The October Revolution of 1917 dismayed a significant part of Russian society and at the same time caused a rather sluggish reaction from the opponents of the Bolsheviks. Although the wave of uprisings began almost immediately, the Soviet authorities managed to localize and suppress the rebellions quite quickly. The white movement at first remained scattered and did not go beyond dull discontent.
And then the Czechoslovak corps rebelled - a large, well-armed and well-knit formation, which, moreover, stretched from the Volga region to Pacific Ocean. The Czechoslovak revolt revived the anti-Bolshevik forces in eastern Russia and gave them time and reason to consolidate.
Czech squad
From the very beginning of the First World War, the Czechs on the territory of the Russian Empire showed an enviable organization. The most socially and politically active of them formed the Czech National Committee. Already on the day of the official declaration of war, this committee adopted an appeal to Nicholas II, announcing the duty of the Czechs to help their Russian brothers. On September 7, the delegation even obtained an audience with the emperor and handed him a memorandum stating, among other things, that “the free and independent crown of St. Wenceslas (prince and patron saint of the Czech Republic, who lived in the 10th century) will soon shine in the rays of the Romanov crown ...”
At first, the enthusiasm of the Slavic brothers was greeted rather coolly. The military leadership of Russia was wary of movements organized "from below", but still allowed the Czechs, as the order of the Minister of War V.A. Sukhomlinov, "to form in Kiev one or two regiments or, depending on the number of volunteers, a battalion of at least two companies." They were not going to throw them into battle - it was too valuable a propaganda card. The Czechs were supposed to demonstrate in every possible way the unity of the Slavic peoples in the struggle against the Germans.
Already on July 30, the Council of Ministers decided to form the Chesh squad in Kiev - because it was there that the center of the Czech diaspora in Russia and its largest part were located. Throughout August, volunteers eagerly enrolled in the ranks. The unit included Russian Czechs, primarily from the Kiev province, but also from other regions, too. At the same time, the Czech Squad Foundation was established, which was engaged in supply, hospitals and caring for the families of the soldiers.
The Czechs experienced a genuine and quite sincere national enthusiasm: it seemed that a little more, and the mighty Russian brother would give them independence. Own armed forces, albeit recruited from the subjects of the Russian tsar under Russian command, gave serious grounds for creating their own state. The head of the military department of the Czechoslovak legions, Rudolf Medek, later said: “The existence of the Czech army would definitely play a decisive role in resolving the issue of restoring the independence of the Czech Republic. It should be noted that the emergence of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 directly depended on the existence of a combat-ready Czech-Slovak army.
By September 1914, the Czech squad (one battalion) was already operating as a military unit within the Russian armed forces. In October, it numbered about a thousand people and soon went to the front at the disposal of the 3rd Army under the command of General R. D. Radko-Dmitriev.
The officers were Russian - in Russia there simply were not enough Czechs with experience and higher military education. This situation will change only during the years of the Civil War.
POW Corps
Throughout the war, Czechoslovaks on the other side of the front surrendered en masse. The idea of the Austro-Hungarian government to distribute weapons to the people, who considered themselves oppressed, was not the most successful. By 1917, out of 600 thousand prisoners of war from all over the Russian-Austrian front, about 200 thousand were Czechoslovaks. However, many continued to fight on the side of the Austro-Hungarians, including the future Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Klement Gottwald and the son of the future first president of Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk.
The Russian command treated the prisoners with suspicion. In addition, at the beginning of the war, the imperial army did not really need manpower. But in March 1915, at the direction of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and at the numerous petitions of various public organizations, Czech and Slovak prisoners of war began to be accepted into the Czech squad. By the end of 1915, the formation doubled its strength and turned into the First Czechoslovak Infantry Regiment named after Jan Hus. A year later, the regiment grew to four thousand people and turned into a rifle brigade. There were also disadvantages: a motley mass of subjects of Austria-Hungary blurred the squad, which until then consisted of ideological supporters of Russia. It will come out later.
After February Revolution Slavic brothers became noticeably more active. In May 1917, a branch of the Czechoslovak national council. The Council met throughout the war in Paris under the leadership of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Let's talk about this person in more detail - it is difficult to overestimate his role in the formation of an independent Czechoslovakia. University professor Masaryk was a member of the Austrian parliament before the First World War, and then became an active member of the underground organization "Mafia", striving for the independence of Czechoslovakia.
The future father of the nation was married to Charlotte Garrig (he took her last name as a middle name), a relative of the successful American businessman Charles Crane, a great connoisseur of Eastern European culture. By their own political views Masaryk was a liberal nationalist oriented towards the countries of the West. At the same time, he had enough diplomatic flair and the ability to use the real situation to his advantage. Thus, in a letter to British Foreign Secretary E. Gray in May 1915, he, as if yielding to Slavophil public opinion, notes: “The Czech Republic is projected as a monarchical state. Only a few radical politicians advocate for a republic in the Czech Republic... The Czech people - this must be emphatically emphasized - are a completely Russophile people. A Russian dynasty in whatever form would be the most popular... Czech politicians would like to create a Czech kingdom in full agreement with Russia. Russia's desire and intention will be decisive." After the overthrow of the Russian autocracy, the situation changed dramatically. The Romanov dynasty leaves the political scene, and democratic forces of various kinds and orientations come to power. Under the new conditions, the Czechoslovaks (despite all the statements, mostly democrats) receive more support from the government than under the Tsar.
The Czechoslovak troops performed well during Kerensky's June offensive (perhaps you can't say that about anyone else). During the Zborovsky (in Galicia) battle on July 1–2, 1917, the Czechoslovak rifle brigade defeated the Czech and Hungarian infantry divisions, which were almost 2 times larger in number. This victory could not change the deplorable democratic situation at the front, but it made a splash in Russian society. The interim government decided to remove the previously existing restrictions on the formation of military units from prisoners. The Czechoslovak brigade received recognition, honor and glory - as one of the few combat units that achieved at least some success in that shameful year.
Soon the overgrown brigade was deployed into the 1st Hussite Rifle Division. Already on July 4, 1917, under the new commander-in-chief Lavr Kornilov, the 2nd Hussite division appeared. Finally, in September-October 1917, on the orders of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Nikolai Dukhonin, the Czechoslovak Corps began to be created from 3 divisions, one of which, however, existed only on paper. It was a serious connection - about 40 thousand bayonets. The Russian Major General Vladimir Shokorov was placed at the head of the Czech units. In August 1918, all Czechoslovaks in Russia were mobilized, and the corps grew to 51 thousand people.
The October Revolution dramatically changed the situation. The leadership of the Czechoslovak National Council, on the one hand, declared its support for the Provisional Government and its readiness to continue the fight against the Germans, and, on the other hand, decided not to interfere in the political affairs of Russia. The Bolshevik government did not have any special love for the allies of the former regime, it was not going to fight the Germans, and the Czechoslovaks had to ask for help from the Entente. In December, the Poincare government decided to organize an autonomous Czechoslovak army ("legion"). Chekhov was reassigned to the French command, and the French immediately ordered them to go to the Western Front by sea: either through Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, or through Vladivostok.
It took several months for the Bolsheviks and Czechoslovaks to establish permanent relations (this was done through separate detachments in the field, the vertical of power at that moment was rather illusory). In order not to quarrel with the Reds, the Czechoslovak leadership allows communist agitation and refuses the proposals of the White generals and Milyukov to oppose the Bolsheviks. Some Czechs generally decided to support the Reds in the Russian civil strife (for example, Yaroslav Gashek, the future author of Schweik) - for world revolution wished to fight 200 people.
At the same time, many socialists from among the prisoners of war appeared in the Czechoslovak National Council, which to a large extent predetermined the political face of this body in subsequent years. The main task of the council is the evacuation of the corps from Russia to France by sea and transfer to the Western Front. The route through Murmansk and Arkhangelsk was considered too dangerous because of the threat of the German offensive, so they preferred the circuit, through the Far East. It was problematic to disarm an organized delegation of Czechoslovak guests, so the agreement concluded on March 26, 1918 bashfully allowed the legionnaires to keep some of the weapons “for self-defense against assassination attempts by counter-revolutionaries”, and the military personnel formally moved not in battle order, but “as a group of free citizens”. In return, the Bolsheviks demanded the dismissal of all Russian officers as a counter-revolutionary element. For this, the Council of People's Commissars undertook to provide the legionnaires with all possible assistance along the way. The next day, a telegram arrived with an explanation: “part of the weapon” meant one armed company of 168 people, one machine gun and several hundred rounds of ammunition per rifle. Everything else had to be handed over to a special commission in Penza against receipt. In the end, the Reds received 50 thousand rifles, 1200 machine guns, 72 guns.
