Byzantium Endures

APPENDIX B A Brief Account of the Russian Civil War

After the Kerenski revolution of February 1917, the Ukraine set up its own Rada, or parliament, although still acknowledging the authority of the Provisional Government. Its first president, Michael Hrushevsky, made tentative claims for Ukrainian nationalism, apparently under pressure from soldiers and ‘Haidamaki’ (armed peasants borrowing their name from those who had resisted Polish and Russian imperialism in previous centuries). Although paying lip-service to the idea that it was a branch of the Russian constitutional assembly, the Rada became increasingly nationalist in its claims and ambitions. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists, the dominant political movement at this time, was liberal rather than radical. Hrushevsky eventually left to join the more left-wing Ukrainian Party of Social Revolutionaries which was soon elected as the majority party in the Rada. Further to the left was the Ukrainian Socialist Democratic Labour Party. One of its leading lights was Semyon (Simon) Petlyura, a convinced nationalist. Dissatisfaction with delays in announcing an independent Ukraine led to the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress in Kiev, May 18, 1917. Free Cossacks (militia formations) and units from every Ukrainian fighting force (then still at war with the Central Powers) were represented and came together in defiance of Kerenski, Minister of War. It elected a council of 130 to the Central Rada, to represent the interests of Ukrainian soldiers and sailors. Other groups - including Bolsheviks and Anarchists - resisted the idea of nationalism, which they saw as reactionary, but sometimes supported the idea of federalism within the states of a dismembered Russian Empire. In June 1917 relations with the Provisional Government had degenerated so badly that the nationalists broke with it and announced the impossibility ‘of collaboration with the Russian government’. A coalition Rada formed the first provisional Ukrainian government. The Russians continued to attempt to negotiate with the Ukrainians. The Ukraine was a vital area and Ukrainian soldiers were needed to continue the war against the Central Powers. For an understanding of the important geographical and economic position of the Ukraine in the politics of this area see the map in the introduction. Before matters came fully to a head between Kerenski and the Rada, the Bolshevik counter-revolution of November (October, old calendar) 1917 took place and politics in Kiev were further confused by various groups supporting Bolsheviks, Kerenski, democratic Whites, full-blooded nationalism, or even a return to Russian authoritarian monarchism. A miniature civil war broke out between these factions. From it the Central Rada again emerged as the leading force, faced with the problems of large gangs of demobilised troops looting the rural areas. These gangs frequently described themselves as ‘Cossacks’ or ‘Haidamaki’ and claimed loyalty to a variety of political parties. Those who supported, say, the Bolsheviks were called by the Bolsheviks ‘revolutionary soldiers’, those who did not support them were called by the Bolsheviks ‘bandits’. They were primarily hungry, weary, brutalised and confused men who were often not even certain which country they were in. It is now impossible to tell how many were actually motivated by revolutionary idealism or loyalty to an earlier regime; most were ferociously tired. The Jews (the Ukraine was the chief Russian territory ‘beyond the Pale’) were, as always, their main victims.

On November 20, 1917, the Rada announced the formation of the Ukrainian National Republic. They paid lip-service, once more, to federalism, but refused to accept the legitimacy of the Bolshevik regime. Its principles were democratic and included the abolition of capital punishment, the right to strike and amnesty for all political prisoners. Their main support came from the rural population and land reform was one of their main promises. Semyon Petlyura became Secretary for Military Affairs, soon resigning after an argument over general policy. Various revolutionary groups, including Social Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks and Anarchists, continued to agitate against the Rada.

The Ukrainian army at this time was primarily made up of ‘Free Cossack’ volunteer units. The most important of these units was the two-battalion Haidamats’kyi Kish Slobids’koi Ukrainy, which Petlyura led under the title of ‘Ataman’ (a word originally meaning an elected Cossack leader). Also important as a fighting force was the Galician Battalion of Sichovi Strel’tsi (Sich Riflemen) formed from West Ukrainian prisoners formerly in the Austrian army. The Entente forces tried to recruit the aid of the Ukrainians but could offer no real support since Turkey still controlled the Black Sea and the Bolsheviks controlled Murmansk. An armed left-wing uprising in Kiev in December 1917 was put down and the First Ukrainian Corps, under General Paul Skoropadskya, with the aid of some Free Cossacks, defeated the Bolshevik-led Second Guard Corps near Zhmerynka. Open war between Bolshevik Russia and the Ukraine began in late December (the Bolsheviks claiming to be lending support to the ‘official Ukrainian Soviet government’ which existed in Kharkov, maintained by Bolshevik troops). The real Bolshevik invasion began on December 25. In charge of it was the able Red Army leader Antonov. The Bolsheviks were extremely successful in the face of the somewhat disorganised Ukrainian defence and took many key cities. Under Muraviev, Bolshevik troops attacked Kiev. The 3,000 defending Ukrainian troops evacuated the city. Muraviev occupied Kiev and ordered mass executions of the Ukrainian (‘nationalist’) population. The Red Cross estimated that some 5,000 people were killed in Kiev during this period. Elsewhere in the Ukraine a similar ‘terror’ was implemented.

