Author – Olesia Isaiuk, scientific co-worker of the Center for Research on the Liberation Movement, scientific co-worker of the National memorial museum “Prison at Lonsky”
Translator’s introduction:
It is impossible to take for granted what a luxury it is to study Ukraine’s military history while being in a safe and even obscure part of Canada. By contrast, civilians and military in Ukraine, volunteer as well as regular armed forces, are making history by refusing to remain as mere bystanders in their own lives. They are preoccupied with tasks so urgent, dangerous, and emotionally draining that all I can do is dedicate these comments to them in their honour; and for those whose suffering in this life will never afford them the possibility of reflecting on their place in these epic events, to their blessed memory.
Research on this topic of events in 1918 included the webpage of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory and articles by Olesia Isaiuk, who is with the Centre for Research on the Liberation Movement. I was also given a copy of Borys Monkevich’s “Memories of the Year 1918” by a family acquaintance, part of a box of books her parents once possessed. When one considers the following quote from the Forward to those memoirs, and then reads the text associated with the photo in Isaiuk’s article, it is possible to see the development of patterns and repetition of themes between the events of 1918-1919 and now in 2014-2015:
“What’s essential is not that we need an army – everyone understands that we do – but rather, how do we develop the kind of army that would defend our country and not ruin it; defend it, and not become the source of our greatest danger.” Vyacheslav Lypynsky (1882-1931, Ukrainian Ambassador to Vienna during Hetmanate).
(Poster: January 29, 1918. Our volunteers halted an enemy attack on Kyiv. Ukraine became a possibility because it had an army. Kruty: The First Cyborgs)
Monkevych dedicates his memoir to the Zaporizhians with whom he fought. “With the publication of this book, I consider my debt to the Zaporizhians and also to history to have been fulfilled.” He expresses some disillusionment with various Ukrainian governments and top commanders about their acceptance or non-acceptance of these men, stating that a great deal of time had to pass “and a sea of blood be shed” before they realized what type of anti-communist, pro-Ukrainian force they had in the Zaporizhians.
Monkevych is one source that confirms what Olesia Isaiuk writes about when she describes the opposition to nationalist ideas among government personalities in the early days of Ukrainian independence. Speaking about the lives of these soldiers, he writes that “the population was more sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, so they could not be billeted in cities or towns…. At the same time, units of the former Russian army were returning from the Austrian front. They were all demoralized, and since all were well versed in the manipulative Bolshevik slogans guaranteed to incite violence, they posed a hostile threat to the very idea of a national Ukrainian state.”
Monkevych describes the Bolshevik treatment of prisoners, and we see history repeating itself in the modern day “Hivi” and “Motorola” terrorists backed by the Kremlin in eastern Ukraine: battles were engaged against enemy cavalry between Zhytomyr and Berdychiv. The Zaporizhian colonel, Petro Bolbochan discovered the body of Sotnyk Savinskyi and his men. “Each of them, as evident from their appearance, had been tortured as if by animals. Sotnyk Savinskyi had had his fingers cut off… The bodies of these heroes were taken with the army as they advanced, and were later buried in Kyiv in the cemetery of Askold Mohyla.”
Also at Berdychiv, Colonel Bolbochan re-armed his men in the same fashion that the soldiers of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps and other battalions in the Russo-Ukrainian War equip themselves, or at least how they did until the September 5th ceasefire: through “trophy” weapons captured from the enemy, along with armament caches from the former south-western front of the First World War. Since the Ukrainian army was dressed and armed like the Bolsheviks, in Russian uniforms, for example, “they developed ways to distinguish their men by tying a blue, or a blue and yellow binding around their left arm… anything in an attempt to heighten the morale and national identity of the soldiers.”
Nearly one hundred years ago, Borys Monkevych expressed a comment that affects Ukraine currently as a cause of the Russo-Ukrainian War: “Ukraine was a new and unfamiliar country, and everyone perceived her in the manner that suited him best.”
Jeffrey Stephaniuk
The picture of Kruty that has been firmly ingrained in the popular imagination is that of the engagement of three hundred heroic young people against a Bolshevik horde too numerous to count. These youth protected Kyiv with their very lives at a time when an incompetent government neglected to mount its own defence of the capital. When individuals with nationalist sympathies defend these theories, it should be added to their narrative that nearly the entire leadership of the UNR (Ukrainian National Republic) as of late 1917- early 1918, were socialists. It has also become customary to compare the defenders of Kruty with the defenders at Thermopylae (480 B.C.E. often used “as an example of the power of a patriotic army defending its native soil.” –Wikipedia; translator) In each variant and variation of this myth we find an emphasis on individual heroism, self-sacrifice, and tragic death in an unevenly matched battle.
Meanwhile, from a historian’s point of view, this “canonical-populist” version presents many loose ends and inaccuracies. The following analysis exposes these weaknesses of the traditional version and how they reappear in modern Ukraine.
