Russian Civil War
180-642: The Czechoslovak Legion ( Czech : Československé legie ; Slovak : Československé légie ) were volunteer armed forces consisting predominantly of Czechs and Slovaks fighting on the side of the Entente powers during World War I and the White Army during the Russian Civil War until November 1919. Their goal was to win the support of the Allied Powers for the independence of Lands of
360-678: A better negotiating position to end the war, and defend the territory of the country. The Bolsheviks voted against it during the Congress, along with some far-left deputies from the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries , calling it part of an "imperialistic war." The Germans were fully aware of the Russian offensive plan, from a combination of reports from deserters and aerial reconnaissance, and after defeating
540-518: A breakthrough on this part of the front before reinforcements were used to strengthen that area. Although it was a small battle, it became well known in Czech and Slovak history, as part of their independence struggle from the Habsburg monarchy. After the first couple of days, the shock troops that had been chosen to lead the attack had been weakened, and the regular infantry were not as reliable. There
720-634: A bridgehead on the Dniester river, and the following day Kalush, the headquarters of the Third Army. Kornilov's men had advanced 15–20 miles and captured 10,000 troops. However, the Russian advance was halted, including by a German reinforcements to strengthen the Austrians and by problems caused by bad weather in the area of the Lomnitsa river that destroyed the bridges they had built. This marked
900-545: A clear policy about the war until after the offensive happened. Towards the end of March 1917, the commanders of Russia's three main army groups were ordered to give a report on the situation in their units. Generals Nikolai Ruzsky of the Northern Front and Vladimir Smirnov of the Western Front both answered that their troops were not in a condition to go on the attack, while General Aleksei Brusilov at
1080-739: A coup against the Petrograd Soviet . But the Kornilov coup failed when his troops refused to fight, and instead strengthened the revolutionary tendencies among soldiers. The collapse of the Provisional Government's popularity as a result of the offensive, and even more so after the Kornilov coup, was critical to the Bolsheviks increasing their influence over both the army and the Petrograd Soviet shortly before
1260-579: A distinction between phonemic /l/ and /ʎ/ which survives in Slovak. With the beginning of the national revival of the mid-18th century, Czech historians began to emphasize their people's accomplishments from the 15th through 17th centuries, rebelling against the Counter-Reformation (the Habsburg re-catholization efforts which had denigrated Czech and other non- Latin languages). Czech philologists studied sixteenth-century texts and advocated
1440-506: A dozen additional counties in Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and Minnesota . As of 2009, 70,500 Americans spoke Czech as their first language (49th place nationwide, after Turkish and before Swedish ). Standard Czech contains ten basic vowel phonemes , and three diphthongs. The vowels are /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /o/, and /u/ , and their long counterparts /aː/, /ɛː/, /iː/, /oː/ and /uː/ . The diphthongs are /ou̯/, /au̯/ and /ɛu̯/ ;
1620-557: A few reliable units. The Bolsheviks took this opportunity to spread within army units all across the front line, whereas before their influence had been mostly limited to the Northern Front near the capital, and to obtain the majority of seats in the Petrograd Soviet, shortly before the October Revolution . The Kerensky offensive led to the Kornilov crisis, which itself greatly contributed to the Bolsheviks overthrowing
1800-535: A large number of mobilized civilians who went through accelerated training. The prewar officers included both aristocrats and peasants; the graduates of cadet corps and junker schools; guards and general staff officers and junior officers in the provinces. Each of the groups had their own views, and the conditions of war led to many officers being either weeded out or promoted. After the revolution, many regiment or division commanders were forced to step down because they were seen as counter-revolutionary and they left
1980-609: A meeting of senior commanders at the Stavka on 29 July 1917, Kerensky was criticized for all of the policies that the Provisional Government implemented in the army since the February Revolution, and he agreed on the necessity of restoring order among the troops. On 31 July, he appointed Kornilov to replace Brusilov as the Supreme Commander, because Kornilov had always opposed the revolutionary changes. Kornilov
SECTION 10
#17327659081522160-571: A more-restricted distinction between "hard" and "soft" consonants (see Phonology below). The term "Old Czech" is applied to the period predating the 16th century, with the earliest records of the high medieval period also classified as "early Old Czech", but the term "Medieval Czech" is also used. The function of the written language was initially performed by Old Slavonic written in Glagolitic , later by Latin written in Latin script . Around
2340-514: A realistic chance of returning as a major language. However, Josef Jungmann and other revivalists used Dobrovský's book to advocate for a Czech linguistic revival. Changes during this time included spelling reform (notably, í in place of the former j and j in place of g ), the use of t (rather than ti ) to end infinitive verbs and the non-capitalization of nouns (which had been a late borrowing from German). These changes differentiated Czech from Slovak. Modern scholars disagree about whether
2520-588: A shortage of locomotives and the recurring need to negotiate with local soviets along the route. On 14 May, a dispute at the Chelyabinsk station between legionaries heading east and Magyar POWs heading west to be repatriated caused the People's Commissar for War, Leon Trotsky , to order the complete disarmament and arrest of the legionaries. At an army congress that convened in Chelyabinsk a few days later,
2700-489: A slow rise from low to high, quickly dropping to low on the last word or phrase. In modern Czech syntax, adjectives precede nouns, with few exceptions. Relative clauses are introduced by relativizers such as the adjective který , analogous to the English relative pronouns "which", "that" and "who"/"whom". As with other adjectives, it agrees with its associated noun in gender, number and case. Relative clauses follow
2880-474: A verb; information about its subject is encoded in the verb. Enclitics (primarily auxiliary verbs and pronouns) appear in the second syntactic slot of a sentence, after the first stressed unit. The first slot can contain a subject or object, a main form of a verb, an adverb, or a conjunction (except for the light conjunctions a , "and", i , "and even" or ale , "but"). Czech syntax has a subject–verb–object sentence structure. In practice, however, word order
3060-713: A week before the arrival of the Legion. News of the Czechoslovak Legion's campaign in Siberia during the summer of 1918 was welcomed by Allied statesmen in Great Britain and France, who saw the operation as a means to reconstitute an eastern front against Germany. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson , who had resisted earlier Allied proposals to intervene in Russia, gave in to domestic and foreign pressure to support
3240-753: Is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group , written in Latin script . Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic . Czech is closely related to Slovak , to the point of high mutual intelligibility , as well as to Polish to a lesser degree. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order . Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Latin and German . The Czech–Slovak group developed within West Slavic in
3420-765: Is a 1936 Czechoslovak movie and drama about a skirmish of the Czechoslovak Legion with bolsheviks in Siberia. Last Train Home is a real-time tactics video game developed by Ashborne Games, in which the player controls a train carrying Czechoslovak Legion troops along the Trans-Siberian Railway during their withdrawal. The game was released on 28 November 2023. Czech language Czech ( / tʃ ɛ k / CHEK ; endonym : čeština [ˈtʃɛʃcɪna] ), historically also known as Bohemian ( / b oʊ ˈ h iː m i ə n , b ə -/ boh- HEE -mee-ən, bə- ; Latin : lingua Bohemica ),
3600-636: Is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish , Kashubian , Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak . Slovak is the most closely related language to Czech, followed by Polish and Silesian . The West Slavic languages are spoken in Central Europe. Czech is distinguished from other West Slavic languages by
3780-634: Is a recognized minority language in Slovakia, Slovak citizens who speak only Czech may communicate with the government in their language in the same way that Slovak speakers in the Czech Republic also do. Immigration of Czechs from Europe to the United States occurred primarily from 1848 to 1914. Czech is a Less Commonly Taught Language in U.S. schools, and is taught at Czech heritage centers. Large communities of Czech Americans live in
SECTION 20
#17327659081523960-422: Is also relevant to the declension patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft. Voiced consonants with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in consonant clusters voicing assimilation occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/. The phoneme represented by
4140-432: Is flexible and used to distinguish topic and focus , with the topic or theme (known referents) preceding the focus or rheme (new information) in a sentence; Czech has therefore been described as a topic-prominent language . Although Czech has a periphrastic passive construction (like English), in colloquial style, word-order changes frequently replace the passive voice. For example, to change "Peter killed Paul" to "Paul