True, according to the commander of the western group of the corps, Stanislav Chechek, many soldiers hid their weapons, and he himself, like many other officers, approved of their actions. Three regiments of the corps were not disarmed at all, because by the beginning of the uprising they simply did not have time to reach Penza. With the demand for the resignation of Russian officers, the same thing happened: only 15 people were fired, and the majority (including, for example, the corps commander Shokorov and his chief of staff Diterichs) remained in their previous positions.
At the forefront of the counterrevolution
Despite the interest of the Bolsheviks in the speedy transfer of the corps to the sea, the Czech trains were constantly detained and driven into dead ends - trains full of Hungarians and Germans, after Brest, were going back to their armies from captivity. This was the logic: the prisoners had already been pumped up with red propaganda by agitators, the Council of People's Commissars hoped that at home they would kindle the fire of the world revolution.
By April, the movement of the corps had completely stopped: the Japanese landed in Vladivostok, Ataman Semyonov advanced in Transbaikalia, the Germans demanded their prisoners back as soon as possible, the general chaos reached the last degree. The Czechs began to fear (not unreasonably) that the Reds would betray them to the Germans. By May 1918, Czechoslovak trains were stretched along the entire Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok.
And then there was the Chelyabinsk incident. The Russians took the most indirect part in it: some Hungarian at some station threw some iron object at some Czech. The comrades of the offended fighter removed the Magyar from the train and lynched him. For this they were arrested by the local red authorities. The legionnaires did not appreciate this treatment and began to smash the Soviet institutions: they freed the captives, disarmed the Red Guards and seized the weapons depot. Artillery was found in the warehouse, among other things. The stunned friends of the workers offered no resistance. And then, realizing that since such fun had already begun, it was necessary to cut the last Bolshevik, the rebellious Czechs contacted their comrades-in-arms in other sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway. There was a full scale uprising.
The legionnaires elected the Provisional Executive Committee of the Congress of the Czechoslovak Army, which was headed by 3 group commanders - Stanislav Chechek, Radola Gaida and Sergei Voitsekhovsky (a Russian officer, then he will become the fourth person in the military hierarchy of independent Czechoslovakia). The commanders decided to break off relations with the Bolsheviks and move to Vladivostok, if necessary, then with battles.
The Bolsheviks did not immediately react to the events - on May 21, representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council Max and Chermak, who were in Moscow, were arrested. They had to order the legionnaires to disarm. However, the Czechoslovak executive committee ordered the troops to continue moving. For some time, the parties tried to find a compromise, but to no avail. Finally, on May 25, Trotsky gives a clear order to disarm the corps. Employees railway it is ordered to detain its trains, armed legionnaires are threatened with executions on the spot, and "honest Czechoslovaks" who laid down their arms are threatened with "fraternal help." The most insane Red Guards sincerely tried to fulfill the instructions of the people's commissar, but it was useless. Legionnaires have crossed their Rubicon.
From the tactical side, the position of the legion was quite vulnerable - there was no established connection between the echelons, the Reds could easily cut the Czechs and break them into pieces. The Slavic brothers were saved by revolutionary chaos and the general uselessness of the Red Army commanders: the Bolsheviks were simply confused - they had neither a plan, nor an organization, nor any reliable troops. In addition, the local population had already managed to taste the delights of war communism and were not eager to help the friends of the workers. As a result, the Soviet government, which triumphantly marched across the country after the October Revolution, turned around and began to retreat just as triumphantly. The Czechoslovaks took (or actively helped to take) Penza, Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, Petropavlovsk, Novonikolaevsk, in early June - Samara and Tomsk, in July - Tyumen, Yekaterinburg and Irkutsk. Officers' circles and other anti-Bolshevik organizations were awakening everywhere. At the very end of August, parts of the Czechoslovak corps connected with each other and thus secured control over the Trans-Siberian from the Volga region to Vladivostok.
Of course, political life immediately swelled in full swing. All sorts of governments and committees began to spring up like mushrooms. In the Volga region, the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, which consisted mainly of Socialist-Revolutionaries, creates the People's Army, at first similar to the armed forces of the Kerensky era - with soldiers' committees and without shoulder straps. They put a Czech in command - Stanislav Chechek. The Czechoslovaks are fighting side by side with this army, advancing, capturing Ufa, Simbirsk, Kazan. In Kazan - a huge success - part of the gold reserves of Russia falls into the hands of the Whites. The Eastern counter-revolution meets almost no resistance: the Reds just pulled off everything more or less combat-ready against Denikin, who, after the Second Kuban campaign, turned into a serious threat. The worst enemies of the Czechs (this is noted by several authors at once) were the Austrians and Hungarians - they did not take these prisoners at all. As a rule, Russian Red Army soldiers were treated somewhat more humanely.
None"The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schweik" would not exist in nature if their author, Yaroslav Gashek, who was lost in 1918 in the Russian expanses, then fell into the hands of his fellow tribesmen - fighters Czechoslovak Corps. They sentenced Hasek to death: he was among those few Czechoslovaks who responded to the calls of the Bolshevik agitators and went over to the side of the "builders of a brighter future." The rest declared war on the Reds exactly one hundred years ago, starting one of the most amazing military epics in history.
The Czechoslovak Corps is the main contender for the title of the smallest army in history that has conquered a vast territory. In the late spring and summer of 1918, the Czechs and Slovaks - at that time a little more than 40 thousand fighters - took control of the colossal regions of Russia - from the Volga region to Primorye. The corps, located in several dozen echelons, stretched along the railroad from Penza to Vladivostok, waiting to be sent along ocean routes to Europe. But then an obstacle appeared in his path in the form of Soviet power.
- The first Czech unit in Russia was created at the beginning of the First World War, in 1914, - says the Czech military historian Eduard Steglik. - It was called the Czech squad and was made up of Czechs who lived in the Russian Empire before the war and were its subjects. Gradually, the squad was transformed into a division, at the beginning of 1917 there were about four thousand fighters in it. In the summer of 1917, they entered into battle with the German and Austro-Hungarian units near Zborov in Ukraine and showed themselves very well - they broke through the enemy's front. After that, the Provisional Government allowed the recruitment of former soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army, Czechs and Slovaks by nationality, from the POW camps to serve in the legions. (Československe legie - the official name of the formations that fought against Austria-Hungary and its allies, for the creation of an independent state of Czechs and Slovaks. – RS). Thus, an influx of tens of thousands of fighters was ensured.
There was a Bolshevik coup, and they were stuck in a foreign country covered by revolution
They were politically subordinate to Tomas G. Masaryk, the head of the Czechoslovak National Council, located in the West. He formally included the Czechoslovak Corps, which was in Russia, into the legions that fought against the Germans on the Western Front, in France. It was there that it was supposed to transfer legionnaires from Russia. But there was a Bolshevik coup, and they were stuck in a foreign country engulfed in revolution. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the declaration of independence of Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1918, the Western Front was gone, and the task of the Czechoslovaks now was to return to their homeland.
- That is, the legionnaires did not have any ideological message, and they intervened in the outbreak of the Civil War in Russia, simply speaking, because they wanted to leave as soon as possible and get home?
- Masaryk repeatedly emphasized, referring to the legionnaires (and he spent most of 1917 and the beginning of 1918 in Russia): there is no need to get involved in internal Russian conflicts, the task of the legionnaires is to get to France and take part in the war on the Western Front, so that later , as a result of the defeat of the Central Powers, a new state of Czechs and Slovaks was created. And it should be noted that initially the conflict that broke out in the spring of 1918 was not a clash between the legionnaires and the Bolsheviks. It was about banal fights - the most serious consequences were the one that occurred on May 14 at the station in Chelyabinsk, after which the legionnaires, in fact, began fighting. The Czechs and Slovaks, who were traveling east, fought, and the Austro-Hungarian prisoners - Hungarians and Germans, who followed in the opposite direction. Indeed, in March 1918, the Bolshevik government concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and Austria-Hungary, after which the exchange of prisoners began. It was in these skirmishes between the legionnaires and the Austro-Hungarian soldiers that the Soviet authorities intervened in a very unsuccessful way. Trotsky announced that "every armed Czechoslovak found must be shot." Legionnaires responded to attempts to disarm them with resistance - and an uprising began, or, in Soviet terminology, a "mutiny" of the Czechoslovak Corps, says Eduard Steglik.
