Page - 756 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

756 Kerensky Offensive and Peace Efforts of the Mala Strypa River […]. The Czecho-Slovakian Brigade captured 62 officers and 3,150 soldiers, and seized 15 cannons and a large number of machine guns, which were for the most part turned on the enemy.’1767 A gap in the front emerged. What had happened ? The Czecho-Slovakian Brigade had been systematically established. As early as 1914, Czech units had begun to be formed in the Kiev military district, which the Russians called the ‘Hussite Legion’, whilst the Czechs themselves called them ‘Česká družina’ (Czech Fellowship) or, generally, ‘dobrovolnici’ (volunteers).1768 In November 1914, several dozen people began to systematically bring in Czech prisoners of war and to attempt to induce them to join the Russian Army. For a period of months, however, the ‘družina’ had met with no noteworthy success. Czech organisations and individuals, such as the then Second Lieutenant Vladimir Klecanda, had repeated success in per- suading Czech soldiers to desert.1769 Since the Russians had clearly hesitated, however, to set up and deploy Czecho-Slovakian troops, the establishment of actual Czech units proceeded only very sluggishly. In order not to come into conflict with the Hague Convention on Land Warfare, the Czechs that then joined the ‘legion’ were forced to adopt Russian citizenship and, of course, wear Russian uniforms.1770 For the Imperial and Royal Army, however, they were still guilty of high treason. Czech members of the Imperial and Royal Army were repeatedly prepared to lay down their arms or even to desert, but they did not show much inclination to be recruited by the Russians. They were also content to be treated better by the Russians in prisoner of war captivity as a type of investment in the future than, for example, the German Austrian or the Hun- garian prisoners of war (see Chapter 26). By 1916, a Czecho-Slovakian rifle regiment and, eventually, a rifle brigade with two regiments had been established. The Russians still hesitated to deploy these formations on their south-western front, even under Rus- sian command and with Russian officers. Émigré circles, therefore, considered forming a Czecho-Slovakian corps in Russia but transporting it to France to fight against the Germans. The Czech offer to set up Czecho-Slovakian army components was met with such enthusiasm by the western Allies that the Russians ultimately agreed to a transfer even before the February Revolution. Subsequently, intensive recruiting took place among the prisoners of war in Russia. Pamphlets and appeals flooded the camps ; pressure was also exerted.1771 The changes brought about by the bourgeois revolution in Russia also had the effect, however, that the Czechs were to be deployed in the framework of the Russian Army after all. Thus, two of the three Czecho-Slovakian regiments that had been set up by then joined the 49th Corps of General Selivachev in the structure of the 11th Army.1772 They saw themselves as the first Czech troops to fight for their homeland since the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. The Battle of Zborov (Zborów) immediately, and in fact very differently to all pre- vious events, shed light on how precarious the inner fabric of the Imperial and Royal