ity, was captured. Within two days both our military groups, those of Penza and Chelyabinsk respectively, achieved the desired connection, and on July 7th the most important decision of our military leaders was reached. The executive committee of the Penza military group instructed Lieutenant Čeček to change the objective of his operation. The Penza Corps was not to continue its progress eastwards, but to remain where it was, and act as an Allied advance-guard for establishing a new Eastern front against the Germans. A report now reached Vladivostok that our second military group had been hindered in its free passage eastwards by the interference of Bolsheviks and prisoners of war. The Vladivostok group therefore decided, towards the end of June, to proceed to the help of their comrades. They refused to embark on the vessels which were now ready, and returned westwards, gaining possession of railway stations as they went, and occupying the eastern part of the Siberian railway line.
This is the beginning of the actual anti-Bolshevik action of the Czechoslovaks. It constituted a change of military and political plans and aims. The results showed themselves immediately. Our troops proceeded to attack Syzran, Saratov, and Kazan, advancing from the Ural base westwards. On August 6th ensued the long-prepared intervention of the Japanese, the original aim of which was to assist the Czechoslovaks in occupying the railway and reaching Vladivostok. In the course of events, however, the Japanese intervention changed its character, and assumed the form of an occupation of the eastern part of Siberia, partly to prevent the Bolsheviks from penetrating to the Far East and partly to secure a basis in the Far East for undertaking any extensive anti-Bolshevik operations which the Allies might decide upon.
Thus, as events developed, the Czechoslovaks, at the beginning of August, were distributed all along the Siberian line, continuing to engage in small-scale hostilities, and gradually occupying the important railway centres. At the most westerly extremity of the territory occupied in European Russia, at Kazan, Penza, and Samara, their regiments faced Bolshevik Russia and the Red Guards. On August 28, 1918, Jan Syrový was appointed supreme commander of our army, all the Russian officers, with very few exceptions, having left. In the middle of September the whole of the Siberian railway line was in the hands of our troops, and partly in those of the Japanese.