Divided into several battle groups of 10-15 thousand fighters each, the Czechoslovaks during the summer of 1918 took control of the entire Trans-Siberian Railway, as well as several major centers in the Volga region. They fought famously: for example, on August 6, Kazan was occupied by only 3,300 fighters of the Czechoslovak Corps, the Serbian squad and local anti-Bolshevik formations, knocking out a 10,000-strong Red garrison from the city. "In the territories occupied by the legionnaires, democratic institutions were being restored, liquidated by the October Revolution. In early June, the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) met in Samara - a body whose legitimacy was based on the first free elections in the history of Russia, held at the end of 1917," - notes the columnist of the Czech weekly "Echo" (Týdeník Echo) Peter Golub, who published on the eve of the anniversary of the uprising a series of articles about the legionnaires. And he quotes from the order of the corps command of June 17, 1918 - it follows from it that the rise of the anti-Bolshevik movement, which provoked the uprising of the Czechoslovaks, in turn, influenced the mood of the legionnaires: "Our actions brought to life a movement whose goal is the liberation of the entire Russia. Therefore, we are obliged to stay here until the situation clears up and the political problems that have arisen as a result of the military operations we have undertaken are resolved."
Our actions brought to life a movement whose goal is the liberation of all of Russia
The alliance with the Russian democrats, however, was short-lived. At the end of 1918, as a result of a military coup, power in the eastern part of Russia passed into the hands of Admiral Kolchak, who took the title of "supreme ruler". The relations of the Czechoslovaks with the Kolchak government and command were not easy. After all, the legionnaires found themselves between two fires: between the Russian White movement, for which the presence of the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia was of great help, and the powers of the Entente, in whose operational subordination were the legionnaires. While Kolchak was advancing, there were fewer problems - moreover, some Czechoslovaks actually joined the ranks of the Whites, and the former military assistant Radola Gaida rose to the rank of general with Kolchak, but at the end of 1919, when things went really bad for the admiral, he rebelled against him .
There were also reverse cases: Russian officers and generals, once seconded to the Czechoslovak Corps, remained to serve with the legionnaires. Some left Russia with them after the Civil War. The most famous is the tragic fate of Sergei Voitsekhovsky, who rose to the rank of army general in interwar Czechoslovakia. In the fall of 1938, he, along with other military men, tried to convince President Benes not to accept the terms of the Munich Treaty, and in May 1945, when Soviet troops arrived in Prague, he was arrested by Smersh counterintelligence and thrown into a Siberian camp. Voitsekhovsky died in the early 50s near Irkutsk - exactly in those places where 30 years earlier he had fought together with the Czechoslovaks against the Bolsheviks.
There were other examples of "growth" of legionnaires with the Russian environment. In 1920, when the last units of the Czechoslovak Corps were leaving Vladivostok, more than 70 thousand people boarded the allied transport ships, although there were just over 50 thousand directly military personnel along with the service personnel. The rest are family members, wives and children that the Czechoslovaks acquired during their Russian epic. Many legionnaires, having returned to their homeland, actively helped refugees from Russia who settled in Czechoslovakia.
However, they did not help Alexander Kolchak, who had been defeated by the Red Army by the beginning of 1920. Probably the most controversial in the history of the Czechoslovak Corps is the January episode, when, with the consent of the head of the allied mission, the French General Janin, the legionnaires handed over the admiral to the left-wing rebels who seized power in Irkutsk - in exchange for the right of free passage further east, to the sea. Soon Kolchak, as you know, fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks and was shot. According to Eduard Steglik, in general, the Czechoslovaks, however, did not stain themselves in Russia either with special cruelty or crimes against the civilian population:
– Left for the most part in an organized manner. There were cases of looting, during the period of retreat there were also refusals to go into battle - the legionnaires increasingly felt that this was not their war. The upsurge was replaced by disappointment, largely influenced by the atrocities committed by both reds and whites, which the legionnaires became witnesses. It was very unpleasant for me to come across publications in modern Russian media, when, for example, photographs of Bolsheviks posing near the bodies of killed legionnaires were presented as the opposite - Czechs and Slovaks standing over the corpses of Red Army soldiers allegedly tortured by them! In this case, we are talking about pictures from Czech or Western archives, well studied by historians - in some cases it is known by name who these murdered were. And suddenly it is presented as "the atrocities of the White Czechs", who allegedly behaved in this way towards the Russians.
There were also refusals to go into battle - the legionnaires felt more and more acutely that this was not their war
Of course, legionnaires happened to kill prisoners, but almost always it was a reaction to the brutal executions of corps soldiers committed by the enemy - when the Czechs and Slovaks stumbled upon the traces of these atrocities. But I have never seen any documentary evidence of the war crimes of the legionnaires against the civilian population, although I studied a very large number of documents relating to the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia. Conversely, there is evidence of the sadness with which many legionnaires left Russia - a country that they had come to love, but which at that moment was in a catastrophe.
– What is true and what is a lie in the legend that the Czechoslovaks stole and took out the part of the Russian gold reserve entrusted to them by the Kolchak government? Back in the interwar period, for example, there were accusations from German representatives that more than 30 million gold rubles had been taken out of Russia by the Czechoslovaks. Sometimes larger sums were also mentioned.
- You used the word "legend" correctly. In fact, from the very beginning, a detailed inventory of the gold reserves that ended up in the hands of the Czechs was made. (He was captured in the summer of 1918 in Kazan and later was once again entrusted to the legionnaires during the retreat of the Kolchak army through Siberia. - RS). It was signed not only by Czech, but also by Russian representatives. At the moment when the legionnaires left Russia, this gold was handed over to the Russian side in accordance with this inventory. The idea that the Czechoslovak Corps left Russia, taking with them wagons with looted Russian gold, and then interwar Czechoslovakia flourished at the expense of this gold, is, to put it mildly, erroneous, Eduard Steglik believes.
Petr Golub notes that the opponents of the legionnaires in Russia were not only local Bolsheviks, but also recent compatriots - former subjects of Austria-Hungary, who stood under the banner of the "world revolution". “During the battles at Spassk and Kaula on the Ussuri River, the legionnaires felt in their own skin how much better the red units were fighting, which included recent German and Hungarian prisoners. Therefore, one of the tasks of the Czechoslovaks in Siberia was to keep the prisoners in the camps that existed there - sometimes Czechs and Slovaks until recently were themselves prisoners of war, but, having received freedom, they ruthlessly denied it to the rest.
Now, a hundred years later, in Russia there are few memorable places associated with the epic of the Czechoslovak Corps. Only one cemetery of legionnaires has survived - in Vladivostok. During the years of Soviet power, everything that was connected with the "White Czechs" was destroyed for obvious reasons. According to Eduard Steglik, in the last 15–20 years, monuments or memorial plaques on the sites of unpreserved graves. Local authorities in some cases go towards the Czech side, in others they oppose, as, for example, in Samara, where, thanks to the activity of local communists, the erection of a monument to the fallen legionnaires was postponed indefinitely. “Another problem that has emerged recently is vandalism,” says the Czech military historian. “The new monuments that we managed to put up in recent years became targets of attacks: they beat off this or that detail, doused it with paint, applied inscriptions - in one case , for example, they wrote "They killed the Russians." Unfortunately, the situation worsened."
CZECHOSLOVAK CORPS AND KOMUCH
There was a consolidation of anti-Bolshevik forces in the east of the country. The uprising of the Czechoslovak Corps in May 1918 played an important role in their activation.
This corps was formed in Russia during the World War from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army to participate in the war against Germany. In 1918, the corps located on Russian territory was preparing to be sent to Western Europe through the Far East. In May 1918, the Entente prepared an anti-Bolshevik uprising of the corps, the echelons of which stretched along the railway from Penza to Vladivostok. The uprising activated the anti-Bolshevik forces everywhere, inciting them to armed struggle, and created local governments.
One of them was the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) in Samara, created by the Social Revolutionaries. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary power, which, according to the plan of its creators, was to cover all of Russia and become part of the Constituent Assembly, designed to become a legitimate power. The chairman of Komuch, Socialist-Revolutionary V.K. Volsky, proclaimed the goal - to prepare the conditions for the real unity of Russia with a socialist Constituent Assembly at its head. This idea of Volsky was not supported by a part of the top of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The Right Socialist-Revolutionaries also ignored Komuch and went to Omsk to prepare there for the creation of an all-Russian government in coalition with the Cadets instead of the Samara Komuch. In general, anti-Bolshevik forces were hostile to the idea of a Constituent Assembly. Komuch, on the other hand, demonstrated a commitment to democracy, while not having a specific socio-economic program. According to its member V.M. Zenzinov, the Committee tried to follow a program equally removed from both the socialist experiments of Soviet power and the restoration of the past. But equidistance did not work. The property nationalized by the Bolsheviks was returned to the old owners. On the territory subject to Komuch, all banks were denationalized in July, denationalization of industrial enterprises was announced. Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. It was based on the Czechs, who recognized his authority.
The political leaders of the Czechoslovaks began to seek from Komuch unification with other anti-Bolshevik governments, but its members, considering themselves the only heirs of the legitimate power of the Constituent Assembly, resisted for some time. At the same time, the confrontation between Komuch and the coalition Provisional Government that had arisen in Omsk from representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cadets grew. Things went as far as declaring a customs war on Komuch. Ultimately, the members of Komuch, in order to strengthen the front of the anti-Bolshevik forces, capitulated, agreeing to the creation of a united government. An act was signed on the formation of the Provisional All-Russian Government - the Directory, signed by Komuch by its chairman Volsky.
