Soviet Russia (RSFSR)

Use by the Council of People's Commissars of local Bolshevik cells as a legal political force that was to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian proletariat against the Central Rada^[1].

Deliberate transfer of loyal delegates and political agitators to the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kyiv in order to hijack the agenda from within^[2].

An attempt to convert an electoral minority into a procedural majority at the congress. Actual support was negligible: in the Constituent Assembly elections "across the country as a whole the Bolsheviks gathered less than 24% of the votes, and in the Ukrainian gubernias only 10%"^[2]. Hence the wager on capturing representative bodies: the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) declared outright that "the transfer of government from the hands of one soviet party into the hands of another party is secured without any revolution, by a simple decision of the Soviets, by a simple re-election of deputies to the Soviets," while the All-Russian Central Executive Committee's decree of 4 December 1917 "On the right of recall of delegates" provided the mechanism for such a replacement^[2][3].

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"^[4]. 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"^[5]. 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"^[5]. 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"^[4][1]. 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"^[4]. 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^[6]. 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"^[2].

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"^[4]. 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"^[8].

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'"^[4]. 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"^[9].

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^[8]. 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"^[10]. 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^[6]. 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"^[6]; 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"^[11]. 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^[1]. The assembly declared itself the All-Ukrainian Congress and proclaimed the creation of a Soviet - "supposedly truly popular" - UNR^[1].

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^[12]. 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^[12][13]. 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^[14]. 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^[12]. The fighting lasted until evening, the defenders repelled several attacks; historians put the defenders' losses at "up to 300 killed, wounded, captured"^[12]. 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^[12]. 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^[14].

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"^[13]. 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"^[13]. 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^[13]. 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^[14]. 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^[14].

Political and military support for local radicals (the Artem group) in proclaiming a republic not subordinate to Kyiv^[2].

An attempt at the bureaucratic resubordination of territories — declaring the Donbas an autonomous part directly linked to Russia, bypassing any Ukrainian authorities^[1].

A full-scale offensive by the Ukrainian Front of the Red Army in early 1919 to recapture Ukrainian cities after the withdrawal of Austro-German troops^[2].⏎In the summer of 1919 Ukraine was also under attack by the White army - the Armed Forces of South Russia led by General Denikin^[15]. The advance of Denikin's White army on Kyiv ran under the slogan of restoring a "united and indivisible Russia"^[2]. On August 30, 1919, Kyiv, abandoned by the Reds almost without a fight, was taken by the combined Ukrainian forces - the 1st and 3rd corps of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) and the Zaporizhzhia Group of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) under the overall command of the Galician general Kravs; for 4 p.m. the next day, Sunday, August 31, Kravs scheduled a ceremonial parade of the Ukrainian troops on Khreshchatyk with the participation of Symon Petliura, head of the UNR Directory^[1]. The day after the Ukrainian armies entered the capital, Kyiv was also occupied by Denikin's troops under General Bredov, who forced the Ukrainian units out^[1]. The events of August 31, 1919 became known as the "Kyiv catastrophe"^[1][2]. A catastrophe this day was for the Ukrainian armies and for the statehood of the UNR: they lost the capital, taken the day before, within a single day; the armed clash on Duma Square left dead and wounded, and several hundred men were taken prisoner^[1]. Historians of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences conclude: "the initially successful operation of the Ukrainian forces turned into a painful defeat". Of the consequences they write: the catastrophe "had a demoralizing effect on the Ukrainian army and deepened the divergence in the strategic aims" of the two Ukrainian political leaderships - that of Dnieper Ukraine and that of Galicia^[1].⏎The course of the day is known from the diary of the Supreme Command - the staff of the Ukrainian Galician Army. The staff described the morning of August 31 thus: at 8 o'clock Denikin's units entered the city, "it seems - across the middle unoccupied bridge and also across the railway bridge, over which several armored trains crossed", and positioned themselves in the southeastern suburbs^[16]. The senior Galician commander, Otaman Vimetal, agreed with Denikin's commanders on a provisional demarcation line, but between 4 and 5 p.m. Denikin's general Stackelberg, with a delegation of officers and a detachment of 100-200 men, approached the City Duma, already held by the Galicians; Kravs demanded that they be withdrawn behind the agreed line^[16]. The staff recorded the denouement thus: the assembled crowd, "knowing of the presence of Denikin's troops in Kyiv, demanded that the Russian flag be hung on the Duma in addition to the Ukrainian one we had already planted there", and Kravs, "in order to calm the crowd, in which there were many former Russian officers", permitted it with the justification "as a banner of the common struggle of both armies against the Bolsheviks"^[16]. Units of the Zaporizhzhia Group passing by the Duma "tore down the Russian flag"; shooting broke out - Denikin's detachments attacked the Galician units scattered across the city, and of the fire from roofs and balconies the diary entry reads: "the civilian population also fired at our units"^[16]. The day's toll in the diary: "10 Cossacks killed", the disarmed staff of the III Galician Corps and eleven of its companies, the guns of the Zaporizhzhia Group abandoned in the city; Kravs estimated Denikin's forces at "at least two divisions"^[16]. There was no battle for the city: after the shooting at the Duma "great panic" set in - several units were disarmed, the rest fought their way out of the city; the staff summed up: "a unified resistance was impossible because of the panic mentioned"^[16]. Kravs set out to negotiate with Bredov and already on his way met "strong columns of volunteers [soldiers of Denikin's Volunteer Army]" marching on the city^[16].⏎Kyiv remained with Denikin's forces. On the night of September 1 Kravs signed with Bredov an agreement on the withdrawal of the Galician units; by September 2 the group's troops were already assembling on the Ihnativka - Vasylkiv line^[16]. The withdrawal was the command's decision: the riflemen of the group, according to the entry for September 1, "deeply dispirited by the recent events, demand a new offensive on Kyiv"^[16].⏎In the fall of 1919 the Red Army went over to a counteroffensive, now against Denikin's forces^[2].

