Sam Eastland - Archive 17

Hoping to reach the safety of the coast, where he might find asylum among the Allied expeditionary forces stationed in Vladivostok, Kolchak got as far as the city of Irkutsk before being halted by soldiers of a local government calling itself Socialist Political Center.

Although the Czechoslovakians, with more than thirteen thousand men, eight field guns, and an armored train at their disposal, could easily have defeated the Irkutsk garrison, these soldiers had placed mines in tunnels through which the Czechoslovakian convoy would have to pass in order to reach the coast.

The Socialist Political Center made the Czechoslovakians an offer-hand over Kolchak and we will let you proceed. There was one other thing they wanted, and that was the Tsar’s Imperial Reserves. These had originally been hidden in the city of Kazan, but had since found their way into the safekeeping of the Czechoslovakians.

Faced with the possibility of never seeing his newly created homeland, Janin gave in to the demands of the Irkutsk garrison. On January 15, 1920, Kolchak and the gold were handed over.

On January 30, after a trial lasting one day, in which Kolchak was convicted of atrocities, the “Supreme Ruler of All Russia” was shot against a brick wall in Irkutsk.

Although Kolchak’s army was not the only force brought to bear against the Bolsheviks, its defeat and the execution of its leader spelled the end for any hopes of Allied intervention in the conflict. Leaving behind hundreds of dead, soldiers of the U.S. Siberian Expeditionary Force (AEFS) departed in April of 1920. Japanese troops sent to help the Allied cause were the last to leave, in 1922. Their reputation for atrocities not only against Bolsheviks but also against civilians and even their own allies would soon be dwarfed by Japanese actions against the Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s.

By the time the last Legionnaires left Vladivostok on September 2, 1920, more than thirty-five thousand Czechoslovakians had been evacuated from Russia. Although they had played a pivotal and heroic role in establishing their country, freedom for the Czechoslovakians would be short-lived and sporadic.

Eighteen years later, Germany invaded.

Another eighteen years would pass before their onetime ally, Russia, sent its tanks across the border.

Unlike the beautifully maintained cemeteries of Great War dead in France, Belgium, and the Dardanelles, the dead of the Siberian campaign lie mostly in unmarked graves and all trace of their battles, except for a few bullet holes on the walls of Vladivostok station, is lost forever in the wilderness.