It was a cloudy morning. Dušan, clad in his heavy fur coat, sat on the dock and
lit a cigarette. The harbor was a busy place, hundreds of voices could be heard; Czech, Slovak,
Russian and other languages he couldn’t recognize. Tuning them out, he turned his thoughts to his two
friends. He had met them six years ago in Kyiv and they had stuck together ever since. They had
pulled through the Great War and the crazy days of the Bolshevik revolution. He took another
puff. Dušan was the only one among them to have reached the Far East. His friends were now lost,
unceremoniously buried somewhere in the frozen Siberian tundra. The ship’s horn blasted,
interrupting his thoughts. Taking another puff he threw the cigarette on the ground and walked
to the ship’s ladder. It was time to return home. While Dušan is a fictional character,
his story is that of hundreds of Czechoslovaks who a century ago volunteered to fight against
the Central Powers in the hopes of establishing their own independent state. Today we will
look into their service during the First World War and their epic journey through
6000 miles of Russian wilderness to escape from the turmoil of the Russian Civil War.
And once we’re done telling you what happened, we invite you to go try it for yourself with the
new video game version of this story, Last Train Home, who have sponsored this video.
One part Company of Heroes, another part Frostpunk, here we have a unique blend
of gameplay styles that encompasses the challenges of the Czechoslovak legion.
You’ll be managing a train of soldiers trying to navigate through the chaos of
the russian civil war, featuring detailed rts combat with your customisable squads.
But your true enemy will be the journey, and the elements,
as you must gather and manage resources to keep your train working and warm, and deal
with the day to day survival challenges arising from being trapped in inhospitable territory.
You can’t know what will happen, or ever fully prepare,
but there’s one thing that is certain: to have any hope of making it home,
you’ve got to keep that train moving. And for that, perhaps sacrifice is unavoidable.
So take up your own version of the true story we’ll be telling today, where every soldier
isn’t just a unit to dispose of, but a person in your care, another invaluable passenger on
the Last Train Home. The game is out now, grab it on steam via the link in the description.
Service in the Great War When the First World War broke out,
the Czech and Slovak peoples found themselves in a precarious situation. Both were a people without a
state, their lands long under the control of the Habsburg Monarchs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The Czechs did enjoy some level of autonomy and were represented in the Austrian parliament,
but the Slovaks were completely dominated by their Hungarian overlords, having no political
or economic power. Both people desired their own independent state, but to achieve that,
Austro-Hungary, the empire that was now calling them to arms to defend it, would have to collapse.
The outbreak of World War I presented to the Czechoslovaks the golden opportunity to establish
their independence. Their hearts burning with the desire for self-determination and freedom,
many volunteers formed what would later become known as the Czechoslovak Legions
to fight against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians alongside the
Entente powers. Several Czecoslovak legions formed in both France and Italy, but in this
video we will look at the most legendary of these units; the one formed in Russia.
The Czechoslovak Legion of Russia can trace its origins to the small Czech population that
lived in Ukraine. In August 1914 the council of Czechs in Kiev successfully petitioned the Czar’s
government to form a retinue, or druzhina. These 720 men, the “Old Fellows” as they would later be
known, formed the 1st battalion. On the 28th they officially swore an oath and received their battle
flag, one that featured the Russian tricolor on one side and the Crown of St. Wenceslas over a
white and red field on the other. Their unit was attached to General Radko Dmitriev’s Third Army,
where they mainly served as scouts and propagandists. This second role was of
particular importance, as their mission was to convince their ethnic Czechoslovak compatriots,
fighting under the Austro-Hungarian banners, to defect to their side. Those who shared the same
hatred towards the Dual Monarchy would do so, though it wasn’t easy to escape
the ever watchful eyes of the Austrians and the Hungarians and cross the lines,
so only a few men managed to desert at a time. There are, however, recorded instances
of even entire regiments of Czechoslovak soldiers within the Austro-Hungarian army abandoning their
positions, such as the 28th and 8th Infantry, that defected in April and May of 1915 respectively.