4320-629: Is one of the EU's official languages and the 2012 Eurobarometer survey found that Czech was the foreign language most often used in Slovakia. Economist Jonathan van Parys collected data on language knowledge in Europe for the 2012 European Day of Languages . The five countries with the greatest use of Czech were the Czech Republic (98.77 percent), Slovakia (24.86 percent), Portugal (1.93 percent), Poland (0.98 percent) and Germany (0.47 percent). Czech speakers in Slovakia primarily live in cities. Since it
4500-575: Is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech r and š . The consonants /r/, /l/, and /m/ can be syllabic , acting as syllable nuclei in place of a vowel. Strč prst skrz krk ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech tongue twister using syllabic consonants but no vowels. Each word has primary stress on its first syllable , except for enclitics (minor, monosyllabic, unstressed syllables). In all words of more than two syllables, every odd-numbered syllable receives secondary stress. Stress
4680-499: Is unrelated to vowel length; both long and short vowels can be stressed or unstressed. Vowels are never reduced in tone (e.g. to schwa sounds) when unstressed. When a noun is preceded by a monosyllabic preposition, the stress usually moves to the preposition, e.g. do Prahy "to Prague". Czech grammar, like that of other Slavic languages, is fusional ; its nouns, verbs, and adjectives are inflected by phonological processes to modify their meanings and grammatical functions, and
4860-641: The Hrad ("The [Prague] Castle") for their support of the President of Czechoslovakia . The 2005 novel The People's Act of Love , by the British writer James Meek , describes the occupation of a small Siberian town by a company of the Czechoslovak Legion in 1919. The original inhabitants of the town are members of the Christian sect of Skoptsy , or castrates. A memoir Přál jsem si míti křídla by Jozef Dufka
5040-859: The Battle of Zborov . Following the soldiers' stellar performance at Zborov, the Russian Provisional Government finally granted their émigré leaders on the Czechoslovak National Council permission to mobilize Czech, Moravian and Slovak volunteers from the POW camps. Later that summer, a fourth regiment was added to the brigade, which was renamed the First Division of the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia ( Československý sbor na Rusi ), also known as
5220-622: The Bosporus straits after the victory, as had been promised by the Entente earlier. This note was revealed to the public on 20 April 1917, and it caused large protests against the government. The more radical Bolshevik faction took advantage of the crisis to agitate for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, but the Soviet Executive Committee opposed this and worked to prevent another uprising. The April crisis led to
5400-651: The Brusilov offensive . The main attack was launched by the Seventh Army and Eleventh Army , which made a limited advance, though the Eleventh Army's Czechoslovak brigade notably captured the town of Zborov from the Austrians. Further to the south, General Lavr Kornilov 's Eighth Army was more successful, pushing back the Austrian Third Army and creating a breach along the front that
5580-689: The Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk . The chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council, Tomáš Masaryk , who had arrived in Russia earlier that year, began planning for the Legion's departure from Russia and transfer to France so the Czechoslovaks could continue to fight against the Central Powers. Since most of Russia's main ports were blockaded, Masaryk decided that the Legion should travel from Ukraine to
Czechoslovak Legion - Misplaced Pages Continue
5760-607: The Družina soldiers served in scattered patrols performing a number of specialized duties, including reconnaissance, prisoner interrogation and subversion of enemy troops in the opposite trenches. From its start, Czech and Slovak political émigrés in Russia and Western Europe desired to expand the Družina from a battalion into a formidable military formation. To achieve this goal, they recognized that they would need to recruit from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war (POWs) in Russian camps. In late 1914, Russian military authorities permitted
5940-683: The Družina to enlist Czech and Slovak POWs from the Austro-Hungarian Army, but this order was rescinded after only a few weeks due to opposition from other branches of the Russian government. Despite continuous efforts of émigré leaders to persuade the Russian authorities to change their mind, the Czechs and Slovaks were officially barred from recruiting POWs until the summer of 1917. Still, some Czechs and Slovaks were able to sidestep this ban by enlisting POWs through local agreements with Russian military authorities. Under these conditions,
6120-658: The Entente cause, these groups advocated the establishment of a unit of Czech and Slovak volunteers to fight alongside the Russian Army. On 5 August 1914, the Russian Stavka authorized the formation of a battalion recruited from Czechs and Slovaks in Russia. This unit, called the "Companions" ( Družina ), went to the front in October 1914, where it was attached to the Russian Third Army. There
6300-712: The Fifth Army , but only two of its six divisions were willing to attack, while the Twelfth Army refused to advance at all. Two divisions of the Fifth Army, the 18th and 70th , were able to take some of the German trenches in front of them, mainly with the use of officers, shock battalions, and other loyal units, but the attack was cancelled as the bulk of the troops remained in their own trenches and were unwilling to provide support. Mutinies also broke out, and after
6480-681: The Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 (the first complete Czech translation of the Bible from the original languages) became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries as it was used as a model for the standard language. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the only official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt (of predominantly Protestant aristocracy) which
6660-622: The Leskovec-Dresden Bible , also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were also produced outside universities. Literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation . Jan Hus contributed significantly to the standardization of Czech orthography , advocated for widespread literacy among Czech commoners (particularly in religion) and made early efforts to model written Czech after
6840-687: The Moskovsky , Egersky , and Finlandsky regiments leading the way while the Preobrazhensky , Semyonovsky and Pavlovsky regiments backed them up. The artillery barrage ahead of their attack never occurred, leaving the fortifications of the defenders intact, and the guards units were quickly pushed back with heavy losses. Demoralization spread among the guards, and the corps commander Vladimir May-Mayevsky 's order to arrest Bolshevik agitators caused chaos in their units. Reinforcements that arrived from Petrograd also spread Bolshevik propaganda among
7020-649: The October Revolution . The British and French high commands held a conference in Chantilly , France, in November 1916 to decide on a strategic plan for the Entente war effort in 1917. The Stavka , the Russian high command, initially proposed a limited operation after having taken heavy losses in the East Prussia offensive in 1914, the Lake Naroch offensive in early 1916, and the Brusilov offensive in
7200-615: The Tenth Army attacking in the direction of Smorgon and Krevo , but they were stopped by German reinforcements, and many of the larger units refused to fight or began disintegrating. Out of all of the forces during the Kerensky offensive the Tenth Army had the least success. Many of its soldiers were demoralized, despite a lack of widespread Bolshevik agitation there. The Northern Front attacked towards Vilnius on 21 July with
7380-400: The Triple Entente , which included launching an offensive in the spring of 1917. The operation was directed at capturing Lemberg and the rest of Galicia from Austria-Hungary . The Southwestern Front of the Russian Army was tasked with the offensive, as it was the least affected by revolutionary agitation and would be mostly fighting Austria-Hungary, which had not fully recovered from
Czechoslovak Legion - Misplaced Pages Continue
7560-559: The high medieval period, and the standardization of Czech and Slovak within the Czech–Slovak dialect continuum emerged in the early modern period. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the modern written standard became codified in the context of the Czech National Revival . The most widely spoken non-standard variety , known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague , but is now spoken as an interdialect throughout most of Bohemia . The Moravian dialects spoken in Moravia and Czech Silesia are considerably more varied than
7740-428: The soldiers' committees with contempt, while those who had been promoted into officer ranks or volunteered during the war were able to mediate between these two groups. The Stavka, the high command, initially refused to cooperate with the committees, but front line officers did so because it was necessary. The Russian officer corps itself was divided between prewar career officers, student volunteers and reservists, and
7920-453: The summer offensive , the June offensive ( Russian : Июньское наступление ) in Russia, or the July offensive in Western historiography, took place from 1 July [ O.S. 18 June] to 19 July [ O.S. 6 July] 1917 and was the last Russian offensive of World War I . After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II during the February Revolution , the Russian Provisional Government pledged to fulfill Russia's existing commitments to