In early October, Komuch, not having the support of the population, adopted a resolution on his liquidation. Soon the capital Komuch Samara was occupied by the Red Army.
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ORDER OF THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONER FOR MILITARY AFFAIRS ON THE DISARMAMENT OF THE CZECHOSLOVAKIANS
All Soviets, on pain of liability, are obliged to immediately disarm the Czechoslovaks. Every Czechoslovak who is found armed on the railroad line must be shot on the spot; each echelon in which there is at least one armed person must be unloaded from the wagons and imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp. Local military commissars undertake to immediately carry out this order, any delay will be tantamount to dishonorable treason and will bring down severe punishment on the guilty. At the same time, reliable forces are sent to the rear of the Czechoslovaks, who are instructed to teach the disobedient a lesson. Honest Czechoslovaks, who surrender their weapons and submit to Soviet power, should be treated like brothers and given them all possible support. To inform all railroad workers that not a single armed car of the Czechoslovaks should advance to the east. Whoever succumbs to violence and assists the Czechoslovaks in their advance to the east will be severely punished.
Read this order to all Czechoslovak echelons and inform all railway workers at the location of the Czechoslovaks. Each military commissar must report on the execution. No. 377.
People's Commissar for Military Affairs L. Trotsky.
Quoted from the book: Parfenov P.S. Civil War in Siberia. M., 1924.
NOTE BY THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS CHICHERIN ON THE CZECHOSLOVAKIANS
The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs handed over to the head of the British mission, the French Consul General, the American Consul General and the Italian Consul General a note reading as follows:
“The disarmament of the Czechoslovaks cannot in any case be regarded as an act of hostility towards the powers of the Entente. It is caused primarily by the fact that Russia, as a neutral state, cannot tolerate armed detachments on its territory that do not belong to the army of the Soviet Republic.
The immediate reason for taking decisive and strict measures to disarm the Czechoslovaks was their own actions. The Czechoslovak rebellion began in Chelyabinsk on May 26, where the Czechoslovaks, having captured the city, stole weapons, arrested and deposed the local authorities, and in response to the demand to stop the atrocities and disarm, they met military units with fire. The further development of the rebellion led to the occupation of Penza, Samara, Novo-Nikolaevsk, Omsk and other cities by the Czechoslovaks. The Czechoslovaks everywhere acted in alliance with the White Guards and the counter-revolutionary Russian officers. In some places there are French officers among them.
In all points of the counter-revolutionary Czechoslovak revolt, the institutions abolished by the Workers' and Peasants' Soviet Republic. The Soviet government took the most resolute measures to suppress the Czechoslovak revolt with armed force and to disarm them unconditionally. No other outcome is acceptable for the Soviet Government.
The People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs expresses confidence that, after all of the above, the representatives of the four powers of Entente will not consider the disarmament of the Czechoslovak detachments under their protection as an act of hostility, but, on the contrary, recognize the necessity and expediency of the measures taken by the Soviet Government against the rebels.
The People's Commissariat also expresses the hope that the representatives of the four powers of the Entente will not hesitate to condemn the Czechoslovak detachments for their counter-revolutionary armed rebellion, which is the most frank and decisive interference in the internal affairs of Russia.
People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Chicherin.
OVERTHROW OF SOVIET POWER IN SIBERIA
From Novonikolaevsk - Mariinsk. In all cities, villages - citizens of Siberia. The hour of saving the motherland has struck! Provisional Government of Siberia. The Regional Duma overthrew the Bolshevik government and took control into its own hands. Most of Siberia is occupied, citizens are joining the ranks of the people's army. The Red Guard is being disarmed. The Bolshevik government has been arrested. In Novonikolaevsk, the coup ended in 40 minutes. Authorities in the city were taken over by representatives of the Provisional Siberian Government, who proposed that city and zemstvo councils begin work.
There were no victims. The revolution was met with sympathy. The coup was carried out by a local detachment of the Siberian Government with the assistance of the Czechoslovak units. Our tasks: the defense of the motherland and the salvation of the revolution through the All-Siberian Constituent Assembly. Citizens! immediately overthrow the power of the rapists. Restore the work of zemstvo and city self-governments dispersed by the Bolsheviks. Provide assistance to government troops and helping Czechoslovak detachments.
Representatives of the Provisional Siberian Government.
Mariinsky Committee of Public Safety.
Telegram of representatives of the Siberian Government about the overthrow of Soviet power
DENIKIN'S OPINION
As for y.g. Massaryk and Max, wholly devoted to the idea of the national revival of their people and their struggle against Germanism, in the confused conditions of Russian reality, failed to find the right path and, being under the influence of Russian revolutionary democracy, shared its waverings, delusions and suspicion.
Life severely avenged these mistakes. It soon compelled both national forces, which so stubbornly avoided interfering "in the internal Russian affairs", to take part in our internecine strife, placing them in a hopeless situation between the German army and Bolshevism.
Already in February, during the German attack on the Ukraine, the Czechoslovaks, amidst the general shameful flight of the Russian troops, will wage fierce battles against the Germans and their former allies - the Ukrainians on the side of the Bolsheviks. Then they will move to the endless Siberian route, fulfilling the fantastic plan of the French command - the transfer of the 50,000th corps to the Western European theater, separated from the eastern one by nine thousand miles of railway track and oceans. In the spring they will take up arms against their recent allies, the Bolsheviks, who are betraying them to the Germans. Allied policy will turn them back in the summer to form a front on the Volga. And for a long time yet they will actively participate in the Russian tragedy, evoking among the Russian people an intermittent feeling of anger and gratitude ...
A.I. Denikin. Essays on Russian Troubles
JAROSLAV GASHEK AND THE CZECHOSLOVAK CORPS
During the Civil War in 1918, Gashek was on the side of the Reds and was in Samara, participated in its defense from the White Army and the suppression of an anarchist rebellion.
And it all started with the fact that the future writer did not want to take part in the First World War. He tried his best to avoid military service, but in the end, in 1915, he was enrolled in the Austrian army and brought to the front in a prison wagon. However, Hasek soon voluntarily surrendered to Russian captivity.
He ended up in the Darnitsky POW camp near Kiev, then he was redirected to Totsky near Buzuluk. Inspired by the ideas of communism, at the beginning of 1918 he joined the RCP (b) and stood under the banner of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War flaring up in Russia.
At the end of March 1918, the Czechoslovak section of the RCP (b) in Moscow sent Yaroslav Hasek to Samara at the head of a group of comrades to form an international detachment of the Red Army and explanatory work among the soldiers of the Czechoslovak corps.
Arriving in Samara, Hasek launched an agitation among the soldiers of the corps and other Czechs and Slovaks who were in prisoner-of-war camps or worked in factories. The members of the Hasek group, meeting the echelons with the legionnaires at the station, explained to them the policy of the Soviet government, exposed the counter-revolutionary plans of the corps command, urged the soldiers not to leave for France, but to help the Russian proletariat in the struggle against the bourgeoisie.
To work to attract soldiers to the Red Army, a "Czech military department was created to form Czech-Slovak detachments under the Red Army." It was located on the second floor of the San Remo Hotel (now Kuibysheva St., 98). There was also a section of the RCP(b) and the apartment of Yaroslav Hasek.
During April and May, a detachment of 120 fighters from Czechs and Slovaks was formed. Yaroslav Hasek became its political commissar. It was assumed that over the next two months the detachment would increase to a battalion, and possibly a regiment. But this was not possible: at the end of May, a rebellion of the Czechoslovak corps began. During the days of the White Czechs' offensive against Samara, Yaroslav Gashek was on the outskirts of the Samara railway station.
Early in the morning of June 8, 1918, under the onslaught of the superior forces of the White Czechs, the detachments of the defenders of Samara, including the detachment of Czechoslovak internationalists, were forced to leave the city. At the very last moment, Gashei went to the San Remo Hotel to take or destroy the lists of volunteers and other documents of the military department and section of the RSC (b) so that they would not fall into the hands of enemies. He managed to destroy the materials, but it was no longer possible to return to the station to the detachment - the station was occupied by the White Czechs, and the detachment surrounded by rail.
With great difficulty and risk Hasek got out of the city. For about two months he hid with the peasants in the villages, then he managed to cross the front. Hasek's activity as an agitator of the Red Army in the Czech environment was short-lived, but did not go unnoticed. In July, that is, only three months after arriving in Samara, in Omsk, the field court of the Czechoslovak legion issued a warrant for the arrest of Hasek as a traitor to the Czech people. For several months, he was forced, hiding behind a certificate that he was "the crazy son of a German colonist from Turkestan", to hide from patrols.
