From Siberia To Freedom: The Odyssey Of The Czechoslovak Legion

Emperor Franz Josef visiting Prague in 1891, when today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

With Czech and Slovak culture largely repressed by Austro-Hungarian authorities, a growing call for independence was taken up by Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (center).

With a Czech mother, Slovak father, and American wife, Masaryk was well-placed to rally for an independent Czechoslovakia.

Czechs and Slovaks wearing Russian gas masks. After World War I broke out in 1914, thousands of Czechs and Slovaks living inside Russia heeded Masaryk’s call to fight alongside Russians against the Central Powers, which included Austria-Hungary.

The Czech and Slovak volunteers (pictured on a patrol on the Eastern Front) saw themselves as freedom fighters against an oppressive regime. But the Austro-Hungarian authorities considered them traitors to the empire...

...and if caught, they faced execution. This Czech fighter was hanged after his capture by Austrians in 1918.

Czechs and Slovaks charge into the fray against Austrians during the battle of Zborov on the Eastern Front. The battle won the fighters a reputation for grit and ability.

But after Russia’s 1917 revolution ended with Bolsheviks seizing power, their situation inside what had been the Russian Empire became increasingly precarious.

When the Bolsheviks withdrew Russia from the war in the spring of 1918, some 40,000 well-armed Czechs and Slovaks found themselves trapped.

With the war still raging to their west, the hunted legion’s only escape route was east through Siberia to the port city of Vladivostok -- a quarter of the way around the world.

The legion cut a deal with Josef Stalin, then a Bolshevik leader, who promised safe passage if the Czechs and Slovaks surrendered most of their weapons.

But tensions were high. As Russia collapsed into chaos, the eastbound Czechoslovaks brushed past freed Austrian and Hungarian prisoners of war headed west.
In May, a freed POW flung an object at a Czech legionnaire, sparking a bloody brawl. Local Bolsheviks arrested the Czechs involved, but the legion wasn't having it and stormed in to free its comrades. Bolshevik leadership reacted furiously, demanding the Czechoslovaks be disarmed or “shot on the spot.”

The legion responded by gunning up...

...and capturing this armored train from the Bolsheviks.

The “Orlik” (Little Eagle) was wrapped in steel armor, bristled with machine guns, and bookended with two cannons.

Legionnaires inside the Orlik. Their journey east continued, but while the Czechoslovak rebels were now virtually unstoppable, the going was slow.

The legion, by now some 61,000 strong, needed to clear the tracks...

...repair sabotaged bridges...

...and fight off attacks from Bolsheviks (and swarms of mosquitoes).

But morale was high, and the trainloads of Czechoslovak fighters soon made a home on the rails.

Bakeries were created inside some wagons.

Others were decorated with images of home. This door depicts the Prague Castle above the message, “You, glory of the Czechs, as you used to live, you live and will live on in our hearts.”

“Death is better than the life of a slave,” proclaims another of the legionnaire’s wagons.

Legionnaires guarding a train in Siberia on a -40C day. By the autumn of 1918, World War I was over and the legionnaires’ distant, beloved Czechoslovakia had been declared an independent nation.

Legionnaires on a patrol in Siberia. Although World War I had finished, the Russian Civil War was just heating up.

Legionnaires guarding a railway tunnel in Siberia. At the behest of the Western Allies, the Czechoslovaks were asked to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway and assist the White Army in its fight against the Bolsheviks.

But the Russian Civil War was not their fight, and by the beginning of 1920, the legionnaires just wanted to go home.

In January of that year, in the face of a resurgent Red Army, the Czechoslovaks handed over the White Army’s commander to the Reds (he was executed shortly afterward) and headed en masse to Vladivostok, where Allied boats were waiting to evacuate the legion.

Legionnaires boarding at Vladivostok. The Czechoslovaks left behind some 4,000 dead but took with them more than 1,000 local women whom they had married.

After weeks at sea, the legionnaires of Russia finally returned to their independent homeland under its new president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (visible inside car during his 1918 inauguration in Prague).

A century later, the Czechoslovak Legion’s travails in Russia are remembered with a traveling museum and immortalized in monuments and in reliefs on a Prague building (pictured).

Czech and Slovak fighters on the Eastern Front in 1916.

From the safety of Czechoslovakia, and after the Communists had seized full control of Russia, one legionnaire recalled, “The brotherhood of the Czechoslovak Legion was a thing at which to marvel. Nothing could shake the confidence of the legionnaire in himself and in his brothers. And so we were able to stand firm in the heart of the Bolshevik ruin, and for all practical purposes, remain untouched by its doctrines.”