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
Greek Catholic priest who became president of Carpatho-Ukraine when it declared independence in March 1939
The son of a Greek Catholic priest in Carpathian Ruthenia, then part of Austria-Hungary, he studied at the Ungvár school of theology and at Budapest University and was ordained. In 1918 he became head of the Subcarpathian National Council, which in 1919 asked for the region to join Czechoslovakia. In 1925 he was elected to the parliament in Prague as leader of the Ruthenian National Christian Party, and in October 1938 he was appointed head of the government of the Subcarpathian Autonomous Region. On 15 March 1939 he became president of Carpatho-Ukraine, but the next day Hungary occupied and annexed the region; he fled to Prague and spent the war as a professor at the Ukrainian Free University. Arrested by the NKVD when the Soviet army took Prague in May 1945, he was taken to Moscow and died in Butyrka prison in July.
Career timeline
- 1900–1917Professor of mathematics, teachers’ institute
- 1918–1919Head, Subcarpathian National Council
- 1925Deputy in Prague (Ruthenian National Christian Party)
- 1938–1939Head of the Subcarpathian autonomous government
- 1939President of Carpatho-Ukraine
- 1939–1945Professor, Ukrainian Free University, Prague
- 1945Arrested by the NKVD; died in Butyrka prison
Czech journalist who chaired the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic in 1919
Born in Nymburk, he was originally an engine fitter; he joined the Social Democratic Party in 1895 and from 1906 was a workers’ journalist and an official of workers’ associations. Living in Budapest from 1918 as a correspondent of the Kladno paper Svoboda, he led the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist Party’s central committee in 1919. After the Hungarian Red Army entered Slovakia he proclaimed the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov and became chairman of its Revolutionary Governing Council, but the state ceased to exist on 7 July when Czechoslovak troops pushed the Hungarians out. Imprisoned in Hungary after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities in 1920. Granted Soviet citizenship, he moved to Soviet Russia in 1922 and worked for International Workers’ Aid. He died of natural causes in 1941.
Career timeline
- 1895Joined the Social Democratic Party
- 1906Workers’ journalist and official of workers’ associations
- 1919Head of the Czech and Slovak section of the Hungarian Communist central committee
- 1919Chairman of the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Slovak Soviet Republic
- 1922–1941Moved to the Soviet Union; International Workers’ Aid
Commander of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia
In May 1918, about 8,000 Legion riflemen were concentrated at Penza under Čeček's command.
Čeček was an officer who linked the Czech national movement in the First World War with the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia. In 1918 he commanded the largest Legion concentration, about 8,000 men at Penza, and led the capture of Samara, helping create the conditions for the Komuch government. His course shows how Legion commanders took political and military initiative in clashes with Bolshevik forces rather than simply awaiting orders from above. In interwar Czechoslovakia he carried that battlefield experience into the construction of the national military establishment through senior staff and aviation work.
Career timeline
- 1907Lieutenant, Prague 102nd Infantry Regiment
- 1914Joined the Czech Družina in the Imperial Russian Army
- 1917Commander of the 4th Regiment, Czechoslovak Legion
- 1918Commander at Penza and commander-in-chief of Komuch's Volga Front
- 1920Deputy chief of the Czechoslovak General Staff
- 1921–1923Studied at France's École supérieure de guerre
- 1924–1926Chief of the President's Military Office, then head of the Defence Ministry aviation department
- 1929–1930Commander of the 5th Infantry Division and military commander at České Budějovice
A legion commander who carried battlefield success into White politics
After capturing Yekaterinburg, Gajda set up his headquarters in the very Ipatiev House where the Romanovs had been murdered by the Bolsheviks less than a week earlier.
Radola Gajda was a Czechoslovak Legion commander who rose to prominence in the First World War and the Russian Civil War, later becoming a general and politician in interwar Czechoslovakia. In 1918 he led the Legion's eastern group, seizing the railway from Novonikolaevsk to Irkutsk and pressing the argument for armed struggle over neutrality. He joined Kolchak's White forces, lost his command, and returned home to serve as acting chief of the general staff before leading the National Fascist Community. His military anti-Bolshevism became fascist politics in Czechoslovakia, while during the Nazi occupation he aided resistance networks.
Career timeline
- 1910–1911Served in the Austro-Hungarian Army
- 1915–1916Officer in the Montenegrin Army
- 1917Company and regimental commander, Czechoslovak Legion
- 1918Commander, Legion eastern group, directing the capture of Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg
- 1918–1919Commander of Kolchak's Siberian Army
- 1922–1926Divisional commander and acting chief of the Czechoslovak General Staff
- 1927–1939Leader of the National Fascist Community and parliamentarian
1850–1937
○ Natural causes
