in the campaign “Soviet-Ukrainian War: Second Invasion and Resource Depletion (1919)”
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"[1]. 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[2].
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"[3].
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]"[4].
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[5].