Russian Sideshow

by Robert L Willett

  Another factor in Wilson’s decision was the beginning of the Russian Revolution in that same month. This relieved President Wilson of entering the war on the side of the Allies and supporting the tyrannical tsar, Nicholas II. Recognizing the turmoil in his country, the tsar and his thirteen-year-old son, Alexis, abdicated on March 15, 1917, and a new provisional government was formed under Prince Lvov, and later Alexander Kerensky, favoring a democratic form of government. On March 20, the United States happily recognized the new government, and two days later, so did Britain, France, and Italy.3

  Wilson was almost emotional in his April 2 speech as he talked about Russia: “Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening in Russia?”4 Wilson at that time was not an expert on Russian affairs, but had learned much from the most knowledgeable American available, Charles R. Crane, a prominent Democrat and Russophile.5 In April 1916 Wilson had appointed David Francis as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, although he had little knowledge of that area. He, too, was counseled by Crane as he assumed his new responsibilities. Francis was a sixty-five-year-old Missouri Democrat, a former St. Louis mayor and state governor. He had a number of fine qualities, but his performance was clouded by a passion for whiskey, poker, and a friendship with a Russian woman, Mrs. Matilda de Cram, of suspicious background. The ambassador and the president were both learning as they became increasingly involved in Russia.

  In the early months of the Russian provisional government, the United States pledged its economic and technical assistance and sent several missions to Russia. One was the Root Commission, tasked with bolstering Russian participation in the war and assuring the new government of U.S. support. The other was the Railway Advisory Commission, sent to Russia in May 1917 to study the condition of the railroads, particularly the Trans-Siberian Railroad that provided the only real link between European Russia and Siberia. It ran almost five thousand miles from St. Petersburg and Moscow across Siberia to Vladivostok and was a vital part of the Russian nation. The Railway Advisory Commission’s successor organization, the Russian Railway Service Corps (RRSC), was later plagued by conflict with the Russians and with the Allies, most noticeably Japan. The Corps arrived in Vladivostok on December 15, 1917, in time to be confronted by the Bolshevik Revolution. Wisely, they retreated to Nagasaki, Japan, until things cooled down in Russia. The last elements of the RRSC did not find themselves in Russia until August 1918.6

  The Root Commission was led by Elihu Root, a prominent Republican who had considerable prestige in Washington, both as a politician and as an international lawyer. The rest of the commission comprised eminent men from various walks of life and included the very knowledgeable Charles Crane. Their mission was to try to keep Russia in the war and to offer American support for the fledgling new government. They arrived in Vladivostok at almost exactly the same time as the Railway Advisory Commission. Unfortunately, later events rendered their mission fruitless.

  In addition to the government missions, U.S. charities added their enthusiastic support, including the American Red Cross, the YMCA, and others. Raymond Robins, part of the Red Cross mission, played an interesting role, loudly proclaiming his views, which clashed with most diplomats, including U.S. Consul General Maddin Summers. Robins took much notice of the rising left wing in Russia and strongly favored recognizing the Soviet government, which put him in confrontation with Summers and Ambassador Francis, both of whom were openly anti-Bolshevik.7

  The Kerensky government pledged to continue the war against Germany, and on June 18, 1917, launched an ill-fated massive offensive against the Austro-Hungarian and German forces on the eastern front.8 Initially successful, the drive stalled; then, the entire front collapsed as the German counteroffensive smashed the poorly armed Russians. It was the final straw for the Russian Army, which simply melted away in an orgy of mutiny and destruction. Officers were murdered for simply being officers, and soldier’s committees made what few decisions were forthcoming. Russia was now out of the war, and there was no longer an eastern front. Unfortunately for the United States and its president, the provisional government under Alexander Kerensky was short-lived, and a successful October Revolution placed the Soviets in power.9 The Soviet takeover was reasonably bloodless, with mutinied sailors and soldiers driving Kerensky out of power and out of the capital disguised as an ordinary seaman.10 Led by the infamous Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the Soviets began their oppressive rule as civil war raged in Russia.

