The Czechoslovak Legion in the First World War

The Czechoslovak Legion is the name given to the units that Czechs and Slovaks, most of them former soldiers of Austria-Hungary, raised on the Allied side. The most important was the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia, which in the spring of 1918 numbered, depending on the source, between about 40,000 and 50,000 men. It grew from a handful of volunteers in 1914, won fame at Zborov in July 1917, and in May 1918, on its way to France, took up arms against the Bolsheviks and seized the Trans-Siberian Railway. Its fight helped win the Allies over to the Czechoslovak cause, and the last legionaries left Russia only in September 1920.

From druzhina to brigade (1914–1917)

Before the war about a hundred thousand Czechs and Slovaks lived in Russia, and many of them tied the war with Austria-Hungary to the hope of a state of their own. In August 1914 the Tsar allowed them to form the Czech Druzhina (PL) in Kiev, at first about 700 volunteers. The tsarist authorities, however, distrusted prisoners and deserters who had broken their oath to the Habsburgs, and for a long time would not let them recruit in the camps. The Czechs were used above all as scouts and interpreters, split into small groups attached to many divisions.

Even so the unit slowly grew. In December 1915 it became the Jan Hus Rifle Regiment, and by an order of 6 April 1916 a rifle brigade, whose soldiers fought in the Brusilov offensive. The February Revolution changed the authorities’ attitude. The Provisional Government was friendlier to the nations fighting the Habsburg monarchy, and in May 1917 the leader of the exiles, Professor Tomáš Masaryk, came to Petrograd to press for a larger Czechoslovak army.

Zborov and the corps (1917)

On 2 July 1917, during the Kerensky offensive, the Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade, about three and a half thousand men in three regiments, attacked Austro-Hungarian regiments at Zborov that were largely Czech themselves. Within a few hours it went through line after line of trenches and, according to Czech sources, took about 3,300 prisoners. Militarily it was an episode, but the news that the Emperor’s subjects were fighting his army as allies of the enemy went round the world.

After Zborov the Provisional Government agreed to recruitment in the prisoner-of-war camps, and the brigade grew quickly. By an order of the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Nikolay Dukhonin, dated 9 October 1917 (26 September in the Julian calendar), the Czechoslovak Corps of two divisions was formed. It was led by Russian generals, Vladimir Shokorov as commander and Mikhail Diterikhs as chief of staff. After the Bolshevik coup Masaryk declared that the corps would not take part in Russia’s internal quarrels, and a French decree of December 1917 made it part of the Czechoslovak army in France. From then on the army had an Allied superior, though it still had no state.

Anabasis (1918)

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk left no room in Russia for a foreign army fighting the Central Powers. At the beginning of 1918 the corps was in Ukraine, and when the German offensive began, its 1st Division held off the Germans at Bakhmach until the legionaries’ trains had passed through the junction. It was decided that the corps would travel by the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, and from there by ship to France. On 26 March at Penza an agreement on the journey was made with the Soviet authorities, leaving the legionaries few weapons for self-defence. The echelons stretched over thousands of kilometres, and distrust grew on both sides.

On 14 May at Chelyabinsk station legionaries lynched a Hungarian prisoner who had wounded one of them, and then freed their arrested comrades. On 25 May Leon Trotsky ordered the Czechoslovaks to be disarmed and anyone found with a weapon shot on the spot. The revolt spread along the whole line. Supported by Russian opponents of the Bolsheviks, the legionaries took Samara in June. After the fall of Omsk the units of Radola Gajda moved east and in July entered Irkutsk, and on 7 August the Czechoslovaks and the Komuch volunteers took Kazan and seized the Russian gold kept there. The legion’s plight won over President Wilson: in August the Japanese and the Americans sent troops to Siberia, officially to help the legionaries.

France and Italy

Smaller legions were raised in the west. In France the 21st and 22nd Czechoslovak Rifle Regiments were formed in 1918; on 30 June they took the oath at Darney, and in the autumn they fought in Alsace and the Ardennes. In Italy a convention signed on 21 April 1918 by Milan Rastislav Štefánik allowed the 6th Czechoslovak Division to be formed from prisoners; it stood in reserve at Vittorio Veneto. In the summer France and Britain, and in September the United States, recognised the Czechoslovak National Council of Masaryk and Edvard Beneš.

The end of the war and the way home (1918–1920)

On 28 October 1918 Czechoslovak independence was proclaimed in Prague. The legionaries celebrated the birth of their state with fanfare, but they were less and less willing to fight in the Russian Civil War. Discipline weakened, and some regiments refused orders to go to the front. The Russian branch of the National Council condemned Kolchak’s coup, at the end of 1918 the legionaries were pulling out of the front, and in 1919 they only guarded the railway, the Whites’ sole supply line.

In January 1919 Štefánik ordered the wounded and sick to be sent home, and in August the order came to evacuate the whole army. In the winter of 1919 and 1920 the legionaries travelled east together with the retreating Whites. In January 1920 at Irkutsk they handed Admiral Alexander Kolchak over to his opponents, and on 7 February, the day of his execution, they concluded an armistice with the Red Army at Kuytun. Ships from Vladivostok carried them mostly round India to Trieste, and the last one sailed on 2 September 1920. According to the Czech historian Jaroslav Vaculík, 67,730 people returned from Siberia, most of them soldiers. By the most often quoted estimate about 4,100 legionaries died in Russia, and many veterans, such as Gajda and Jan Syrový, later rose to high posts in the Czechoslovak army and state.