The march of the seventy thousand
by Henry Baerlein
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry BaerleinEdition: Unknown Binding
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1926
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 287
Publisher: L. Parsons
Book Reviews of The march of the seventy thousand
Book Review: The story of the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia during the Bolshevik Revolution...
Summary: 3 Stars
and with a title clearly designed as a play on Xenophon's Greek classic "March of the Ten Thousand." Hard to find, a bit dated in style but an interesting book for all that. And the tale of the Czechoslovak Legion is indeed an interesting one......
The Czechoslovak Legions were Czech and Slovak volunteer armed forces fighting together with the Entente powers during World War I. Their purpose was to win the support of the Entente (France, Britain and later the USA) for the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later, many Czech and Slovaks captured during the war joined these units and the Legions grew into a force of tens of thousands.
Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik government concluded the separate Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks and the corps agreed to evacuate the Legion to France to join the Czechoslovak corps and continue fighting there. Because Russia's European ports were not safe, the corps was to be evacuated by a long detour via Siberia, the Pacific port of Vladivostok, and the USA. A slow evacuation by the Trans-Siberian railway was exacerbated by transportation shortages - as agreed in the Brest-Litovsk treaty, the Bolsheviks were at the same time repatriating German, Austrian and Hungarian POWs from Siberia. Around this same time Leon Trotsky, the then People's Commissar of War, under intense pressure from the Germans, ordered the disarming and arrest of the Legion, thus betraying his promise of safe passage.
It all came to a head in May 1918 with what is generally referred to as The Revolt of the Legions. There are a number of versions of how it all started. Clearly, there was a bit of conflict between trains of Legionnaires going to fight on the Allied side and German and Austro-Hungarian prisoners (including some Czechs and Slovaks) going back to fight for their side. As one version goes, the legionnaires stopped a Hungarian train at Chelyabinsk and shot a soldier who had apparently thrown something at their train. Then, the local Bolshevik government arrested some of the Czechs. To free them their comrades had to storm the railway station, and subsequently occupied the whole city. This incident triggered hostilities between the Legion and the Bolsheviks. All up and down the line, the Legion - clearly being denied their safe passage - fought back.
In the beginning, the various parts of the Legion were strung out and separated on the railway. A complicated series of battles took place with the primary objective of re-connecting the various groups and getting to Vladivostok - for their exit to the Western front. As it became clear that this was the only organized fighting force in Russia (the Red Army under Trotsky was still small and disorganized), the Allied governments largely agreed that the Czechs might be useful re-opening an Eastern Front. Elements within the Allied governments (notably Winston Churchill), concerned about the Bolsheviks, had a different agenda. And the Czechs, of course, had their agenda - do what the Allies said (they were technically reporting to the French and General Janin) so that they would be on the winning side.
At its peak, the Legion took over a considerable area around the railway from just east of Volga River all the way to Vladivostok. In the process, they captured a large amount of military and civilian equipment and material and tried to provide a fair and orderly presence in the middle of the chaos of Russia and revolution, controlling their temporary territory through the use of heavily armed and armored trains. Their existence played a role in the rise of other anti-Bolshevik groups and Siberia-based independence movements. The Allies instructed the Czechs to push back up the line, which they did - reaching Yekaterinburg. The fact the Czech Legion was just a day away appears to have been one of the motivating forces behind the hasty execution of the Czar and his family.
Meanwhile, with Russian invovlement in World War One now over, the Allies began the Siberian Intervention, with troops from the U.S., France, Great Britain, and Japan landing in Vladivostok, where the Czechs had been in charge for some time. In Vladivostok, however, the Allied rescue of the Czech Legion got sidetracked. The Japanese forces arrived in April with 500 Marines followed by 50 British soldiers in May and 500 Americans in June and 600 more British and some French in late June 1918. They arrived to find everything changed in their mission with open warfare going on between the Bolsheviks and Czech Legions and White Russians. On top of that World War One would end in a few short months, Nov 1918, making the whole mission to bring the Czechs and Slovaks to France and fight on the Western front pointless. The confusion as to what to do now only got worse. The Japanese got themselves directly involved in the fighting on the side of the Czech Legion and White Russians as their Government saw this as an opportunity. By September 1918 there were 70,000 Japanese, 829 British, 1,400 Italian, 5,002 American and 107 Annamese troops under French command in and around Vladivostok. The chaos in Siberia included the arrival of eight train cars of gold bullion from the Imperial reserve in Kazan.