  The shift in power from the provisional government to the Soviets was extremely disappointing to the Allies. Under Soviet rule there was to be no continuation of the war, and to make certain of that, Lenin and Trotsky began negotiating a treaty with Germany. In December 1917 they signed an armistice with the Central Powers and also ceased fighting the Turks. The complicated negotiations kept on until February, when Germany tired of the process and once again invaded Russia. That was enough for the new Soviet government to swallow the unappetizing terms offered by Germany. In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed in mid-March 1918, Ukraine was given independence, as was Finland, and Russia lost control of part of Poland and the Baltic states.11 One result of Germany’s move into Russia was to move the Soviet seat of government from Petrograd to Moscow. Petrograd was considered too close to vulnerable Finland. The diplomats of the Allied nations decided to leave Petrograd, too, but decided going to Moscow could be interpreted as moving toward recognition of the new government. On February 27, Ambassador Francis led the Allied personnel to Vologda, located at the junction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Archangel-Vologda Railroad.12

  As the Soviets tried to consolidate their control, the United States maintained a state of confusion as to its position on Russia. Opinions and advice were available from any number of sources, but in most cases conflicted or offered no substantial information. The Allied nations were alarmed at Russia’s treaty and its possible effects on the western front. With no eastern front to hold their divisions, Germany was in position to shift large numbers of troops to France. The western front stalemate was thought to be in grave danger. This concern was strengthened by the massive offensive launched by Germany against the Allies on the western front in March 1918. American troops were just coming on the line at that time, so the brunt of the attack was met by the depleted French and British forces. The Allies were desperate to bring Russia back into the war, and they now began discussions as to how best to accomplish that. The French had virtually exhausted their manpower in the carnage of western front warfare, and the British also were in no position to offer much in the way of manpower for any Allied intervention into Russia. The two countries that could afford to send men were Japan and the United States. Pressures began to mount on Wilson from Britain and France to agree to a Russian intervention. In fact, by May all the diplomats in Vologda, if not their governments, were ready to intervene.13

  One of the more significant events took place in May 1918, not in Moscow or in Vladivostok, but in the town of Chelyabinsk. In any analysis of the American entrance into Russia in 1918, it is necessary to explain the presence of a military force known as the Czech Legion. Its history is legendary in itself and contributed significantly to Allied and American strategy and emotional justification for what became known as the Intervention.

  When war was declared in 1914, there was no country called Czechoslovakia. What was to become that nation was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of the Central Powers aligned against the Allies. However, the people of the Czech region were more closely tied ethnically to Russia than to the European Austro-Hungarians and were a very unenthusiastic group fighting for the Central Powers. As the war progressed on the eastern front, the Czech soldiers found ways to surrender, sometimes en masse, to their Russian cousins.

  The movement toward independence for the Czechs had not been encouraged by the tsar, but after the March revolution, the provisional governmen
t was sympathetic to the growing pressure for independence by leaders Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes. They had successfully lobbied for a Czech Corps to be made up of Russian Czechs and Czech prisoners of war to be used by the Allies. This was accomplished in the spring of 1917, and the corps fought effectively, but in vain, in the ill-fated offensive of Russian general Brusilov, which collapsed in the summer of 1917. With the collapse of the offensive, the Russian Army ceased fighting. That encouraged Masaryk to suggest that the very-much-intact Czech Corps be incorporated into the western front. In December 1917 the Allies officially accepted the idea, and the Czech Corps was placed under French command and assigned to the western front. However, there remained the slight problem of moving the fifty-thousand-man corps from the Ukraine to France across areas controlled by Germans and Austro-Hungarians. The solution was to go the other way, east, across Siberia.

