Having left the Austrian army rather than fire on their brother Slavs
the Czechs could scarcely be expected to have much enthusiasm for
fighting Russians over an ill-defined intervention program through
thousands of miles of Siberia. Chafing under the enforced delay, these
soldiers insisted that they be allowed to proceed to France. This seemed
out of the question to the Bolsheviki whose only alternative was to
disarm them. The Czechs who had carefully avoided any aggression upon
Russians until then, immediately set up a stout resistance, quickly
overcoming their would-be captors and thus almost miraculously putting
the small force which had then probably reached one hundred thousand men
in control of thousands of miles of railway reaching from Novo
Nikolayevsk to Tcheliabinsk and thence along the two branches leading to
Ekaterinburg and Zlatoust. This virtually established an economic
boundary between Siberia and Russia along the line of the Urals, since
the unsettled condition of the country makes the railway the only
practicable line of communication.
[Sidenote: How control of the railway is secured.]
[Sidenote: The Russian peasants friendly.]
The control of the railways was easily secured. At each of the important
stations Czech trains held the sidings. Due to the delay the trains
which should have been en route to France piled up at the stations, and
even in European Russia at Samara, Simbirsk and Suizran, a sufficient
number of Czechs held the station points to make their capture by
Bolsheviki forces a difficult matter.
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