| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Manifesto of ‘Tsar Anton'. How the Whites Made Kyiv Soviet in 1919 |
| 2024-09-01 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Denis Davydov [REGNUM] In 1919, Kyiv set a world record for the speed of change of power, which has not been broken by anyone to this day – not even by Bolivia, the acknowledged champion. And in this part of the city’s history, there were no other two consecutive days that left such a noticeable mark as August 30–31. Then the Ukrainian capital was abandoned by the Bolsheviks and taken by the White Guards. In fact, the main trophy was seriously claimed by the army of the UPR united with the Galicians under the command of Symon Petliura, moving from the west, and they came to the finish line first. But the Volunteer Army (as part of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia of General Anton Denikin ) won, which was later called the "Kiev catastrophe" in Ukrainian patriotic historiography. For the Russians of Kiev and the large number of officers who remained here during the turbulent events in distant Petrograd and the raging Civil War, the arrival of Denikin's men was a symbolic return to the old Russia and a hope for a peaceful life as before. For the "Ukrainians", as they were contemptuously called by the convinced monarchist, former State Duma deputy and editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Kievlyanin" Vasily Shulgin, the situation was not so clear-cut. The Galicians saw in the Russian army a chance to save themselves from Poland, which together with Romania and Czechoslovakia literally devoured the ZUNR in July. In fact, the routine entry of the Volunteer Army into Kyiv became possible thanks to the sluggishness of the "blue-coated" soldiers, who followed the order not to shoot under any circumstances. And for the "Nadneprians", who were actively pushing the issue of the independence of the UPR, any manifestations of the Russian were a pain in the neck. This is particularly related to the key incident when, during a parade on Duma Square (now Independence Square), Petliurites from the Zaporizhian Corps, on the orders of Colonel Vladimir Salsky (incidentally, a former Russian intelligence officer assigned to the General Staff), tore down and threw under the horses’ hooves the tricolor that had just been raised on the building of the City Duma. This was the spark in the powder keg. The first shot rang out when the front ranks of the Zaporozhian Cossacks were passing the corner of Kreshchatik and Instytutska Street. A bullet whistled past Salsky, then someone threw a hand grenade – and off it went. "Shooting began, and the civilian population also shot at our units from rooftops and balconies. We lost 10 killed Cossacks there, and 7 horses were also killed. Great panic arose, and the Zaporizhzhya Group even left its cannons in the city," the journal of the Main Command (General Staff) of the Ukrainian Galician Army, published in 1974 in New York, reports about this event. Throughout Kiev, volunteers began disarming and capturing Ukrainian units, capturing about three thousand people, including the headquarters of the III Corps, as well as all the heavy weapons and trophies left behind by the Bolsheviks. Shulgin described it this way: “The Petliurites ran ‘faster than a deer’ and concentrated at the train station…” where the headquarters was located, but they received no further orders. As the main commander of the Petliura forces, the Galician general-chetar Antin Kravs rushed to his colleague, the commander of the VSYUR forces Nikolai Bredov, to settle the conflict. But he was demonstratively humiliated and received an unambiguous answer: "Kiev, the mother of Russian cities, has never been Ukrainian and never will be", and there can be no negotiations with the delegation of the UPR army, "... let them not come, they will be arrested and shot as traitors and bandits." Finally, having signed the agreement to leave Kyiv, General Kravs left the building and discovered that his car had disappeared. In its place stood another, older car, "offered" by Denikin's men in exchange. Accompanied by his officers, Kravs left for the train station. On the morning of September 1, 1919, Bredov's order was posted all over Kiev: "...from now on and forever Kiev returns to the united and indivisible Russia." The UPR, in fact, recognized the state of war with the Whites, and then Petliura concluded an agreement with the Poles, officially "giving" them Galicia. In September, the Galician Army was already part of the Armed Forces of South Russia, unable to find the strength to forgive such betrayal, and less than two months later it went over to the Bolsheviks. MANIFESTO OF "TSAR ANTON" The events of distant August, where everyone was against everyone, allow us to better understand why the Bolsheviks ultimately won. This is especially relevant in terms of the modern lamentations of the Ukrainian side about the innumerable forces of the "horde", the terrible occupation and the great sacrifice of the "heroes of Kruty": in the summer of 1919, the Reds generally had a great chance of losing everything. Kyiv was a stopover for the Volunteer Army, the Whites were heading for Moscow and were confident of success. They had already successfully taken the strategically important Donbass and Kharkov, moving on to Kursk and Orel. The chaos and disorder in the Red forces, which had grown due to independent “atamans” like Nestor Makhno, were countered by the troops of General Vladimir Mai-Maevsky with a crushing trump card: disciplined front-line units, effective maneuvers of infantry and armored trains on the railroad, and Cossacks on horseback. It was in Donbass that tanks were first used. Moreover, the Reds, who initially proposed a program that was very popular among the peasants, quickly undermined their credibility with food requisitioning, mobilization, and, if we are talking about Kyiv, with the insane renaming of streets and the purge of everything “old-regime.” "Until recently, uprisings were a problem for the Directory, now they were shaking the rear of the Soviet forces. Rebel detachments were growing rapidly, there were no fewer republics in Ukraine than there were kingdoms in Palestine during the time of Joshua. The units sent against them could easily go over to the side of those they were sent to catch," writes the famous Ukrainian scientist and Kiev expert Stefan Mashkevich. As for Petliura's power, it was so pitiful and ineffective that only the collapse of Soviet power under the blows of Denikin's forces gave the defeated UPR a last chance for at least some success. That is why he threw his army at Kyiv: both the Galicians from ZUNR and the nationalists from UPR controlled only small areas to the west of the capital, and tried to revive their movement. At the same time, Petliura had no chance to reach an agreement with Denikin or the Reds from the very beginning: in both cases, the talk was about different