Soviet-Ukrainian War: First Invasion and the Puppet Government (December 1917 - April 1918)

In December 1917 the Bolsheviks gathered their own congress of soviets in Kharkiv and created a government subordinate to Petrograd, the "People's Secretariat". The goal was to pass off Russia's war against Ukraine as an internal struggle among Ukrainians. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine describes it this way: it was created "as an alternative to the Ukrainian Central Rada and the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Central Rada" and "acted in close contact with and under the direct leadership of the highest state and party institutions of Soviet Russia"^[1]. The congress declared Ukraine a part of Russia. On 12 (25) December 1917 it adopted a resolution on the self-determination of Ukraine. In it the congress recognized "the Ukrainian Republic as a federative part of the Russian Republic" and declared "a resolute struggle against the policy of the Central Rada, ruinous for the worker and peasant masses, exposing its bourgeois, counter-revolutionary character"^[4]. The congress explained its right to power by the coup in Petrograd and wrote in the resolution: "the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, proclaimed by the February Revolution, could be put into practice only thanks to the October Revolution, which led to the creation of the Worker-Peasant Government — the Council of People's Commissars"^[4]. The puppet government in Kharkiv had no laws of its own: it introduced Petrograd's ready-made decrees in Ukraine. The congress itself decided so: "to immediately extend to the territory of the Ukrainian Republic all decrees and orders of the worker-peasant government of the Federation" and "to declare invalid all orders of the Rada that it has issued and will issue"^[5]. The entire new "all-Ukrainian" Soviet authority consisted of 40 people chosen by the congress. There were no peasants among them: the congress left 20 seats for a peasant congress that had not yet convened^[6]. Among its first decisions the puppet government appealed to the Council of People's Commissars (the government of Soviet Russia) and annulled the reply of the General Secretariat (the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic under the Central Rada) to Petrograd's ultimatum^[6]. It explained the purpose of the appeal this way: "to avoid the possibility of a fratricidal war between the working peoples inhabiting Russia"^[6]. The Council of People's Commissars had telegraphed this ultimatum to Kyiv earlier, on 4 (17) December^[7]. It put four demands to the Rada. Not to break up the common front by recalling Ukrainian units. Not to let Cossack units pass to the Don, to Kaledin (a general, ataman of the Don Cossack Host, who did not recognize the authority of the Council of People's Commissars), without Petrograd's consent. To help the troops of Soviet Russia against Kaledin. To stop disarming Soviet regiments and the Red Guard. The Council of People's Commissars wrote in the ultimatum: "in the event that a satisfactory answer to these questions is not received within 48 hours, the Council of People's Commissars will consider the Rada to be in a state of open war against Soviet power in Russia and in Ukraine"^[8]. The General Secretariat replied with a refusal the next day^[7]. The puppet government withdrew that refusal. Thus Petrograd obtained a Ukrainian government that accepted the terms of the ultimatum. Petrograd also kept its own man inside the government. The people's secretary for inter-ethnic affairs, Bakinsky, was at the same time the representative of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia^[1]. The historian Stanislav Kulchytsky describes direct supervision: "since no Ukrainian party centre existed, Lenin placed a temporary extraordinary commissar over the Kharkiv government"^[9]. That commissar was Ordzhonikidze, an official of the central party apparatus^[9]. The journal "Letopis revolyutsii" (a publication of Istpart, the party commission on history) wrote in 1924: "The all-Ukrainian government was a centre without a periphery, a headquarters without an army, when it had neither territory, nor a population subordinate to it, nor an armed force"^[10].

In January 1918, while the troops of Soviet Russia were advancing on Kyiv, the Bolsheviks raised an uprising inside the city itself. On Sunday 15 (28) January, workers and armed Bolshevik detachments seized the "Arsenal" plant in Pechersk (a district of Kyiv)^[11]. The next day, 16 (29) January, the Kyiv committee of the Bolshevik party issued a printed leaflet to the workers and soldiers of the city against the General Secretariat (the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic under the Central Rada). It said: "The gentlemen from the General Secretariat are preparing here, in the heart of Ukraine, the dispersal of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and think that soldiers will be found here who will carry out this black deed. No, this shall not be!"^[12]. The leaflet called "to the defence of the revolution" and ended with the appeal "Down with the counter-revolutionaries grouped in the Central Rada and the General Secretariat". On 19 January (1 February) Ordzhonikidze, the extraordinary commissar of Soviet Russia in Ukraine, telegraphed the government of Soviet Russia: "In Kyiv there is an uprising of workers and of soldiers of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Shevchenko regiments. The Arsenal is in the hands of the workers. Today Soviet troops will enter Kyiv"^[13]. The uprising inside the city and the offensive from outside stand in one telegram and in one calculation.

In January 1918 the troops of Soviet Russia marched on Kyiv. On 16 (29) January Antonov-Ovseyenko, people's commissar for the struggle against counter-revolution in the South, appointed Muravyov commander-in-chief of all Soviet troops acting against the Central Rada^[14]. On 17 (30) January, from Bakhmach (a railway junction on the way from Russia to Kyiv), Muravyov reported to the government of Soviet Russia and to Antonov-Ovseyenko: "After a two-day battle the 1st revolutionary army of Yegorov, supported by the 2nd army of Berzin, defeated at Kruty station the counter-revolutionary troops of the Rada, led by Petliura himself", and ended: "I am marching on Kyiv. The peasants greet the revolutionary troops with enthusiasm"^[14]. On 21 January (3 February) he told Antonov-Ovseyenko over the direct line: "The revolutionary armies are 20 versts from Darnytsia. For the second day we are moving forward on foot and on carts, since all the bridges have been blown up by the Rada's troops, the tracks are wrecked"^[14]. On 25 January (7 February) Muravyov laid out the seizure of the city street by street: "The First Army is to take Fundukleyevska, Volodymyrska, Khreshchatyk and the Merchants' Garden. The Second Army is to take the arsenal, the fortress, Pechersk and all the heights near the fortress and the Lavra. Army commander 2 Berzin is to bring in one or two batteries for street fighting, depending on the situation. Army commander Yegorov is to bring the Bryansk battery into the city"^[15]. On 27 January (9 February) he reported to Antonov-Ovseyenko: "At last, after 5 days of fighting in the streets of Kyiv, I have taken possession of the city"^[15].