Mezhlauk, deputy war minister of the Soviet colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR), telegraphed Lenin on 5 April 1919: Ukraine must not be looked upon "as a promised land" of inexhaustible reserves - its resources had to be counted among the all-Russian ones as soon as possible and used under a single plan^[17]. In the second half of April 1919 Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, proposed that the Petrograd organizations ship workers to Ukraine to replenish stocks of food and fuel: "Continue the mobilization of workers in Piter, extending it to Ukraine and the Don... I advise sending these workers en masse to Ukraine, the Don, the East for 3 months. It is foolish to starve and perish in Piter when bread and coal can be won back"^[18]. By a decree of 12 April 1919 this administration obliged every village to hand over to the state the amount of grain assigned to it^[19]. The grain was taken from Ukrainians by the administration's food ministry: it sent armed workers' detachments into the villages, and alongside them the grain was seized by detachments of the Bolsheviks' secret police - the extraordinary commissions (Cheka) - and by units of the Russian army^[19]. These detachments confiscated peasants' property and implements, took hostages, and made a whole village answer for a single inhabitant. Detachments of the same ministry and of the Cheka intercepted, on roads and at railway stations, Ukrainians carrying grain for barter or sale outside the state monopoly: the food was seized, and carrying grain was punished up to and including execution^[19]. Refusing to hand over property cost lives: in June 1919 agents of the Kherson district extraordinary commission detained Nykyfor Potachenko, a 24-year-old peasant of the village of Roksandrivka in Kherson district, "for unwillingness to provide horses"; by the commission's resolution he was shot on the night of 15 June (a local history publication gives 15 July) in the basement of the Tyulpanov house - twice he climbed out of the filled-in grave alive, and only the third execution killed him^[20].

On 14 June 1919 Lenin telegraphed Kyiv at three addresses at once - Rakovsky, head of the colonial administration, Shlikhter, its food minister, and Podvoisky, its war minister - shifting the supply of the Russian fronts onto Ukrainian grain: "In view of the utter impossibility of provisioning the Western and Northern fronts from the exhausted stocks of the Centre, the whole weight of this state task naturally passes to the delegation of Tsekomprodarm, led by Orlov and working under Trotsky's order for the entire Russian army as a whole"; in the same telegram he demanded that the administration's war ministry assist this delegation "so that it can immediately move food freight to the armies of the West and North"^[21]. A week later, on 21 June, Lenin sent Rakovsky a telegram marked "out of all turn" and "with verification of the exact time of delivery," setting a deadline: "The Western army absolutely needs three trainloads of bread within the coming days. I urgently request the most energetic measures to meet this need. The extremity is utmost"^[22].

