Staging a Coup

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)^[1]. 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!"^[2]. 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"^[3]. The uprising inside the city and the offensive from outside stand in one telegram and in one calculation.