The course of events in Tchelyabinsk is characteristic of the uprising. A Magyar prisoner of war, a servant of the railways, had a dispute with some Czechs. In the fight which followed the Magyar was killed, and the authorities of the town protested and imprisoned the men who had killed him. There were two trainloads of Czechs in the Tchelyabinsk station at the time, and the men on them felt that their national honour was at stake owing to this imprisonment. They seemed to see in this the guiding hand of Germany and a clear evidence that the Bolsheviks intended to stop their journey. They demanded that the civil authorities should release their comrades, and followed their demand immediately by a demonstration of force. They shot about a dozen of the militia who were guarding the town, rushed the magazine, and captured all the arms and ammunition. This was done with a force of not more than 100 rifles, but it must be remembered that in Tchelyabinsk there was not at that time a Bolshevik force, but only a few platoons of militia.
At this point the Czech National Council and their French advisers recommended that matters should quiet down and that the Czechs should hand over the town again to the Bolsheviks. This course, after severe comment and much irritation, was adopted, and they returned to their trains expecting to proceed. But on that day they heard that fighting had occurred between the Bolsheviks and the Czechs at several points on the line. Orders had come through from Major Gaida that all telegraph stations were to be seized, and no messages sent except by Czech officers. The town was recaptured i in a few hours by the Czechs.
Fighting continued all along the Siberian line, and towards the end of June Irkutsk fell into the hands of the Czechs. Soon after this happened Colonel Emerson, of the American Railroad Commission, arrived in the city and tried to arbitrate between the Czechs and the Bolsheviks. As a condition of armistice the Czechs gave up Irkutsk to the Bolsheviks. The period of armistice came to an end without a decision of peace, because the suspicion was again aroused that the Czechs were being held up by the Bolsheviks at the instigation of Germany.
In Manchuria.
In Russia and Siberia the political situation was simple in the extreme compared with that which existed in Manchuria.
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