Samara local historian Alexander Zavalny gives the following story about this stage of the writer's life: “Once, when he was hiding with his friends at one of the Samara dachas, a Czech patrol appeared. The officer decided to interrogate the unknown, to which Hasek, playing an idiot, told how he saved the Czech officer at the Batraki station: “I sit and think. Suddenly an officer Just like you, so delicate and frail. He purrs a German song and seems to be dancing like an old maid on an Easter holiday. Thanks to the tested sense of smell, I immediately see - an officer under the fly. I look, heading straight for the restroom, from which I just came out. I sat close. I sit for ten, twenty, thirty minutes. The officer doesn’t come out ... ”Further, Gashek depicted how he went into the toilet and, pushing the rotten boards apart, pulled out the drunken loser from the outhouse:“ By the way, do you know what award I will be awarded for saving the life of a Czech officer?
Only by September, Gashek crossed the front line, and in Simbirsk again joined the Red Army. Together with the soldiers of the 5th Army, he marched from the banks of the Volga to the Irtysh. At the end of 1920, Yaroslav Gashek returned to his homeland, where he died on January 3, 1923, still very young, about 4 months before the age of 40.
Soldiers of the 5th regiment of the Czechoslovak Corps at the station they captured in Penza. May, 1918
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia says that it was “an armed counter-revolutionary uprising of the Czechoslovak troops stationed in Soviet Russia, provoked by representatives of the Entente.”
These notorious "representatives of the Entente" are mentioned in all Soviet sources, although in no case is it deciphered - what kind of "representatives" are they?
It should be noted that in the spring of 1918 the Entente had enough worries at the front with Germany - as General Ludendorff wrote in his memoirs: “At the turn of 1917-18. the situation, as a result of Russia's withdrawal from the war, was more favorable for us than a year before ... The balance of forces was developing for us as favorable as ever.” German forces on the Western Front increased by more than a quarter, from 155 divisions to 195, due to the agreement with the Bolsheviks on the cessation of hostilities concluded on December 5, 1917 in Brest. In March 1918, the German army went on the offensive there., British and French troops lost 850 thousand killed and wounded, the Germans took 190 thousand prisoners, 2.5 thousand guns, 6 thousand machine guns and 200 tanks (according to TSB) . On March 23, 1918, the shelling of Paris began from the super-long-range guns "Colossal" (they are also "long Berts"). IN May 1918 The Germans reached the Marne River, posing a threat to Paris. Three ledges up to 80 km deep were formed, the Entente defensive line was broken through to the full depth. The protrusions threatened the main highway Paris-Amiens-Arras-Calais, restricting the freedom of movement of Entente troops. It should also be noted that although America declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, until May 28, 1918, American troops did not participate in battles with the Germans - the United States accumulated forces in Europe, hoping that the war would end at best in 1919 . Finally, we note that the Germans were advancing in the west before July 18, 1918.
Creation of the Czechoslovak Corps
Already in August 1914 (in the first month of the World War), the formation of Czech units as part of the Russian army began. In September 1914, the Czech squad was created from defectors and prisoners, its staff consisted of 34 officers (of which 8 Czechs) and 921 non-commissioned officers and soldiers. The commander of the squad was the Russian colonel Lototsky. At the end of October 1914, the squad was sent to the Southwestern Front as part of the 3rd Army, commanded by the Bulgarian General Radko Dimitriev. In March 1915, Slovak prisoners and Czechs from Russian subjects began to be enrolled in the squad.
The command of the Southwestern Front highly appreciated the Czech squad and recommended that it be deployed in a regiment. The staff of the squad was increased to 2.090, and on December 27, 1915, the squad was renamed the 1st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment. In the summer of 1916, the Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade was created, consisting of two regiments, a total of about 5 thousand officers and lower ranks, under the command of Colonel Troyanov. In the offensive of the Russian army in July 1917 in Galicia, the Czechoslovak brigade broke through the front in the Zborov region, captured more than 3 thousand, losing up to 200 killed and up to 1000 wounded. For this success, the brigade commander was promoted to major general.
The brigade was deployed into a division, and in the fall of 1917 the 1st Czechoslovak Corps (two divisions) was created as part of 39 thousand soldiers and officers. The creation of the 2nd Corps was also planned - perhaps that is why many sources indicate that there were 60, 70 or even 80 thousand "rebellious" Czechoslovaks.
(Although after the Bolshevik coup there were those who transferred from the corps to the Red Army - in total218 man, that is0,56% . The most famous example is Yaroslav Hasek, editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the Czechoslovak Corps. Curiously, unlike Hasek,future president of communist Czechoslovakia, General Ludwik Svobodain 1918, being a second lieutenant, he did not desert from the Czechoslovak Corps.)
However, the 2nd Corps was never created, since the October Revolution broke out. The Bolsheviks made a separate peace with Germany, and the Czechoslovak corps had to go through Siberia to Vladivostok in order to get from there across three oceans to the European Front, where the Czechoslovaks intended to fight for the independence of their homeland.
But before you start your trip around the world, parts of the corps until mid-March 1918 (even after the conclusion of a separate peace between the Bolsheviks and Germany) still fought with the German and Austrian troops in Ukraine. Over the past four days of fighting against the Germans in the Bakhmach area, the Czechoslovaks lost up to 600 people killed and wounded.
"Rebellion"
March 26, 1918 The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR concluded an official agreement with the branch of the Czechoslovak National Council in Russia, according to which the Czechoslovaks were granted the right to travel to Vladivostok as private citizens. Czechoslovak units were obliged to hand over their weapons when passing through Penza. For guard duty, they were allowed to leave 168 rifles and 1 machine gun in each echelon. Artillery armament was completely surrendered (basically it was transferred to the Red Guards during the transition from Ukraine to Russia).
On April 5, 1918, robbers dressed in Russian soldier's uniform killed two Japanese in Vladivostok, and two Japanese companies landed in the city. Lenin, deciding that this was the beginning of a large-scale intervention, ordered the trains with Czechoslovaks to be stopped. On April 10, the Vladivostok Soviet of Deputies informed Moscow that no increase in the landing force was foreseen, and two days later Lenin's order was cancelled. However, this week of delay caused great irritation of the Czechoslovaks.
IN May 1918, as written in TSB, 14 thousand Czechoslovaks have already arrived in Vladivostok ( that is, more than a third of the composition of the corps), 4 thousand were in the Novo-Nikolaevsk region (now Novosibirsk), 8 thousand in the Chelyabinsk region, 8 thousand in the Penza region (250 km west of the Volga).
Relatively start There are two versions of the Czechoslovak “mutiny” (apart from the official Soviet one about the mythical “representatives of the Entente”). Both versions do not contradict each other, but rather complement.
According to the first version, the incident was the catalyst for the conflict. May 14, 1918 in Chelyabinsk. A train of Czechoslovaks and a train of former captive Hungarians, released by the Bolsheviks under the terms of the Brest Treaty, ended up at the station next door. As you know, in those days between the Czechs and Slovaks on the one hand, and the Hungarians on the other, there were strong national antipathies.
As a result, the Czech soldier Frantisek Duhacek was seriously wounded by a piece of iron thrown from the Hungarian echelon. In response, the Czechoslovaks lynched the culprit. And the Bolshevik authorities of Chelyabinsk arrested several Czechoslovaks the next day, not understanding who was right and who was wrong. The Czechoslovaks were furious, and not only freed their comrades by force, disarming the Red Guards, but also captured the city arsenal (2,800 rifles and an artillery battery) in order to properly arm themselves.
However, things had not yet come to a major bloodshed between the Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovaks - they managed to reach a peace agreement. However, then, according to this version, the central Bolshevik authorities ordered the immediate disarmament of the Czechoslovak Corps and the execution of all Czechoslovaks found with weapons. In addition, if at least one armed person was found, it was ordered to arrest all those in the echelon.
(It is curious thatSoviet official sourcesit is dated May 14, 1918, the mythical meeting of “representatives of the Entente, the command of the corps and the Socialist-Revolutionaries” where it was allegedly decided to raise a rebellion.)
According to another version, German General Staff he was very afraid of the appearance on the Western Front of the Czechoslovak Corps. And allegedly under the influence of the German ambassador, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, Chicherin, April 21 1918 sent a telegram to the Krasnoyarsk Soviet of Deputies stating:
"Czechoslovak detachments must not move east."
According to the same version, a telegram is sent to Penza from the head of the operational department of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs of the RSFSR Aralov from May, 23rd 1918:
“...immediately take urgent measures to delay, disarm and disband all units and echelons of the Czechoslovak corps, as a remnant of the old regular army.”
However, this telegram is quite consistent with the first version.