  In March 1918, the Soviet government unhappily agreed to the punitive German terms of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, giving up much of the Ukraine and the Baltic republics. At the same time, the Soviets, in a telegram from Joseph Stalin, gave hasty permission for the Czech Corps to move across Russia to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railroad without interruption by the Bolsheviks. “And so their echelons began their long pilgrimage of nearly 6,000 miles.”14

  As the trains began to roll toward Vladivostok, Stalin’s authorization became increasingly meaningless. The trains moved from town to town, facing local Soviet governments and stationmasters who felt no need to obey a far-off official and who saw possibilities for payoffs. The payoffs were frequently made in the form of weapons, given up by the corps, now known as the Czech Legion, to insure safe passage. As the demands grew, any incident was used by either side to begin armed conflict. As would be expected, a complete break with the Reds came in May 1918. By that time the first trains were arriving in Vladivostok bringing about twelve thousand Czech soldiers.15 By May, the legion was spread from Penza in the west to Vladivostok in the east, with one section in Chelyabinsk. In that city, one Czech on the eastbound train was killed by a piece of iron thrown by a Hungarian on a westbound trainload of returning prisoners. The Hungarian culprit was promptly identified by the Czechs and hanged. The situation degenerated into a series of retaliations. Finally, the Czechs left their train, stormed the railroad station and on May 17 seized the local armory, releasing the Czechs in custody. The action had repercussions in Moscow; a few days later the Czech National Council in Moscow was ordered to disarm the Czechs. The officers of the democratic Czech Legion met in Chelyabinsk as the Congress of the Czechoslovak Revolutionary Army and, when confronted with the National Council’s order to disarm, published a resolution that included the legion’s pledge to fight on to Vladivostok.16 This was in spite of Masaryk’s urgent pleas for the legion to maintain its neutrality as they crossed Siberia. Plainly, there would be no pretense of neutrality after the events of May 1918. From then on, every Czech train would find itself in some kind of confrontation with the Bolsheviks.17

  Sadly, even as the relations between Czechs and Russians disintegrated, the Allies themselves were in a quandary as to the fate of the legion. In a series of meetings they had proposed that the legion be split, with those already east of Omsk to continue on to Vladivostok and those west of the city to be rerouted to Archangel. The British had hoped to divert the western portion of the legion to the Murmansk area to support their planned invasion. These discussions became moot when the Czechs issued their resolution and vowed to continue to fight their way east. The plan to split the legion was one more example of how the warring nations differed in their use of the valiant band of legionnaires.

  After the open split with the Bolsheviks, fighting broke out all up and down the railroad, and the disciplined troops of the legion found the local Bolshevik troops no match for their skills. In three months the Czechs had established themselves along the railroad up to Irkutsk, but the Reds held Irkutsk and the road east of there through Khabarovsk and down to within forty miles of Vladivostok. The Czechs had even managed to establish anti-Bolshevik governments in areas they controlled. In Vladivostok, however, there was no word of the May resolution, and the Czechs there were confused by reports of fighting in the west. So those in Vladivostok took no action, partially because of Masaryk’s explicit orders to remain neutral.

  On the morning of June 28, 1918, the Czechs in Vladivostok learned that arms in Vladivostok were being sent for use against Czechs in the west, and they demanded that the Soviet government in Vladivostok surrender its arms. When the Reds refused there was a brief skirmish and the outmanned, outgunned government surrendered the city to Gen. Mikhail Dietrichs, a Russian then commanding Czech forces in Vladivostok. The next move was for Dietrichs to head west to aid Czech Gen. Rudolf Gaida’s force, then doing battle for Irkutsk. Dietrichs left Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, turned off at Nikolsk to take the Chinese-Eastern Railroad to aid their comrades attacking Irkutsk, an attack that began July 11.

