The Battle of Kruty and the Killing of Prisoners (January 1918)

In January 1918 the troops of Bolshevik Russia were advancing on Kyiv. At Kruty station the Ukrainian defense barred their way. From late December 1917 the yunkers - cadets of the 1st Kyiv Youth Military School named after Bohdan Khmelnytsky, four companies of 150 cadets each with 20 officers and 18 machine guns - under the command of Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko held Bakhmach, a railway junction on the border of the UNR and the RSFSR^[1]. On January 27 the first company of the student volunteer battalion under Sotnyk Omelchenko arrived from Kyiv to join them - 115-130 volunteers: students and senior-grade gymnasium pupils, teenagers, many of them 17 years old^[1][2]. Together with the company the Ukrainian command also sent out a demolition team; the volunteers dug in on both sides of the railway line between the stations of Kruty and Plisky^[3]. The battle began on the morning of January 29, 1918. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences write: it took place "during the offensive on the city of Kyiv by the troops of Bolshevik Russia", with the positions attacked by the forces of "a 6-thousand-strong Bolshevik detachment of Petrograd and Moscow Red Guards" led by Yegorov^[1]. The fighting lasted until evening, the defenders repelled several attacks; historians put the defenders' losses at "up to 300 killed, wounded, captured"^[1]. Toward evening Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko ordered a withdrawal to their echelon - the detachment's train waiting two kilometers away; during the retreat part of the student company was encircled, and one platoon lost its bearings at dusk and came out at the station already held by the Red Guards - 27 captured teenagers and students were shot^[1]. The defenders delayed the Red Guards' advance on Kyiv: explaining the heavy losses and the delay, Muravyov claimed in his report that the Ukrainian forces had been commanded by "S. Petliura himself" - as the compilers of the collection of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory note^[3].

The Red Guards shot the prisoners taken at Kruty (a station in the Chernihiv region) with the authorization of Yegorov, commander of the First Revolutionary Army. Lapidus, commissar of the 1st Moscow Red Guard detachment, who was with the prisoners at the station and the day before, together with Zombart, commander of the armored train, had talked the Red Guards out of an immediate reprisal, recounted in his testimony to the investigation in the case of commander-in-chief Muravyov: "The next day, as we were pulling out of Kruty station, the train stopped on the way at Yegorov's order; all the detainees were led out of the carriage, and 300 paces from the train they were shot with explosive bullets. I went up to the dead, then went up to Yegorov and asked why they had been shot. Yegorov, puffing on a cigarette and smiling, replied that he had given the Red Guards permission because they insisted on it"^[2]. Moiseyev, a member of the committee of the First Revolutionary Army, described in his testimony who was shot: "At Kruty station about 20 haidamakas were taken prisoner, among them many gymnasium pupils of about 17. They were taken beyond the station and shot in the most shameless manner. There was an outrageous case when one youth ran away from that place, but he was chased down, brought back to the same spot wearing only his underwear and shot" - and specified: "this was done from the train commanded by Yegorov"^[2]. Babenko, commander of the Moscow detachment, captured the prisoners, and Muravyov had appointed Yegorov commander of the First Army - both links are recorded in the investigation materials^[2]. The investigation clarified the number of those shot: Tsvanger, secretary of the army committee, corrected her testimony, naming 24 people instead of the earlier 150, and a member of the investigative commission certified the correction^[3]. The sources differ in describing the manner of the killing: Sotnyk Averkii Honcharenko, who commanded the Ukrainian detachment at Kruty, wrote in his memoirs that the prisoners were not shot but bayoneted, whereas the documents of the Soviet investigation record shooting with explosive bullets^[3].