Thinking loudly

The theme of this blog entry is Jaroslav Hašek and his activities in the aftermath of the Russian February Revolution. The information is mostly taken from Cecil Parrott's "The Bad Bohemian" and Jaroslav Křížek's "Jaroslav Hašek v revolučním Rusko". "Za svobodu" vol. I (Vaněk,Holeček,Medek) and Radlo Pytlík's "Toulavé house" have also been consulted. Material from PNP (fond B. Hůla) has also been consulted.

It is possible to think aloud, but some times it can have grave consequences. Jaroslav Hašek was prone to think very loudly and he didn't care at all who listened. He repeatedly bit the hand that fed, and he was also an expert on shooting himself in the foot. With the infamous satire "The Czech Pickwick Club" he achieved all three ...

The black hand

The first issue of "Revolution" contained
"The Czech Pickwick Club"

From 1916 the Czechoslovak Union started to recruit professionals and intellectuals from the ranks of volunteers and prisoners. Many of these were former k.u.k officers and other resourceful people. At the end of 1916 they organised themselves in the so-called "Klub spolupracovníků Svazu čs. spolků na Rusi" (The club of co-workers of the union of Czechoslovak organisations in Russia). Hašek was among those who joined the club. In the dispute between the the pan-slavist and conservative "Union" in Kiev and the western-oriented group in Petrograd, most of the co-workers club supported Petrograd (this group was loyal to Masaryk's National Council). An exception was a small group: 12 of the 72 members stood by the conservative and pan-slavist leadership of the "Union" (Za svobodu I). After the revolution in March they lost their footing, but were still in opposition to the Petrograd "západníky" (westerners) who now controlled the Czech revolutionary movement. This minority was jokingly called "Černá ruka" (Black hand), a name inspired by the Serb terrorist group who carried out the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The names of some of the members can be found in the archives of PNP. These are: Ladislav Grund, Jaroslav Hašek, Ivan Hájek, Čáska, Svoboda, Kadlec, Žd'árský, Pavlík, Matička, Dr. Skuthan.

From the archive of PNP (fond Bretislav Hůla): Hašek and Hájek ordered to report to their regiments.

The group eventually founded their own "independent political weekly" called "Revoluce". Hašek had in previous pre-revolutionary articles in "Čechoslovan" attacked some "westerners" as "provincial petit bourgeois politicians" but without mentioning names. This was at the height of the struggle between the Petrograd liberals and the Kiev conservatives. The slanging match took place in their respective weeklies "Čechoslovák" and "Čechoslovan" and Hašek had thrown his weight in behind the Kiev group. After the revolution (15 March) Hašek adapted somewhat to the new reality and even published an article critical of the old regime. In the article "Dark force", he directly attacked the corrupting influence of Rasputin. But somehow he hadn't quite put his old allegiances behind him.

During January and February he had been involved in a couple of episodes that reflected badly on the whole "Club of co-workers"  (see the previous blog entry). On 20 April Hašek and another "Black Hand" member (Ivan Hájek) were ordered to report to their regiment within a week. Hašek was told by that this was only due to his association with "Black Hand", to which he retorted that he was victimised by the second group in the club, which he termed the "Dirty Hand". On 3 May he handed in a hand-written manuscript to "Revoluce" and together with Hájek left for the front. Jaroslav Křížek claims that the two men were sent away from Kiev on request from the Čs. Brigade to prevent them from attending the upcoming 3rd meeting of the "Union of Czechoslovak Association in Russia", but he leaves is in the dark as to why these two particular members of "Black Hand" were singled out.

Klub Českých Pickwicků

Josef Patejdl became a prominent figure
in Czechoslovakia and ended his life
in Dachau.

On 6 May 6 (23 April old Russian calendar) "Revoluce" was published for the first time, and what a start! Hašek's story  was called "The Czech Pickwick Club" and he ridiculed members of the "Club of co-workers" and other leading western-oriented political activists. In contrast to earlier they were attacked and insulted with full names, and some of them were eventually to attain leading positions in the Czech revolutionary movement and in post war Czechoslovakia. Those on the receiving end were: Bohdan Pavlů, editor of "Czechoslovák" and Vladimír Chalupa, chairman of the Club of Associates. Hašek also lashed out at Josef Patejdl (vice chairman), Josef Kudela, Jaroslav Papoušek, Josef Fišer and a certain Šeba. We must assume that Hašek wrote the story as revenge for being sent to the front, but for the time being he burnt all the bridges back to Kiev.

Arrest and trial

The reaction was swift: Hašek was arrested, and at the 1st regiment HQ at Remczyca he appeared before a honorary court on May 16. Here he was forced to issue an apology. He read it out loud to the court members, and apparently did it with such an innocent and sincere face that the court members broke out in laughter. Still Bohdan Pavlů, editor of "Czechoslovák", and one of the insulted party, refused to print the apology. The article had also made him unpopular amongst other Czech volunteers.