On 22 January (4 February) 1918, five days before the seizure of Kyiv, Muravyov (commander of the Soviet troops acting against the Central Rada of Ukraine) signed order No. 9 at Darnytsia station near Kyiv: "I order the troops of both armies to mercilessly destroy in Kyiv all officers and cadets, Haidamaks, monarchists and all enemies of the revolution. Units that kept neutrality must be immediately disbanded, their property handed over to the Military Revolutionary Committee of the city of Kyiv"^[16]. Antonov-Ovseyenko (who commanded the whole expedition into Ukraine) printed this order in his notes together with a reproduction of Muravyov's handwritten original and wrote that the order "at once, by its tone and by its instruction on summary reprisal against all suspicious persons, alarmed our party organization and the Soviet authorities"^[15]. On 28 January (10 February) the Kyiv Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (the organ of that very Soviet power which the troops had brought) resolved: "The Soviet expresses its resolute condemnation of the unceasing lynchings of prisoners, which stain the glorious victory of the proletariat. Those who have disgraced themselves by the murder of the unarmed must be expelled from the ranks of the socialist army and handed over to a revolutionary court. Enough violence!"^[17]. On 19 March 1918 members of the committee of the 1st revolutionary army came with a complaint against Muravyov to Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka, the Bolsheviks' secret police^[18]. On 5 May Dzerzhinsky testified to the investigative commission: "our worst enemy could not have done us as much harm as he did with his nightmarish reprisals, executions, tyranny, and by granting the soldiers the right to plunder towns and villages. All this he did in the name of our Soviet power, turning the whole population against us. Plunder and violence — that was his deliberate military tactic"^[18]. Muravyov himself, from prison on the same day, 5 May, conveyed the accusation this way: "no charge has been brought against me, apart from a verbal one 'for plunder, drunkenness and murders'"^[19]. On 9 June 1918 the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the highest organ of Soviet power, on the report of Krylenko from the investigative commission, closed the case for absence of a crime^[18]. Mykhailo Hrushevsky, head of the Central Rada, wrote about the commander in 1921: "the chief commandant, the former gendarme Muravyov, back in February boasted of shooting Ukrainians and of ruining their property"^[20].

In December 1917 the Bolsheviks held a sham "all-Ukrainian" congress in Kharkiv to give the seizure of power in Ukraine the appearance of an expression of the people's will. The elected assemblies of workers and soldiers, through which the Bolsheviks were trying to seize power, gathered at the real All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kyiv on 4–6 (17–19) December 1917. At the real congress Ukrainians hardly noticed the Bolsheviks: of more than 2,500 delegates "the Bolsheviks were represented by only 150", and the congress supported the Central Rada^[3]. The communists decided not to give up. Zatonsky (one of them, later a member of the puppet government in Kharkiv) recalled: "having gathered illegally in the premises of the trade unions, the delegates of the congress, all Bolsheviks except for two or three Left SRs, resolved to declare themselves the plenipotentiary Congress of Soviets of the Country, to elect a Central Executive Committee and a government of Soviet Ukraine and, having moved to Kharkiv, to take up open struggle against the Central Rada"^[21]. The new "congress" met in a city already seized by Russian troops. The historian Stanislav Kulchytsky writes: "the day before the opening of the congress of soviets the Central Rada's garrison in Kharkiv was disarmed by the troops of V. Antonov-Ovseyenko, whom the Council of People's Commissars had instructed to take Ukraine by force of arms"^[9]. On 9 (22) December the regional congress of soviets of the Donbas and Kryvyi Rih area opened in Kharkiv. When the delegates' credentials were checked, 77 people with the right to vote and another 6 without it were counted. In the Donbas and the Kryvyi Rih area there were 140 elected assemblies of workers and soldiers, and only 46 of them had sent delegates. By the rule of the previous regional congress, a session was allowed only with delegates from half of these assemblies. Those gathered in Kharkiv abolished this rule by a vote of 46 to 18 with 5 abstentions and declared themselves entitled to sit. Then the delegates who had left Kyiv addressed the gathering. By a majority of 43 to 11 the assembly resolved "to merge with the representatives of the Regional Congress and to name the congress 'the Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of Ukraine with the participation of part of the peasant deputies'"^[22]. Thus an assembly of one region began to speak in the name of all Ukraine. It granted itself the right to sit by abolishing its own rule that a session was allowed only with delegates from at least half of the region's assemblies. Its new name came from a vote of 43 to 11 in a Kharkiv hall, not from elections: outside the hall nobody had voted for this congress. The historian Vladyslav Verstiuk calls it "a hastily staged alternative congress of soviets": "at it 89 soviets and military revolutionary committees were represented by 200 delegates", whereas "soviets alone at that moment numbered more than 300 in Ukraine"^[23]. The historian Larysa Yakubova notes: there were "almost no" peasant delegates, and Soviet historiography later scrubbed the qualifier "with the participation of peasant deputies" from the congress's name^[2]. In the resolution of 9 (22) December that qualifier stands^[22]. The majority of Ukraine's population remained outside the doors of the hall. The assembly declared itself the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets and proclaimed the creation of a Soviet - "supposedly truly people's" - Ukrainian People's Republic^[2].