8100-406: The voiced velar fricative consonant (/ɣ/) and consistent stress on the first syllable. The Bohemian (Czech) language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the late 13th and early 14th century and administrative documents first appear towards the late 14th century. The first complete Bible translation ,
8280-446: The 1st Company of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion in Bayonne was created mostly of the Czechs and was nicknamed " rota Nazdar " ("Nazdar!" Company). The company distinguished itself in heavy combat during assaults near Arras on May 9 and June 16, 1915. Because of heavy casualties, the company was disbanded, and volunteers continued to fight in various French units. New autonomous Czechoslovak units were established by
8460-404: The 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, settling on the eastern fringes of the Frankish Empire . The West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries. The diversification of the Czech-Slovak group within West Slavic began around that time, marked among other things by its use of
8640-482: The Austrian army. In September 1918 the first fighting unit, the 39th Regiment of the Czechoslovak Italian Legion, was formed from those volunteer reconnaissance squadrons. Czechoslovak legionaries in Italy were the first to return to newly created Czechoslovakia in 1918 and were immediately drafted into fights for new state borders, most notably in the war against the Hungarian Soviet Republic . Flags of legions’ regiments were white and red with embroidered symbols of
8820-473: The Austrian defenses, and a renewed assault led to the capture of Stanislau on 8 July. The defenses beyond the city, along the road from Stanislau to the Russian objective of Kalush , had not been prepared by Nádas or other senior officers. The Austrian positions here collapsed and Kornilov's troops advanced six miles toward Kalusz. Kornilov's success was more than taking territory, as the German high command had to delay their plans for their own counteroffensive in
9000-407: The Bohemian Crown from the Austrian Empire and of Slovak territories from the Kingdom of Hungary , which were then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . With the help of émigré intellectuals and politicians such as the Czech Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik , they grew into a force over 100,000 strong. In Russia , they took part in several victorious battles of
9180-400: The Czech countries and Slovakia, linden twigs, St. Wenceslas’ crown, letters “ S”, and Hussite themes. The reverse side of the Russian legion's flag showed national colors for the Russian command, and Czech and Slovak colors for the Czechs and Slovaks. The National Council of Czechoslovakia in exile, which led the anti-Austrian resistance, became the interim government on 26 September 1918 with
SECTION 50
#17327659081529360-415: The Czechoslovak Legion ( Československá legie ) in Russia. A second division, consisting of four regiments, was added to the Legion in October 1917, raising its strength to about 40,000 troops by 1918. In France, the Czechs and the Slovaks who wanted to fight Austria-Hungary were allowed to join the Foreign Legion , hence originated the term Legion for units of Czechoslovak volunteers. On 31 August 1914,
9540-429: The Czechoslovak unit in Russia grew very slowly from 1914 to 1917. In early 1916, the Družina was reorganized as the 1st Czecho-Slovak Rifle Regiment. During that year, two more infantry regiments were added, creating the Czechoslovak Rifle Brigade ( Československá střelecká brigáda ). This unit distinguished itself during the Kerensky Offensive in July 1917, when the Czecho-Slovak troops overran Austrian trenches during
9720-414: The Czechoslovaks defended the Kolchak government's only supply route for the duration of 1919. During the summer and autumn of 1919, Kolchak's armies were in a steady retreat from the Red Eastern Army Group. On 14 November, the Reds took Omsk, Kolchak's capital, initiating a desperate eastward flight by the White army and refugees along the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the following weeks, the Whites' rear
9900-440: The Czechoslovaks – against the wishes of the National Council – refused to disarm and began issuing ultimatums for their passage to Vladivostok. This incident sparked the Revolt of the Legions . Fighting between the Czechoslovak Legion and the Bolsheviks erupted at several points along the Trans-Siberian Railway in the last days of May 1918. By June, the two sides were fighting along the railway route from Penza to Krasnoyarsk . By
10080-424: The Czechoslovaks' lines. The most important of these governments were the Komuch , led by the Social Revolutionaries , in Samara and the Provisional Siberian Government in Omsk . With substantial Czechoslovak help, the People's Army of Komuch won several important victories, including the capture of Kazan and an Imperial state gold reserve on 6-7 August 1918. Czechoslovak pressure was also crucial in convincing
10260-416: The Eastern Front to force the Soviet government to accept its terms for peace. From 5 to 13 March, the Czechoslovak legionaries successfully fought off German attempts to prevent their evacuation in the Battle of Bakhmach . After leaving Ukraine and entering Soviet Russia , representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council continued to negotiate with Bolshevik authorities in Moscow and Penza to iron out
10440-559: The Eastern Front. But the other countries had more influence in Russia than the U.S., and the delegation arrived when the decision had already been made. In June, Kerensky made an effort to increase political backing for the offensive. To democratize the army as the Soviet wanted, he issued the declaration of soldiers' rights, which stated that soldiers could be members of political organizations and could express their opinions openly. But this meant that officers were prevented from stopping political agitation that spread anti-war sentiment among
10620-476: The French offensive in the West, the Army Supreme Command (OHL) sent six divisions from there to the Eastern Front. German quartermaster-general Erich Ludendorff intended to not only stop the Russian offensive but to launch a counteroffensive into Russian territory. The German high command's plan called for the capture of the Tarnopol – Czernovitz line, and Germany transferred six or seven infantry divisions, one cavalry division, and two artillery regiments from
10800-603: The Italian connection to the Legion. The French military mission's role was to integrate the existing Czechoslovak Foreign Legions with the home units of the Army and develop a professional command structure. On October 15, 1919, the main staff of the Czechoslovak Army was officially formed. French officers were installed as territorial commanders and commanders of some divisions. Over the course of time, there were 200 French non-commissioned officers, over 100 commissioned officers and 19 Generals. General Pellé and his immediate replacement, General Eugène Mittelhauser (also French), were
10980-573: The Japanese Expeditionary Force and the troops of Ataman Grigori Semenov , who stalled the Czechoslovak trains to delay the arrival of the Red Army in Eastern Siberia. By then the evacuation of Czechoslovak troops from Vladivostok was well underway, and the last legionaries left the port in September 1920. The total number of people evacuated with the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia was 67,739; including 56,455 soldiers, 3,004 officers, 6,714 civilians, 1,716 wives, 717 children, 1,935 foreigners and 198 others. After their return to Czechoslovakia, many formed
SECTION 60
#173276590815211160-412: The Pacific port of Vladivostok , where the men would embark on transport vessels that would carry them to Western Europe. In February 1918, Bolshevik authorities in Ukraine granted Masaryk and his troops permission to begin the 9,700-kilometre (6,000 mi) journey to Vladivostok. On 18 February, before the Czechoslovaks had left Ukraine, the German Army launched Operation Faustschlag (fist strike) on
11340-498: The Provisional Government in the spring of 1917 to deal with the discipline problems was to create "volunteer, revolutionary battalions for the training of shock groups." Based on shock detachments formed by Brusilov in 1916 for infiltration and reconnaissance, they were expanded by him and by General Kornilov in early 1917, which was eventually approved by Kerensky. Brusilov sent recruiters to places as far away as Petrograd and Moscow to find volunteers. These units were recruited from
11520-407: The Provisional Government in the spring of 1917. But they were too few in number to hold the line against a counterattack by German reinforcements, and the regular infantry were less reliable. The Russian forces were then pushed back after 19 July, losing all of the territory they had gained. The Germans and Austrians continued advancing into Russian territory by as much as 120 kilometres (75 miles). By
11700-412: The Provisional Government, which consisted mostly of liberals and a few socialists, though it had no control over the revolutionary mobs in Petrograd without cooperation from the Soviet. The leaders of the Provisional Government wanted to continue the war against the Central Powers alongside the Entente, and in April 1917 this led to a political crisis. The workers and soldiers in Petrograd wanted to end
11880-430: The Provisional Government. Vladimir Lenin thought that the government still had significant support and an early uprising could be crushed. However, the Bolshevik organization in Petrograd was taken over by the radicals. On 16 July, some of the troops started a violent protest against the offensive and the government, calling on workers to join them. Within days, they brought the city to a standstill. The rioters surrounded