On 1 June 1919 the central Soviet authority of Russia (the VTsIK) resolved to carry out "a close unification of 1) the military organization and military command, 2) the councils of the national economy, 3) railway administration and management, 4) finances and 5) the commissariats of labour" of Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Crimea - "so that the direction of the said branches of national life be concentrated in the hands of single collegiums." The resolution was signed by Kalinin, chairman of the VTsIK, and by secretary Serebryakov, while preserving the formula of independence word for word: the unification was carried out "standing fully on the ground of recognition of the independence, freedom and self-determination of the toiling masses of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Crimea"^[23]. Ukraine's economy, railways, finances and labour passed under Moscow's management; independence remained a word on paper.

The food ministry was not on that list: Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, subordinated it separately and in secret. On 12 June 1919 he sent a note to Kyiv: the food ministry of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR) was passing under the all-Russian one in both money and management - without any announcement; at the bottom of the note stood the instruction to encipher the underlined part and transmit it immediately, and on 14 June the question was put before the plenum of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party^[24].

In captured Kyiv the occupiers shot hundreds of people over 1919: they killed at night, printed the names of the dead daily in a newspaper, and in the last week of August proclaimed a "week of red terror." An eyewitness - Kateryna Koval-Medzvedska, a Kyivan who lived seven months in the city under Moscow's occupation, from February to August 1919 - recorded that on 24 August 1919 "a 'week of red terror' was officially proclaimed - blood flowed in rivers. Peters, Voroshilov and Latsis, all-powerful that day, took no account of government members Rakovsky, Manuilsky and others who signed orders for releases from the Cheka, but ordered those people shot 'in the order of red terror.'" The shooting was done at night: "From 2 to 4 o'clock the sinister night silence of the unhappy, tormented city was broken by single shots and the piercing sounds of a car siren. People living near one of the 17 chekas scattered across the city understood that our brothers were being shot, their cries and groans drowned out by the red executioners with the shrill piercing sounds of sirens"^[25].

From 24 to 30 August inclusive the newspaper Izvestia - the organ of the Kyiv occupation authority - daily announced lists of dozens shot "in the order of red terror"; on 26 August "a list was announced of 167 persons shot 'in the order of red terror'" - among them people whose release order the eyewitness had read two days earlier in the chancellery of the central organ of the colonial administration (the VUTsIK). "And how many people perished without announcement, simply vanished without trace!"^[25]. One of those newspaper lists survived in a reprint: Shumakher, acting head of the Whites' Information Section, reproduced in "Summary of Information on the Atrocities and Lawlessness of the Bolsheviks" No. 25 a list printed in the Kyiv Izvestia of people shot by the occupiers: a professor, a gymnasium teacher, merchants, house-owners, attorneys, former Kyiv governor Sukovkin, former vice-governor Neklyudov, 80-year-old Slynko^[20]. The very form of the announcements came from Moscow: the RSFSR government's resolution "On Red Terror" of 5 September 1918, signed by justice minister Kursky and interior minister Petrovsky, required "publishing the names of all those shot, as well as the grounds for applying this measure to them" - the Kyiv lists with the formula "in the order of red terror" delivered names and grounds, exactly what the resolution demanded^[26].

The head of the Soviet colonial administration of Ukraine, Rakovsky, wrote to Lenin on 9 August 1919 that the Kyiv secret police had been carried away with executions by hastily drawn-up lists and that more than 300 people had been shot in Kyiv in total^[27], while Latsis, chairman of the Ukrainian secret police, gave his own statistics in his 1920 report book: "Shot by the Kyiv Extraordinary Commission jointly with the V.U.Ch.K. - 825" people in 1919 up to October^[28].

The resistance of the villages of captured Ukraine tied down troops for the whole of 1919. On 18 April 1919 Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the RSFSR's Ukrainian Front, reported to Vatsetis, commander-in-chief of the RSFSR armed forces, that he would give no troops for the Southern Front: "Right now there is hard fighting at Shepetivka and Tiraspol and a hard struggle with kulak uprisings everywhere." Vatsetis wrote on the report: "Carry out the order and report back"^[29]. Two weeks later, on 3 May 1919, Antonov-Ovseenko repeated his refusal and named the scale: "30 versts from Kyiv there is a kulak uprising, up to three thousand well-armed men with 8 guns." Vatsetis answered as before: "I repeat that the order must be carried out"^[30].

