Czechoslovak Legion

Definition and origins

On 25 July 1914 the Czech National Committee in Russia appealed to Nicholas II, and on 30 July 1914 the Russian Council of Ministers decided to form a Czech Detachment (Česká Družina); the Stavka authorised a battalion of Czechs and Slovaks on 5 August. It went to the front with the Russian Third Army in October 1914, was expanded to the 1st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment (about 2,100 men) by the end of 1915, and reached brigade strength in 1916. Growth through 1914–1915 was slow.

The unit drew mainly on Czechs and Slovaks living in the Russian Empire and on Czech and Slovak POWs of the Austro-Hungarian army who wished to fight Germany and Austria-Hungary. After the February Revolution of 1917 its strength rose quickly, and on 26 September 1917 a Czechoslovak Corps of two divisions and a reserve brigade was formally established within the Russian army, then about 39,000 officers and men. From 15 January 1918 the corps was formally subordinated to French command. Its performance at Zborov during the Kerensky Offensive led to its promotion to the 1st Division of the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia, with a second division added in October 1917.

The revolt of May 1918

After the Bolsheviks took power in November 1917, Masaryk, as chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council, planned to move the Legion from Russia to France. Because most Russian ports were blockaded, the route chosen ran from Ukraine to the Pacific port of Vladivostok along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The first echelon departed on 27 March 1918 in 63 trains of 40 wagons each.

On 25 March 1918 the Czechoslovak National Council and the Bolsheviks signed the Penza Agreement: legionaries were to hand over most of their weapons in exchange for unimpeded passage to Vladivostok, though mutual distrust remained, and under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks prioritised the westward repatriation of German, Austrian and Hungarian POWs. On 14 May 1918 came a dispute at Chelyabinsk station between eastbound legionaries and Magyar POWs heading west: a Hungarian POW threw an iron stove-leg that seriously wounded a Czech soldier, the legionaries stopped the train and killed the culprit, Soviet authorities arrested ten legionaries the next day, and on 17 May their comrades freed them by force, disarming the local Red Guard and seizing 2,800 rifles and a battery.

On 25 May 1918 Trotsky ordered the disarmament of the Czechoslovak echelons along the railway, threatening execution on the spot of any armed legionary. The Czechoslovak army congress at Chelyabinsk refused to disarm and decided to halt the surrender of weapons and move east on its own, and clashes with the Red Guards occurred on 25–27 May at Maryanovka, Irkutsk and Zlatoust.

Into the Civil War

The revolt ran from the Legion's armed actions against Bolshevik authorities in May 1918 to its evacuation from Siberia to Europe in 1920. It unfolded along the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia as a reaction to a Bolshevik-initiated threat. In late May fighting erupted at several points; by June the two sides were fighting from Penza to Krasnoyarsk; by the end of June legionaries under General Mikhail Diterikhs had taken Vladivostok; and by early September they had cleared Bolshevik forces from the whole length of the railway. Voitsekhovsky's unit took Chelyabinsk on 27 May, Chechek's unit took Penza on 29 May after a day-long battle, and Petropavlovsk, Kurgan, Novonikolaevsk, Mariinsk, Nizhneudinsk and Kansk followed. In response the Council of People's Commissars created the Eastern Front on 13 June 1918, the Red Army's first front formation, dissolved on 15 January 1920; its armies fought the Czechoslovak Corps, Komuch's People's Army and the Siberian Army.

The Legion's victories enabled the first anti-Bolshevik governments: the Komuch in Samara on 8 June 1918 and the Provisional Siberian Government in Omsk, beginning the formation of regional anti-Bolshevik governments across Russian territory. With substantial Czechoslovak help Komuch's People's Army captured Kazan and a Russian Imperial state gold reserve on 6–7 August 1918, and Czechoslovak pressure also helped convince anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia to unify nominally behind the All-Russian Provisional Government formed at Ufa in September 1918.

During the revolt, however, Legion units did not only fight the Bolsheviks: they also took part in mass shootings in the territory they occupied. The Russian Wikipedia article on the corps notes both the ambiguity of the White-Czech role in Russian history and that monument initiatives often provoke protests because of terror by Czechoslovak Corps troops.

Under Kolchak and evacuation

In autumn 1918 the Legion was withdrawn from the front and assigned to guard the Trans-Siberian Railway after Kolchak's coup. Legion commander Jan Syrový claimed the railway between Novonikolaevsk and Irkutsk as a Czechoslovak zone of operation on 27 January 1919, interfering with White Russian efforts in Siberia. In winter 1918–1919 the Legion was redeployed to protect the line between Novonikolaevsk and Irkutsk from partisan attacks and, with other POW legions, guarded Kolchak's only supply route through 1919.

In early 1920 at Irkutsk, Syrový agreed to hand Alexander Kolchak over to representatives of the Red Political Centre in return for safe transit eastward for Zaamurets and other Czechoslovak trains. Kolchak was executed in February, and the Whites accused the Czechoslovaks of treason, citing also Radola Gajda's attempted rebellion against the Whites in Vladivostok on 17 November 1919. On 7 February 1920 at the station of Kuitun the Red Army command and the Czechoslovak Army in Russia signed an armistice guaranteeing a route to the Far East and evacuation; the gold reserve was to be handed to the Soviet side after the last Czechoslovak echelon left Irkutsk eastward, and the transfer took place on 1 March.

The Legion evacuated by sea from Vladivostok between December 1919 and September 1920. The last Czechoslovak troops left Vladivostok on 3 September 1920 aboard the USAT Heffron, and the last echelon returned to Czechoslovakia in November 1920. Ships began leaving Vladivostok from December 1919; 72,644 people were transported to Europe on 42 ships (3,004 officers and 53,455 soldiers and warrant officers), and more than four thousand did not return from Russia, being killed or missing.

Distinctions and assessment

The Legion was formed as several separate forces: a small unit in the Imperial Russian Army (from 1914), Czech volunteers in France from the start of the war as the "Nazdar" company, and later units in Italy and Serbia, with the Russian corps, French legion and Italian legion as distinct formations under the Czechoslovak National Council. The Czech term Československé legie covers the volunteer formations as a whole, while Russian usage distinguishes Чехословацкие легионы (all branches) from Чехословацкий корпус/ЧСК (the corps in Russia). The Russian corps article gives "Чехословацкий корпус (Чехословацкий легион)" and the abbreviations очск, ЧСК, ЧСА. After the 1917 reorganisation the corps was also called the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia (Československý sbor na Rusi).

A small minority of legionaries sided with the revolution: with Masaryk's consent Bolshevik agitation was permitted in the Czechoslovak units, and a small group of a little more than 200 people, including Jaroslav Hašek, left the corps and later joined the international brigades of the Red Army. Many Soviet historians treated the corps's actions as a deliberate Entente intervention scheme, but Russian Wikipedia notes there is no documentary confirmation of that version. The available documents indicate that the Entente exploited the Czechoslovak action to fight the Bolsheviks after it had already won rapid victories in Siberia and much of eastern Russia, without provoking it.

The later paths of the legionaries diverged. Jan Syrový and other legionaries went on to form the core of the Czechoslovak army, and the Legion is still commemorated in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as a major source of national pride, though the record of mass shootings in occupied territory and later controversies complicate that memory.

The English article's see-also compares the Legion's march out of Russia to the Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries of the Achaemenid civil war: a template for an expeditionary force in hostile territory, not an equivalence of situations.