Soviet-Ukrainian War: Third Invasion and the Final Soviet Occupation (December 1919 - November 1921)

On December 12, 1919, the command of the Soviet Southern Front issued secret directive No. 188. The document was signed by front commander Yegorov, the future head of the USSR Stalin, and chief of staff Petin. The directive gave the invaders' army its task: «to capture the city of Kyiv in the shortest possible time»^[2]. On December 16, 1919, the army of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) took Kyiv for the third time since the start of the communist revolution^[2][1].
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) is the Ukrainian state proclaimed in 1917. By December 1919 its army - eight to ten thousand soldiers, many of them sick with typhus - was pinned near Starokostiantyniv in Volhynia: the Volunteer Army of Denikin to the south and east, the Polish army to the west, the troops of Soviet Russia to the north. Contemporaries called this position the «triangle of death»^[3]. At a meeting in Nova Chortoryia on December 4-6, 1919, the head of the UNR Directory Symon Petliura and the army command decided to dissolve the regular front. The UNR Army under the command of Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko set out on a raid through the rear of the Soviet and White forces: in 180 days, from December 6, 1919 to May 6, 1920, some ten thousand soldiers marched two and a half thousand kilometres across Ukraine. This raid is known as the First Winter Campaign^[3].
That same winter Soviet troops occupied most of Ukraine. The dates of the cities' capture, according to the front reports: December 11, 1919 - Poltava and Kharkiv, December 16 - Kupiansk, December 24 - Luhansk, January 5, 1920 - Mariupol, February 7 - Odesa^[2]. On the Right Bank the Russian occupier reached the Polish front line: Kamianets-Podilskyi, Proskuriv and Starokostiantyniv were held by the Poles^[3].
The UNR leadership signed an alliance with Poland and secured the support of its army in the fight against the Russian occupiers. In the spring of 1920 the armies of Poland and the UNR moved to liberate Kyiv. On May 6, 1920, Yegorov, commander of the Southwestern Front of the Soviet army, telegraphed in secret order No. 304: «Kyiv must fall to the enemy only at the cost of the heaviest losses on his part»^[4]. The armies of the UNR and Poland retook Kyiv: on May 7 Polish reconnaissance units rode to the centre of the city by tram, and on May 8 ten regiments of the 3rd Polish Army entered the capital^[5].
The occupier gathered its forces and on June 6 broke through the Polish front south of Kyiv, at Samhorodok. On June 10 the Polish troops, having blown up the Chain and Rusanivskyi bridges, withdrew from Kyiv^[5]. On June 12, 1920, Yegorov reported: «Units of the 58th Division have taken Pechersk and are entering Kyiv». The orders to cut the Kyiv - Korosten railway, issued the day before, were signed by Yegorov and Stalin^[4].
On October 18, 1920, an armistice took effect on the Polish-Soviet front, and the UNR Army was left to face the invader alone^[5]. By November 10 it held the front with 8,968 bayonets and 3,250 sabres, with 95 guns and 687 machine guns. Against it the Soviet command moved the 12th and 14th armies, the Bashkir cavalry brigade and Kotovsky's cavalry brigade: 24,000 bayonets, 4,000 sabres, 120 guns and five armoured trains^[9]. The occupation troops attacked first and thwarted the offensive being prepared in Podillia, in today's Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi oblasts. In eleven days of fighting the UNR Army lost about 13 thousand soldiers, almost all of its artillery and four armoured trains^[5].
On November 21, 1920, about 12 thousand UNR soldiers, together with the staff of Symon Petliura and the ministries, crossed the Zbruch River, along which ran the border with the lands ceded to Poland under the Treaty of Warsaw^[5]. Mykhailo Andrusiak, a participant in the retreat, recalled: «Sadly, with bowed heads, the Cossacks laid down their arms after crossing the bridge and marched on to the West»^[10].
In the autumn of 1921 the soldiers of the UNR army made a last attempt to raise a general uprising against the Soviet occupiers. This raid is known as the Second Winter Campaign, and its course is known from the report of the chief of the Field Insurgent Staff, Colonel Yurii Otmarshtein, submitted to Symon Petliura. At 2 a.m. on November 4, 1921, the detachment crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border near the village of Borove: 155 officers and officials, 645 Cossacks, 32 horses, with about 56 percent of the men armed with rifles^[11]. On November 7 the detachment under the overall command of Yurii Tiutiunnyk liberated the Korosten railway junction in battle and freed 600 political prisoners from the jail, but withdrew that same morning: an armoured train of the Soviet occupiers was approaching the town with guns the detachment had nothing to counter, and ammunition had to be spared. Seven officers and twelve Cossacks died in the battle^[11].
The detachment could go no further. Half of the infantry marched without boots and with frostbitten feet, the wagon train carried up to 80 wounded, and ammunition was replenished only with what was taken from killed and captured Russians. The staff decided to turn back, towards Poland^[11]. The troops of the Russian invader blockaded the area of the UNR raid and on November 17 encircled the detachment near the village of Mali Mynky in the north of Zhytomyr Oblast. Over 400 soldiers died in the battle, 537 were taken prisoner, and more than a hundred broke out of the encirclement and crossed the Polish border on November 20^[12][6]. The prisoners were taken to the village of Bazar, where 359 of them were shot^[7]. The armed struggle of the regular UNR Army ended there^[8].

