in the campaign “Soviet-Ukrainian War: Second Invasion and Resource Depletion (1919)”
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"[1]. 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"[2].
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[3].
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[4].