# The Czechoslovak anabasis across Russia and Siberia/Chapter 4

IV
The attempt to reconstruct in Russia the former eastern front against the Central Powers
THE interest of the Allies in the events in Russia and in Siberia, the enthusiasm of patriotic Russians over the fall of the Soviet régime in the liberated regions, and the hope of its abolition in all parts of Russia, led to a decision regarding the further sphere of action of the Czechoslovak army. It was no longer to be brought to France, but was ordered by the Allied Supreme Command, the authority of which it had always loyally acknowledged, to remain in Russia. Its task was to hold as long as possible the occupied territories and regions, and the Trans-Siberian Railway, and to form the nucleus of an army which was to build up a front in the Volga district from the steppes of Orenburg to Kazan and Penza, and then advance westward to the frontiers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The destruction of the Soviet régime would have followed, the attitude of the Russian population at that time being what it was. Everywhere the Russians joined the colours of the Constituent Assembly which in January, 1918, in Petrograd, had been forcibly dissolved by the Bolsheviks. This Constituent Assembly was to be convoked again in Moscow and was to decide on the ​new forms of political life and of administration in Russia.
In the autumn of 1918, when the whole railway was already securely in their hands and Siberia freed from the Soviet reign of terror and purged of the Red Guards, the forces of the Czechoslovak army, which till then had fought victoriously in Central Siberia and in the Far East, were sent from east of the Urals to the Volga district. The principal centres of the new front in formation were the towns of Samara on the Volga, and of Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk in the Urals. At that time the co-operation of the Russians became more intensive.
As in the course of the struggle one region after another was freed from the Soviet régime, various attempts were made to reorganize the political and administrative life of Russia. Local influences, the character of the population and their economic significance, and in some cases the military situation, influenced the structure and nature of the Governments then coming into power in the Volga district, the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East. Briefly, we may say that from west to east the genuine elements of the Russian political community gradually asserted themselves. In Samara, for instance, the Government was in the hands of a committee of members of the Constituent Assembly, and authority rested almost entirely with the Social Revolutionaries. The Government in Omsk was at first rather in favour of Siberian separatism, and was backed in this by the Regional Duma of Siberia, and especially by the towns and the Siberian Cossacks. In Chita and in Manchuria the despotic Hetman Semenov strove after power even before the ​arrival of the Czechoslovaks, and in Vladivostok and the Far East a shareholder of the Manchurian Railway, General Horvat, had asserted himself. It was clear that such complicated conditions were not very propitious for further attempts to renew a democratic and national Russia and an anti-German front, this being of course of the greatest importance to the Allies.
The representatives of the Czechoslovaks and the Allies proposed to each regional Government of the liberated Russian regions a plan for the political and administrative unification of the whole liberated territory from Samara to Vladivostok. The small despotism of the Hetmans were to be replaced by a single democratic Government charged with the administration of the liberated regions, the struggle against Bolshevism, and especially the organization of a new Russian national army which would not only put an end to the revolutionary chaos in Russia, but also blot out the disgrace of the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, reassume a distinguished place among the armies of the Allies, and take up its position on the former Russian front.
It seemed that this clear and uniform plan for the regeneration of Russia would be in accordance with the desires of all Russian patriots. The call for a single Government was general throughout the liberated territory. Every intelligent Russian and every foreigner who had looked closely into the Russian conditions of the time, admitted the importance and necessity of simplifying political and administrative affairs and of uniting all regions from the Volga to the Pacific under one central authority. Of course questions of ​personal prestige for a long time made it impossible to find a satisfactory solution. At last, however, after protracted negotiations, an agreement was reached, in the Assembly at Ufa in September, 1918, and a Directory of Five was entrusted with the government. The organization of the Russian army was likewise centralized, and the foundations were laid for its further development and growth. It really looked as if all would go well.
All this took place at a time when the Central Powers imagined that the Peace of Brest-Litovsk had removed imminent danger," that Russia had left the ranks of the Allies for good, that the Russian Front in Eastern Europe had disappeared for ever, that the way was paved for Germany and Austria-Hungary to exploit Russia, and that now the exhausted Powers of Central Europe could secure the millions of soldiers formerly engaged on the Russian Front, and besides obtain bread and cotton from Turkestan, wood from the Urals, and coal from the Donetz basin. After the conditions dictated by the German generals to the Government of Workers and Peasants at Brest-Litovsk, the Ukraine and Russia itself, Siberia and Turkestan were to become the storehouses from which the Central Powers might recover their strength for the continuation of the war.
With all her iron energy Germany rushed into her offensive on the French Front, and up to August, 1918, she was fairly successful. At the same time Austria-Hungary decided to crush the Italians by the invasion of Venetia. The last and decisive attack was to be made by a reserve army, a million strong, of prisoners returned from the Siberian prison camps. Of course ​the Ukrainian and Siberian flour, coal of the Don basin, and the cotton of Turkestan played an important part in this plan, according to which the war was to be ended by the complete victory of Germany and her allies.
Then, thanks to the Czechoslovaks, the “Russian Peril,” the danger of a renewal of the anti-German and anti-Austrian front in the East, once more presented itself to Germany. Again the German generals had to take into account that this front would use up many of their forces. Besides, under such conditions, the East would not be available for the supplies which were to avert the crisis in the armies and countries of Central Europe.
The front in the East was organized in the Volga district, and at any moment an advance to the unguarded frontiers of Germany and Austria-Hungary was possible. There were riots in Poland, which was smarting under the German invasion, and in Rumania, which felt humiliated by the unbearable peace conditions dictated at Bucharest. An army of a million was detained by the Czechoslovaks in the prisoners’ camps in Eastern Russia and Siberia. The rich Volga district and the fertile region of Akmolinsk in Siberia, before the war the granaries of the whole of Europe, were in Czechoslovak hands. The Czechoslovak front on the Volga was the boundary-line between European Russia and Asia. Every approach to Turkestan and Caucasia was stopped, since, from the steppes of Orenburg southward, the Russian anti-Bolshevist army of General Denikin practically extended the line of the Czechoslovak troops.
Germany saw that her plans might fail. The spectre ​of a united Russia, put into the coffin by the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, rose before her eyes. Again she was a besieged fortress, shut off from the east as well as from the west and south, condemned to starve and to surrender. The Soviet Government was full of anxiety about its own future and had to fight against Czechoslovaks, anti-Soviet Russians and the Allies. Even with the best intentions it could not comply with the German requests. The German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers remained in the prisoners' camps of Siberia, and the supplies destined for the Central Powers were still behind the hostile lines. Of the territory of Russia the Soviet Government held in its power only the regions around Moscow, Vologda and Petrograd. Against the Soviets the English advanced from the north, General Judenich from the west, and General Denikin from the south. Russian Communism nearly failed. How easy it would have been to restore Russia to the world and to include it in the organization of European democracy!