both costly and humiliating to the Russians, and gave rise to the independence of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), as well as Finland and Ukraine. Czechs and Slovaks watched these developments with renewed hopes that their own independence might also be close at hand.

At this point, the Bolsheviks were as anxious to be rid of the Czech Legion as the legion was anxious to leave Russia. With permission from Stalin to travel unhindered to Vladivostok, the legion set out on its historic trek. For this, they followed the path of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, not only because it represented the most direct route across the country but also because the legion obtained access to trains.

In spite of Stalin’s permission, as the journey progressed, the legion encountered many difficulties from local governments demanding bribes in order to allow the legion to proceed through their territory. Partly as a result of this, by the time the first Czechoslovakians reached Vladivostok in May of 1918, the legion was spread out over literally thousands of miles between Vladivostok and the city of Penza, far to the west.

This dangerous situation was made even worse by an event which occurred on May 14, 1918, in the city of Chelyabinsk. An eastbound train loaded with Czechoslovakian Legionnaires found itself opposite a train filled with Hungarian troops heading west. These Hungarians were former POWs on their way home, having been released as part of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty.

To the Hungarians, these Czechoslovakians were nothing more than traitors to the Habsburg Empire. Amid a torrent of verbal abuse hurled between the two trains one Hungarian threw an iron bar at the Czechs, killing a man in the process.

The Czechs, who were not only armed but constituted a much larger force than the Hungarians, responded by attacking the Hungarians’ train and lynching the man who had thrown the iron bar. They then stormed through Chelyabinsk and freed a number of Czechs who were being held prisoner there, having been arrested by the local soviet for taking part in the attack.

The response from Moscow was swift. The diplomatic council representing Czechoslovakians, the Czech National Council, was ordered by Leon Trotsky, then Commissar of Foreign Affairs, to lay down its guns and surrender.

Realizing that this would be tantamount to suicide, the Czechs refused. In spite of Masaryk’s plea for it to remain neutral, the legion renamed itself the Czechoslovak Revolutionary Army, vowed to fight through to Vladivostok, and continued with the journey.

Most regional governments were no match for the Czechs and their armored train convoys, but they encountered increasingly fierce resistance at Irkutsk. Farther to the east, Czech trains were involved in heavy fighting around Khabarovsk.

Czechs who had already reached the safety of Vladivostok stood ready to come to the assistance of their comrades, but were confused by contradictory reports about the clashes taking place, in some cases only forty miles away, and by Masaryk’s continued demands that all Czechoslovakians remain neutral.

This confusion was resolved when, on June 28, 1918, the Czechs learned that weapons being sent west by Bolsheviks in Vladivostok were being used against their countrymen. The Czechs immediately overwhelmed the Vladivostok Bolsheviks and, on July 11, headed west to help their friends, using a spur of the Trans-Siberian Railroad which travels through China and is known as the Chinese Eastern Railway.

Caught between Czech troops advancing from both directions was the city of Ekaterinburg. Unknown to the Czech Legion at the time, the Tsar and his family were being held prisoner in Ekaterinburg, in the house of a merchant named Ipatiev.

Fearing that the Czechs would liberate Nicholas II, the order was given to execute the Tsar. The executions were carried out on the night of July 17, 1918. The bodies were then doused with acid and buried in a nearby forest, where they remained hidden for most of the twentieth century. In 1991, they were finally exhumed and identified using DNA from surviving members of the Romanov bloodline, including Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovakian troops under the command of General Gaida succeeded in opening up the Trans-Siberian Railroad all the way from Vladivostok to Kazan, clearing the way for the remaining Czechoslovakians to reach the safety of the coast.

Elsewhere in the world, the odyssey of the Czechoslovakians had not gone unnoticed. Impressed by their phenomenal accomplishments, the governments of Britain, France, and the United States urged the Czechoslovakians to remain in Russia and continue fighting the Bolsheviks.

All of these countries eventually dispatched expeditionary forces to Russia on what was optimistically referred to as a peacekeeping mission but was, in reality, designed to offer assistance in the event that the Reds could be overthrown by an uprising of anti-Bolshevik soldiers. With troops stationed near Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, as well as in the arctic port of Archangel in the west, the U.S. and British governments failed to agree on whether to remain neutral or to intervene in the Revolution and thereby, if successful, to inspire Russians to continue the war against Germany.

In spite of the urgings of world leaders such as Woodrow Wilson to remain neutral, local Allied commanders promised assistance to the Czechoslovakians. In most cases, this assistance never materialized, although British, French, and American soldiers were drawn into other clashes with the Reds, and with disastrous results.

As the situation among the anti-Bolshevik forces grew more and more confused, the Reds were gathering strength.

On September 10, 1918, troops of the Red Guard, led by Leon Trotsky, launched an all-out attack on the Czechoslovakians. Meanwhile, far to the west, the dream of the Czechoslovakians was coming true at last. On October 28, 1918, with the end of the Great War less than a month away, the nation of Czechoslovakia was established.

The effect on those Czechoslovakians still trapped inside Russia was dramatic. On that same day, disillusioned by Allied promises of help in combating the Bolsheviks, Czechoslovakian soldiers under the command of Colonel Josef Svec mutinied. Despondent over the loss of his command, Svec committed suicide. Other mutinies soon followed. On October 20, the Fourth Czech Division refused an order to attack Red troops. On the 24th, the entire First Regiment of that division revolted against its commander.

