In Petrograd and Moscow the Bolsheviks were able to retain control. But across the far-flung territory of Russia the Soviet regime was openly challenged. By the spring of 1918 the global linkage of politics and strategy from the Baltic to the Pacific had become almost commonplace. Even so, it must have come as a surprise to find the fate of Siberia hanging on the decision of a Czech professor, who from exile in Washington found himself in command of armies operating on battlefronts stretching from Flanders to Vladivostok.