12060-421: The Revolution and the creation of soldiers' committees undermined their plans for the offensive. General Alekseyev, who became the army supreme commander after the Revolution, told his French counterpart Robert Nivelle in March that the offensive would have to be delayed until June, because of low morale, logistical issues, and problems caused by bad weather. Alekseyev was also told by Alexander Guchkov , who
12240-455: The Romanian Second Army would launch a secondary attack against the Austro-Hungarian First Army in the upper Putna valley. The three Russian armies (the Fourth , Sixth , and Ninth ) had a supporting role to the Romanians. Romanian morale was high, but it was much lower for the Russian units. Because of that, and the defeat of the main offensive in Galicia, there were proposals to cancel the operation (planned for 24 July), but it went ahead at
12420-548: The Russian Army would not be ready for an offensive by the requested date. On 1 February 1917, at a conference with French, British, and Italian delegations in Petrograd , it was agreed by Entente military leaders that an offensive in the West would start in April and the Russians would begin about one month later, giving them more time. The Petrograd conference also resulted in the Western Allies promising to provide Russia with supplies, including heavy artillery, aircraft, and railway rolling stock. On 6 February, Nicholas accepted
12600-402: The Russian Army's munition shortages. Therefore the Russian delegation to the conference instead proposed a Russian offensive from Romania that would invade Bulgaria from the north, and together with a pincer movement from the south by the Anglo-French army in Greece , remove Bulgaria from the war. This would also increase Russian influence in the Balkans and cut off the Ottoman Empire from
12780-416: The Russian army had fallen back to the original Austrian-Russian border, having retreated by as much as 120 kilometres (75 miles). Most of the Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina were retaken by the Austro-German forces. On other parts of the Russian front, the supporting attacks by the other army groups fared worse. The Western Front , led by Anton Denikin , started the offensive on 20 July with
12960-662: The Russians were used to stop the breakthrough in the Austro-Hungarian line. The Battle of Zborov in the Eleventh Army's sector became notable for the advance of the Czechoslovak Brigades against the Austrian 19th Infantry Division, which mostly consisted of ethnic Czechs. The successful Czechoslovak attack caused the division to withdraw from the town, and, together with Russian assistance, threatened
13140-603: The South Army's sector to the north. Instead, the divisions they intended to use for that were diverted to shore up the Austrian Third Army. The fighting paused on 10 July as the Russians brought more ammunition and artillery to their new positions, but Nádas was relieved of command by Karl Křitek . Brusilov, the front commander, asked Kornilov to provide assistance to the Seventh and Eleventh Armies, but he
13320-473: The Southwestern Front was the only one who was optimistic and said that his armies were ready for an offensive. On 3 June, Alekseyev informed all front commanders that an offensive would be launched around 20 June, with a secondary attack by two armies of the Northern Front in the direction of Vilnius , but the main focus would be Galicia in the southwest. In May 1917, Kerensky went on a tour of
13500-540: The Soviet to ask the Bolsheviks for help, releasing their leaders that had been imprisoned after the July Days, and arming 25,000 Bolshevik Red Guards . They also invited radical Baltic Fleet sailors into Petrograd for security. The soldiers distrusted Kerensky because of his lenient treatment of Kornilov and his conspirators, and many of the troops refused to take orders from the high command, which could now only rely on
13680-488: The Tauride Palace, but the leaders of the Soviet refused their demands, while Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders were reluctant to get involved. Regardless, the Bolsheviks were accused of being the instigators and had to flee the capital when the Provisional Government brought loyal troops into the city to end the protests. Also, on 7 July, Kerensky became the head of government when Prince Georgy Lvov resigned, which
13860-520: The Western Front to carry out the counterattack. Armies from north to south: The Special Army was also part of the Southwestern Front, but did not participate in the offensive. Armies from north to south: The preliminary artillery barrage began on 29 June [ O.S. 16 June] 1917, when Kerensky arrived in Tarnopol and officially ordered the offensive. The Russian objective
14040-519: The Whites, organized by Radola Gajda in Vladivostok on 17 November 1919, the Whites accused the Czechoslovaks of treason, but were too weak to act against them. When the armistice with the Bolsheviks was concluded, dozens of Czechoslovak trains were still west of Irkutsk. On 1 March 1920, the last Czechoslovak train passed through that city. The legionaries' progress was still hampered at times by
14220-615: The anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia to nominally unify behind the All-Russian Provisional Government , formed at a conference in Ufa during September 1918. During the autumn of 1918, the legionaries' enthusiasm for the fighting in Russia, then mostly confined along the Volga and Urals , dropped precipitously. The professor T. G. Masaryk supported them from the United States of America. The rapidly growing Red Army
14400-402: The army and save Russia. Kerensky approved this request, and it was accepted by the supreme commander, Brusilov. The Germans launched their counteroffensive against the Southwestern Front on 19 July. The initial attack fell on the Eleventh Army, which began retreating despite its numerical superiority over the German force. The most reliable units had suffered the majority of the casualties, and
14580-503: The army. There were also reports of Russian soldiers talking and sharing food and alcohol with the Germans and Austrians, who took the opportunity to spread propaganda among them after they became aware of the revolutionary developments in Russia. Almost every corps at the front line experienced refusal by some soldiers that were in reserve to move up to the front, though the vast majority of these situations were resolved by negotiation with
14760-663: The attack. Around the time the attack in the north slowed down, on 6 July 1917, the Eighth Army began shelling the Austrian positions in their sector near Stanislau . The Russians had a geographic advantage, with their positions being higher up than the Austrians, who had also not completed their defenses in this area. The Eighth Army then launched its own attack against Austrian Third Army, led by Karl Tersztyánszky von Nádas , but it failed to break through on 7 July. The initial infantry attack at several locations did not make much progress, but two days of an artillery barrage weakened
14940-679: The beginning of the war as the "Nazdar" company, and similar units later emerging in Italy and Serbia . Originally an all-volunteer force, these formations were later strengthened by Czech and Slovak prisoners of war or deserters from the Austro-Hungarian Army . The majority of the legionaries were Czechs, with Slovaks making up 7% of the force in Russia, 3% in Italy and 16% in France. The name Czechoslovak Legion preceded and anticipated
15120-439: The best soldiers and officers of regular infantry regiments, as well as from civilian volunteers. But this also made the regular infantry less reliable. Between March and November 1917 there were 600,000 volunteers for the shock battalions. These included a Women's Battalion , which the Provisional Government also hoped to use to shame the infantry that did not want to fight. But in early May 1917, Brusilov told Alekseyev that
15300-458: The borderlands. Meanwhile, the legionaries were wary of Czechoslovak Communists who were trying to subvert the corps. They also suspected that the Bolsheviks were being pressured by the Central Powers to stall their movement towards Vladivostok. By May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion was strung out along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok. Their evacuation was proving much slower than expected due to dilapidated railway conditions,
15480-603: The capacity of their railways to provide support. Before the German counteroffensive in Galicia was over, the high command began planning an offensive further north to capture Riga , a city not very far from the Russian capital Saint Petersburg. The month of July also saw a series of protests in Petrograd known as the July Days . The possibility of being sent to the front for the summer offensive, and therefore removed from
15660-405: The center of power, caused the revolutionary soldiers of the Petrograd garrison to stage protests against the government. The arrival in Petrograd of rebellious troops and deserters from other fronts caused agitation, as they advocated for all power to be given to the Soviet. Initially they were peaceful, and both the Soviet and Bolshevik Party leaders talked the radicals out of staging a coup against
15840-471: The committees; they tended to support War Minister Kerensky, were pro-war and patriotic, and made preparations for the June offensive. The enlisted soldiers were mostly peasants, and they were patriotic but wanted to fight defensively and establish peace. Among the professional officers, some of them were monarchists (either constitutional or absolutist), while many welcomed the removal of Nicholas II and supported
16020-629: The consent of France, Great Britain, and the US. The first ceremonial hoisting of the Czechoslovak flag on the house inhabited by T. G. Masaryk, the head of the interim government, took place on 18 October 1918. Based on the historical flag of Bohemia, the Czechoslovak flag was defined as the connection of two stripes, i.e. a white one above a red one. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power throughout Russia and soon began peace negotiations with
