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152 long remained open for communication with the ocean and the West. The Transiberian line runs from Petrograd through Vologda, and there is a direct line from Moscow to Vologda which may be considered as leaving Russia proper and entering North Russia at the bridge over the Volga at Jaroslav. For these reasons it was that the Allied Embassies established themselves at Vologda when they retired from Petrograd and Moscow: apart from the convenience of alternative communications with Archangel and Vladivostok, they were outside Bolshevik Russia.

Even more significant was the action of the Czecho-Slovaks on the Moscow branch of the Transiberian line. Advancing from the Ural Mountains, with the support of the Ural Cossacks, they took Samara at the point where the railway reaches the Meadow Bank, and they seized the great bridge over the river at Syzran. They even penetrated a short way along the line to Penza within the real Russia, but through a rather sparsely-populated neighbourhood. Also, they struck up the river to Kazan. In truth they were thus hovering round the edge of the real Russia and threatening it from outside. The British expedition from. Archangel by boat up the Dwina River to Kotlas, and thence by railway to Vyatka