Both
Lenine and Trotzky by agreement with Professor Masaryk furnished these
men with passes for leaving the country and in spite of the chaotic
condition of transportation ample rolling stock, amounting to about
sixty trains of forty freight cars each, was placed at their disposal or
secured by the Czechs through their own efforts. Arrangements had
already been made with representatives of the French Government so that
plenty of money was provided for provisioning, equipping and
transporting a minimum of forty thousand men over about six thousand
miles.
[Sidenote: Military equipment being taken away.]
[Sidenote: The Czechs resist.]
Before these trains had gone far one local Soviet after another had
insisted on their leaving behind the armored motor cars, aeroplanes,
machine-guns and other military equipment which had been allotted to
them by the Russian Government during the Kerensky offensive. By the
time Penza--one day's run west of the Volga--was reached, after
machine-guns had been mounted on the engines in fighting their way
through the Germanized Ukrainian districts, the arms of each train had
been reduced to 140 rifles and ammunition. But the Czechs knew enough
about Russian conditions to realize the necessity for at least one gun
to a man and when the Bolsheviki, early in June, started to disarm them,
guns and rifles appeared from secret hiding places, to the extreme
consternation of the disarmers.
[Sidenote: Siberian Soviets delay the Czechs.
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