From Remczyca

Writing "The Czech Pickwick Club" was the culmination of a troubled start to 1917. As we have seen Hašek was stripped of his journalistic and recruiting duties, and demoted to an ordinary soldier. He was also ousted from the "Club of co-workers" and thereby lost fixed income. A soldier is what he had wanted to become in June the previous year, but was declared unfit. Now he was apparently fit enough. He was moved around from post to post during May until he was finally assigned to the 1st regiments machine gun detachment. It was in this capacity he was sent to the front in June in preparation for the so-called Kerensky offensive.

Consequences

Fortunately Hašek didn't share the fate of some of
his fellow brothers. 

The fall-out with his colleagues could have proved fatal for Hašek. By that we should not assume that there was any danger that Hašek would have executed by the "brothers"  (the Czech volunteers referred to each others as brothers) in the Czechoslovak Army. But now he was a common soldier which in itself was a perilous occupation. At the end of June, during and after the Kerensky offensive, fighting in Eastern Galicia flared up again and more than 100 brothers lost their lives in the ensuing battles that lasted until the end of July.

Fortunately Hašek survived this time, but regrettably didn't live long enough to tell us his version of events around the Pickwick Club. It is easy to imagine Marek sitting down to tell Švejk and others about his ordeal in front of the honorary court at Remczyca. It would surely have been as hilarious as any other episode in the novel ...

On a sinking ship

This letter is an attempt at describing the complex political and military situation in Russia  at the time of Jaroslav Hašek’s  release from captivity in June 1916 .

RUSSIA 1914

Jaroslav Hejduk, the standard bearer of Družina.

The Russian Empire of 1914 counted around 100,000 Czechs and Slovaks residents, the overwhelming majority of them Czechs. Most of them were Russian subjects, but there was also a number of Austrian citizens. The outbreak of war caused consternation in their ranks as they were as citizens of an enemy power subjected to confiscation of property and even deportation. It became paramount to prove themselves as loyal citizens, and after meetings with higher authorities (even the tsar),  they were allowed to create Česká Družina, a unit of volunteers that was to operate within the Russian Third army.

Initially their headcount was a mere 750, split across three companies. The creation of the unit was formally approved on 20 August 1914, and it became operative during October.  They were sent to the Carpathians, mainly to carry out reconnaissance, propaganda and infiltration activities. In the beginning officers were Russians, with Czechs gradually entering amongst the lower ranks. Still as late as 1917 all regimental commanders were Russians.

At the end of 1914 prisoners of war were allowed to joine, provided that the applied immediately after the capture. There was initially concern about allowing them into the Russian army as this was regulated by the Geneva convention. In the first group of 300 prisoners that enlisted in December 1914, there was a very prominent person. Bohdan Pavlů was a young Slovak intellectual  and from 1915 he became editor of Czechoslovák in Petrograd, and take up an important role in the Czechoslovak movement in Russia. After the war he held positions in the diplomatic service.

Družina was on  2 February 1916 formally renamed the Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment and on  17 April the Czecholovak Rifle Brigade and was split into two regiments. In June 1916 the number of volunteers was still only 1500, but in August 1916 a new influx of volunteers from the prisoners ranks were added, and the regiments now counted 8 companies each. The unit was later to form the core of the Czechoslovak Army Corps (after the war generally known as the Czechoslovak Legion). 

CZECH/SLOVAK POLITICAL ORGANISATION

Meanwhile Czechs and Slovaks in Russia started to organise themselves politically. The Union of Czechoslovak associations in Russia  (Svaz Čs. spolků na Rusi) was founded in Moscow in March 1915. The political leadership located in Petrograd, and this is also where they founded and published their own weekly Čechoslovák.

The term " Čechoslovák " itself is worth study in its own right. It was used already early in the war, although almost all the leaders and members of these organisations were Czechs. The Czechs made up more than 95 per cent of the total headcount. Of the original 750 members of Družina, only 7 were Slovaks. In the Slovak language the word "Čechoslovák" is generally  hyphenated, giving the impression that the Slovaks were more on equal terms than they really were. Politics and language will forever remain inseparable...

Josef Dürich: betting on the
 loosing horse

Other large Czech communities in Russia were found in Moscow, Warsaw and Kiev. The latter group was particularly numerous and was the one closest to the centre of military operations. The leadership of Družina was thus based in Kiev.  The Kiev  group was controlled by resident Czechs, which were mainly conservative and loyal to the tsar. The Petrograd group on the other hand, consisted of many former POW's, amongst them Bohdan Pavlů, leant towards western democratic ideas. From February 1916 these were aligned with the newly created "Czechoslovak National Council" (Českosloveská Národni Rada).