16200-434: The conservative revivalists were motivated by nationalism or considered contemporary spoken Czech unsuitable for formal, widespread use. Adherence to historical patterns was later relaxed and standard Czech adopted a number of features from Common Czech (a widespread informal interdialectal variety), such as leaving some proper nouns undeclined. This has resulted in a relatively high level of homogeneity among all varieties of
16380-771: The core of the new Czechoslovak Army . The number of legionaries killed in Russia during World War I and the Russian Civil War was 4,112. An unknown number went missing or deserted the legion, either to make an arduous journey to return home or to join the Czechoslovak Communists. Among the latter was Jaroslav Hašek , later the author of the satirical novel The Good Soldier Švejk . A total of 36 transports were dispatched from Vladivostok. The rank insignia of commissioned officers . The rank insignia of non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel . Czechoslovakia declared its independence from
16560-511: The creation of Czechoslovakia . In the first months of World War I, the response of the Czech soldiers and civilians to the war and mobilization efforts were highly enthusiastic; however, it turned into apathy later. As World War I broke out, national societies representing ethnic Czechs and Slovaks residing in the Russian Empire petitioned the Russian government to support the independence of their homelands. To prove their loyalty to
16740-512: The crowds began also making political demands. The initial marches were endorsed by revolutionary workers' committees, who began organizing more protests. As the protests became violent the emperor sent a telegram ordering the use of force to end the unrest. After police were attacked on 10 March, the Petrograd Military District commander, General Sergei Khabarov , gave soldiers permission to shoot at rioters. The next day,
16920-748: The decree of the French government on 19 December 1917. In January 1918, the 21st Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment was formed in the town of Cognac ; it mixed prisoners of war with volunteers living in America. The 22nd Czechoslovak Rifle Regiment was created later in May. The creation of Czechoslovak units in Italy took place much later than in France or Russia. In January 1918, the commander of 6th Italian Army decided to form small reconnaissance groups from Czech, Moravian Slovak and Southern Slav volunteers from prisoner-of-war camps. They also served in propaganda actions against
17100-619: The defenses for several miles along the Zborov –Berezhany sector, and by 2 July had taken several lines of trenches. The Eleventh Army had pushed back the Austrian Second, and advanced an average of two miles into their territory along the front, but the Seventh Army further to the south had a much slower advance, primarily facing the German troops of the South Army. The Russian attack on the first day captured over 18,000 men. After
17280-518: The details of the corps' evacuation. On 25 March, the two sides signed the Penza Agreement, in which the legionaries were to surrender most of their weapons in exchange for unmolested passage to Vladivostok. Tensions continued to mount, as each side distrusted the other. The Bolsheviks, despite Masaryk's order for the legionaries to remain neutral in Russia's affairs, suspected that the Czechoslovaks might join their counterrevolutionary enemies in
17460-427: The dialects of Bohemia. Czech has a moderately-sized phoneme inventory, comprising ten monophthongs , three diphthongs and 25 consonants (divided into "hard", "neutral" and "soft" categories). Words may contain complicated consonant clusters or lack vowels altogether. Czech has a raised alveolar trill , which is known to occur as a phoneme in only a few other languages, represented by the grapheme ř . Czech
17640-673: The disintegrating Austria-Hungary, on 28 October 1918 with now President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk of the Czechoslovak Republic. Members of the Legions formed a significant part of the new Czechoslovak Army. A French military mission began in Czech territories after January 1919, led by General Maurice Pellé . After some disagreements with the Italian-led Czechs in Slovakia, President Masaryk eventually replaced Piccione with Pellé on July 4, 1919, and essentially ended
17820-405: The easily separable affixes characteristic of agglutinative languages are limited. Czech inflects for case, gender and number in nouns and tense, aspect, mood , person and subject number and gender in verbs. Parts of speech include adjectives, adverbs , numbers, interrogative words , prepositions , conjunctions and interjections . Adverbs are primarily formed from adjectives by taking
18000-401: The end of the Eighth Army's advance, which had been the most successful, and on 20 July Kornilov, to whom the success was attributed, was named the commander of the Southwestern Front in the place of General Aleksei Gutor . His promotion was requested to Kerensky by Boris Savinkov , a Provisional Government commissar to the Southwestern Front, who believed the Kornilov could restore the power of
18180-493: The end of the month, legionaries under General Mikhail Diterikhs had taken control of Vladivostok, overthrowing the local Bolshevik administration. On July 6, the Legion declared the city to be an Allied protectorate, and legionnaires began returning across the Trans-Siberian Railway to support their comrades fighting to their west. Generally, the Czechoslovaks were the victors in their early engagements against
18360-498: The face of foreign conquest. Prince Lvov addressed this with a declaration stating that Russia was fighting the war to establish peace and self-determination for all nations. The Soviet's Executive Committee wanted the declaration to be sent to the other Allies, and when it was, Pavel Milyukov , the new government's minister of foreign affairs, added a private note which said that Russia still wanted to gain Constantinople and
18540-515: The failed advance the Fifth Army was faced with the task of restoring order. The Stavka originally planned for Russia's ally Romania to have a small contribution to the main offensive, seeing the Romanians as a liability, but the Romanian leadership was intent on liberating their homeland and proposed a much larger operation, which was approved in late March 1917 by a new Russian government that
18720-477: The final ý or í of the base form and replacing it with e , ě , y , or o . Negative statements are formed by adding the affix ne- to the main verb of a clause, with one exception: je (he, she or it is) becomes není . Because Czech uses grammatical case to convey word function in a sentence (instead of relying on word order , as English does), its word order is flexible. As a pro-drop language , in Czech an intransitive sentence can consist of only
18900-557: The first chiefs staff of the Czechoslovak Army. The Legion took part in the Hungarian–Czechoslovak War . On January 1, 1919, Legion troops took control of the city of Bratislava and Italian Colonel Riccardo Barreca was appointed military commander of the city. Several clashes (which killed at least nine Hungarian demonstrators) took place and Barreca himself was injured. The Italian officers continued to assist in
19080-485: The first two days of fighting the Seventh Army took about 15,000 casualties and inflicted about 12,500 on the opposing German-Austrian-Ottoman force, which challenged them for control of the heights of the Zolota Lypa river valley. By the evening of the second day the troops of the Seventh Army were no longer willing to go on the attack. The Seventh Army's advance stopped after 2 July and it was ordered to simply cover
19260-462: The flank of the Eleventh. The Eleventh Army had more initial success, capturing its objectives, and so did the Czech volunteer units. The opposing Austro-Hungarian force was reduced took heavy losses and many of them abandoned their positions during the Russian attack. The Eleventh Army took a significant number of prisoners, and the German reserve forces that were meant for a counterattack against
19440-429: The fledgling Red Army . By mid-July, the legionaries had seized control of the railway from Samara to Irkutsk , and by the beginning of September they had cleared Bolshevik forces from the entire length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Legionnaires conquered all the large cities of Siberia, including Yekaterinburg , but Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed on the direct orders of Yakov Sverdlov less than
19620-409: The front for their own safety, while those who remained pledged loyalty to the revolution and worked with the soldiers' committees to get things done. Officers had to show their enthusiasm for the revolutionary changes and use persuasion to convince soldiers to follow their orders. Those with a middle class professional or student background were most likely to sympathize with the revolution and work with
19800-462: The front got along better, while the members of training or reserve units had less bonds between them. Kerensky, as well as the Stavka and the Ministry of War, were determined to continue with the planned offensive in Galicia. In addition to their obligations to the Entente, they also thought it could restore national unity and military discipline. Despite its previous casualties, the Russian Army
19980-399: The front lines to give patriotic speeches to the troops, and during the tour he spent a lot of time together with Brusilov. The two of them got along well and agreed on many of the issues facing Russia at that time. They were also well received by the soldiers, and Kerensky's speeches helped raise enthusiasm for the offensive. At the same time, General Alekseyev had been critical of Kerensky and
