The “Oppressed Nationalities” Project as an Attempt to Organise the Co-operation of Nationalist Movements of the Peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (the second half of 1917 – the beginning of 1918)

Abstract

The article deals with one of the insufficiently explored phenomena in the history of the Czecho-Slovak nationalist movement during World War I: the Czecho-Slovak National Council’s attempt to lead joint political and military activity with the Polish, Romanian and Yugoslavian organisations which operated on the territory of former Russian Empire. For the most part, historical works characterize the Russian Branch of the Czecho-Slovak National Council led by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk as the initiator of this co-operation. However, they do not shed light upon the role which the Allied Powers played in the attempt to realise this project. This article therefore touches upon the viewpoints of the chiefs of the French military missions in Russia, Romania and the Ukrainian People’s Republic (Generals Henri Albert Niessel, Henri Mathias Berthelot, and Georges Tabouis) and the British military representative in Ukraine (Major Gerald Fitzwilliams) on the use of the Czecho-Slovak, Polish and other national military units for the restoration of the Russian Army and the renewal of hostilities on the Eastern Front. This study shows that Masaryk’s “oppressed nationalities” project was closely connected with the Allies’ attempt to restore the military efficiency of the Russian Army. In fact, it represented a modified variant of William Somerset Maugham’s plan to utilize national military units quartered on the territory of the former Russian Empire. This article is based on published documents from the collections of the Central Military Archive of the Czech Republic, material from the Czecho-Slovak and Russian periodical press, and contemporaneous memoirs.