Through the recruitment of captured or deserted Czechoslovaks, what once had begun as a fellowship
of men, by the late spring of 1916 had become the 1st Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade, ten times
the size of the original druzhina. Their numbers were further bolstered with the assimilation of
an additional thousand men that had previously served in the Serbian Corps stationed in Odessa,
allowing the Brigade to form one more rifle regiment in early 1917. Still their strength
was on the low end of the spectrum because recruitment of deserters was not officially
endorsed by the Czarist government out of fear of creating and spreading anti-imperialist sentiments
amongst their own minorities. This would change in the summer of the same year when
General Brusilov launched his famous theater wide offensive. As a part of this offensive,
the Czechoslovak brigade was deployed in the Ukrainian sector near the village of
Zborov. On the morning of the 2nd of July, the legionnaires engaged the well fortified
Austrian lines. Using shock troop tactics, the Czechoslovaks breached the defenses and,
by late noon, had managed to break through the entire Austro-Hungarian trench line. From there,
they advanced further, capturing over 3000 defenders and 20 guns. Despite their immense
success, the Russo-Finnish troops supporting their flanks were unable to keep up and the legion was
forced to withdraw. However their achievements in battle and bravery had a positive impact and
convinced Kerensky to endorse the recruitment of Czechoslovak volunteers. Over the course
of the following months the strength of the Legion ballooned to 40000 men,
an entire corps. In the meanwhile clouds were gathering over Russia’s political scene.
The outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in November of 1917,
placed the Czechoslovaks in a perilous position. Through their political leader, Tomáš Masaryk,
they declared neutrality in the conflict between the revolutionaries and the Tsarist regime, but
also expressed their willingness to continue the fight against the Central Powers. Before we move
forward with our story, let us briefly introduce Tomáš Masaryk. He was born in the town of Hodonin
in present-day Czech Republic to a working class family, but studied in Vienna, receiving
a PhD in philosophy. Later, he was employed as a professor at the Charles-Ferdinand University in
Prague. His academic fame and gravitas opened for him the doors of the Austrian parliament,
the Reichsrat, where he served a total of 9 years trying to promote Czech interests. Therefore,
it was only natural that when the Great War broke out, Masaryk became the voice of all
those Czechoslovaks who desired an independent state, and the beacon around which they would
gather. During these years he toured Europe and America, promoting the cause and negotiating with
other leaders about the future establishment of Czechoslovakia, should the Entente win the war.
The Russian Revolution and the journey home Despite the efforts made by both Masaryk
and the military leadership of the Legion, remaining neutral amidst the turmoil of the
October Revolution was impossible. Soon, soldiers from the 2nd Division exchanged
fire with the Bolsheviks after Ukraine declared independence from the Russian Empire. Ukraine
would not remain a hospitable territory for long, as the treaty of Brest-Litovsk brought
her under Germany’s sphere of influence. The Czechoslovaks had to flee, and fast,
for a port from where they could make their way to allied territory. They had two options:
Arkhangelsk in the north, or Vladivostok in the Far East. A small portion of men managed
to escape through the former, but it wouldn’t take long before this route was shut down,
leaving only Vladivostok and the arduous journey through Siberia as an option.
This was by any means not an easy task. The legionnaires would have to hold the Bachmach
train station against the advancing German and Austro-Hungarian columns long enough for the
retreating 1st Division to pass through and group with the rest at Penza, a task they accomplished
with the assistance of the Bolsheviks, who too were trying to keep the armies of
the Central Powers at bay. But even this uneasy cooperation would soon unravel. The Bolsheviks,
partly pressed by the Germans and partly because they were not keen on having an armed force
waltzing through the country, were continuously pushing for the disarmament of the Legion,
even after an agreement for the Czechoslovaks to keep at least the personal equipment had
been reached. They also seemed to lean heavily towards the Central Powers, by prioritizing trains
carrying German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war to the west. The spark that ignited the
powder keg came on the 14th of May, 1918, at the train station of Chelyabinsk when two trains,
one carrying legionnaires and the other Austrian prisoners met. It didn’t take long before the
heated exchange of slurs gave way to a proper fight, forcing Bolshevik authorities to arrest
some of the Czechoslovaks. Refusing to leave their comrades behind, the rest of the Legion’s
soldiers stormed the station, freed their men and promptly took over the city. After this,
Moscow doubled down demanding the total disarmament of the Czechoslovak legion,
with Commissar of War Leon Trotsky proclaiming that any Czechs and Slovaks who did not lay down
their arms would be shot. Naturally there was no chance the Czechoslovaks could trust the
Bolsheviks to not just slaughter them en masse once they gave up their guns. Thus, at the army
congress that convened in Chelyabinsk, they decided to refuse and fight back.
Fighting soon spread out across the entirety of the Trans-Siberian railroad, with legionnaires
taking control of many cities such as Petropavl, Samara, Ufa, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk and Vladivostok
which fell to troops under the command of Mikhail Diterikhs towards the last days of June of 1918.
Czechoslovak victories in Siberia enabled the anti-Bolshevik organizations to establish their
own governments such as the Komuch of the Social Revolutionaries in Samara and the Provisional
Siberian Government in Omsk. Together, they managed to capture every major city in Siberia,
including Yekaterinburg in July, where Czar Nicholas II and his family were held as prisoners.