20160-676: The guards units, the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments notably put up a fight during the Russian retreat. After only encountering limited Russian resistance, Austro-German troops took the city of Tarnopol on 25 July as the Seventh and parts of the Eleventh Armies withdrew to the other side of the Zbruch river. A Russian attack was launched on 31 July against the Austro-Hungarians but it was fought off. Czernovitz,
20340-420: The idea of an independent Czechoslovak state. As the legionaries cruised from one victory to another that summer, the Czechoslovak National Council began receiving official statements of recognition from various Allied governments. Shortly after they entered into hostilities against the Bolsheviks, the legionaries began making common cause with anti-Bolshevik Russians who began forming their own governments behind
20520-473: The infantry, while the cavalry and artillery were often willing to put down mutinies by the former. In general, while the infantry soldiers were more divided, the Provisional Government still had significant support among the cavalry and artillery, the Cossacks, officer cadets, and volunteers of new infantry units called the " battalions of death ," or shock battalions. One of the measures taken by Brusilov and
20700-578: The insistence of King Ferdinand of Romania, General Constantin Prezan , and the king's Russian chief of staff, Dmitry Shcherbachev . The main advance on Nămoloasa was permanently delayed, but the Russo-Romanian actions at the Battles of Mărăști , Mărășești , and Oituz were successful in retaking some territory from the Austrians and Germans, and prevented the Central Powers from conquering what
20880-494: The language. Czech is spoken by about 10 million residents of the Czech Republic . A Eurobarometer survey conducted from January to March 2012 found that the first language of 98 percent of Czech citizens was Czech, the third-highest proportion of a population in the European Union (behind Greece and Hungary ). As the official language of the Czech Republic (a member of the European Union since 2004), Czech
21060-844: The last two are found only in loanwords such as auto "car" and euro "euro". In Czech orthography, the vowels are spelled as follows: The letter ⟨ ě ⟩ indicates that the previous consonant is palatalized (e.g. něco /ɲɛt͡so/ ). After a labial it represents /jɛ/ (e.g. běs /bjɛs/ ); but ⟨mě⟩ is pronounced /mɲɛ/, cf. měkký ( /mɲɛkiː/ ). The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows: Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft": Hard consonants may not be followed by i or í in writing, or soft ones by y or ý (except in loanwords such as kilogram ). Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak". This distinction
21240-465: The leadership siding with the counter-revolutionary officers against them, and they started becoming disillusioned with both the Provisional Government and the moderate members of the Soviet. In the immediate term, as the Russian army retreated back into the Russian Empire, the soldiers became more willing to fight. The new measures to restore discipline also had an effect, though the events of
21420-533: The legionaries had signed an armistice with the Fifth Red Army at Kutin, whereby the latter allowed the Czechoslovaks unmolested passage to Vladivostok. In exchange, the legionaries agreed not to try to rescue Kolchak, and to leave the remaining gold bullion with the authorities in Irkutsk. Earlier that day, Kolchak had been executed by a Cheka firing squad to prevent his rescue by a small White army then on
21600-526: The legionaries were ordered by Allied representatives in Siberia to convey him to the British military mission in Irkutsk. This plan was resisted by insurgents along the Czechoslovaks' route, and as a result the legionaries, after consulting their commanders, Generals Janin and Jan Syrový , made the controversial decision to turn Kolchak over to the Political Center, a government formed by Socialists-Revolutionaries in Irkutsk. On 7 February 1920,
21780-597: The legionaries' evacuation from Siberia. In early July 1918, he published an aide-mémoire calling for a limited intervention in Siberia by the U.S. and Japan to rescue the Czechoslovak troops, who were then blocked by Bolshevik forces in Transbaikal . But by the time most American and Japanese units landed in Vladivostok, the Czechoslovaks were already there to welcome them. The Czechoslovak Legion's campaign in Siberia impressed Allied statesmen and attracted them to
21960-504: The letter ř (capital Ř ) is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of Kashubian , and formerly occurred in Polish. It represents the raised alveolar non-sonorant trill ( IPA : [r̝] ), a sound somewhere between Czech r and ž (example: "řeka" (river) ), and is present in Dvořák . In unvoiced environments, /r̝/
22140-406: The main offensive, but after the failure of the Seventh and Eleventh Armies, it went on the attack and broke through the Austrian lines to capture several towns, which was celebrated in the Russian press. Kornilov's attack made it as far as thirty kilometers and his troops had relatively less problems with indiscipline, in part because he had formed committees of agitators that persuaded units to go on
22320-469: The most important factor in him making that decision was his chief of staff at the Stavka, General Alekseyev, who had the support of all of the senior army generals. Alekseyev, once he realized the liberal parties in the Duma would form a pro-war government, initially asked him to form a constitutional monarchy with the revolutionaries that could focus on restoring national unity and leading Russia to victory in
22500-473: The noun they modify. The following is a glossed example: Chc-i want- 1SG navštív-it visit- INF universit-u, university- SG . ACC , na on kter-ou which- SG . F . ACC chod-í attend- 3SG Kerensky Offensive [REDACTED] Southwestern Front [REDACTED] / [REDACTED] / [REDACTED] Army Group Böhm-Ermolli The Kerensky offensive ( Russian : Наступление Керенского ), also called
22680-412: The officers now depended on the cooperation of the elected soldiers' committees. The committees were formed to manage the relationship between the officer corps and the enlisted troops, functioning as a soviet at the battalion level and higher, and tended to be dominated by praporshchiks ( warrant officers ) and NCOs. Members of the prewar officer corps, who often were members of the nobility, looked at
22860-430: The ones that were left were unwilling to fight. By the end of 21 July, the Eleventh Army had abandoned its positions, and on 22 July the Seventh Army was also hit by the German counterattack. The Russian Seventh and Eleventh Armies were in full retreat, which turned into a rout, while the remaining resistance there to the Germans came from officers and NCOs. By 23 July, the Eighth Army was forced to withdraw because its flank
23040-599: The operations against the Hungarians during the war. Many veterans of the legion also fought in the Polish–Czechoslovak War . Legion veterans formed organizations such as the Association of Czechoslovak Legionnaires ( Československá obec legionářská ) and Legiobanka ( Legionářská banka , a bank formed with the capital they had gathered during their long service). These and other organizations were known as
23220-473: The other German objective, fell on 3 August. The fighting was largely over after 5 August 1917. The Russian Provisional Government recognized the loyal units that distinguished themselves during the counteroffensive, including the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards Regiments, the Polish Uhlan Regiment , and the 194th Infantry Division . By the time the German counteroffensive was finished
23400-524: The outbreak of the February Revolution . Protests and riots that broke out in Petrograd in March [ O.S. February] 1917 caused a series of events that led to the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, becoming known as the February Revolution . Russia experienced a decline in grain production since the start of the war in 1914, which, combined with the demands of the army and problems with
23580-505: The outskirts of the city. His body was dumped under the ice of the frozen Angara River and never recovered. When the White Army learned about the execution, its remaining leadership decided to withdraw farther east. The Great Siberian Ice March followed. The Red Army did not enter Irkutsk until 7 March, and only then was the news of Kolchak's death officially released. Because of this, and also because of an attempted rebellion against
23760-460: The place of Brusilov at the head of the Southwestern Front, while Ivan Erdeli was appointed to command the Eleventh Army and Lavr Kornilov to command the Eighth. Kerensky's speaking tour, along with the work of the officers that cooperated with the soldiers' committees, was able to win over enough of the infantry units that were needed for the offensive. The lack of discipline was more common among
23940-402: The policies of the Provisional Government. On 4 June 1917 he was relieved of command and replaced by Brusilov as the head of the army. The replacement of Alekseyev was followed by Kerensky's appointment of other generals to senior posts, replacing those who were seen as "counter-revolutionary" with "democratic" generals that were willing to cooperate with soldiers' committees. Aleksei Gutor took
24120-461: The presence of the same discipline problems that affected the rest of the Russian Army. The fighting in Romania continued until mid-September 1917. As many Russian units disintegrated during the retreat, some soldiers committed crimes against the local population in the area near the front, causing Kornilov and Savinkov to ask the Provisional Government to restore the death penalty in the army. At