For the command, the Ukrainian peasants who had risen against the seizures were not an adversary but a hindrance to supplying the front: it regarded the Ukrainian village as a rear area to be kept in order while the main forces carried out Moscow's tasks.

Naval artillery was turned on the risen villages too: on 2-5 May 1919 the armed steamers of the Dnipro river flotilla shelled Chornobyl, Pliuty and Trypillia, held by the insurgents - the vessels "Arnold," "Verny" and "Admiral" are named in the operational summary one by one^[31].

On 25 May 1919, summing up for the armies of the front the fighting against the Ukrainian units of commander Hryhoriv, who had risen against the Soviet authority, Antonov-Ovseenko laid down the order of the mopping-up: those who surrendered were to be handed to the military tribunals of the Soviet authority, "ringleaders and chiefs" singled out separately, and the villages in the armies' areas of operation disarmed with the taking of hostages; the order was signed with him by commissar Savitsky and chief of staff Babin^[32].

On 28 November 1918 the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party (the CC RCP(b)) created in the Russian city of Kursk a puppet government for Ukraine, which named itself the "Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine" - political cover for the invasion by the troops of Soviet Russia into Ukraine. By a manifesto of 29 November it proclaimed the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine, and on 29 January 1919 it was reorganized into the Council of People's Commissars of the UkrSSR on the Russian model^[33]. By a decree of 3 December 1918 - a month before the capture of Kharkiv - this government set up its own secret police: the All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission^[34].

In the summer of 1919 Moscow took even the punitive apparatus away from the front it had created. On 11 June 1919 Shishkov, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian secret police, telegraphed the CC RCP(b) that it had no organizational ties whatsoever with the Russian one and that all local commissions in Ukraine were subordinate only to the Ukrainian, not the Moscow one^[35]. On 22 July 1919 Dzerzhinsky, head of the Russian secret police, wrote to Latsis, head of the Ukrainian one, that the Ukrainian commission's business was to carry out in Ukraine the policy of the party's Moscow centre: "in relation to us You have become a samostiynik, become one objectively," and its task was "to be the conductor of the policy of the CC RCP [the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party] in Ukraine"^[36]. On 13 August 1919 the politburo of the CC RCP(b) resolved to dissolve the Ukrainian secret police, merging it with the Russian one, and charged Peters with the execution; on 14 August the politburo of the party's Ukrainian branch (the CC CP(b)U) submitted, and on 16 August Peters was appointed representative of the Russian commission attached to the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR)^[37].

Retreating from Kharkiv in June 1919, the Bolsheviks' secret police killed its own prisoners and hostages - Ukrainians held in its jails without trial. By the count given in a summary of the Whites' Information Section, over the months of the Bolshevik occupation of Kharkiv more than 1,000 people were shot: 40-50 were killed daily, "and in the last days this figure rose sharply"; among the named dead were former governor Bantysh with his son, generals Nechaev and Kuskov, prince Putyatin^[20]. Excavations after the Bolsheviks left yielded 239 bodies; forensic medical examination established facts of burial alive, of torment and of torture. In the concentration camp the secret police had set up on Chaikovska street, 33 bodies of executed hostages were dug up^[20]. A witness from the camp hostile to the Whites - the left SR Karelin, held in the Kharkiv prison - confirmed both the routine and the last day: Saenko, commandant of the Kharkiv secret police, "usually shot all the condemned... with his own hand," and "on the last day of our stay in the Kharkiv prison... 120 people were shot in the back yard of our prison"^[38]. There were no sentences: Kharkiv secret police investigators Portugeis and Feldman, by the documents studied by the historian Melgunov, "in 1919 shot people without any protocols at all" - by a pencilled resolution, "Baeva, as an incorrigible criminal, to be shot"^[38]. Before leaving neighbouring Vovchansk the Bolsheviks shot 64 hostages, among them the headmistress of the girls' gymnasium^[20]. In the settlement of Velykyi Burluk in the same Vovchansk district the Bolsheviks executed the entire family of prince Vadbolsky - nine people, among them two 80-year-old women and an English governess; the compilers of the summary recorded: "they were stripped naked, led behind the house church, candles were lit, they were ordered to kneel and pray, and then, to whistling and shouting, their ears were cut off, they were hacked with sabres and, as the victims lost consciousness, finished off with shots"^[20].

