The Czechoslovak anabasis across Russia and Siberia/Chapter 3
III
The longest front in the great war
THE men on the Czechoslovak trains which were had offered such a stout resistance that the Soviets clearly saw how sanguinary and severe would be the hostilities that they were provoking.
In Zlatoust the first Czechoslovak regiment, the clerks, bandsmen, bakers and artisans of the regiment, and even the disabled soldiers, fought tooth and nail against the Soviet machine-guns, with stones, cudgels, knives and revolvers. Though they suffered heavy losses they drove back the troops of the Red Guards, seized most of the machine-guns and, for a time, even occupied the station of Zlatoust. Seeing, however, that their feeble forces could hardly expect to reach Chelyabinsk and the stronger Czechoslovak forces then assembled there by rail, they left the railway and set out on their marvellous and heroic march across the Ural Mountains; they traversed wild regions for many nights and days, and surmounted countless obstacles, until at last they reached the small town of Miassa on the Asiatic slope of the Ural Mountains, where they joined the vanguard of the Czechoslovak forces in Chelyabinsk.
In Marianovets, where in their attack upon the train the Red Guards had murdered a great number of volunteers, the unflinching legionaries drove back their forces and continued to Omsk, the centre of the Soviets in Siberia.
Soon hostilities were opened all along the Siberian Railway from the Urals to Vladivostok, and also in European Russia, especially in the Volga district. A large unit of Czechoslovak volunteers was formed by the group stationed in Penza and its environs; this was the westernmost group, cut off almost completely from the main body of the Czechoslovaks in Siberia. Here operations were directed by Čeček, who later became a general, and by Colonel Švec, one of the greatest heroes of the Czechoslovaks. Their objective was to fight their way through the Soviet territory to the east and join the Czechoslovak groups in Siberia. Of these the strongest were the Chelyabinsk group under General Syrový, the Ano group under Colonel Hanuš, the Novonikolayevsk group which was pushing on to Irkutsk under General Gajda and General Kadlec, and the Vladivostok group under the Russian General Dietrich. It was obvious that the scheme of the Soviets, which had been to scatter the Czechoslovak army in small groups all along the railway line so as to weaken and defeat them in detail, had not been successful, since all these groups had displayed great powers of resistance and unusual energy. They realized that they were engaged in a desperate struggle for the existence of their army. The Red Army of the Soviets, which was then not fully organized, employed cruel methods of warfare. The Chinese mercenaries, Magyars enlisted from the prisoners' camps, and various other predatory bands, proved cruel and ruthless foes. To be taken prisoner at their hands meant not only death but often a horrible death by torture. In Serdobsk, west of Penza, where in the struggle for a locomotive a number of Czechoslovaks had fallen into the hands of the Soviet soldiers, the local Soviet put these prisoners into a special sealed railway van labelled “Flour,” and sent them to the Austro-Hungarian forces in the Ukraine. But on the way all the prisoners escaped, and, crossing the Bolshevist front in disguise, rejoined their regiments at Penza.
In the course of these struggles the Czechoslovaks were able not only to preserve their numbers, but even to replenish their stock of arms and their outfit. All the attacks of the Red Army were repulsed and in many places whole divisions of the Soviet army were crushed. Often the Czechoslovaks were obliged to forestall the enemy by assuming the offensive, and thus many important Red towns in the Volga district and in Siberia were captured, such as Penza, Samara, Ufa, Kazan, Orenburg, Omsk, Tomsk, Tobolsk, Irkutsk, Chita, and finally the seaport of Vladivostok. In the spring and summer of 1918, the Czechoslovak army in Russia and Siberia thus held the longest front in the Great War, a front at least 3,000 miles in length and running through Siberia from end to end. Its axis was the Siberian railway, which was held and controlled by the legionaries who had also taken possession of the rolling-stock. Not only did the stations and towns directly on the line fall into their hands, but the country north and south of the line was also gradually pacified and cleared of the Red Army. In the stormy year of 1918 the Czechoslovak army under its national commanders, young reservists risen from the ranks, cadets and lieutenants all inspired with the idea of fighting for the freedom of their nation and steeled by rigid discipline, did wonders; it conquered Siberia and the Volga district and controlled the great Trans-Siberian line, thus preventing for the time being the Bolsheviks of Moscow from carrying their propaganda into Asia, and particularly into China and India.
But how was it possible for the army to fight in a hostile country, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements? How could it forage, and use railways and roads through steppes and woods if the Government of Workers and Peasants really called to arms against it the workers and peasantry?
The Czechoslovak struggle with the Soviets met with the spontaneous sympathy of almost all the Russian inhabitants of the regions conquered by the legionaries. The Czechoslovak army was everywhere hailed as a deliverer from the tyranny of the Soviet commissioners, most of whom had terrorized whole districts. Wherever the power of the Red Army was broken, the Soviet régime also broke down, since its only support was the bayonets of the Red Guards. And the population, which welcomed the victors with the ringing of bells and thanksgiving, rejected all thought of reinstating the Soviets in the liberated regions. Moreover, the deliverers were welcomed not only by the townspeople but also by the factory hands and by the peasants in the villages. Without the effective and voluntary services of the Russian railwaymen they could not have run their trains, and without bread supplied by the peasants the provisioning of the army would have been impossible. Without the use of violence or requisitions the army, well armed and provisioned, was able to turn to new tasks. New volunteers joined them from the prisoners’ camps in Siberia, most of which were now in Czechoslovak hands. The original army corps was reorganized as “The Czechoslovak Army in Russia” and was divided into three divisions, each with a regiment of light and batteries of heavy artillery. In addition it included a cavalry brigade, technical and victualling columns, and in fact all branches required for a regular army in warfare. The command of this army in Russia was taken by General Jan Syrový, who had lost an eye; he was the hero of the battle of Zborov and one of the oldest Czechoslovak soldiers. General Stanislav Čeček, at first commander of the army in the Volga district, was in command of the first division; General Gajda, who was the victor over the Bolshevist forces in Central Siberia and very popular among the Russian people, owing to his operation in the Baikal region and in Transbaikalia, where he dislodged the Red Army from the tunnels, commanded the second division; Colonel (now General) Lev Prchala, formerly an able regular officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, was in command of the third and youngest division. The political representative of the Czechoslovaks was M. Bohdan Pavlů, a man of unusual political and personal qualities, now Czechoslovak Minister in Copenhagen. He was afterwards replaced by Dr. Václav Girsa, now Minister in Warsaw.
Thus the attack upon the modest and unassuming Czechoslovak échelons, which only wished to pass quietly through Russian and Siberian territory in order to join the Allies in Western Europe, developed, owing to their unforeseen resistance, into an important military situation. The Great War formed a new front in Siberia and the Central Powers discovered a new, if somewhat reluctant, ally in the Soviet Government, which, by its attack upon the Czechoslovaks and its whole political tendencies, adopted a hostile attitude towards the Allies.
The Allies could not allow all this to pass unnoticed. They proclaimed the cause of the Czechoslovak army in Russia to be also their own, and promised assistance; their naval forces took an active part in the occupation of the town and harbour of Vladivostok and, later, a force of infantry was sent to Siberia by the Allies. Two regiments of Canadians arrived, in addition to Japanese, American, French and Italian troops. The forces of the British General Pool, in Archangel, also took part in this expedition. The chief command of the Allied and Czechoslovak armies was in the hands of the French General, Maurice Janin, and it was due to the efforts of the English General Knox in particular that the Siberian armies were supplied with provisions. It should be added that the Press throughout the world referred in eulogistic terms to the Czechoslovak exploits in Siberia and their political and military achievements.