Unfortunately they arrived a week too late, and the members of the royal family had already
been executed by the Bolsheviks. The Victories did not stop there for the Czechoslovaks who,
aided by forces of Komuch, captured Kazan on the 5th of August. Kazan, a major city,
was a prize on its own, but what awaited there was beyond everyone’s imagination;
the Imperial gold reserve. Before the war it was the largest gold reserve in the world,
and while a good sum of the money had been spent since then on wartime expenses,
it was still a fortune larger than many nations’ gross domestic product,
estimated at around 645.4 million imperial rubles or 14 billion modern-day US dollars.
That summer also saw allied intervention in the Russian civil war to support White Russia,
as it was termed. The entire world converged in Siberia, with British, French, Italian,
American and Japanese troops landed to assist the White Russian war effort and the Czechoslovak
Legion. With the exception of the Japanese, whose ultimate aim was to forever separate
Siberia from Russia and create a buffer state in the area, the rest of the allies wanted to
establish an eastern front that would slowly push westwards and keep the Central Powers busy there.
Even the various anti-Bolshevik factions were able to put aside their differences,
albeit with pressure from the Czechoslovaks, and present a united front forming in September the
Provisional All-Russian Government, which you may also know as the Ufa directory.
Yet with every passing day, the Red Army was growing stronger. Soon, the battles against them
were becoming fiercer, and the momentum of war began to tilt in the Bolshevik’s favour as allied
troops made no attempt to join the Czechoslovaks on the Volga and Ural fronts. This turning of the
tides proved detrimental to the legionnaires' morale, who had no intention of fighting a war
they didn’t want to be part of. Another blow to the Czechoslovak’s spirit came in late October,
when Masaryk declared Czechoslovakia's statehood in Prague. The legion survived
long enough to see its primary goal achieved. Their people now had a nation of their own.
The war in Europe was almost over, and the men were now only looking to return home.
On November 18th, just a week after the guns went silent on the Western Front,
a change of leadership occurred on the White Russian camp when Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak
overthrew the government at Omsk and styled himself as leader of all Russias. Despite that,
the Legion remained a staunch ally of the Whites and legionnaires continued their operations,
mainly guarding parts of the Trans-Siberian railway from partisans. However, Kolchak was
not able to turn the table in favor of the Whites and following his failed Volga offensive in spring
of 1919, his armies began a steady retreat on all fronts. Omsk fell to the Red army on the
14th of November with Kolchak fleeing towards the east, whose Czechoslovak legionnaires remained at
his side even as his own bodyguard abandoned him. The British asked the legion to deliver
Kolchak to their custody in Irkutsk, but the two Czechoslovak commanders, Generals Maurice Janin
and Jan Syrový, made the controversial decision to instead hand him over to the Political Centre,
a socialist government that had formed in Irkutsk. His captivity would not last long, and on the 7th
of February 1920, he was executed by a firing squad. Kolchak’s death was the blood price that
paid for the Legion’s safe passage to Vladivostok. The Reds also demanded the remaining amount of the
stolen imperial gold, a term which the Legion could not really refuse. The armistice with
the Bolsheviks offered to the Czechoslovaks what the White Russians and the allies couldn’t: a way
home. Unmolested, the legionnaires began moving towards the east and by the 1st of March,
every train carrying the Legion’s remaining troops had passed through Irkutsk. They still
faced difficulties that delayed their evacuation, such as the Japanese corps or the White Russians
of Grigori Semyonov, the man who had succeeded Kolchak, but these obstacles couldn’t prevent
the return of the Czechoslovak soldiers to their homeland. In Vladivostok, the first ship of the
evacuation operation, the Italian Roma, had set sail more than a year ago on the 15th of January
1919, while the last soldiers would depart aboard the USS Heffron on the 20th of September 1920.
Outro Upon returning to Europe,
the Czechoslovak soldiers met with their compatriots who had served on the French
and Italian legions and together formed the backbone of the freshly created Czechoslovak
army. These hardened veterans later fought against Soviet Hungary and Poland. Some of them would even
be part of the resistance that fought against Nazi tyranny 20 years later. Nevertheless, whether they
adopted a civilian life or they continued their military career, the legionnaires were still bound
together by the epic Odyssey they had experienced. A journey similar to Xenophon’s ten thousand over
2000 years ago. Their story is one of bravery, perseverance and deep love for their country
and their legacy is still celebrated in both Czechia and Slovakia. We will make more videos
on the history of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the Czech and Slovak peoples in the
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