In this friendly atmosphere, the two countries initiated in early July talks on a commercial agreement. Signed on August 27—immediately after the “Black Day” of the German armies on the Western Front which convinced even Ludendorff the war was lost—this so-called Supplementary Treaty established between the two countries a relationship that fell just short of a formal alliance.
As if the situation in Russia were not complicated enough, in the spring a further complication arose in the shape of a revolt of Czechoslovak former prisoners of war that deprived the Bolsheviks of control of vast regions in the Urals and Siberia.
During their successful campaign against the Austro-Hungarians in 1914, Russian armies had captured hundreds of thousands of prisoners, including 50,000 to 60,000 Czechs and Slovaks. In December 1914, the Imperial Government offered these prisoners, many of them passionately anti-German and anti-Magyar, an opportunity to form their own legion and return to the front to fight alongside Russian troops. Few Czechs took advantage of this offer; most were afraid that the Central Powers would treat members of this legion (called Druzhina) as traitors and, in the event of capture, put them to death. Even so, in 1916 there were two Czechoslovak regiments in existence: the nucleus of the future army of independent Czechoslovakia. Thomas Masaryk, the head of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris, conceived the idea of forming the prisoners of war as well as civilians domiciled in Russia and elsewhere into a regular national army to fight on the Western Front. He initiated negotiations with the Imperial Government for the evacuation of the Czech POWs to France, but Petrograd proved uncooperative.
He resubmitted the proposal to the Provisional Government, which reacted favorably. The formation of Czech military units proceeded apace, and in the spring of 1917, 24,000 Czechs and Slovaks, organized in a corps, fought on the Eastern Front, distinguishing themselves in the June 1917 offensive. It was planned to transport these units and the remaining POWs in Russian camps to the Western Front, but the Bolshevik coup intervened.
In December 1917, the Allies recognized the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia as a separate army serving under the Supreme Allied Council. The following month, Masaryk returned to Russia to negotiate once again, this time with the Bolsheviks, the troops’ evacuation to France. By now, the matter had acquired considerable urgency because the conclusion of a treaty between the Central Powers and the Ukraine made it likely that the Germans would occupy the Ukraine, where most of the Czechoslovaks were interned. The Bolsheviks delayed their decision until after the signing of the Brest Treaty: finally, in mid-March, when relations with the Allies were at their warmest, they gave their consent.57
Masaryk and the Allied command had originally intended to evacuate the Czechoslovaks through Archangel and Murmansk. But because the railroad lines to the northern ports were threatened by Finnish partisans and there was the additional danger of German submarines, it was decided to embark them at Vladivostok. Masaryk instructed the commanders of what became known as the Czech Legion to adopt a policy of “armed neutrality”58 and under no circumstances to interfere in domestic Russian affairs. Because the territory which the Czechoslovaks had to traverse en route to Vladivostok was in a state of anarchy, Masaryk arranged with the Bolshevik authorities that his men would carry enough weapons to defend themselves.
The Czechoslovaks were well organized and eager to leave. As soon as the Bolsheviks gave them permission, they formed battalion-sized units, 1,000 men strong, each to fill a special train or, as it was known in Russia, echelon. When the first echelon reached Penza, it received a telegram from Stalin, dated March 26, 1918, which listed the conditions under which the evacuation was to proceed. The Czechoslovaks were to travel not as “combat units” but as “free citizens” carrying such arms as were required for their protection from “counterrevolutionaries.” They were to be accompanied by commissars provided by the Penza Soviet.59 The Czechoslovaks were unhappy over this order, behind which they suspected German pressure, because they had no confidence in the ill-trained and radicalized pro-Bolshevik forces, prominent among whom were fanatical Communists recruited from Hungarian and Czech POWs. Before leaving Penza, they reluctantly surrendered some weapons, kept a few openly, and concealed the rest. The evacuation then resumed.
Although they were strongly nationalistic and, therefore, unhappy with the Bolsheviks for signing a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers, in their political views the Czechoslovaks stood solidly to the left of center: one historian estimates that three-quarters of them were socialists.60 Following Masaryk’s orders, they ignored the approaches of both the Volunteer Army and the Bolsheviks, the latter using Czech Communists as intermediaries.61 They had a single purpose in mind: to get out of Russia. Even so, they could not entirely avoid becoming entangled in Russian politics because they were traversing a territory in the grip of a civil war. As they passed towns along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, they established contact with local cooperatives, which provided them with food and other necessities: these happened to be largely in the hands of SRs, Siberia’s dominant party. At the same time, they had occasional altercations with the urban soviets and their “international” military units, composed mostly of Magyar POWs, who wanted the Czechoslovaks to join the Revolution.
85. Armored train of Czech Legion in Siberia: June 1918.
The involvement of the Czech Legion in Russian affairs at the end of May 1918 was not a deliberate reversal of the policy of neutrality. It began when the Germans, displeased at the prospect of tens of thousands of fresh and highly motivated Czechoslovaks reinforcing Allied troops on the Western Front, asked Moscow to halt their evacuation. Moscow issued an order to this effect, but it had no way of enforcing it and the legion continued on its way.62 Next, the Allies became involved. Following the understanding reached in early April about the formation of an Allied force on Russian territory, they concluded there was no point in transporting the Czech Legion halfway around the world to France when it could remain in Russia and join this force, for which the Japanese were to furnish the bulk of the manpower. On May 2, the Allies, largely on British insistence, decided that the units of the legion located west of Omsk would not continue to Vladivostok but would proceed north, to Murmansk and Archangel, and there await further orders.63 Moscow did not object, but the decision caused great unhappiness among the Czechoslovaks.
And now an unexpected event upset everyone’s plans. On May 14, at the western Siberian town of Cheliabinsk, an altercation occurred between Czech soldiers and Hungarian POWs who were being repatriated. As best as can be reconstructed, a Hungarian threw an iron bar or some other metal object at Czechs standing on the railway platform, seriously injuring one of them. A fight broke out. When the Cheliabinsk Soviet detained some Czechoslovaks involved in the disturbance, others seized the local arsenal and demanded the immediate release of their comrades. Bowing to superior force, the soviet yielded.64
Up to this point, the Czechoslovaks had no intention of taking up arms against the Bolshevik Government. In fact, the whole trend of Czechoslovak politics had been one of friendly neutrality. Masaryk was so sympathetic that he urged the Allies to grant the Soviet Government de facto recognition. As for the troops of the legion, the Communist Sadoul wrote that their “loyalty to the Russian Revolution was incontestable.”65