projects for a united Russia. The White Guards agreed to communicate with the Galicians as an extraterritorial army, but they did not recognize the army of the UPR, which fought under the slogan of an independent Ukraine, in principle - despite numerous attempts by senior officials of the Entente countries, starting with Winston Churchill, to reconcile them. At the same time, the Galicians were generally well-disposed towards Russia and did not rule out the possibility that Galicia (and, possibly, the Dnieper Ukraine) would become an autonomous region of the future Russian state. But the Petliurites were categorical opponents of Russia as such and did not want to quarrel with the main enemy of the Galicians - Poland, since objectively they would not have been able to endure a war on two fronts. They didn't even take her to one front. As early as the beginning of July, representatives of the UPR held negotiations with the White Guards in Bucharest with the participation of Marshal of France Philippe Pétain, proposing to postpone the decision on the structure of Russia and the independence of Ukraine, concentrating on the fight against Bolshevism. But Denikin was adamant, quoting himself in Essays on the Russian Time of Troubles: "I do not recognize an independent Ukraine. The Petliurites can either be neutral, in which case they must immediately surrender their weapons and go home; or they can join us, recognizing the slogans, one of which is broad autonomy for the outskirts. If the Petliurites do not fulfill these conditions, then they must be considered the same enemy as the Bolsheviks." At the same time, having approached the borders of modern Ukraine in the summer of 1919, and Kiev in the second half of August, Anton Ivanovich suddenly felt the need to issue something like a programmatic statement. The appeal "To the population of Little Russia" was published on August 25 and is full of loud formulations like "regiments are approaching ancient Kiev, the "mother of Russian cities", in an unstoppable desire to return to the Russian people the unity they have lost." In addition to condemning separatism “under the name of the “Ukrainian State,” “Tsar Anton,” as his contemporaries mockingly nicknamed him for this prank, assured everyone that the basis for organizing the regions of the South of Russia would be self-government and decentralization “with unfailing respect for the vital peculiarities of local life,” and that the Little Russian vernacular would be used in the education system and the press. Leaflets with the text of the appeal were posted on the streets of Kyiv on August 31, the day the White Army entered Kyiv, that is, they did not reach their target audience - the city's residents as a whole did not understand such a move. KYIV IS A STRANGER TO EVERYONE The quantitative advantage in Kyiv was always on the side of the Russian camp. "Kiev, like most cities in Ukraine at that time, was three-quarters foreign, not Ukrainian. And this Kiev, foreign to us, immediately rushed to give Denikin's forces all kinds of help, from ordinary information to armed units of local volunteers. Our Ukrainian Kiev did not manage to provide any such help," the Prime Minister of the Ukrainian National Party Isaac Mazepa later recalled, and representatives of the Galicians agreed that they came to the formally Ukrainian capital " mostly sons of the village, sons of the distant Galician volost, for whom a large city is generally foreign, and Kiev even more so." But this was clearly not enough. Although the White Guards, like any military men who know little about government, began literally to turn the clock back: they set the old style of the calendar, the hands to Petrograd time, and began to abolish the laws of the Soviet government and, at the same time, its money. That is, for the people, their cash was again zeroed out. If the Cheka under the Reds actively caught agents of the "anti-people tsarist power", then the Whites were busy exposing the activities of the Cheka and catching their agents. Quite often this led to lynchings of those suspected of Bolshevism - they were shot right on the streets. Within a few days, the external traces of the presence of Soviet power disappeared - numerous monuments to Marx, Engels, Lenin and other communist figures, Bolshevik announcements. But armed at first with the motto “now everything will be as before, that is, good”, the people of Kiev still expected something different. “The population, exhausted to the point of nausea by unexpected changes and ‘revolutions’, almost didn’t care who would rule the city, as long as the new arrivals didn’t shoot, rob or throw people out of their homes,” wrote Konstantin Paustovsky, whose family lived at that time on Annenkovskaya Street, 33 (now Lyuteranskaya Street). And the Whites, as Shulgin, who was completely loyal to them, bitterly admitted, were “overcome by the Grays and the Dirty… The former hid and did nothing, the latter stole, robbed and killed.” Robberies were a common occurrence and, as a rule, took place with complete impunity – the city was even divided into sections, and individual units “specialized” on certain streets, for example, the 42nd Yakut Regiment of Colonel Karpov robbed houses on Tarasovskaya Street, in Kiev’s “Latin Quarter” next to the university. "The firmness of the Bolsheviks needs no comment. The anti-Bolshevik forces were never able to act as a united front and with a single strategy. Their most consistent opponents were the White Guards; the rest either refused to actively fight them (the Entente countries), or negotiated with them in mind possible cooperation (the army of the UPR), or simply went over to their side (the Galician Army in 1920; many of the rebels). The Bolsheviks did not always need to drive wedges between their opponents: the latter often provided them with such a service," Stefan Mashkevich states in his book "Two Days from the History of Kiev. Kyiv once again experienced a change of power. But it was not final, there was still 1920 ahead. And only then was Soviet power established there for the next seven decades. The city, which was never able to "henceforth and forever" return to the "united and indivisible", first became only one of the provincial centers of the Ukrainian SSR. At first, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks did not trust Kyiv, which was alien to everyone, and Kharkov was the capital of Soviet Ukraine until 1934. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 ^And total inability to build anything on their own - if Russians were to bomb all Soviet era infrastructure, Ukraine would return to 19th century. |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-09-01 06:32 |
| #2 /\ Yes, a history of various waring tribes and death. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-09-01 06:27 |
| #1 Anybody reading Ukrainian history must notice the similarities to Africa. |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-09-01 03:02 |