Evacuation from Bolshevik Russia . The dark grey lines show the maximum advance of the White forces, including the Czechoslovaks. In November 1917, the
Bolsheviks seized power throughout Russia and soon began peace negotiations with the
Central Powers at
Brest-Litovsk. The chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council,
Tomáš Masaryk, who had arrived in Russia earlier that year, began planning for the Legion's departure from Russia and transfer to France so the Czechoslovaks could continue to fight against the Central Powers. Since most of Russia's main ports were blockaded, Masaryk decided that the Legion should travel from Ukraine to the Pacific port of
Vladivostok, where the men would embark on transport vessels that would carry them to Western Europe. In February 1918, Bolshevik authorities in Ukraine granted Masaryk and his troops permission to begin the journey to Vladivostok. On 18 February, before the Czechoslovaks had left Ukraine, the German Army launched
Operation Faustschlag (fist strike) on the Eastern Front to force the Soviet government to accept its terms for peace. From 5 to 13 March, the Czechoslovak legionaries successfully fought off German attempts to prevent their evacuation in the
Battle of Bakhmach. After leaving Ukraine and entering
Soviet Russia, representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council continued to negotiate with Bolshevik authorities in Moscow and
Penza to iron out the details of the corps' evacuation. On 25 March, the two sides signed the Penza Agreement, in which the legionaries were to surrender most of their weapons in exchange for unimpeded passage to Vladivostok. Tensions continued to mount, as each side distrusted the other. The Bolsheviks, despite Masaryk's order for the legionaries to remain neutral in Russia's affairs, suspected that the Czechoslovaks might join their counterrevolutionary enemies in the borderlands. Meanwhile, the legionaries were wary of
Czechoslovak Communists who were trying to subvert the corps. They also suspected that the Bolsheviks were being pressured by the Central Powers to stall their movement towards Vladivostok. By May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion was strung out along the
Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok. Their evacuation was proving much slower than expected due to dilapidated railway conditions, a shortage of locomotives and the recurring need to negotiate with local soviets along the route. On 14 May, a dispute at the
Chelyabinsk station between legionaries heading east and
Magyar POWs heading west to be repatriated caused the People's Commissar for War,
Leon Trotsky, to order the complete disarmament and arrest of the legionaries. At an army congress that convened in Chelyabinsk a few days later, the Czechoslovaks – against the wishes of the National Council – refused to disarm and began issuing ultimatums for their passage to Vladivostok. This incident sparked the
Revolt of the Legions. , 1918. Standing above them are other members of the Czechoslovak Legion. Fighting between the Czechoslovak Legion and the Bolsheviks erupted at several points along the Trans-Siberian Railway in the last days of May 1918. By June, the two sides were fighting along the railway route from Penza to
Krasnoyarsk. By the end of the month, legionaries under General
Mikhail Diterikhs had taken control of Vladivostok, overthrowing the local Bolshevik administration. On July 6, the Legion declared the city to be an Allied protectorate, and legionnaires began returning across the
Trans-Siberian Railway to support their comrades fighting to their west. Generally, the Czechoslovaks were the victors in their early engagements against the fledgling
Red Army. By mid-July, the legionaries had seized control of the railway from
Samara to
Irkutsk, and by the beginning of September they had cleared Bolshevik forces from the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Legionnaires conquered all the large cities of Siberia, including
Yekaterinburg, but Tsar
Nicholas II and his family
were executed on the direct orders of
Yakov Sverdlov less than a week before the arrival of the Legion.
Involvement in the Russian Civil War, 1918–1919 , Russia News of the Czechoslovak Legion's campaign in Siberia during the summer of 1918 was welcomed by Allied statesmen in Great Britain and France, who saw the operation as a means to reconstitute an eastern front against Germany. U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson, who had resisted earlier Allied proposals to intervene in Russia, gave in to domestic and foreign pressure to support the legionaries' evacuation from Siberia. In early July 1918, he published an
aide-mémoire calling for a limited intervention in Siberia by the U.S. and Japan to rescue the Czechoslovak troops, who were then blocked by Bolshevik forces in
Transbaikal. But by the time most American and Japanese units landed in Vladivostok, the Czechoslovaks were already there to welcome them. The Czechoslovak Legion's campaign in Siberia impressed Allied statesmen and attracted them to the idea of an independent Czechoslovak state. As the legionaries cruised from one victory to another that summer, the Czechoslovak National Council began receiving official statements of recognition from various Allied governments.
