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
All this would now change because of one mindless act of Trotsky’s. As the newly appointed Commissar of War, Trotsky wanted to act the part, although he had virtually no troops under his command. This ambition in no time transformed a body of well-disposed Czechoslovaks into a “counterrevolutionary” army which in the summer of 1918 presented the Bolsheviks with the most serious military threat since they had taken power.
As soon as Trotsky learned what had transpired at Cheliabinsk and that the Czechs had convened a “Congress of the Czechoslovak Revolutionary Army,” he ordered that the representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council in Moscow be placed under arrest. The frightened Czech politicians agreed to all of Trotsky’s demands, including complete disarmament of the legion. On May 21, Trotsky ordered that all further movement of the legion eastward must cease: its men were to join the Red Army or be pressed into “labor battalions”—that is, become part of the Bolshevik compulsory labor force. Those who disobeyed were to be confined to concentration camps.* On May 25, Trotsky followed with another order:
All soviets along the railroad are instructed, under heavy responsibility, to disarm the Czechs. Any Czech along the railroad line found in possession of weapons is to be executed on the spot. Any military train [
