By one of those curious accidents of history, that spur came at the end of the same month in 1918 when a legion of Czech soldiers became embroiled in a conflict with the Soviets along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Czech Legion had been formed by Czech nationalists working inside Russia after the outbreak of the First World War. During the war it was enlarged by Czech and Slovak prisoners of war and deserters from the Austrian army, and by 1917 it was a force of some 35,000, most of them students and officers. As nationalists fighting for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they had sided with the Russians against the Central Powers. Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Beneš, the Czech Nationalist leaders, had agreed to the Legion’s formation as an independent corps of the Russian army on the South-Western Front. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Legion resolved to continue its struggle as part of the Czech army fighting in France. Rather than run the risk of crossing enemy lines, they decided to travel eastwards, right around the world, reaching Europe via Vladivostok and the United States. On 26 March an agreement was made with the Soviet authorities at Penza, whereby the Czechs were allowed to travel on the Trans-Siberian Railway as ‘free citizens’ with a ‘specified number of weapons for self-defence’.
Had this agreement been adhered to by both sides, the civil war would have taken a very different course. But the passage of the Czechs was marked by increasing mistrust and tension. The trains were held up by the local Soviets, which barraged the Czechs with propaganda and tried to confiscate their weapons. The Czechs, in turn, became suspicious that the Bolsheviks were preparing to hand them over to the Germans — a suspicion increased by the order from Moscow in April for half the Legion to turn around and be evacuated through Arkhangelsk (the irony was that, unknown to the Czechs, the order had been given at the behest of the Allies). The Czechs resolved to fight their way, if necessary, through Siberia to Vladivostok. Events came to a head on 14 May, when the Cheliabinsk Soviet in the Urals arrested some Czechs who had been involved in a brawl with a group of Hungarian prisoners of war. The Czech soldiers occupied the town, released their comrades and disarmed the small Red Guard unit. Moscow ordered the local Soviets to disarm the Czechs in turn. ‘Every armed Czech found on the railway’, read Trotsky’s telegram of the 25th, ‘is to be shot on the spot.’28 It amounted to a declaration of war on the Czechs, and its effect was only to increase their determination to fight their way through to the East. This was a shame from the Bolsheviks’ viewpoint, for there had been no real need to alienate the Czechs, and it was in everyone’s interests to get them out of Russia as soon as possible. Trotsky’s overreaction to the Cheliabinsk incident created a hostile army in the heart of Soviet Russia.
The Czech Legion, broken up into six groups along the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, captured one town after another: Novo-Nikolaesvk on 26 May; Penza and Syzran on the 28th and the 29th; Tomsk on the 31st; Omsk on 6 June; and Vladivostok on the 29th. The Red Army was still not properly organized, and the untrained and ill-disciplined Red Guards, made up of workers from the local towns, who often ran away at the first sign of danger, were no match for the well-trained Czechs.