The council, based in Paris, was headed by Tomáš Masaryk, the architect and undisputed leader of the Czec/Slovak independence movement. Masaryk had gone into exile in 1914 and immediately started to organize the Czech and Slovak resistance abroad. He was himself of mixed origin, a Czechoslovak in the true meaning of the word. He had until 1914 not advocated the break-up of Austria-Hungary, advocating a federal solution giving the Slavs parity with Austro-Germans and Hungarians, but the new situation made him change his mind.

In the spring of 1916 there was an acrimonious split amongst the Czechs in Russia. The Kiev group took control of the "Union", the Petrograd  group  was marginalised, and the influence of the National Council reduced. The Kiev faction started to publish "Čechoslovan" (the first issue was on 2 April), a weekly that had gone out of business at the beginning of the war, but until then had been the only Czech-language periodical  in Russia.  From Paris the National Council dispatched Josef Dürich to reassert their authority, but instead he aligned himself with the Kiev group, advocating a Romanov prince on the throne of a future Czech/Slovak kingdom. The leadership of the "Union" was transferred to Kiev. It should be added that the squabbling was not only about political direction; many were dissatisfied with the relative lack of success in recruiting new volunteers. There was also disappointment that despite promises to release the Slav prisoners, this dragged on and on, and even general Brusilov voiced his concern in support for the Slavs. It has been alleged that the arch-conservative prime minister Boris Stürmer deliberately sabotaged the release of the prisoners. He was on good terms with Dürich and this obviously reflected badly on the latter in the eyes of many Czechs. 

Ironically it was this group that Jaroslav Hašek aligned with before Russian February revolution. But the fall of the Romanovs (tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 15 March 1917) removed their political support and put the Petrograd group firmly in the driving seat. Masaryk and other Czech and Slovak politicians also had very good connections with members of the new Russian provisional government, whose liberal democratic attitudes they often shared. Josef Dürich and the Kiev conservatives were thus politically dead; and their dream of seeing a Romanov prince on future Czech throne became a historical absurdity.

THE BRUSILOV OFFENSIVE

The military situation also took a dramatic turn at the time Hašek approached the end of his stay in the Totskoye POW camp. On 4 June the Brusilov offensive had started. It was brought forward to alleviate the precarious situation of the French at Verdun and take pressure off Italy at the Isonzo front. Unusually the attack was not concentrated on a certain point; the Russians advanced along the whole Austrian section of the front. Nor were the Russians significantly superior in numbers, but they still managed to break through quickly and push about 60 km westwards. Dubno, Brody, Czernowitz, and Lutsk were again on Russian hands. Brusilov introduced some novel concepts: aerial reconnaissance and the use of shock troops (Norman Stone).

The result of Russian "human wave" tactics

His fellow generals were slow and hesitant in the follow-up and the Russian army soon reverted to the "human wave" tactic with catastrophic losses. During the summer and autumn, the offencive petered out; Germany moved in reinforcements from the West  to stiffen up the wobbling Austrians and the front was stabilised. The Dual Monarchy was saved for now, but the cost was frightening. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed, captured and “missing”. No doubt many of the missing later joined the Czechoslovak Army Corps. Russia lost a staggering one million men in dead, wounded and captured. These losses on top of the disasters of 1915 seriously undermined morale and eventually contributed  to the collapse and revolutions of 1917. In other areas the Brusilov offensive was also important; it may have saved the allies in France and Italy and also persuaded Romania to enter the war.

THE END OF THE ROMANOV DYNASTY

Petrograd in turmoil, March 1917

The winter of 1916-1917 was relatively quiet on the Eastern front, as none of the exhausted parties took any major initiatives. The front was established along the Stochod river down to Dorna Vatra in the Romanian Carpathians. Territorially Russia was better off than a year before but the internal fabric was crumbling with protests, hunger marches and strikes commonplace. On 8 March*) 1917 the revolution started and a within a week Nicholas II was forced to resign (here is his letter of resignation). Russia was the first of the four  large autocratic WW1 belligerents to collapse,  and it was to have far reaching consequences, not only for the immediate future, but also for the rest of the 20th century.

*) Called the February Revolution, as it started on 23 February according to the Julian calendar.

SOURCES

The information contained in this entry is largely  based  on "Za svobodu", a four-volume illustrated history of the Czechoslovak Revolutionary Movement  in Russia from 1914 to 1920. Further, books by František Langer, Victor M. Fic and Jaroslav Křížek. To a lesser degree Norman Stone, Radko Pytlík and Cecil Parrott, have been consulted.