Exhausted by their trek across Siberia, disgusted by the brutality around them, and eager to return to their brand new nation, the Czechs cut a deal with the Bolsheviks - gold and the leader of the anti-Bolshevik army, Admiral Kolchak for free passage home (1920). Eventually, with the help of the American Red Cross and their own funds, most of the Legion--totaling 67,739 soldiers--was evacuated via Vladivostok[2] and returned to become the core of the army of the First Republic.
A small number of Czech and Slovak communists stayed behind. (One early Legionnaire to join the Bolsheviks was Jaroslav Hasek, later the author of The Good Soldier ?vejk. He returned to Czechoslovakia in a more comfortable way, with a Russian bride to boot--which surprised his Czech wife, but not others who knew him.) A few others stayed with the White Russian forces for a while. One interesting example was that of General Radola Gajda, who later became a leader of the Czech fascist movement and also provided significant arms to the Korean independence movement. These arms helped the Koreans win the Battle of Chingshanli in 1920. The retreat through Siberia became an element of the heroic military cult around the legions, compared to the Anabasis of Greek mercenaries across Persia - which is where this book made it's mark in the 1920's when the story was well known.
The Legend of the Tsars Gold: A common version of the story is that only seven train cars of the Imperial gold seized by the Legion were returned to Moscow - the Legion kept the eighth to buy or lease ships in Vladivostok. What was left was then used to set up the Legion Bank (Legionáøská banka or Legiobanka) in Prague. There is some evidence - not all of it circumstantial - that some of the gold made its way to the Czechs. William Clarke in The Lost Fortune of the Tsars cites records from the Vladivostok branch of the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. Shay McNeal in The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar refers to San Francisco banking transactions. The most dramatic evidence, however, is circumstantial. $323 million in gold shrank to $200 million by the time it reached the Bolsheviks.
Even more dramatic, however, is the fact of the bank itself. The Bank of the Czech Legion - Legiobanka - with its headquarters on Prague's "Na Poøíèí" street is a masterpiece of First Republic Czech architecture. Its façade features scenes of the Legion's retreat through Siberia and sculptures of Legionnaires top the pillars. The building interior is a unique combination of Moravian graphic themes, art deco, and Czech craftsmanship. It has been widely admired, though it was also an object of resentment and suspicion. The Soviet Red Army looted the bank in May of 1945 and shipped its material assets to Moscow. They also took their revenge on any Legionnaires still alive. The Legion Bank Building was restored by the Czech Export Bank and recently sold to a developer. The bank still maintains a branch on the ground floor.
There's a few other books around on the Czechosolvak Legion. Try the following:
Fic, Victor M., The Bolsheviks and the Czechoslovak Legion, Shakti Malik, New Delhi 1978
Footman, David, Civil War in Russia, Faber & Faber, London 1961
Goldhurst, Richard, The Midnight War, McGraw-Hill, New York 1978
Hoyt, Edwin P., The Army Without a Country, MacMillan, New York/London 1967
Kalvoda, Josef, Czechoslovakia's Role in Soviet Strategy, University Press of America, Washington DC 1981
Kalvoda, Josef, The Genesis of Czechoslovakia, East European Monographs, Boulder 1986
McNeal, Shay, The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar, Harper Collins, New York 2002 pp 221-222
Unterberger, Betty Miller, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 2000
White, John Albert, The Siberian Intervention, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1950
Note: There were quite a few books on the Legion written in Czech that were published in the 1920s, but most were hard to find following the Soviet victory in World War II.
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