The reason for these mutinies was simple. The Czechoslovakians had achieved their independence. They had nothing to gain by continuing to fight against the Bolsheviks. The Czechoslovakians simply wanted to get home, but their ordeal was by no means over.

Although the Great War had officially ended, Siberia remained a battleground.

On November 18, one week after the cessation of hostilities on the western front, Alexander Kolchak, formerly admiral of the Tsar’s Pacific fleet in Vladivostok, had established a dictatorship in Siberia, declaring himself “Supreme Ruler of All Russia.” His “war of liberation” came at a terrible price.

With the help of marauding bands of Cossacks, led by Atamans Semenov, Kalmykov, and Rozanov, Kolchak went on the offensive.

Semenov, who gave up his horse in favor of an armed train known as “the Destroyer,” operated in the area of Lake Baikal. In October of 1920, having committed numerous atrocities, Semenov’s troops fled across the border into Manchuria. Semenov himself escaped to Japan, where, during the Second World War, he became an officer in the Japanese army. Captured by the Russians in 1945, he was hanged as a war criminal in 1946.

Kalmykov, operating in the Ussuri region, was equally guilty of atrocities, the most notable of which was the hanging of Red Cross personnel inside boxcars in the city of Khabarovsk. So outrageous were Kalmykov’s acts of violence that even his own Cossacks refused to carry out his orders. Kalmykov also escaped to China and was shot in the early 1920s.

Rozanov, meanwhile, enacted a policy of killing a tenth of the population of every town he passed through and wiping out entirely any town which offered resistance.

In an alliance brought about in part by the fact that Kolchak now controlled their only means of escape, the Czechoslovakian forces became merged with Kolchak’s army. In recognition of the Czechoslovakian’s fighting reputation, Kolchak placed Czech general Gaida in overall command of his troops.

By the summer of 1919, Kolchak’s army had reached the city of Kazan. And he was not alone. The White Army of General Deniken was on the outskirts of Moscow, while the army of General Yudenich was approaching St. Petersburg.

This was the moment when, had the Allies chosen to act, they might have tipped the balance against the Reds. Instead, they remained paralyzed by indecision.

With increasing momentum, the Reds fought back. By the autumn of 1919, the White armies were either destroyed or in retreat.

On November 14, Kolchak was forced to abandon his headquarters in Omsk. He began a retreat which lasted through the winter and cost the lives of thousands of his followers.

In an attempt to make scapegoats of the Czechoslovakians, Kolchak fired General Gaida. Adding to the already confused situation, Gaida responded by creating his own army, which he named the Siberian National Directorate. Gaida, who was by now both anti-Bolshevik and anti-Kolchak, began openly recruiting in Vladivostok, which resulted in a gun battle between his soldiers and those of General Rozanov. This culminated in a massive shoot-out at the Vladivostok train station on November 17, 1919, bullet holes from which can still be seen today on the main station building.

In that same month, the British garrison, seeing that the situation was hopeless, departed.

Faced with imminent defeat, Kolchak stepped down from power on January 4, 1920. On January 7, he placed himself in the protective custody of his old allies, the Czechs. The responsibility for this safeguarding fell to the Sixth Rifle Regiment, under the command of General Janin.

Hoping to reach the safety of the coast, where he might find asylum among the Allied expeditionary forces stationed in Vladivostok, Kolchak got as far as the city of Irkutsk before being halted by soldiers of a local government calling itself Socialist Political Center.

Although the Czechoslovakians, with more than thirteen thousand men, eight field guns, and an armored train at their disposal, could easily have defeated the Irkutsk garrison, these soldiers had placed mines in tunnels through which the Czechoslovakian convoy would have to pass in order to reach the coast.

The Socialist Political Center made the Czechoslovakians an offer—hand over Kolchak and we will let you proceed. There was one other thing they wanted, and that was the Tsar’s Imperial Reserves. These had originally been hidden in the city of Kazan, but had since found their way into the safekeeping of the Czechoslovakians.

Faced with the possibility of never seeing his newly created homeland, Janin gave in to the demands of the Irkutsk garrison. On January 15, 1920, Kolchak and the gold were handed over.

On January 30, after a trial lasting one day, in which Kolchak was convicted of atrocities, the “Supreme Ruler of All Russia” was shot against a brick wall in Irkutsk.

Although Kolchak’s army was not the only force brought to bear against the Bolsheviks, its defeat and the execution of its leader spelled the end for any hopes of Allied intervention in the conflict. Leaving behind hundreds of dead, soldiers of the U.S. Siberian Expeditionary Force (AEFS) departed in April of 1920. Japanese troops sent to help the Allied cause were the last to leave, in 1922. Their reputation for atrocities not only against Bolsheviks but also against civilians and even their own allies would soon be dwarfed by Japanese actions against the Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s.

By the time the last Legionnaires left Vladivostok on September 2, 1920, more than thirty-five thousand Czechoslovakians had been evacuated from Russia. Although they had played a pivotal and heroic role in establishing their country, freedom for the Czechoslovakians would be short-lived and sporadic.

Eighteen years later, Germany invaded.

Another eighteen years would pass before their onetime ally, Russia, sent its tanks across the border.

Unlike the beautifully maintained cemeteries of Great War dead in France, Belgium, and the Dardanelles, the dead of the Siberian campaign lie mostly in unmarked graves and all trace of their battles, except for a few bullet holes on the walls of Vladivostok station, is lost forever in the wilderness.