Capture of Imperial gold reserve Shortly after they entered into hostilities against the Bolsheviks, the legionaries began making common cause with anti-Bolshevik Russians who began forming their own governments behind the Czechoslovaks' lines. The most important of these governments were the
Komuch, led by the
Social Revolutionaries, in Samara and the
Provisional Siberian Government in
Omsk. With substantial Czechoslovak help, the
People's Army of Komuch won several important victories, including the capture of
Kazan and an Imperial state gold reserve on 6–7 August 1918. Czechoslovak pressure was also crucial in convincing the anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia to nominally unify behind the
All-Russian Provisional Government, formed at a conference in
Ufa during September 1918. During the autumn of 1918, the legionaries' enthusiasm for the fighting in Russia, then mostly confined along the
Volga and
Urals, dropped precipitously. The professor
T. G. Masaryk supported them from the United States of America. The rapidly growing Red Army was getting stronger by the day, retaking Kazan on 10 September, followed by Samara a month later. The legionaries, whose strength had peaked at around 61,000 earlier that year, were lacking reliable reinforcements from POW camps and were disappointed by the failure of Allied soldiers from other countries to join them on the front lines. On 28 October, Czechoslovak statehood was declared in
Prague, arousing the troops with a desire to return to their homeland. The final blow to Czechoslovak morale arrived on 18 November 1918, when a coup in Omsk overthrew the All-Russian Provisional Government and installed a dictatorship under Admiral
Aleksandr Kolchak in control of
White Siberia. During the winter of 1918–1919, the Czechoslovak troops were redeployed from the front to guard the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway between
Novonikolaevsk and Irkutsk from
partisan attacks. Alongside other legions formed from
Polish,
Romanian and Yugoslav POWs in Siberia, the Czechoslovaks defended the Kolchak government's only supply route for the duration of 1919.
Betrayal of the White Russians During the summer and autumn of 1919,
Kolchak's armies were in a steady retreat from the Red Eastern Army Group. On 14 November, the Reds took Omsk, Kolchak's capital, initiating a desperate
eastward flight by the White army and refugees along the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the following weeks, the Whites' rear was further disorganised by widespread outbreaks of uprisings and partisan activity. The homesick legionaries, who simply wanted to leave Siberia without incurring any more casualties than necessary, declared their neutrality amid the unrest and did nothing to suppress the rebellions. Meanwhile, Kolchak's trains, which included the gold bullion captured from Kazan, were stranded along the railway near
Nizhneudinsk. After his bodyguard deserted him there, the legionaries were ordered by Allied representatives in Siberia to convey him to the British military mission in Irkutsk. This plan was resisted by insurgents along the Czechoslovaks' route, and as a result the legionaries, after consulting their commanders, Generals
Janin and
Jan Syrový, made the controversial decision to turn Kolchak over to the Political Centre, a government formed by Socialists-Revolutionaries in Irkutsk. When the White Army learned about the execution, its remaining leadership decided to withdraw farther east. The
Great Siberian Ice March followed. The Red Army did not enter Irkutsk until 7 March, and only then was the news of Kolchak's death officially released. Because of this, and also because of an attempted rebellion against the Whites, organised by
Radola Gajda in Vladivostok on 17 November 1919, the Whites accused the Czechoslovaks of treason, but were too weak to act against them.
Evacuation from Vladivostok, 1920 When the armistice with the Bolsheviks was concluded, dozens of Czechoslovak trains were still west of Irkutsk. On 1 March 1920, the last Czechoslovak train passed through that city. The legionaries' progress was still hampered at times by the Japanese Expeditionary Force and the troops of
Ataman Grigori Semenov, who stalled the Czechoslovak trains to delay the arrival of the Red Army in Eastern Siberia. By then the evacuation of Czechoslovak troops from Vladivostok was well underway, and the last legionaries left the port in September 1920. The total number of people evacuated with the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia was 67,739; including 56,455 soldiers, 3,004 officers, 6,714 civilians, 1,716 wives, 717 children, 1,935 foreigners and 198 others. After their return to Czechoslovakia, many formed the core of the new
Czechoslovak Army. The number of legionaries killed in Russia during World War I and the Russian Civil War was 4,112. An unknown number went missing or deserted the legion, either to make an arduous journey to return home or to join the Czechoslovak Communists. Among the latter was
Jaroslav Hašek, later the author of the satirical novel
The Good Soldier Švejk.
Evacuation A total of 36 transports were dispatched from Vladivostok. • The Allies provided 21 shipsUnited States 12, Britain 9. Two ships were provided by the American Red Cross. The ships
President Grant and
Heffron made all or part of the journey twice. • 12 ships were chartered by the Centrocommission; 9683 people were taken away. Two Japanese ships and one Russian were chartered for cargo. For the transport of people, boats were bought or rented mainly in Japan (7), China (1) and Russia (1). The first ship dispatched by the Centro-Commission was the Japanese
Liverpool-Maru, sailing on July 8, 1919. The regular transport of legionnaires and partially disabled people began on December 9, 1919, with the transport of the 1st Regiment on the
Jonan-Maru. The last ship with people was the
Nizhny Novgorod, which sailed on February 13, 1920. The last ship with cargo was the
Shunko-Maru, which sailed from Vladivostok on May 14, 1920. • The first ship to take the first Siberian legionnaires from Vladivostok was the Italian
Roma on January 15, 1919, and the last was the
Heffron on September 2, 1920. The first ships sailed to Naples and Marseille. Others passed through the Panama Canal, others to North America, others to Canada with the final port of Hamburg. The whole evacuation took 1 year and 8 months. ==Ranks of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia==