My brothers keeper, an OC/SI as the twin of Stalin

[Xodarap]

Opsec is really hurting British planning if they've already generalized Mikheils forces as purely Revolutionary Guard did the good admiral make mistakes in the telegraph messages or was the abbreviated nature of telegraph responsible for the misunderstanding

 

[Alenco98]

An excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Czechoslovak revolt in Siberia:

By early 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion — once a coherent, if weary, fighting force — had become scattered across the immensity of Russia. Roughly 40,000 men remained under arms, but divided into four major concentrations:

10,000 within Ukraine around Kiev.

15,000 along the Penza–kazan-Samara region

10,000 in the Novosibirsk region, and

5,000 stationed near Vladivostok.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and the subsequent signing of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in December 1917 left the Legion in limbo. Their original mission — to fight Germany and Austria-Hungary for Allied recognition of Czechoslovakia — was now impossible without transit out of Russia.

It was into this void that Mikheil Jugashvili, the Georgian warlord and commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps came into play. Having marched into Ukraine with 5000 of his men. He offered to lead the Ukrainian contingent to Murmansk, all while sending messengers east promising the other Czechoslovaks to stand by as he would get them home as well. His infamous Caravan of Vice — a rolling mixture of alcohol, prostitutes, opium, brutality, and hard marching — deposited some ten thousand Legionnaires and 5 thousand revolutionary guardsmen in Murmansk on may 1st.

Initially Mikheil attempted to negotiate with the British, requesting they begin immediate evacuation of the legion. However, admiral Kemp, not having enough ships and having no authorization from London denied his request, informing Jugashvili that he would have to wait for a reply from London.

Not being one to be denied and with his patience running short, Jugashvili rallied the Revolutionary guardsmen and the Czechoslovaks. They subsequently seized the British fleet, scuttled its ships, and fortified the port that same night.

Jugashvili's mixture of ruthless charisma and opportunism attracted many Legionnaires. He promised them not only survival but wealth, glory, and women — and unlike Allied promises of distant evacuation, his words were backed by immediate plunder and authority.

By mid-May 1918, news of the "Murmansk Incident" had rippled across Russia like shockwaves through shattered glass. To Bolshevik sympathizers, Jugashvili's audacious seizure of the northern port was proof that revolutionary willpower could overcome the hesitancy of Allied imperialists. To the Allies themselves, it was nothing short of mutiny, an act of piracy dressed in the trappings of revolution. For the Czechoslovak Legion, the incident was the breaking point.

From that moment on, the once-unified Legion fractured into two bitterly opposed camps.

The Pro-Mikheil Faction. Bound together by Jugashvili's charisma, were drawn in equal measure by his promise of loot, survival, and revolutionary glory. Unlike the cautious Allied officers, Mikheil spoke in certainties: food today, women tomorrow, and plunder the day after. His words resonated with many Legionnaires of working-class origin and with younger junior officers who had grown tired of vague promises of evacuation to France. Among this camp, genuine communist sympathizers rose quickly in influence, reshaping Jugashvili's cult of personality into a revolutionary crusade. By late May, Mikheil's adherents were openly coordinating with Bolshevik forces under Trotsky in the Volga basin, particularly around the Samara–Kazan axis.

The pro allied pole meanwhile rallied around the idea of legitimacy. For these men — often senior officers, professionals, and those more tightly bound to Masaryk's vision of a Czechoslovak state — survival meant Allied recognition, not revolution. They sought nothing more than to escape Russia, regroup in France, and continue the fight against the Central Powers. In exchange for loyalty, they received supplies, ammunition, and arms from British, French, and Japanese missions in Siberia, with American matériel soon to follow. They aligned themselves closely with White forces, tying their fate to the anti-Bolshevik struggle.

The fragile balance between these camps collapsed on 27 May 1918 in Samara, when Jugashvili's adherents attempted to seize food and ammunition depots guarded by Pro-Allied Czechoslovaks. The clash was short but bloody: rifles cracked through the streets, bayonets were fixed, and in less than an hour fifty-seven men lay dead — the first Czechs to fall not against Germans or Austrians, but against their own countrymen.

The "Samara Bloodletting," as it was later called, set the precedent. From that day forward, every rumor, every whispered order, carried the risk of escalation into fratricide.

The Trans-Siberian Railway became the fault line of the Legion's internal conflict. Word of the Samara clashes spread faster than couriers could ride, magnified by rumor and distortion. In Penza, Legion detachments split over whether Mikheil was a savior or a bandit. In Novosibirsk, commanders argued openly in railway stations, pistols drawn, before men deserted to whichever side promised food and pay.

Entire units began switching allegiance at the drop of a rumor. A commander who one week swore loyalty to the Allies might, after hearing tales of Mikheil's victories in the north, defect the next. Others, more cynical, sold themselves to the highest bidder, looting towns and trading spoils with Bolsheviks or Whites as convenience dictated.

In some cities, the Czechs became petty warlords of railway yards, arsenals, or city blocks — men who had once envisioned themselves as liberators of Prague now ruled over stretches of Siberian mud and timber, their banners no longer a symbol of unity but of faction.

For the Bolsheviks, the split was an unexpected boon. Trotsky, wary yet pragmatic, saw the Czechoslovaks as dangerous but useful allies. With tens of thousands of disaffected Legionnaires adding steel to the Red effort on the Volga front.

For the Allies, the mutiny was a disaster. Instead of a disciplined, unified expeditionary asset, they now faced a divided Legion — one half cooperating with Whites, the other half fortifying Bolshevik strongholds. Japanese officers in Vladivostok fumed that their carefully laid plans to secure Siberia were being upended by "that Georgian bandit," while French officers in Irkutsk despaired that Czechs were killing Czechs before they had even set foot back in Europe.