24300-481: The pro-war leaders of the Provisional Government. After the February Revolution, the demoralization that affected the Petrograd garrison began spreading among units outside of the capital. Political agitators from outside the army traveled to the front to give speeches to the troops, which in some instances included trying to pit the soldiers against the officers. The Bolsheviks were among those who sent agitators, and used reserve units to spread their newspapers among
24480-484: The rail system, caused shortages in Petrograd and other cities. Furthermore, the government's inability to finance the war effort led to a large deficit, which was partly covered by printing money, and the resulting inflation caused food prices to more than triple by the start of 1917. On 8 March [ O.S. 23 February], women that worked in factories began marching on International Women's Day to demand bread. They were joined by male factory workers, and soon after that
24660-548: The resignation of several ministers and a coalition agreement between Lvov and the Soviet, while Alexander Kerensky was appointed the Minister of War . Kerensky was among those who supported continuing the war and wanted to proceed with Russia's earlier agreement to go on the offensive. In the weeks after the tsar's abdication the Russian Army began experiencing a rapid decline in discipline and willingness to continue
24840-540: The rest of the Central Powers . The Russian high command's proposal was rejected by the Western Allies, which had already decided that Russia would launch an offensive in coordination with their efforts in the West, initially set for February 1917. But at a meeting of the Stavka on 30–31 December 1916 involving Emperor Nicholas II , who had assumed the post of Supreme Commander himself, the generals told him that
25020-421: The retreat itself were the main reason for the change in attitude. Patriotism reemerged when the army was defending Russia, but the overall revolutionary views of the soldiers remained. The Austro-German forces retook most of the Austrian provinces of Galicia and Bukovina, reversing the gains of the 1916 Brusilov offensive and taking additional territory. They stopped their attack when their forces had gone beyond
25200-582: The return of the language to high culture . This period is known as the Czech National Revival (or Renaissance). During the national revival, in 1809 linguist and historian Josef Dobrovský released a German-language grammar of Old Czech entitled Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache ('Comprehensive Doctrine of the Bohemian Language'). Dobrovský had intended his book to be descriptive , and did not think Czech had
25380-561: The situation on the Southwestern Front had changed from his earlier report, and that logistical problems would make an offensive difficult. Later that month, at a conference of the Stavka, all front commanders reached the conclusion that an offensive was necessary to assist the Western Allies, despite all of the army's problems. France, Britain, and Italy pressured the Provisional Government to take offensive action, and according to foreign minister Mikhail Tereshchenko , they threatened to withhold loans that Russia needed to avoid bankruptcy if there
25560-524: The soldiers at the front, and was interpreted by many soldiers to mean that they no longer had to obey their officers and could elect their own commanders. On 17 March 1917 the Soviet, together with the State Duma, tried to fix this situation by issuing Order No. 2, which stated that soldiers must still obey orders on military matters, but it was ineffective at restoring discipline. Although incidents of violence between soldiers and officers were not common,
25740-483: The soldiers' committees and officers. There were some occasions in which officers were murdered by their troops, and these incidents happened most often in the reserve units further away from the front. Desertion from the front line slightly decreased after the Revolution, but became more common among the rear-echelon and reserve units. Part of the reason for this was that officers and soldiers with common experience at
25920-416: The soldiers. The fighting on 6 July marked the end of the offensive for the Eleventh Army, at which point its troops stayed in the positions they had gained, an advance of five kilometers. Other units in the rear that were less enthusiastic about the offensive had been kept in reserve and were unwilling to assist the front line units. Kornilov's Russian Eighth Army was supposed to have a secondary role in
26100-441: The spoken language. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the division between Czech and Slovak becomes apparent, marking the confessional division between Lutheran Protestants in Slovakia using Czech orthography and Catholics, especially Slovak Jesuits, beginning to use a separate Slovak orthography based on Western Slovak dialects. The publication of
26280-465: The states of Texas , Nebraska and Wisconsin . In the 2000 United States Census , Czech was reported as the most common language spoken at home (besides English ) in Valley , Butler and Saunders Counties , Nebraska and Republic County, Kansas . With the exception of Spanish (the non-English language most commonly spoken at home nationwide), Czech was the most common home language in more than
26460-555: The suggestion of his chief of staff, General Mikhail Alekseyev , that the offensive would be conducted by the Southwestern Front with the focus on capturing Lemberg and the region of Galicia . Their main opponent there would be the Austro-Hungarian Army , which still had not fully recovered from its losses in the Brusilov offensive the previous summer. These plans were concluded by the Russian high command just before
26640-591: The summer of 1916. These offensives were all started early at the request of the Western Allies, before the Russian Imperial Army was fully ready, to alleviate the pressure against France in the West . But when Germany and Austria-Hungary were advancing on the Eastern Front in mid-1915, France and Britain did relatively little to assist Russia, waiting for months before starting their own offensive and providing too few supplies to address
26820-401: The support of right-wing industrialists and politicians that were secretly wanted to remove the Provisional Government from power. Kornilov and some other generals at the Stavka used loyal units to try to remove the Soviet from Petrograd, but this backfired when the troops mostly refused to comply. On 14 September 1917, Kornilov and the other rebel generals were placed under arrest. The crisis led
27000-408: The time the German counter-offensive was over on 5 August, nearly all of Eastern Galicia had been retaken by the Central Powers. The retreat of the Russian army eventually stopped, and Kornilov managed to stabilize the front by mid-August, but the failure of the operation eliminated the offensive potential of the Russian Army and increased support for the Bolsheviks among the troops. The offensive
27180-589: The towns of Kalush and Galich, and the railways in that area. Opposite of the Eleventh Army was the Austrian Second Army, and opposite of the Seventh Army was the German-commanded South Army, the latter including German, Austrian, and Ottoman divisions. The Eighth Army was faced by the Austrian Third Army. On 1 July [ O.S. 18 June], the Seventh and Eleventh Armies commenced their attack. Their shock battalions breached
27360-456: The troops killed people in the crowds, but several units refused to fire on protestors. Some of them joined the protests and over next two days the demonstrations grew beyond what the government could control, and they were also now armed with weapons from the rebellious soldiers. By 12 March the remaining police and loyal troops were overwhelmed and the Council of Ministers resigned as Petrograd
27540-713: The troops with a desire to return to their homeland. The final blow to Czechoslovak morale arrived on 18 November 1918, when a coup in Omsk overthrew the All-Russian Provisional Government and installed a dictatorship under Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in control of White Siberia. During the winter of 1918–1919, the Czechoslovak troops were redeployed from the front to guard the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway between Novonikolaevsk and Irkutsk from partisan attacks. Alongside other legions formed from Polish , Romanian and Yugoslav POWs in Siberia,
27720-510: The troops. Kerensky obtained the support of the Petrograd Soviet, and the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies that convened in the second half of that month also voted in favor of a resolution that allowed him to go on the offensive. The Congress passed a ambiguously-worded resolution on 25 June 1917 stating that the army should be capable of both defensive and offensive operations, which
27900-424: The upper classes. Modern standard Czech originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. By then the language had developed a literary tradition, and since then it has changed little; journals from that period contain no substantial differences from modern standard Czech, and contemporary Czechs can understand them with little difficulty. At some point before the 18th century, the Czech language abandoned
28080-420: The war, including the Zborov and Bakhmach against the Central Powers , and were heavily involved in the Russian Civil War fighting Bolsheviks , at times controlling the entire Trans-Siberian railway and several major cities in Siberia . After three years of existence as a small unit in the Imperial Russian Army , the Legion in Russia was established in 1917, with other troops fighting in France since
28260-404: The war, though the Petrograd Soviet initially did not address the subject and focused on ending the monarchy. Whether or not the war should continue was not one of the main topics in Russian politics during the events of March 1917, but this changed by April, when the Soviet declared that it wanted peace "without annexations or reparations," but also stating that the revolution could not retreat in
