VLADIVOSTOK - home from the war

In 2014, I published an article on LP describing my grandfather's entry into World War I, his departure to the Russian front and his capture by the Don Cossacks. At the end of the article I also briefly outlined his return from captivity by way of Vladivostok. At the time I wrote the article, this journey through a distant port did not make sense to me and I had to check whether the information I had received was based on the truth. However, I already knew then that I would have to return to the topic in the future and describe in more detail the return of prisoners of war at the end of the First World War to their homeland via the distant Vladivostok. Not only for you, the reader, but especially for myself.

The terrible world war is over. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the shattered Austro-Hungarian Empire found themselves far from home, on the vast Russian steppes, in camps in Siberia and in the Far East. Many of them were captured in the first months of fighting on the Eastern Front. Of the roughly 2.1 million Central Powers prisoners interned in Russia, some 400,000-450,000 were from the Austro-Hungarian army, including large numbers of Czechs and Slovaks. Their return home became one of the longest and most arduous journeys in modern history - from the Ukrainian plains to the Pacific Ocean and back to Europe, detouring halfway around the world.

The repatriation of prisoners of war 1918 - 1922

On March 3, 1918, a separate armistice was concluded at Brest-Litovsk between the Central Powers and Russia. The first negotiations on the repatriation of prisoners of war began then. It was agreed that the repatriation of prisoners from Russia would be managed by the evacuation commissions of the Central Powers, and the German and Austro-Hungarian repatriation commissions arrived in Russia. The Austro-Hungarian Main Repatriation Commission activated eleven evacuation commissions on the territory of European Russia in mid-June 1918. The prisoners were concentrated in assembly camps, from where they were redistributed to individual transports.

At this time, however, my grandfather was still hard at work in the fields of the Don Cossack Shimanovsky, at his mercy. Before he could take the necessary steps to rescue himself from captivity, several crucial events occurred. The defeat of the Central Powers and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire brought the repatriation of prisoners of war to a halt.

It was not until the autumn of 1919 that a chance for return

In the second half of 1919, national repatriation missions began to operate again on the territory of Russia. Russia was divided into three repatriation districts: inner Russia and Ukraine, southern Russia and the Caucasus, and Siberia. A direct return to Europe was impossible due to the Russian Civil War, so a route was found leading to Vladivostok as a starting point for the return by ship. My grandfather obtained a document with the necessary stamps from Trotsky in Odessa and was finally waiting at the assembly camp for departure. At the end of 1920, he boarded a train and left for Siberia - like thousands of other soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army who had fallen into Russian captivity on the Eastern Front. Many of them made the journey across Siberia to the port of Vladivostok and from there by boat. The conditions were extreme: the distance, the regime changes in Russia, the civil war and the unclear repatriation routes. Nevertheless, the consciousness of home became a literal driving force for these men.

The train journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway

For many prisoners of war, the journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway represented one of the longest and most difficult periods of their internment. After their capture on the western border of the Russian Empire, thousands of men were rounded up in assembly camps where they were then loaded onto overcrowded trains heading east to Vladivostok. The Trans-Siberian Railway was already over nine thousand kilometres long during the First World War, and the train made countless stops along it - not only in the big cities, but also at small switches lost in the taiga. The trains moved very slowly and often stopped at stations with coal depots. The stops lasted from a few minutes to long hours as the line was overloaded with military transports and supplies. In the larger towns, such as Omsk, Irkutsk or Chita, prisoners were moved to makeshift barracks for inspection, distribution of scarce supplies or more endless waiting.

Typical stops along the way

Frequent stops included major centres such as Perm - the first major hub beyond the Urals, Ekaterinburg - the site of train checks and coal refuelling, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk - a city set among the impressive valleys of the Yenisei, Irkutsk, Chita and then Khabarovsk and Ussuriysk, the last major cities before arriving in Vladivostok. Each stop quickly became a routine of survival. It was necessary to refill the water in the iron and chutor, to collect dry wood, as there was often no coal at the smaller stations. Small stoves were not enough, so improvised fireplaces were built in the wagons, on which the prisoners cooked thin porridge, soups or heated bread. At the stops, the men stretched their bodies, walked on the perón, or lay on the ground if the weather permitted. There were also often small improvised workshops for mending shoes, sewing on buttons, and drying clothes or blankets. Field doctors used the staging areas to treat frostbite and check on the sick.

Weather and trail conditions

Russia is a country of extremes. Winters here are long, dry and severe - for example, in January 1921 temperatures in the Irkutsk region dropped well below -30 °C. The windows of the carriages were covered with heavy frost and the wooden walls could hardly hold any heat. Men slept huddled together to keep at least some body heat. In the spring and summer, they were again plagued by dust from the roads around the railway, mosquitoes in the swampy areas of Siberia, and significant temperature differences between day and night. The quality of the line varied from well-maintained sections to places where the train literally crawled in step and switchmen often had to repair the tracks. The prisoners' diet was very meagre. The main food was black bread, dried or salted fish, potatoes and beets. They drank tea only when there was water. The prisoners tried to replenish their supplies by bartering - offering trinkets, pieces of clothing or handicrafts. The locals, often living modestly themselves, sometimes brought them milk, potatoes or a piece of meat.

Military uniforms designed for the European climate were not suitable for the Siberian winter. The prisoners were given old Russian coats, leather boots or wadded trousers when available, but often lacked warm gloves or caps. The small stoves inside the wagons provided little warmth and often smoked. Each group had to provide its own fuel during the stops or spend the night in the cold.

Arriving by train in Vladivostok was one of the most memorable moments of the entire journey through Russia. The long weeks spent in crowded carriages ended abruptly at the station, where the shouts of the train conductors mingled with the roar of the harbour. The soldiers disembarked stiff, tired and often numb from the monotonous landscape and the monotonous noise of the wheels. Although there was usually another long wait for a ship, the mere sight of the sea meant that the journey eastward was finally at an end. All of Russia, the country that had brought them so much suffering, was finally behind them, and hope for the future was opening up before them.

End of Part 1.

Sources: Geneva Archives (ICRC), Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia (EN), Historie.cz, National Archives Prague , cervenykriz.eu, Russian Hydrometeorological, Service Trans-Siberian Railway