The philosopher-president who organized the Czechoslovak Legion from exile and signed the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks
On 7 March 1918, his 68th birthday, Masaryk boarded a train from Moscow to Vladivostok to prove to his Legion in person that the crossing of Siberia was possible.
Masaryk, a philosophy professor and Reichsrat deputy from Moravia, went into exile at the outbreak of the First World War and became the political leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement. In 1917 he travelled to Russia, where he organized Czech and Slovak prisoners of war into the Czechoslovak Legion and negotiated the Penza Agreement with the Bolsheviks, securing the Legion's transfer to France via Vladivostok. Elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he presided over Central Europe's most stable parliamentary democracy for 17 years, a success built on the contradiction of his Legion being drawn into the Russian Civil War against the very Bolsheviks with whom he had bargained.
Career Timeline
- 1882–1914Professor of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague
- 1891–1893Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Young Czech Party)
- 1907–1914Deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat (Czech Progressive Party)
- 1915–1918Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council (in exile)
- 1917–1918Organized the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia
- 1918–1935First President of Czechoslovakia