in the campaign “Soviet-Ukrainian War: First Invasion and the Puppet Government (December 1917 - April 1918)”
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"[1]. 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"[2]. 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!"[3]. 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[4]. 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"[4]. 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'"[5]. 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[4]. 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"[6].