28440-453: The war. The immediate effect of the loss of the monarchy and the weakness of the Provisional Government was to undermine the authority of the officer corps over the enlisted troops. The day before the abdication, the Petrograd Soviet issued its Order No. 1 to the troops, with the goal of preventing officers in Petrograd from using the garrison against the revolution and to make officers treat soldiers with more respect. But it eventually reached
28620-412: The war. The main concern of the generals at the Stavka was the end the domestic unrest so that Russia could return to the war effort. After meeting with representatives of the Provisional Government, the generals persuaded Nicholas abdicate on 15 March [ O.S. 2 March] 1917, which was demanded by the revolutionaries in Petrograd. Before he abdicated the emperor approved Prince Georgy Lvov to lead
28800-461: Was 30 kilometres (19 miles) wide, leading to the capture of the towns of Kalush and Galich . Secondary attacks to assist the main offensive were also launched by the Russian Western , Northern , and Romanian Fronts in other locations, but they were mostly unsuccessful, with the exception of the one in the Romanian theater . The advance in the first days was in large part due to the volunteer shock battalions that were recruited and organized by
28980-409: Was a break in major fighting for three days, but it resumed on 6 July near Koniukhy , though by this time German reinforcements had reached the area. There were heavy losses for the Eleventh Army, and its advance was halted. After the initial advance, many soldiers believed they had done their job and did not want to continue. The Eleventh Army's reserve, the 1st Guards Corps , went on the attack, with
29160-469: Was a disaster for Kerensky and the Provisional Government, contributing to the July Days and the Kornilov affair . General Kornilov, the leader of the most successful Eighth Army, was appointed the commander of the Southwestern Front, and then army supreme commander just days later, because Kerensky hoped he could restore discipline and order among the retreating troops. He also gained support from conservative circles, and in September they decided to launch
29340-454: Was also recommended to Kerensky by Boris Savinkov. Furthermore, Kerensky approved their request to restore the death penalty, to impose limitations on soldiers' committees, and effectively cancel his Declaration of Soldiers' Rights from earlier. In this he was supported by the Petrograd Soviet Executive Committee, which declared that those who disobeyed orders from the Provisional Government were "traitors and cowards." Ordinary soldiers saw this as
29520-418: Was briefly the Minister of War before Kerensky replaced him, that the Petrograd Soviet had the real power and the Provisional Government existed as long as the Soviet allowed it. Therefore, Alekseyev had the French and Belgian representatives at the Stavka arranged for visits by socialists in their governments to get the Soviet to support continuing the war. The Soviet was divided on the issue, and avoided making
29700-401: Was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620, the Protestant intellectuals had to leave the country. This emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years' War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, especially among
29880-448: Was exposed. Despite this, not a single Russian division was encircled and destroyed, and many of the deserters in the rear of the front line returned to their units or were caught. The German and Austrian forces used up large quantities of ammunition and overstretched their forces. In some areas, such as along Zbruch river, Russian troops started putting up a stronger resistance as they were now fighting within Russian territory. Among
30060-432: Was faced with rapidly declining discipline among its own troops. The Romanian Army was in the process of rebuilding after Romania's near collapse in the previous year, so the Stavka planned for them and the armies of Russia's Romanian Front to be the last to start their advance. The Romanian First Army was tasked with the main attack against the German Ninth Army bridgehead on the Siret river at Nămoloasa while
30240-422: Was focused on the capture of Lemberg (Lvov). Kornilov also requested reinforcements, but received units from the Seventh Army that had experienced Bolshevik agitation and were unwilling to fight. When some of these soldiers tried to retreat from the battle, Kornilov had a machine gun and artillery unit stop them by shooting at them. The advance of the Eighth Army resumed late on 10 July, and they captured Galich ,
30420-462: Was further disorganized by widespread outbreaks of uprisings and partisan activity. The homesick legionaries, who simply wanted to leave Siberia without incurring any more casualties than necessary, declared their neutrality amid the unrest and did nothing to suppress the rebellions. Meanwhile, Kolchak's trains, which included the gold bullion captured from Kazan, were stranded along the railway near Nizhneudinsk . After his bodyguard deserted him there,
30600-417: Was getting stronger by the day, retaking Kazan on 10 September, followed by Samara a month later. The legionaries, whose strength had peaked at around 61,000 earlier that year, were lacking reliable reinforcements from POW camps and were disappointed by the failure of Allied soldiers from other countries to join them on the front lines. On 28 October, Czechoslovak statehood was declared in Prague , arousing
30780-529: Was killed by Peter" the order of subject and object is inverted: Petr zabil Pavla ("Peter killed Paul") becomes "Paul, Peter killed" ( Pavla zabil Petr ). Pavla is in the accusative case , the grammatical object of the verb. A word at the end of a clause is typically emphasized, unless an upward intonation indicates that the sentence is a question: In parts of Bohemia (including Prague ), questions such as Jí pes bagetu? without an interrogative word (such as co , "what" or kdo , "who") are intoned in
30960-446: Was left of Romania. The campaign also restored Romania's credibility among the Entente after the defeat in 1916, but overall it was a small victory for the war effort. It became the most successful supporting operation for the Kerensky offensive. The effect of seeing the Romanian Army advance and the use of shock units to stop mutinies behind the front line contributed to the willingness of Russian soldiers to fight in this area, despite
31140-400: Was meant to be interpreted as an approval. Kerensky gave the order to the Stavka to begin the attack, in accordance with Alekseyev's plan that he had prepared for Tsar Nicholas II. The stand of the Congress was clarified when the Petrograd Soviet's newspaper, Izvestia , called on soldiers to go on the offensive against the Central Powers to prevent the disintegration of the army, put Russia in
31320-425: Was more likely to disintegrate, and that it gave them an excuse to send the rebellious Petrograd garrison to the front line. The United States sent a delegation to Russia led by Elihu Root , who told Tereshchenko that the offensive should be postponed to give Russia time to recover from political unrest, and that Russia nominally being at war with Germany was enough assistance to the Allies, keeping German divisions on
31500-422: Was no Russian offensive. Kerensky also thought that a Russian military success would persuade the other Allies to seek peace on the terms in his government's earlier declaration calling for self-determination for all nations. So he saw Russian military action as an extension of his diplomacy to end the war on renegotiated terms. There was also the belief in the Provisional Government that if the army remained idle, it
31680-476: Was published in magazine Zvuk during 1996-1999 and as a book in 2002 ( ISBN 80-86528-08-1 ). Gustav Becvar (August Wenzel Engelbert (Gustav) Bečvář) published his memoir The Lost Legion in English in 1939. Two postage stamps, issued in 1919, were printed for use by Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia. The flag of the Czechoslovak Legion can be seen in the Allies in the monumental painting Pantheon de la Guerre . The Mounted Patrol (Jízdní hlídka in Czech)
31860-416: Was still an effective force at the start of 1917. The Stavka estimated in April that the army had 7,060,700 soldiers, the largest army Russia ever fielded up to that point. Replacements for the losses of earlier years were being trained and many of its supply shortages had been resolved, in part because of more Allied assistance being shipped to the port of Arkhangelsk . However, the political developments of
32040-416: Was taken over by the uprising. Out of the protests emerged two new political forces that both met at the Tauride Palace : the Petrograd Soviet , a workers' and soldiers' council led by socialist parties, and a Provisional Government that was formed by the liberal parties of the State Duma . These two shared political authority in what became known as dual power . The Duma asked Nicholas to abdicate, but
32220-404: Was to capture the city of Lemberg (Lvov) while advancing from two directions: the Eleventh Army from the north, aiming to capture Zolochev before advancing southwards toward Lemberg, and the Seventh Army from the south, to capture the Berezhany railway junction before continuing north to the main target. Further to the south was this theater, the Eighth Army was tasked with a supporting attack on
32400-426: Was unrelated to either the offensive or the July Days but had to do with several ministers resigning in protest of the government's decision to grant autonomy to Ukraine . The offensive also began Kornilov's rise to power, as he had been its most effective commander and managed to stabilize the front after the rout of the other two armies. He attended the Moscow State Conference in mid-August 1917, where he received
#151848