In the autumn of 1921 the soldiers of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), who had retreated across the Zbruch River in November 1920, formed detachments and returned to Ukraine to raise an uprising against Soviet rule. This raid is known as the Second Winter Campaign^[6]. On November 17, 1921, occupation troops under the command of Kotovsky encircled the UNR detachment near the village of Mali Mynky in the north of Zhytomyr Oblast^[6].
The captured Ukrainians were taken to the neighbouring village of Bazar and locked in the church. A visiting commission of the Cheka - the secret police of Soviet Russia, predecessor of today's FSB - arrived from Kyiv to judge them; the Communists called it the «Extraordinary Five». Its resolution, signed in Bazar on November 22, 1921, was entered into the collection of orders to the troops of the Kyiv Military District as No. 2578 of November 26, 1921^[7].
The Russian commission described the battle as follows: «Over 400 men were cut down in the battle and 537 captured, including the wounded… In all, 443 men appeared before the extraordinary commission (the Five); the rest died of their wounds before the commission arrived or were in grave condition and left until recovery»^[7].
The commission recorded the motive for the execution in the same document: «Guided by the dictates of revolutionary conscience… and in order to prevent similar crimes… and to show the entire capitalist world and its hirelings that the power of the Soviets mercilessly punishes anyone who attempts to disrupt its peaceful work, the Extraordinary Five resolves: 1. The persons listed in the annex hereto, numbering 359, as malicious, active bandits - TO BE SHOT»^[7].
The fate of the remaining Ukrainian prisoners the commission set out in the same document: forty-one men of the senior command and civil administration it ordered sent for further interrogation by the investigative organs, and forty-two former Red Army soldiers, captured a year earlier, to the special department of the Kyiv Military District for screening^[7].
The resolution was signed by commission chairman Garkavy, members Livshits, Ivanov, Kotovsky and Frinovsky, and secretary Litvinov. Kotovsky, who put his signature under the death sentence, commanded the very troops that had encircled the detachment at Mali Mynky. The order for the district was signed by district commander Yakir, member of the district Revolutionary Military Council Zatonsky, and district chief of staff Pauka^[7].
The Soviet command offered the prisoners a transfer into the Red Army; not one agreed^[8][12]. The colonizers carried out the execution in front of people herded to watch: the day before, they forced local peasants to dig a long ditch in a ravine near Bazar, and brought in the residents of the surrounding villages to the execution site^[7]. Before the ditch one of the commissars asked once more who wished to join the Red Army. From the ranks came the answer: «We will not serve you!.. Shoot!.. The people will not forgive you for this!»^[7]. The condemned embraced and sang «Shche ne vmerla Ukraina» - the song that seventy years later, after Ukraine declared independence in 1991, became the national anthem of Ukraine and remains so to this day^[13]. To the sound of the anthem, Soviet troops shot all 359 Ukrainian prisoners near the village of Bazar^[7][8]. The testimonies were gathered by a courier of the Ukrainian underground who visited Mali Mynky and Bazar immediately after the execution^[7].
The exact day of the execution differs between sources, ranging from November 21 to 23^[7][12][6].
The list of all 359 executed men, name by name, was published by Sotnyk O. Shpilinskyi in Kalisz in 1932; the list was later reprinted together with the text of the resolution^[7].
Historian Larysa Yakubova writes: «This execution became a tragic symbol of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917—1921. The armed struggle of the regular UNR Army came to an end»^[8].

In November 1921 Russian occupation troops under the command of Kotovsky encircled, near the village of Mali Mynky in the north of Zhytomyr Oblast, a detachment of soldiers of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) who had returned from across the Zbruch to raise an uprising against Soviet rule - this raid is known as the Second Winter Campaign^[6]. The captured Ukrainians were taken to the neighbouring village of Bazar, and a visiting Russian commission (the «Extraordinary Five») sentenced 359 men to death^[7].
The colonizers staged a public execution for intimidation. The day before the shooting they forced the peasants of the village of Bazar to dig a long ditch in a ravine, and brought the residents of the surrounding villages to the execution site^[7]. The purpose is recorded in the testimonies gathered by a courier of the Ukrainian underground who visited the site immediately after the execution: the people were herded there «to deter the population from attempts to resist Soviet rule»^[7]. A detachment of the invader's army surrounded the 359 captured Ukrainians in a tight ring and shot them before the eyes of their assembled compatriots^[7].
The calculation of intimidation is recorded in the sentence itself: the commission resolved to shoot the prisoners in order «to show the entire capitalist world and its hirelings that the power of the Soviets mercilessly punishes anyone who attempts to disrupt its peaceful work»^[7].