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

The holding of an alternative congress in Kharkiv and the creation of a Moscow-controlled "People's Secretariat" to imitate an internal struggle: 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 part of Russia. In the resolution on the self-determination of Ukraine, adopted in Kharkiv on 12 (25) December 1917, 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-peasant masses, exposing its bourgeois, counter-revolutionary character"^[4]. The congress derived its mandate from the decisions of Petrograd: in the words of the resolution, "the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, proclaimed by the February Revolution, could be brought to life only thanks to the October Revolution, which led to the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Government — the Council of People's Commissars"^[4]. The secretariat's own power came down to another state's decrees: it "announced the overthrow of the UCR and the recognition of only its own decrees as valid. It introduced the decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia in Ukraine"^[1][2]. Moscow kept its man inside the government as well: Serhii Bakynskyi, people's secretary for inter-national affairs, was simultaneously "the representative of the CPC of Russia"^[1]. Historian Stanislav Kulchytsky describes the direct oversight: "since a Ukrainian party center did not exist, Lenin placed a temporary extraordinary commissar over the Kharkiv government" - Georgii Ordzhonikidze, an official of the central party apparatus^[5]. The journal of the Istpart of the CP(b)U "Letopis revoliutsii" wrote in 1924: "The All-Ukrainian government was a center without a periphery, a staff without an army, when it had neither territory, nor a population subordinate to it, nor an armed force"^[6].

The Bolsheviks' provocation of an uprising of the Arsenal plant workers in Kyiv itself at the very moment of the Red troops' offensive: it was "an armed action organized by the Kyiv committee of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (Bolsheviks) against the Ukrainian Central Rada," and "it was planned for the moment of the approach of Soviet troops to Kyiv in the course of Soviet Russia's war against the UNR of 1917–18"^[7].

The direct deployment of Red troops, heavy fighting for the stations, and the storming of Kyiv. The march on Kyiv was led by Muravyov: he "headed the march of Soviet troops on Kyiv in January 1918"^[1]. Overall command was exercised by Antonov-Ovseenko: "in December 1917 - March 1918 - commissar for combating counter-revolution in the South, he led the Soviet troops in the struggle against otaman A. Kaledin and the Ukrainian Central Rada"^[3].

The Muravyov massacre of February 1918 after the capture of Kyiv by the Red troops: the EIU characterizes Muravyov as "the initiator of mass executions in the city," and later he was himself arrested on the charge of "'condoning mass executions and lootings that led to the fall of Soviet power in Ukraine'"^[1]. Hrushevsky on the campaign's commander: "the chief commandant, the former gendarme Muravyov, who in February had boasted of executions of Ukrainians and the ruin of their property"^[8].

The staging of a sham "all-Ukrainian" congress to give the seizure of power the appearance of popular will. The real All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kyiv on 17-19 December 1917 did not go the Bolsheviks' way: by the time resolutions were adopted it numbered more than 2,500 delegates, "the Bolsheviks were represented by a mere 150 delegates", and the congress backed the Central Rada^[3]. The losers did not accept the outcome. Volodymyr Zatonsky - one of them, later a member of the Kharkiv government - recalled: "having gathered illegally in the trade-union building, the delegates of the congress, all of them Bolsheviks except 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 enter into open struggle against the Central Rada"^[9]. The new "congress" convened in a city already occupied by Russian troops: "the day before the congress of soviets opened, the Central Rada's garrison in Kharkiv had been disarmed by the troops of V. Antonov-Ovseenko, whom the Council of People's Commissars had instructed to take Ukraine by force of arms", writes historian Stanislav Kulchytsky^[5]. He describes the merger thus: with the regional congress of soviets of the Donets and Kryvyi Rih basins, the newcomers "proclaimed their congress the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets"^[5]; historian Vladyslav Verstiuk writes that "an alternative congress of Soviets was hastily staged", at which "200 delegates represented 89 soviets and military-revolutionary committees", while "soviets alone in Ukraine at that moment numbered over 300"^[10]. The majority of Ukraine's population stayed outside the hall - delegates from the peasants, notes historian Larysa Yakubova, "were almost absent", and the qualifier "with the participation of peasant deputies" was later scrubbed from the congress's name by Soviet historiography^[2]. The assembly declared itself the All-Ukrainian Congress and proclaimed the creation of a Soviet - "supposedly truly popular" - UNR^[2].