The Bolsheviks' secret police tortured detained Ukrainians in the captured cities: interrogations with beatings and torture regardless of sex or age, closet-cells and cellars flooded with water, staged executions, staff executioners paid per person shot. In Kyiv this was put on record by the Red Cross: the report of the Central Committee of the Russian Red Cross Society on the activity of the Kyiv secret police, compiled from the observations of nursing sisters over February - August 1919 and signed by the committee's acting chairman, doctor Lodyzhensky, describes the interrogations: "As soon as a person fell into the power of the ChK [the secret police], he lost all human rights... From the very first interrogation the screaming began... cruel beatings began, accompanied by abuse. Neither age nor sex protected from them" - "the fourteen-year-old daughter of the actress E. K. Chaleeva was cruelly beaten before her mother's eyes, to extract more candid testimony from both daughter and mother"; an investigator beat 60-year-old Vorovskaya in the presence of her arrested daughter^[39]. The arrested Ukrainians were kept in a windowless cellar flooded with water and in a wall closet in which, according to the report, "one could only sit hunched." Interrogation was conducted by staged executions: Ustinsky "was led to the place of execution in the basement, undressed, laid on the floor... The shot did ring out, but calculated so that the bullet flew close but past. So close that... all the skin on Ustinsky's hands was scorched. Such shooting was repeated many times. In the end Ustinsky was shot dead"; Solntsev was forced to attend executions and locked in the basement as "the last living man among the still-warm corpses" - at a night interrogation he went mad, which, at the investigators' demand, was certified by the psychiatrist Kirichevsky, himself a prisoner. One of the sisters summed up seven months of observation thus: "there were no torn-out fingernails, no epaulettes nailed to shoulders, no flayed skin, no people scalded with boiling water. But their whole life was one continuous torture"^[39].

In Odesa an eyewitness who had been held under arrest in the Odesa secret police and published his memoirs there in 1919 under the pseudonym K. Alinin recorded, from the words of the staff executioner Abash, how one of the chiefs of that secret police conducted interrogation: he "'broke a person up by parts.' He would usually sit down before his victim and begin questioning him. - An officer? - he would squint... and, taking aim with his revolver, shoot through the martyr's hand. - A colonel, perhaps? - And the bullet would shatter the elbow"; for each person shot, by the same Abash's words, the secret police paid the executioner^[40].

In Kharkiv Saenko, commandant of the Kharkiv secret police, tortured the interrogated himself: his "favourite method," by testimony collected by the Whites' investigative commission, was this: "he would plunge a dagger a centimetre into the body of the person under interrogation and then turn it in the wound," and the torture went on "in the office of the investigator of the 'special department,' before the eyes of Yakimovich, his assistants and investigator Lyubarsky." The same was independently confirmed by the left SR Karelin, held in the Kharkiv prison: "Usually Saenko shot all the condemned with his own hand... In our presence in the Kharkiv prison he shot a sick man on a stretcher"^[38].

On 29 June 1919 the central organ of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the VUTsIK) resolved "to carry out a general mobilization of workers and peasants of call-up age, beginning at 19, and in the front-line zone at 18," and to draft the entire "non-labouring element" from 18 to 45 into the rear militia - captured Ukraine was to fight for its captor - and by the same resolution it declared: "All who resist the carrying out of the mobilization are to be deemed enemies of the people"; it was signed for the chairman of the organ by Polozov and by secretary Lapchinsky^[41]. On 26 July 1919 Skrypnyk, plenipotentiary of the same administration's Defence Council, reporting on the Trypillia district, where the army had just crushed the risen peasants, wrote: "there now remains the mobilization of the entire population of this district" - the men of villages that had just risen were taken into the very army that had crushed them^[42].

On 25 May 1919 Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the RSFSR's Ukrainian Front, disarming the villages, ordered the armies: "beforehand, to take hostages from the kulak elements"^[32]. On 29 June 1919 the central organ of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the VUTsIK) legalized "the taking of hostages" by its resolution on general mobilization^[41], and on 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, included "the hostage system" in the list of means by which the armies "entering Ukraine" were obliged to disarm the population^[43].