  While some Czechs were on the move across Manchuria, others were moving west on the Ural front. This was the central force under General Voitsekhovskii, whose assignment was to take Ekaterinburg from his base in Chelyabinsk. The fighting was fierce as he moved north, probably due to the fact that the Bolsheviks held Nicholas II and his family in Ekaterinburg, and they feared his recapture. To prevent that happening, the tsar and his whole family were executed by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 17, 1918. General Gaida had planned to attack Irkutsk, then move on toward Lake Baikal to try to join friendly Ataman Semenov on the other side of the cliffs blocking the railroad. After taking Irkutsk, Gaida moved on to take Verkhne-Udinsk, which opened the railroad across Manchuria all the way from Vladivostok to Kazan in the east. Coinciding with the taking of Verkhne was the arrival of Dietrichs from Vladivostok who joined the western Czechs near Chita. The French high command gave command of the Czechs to Jan Syrovy, who had been a first lieutenant when the legion was first formed. The veteran Dietrichs, a Russian, was named Syrovy’s chief of staff. With their combined forces, they moved back west to open a new front in the Urals. Historian Richard Goldhurst warned, “The vanguard of the Allied intervention was ready for the big push. Russia, however, is a place that swallows venturesome vanguards whole.”18

  The political climate was fast changing in the summer months of 1918. The French, in particular, favored using the Czechs as their elite force in Russia, instead of shipping them back to the western front. A well-trained and disciplined military unit with the experience of the Czechs was something to be sought after, and messages were sent out from the American diplomats and the French urging the legion to stay in Russia.

  The reasons that persuaded the legion to move back to the west and begin a push against the Bolsheviks were simple. The representatives of both the French and American authorities had virtually promised that Allied forces would be coming to relieve the Czechs in the near future. Consul General DeWitt Poole was the American official who had most consistently promised the Czechs that Allied forces were committed to come to their aid. After the Intervention, Maj. Gen. William S. Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force Siberia (AEFS), wrote, “Mr. Poole by his communication led the Czechs, or helped lead them, to believe the United States and the Allies were going to intervene in Siberia.”19 Poole’s comments, coupled with similar French remarks, incensed General Graves, who consistently tried to follow President Wilson’s instructions to avoid any interference. The Czech leadership also felt that the legion’s cooperation with the Allies would help insure the independence of Czechoslovakia, and there was a concern that Bolsheviks and Germans were plotting to stabilize Soviet control.

  The Czech forces were successful on the eastern Ural campaign for a brief time, but they had reached their limit. On September 10, 1918, almost as the Americans were landing in Archangel and in Vladivostok, the Red Guard under Leon Trotsky attacked them in force, and their retreat began. The White Army in Siberia turned out to be as ruthles
s as the Bolsheviks, tolerating little opposition and committing countless atrocities with their own forces and their allied Cossack terrorists, Atamans Semenov and Kalmykof.

  The Czech general Rudolph Gaida was a character out of a novel. Only twenty-six in 1918, he was young, rash, outspoken, adventure-some, and brave beyond question. But he was also highly political and temperamental. As the Czechs manned the Ural front in the fall of 1918, they tired of Allied promises of coming aid and were under increasing pressure from Bolsheviks. On October 28, 1918, two events illustrated the polar experiences of Czechs. First, the nation of Czechoslovakia was established with a bloodless coup in Prague. Second, a mutiny of legionnaires so discouraged their colonel, Josef Svec, that he shot himself. It was the first of many refusals by Czech soldiers to fight. Other mutinies followed; on October 20, the badly mauled Fourth Czech Division refused to fight as the Reds continued to advance. On October 24, the First Regiment mutinied, and the three young generals, Gaida, age twenty-six, Stanislav Cecek, age thirty-two, and Jan Syrovy, age thirty-three, who had tried to halt the Soviet advance, were left virtually without troops.20

  The next blow to the legion was the coup that ousted a democratic Siberian government and installed Adm. Alexander Kolchak as Supreme Ruler of All Russia, in reality the dictator of the land. One legionnaire wrote, “Filled with indignation and bitter disappointment, the Legionaries lost the last of their enthusiasm for the anti-Bolshevik cause.” This quote is from a chapter of a book written by Gustav Becvar of the Sixth Regiment in a chapter entitled, “To Hell with Intervention.”21