David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

In Kazan, Colonel Čeček had already discovered the price demanded for having allied himself to Kappel. After the mutiny at Chelyabinsk, Čeček and the 1st Division of the Legion had found itself on the wrong side of the Volga and cut off from the main body of the Legion. Fighting their way east to join the central échelons, they had taken Samara and helped establish a Social-Revolutionary government with the remaining members of the Constituent Assembly. Then, together with Major Guinet, French liaison officer to the Legion, Kappel had persuaded Čeček to halt his easterly progress and to join the attack on Kazan. Struck by the ease with which they had taken Samara, Čeček and his men, in sympathy with the socialist ideals of Komuch , forgot their oath to the Czech National Council to maintain the Legion’s neutrality. The deciding factor in this had been Guinet’s assurance that Poole’s Allied forces in Archangel were advancing south to provide a second front. Kappel’s idea had been to attack Kazan and take the Reds unprepared.

As it happened, the Bolsheviks had abandoned the city in the face of a small Serbian unit under an ex-tsarist officer named Blagotic before the arrival of Kappel and Čeček’s trains. Once there, though, with no news of Poole, it had become obvious to Čeček that Guinet had overstated the Allied commitment. Guinet had duped Čeček into betraying his oath to the Czech National Council. Kappel continued to advance, but Kazan was as far as he got. His attack on the Romanov bridge and an attempt to take Sviyázhsk failed. By then Trotsky had brought up another regiment of Lettish Rifles and, in his own unique way, had stiffened the resistance of those already there.

Čeček’s disenchantment was but a microcosm of the decline in his own men’s morale. They had broken their oath and the Allies had let them down.

It was at this moment Paul had chosen, if in a unwitting way, to appear brandishing Masaryk’s letter.

That the tattered — and now anachronous — letter absolved Čeček of some of the guilt he felt at his own actions did nothing to lessen the abhorrence in which he held Guinet and the Allies. Čeček may have treated Paul — and Sofya and Valentine — with courtesy, but on reaching Samara, having first ensured his rear units had safely evacuated Kazan, he informed Paul he would be contacting the Legion commander, General Syrový, before deciding what to do with him.

Syrový had recently been given overall command of the Legion, a fact regarded as an omen by many of the Czechs and Slovaks as Syrový had worn an eye patch since he had lost an eye the previous year in Brusilov’s offensive on the eastern front, a wound Paul soon discovered that left Syrový resembling another one-eyed Bohemian Hussite warrior, Karel Zizka. Zizka had apparently defeated a German army some time back in the 15th century, an historical consonance Paul found to be typical of the morass of Czech and Slovak mythology in which he now found himself mired.

News had filtered through that Poole and his troops had finally begun to move south along the railway towards Vologda, a town north-east of Moscow. A separate force had also advanced east, up the Dvina by river barge towards Kotlas. But that had been in September and there’d be no news since. With winter upon them Paul doubted if Poole would get any further.

The knowledge had only deepened the Legion’s sense of disillusionment and had hardly helped Paul’s cause. It sometimes seemed to him that those legionnaires he met saw him as an embodiment of the unreliability of the Allies’ character. It was as if he personally stood for all the blandishments and assurances that had never been made good, and they treated him accordingly. Although never hostile, nor even outwardly insulting, Paul had nevertheless come to feel to be a man apart; with them but not of them; tolerated but not appreciated. Like a man aware of a congenital fault, he had attempted to make up for this with overcompensation. He volunteered for every patrol, committed himself to every action. Yet he made no impact upon their wall of indifference. He had vaguely hoped when the news of Masaryk’s declaration of Czechoslovakian independence reached them that their resentment might be buried. But although this was cause for celebration along the Trans-Siberian line, the declaration was still tempered by the knowledge that whatever their status in their own eyes might be, they were still stuck in the frozen heart of Russia with no option but to fight their way out.

At the time, Paul suspected that Čeček’s passing him on to Syrový was an act of revenge, against both Paul — as the Allies personified — and against Syrový himself. Syrový’s appointment as commander had been made over Čeček’s head; a slap, it might have been construed, for Čeček’s precipitate action in Kazan. Another school of thought maintained it was because of Čeček’s egalitarian attitude towards his officers and men. Standing to attention in front of Čeček in Samara, having been summoned by the colonel, Paul saw little evidence of this sympathy. Syrový could decide what to do with Paul, Čeček informed him, and in the meantime Paul could make himself useful in Samara.

On arrival he had made enquiries about Sofya and Valentine. The treasury shipment that had arrived in Samara from Kazan, he discovered, had been transferred to Ufa while Komuch was engaged in talks with a west Siberian political grouping from Omsk. His Excellency , M. Rostov, who had accompanied the treasury officials, had put up at the Grand Hotel on Dvoryánskaya. If he had given it any thought, Paul might have expected Mikhail to be still using the old tsarist method of address and, now he did think about it, he wondered — possibly cynically — if his cousin had taken the opportunity of Russia’s confusion to unofficially advance himself a rank or two.

The Grand Hotel turned out to be one of Samara’s more expensive hotels although, upon reaching it, Paul was told that Mikhail had already left for Ufa in the company of his sister, Sofya Ivanovna Rostova. There had been no messages left for a Pavel Rostov, nor had reception any record of anyone going under the name of Valentine, Hart, Olyen, or even Darling.

In the event, Paul had found himself of little more use in Samara than he had been in Kazan. The city was taken by the Red Army on 7th October, Paul having already been packed off to Colonel Voitzekhovsky, one of Russian officers who had commanded the original Czech forces on the eastern front. Like a handful of other Russian officers, his duty, a liking for the Czechs and Slovaks, and detestation for the Bolsheviks had persuaded Voitzekhovsky to stay with the Legion after the Revolution. Voitzekhovsky had been chief-of-staff to Colonel Čeček when Čeček commanded the 1st Division and had since taken over Syrový’s former command of the échelons between Chelyabinsk and Omsk. In the event, though, Paul had never reached Voitzekhovsky, passing into the hands of Colonel Švec, a survivor of the original Družina raised to fight on the eastern front. Paul had liked Švec and had had hopes of serving on his staff, but Švec had had his hands full and had shifted him on once more. From Švec Paul had passed from one group to another, one train to the next like the object in a game of pass-the-parcel, until he had ended up on a branch line off the Samara—Ufa line with Kapitan Lubas.

There had been no opportunity for him to visit Ufa and it was by chance — the Legion being in control of the railway and adjacent telegraph lines — that Paul discovered, with Ufa now under threat, that Komuch had decided to move the gold reserves once again, this time by rail to Chelyabinsk. Before he was able to find out if Mikhail and Sofya had followed it, Paul heard that while arrangements were being made for storing the gold in Chelyabinsk, orders were given for the train carrying it to proceed to Omsk.