In Zhytomyr, during the nine days of Soviet rule in March 1919, hostages sat in the secret police "until payment of the contribution" - until the town paid the sum imposed on it; so recorded Livshits, commissioner of the Central Committee for Aid to Pogrom Victims, noting that a considerable part of those arrested "as hostages" were Jews^[44]. So it was in Fastiv too: until the contribution imposed on the town was paid, Jews sat as hostages^[45]. The occupation secret police in Kyiv held hostages as well: Rakovsky, head of the Soviet colonial administration of Ukraine, wrote to Lenin on 9 August 1919 that after the proclamation of "red terror" over the Hryhoriv uprising it had shot 30 hostages - former members of the monarchist organization "Union of the Russian People," which staged pogroms, and former tsarist officials; when it prepared to shoot 15 more and Rakovsky with Latsis, chairman of the Ukrainian secret police, checked their biographies, only two turned out to be dangerous enemies^[27].

The removal of hostages from Kyiv during the evacuation at the end of August 1919 was described by the eyewitness Kateryna Koval-Medzvedska: "Doctors, engineers, topographers were put on record, and in the last days, under threat of execution, they were carried off by force to Moscow. Besides that, landowners and the bigger merchants were carried off by the hundreds as hostages"^[25].

On 29 June 1919 the central organ of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the VUTsIK) resolved: "To take the most energetic measures to suppress kulak uprisings and the actions of bands, applying the imposition of contributions on rebellious localities and the taking of hostages"; the resolution was signed for the chairman of that organ by Polozov and by its secretary Lapchinsky^[41]. Under this resolution it was not the one who rose who had to answer - in money and in hostages - but the whole locality at once.

By the end of the year Moscow fixed the practice for the entire army: on 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, and Kamenev, commander-in-chief of the RSFSR armed forces, signed secret order No. 579 - every army "undertakes, in its area of operations, to disarm the population with the help of all means at its disposal (agitation, agent intelligence, payment for surrendered weapons in money and in kind, house-to-house searches, fines in money and in kind, collective responsibility, the hostage system, the shooting of culprits, etc., etc.)," and the order, as stated in it, applies "first of all to the armies entering Ukraine"^[43].

On 26 July 1919 Skrypnyk, plenipotentiary of the same administration's Defence Council, telegraphed from the area of Zeleny's uprising - in the same words as the orders: "The uprising of the peasants of the Trypillia district has been suppressed... there now remains... the exaction from it of all the expenses borne by the workers' and peasants' state for the suppression," specifying: "It is necessary to carry out the exaction in produce, the exaction from the peasants of the expenses caused by the uprising"^[42]. In Mohyliv-Podilskyi, which Soviet troops captured on 5 April 1919 without a fight, the town was at once subjected to a forced payment - a telegram to the Bureau of the Ukrainian Press over the signature of Ivanitsky reported: "there is exemplary order in the town, with which even the bourgeoisie is content, despite the imposed contribution of one and a half million"^[46]. The reports of the Special Investigative Commission attached to the Whites' command (the AFSR) record of Odesa: "400 people have been sent to forced labour for non-payment of contributions," and of Izium in Kharkiv province: "eyewitnesses told of the wholesale robbery of families whose relatives had gone over to the 'Kadets'"^[20].

In Fastiv in Kyiv province the forced payment imposed on the town under the Soviet authority was paid by the Jewish community - Kh. Hofman, an officer of the Editorial Board, the body collecting testimony on the pogroms, recorded: "The entire imposed contribution was paid almost wholly by the Jews, notwithstanding that they are poorer and considerably fewer than the Christians. Many Jews were taken hostage, sat long in prison, many had to leave Fastiv altogether"^[45].

On 26 May 1919, at the height of the uprising of Ukrainian peasants under Hryhoriv against the Soviet authority, Lenin, head of the RSFSR government, telegraphed to Kyiv to Rakovsky, head of the colonial administration of Ukraine (the UkrSSR), and to Kharkiv to Mezhlauk, its deputy war minister: "Decree and carry into effect the complete disarming of the population, shoot on the spot mercilessly for any concealed rifle. The whole crux of the moment: a quick victory in the Donbas, the collection of all rifles from the villages, the creation of a solid army"; he ordered the telegram read "to all prominent Bolsheviks"^[47]. A day earlier Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the RSFSR's Ukrainian Front, had ordered the armies "to disarm the local population" in their areas of operation^[32].

