delegates, resolved in its negotiations on May 20th to decline to proceed to Archangelsk, since it regarded this scheme as a Bolshevik trick against the army. On the same day Trotsky ordered the arrest of Maxa and Čermák, the delegates of the Moscow branch of the National Council, who on the following day were to have made a definite arrangement with him for adjusting the progress of our troops eastward. Maxa and Čermák then sent a message to our troops urging them to keep to the agreement and to surrender their arms, as that would be the only course by which they could reach Vladivostok. Our troops, however, thought that this message had been sent as the result of pressure from the Soviet Government, and they refused to obey it. At the same time our military leaders intercepted Aralov’s telegram instructing the Soviet authorities to call upon the Czechoslovaks to organize themselves into labour brigades and to enter the ranks of the Soviet Red Army. This naturally aroused indignation among our troops, and on the next day, May 23rd, the military congress decided to inform the Bolshevik Government that they would cease handing over their arms to the Soviet authorities, and that they would force their way eastward. Evidently, as a reply to this resolution, Trotsky issued, on May 25th, the order to disarm the Czechoslovaks forcibly and to shoot all those who did not submit, the remainder to be interned in prisoners’ camps. On the same day, May 25th, evidently as a result of telegrams from Aralov and Trotsky, the first Soviet attempt was made at Maryanovets, near Omsk, to disarm a military transport, and on the two following days similar attempts were made at Irkutsk and Zlatoust, near Chelyabinsk. On the same days, in accordance with the resolution of the Chelyabinsk congress of May 23rd, Captain Kadlec and Captain Gajda decided to proceed eastward at their own discretion and to occupy Mariinsk and Novo-Nikolayevsk.
Thus began the Czechoslovak action in Siberia. On May 27th Chelyabinsk was occupied, on the 29th Penza was captured, on the 31st Tomsk, on June 6th and 7th Omsk, on June 8th Samara, and on June 19th Krasnoyarsk. The Czechoslovak action was at once resolutely opposed by the French military representatives, Vergé and Quinet, following the instructions from Paris by which they had been urged to secure the transport of our troops to France, and fearing that a conflict with the Bolsheviks would frustrate the realization of this scheme.
This throws a clear light upon our policy in Russia and in