By June 1918, the Legion's fate was sealed. The question was no longer whether they would fight for Czechoslovakia, but which Czechoslovakia they would fight for; one forged in the crucible of Allied legitimacy and Western recognition, or one born in fire and vice, under the banner of Jugashvili and the Bolshevik revolution.

The next battles — at Kazan, Ufa, and along the frozen stretches of the Siberian railway — would determine not only the survival of the Legion, but whether their homeland would be represented abroad as democratic allies of France and Britain, or as revolutionary comrades of Lenin and Jugashvili.

In Samara, Jugashvili's adherents formally threw in their lot with the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik detachments reinforced them, and together they began a series of lightning raids against White and pro-Allied Czechoslovak positions. Supply depots, rail stations, and even hospitals became targets.

The Whites and their Czechoslovak allies retaliated with their own brand of brutality, executing any Legionnaires suspected of being "red sympathizers." Executions were carried out in public squares to terrify the wavering. But rather than intimidating Mikheil's faction, the bloodletting only radicalized them.

The city became a deadly pendulum of control — swinging one day to the Whites, the next to the Reds. Civilians cowered in cellars, the streets stank of unburied corpses, and the Trans-Siberian line through Samara slowed to a crawl under the weight of barricades and patrols.

By 3 July, the Bolsheviks, supported heavily by Jugashvili aligned Czechoslovaks, seized the upper hand. The last pro-Allied Czech garrisons in the city were surrounded. Jugashvili's men offered them a choice: pledge allegiance or die.

In a grotesque echo of Jugashvili's earlier brutality in Moscow and on the Pukilovo Heights, those who defected were forced to execute their comrades who refused. Entire units dissolved in a haze of tears, drunkenness, and blood. The symbolism was deliberate — Jugashvili's new order demanded not just obedience, but complicity.

Flushed with their victory, the Czechoslovaks advanced south and seized Kazan on July 29th. There, in the chaos of conquest, they captured the Russian gold reserves — the single most valuable prize in Russia. The windfall provoked a bitter quarrel between the Czechoslovaks and Trotsky, who argued the gold belonged solely to the Soviet state.

After tense negotiations, a compromise was struck on August 15. The Czechoslovaks, backed by the sheer fact of physical possession, as well as by the political backing of Joseph Stalin, forced the Bolsheviks to concede. The gold was divided: one-third for the Bolshevik aligned Czechoslovaks in Samara and Jugashvili's northern contingent that was fighting in Finland, and two-thirds for the Bolshevik government. The split was grudging, but decisive. The Bolsheviks gained a financial lifeline that would sustain their revolution, while Czechoslovaks secured the loot that Jugashvili promised them.

Far to the east, in Novosibirsk, the schism played out differently. There, rival Czechoslovak commanders each declared themselves the rightful representatives of the national cause, forming dueling "committees."

Skirmishes on the outskirts escalated into pitched battles. By June, the fighting had drawn in Russian civilians and partisans, swelling into a localized civil war. Artillery duels turned entire neighborhoods into smoldering ruins. Railway cars filled with the dead were sent eastward, silent testimony to the ferocity of the fighting.

In the end, the Whites proved stronger. With substantial Allied support and better supply lines, they gradually ground down the Mikheil-aligned Czechoslovaks. By July's end, the Red-sympathizing Czechs had been surrounded, captured, and executed en masse. Their corpses were displayed publicly, a warning against Bolshevik agitation in Siberia. The pro-Allied faction declared Novosibirsk the "legitimate heart" of the Czechoslovak struggle — though the ruins around them spoke more of fratricide than liberation.

In Vladivostok, the balance was never in question. The Allied faction remained intact and unchallenged. Reinforced by Japanese divisions and with Allied warships in the harbor, Vladivostok became a fortress of pro-Allied order.

Pro-Mikheil agitators, sent eastward to stir dissent, were quickly uncovered and crushed. Those who attempted to rally troops were executed or shipped back west in chains. A rare moment of unity occurred when Japanese and Czechoslovak forces jointly suppressed Mikheil's supporters with ruthless efficiency. Vladivostok thus remained a bastion of Allied legitimacy, a gateway through which supplies, weapons, and political recognition flowed.

By the beginning of September, the map of the Czechoslovak Legion reflected its fracture. Samara–Kazan laid firmly in Jugashvili's hands, aligned with Bolsheviks and enriched by the gold reserves.

Novosibirsk and Vladivostok were purged of Mikheil's adherents, under White and Allied control. With Vladivostok in particular having become a stronghold of the Allied faction, which was heavily bolstered by Japanese power.

The Legion, once imagined as a unified army of national liberation, was now irreparably divided. Two banners flew under the same name: one red, revolutionary, and drenched in vice; the other white, legitimist, and chained to Allied interests.

And in between lay thousands of miles of railway, towns, and villages — the battleground of a civil war within a civil war.

The Legion Civil War remains a footnote in the broader Russian Civil War, yet it had lasting consequences. For the Allies, it shattered faith in the reliability of émigré forces. For the Bolsheviks, it proved both a boon — weakening White control, the securing of the Russian gold reserves — and a danger, as the Czechs were only loyal to loot, not to ideology.

Most poignantly, for the Czechoslovaks themselves, it was a tragedy. Men who had left their homes to fight for independence found themselves killing their own countrymen on distant Russian soil, their sacrifice entangled in the ambitions of foreign empires and the madness of revolutionary war.