In secret order No. 579 of 11 December 1919 Trotsky, war minister of the RSFSR, named the goal in a single clause - "the unconditional and universal disarming of the village population" of Ukraine was declared "the basic condition of success"^[43].

On 26 July 1919 Skrypnyk, plenipotentiary of the same administration's Defence Council, telegraphed on the course of the disarmament from the Trypillia district: "The disarming of the population is carried out by searches; all those guilty of concealing weapons and war materiel are handed over to the field revtribunal [the Bolsheviks' military court]"^[42].

In the village of Tiutkovychi in Rivne district on 6 July 1919 an assembly of village representatives, in the presence of Soviet military commissar Senichkin, resolved to surrender "rifles, machine guns, cartridges" and asked "to leave the population 15 rifles and cartridges for the defence of the population against bandits"; in the same protocol the assembly complained that Soviet soldiers were taking property arbitrarily, without a warrant^[48].

Use of the "union treaty" format of June 1, 1919, and December 28, 1920, not to create an equal federation but as an instrument for legalizing direct, rigid rule from Moscow^[2].

Transfer of control over the military affairs, finances, communications, and transport routes of the Ukrainian republic into the hands of the central bodies of the RSFSR^[2].

De facto liquidation of the Ukrainian army (the disbandment of the Ukrainian Front) and the transformation of the government of the Ukrainian SSR into a nominal appendage of the Russian administrative machine^[2].

The signing of the Treaty of Riga in March 1921: a backroom division of spheres of influence and Ukrainian territories with Poland behind the back of the Ukrainian people, legalized through the formal participation of the puppet Ukrainian SSR^[1].

Moscow's seizure of direct control over the punitive apparatus through the decision to liquidate the independent All-Ukrainian Cheka (VUChK) in August 1919 and the appointment of its own special commissar, Ya. Peters^[2].

Coercion of legal Ukrainian parties into self-dissolution (in particular, the Borotbists in the spring of 1920) and their absorption by the CP(b)U through political blackmail and the bribery of their leaders with official posts^[2].

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»^[49]. On December 16, 1919, the army of Soviet Russia (RSFSR) took Kyiv for the third time since the start of the communist revolution^[49][2].
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»^[50]. 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^[50].
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^[49]. On the Right Bank the Russian occupier reached the Polish front line: Kamianets-Podilskyi, Proskuriv and Starokostiantyniv were held by the Poles^[50].
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»^[51]. 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^[52].
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^[52]. 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^[51].
On October 18, 1920, an armistice took effect on the Polish-Soviet front, and the UNR Army was left to face the invader alone^[52]. 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^[53]. 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^[52].
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^[52]. 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»^[54].
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^[55]. 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^[55].
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^[55]. 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^[8][56]. The prisoners were taken to the village of Bazar, where 359 of them were shot^[57]. The armed struggle of the regular UNR Army ended there^[1].

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^[56]. 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^[56].
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^[57].
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»^[57].
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»^[57].
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^[57].
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^[57].
The Soviet command offered the prisoners a transfer into the Red Army; not one agreed^[1][8]. 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^[57]. 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!»^[57]. 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^[33]. To the sound of the anthem, Soviet troops shot all 359 Ukrainian prisoners near the village of Bazar^[57][1]. The testimonies were gathered by a courier of the Ukrainian underground who visited Mali Mynky and Bazar immediately after the execution^[57].
The exact day of the execution differs between sources, ranging from November 21 to 23^[57][8][56].
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^[57].
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»^[1].

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^[56]. The captured Ukrainians were taken to the neighbouring village of Bazar, and a visiting Russian commission (the «Extraordinary Five») sentenced 359 men to death^[57].
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^[57]. 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»^[57]. 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^[57].
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»^[57].

