CONTROL OF THE TRANS-SIBERIAN DURING THE CIVIL WAR:
Resistance to the Bolsheviks by the counter-revolutionary White armies began in December of 1917. They were joined by the Czech Legion in May 1918 when the Czechoslovaks became suspicious of Soviet good faith in their agreement for safe passage to France. Czechs already in Vladivostok decided to help their comrades fighting against the Bolsheviks in western Siberia who had been stalled enroute. On June 29 they overthrew the Soviet authorities in Vladivostok and appealed for Allied help against armed Austro-Hungarian and German prisoners-at-large who supposedly stood between them and their compatriots near Irkutsk. At this, the Japanese were only too happy to jump into the fray. By August the Czechs had taken over most of the railway and telegraph system from the Volga River to the eastern shore of Lake Baikal.