In response to this situation the Rada signed a separate peace with the Central Powers. German and Austrian units aided nationalist units led by Petlyura, Skoropadskya and others to drive back the Reds. The battles were fought primarily for control of railway lines and stations (armoured trains and cavalry units being of main strategic importance in this kind of warfare). By August 1918 there were some thirty-five Central Powers divisions in the Ukraine and they were acting as an occupying army, dictating policy to the Rada which did its best to resist Austro-Hungarian and German demands (principally for grain to feed its fighting armies). In April, the German commander, Field Marshal Eichborn, began to issue decrees without reference to the Rada. The Rada was all but powerless and lost its popular support to the more right-wing Socialist-Federalist party. On April 25, Eichborn issued an order making Ukrainians subject to German military tribunals for offences against German interests. He went on to order the disarmament of Ukrainian units and, when the Rada complained, sent a German detachment into the Rada building in Kiev to arrest two ministers. A day later Hrushevsky was elected President of the Republic but was ousted immediately in a coup d’état, supported by Germans and right-wing elements, led by Skoropadskya who proclaimed himself ‘Hetman of the Ukraine’ - another romantic Cossack title, designed to appeal to those who nostalgically identified Ukrainian freedom with the old Cossack uprisings. Skoropadskya was a German puppet who willingly aided their efforts to put down dissident elements, allowing the ruthless German military police units full rein. Resistance to his regime and the German occupying forces was carried on most successfully by Petlyura on the one hand and, most dramatically, by Nestor Makhno, the Anarchist-Socialist, whose exploits were so daring and so cleverly-organised that he was popularly considered to be the ‘Robin Hood’ of Southern Ukraine. Skoropadskya’s ‘Hetmanate’ seemed an ideal refuge for thousands of Russians fleeing, for one reason or another, the Bolsheviks. Kiev and Odessa became, in particular, centres of bourgeois and aristocratic opposition to any form of radicalism or nationalism. These cities, along with most of the Ukraine’s other industrial cities, had large ‘non-Ukrainian’ populations (primarily Russians and Jews). The pogroms became worse. Skoropadskya introduced grandiose elements into his regime, clothing his soldiers in elaborate nineteenth-century uniforms and making increasingly pompous and empty decrees. His support came entirely from extreme right-wing Russian interests and from the occupying forces, though many of the old Rada ministers continued to hold office so long as they did not act against German interests. The Union of Representatives of Industry, Commerce, Finance and Agriculture (Protofis), made up of industrialists, important merchants, bankers and big landowners, also supported the Hetman. Pyat apparently belonged to this Union for a time, though his role in it is uncertain. Catholics were inclined to be nationalist-sympathisers, while the Orthodox Church was divided between those who refused to acknowledge the authority of leaders who had accepted the Bolsheviks, those who supported the nationalists, those who supported ‘official’ Russian leadership and those who wanted a break altogether with the historical authority of Russia. Both Churches maintained a decidedly anti-Semitic attitude.

After the ratification of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Hetman visited Germany and was received cordially by the Kaiser. The Austro-Hungarians postponed ratifying the Treaty because of secret claims on Ukrainian border-territories, Galicia and Bukovina. When Rumania occupied Bessarabia in March 1918, the Hetman could only make a token protest. Further difficulties arose with the proclamation of Crimean independence and threatened action from the Don region, now under the leadership of Ataman Pyotr Krassnoff, which remained unrelentingly monarchist, but a treaty was eventually signed between the Ukraine and the Don Cossack Host in August 1918. With the end of hostilities between the Great Powers the Germans began to withdraw from the Ukraine, leaving Skoropadskya without any real support. Liberal forces resumed control of the Rada, but leftist and nationalist (‘Greens’) groups refused to co-operate. In November 1918 a Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic was formed to lead the uprising against Skoropadskya. The Directory’s chief leaders were Vinnichenko, Petlyura, Shets, Makerenko and Andriievsky. Kiev was defended by Russian and German units. The Directory (‘Greens’) forces offered a guarantee to the Germans that they would be allowed to return safely home if they declared their neutrality. The Germans accepted. On December 14 the Hetman abdicated and fled with the Germans. On December 19 the Directory forces entered Kiev and the nationalist leadership became the official government of the Republic.

