Killing of Prisoners and Detainees

In the autumn of 1921 the soldiers of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), who had retreated across the Zbruch River in November 1920, formed detachments and returned to Ukraine to raise an uprising against Soviet rule. This raid is known as the Second Winter Campaign^[1]. On November 17, 1921, occupation troops under the command of Kotovsky encircled the UNR detachment near the village of Mali Mynky in the north of Zhytomyr Oblast^[1].
The captured Ukrainians were taken to the neighbouring village of Bazar and locked in the church. A visiting commission of the Cheka - the secret police of Soviet Russia, predecessor of today's FSB - arrived from Kyiv to judge them; the Communists called it the «Extraordinary Five». Its resolution, signed in Bazar on November 22, 1921, was entered into the collection of orders to the troops of the Kyiv Military District as No. 2578 of November 26, 1921^[2].
The Russian commission described the battle as follows: «Over 400 men were cut down in the battle and 537 captured, including the wounded… In all, 443 men appeared before the extraordinary commission (the Five); the rest died of their wounds before the commission arrived or were in grave condition and left until recovery»^[2].
The commission recorded the motive for the execution in the same document: «Guided by the dictates of revolutionary conscience… and in order to prevent similar crimes… and to show the entire capitalist world and its hirelings that the power of the Soviets mercilessly punishes anyone who attempts to disrupt its peaceful work, the Extraordinary Five resolves: 1. The persons listed in the annex hereto, numbering 359, as malicious, active bandits - TO BE SHOT»^[2].
The fate of the remaining Ukrainian prisoners the commission set out in the same document: forty-one men of the senior command and civil administration it ordered sent for further interrogation by the investigative organs, and forty-two former Red Army soldiers, captured a year earlier, to the special department of the Kyiv Military District for screening^[2].
The resolution was signed by commission chairman Garkavy, members Livshits, Ivanov, Kotovsky and Frinovsky, and secretary Litvinov. Kotovsky, who put his signature under the death sentence, commanded the very troops that had encircled the detachment at Mali Mynky. The order for the district was signed by district commander Yakir, member of the district Revolutionary Military Council Zatonsky, and district chief of staff Pauka^[2].
The Soviet command offered the prisoners a transfer into the Red Army; not one agreed^[3][4]. The colonizers carried out the execution in front of people herded to watch: the day before, they forced local peasants to dig a long ditch in a ravine near Bazar, and brought in the residents of the surrounding villages to the execution site^[2]. Before the ditch one of the commissars asked once more who wished to join the Red Army. From the ranks came the answer: «We will not serve you!.. Shoot!.. The people will not forgive you for this!»^[2]. The condemned embraced and sang «Shche ne vmerla Ukraina» - the song that seventy years later, after Ukraine declared independence in 1991, became the national anthem of Ukraine and remains so to this day^[5]. To the sound of the anthem, Soviet troops shot all 359 Ukrainian prisoners near the village of Bazar^[2][3]. The testimonies were gathered by a courier of the Ukrainian underground who visited Mali Mynky and Bazar immediately after the execution^[2].
The exact day of the execution differs between sources, ranging from November 21 to 23^[2][4][1].
The list of all 359 executed men, name by name, was published by Sotnyk O. Shpilinskyi in Kalisz in 1932; the list was later reprinted together with the text of the resolution^[2].
Historian Larysa Yakubova writes: «This execution became a tragic symbol of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917—1921. The armed struggle of the regular UNR Army came to an end»^[3].