Soviet Russia placed an unelected extraordinary body over Chechnya: on 3 April 1920 a congress in Grozny "proclaimed the transfer of all power to the Chechen Revolutionary Committee of five members"^[58]. When at the elections to the Soviets in July 1920 "the overwhelming majority of seats in the Soviets went to... representatives of the so-called 'kulak-mullah and nationalist elements'", the elected Soviets were dissolved - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov record: "within a short span the peasant Soviets were dissolved twice (in August 1921 and in July 1922) and the power of the revkom was restored again"^[58]. In the autumn of 1920 "the Aldy congress was dispersed, and several Grozny party workers... arrested" on the orders of Ordzhonikidze, head of the Caucasus Bureau of the Communist Party's Central Committee^[58]. The Mountain ASSR, which had given legal form to the highlanders' autonomy, "did not last long and in 1924, having fulfilled its tasks as conceived by the party leadership, ceased to exist"^[58].

Soviet Russia disarmed Chechen villages by military operations through all five years of the campaign. Historian E. F. Zhupikova writes: the Caucasus Labor Army "conducted" disarmament operations "...in 1920; in March-August 1921 the Chechen auls of Gordali, Tsentoroy, Belgatoy, Dargo, Benoy, Vedeno, Groznensky and Shali, which had taken part in the mutiny of N. Gotsinsky, were disarmed"^[59]. In May 1922 the troops sent into Chechnya were headed by Gikalo - secretary of the Mountain oblast committee (obkom) of the party^[60], who in the war with Denikin had commanded insurgent detachments in the mountains of Chechnya^[59]: "The villages of Makhkety, Goity and Katyr-Yurt were subjected to disarmament, with combat aviation used against the latter. Besides the seizure of a significant quantity of weapons, up to 30 'bandits' were captured and shot, and their property was confiscated by the authorities"^[58]. The year 1924 "ended in the Chechen Autonomous Oblast with a large military operation to seize weapons, in the course of which almost 3 thousand rifles and about 400 revolvers and pistols were collected"^[58].

Soviet Russia carried out executions for show: "During the Chechen congress in Grozny, by verdict of the local Cheka, 7 Chechens were demonstratively shot. The execution made such '...a devastating impression on the masses of Chechens who had not yet had time to disperse after the congress' that the command of the Caucasus Labor Army demanded that henceforth death sentences on Chechens be carried out as far away from Chechnya as possible"^[58].

Over Sheikh Ali Mitaev, a member of the Chechen revkom, the GPU set "thorough surveillance", and in the spring of 1924 it "took the decision 'on the removal' of A. Mitaev from Chechnya. The official agreements with him were treacherously broken; he was suddenly arrested, taken to Rostov-on-Don and, after a brief investigation, shot"^[58]; historian E. F. Zhupikova dates the arrest to 19 April 1924 and cites the GPU's formula of accusation - "for his connection with counter-revolutionary organizations"^[59]. The historians call the character of the reprisal and its perpetrators by their proper names: "The murder of A. Mitaev by the Chekists," write Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov^[58].

In 1923-1924 the Chechen revkom made hostage-taking an official practice of the fight against "banditry": "Measures were taken to register all criminals present in Chechnya, and the practice was introduced of taking hostages from among the close relatives of bandits in hiding"^[58].

Soviet Russia gave the sharia courts official status and took it away within a month: the constituent congress of Soviets of the Mountain Republic in April 1921 resolved to introduce a sharia court system (sharia - Islamic law) - historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov call this "a clear (and temporary) concession to the Muslim clergy of Chechnya and Ingushetia": "Already in May 1921 the TsIK of the GASSR by its resolution deprived the sharia courts of financing from the state budget and of the support of state bodies"^[58].

In 1920 the Red Army looted the Chechen villages where it was stationed: the units quartered in Chechnya, historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write, "received almost no property or food allowance", which pushed them into "self-supply" - "...the Red Army not only ran riot, but took away grain, cattle and so forth, terrorizing the population with senseless killings"^[58]. In the summer of 1920, in Tsentoroy, the Chechens routed a unit of the Caucasus Labor Army "engaged in outright plunder"^[58]. The property of the killed was taken too: during the disarmament of May 1922 "up to 30 'bandits' were captured and shot, and their property was confiscated by the authorities"^[58].

The special department of the Caucasus Labor Army carried out mass shootings uncontrolled even by its own command: army commissar Vrachev complained that of them "...almost nothing is known not only to the Revolutionary Tribunal or the Political Department of the army, but to me or the army commander either"^[58]. During the disarmament of May 1922 people were first captured and then shot: "up to 30 'bandits' were captured and shot, and their property was confiscated by the authorities"^[58].