in the campaign “Soviet-Ukrainian War: Second Invasion and Resource Depletion (1919)”
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[1]. 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[1]. 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"[2]. 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"[2]. Before leaving neighbouring Vovchansk the Bolsheviks shot 64 hostages, among them the headmistress of the girls' gymnasium[1]. 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"[1].