The People's Commissar of the Navy Trotsky himself telegraphed May 25 1918 to all Soviet deputies from Penza to Omsk:
“I am sending reliable forces to the rear of the Czechoslovak echelons, who are entrusted with teaching the rebels a lesson. Not a single wagon with Czechoslovaks should move east.”
Interestingly, according to the original official Soviet version, the Czechoslovak "mutiny" began 26 of May 1918. That is Trotskyannounced the Czechoslovaks as rebels in advance. Of course, when Trotsky's "reliable forces" began to attack the Czechoslovaks, they became "rebels", so to speak, legally, because they not only resisted, but also utterly defeated these very "reliable forces" and occupied a bunch of cities from Penza to Krasnoyarsk.
And in the latest Soviet sources, the date of the start of the “mutiny” was postponed to May 25 - despite the fact that neither Trotsky himself, nor his telegram of May 25 was mentioned at all.
It is noteworthy that in general the Czechoslovak Corps then no one was in charge. The former commander of the Russian corps, General Shokorov, had already formally been replaced by philosophy professor Tomasz Masaryk, who had not served in the army a day before and was also in Paris at that time.
(Also formally, the corps was already listed as part of the French army, since no Czechoslovakia, as a state, existed at that time, and the Russian Empire, whose army previously included the corps, ceased to exist.)
There was practically no command at the divisional and often even regimental level - the Russian officers who occupied many command and staff positions had mostly already left the corps (such was the demand of the Bolsheviks), and among the Czechs and Slovaks in high ranks then still few went. Radola Gaida, the only Czechoslovakian, had the highest rank captain. (Therefore, the statement about some "Conference of representatives of the Entente and command buildings on May 14” - an obvious lie.
The command of the Penza group of Czechoslovaks (8 thousand) was taken lieutenant Stanislav Chechek, who soon became a colonel (from July 17, 1918 - commander of the troops of the Russian People's Army). The Chelyabinsk group (8 thousand) was commanded by a Russian lieutenant colonel Voitsekhovsky(commander of the 3rd Czechoslovak regiment). Siberian group (4 thousand) - captain gaida, commander of the 7th regiment. The largest, Eastern group (14 thousand) was commanded by the chief of staff of the Czechoslovak Corps, Russian General Dieterichs.
In addition to these four, largest commanders of units of the Czechoslovak Corps can only be mentioned Lieutenant Shvets(who soon became a colonel and commander of the 1st Czechoslovak division), Russian captain Stepanov(commander of the 1st Czechoslovak regiment), Lieutenant Syrovy(who soon became a general and commander of the Czechoslovak Corps), Russian lieutenant colonel Ushakov(who died in battle near Krasnoyarsk in June 1918).
None of the four largest Czech military leaders was a regular military man. Before the World War, 30-year-old Syrovy was an official, 26-year-old Gaida was a shopkeeper, 32-year-old Chechek was a company representative, and 35-year-old Shvets was a teacher. However, the first three became generals in the summer of 1918, and the fourth - a colonel in a general's position.
War against the Bolsheviks
It should be immediately noted that, contrary to the numerous assertions of both Soviet and even some Western sources, the "rebellious" Czechoslovaks did not at all seek to advance in a westerly direction against the Bolsheviks, and even more so to capture Moscow (trying to do this with the forces just two divisions stretched from Penza to Vladivostok, would be completely ridiculous).
Initially, the Czechoslovaks overthrew the power of the Bolsheviks in those cities where their trains were or were nearby - on May 26 in Chelyabinsk and Novo-Nikolaevsk, on May 27 in Mariinsk, 28 in Nizhneudinsk, 29 in Kansk, Penza, Syzran, 31 in Petropavlovsk and Tomsk, 2 June in Kurgan.
The goal of the Czechoslovaks was to return to Europe, to the Western Front, via Vladivostok. However, since the Czechoslovaks were forced to be at war with the Bolsheviks, they could not leave their rearguard Penza group, as well as the Chelyabinsk group, to the mercy of fate.
Therefore, the largest group of Czechoslovaks continued to move up from Transbaikalia, concentrating in Vladivostok, and the Siberian group went to connect with both the Vladivostok and Chelyabinsk groups. The Chelyabinsk group was supposed to establish contact with both the Penza group in the west and with the Siberian group in the east - for this purpose, it occupied Omsk on June 7, and on June 10 it joined the Gaida forces. The Penza group began to make its way to the east, through Samara and Ufa to Chelyabinsk. The Siberian and Vladivostok groups established contact only on September 1, 1918.
According to the official Bolshevik version, the "rebellion of the Czechoslovaks" "was organized by the Anglo-French imperialists with the active support of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks."
And here is how the relationship between the Czechoslovaks and the Social Revolutionaries is described not by anyone, but by the then member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Mensheviks), then a member of the government of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), I.M. Maisky (later - Soviet diplomat, historian, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, USSR ambassador to Britain and deputy people's commissar for foreign affairs of the USSR):
“And just at that moment, the Czechoslovaks suddenly appeared on the scene. The details of the Czecho-Slovak intervention of 1918 have not yet been fully elucidated, nor are the circumstances that caused a clash between the Bolsheviks and the Czecho-Slovak echelons in Penza at the end of May of that year. Be that as it may, but this clash happened, and as a result, the city was captured by the Czechs for a short time, and the Soviet power was overthrown. The Penza events affected the Samara Socialist-Revolutionaries like a breath of living water. “Ah, here it is the external push that we so passionately expected to start an open performance!” they said to themselves, and immediately set to work.
brushvit (SR, member of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly) went to Penza and began negotiations with the Czechs. As he later related, his initial reception at the Czech headquarters was rather unfriendly. The Czechs declared that they were now heading to the Far East to go on to France, that they did not want to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia, and that, in particular, they had no confidence in the strength and seriousness of the organization in whose name Brushvit spoke. The latter tried to prove to the Czechs that it was possible to deal with the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and in these forms demanded from the Samara Party Committee, even before the Czechs arrived there, to carry out a coup and seize power. Brushvit's demand put the committee in an extremely difficult position: the Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves had absolutely insignificant forces, while the officer organization of Colonel Galkin, connected with them, hesitated and actually did nothing. The coup was not carried out, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries nevertheless managed to collect information about the location of the Bolshevik troops in Samara. This information was sent to Brushvit in Penza. At the same time, the peasant SR squads seized the Timashevsk plant located not far from Samara and established guards over the bridge across the Volga. Both facts apparently raised the prestige of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Brushvit in the eyes of the Czechs, since after that they became somewhat more amiable. But still, they did not increase their desire to participate in the Russian civil war. The Czech headquarters specifically stated that it would remain in Samara for only a few days to rest the troops and replenish supplies, and then continue on its way east. On June 7, Czech battalions approached Samara, and on the 8th, after a short battle, they broke into the city.
This is evidence of perfect non-involvement of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in "Organizing the rebellion of the Czechoslovaks" was published not just anywhere, but in the USSR in 1923.
And what about the notorious "Anglo-French imperialists"? And about them there is evidence of the same Maisky:
“The first question that the newborn Committee had to decide was the question of the Czechoslovaks. I have already pointed out above that the Czech headquarters was not going to stay in Samara for a long time. And since the Committee did not have its own armed forces, the question of life and death for it was the consent of the Czechs to a long-term participation in the "Volga front" against the Bolsheviks. The SRs used all their diplomatic art to achieve this goal, and also resorted to the help of the “French consuls” who were at that moment in Samara. Guinet, Jeannot and Como. Who these venerable diplomats were and in what capacity they were in Russia is a rather obscure matter. Subsequently, it turned out, for example, that Mr. Jeannot and Como did not have any authority from the French government, but during the period described they all called themselves "consuls", sometimes quarreled among themselves, accusing each other of imposture, and all were intensively engaged in anti-Bolshevik intrigues. The “French consuls” willingly assumed the role of intermediaries between the SRs and the Czechs, and since the Czechs ate French gold, they could not ignore the “friendly” advice of representatives of such a powerful “allied power”. These combined es-ero-French efforts were quite definite result: the Czechs agreed to temporarily stay on the Volga in order to give the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly time and opportunity to form their own army, and subsequently they received from their own and allied centers already quite definite directives on armed support for the anti-Bolshevik movement in Russia.
As you can see - and the imperialists no part in "Organizing the rebellion of the Czechoslovaks" did not accept. Although, as Maysky rightly points out, the Czechoslovak Corps had financed by France as part of its army.
