Dreams of a great small nation the mutinous army that threatened a revolution, destroyed an empire, founded a republic, and remade the map of Europe

415 Pages·2016·3.73 MB·English

by  Masaryk

TO KATRINA
Whose love, patience, and understanding make all things possible
CONTENTS
List of Maps
Acknowledgments
Foreword
INTRODUCTION
LOSING A GREAT WAR
CHAPTER ONE
UNDER ENEMY EYES
CHAPTER TWO
INSIDE ENEMY LANDS
CHAPTER THREE
MASARYK’S EXILE
CHAPTER FOUR
RUSSIA UNRAVELS
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ODYSSEY BEGINS
CHAPTER SIX
THE SEIZURE OF SIBERIA
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE AMBIVALENT INTERVENTION
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
CHAPTER NINE
THE VIEW FROM SIBERIA
CONCLUSION
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Index
LIST OF MAPS
World War One’s Eastern Front, 1917
Peoples & Nations, Central & Eastern Europe, 1914
Trans-Siberian Railway, Europe & Asia
Trans-Siberian Railway, Siberia
Trans-Siberian & Chinese Eastern Railways, Russian Far East
Trans-Siberian Railway in Vicinity of Lake Baikal
Post-World War One Nations, Central & Eastern Europe
Modern Czecho-Slovakia, Pre-1993
Life is warfare, and the sojourn of the stranger in a strange land.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations II1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WISH TO acknowledge the assistance and support of Max Boot, Richard
Immerman, John Lehman, and Richard Pipes, all of whom encouraged and
assisted me in this project. A big thanks to Neal Orkin, who brought to my
attention the five-volume work Cestami odboje: Jak žily a kudy táhly čs. legie
(The Road to Resistance: How the Czech Legion Lived and Fought) that was
published in Prague in the 1920s. Thanks also to Alan H. Luxenberg, president
of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, for his enthusiasm, as well as to the
generosity of the Earhart and Tawani Foundations, all of which was absolutely
decisive in making this project possible.
I owe a special debt to the late Russell F. Weigley, the scholar and teacher
who introduced me to the subject of military history. Ivo Reznicek, the nephew
of a legionnaire, agreed to render the stories of the legionnaires into English,
settling accounts for the scolding he received as a boy in communist Czecho-
Slovakia, where he was reprimanded by his teacher for speaking in class of his
uncle’s exploits in the Czecho-Slovak Legion. The staffs at the Immigration
History Research Center Archives at the University of Minnesota, the special
collections library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the National Czech
and Slovak Museum & Library, and the Vancouver Public Library were helpful.
Many thanks also to Anne Applebaum, Mary Andrejka, Andrew Bultas, Edward
Chlanda, Robert Faltin, Stella Gabuzda, Arlene Gardiner, Elinor Gay, George E.
Glos, George Hanc, John Hanc, Penny Heger, Tomas Jakl, Frank Kaderabek,
Mary Kaderabek, Sarah Kaderabek, Radomir Luza, Jerry Machalek, Paul
Makousky, Joan McGuire Mohr, Lukas Pavlicek, Daniel Pipes, Helen
Rappaport, Miloslav Rechcigl Jr., Sandra Scott, Jim Stroner, Ivan Vilimek, and
Milos Zika. An especially large debt is owed to my wife, Katrina, and my
daughters, Hilary, Whitney, and Julia, for their patience and understanding
during this long trek, which consumed many more years than the legion’s epic
journey.
FOREWORD
WORLD WAR I and the Russian Revolution remain the two most significant
events of the twentieth century and the little-known story told in these pages had
significant impacts on both of them. We know that the war originated in
Sarajevo, now the capital of independent Bosnia-Herzegovina, but the conflict
also had much greater consequences in Eastern Europe and Russia than it did in
the West. While the Western Front’s near-limitless casualties were personally
horrific and socially traumatic, the combatant nations survived. Indeed, these
battles are often quizzically recalled for their waste of human life in an otherwise
inconsequential exercise of power.
The war in the east was far more consequential, casting adrift multinational
empires, ancient dynasties, and entire societies amidst the collapse of four
regimes—Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian—that governed
much of the earth. Governments were deposed, new nations created, old ones
destroyed, dictatorships and democracies founded, the map of Europe redrawn,
and the twentieth century forever altered. And while peace finally dawned in the
west on November 11, 1918, war-borne conflicts continued to roil Russia,
Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and especially the
Middle East. Conflicts continue today in all these places.
War’s crippling consequences ushered in the Russian Revolution, giving
birth to a regime that would lead to a decades-long global cold war that divided
Europe, east from west. When communist rule collapsed in 1991, more than half
a dozen European states were liberated from Moscow’s grip, and the Soviet
Union imploded into another fifteen smaller national units. German anger at
losing the Great War prepared the ground for World War II and the Holocaust.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire left behind many states throughout the
Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East that still struggle to establish stable
governments and mutual peace. Austria-Hungary’s collapse gave birth to
Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia, which served as trip wires and
hostages for hot and cold wars. Azerbaijan, Czecho-Slovakia, Georgia, Moldova,
Ukraine, and Yugoslavia have splintered into smaller units, and conflicts