Although controlling most of the Ukraine, the Directory was almost immediately faced with the threat of invasion from a recently independent Poland, anxious to reclaim its Ukrainian empire, from the Bolsheviks and from the White Russians (who had supported the Hetman) in the northern Caucasus. By this time Entente (France-Greek) forces were supporting the White Russians and were threatening Odessa and Nikolaieff. Fundamentally a ‘moderate’ socialist regime, the Directory had support from a number of other left-wing elements, although Bolsheviks and Anarchists (who were inclined to take an internationalist view) refused to acknowledge it as anything but a ‘bourgeois-liberal’ government and continued to work against it. When the Bolsheviks began their second invasion in earnest (under the command of Trotsky and Antonov) many of these elements agreed to bury their differences and fight against the Red Army. By this time Makhno commanded a very large and effective fighting force, using innovative tactics which the Red Cavalry were eventually to borrow wholesale. Other ‘revolutionary’ or insurgent leaders of sometimes doubtful political conviction included Hrihorieff (Grigoriev) fighting in the Kherson region, Ataman Anhel in Chemihiv, Shepel in Podilia and Zeleny in northern Kiev province. These had some of the characteristics of the Warlords, who would later take advantage of China’s civil unrest, but by and large at this stage they were all content to hold their own territory rather than attack Petlyura or give active support to the Bolsheviks, whom they mistrusted as Russian imperialists. In January 1919, however, the Bolsheviks, now aided by some insurgents, drove for Kiev and in February the Directory forces evacuated the city and allied themselves with the French and, therefore, the Whites. This lost them considerable mass support. Hrihorieff, in particular, put his army at the disposal of the Bolsheviks and attacked the Directory’s forces. Hrihorieff then appears to have developed strong personal ambitions and begun a broad attack on various towns and cities with the object of reaching Odessa and ousting the Entente-White forces holding the Ukraine’s most important port. The best account of this may be found in Bolsheviks in the Ukraine by Arthur E Adams, Yale University, 1963. For a while Hrihorieff was enormously successful, emerging as the Ukraine’s most colourful leader to the chagrin of Antonov and Trotsky who tried desperately to control the insurgent troops and failed miserably.

Makhno soon turned against the Bolsheviks again and for a while he and Hrihorieff planned an alliance, but Hrihorieff’s ego centricity and pogromist activities (Reds, Greens and Whites were all responsible for uncountable atrocities against Ukrainian and Polish Jews) disgusted the Anarchist and, in a well-documented meeting at the village of Sentovo near Hrihorieff’s Alexandria camp, under the noses of Hrihorieff’s own followers, Makhno and his lieutenants assassinated the Ataman for ‘pogromist atrocities and anti-revolutionary activities’. But the insurgents never reclaimed their former glory. Bit by bit they were betrayed and conquered by the Reds, whose frequent tactic was to invite insurgent leaders to conferences and then (as Trotsky did with Makhno’s lieutenants) have them shot on the spot. In an atmosphere of chaos and mass-murder reminiscent of the worst days of the Thirty Years War, Petlyura and his men held out a little longer in Galicia but by early 1920 the Bolsheviks had gained most of the Ukraine and would soon turn the weight of Budyenny’s Red Cavalry upon the invading Poles and the remnants of the Whites. By this time, of course, Pyat had no personal interest in the matter.

Lobkowitz recommends Konstantin Paustovsky’s Story of a Life [Six volumes published by Collins/ Harvill Press, 1964-1974] as ‘excellent, if diplomatically-edited’ background reading to this period of Ukrainian-Russian history. He also tells me that ‘al least one of Pyat’s claims is partially vindicated by Paustovsky: in Vol. III (In That Dawn), page 141, where he mentions a rumour circulating in Kiev that a “Violet Ray” was to be used by Petlyura to defend the city against the Bolsheviks.’ He goes on to suggest that it is ‘worth reading between the lines of Paustovsky’s account, which was, of course, published first in the Soviet Union and therefore tends to take an official view, on the surface at least, of Petlyura Makhno and various other personalities of those years’. He also recommends, as an academic source, The Ukraine, 1917-1921: A Study in Revolution, edited by Taras Hunczak and published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977 (distributed by Harvard University Press).