Siberian Red

almost peaceful.
    One week later, Klenovkin’s barrel arrived at the Centre for Medical Studies of Sverdlovsk University, where it was immediately assigned to a newly arrived medical intern for use as a cadaver. Having collected the barrel from the shipping department, the intern loaded it on to a handcart and proudly wheeled it across to the laboratory where he and his classmates would soon begin dissections. He even took the long way around, so that everyone could see. The barrel was heavier than he’d expected. By the time he reached a deserted courtyard on the outskirts of the campus, the intern needed a rest. Propping the handcart against a wall, he lit himself a cigarette and sat down on an empty concrete platform, placed there many years ago for a statue which never arrived.

What Really Happened in Siberia
     
     
    The struggle for domination in Siberia during and after the Russian Revolution is one of the bloodiest and most confusing chapters of military history. At the height of the struggle, more than twenty-four separate governments had been established between the Ural Mountains, which mark the western border of Siberia and Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. This was not merely a fight between Bolsheviks (Reds) and anti-Bolshevik (White) Russian forces. It also involved troops sent from the United States, Britain, France and Japan, all of whom saw heavy fighting, in some cases against the very people they had been sent to protect.
    Central to this conflict was the role played by the Czechoslovakian Legion, whose extraordinary journey across the entire length of Russia is not only inspiring but almost incredible.
    What were Czechs and Slovaks doing in Siberia, thousands of miles from their native country? The answer is that, prior to 1919, they didn’t have a country. Instead, Czechs and Slovaks represented only two of dozens of different ethnicities which made up the Habsburg Empire, also sometimes called the Austro-Hungarian Empire, since these were the largest and most dominant nationalities.
    The Habsburg Empire had been founded back in 1526, and had, for generations, served as a barricade of Christianity against the Muslim countries to the south and east. At the height of its powers in the sixteenth century, the Habsburg Empire controlled a large portion of Europe.
    By 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the Empire was in serious decline. It was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, a member of Habsburg royalty, that would propel the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a conflict which it would not survive. By the time the guns of the Great War ceased firing, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the ties which bound together the many countries of the Habsburgs had been permanently severed, and their Empire ceased to exist.
    One of the new countries to emerge from this collapse was Czechoslovakia, which existed from 1919 until 1993, when it divided into two separate nations, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
    In 1914, although many Czechs and Slovaks wanted independence from Austria-Hungary, the chances of achieving this must have seemed remote. The First World War gave them the chance they had been waiting for. As subjects of Austria-Hungary, they were expected to fight under the banner of the Habsburgs, joining with Germany and Turkey in an alliance which became known as the Central Powers.
    Knowing that their only hope of independence was the defeat of the very country for which they were expected to fight, many Czechs and Slovaks chose instead to take up arms against Austria-Hungary. The result of this was the Czechoslovakian Legion, whose soldiers fought alongside not only the Russians, but also the French and Italians.
    It is, however, for the exploits of those Czechs and Slovaks fighting among the Russians that the Czechoslovakian Legion is best known.
    Although the Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, did not encourage their independence, many Czech and Slovak soldiers chose to desert from the Austro-Hungarian Army in order to fight for the Russians. Another source of manpower came from those Czech and Slovak troops who had been taken prisoner by the Russians, and opted to serve in the Russian Army. A third group was made up of men who, although they lived within the boundaries of Russia, felt themselves to be ethnically Czech or Slovak.
    After the March Revolution of 1917, when the Tsar officially stepped down from power, the interim government of Alexander