The Red military leaders I.I. Vatsetis and N.E. Kakurin (the first - a direct participant in the hostilities against the Czechoslovaks, until the end of September 1918 - the commander of the Eastern Front, then the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the RSFSR) in their work "Civil War 1918-1921" assessed the forces the total forces of the Czechoslovak Corps, from the Volga to Vladivostok, in 30-40 thousand human. According to their description:
“In their proximity to the vital centers of the revolution, the most dangerous were the Penza (8,000 fighters) and Chelyabinsk (8,750 fighters) groups of Czechs. However, both of these groups initially showed a desire to continue moving east. On June 7, Voitsekhovsky's group, after a series of clashes with the Reds, occupied Omsk. On June 10, she connected with the echelons of the Gaida. The Penza group headed for Samara, which they captured on June 8 after a minor battle.
It's curious that subsequently Bolshevik historians began to officially assert that Samara was allegedly “stubbornly defended by 5,000 Red fighters for five days” . These statements don't match at all with a description of the events by the direct participants (Maisky and Vatsetis), who speak of short or insignificant battle and only one day.
According to the TSB (first edition, 1934), by the beginning of July 1918, the Reds had five armies on the Eastern Front:
“The 1st Red Army in the Simbirsk region (commander M.N. Tukhachevsky) consisted of 6,800 bayonets, 700 sabers, 50 guns; 2nd Army in the Orsk region - 2,500 bayonets, 600 sabers, 14 guns; 3rd Army in the Perm region - 18,000 bayonets, 1,800 sabers, 43 guns; 4th Army in the region of Saratov and Novouzensk - 23,000 bayonets, 3,200 sabers, 200 guns; 5th Army in the Kazan region on both banks of the Volga - 8,400 bayonets, 540 sabers, 48 guns.
That is, in total, the Reds had more than 65 thousand fighters and more than 350 guns against less than 16 thousand previously almost disarmed Czechoslovaks. True, June 13 against Bolsheviksthe workers rebelled Verkhne-Nevyansk and Rudyansk factories, later similar successful uprisings occurred at several more factories, including Votkinsk and Izhevsk (in August). Formation of the People's Army began in Samara in June socialist-revolutionary Komuch government. However, by July, all anti-Bolshevik forces on the Volga and Urals, including the Czechoslovaks, the rebellious workers and the People's Army, did not exceed 25 thousand poorly armed fighters.
Thus, the Bolsheviks had an almost threefold superiority in manpower, with an overwhelming superiority in artillery and armored vehicles. It is curious that the rebellious workers and the People's Army fought against Bolsheviksunder theirredbanners. It is also noteworthy that, according to some data,before 80% red manpowerwereGermans and Hungarians, and the basis of Tukhachevsky's army wasLatvians, that is, of order10% . The Latvian Vatsetis, a former colonel of the General Staff, also commanded the Red Front. Of the five commanders of the Red armies, three were Latvians.
Vatsetis and Kakurin: “On July 5, Chechek’s detachments occupy Ufa, and on July 3 near the station. Minyar unite with the Chelyabinsk units of the Czechoslovaks.”
This period includes the heaviest and longest battle of the units of the Penza group. On the 20th of June, the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Czechoslovak Regiment named after Jan Hus ( 300 fighters) fought for three days in the Buzuluk area with 3 thousand Germans and Hungarians liberated by the Bolsheviks from Russian captivity under the terms of the Brest Treaty. The Bolsheviks suggested to these Germans and Hungarians, who were heading west to continue the war against Britain, France and their allies, along the way, "punish the traitorous Czechs." To do this, the Reds armed the Germans and Hungarians not only with rifles and machine guns, but also with 20 artillery pieces and several armored cars. The Czechoslovaks in Buzuluk had not only artillery, but not even a single machine gun. Nevertheless, the Czechoslovaks, after stubborn fighting, put the Germans and Hungarians to flight.
Vatsetis and Kakurin: “The Eastern group of Czecho-Slovaks in 14,000 people. under the command of Gen. Dieterikhsa was passive at first. All her efforts were aimed at successfully concentrating in the Vladivostok region, for which she negotiated with local [those. red] authorities with a request for assistance in promoting trains. On July 6, she concentrated in Vladivostok and captured the city.”
Meanwhile, the Penza group of Czechoslovaks moved east and occupied Ufa on July 5, and the Chelyabinsk group recaptured Yekaterinburg from the Reds on July 25, which, as Vatsetis and Kakurin point out, “was important for the Czechs as being on their flank and threatening their communications.”
In the first days of August, the commander of the Red Front, Vatsetis, launched his five armies into the offensive. However, despite a threefold superiority in manpower and an overwhelming superiority in artillery and armored vehicles, the Reds did not reach no success.
Moreover, on August 6, units of the 1st Czechoslovak Regiment under the command of Captain Stepanov (according to Vatsetis - “2000 people with 4 guns”) took Kazan where was headquarters of the Eastern Front, under the protection of the 5th Latvian Regiment and the International Serb Battalion. As a result, the Serbs went over to the side of the Czechs, the commander of the front, Vatsetis, as he himself wrote, "left the city on foot with a bunch of his shooters."
Most importantly, the Bolsheviks lost what was in Kazan Russia's gold reserves. This reserve passed to the All-Russian Provisional Government (Ufa Directory).
In August 1918 the French government (in those years - the only one in the world government that wanted the elimination of the Bolshevik regime) tried to take control of the actions of the Czechoslovak Corps. For this, General Janen was sent to Siberia with the task of organizing the Eastern Front against Germany and the Bolsheviks loyal to her. However, General Zhanen reached Omsk only in December 1918 - when the situation in the world and the mood of the fighters of the Czechoslovak Corps changed dramatically.
In August 1918, the Czechoslovaks fought on the Volga and the Urals against the Reds, most of whom were Germans and Hungarians, that is, according to the Czechoslovaks, ultimately for the independence of their homeland, albeit far from it. It was these feelings that gave them strength. As Vatsetis pointed out:
“... near Kazan, the enemy found himself in a very difficult position. Here, his forces, not exceeding 2000-2500 people, occupied an arched front 100-120 km long and were covered by almost five times the superior forces of the 2nd and 5th armies.
In October 1918, when it became clear that Germany and Austria-Hungary were about to capitulate, the Czechoslovaks were increasingly overcome by the desire to return home as soon as possible. Some units began to leave the front, loaded into trains and sent to the east. Because of such moods of the corps fighters, on October 25, the commander of the 1st Czechoslovak division, Colonel Josef Shvets, shot himself. On October 28, 1918, Czechoslovakia became independent, and when this news reached the corps, the Czechoslovaks evacuated from Ufa and Chelyabinsk in early November.
Mission of General Janin
General Zhanen, formally listed as “Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces in Siberia” from November 1918, was in fact a general without an army. Neither the British, nor the American, and even more so the Japanese contingents stationed in the Russian Far East were subordinate to him. And actually the French contingent was negligible - one company of the Vietnamese in Vladivostok.
And General Zhanen tried to become at least the head of the Czechoslovak Corps. Zhanin wanted to raise his authority in the eyes of the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Admiral Kolchak - to show him that the Allies, and primarily France, support him with troops (though not actually French).
However, the maximum that Jeanin could achieve (thanks to the pressure of the French Prime Minister Clemenceau on the president of the Czechoslovak National Council Masaryk) was the order (January 27, 1919) of the commander of the Czechoslovak Corps Syrovy, according to which the Trans-Siberian Railway from Novo-Nikolaevsk (Novosibirsk) to Irkutsk was declared operational section of the hull.
Thus, General Janin and the French government, led by Clemenceau, managed to detain the Czechoslovaks in Russia for another year. No matter how eager they were to return to their homeland - in June 1919 there was even a riot suppressed by military force - sending Czechoslovaks by ships from Vladivostok to Europe began only in December 1919.
And in January 1920, the “valiant” French General Janin rendered his last “service” to the Czechoslovaks - he ordered the extradition of Admiral Kolchak, who was under their protection, to the Irkutsk socialist revolutionaries who had gone over to the side of the Bolsheviks.
The fighters and commanders of the Czechoslovak Corps, who once bravely fought against the Germans and the Reds, having lost more than four thousand of their comrades in four years of fighting - having fulfilled this vile order, they forever covered themselves with shame.
Back in the Middle Ages, being under strong military and political pressure from its neighbors, the Czech Republic was forced to recognize the power German emperors. The Czech people then repeatedly rose to national liberation uprisings, but could not achieve the desired independence for centuries. In the XIX century, after the official cessation of the existence of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, the lands of the Czech Republic were included in Austria.
Like many others Slavic peoples, hopes for the restoration of national independence, the Czechs associated with Russia.
“In the second half of the 19th century, Russophile sentiments were very strong in the Czech Republic. In Prague, it was even fashionable to speak Russian - this was considered evidence of progressive views. Many Czechs left the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and moved to Russia, where they worked as Latin teachers or became colonists and cultivated the land, ”the candidate said in an interview with RT historical sciences, Associate Professor, Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov Oleg Airapetov.
According to the scientist, immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, representatives of Czech organizations turned to Nicholas II with a proposal to create volunteer military units as part of the Russian army.
- Emperor Nicholas II and regiment commander Major General N.M. Kisilevsky bypass the system. Tsarskoye Selo. May 17, 1909
- topwar.ru
“Among the Czechs, patriotic, national-romantic and anti-German sentiments were very strong. By the way, it was they who initiated the renaming of St. Petersburg to Petrograd, ”the historian emphasized.
In the autumn of 1914, the first Czech squad was created and sent to the front. Against the backdrop of military successes in Russia, they started talking about creating an independent Czechoslovak state and that Czech volunteers could become the core of its future army. However, the Russian leadership failed to realize its plans. The front rolled back, and repressions against the Russophiles began on the territory of Austria-Hungary. In the spring of 1915, the Russian command decided to recruit not only Czechs living in Russia, but also prisoners of war into the Czech national formations. At the end of 1915, a rifle regiment was created on the basis of the squad, and a year later, a brigade.
“Chekhov was very often used in intelligence: they spoke languages, they were well oriented in the area. This service was dangerous, but they willingly went for it, ”said Airapetov.
In 1917, the Czechoslovak division and the Czechoslovak corps were formed in turn from the Czechs, Slovaks, Rusyns and Balkan Slavs.
“The October Revolution and talk about peace seriously agitated the fighters of the corps. In the eyes of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, they were traitors, they had no way back, ”said Oleg Airapetov.
Representatives of Czechoslovak organizations began negotiations on cooperation with the governments of the Entente countries. As a result, France in December 1917 announced the transfer of the Czechoslovak Corps under its command. Czech organizations and official Paris began to seek permission from Moscow to transfer the Czechoslovak Corps by sea to Europe - to the Western Front. In March 1918, the Council of People's Commissars approved the project of sending Czechoslovak soldiers and officers to Vladivostok with their subsequent transfer to France (63 echelons, 40 wagons each). At the same time, the Czechoslovak units were subject to partial disarmament: they could leave only one company with rifles and machine guns for each echelon.
Czechoslovak uprising in the heart of Russia
The authorities of the Entente countries were very unhappy with the withdrawal of Soviet Russia from the war. Moreover, the Western powers feared for the fate of the military cargo they delivered to Russia, but never used, which was in the warehouses of the largest domestic ports. Therefore, in the spring of 1918, the Entente raised the question of the intervention of Soviet Russia.
After the signing of peace between the Bolshevik government and the Central Powers, not only Czechs and Slovaks, but also prisoners of war of German and Hungarian origin to be released were moving around Russia en masse.
Due to mutual antipathy, the soldiers of the Czechoslovak Corps constantly clashed with them. The nervous atmosphere also intensified due to the fact that Moscow, under pressure from Germany, was delaying the process of sending the Czechoslovak Corps to Vladivostok. The soldiers feared that they could be deported to Austria-Hungary, where the "traitors" were awaiting execution or hard labor.
On May 14, 1918, in Chelyabinsk, from a train carrying Hungarian prisoners, a cast-iron leg from the stove flew into the Czechs, seriously injuring soldier Frantisek Duhacek. The fighters of the Czechoslovak Corps detained the culprit and "punished" him by inflicting several blows with a bayonet. The local Bolshevik authorities arrested the Czechoslovak soldiers and tried to completely disarm the echelons in the city. In response, the fighters of the Czechoslovak Corps on May 17 captured the local arsenal and artillery battery and freed their fellow countrymen.
A few days later, members of the Czechoslovak National Council were arrested in Moscow, who, at the request of Leon Trotsky, turned to their compatriots with a call for disarmament and an end to the rebellion. But the personnel of the corps have already elected their own self-government bodies, which, in response to attempts Soviet authorities to disarm the Czechs and Slovaks, called on fellow countrymen not to hand over their weapons, but, if necessary, to resist the local authorities.
On May 26-27, 1918, armed clashes began between the Czechoslovak units and the Red Guards in Irkutsk and Zlatoust. Being a powerful organized military force, the corps defeated the Soviet units and in just a few weeks captured Petropavlovsk, Kurgan, Omsk, Novonikolaevsk, Mariinsk, Tomsk and other cities.
- Civil War. Eastern front. Soldiers of the Czechoslovak Corps with a captured pennant of the Soviet detachment
- State Archive of the Russian Federation / russiainphoto.ru
On June 4, the Entente declared that the Czechoslovak Corps was part of its troops. In June, the first Russian anti-Bolshevik governments were formed in Samara and Omsk, captured by the corps.
Bloody whirlwind of war
Historians today give different dates for the beginning of the Civil War. Some are "attached" to the Chelyabinsk incident, while others believe that the war actually began much earlier.
“Of course, conflicts took place as early as 1917, but they were of a focal nature. Without external intervention, the war would never have become so bloody. The anti-Bolshevik forces initially had no support and could not hold on anywhere on their own. But after the rebellion of the Czechoslovak Corps, a full-scale war began, ”Oleg Airapetov expressed his opinion.
The civil war began gradually, notes Alexander Krushelnitsky, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University.
“In reality, the Civil War unfolded gradually, long before the Uprising of the Czechoslovak Corps, from the beginning of 1917. First, the soldiers killed the officers, then the Bolsheviks carried out an armed coup, there were clashes in Moscow. It soon became clear that intervention from the Entente should be expected, which would lead to the removal of the Bolsheviks from power, ”notes Alexander Krushelnitsky.
According to the historian, intervention in the border areas would not have had a mobilizing effect on the population, and the fighting along the entire length of the railway leading from the European part of Russia to the Far East dragged the inhabitants of the whole country into the conflict, to whom the war literally came home.
“The so-called Czechoslovak rebellion served as a catalyst for the formation of the Red Army,” Krushelnitsky emphasized.
According to the expert, there is every reason to believe that Leon Trotsky could somehow provoke this process on purpose.
Oleg Airapetov, on the contrary, is inclined to link the actions of the Czechoslovak Corps with the decision of the Entente to intervene.
“The rebellion led to the emergence of a new force that was not taken into account in any way, and its very appearance was in no way considered by the Bolsheviks,” Maxim Timonov, general director of the Fifth Rome publishing house, told RT. “It was a powerful maneuverable force that could not be ignored and to counter which it was necessary to hastily seek resources, and the resources in the summer of 1918 were small.”
According to Timonov, since the Chelyabinsk incident, the process of launching the Civil War has acquired an irrevocable character.
The command of the Czechoslovak Corps took an extremely hostile position towards the Bolsheviks, which led to a sharp increase in the counter-revolutionary movement.
In the winter - spring of 1918, a significant part of Soviet Russia was occupied on the one hand by the troops of Germany, and on the other - by the Entente. Against the backdrop of the uprising of the Czechoslovak Corps, anti-Bolshevik forces within the country sharply intensified.
In the fall of 1918, representatives of the White movement led by Anton Denikin and Pyotr Krasnov went on the offensive against the Bolsheviks in the south, and Alexander Kolchak in Omsk declared himself the supreme ruler of Russia. Anglo-French troops carried out a massive landing in the Black Sea ports. At the same time, after the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia was announced, the soldiers of the Czechoslovak Corps lost all desire to fight, and they retreated to the rear, transferring their positions to the White Guards.
Military success in late 1918 - early 1919 went over to the side of the Bolsheviks. They stopped Kolchak's offensive, defeated Krasnov and provoked revolutionary unrest in the French units. In the future, the Red Army successfully operated in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the North.
Representatives of the Czechoslovak corps by this time were largely demoralized and thought mainly about how to leave Russia, taking with them a lot of looted property. At the beginning of 1920, they actually handed Kolchak into the hands of the Soviet authorities and signed an armistice with Moscow.
The evacuation of the corps from Russia lasted almost a year. During this time, more than 72 thousand natives of the Czech Republic and Slovakia left Vladivostok on 42 ships.
The civil war in Russia continued until 1922. She claimed, according to scientists, from 13 to 25 million human lives. Moreover, only about 1 million people died during the hostilities, the rest became victims of hunger, epidemics and rampant crime caused by the war. The damage caused to the country's economy was estimated at 50 billion gold rubles, agricultural production was halved, and industrial production decreased several times.
According to Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, member of the Public Council under the Russian Ministry of Defense, the role of the Czechoslovak Corps in these events was rather negative. “The war would have started anyway - it was impossible to find a compromise between the old and new Russia, but without the intervention of the Czechoslovaks, it most likely would not have become so large-scale. Many today paint everything that the Bolsheviks did in black, but this is unfair. They raised the power that was literally lying on the pavement, and then they ensured the economic development of the country, created nuclear weapons, and launched a man into space. It's pointless to think that things could have been different. History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood. Instead, you just need to be aware of the mistakes of the past and try not to repeat them, ”Korotchenko said.
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