1. The number of combatants and their losses. We are informed by the “traditional” version that a “Bolshevik horde” was met with a resistance force of no more than 300 students, the overwhelming majority of whom perished in the battle. Others were captured and tortured. In reality, the number of students alone was 600 people (4 companies with 150 individuals in each). In addition, an artillery battery commanded by Sotnyk Loschenko fought in this battle. The battery included a group of officers who had been together in a previous formation, along with units of the “Free Kozakship.” Conservative estimates then place the number on the Ukrainian side as at not fewer than 800 combatants in the battle. According to the eyewitness report of Commander Averkiy Honcharenko, the students were committed to battle as reinforcements. Exact numbers of fatal casualties are not known to this day. In his memoirs, Honcharenko places the number at 250, while modern assessments offer the estimate of between 70 and 100 people. By comparison, at least 300 Bolsheviks were killed.
2. “Unarmed children” – one of the favorite propositions of the “traditional version” highlights the young age of the participants and a shortage of explosives. A poetical representation of this theme is found in Oleksa Stefanovych’s poem, “Kruty”: “Bring another shell!… There are no more. Exposed on the battlefield without explosives…” The truth is that a minimum of one artillery battery fought in the Battle of Kruty, under the command of Sotnyk Loschenko. Various eyewitness reports indicate the involvement of a second battery, under the command of Almazov. The residents of Kruty themselves assumed their positions armed with rifles and ammunition.
3. The fighters of Kruty were the sole defenders of Kyiv. At the end of January, 1918, the Republican regiment commanded by Petro Bolbochan was present in Kyiv and at key intersections into the city. Also, by 30 January, the Division, Sichovyi Striltsi, dressed in their distinctive uniform of blue and grey, had also entered the city, represented by the Kost Hordienko Regiment, under the command of Colonel, and later, General, Vsevolod Petriv. All these units were plagued by the same handicap of the lack of command coordination. Additionally, a serious problem was that the leadership of the UNR was being fundamentally influenced under the spell of socialism, a tenet of which was the demand for the disbanding of the army because “in the future it won’t be necessary.” In such a scenario, the commanders were left to their own devices. These military formations remained in Kyiv and did not march in the direction of Kruty due to the uprising in the city staged by the workers of the “Arsenal” factory. The majority of the rebels were Russian by nationality and were Bolshevik sympathizers. While the residents of Kruty, among others, halted the advance of the external enemy at the approaches to the capital, the rest of the army was fighting the enemy from where it had found itself, and their battle was of no less importance.
4. Doomed retreat. The “traditional” version depicts the retreat of from Kruty as a logical prelude to individual acts of fatalistic heroism. However, the reality is that their retreat was not a simple abandonment of the field of battle: as they executed their retreat, the Kruty combatants were destroying, and in fact succeeded in inflicting serious damage to the transportation infrastructure of the railroad. As a result, the Bolshevik advance was suspended. They were forced to lose valuable time repairing the train tracks. Thanks to the efforts of the band of students, sections of the line were indefinitely useless. The track-mounted weapons that had previously been the Bolsheviks main armaments were now a burden when they had lost control over the effective use of the transportation system.
5. “Thermopylae”. It has become common to compare the formation of fighters at Kruty with the 300 Spartans of Thermopylae. Motivated by a sense of moral obligation, they went to their heroic deaths in the canyon of Thermopylae against a considerably larger army. However, from the point of view of what is now realistically known, it is categorically incorrect to make a comparison to Thermopylae. The simple fact is that in Sparta there was a law, that if a soldier retreated from the field of battle, even for a justifiable reason, he would be executed as a coward. In other words, for a “true Spartan”, the choice was never between a heroic sacrifice or the pragmatic choice to remain alive, but rather, the heroic death at the hands of foreigners or the shameful death based on a false accusation at the hands of “your own” people. Such is the context for the famous epitaph to the memory of the 300 Spartans: “O traveler, when you reach Lacedaemon, report that we were obedient to our orders, we were ready to die.” The true heroes of Thermopylae were the thousand soldiers of Plataea who defended the mountain pass together with the Spartans of Leonidas. They were not bound by the law “on cowardice”, and yet they choice death together with the Spartans.
6. Context is everything. In general, the traditional explanation does not take into account the context within which the fighters of Kruty were operating. As mentioned above, there were also fierce battles raging in Kyiv itself simultaneous with the battle at Kruty. These other battles in themselves make it impossible to take seriously the suggestion that the students were “alone in battle.” Further, their diversionary tactics concerning the train tracks meant that these fighters of Kruty detained the Bolshevik army for several days; the Bolsheviks were only able to enter Kyiv as victors on 5 February, 1918. During this time, it was possible to evacuate from Kyiv the central organs of government, important documents, valuables, and an orderly retreat of the army. In other words, everything that could be done was done with the goal of quickly regaining the positions that had been lost earlier. The retreat itself stopped not very far outside of Kyiv. The military staff of the UNR stationed itself in the village of Hnativka, near Kyiv. Most importantly, this delay provided an opportunity to complete talks with the German Kaiser about signing a peace accord, the result of which was international recognition of the Ukrainian government. The accord automatically made the Bolsheviks an occupation force against a sovereign country.
When the real facts and figures are considered as a whole, the picture that is revealed is completely different than that suggested by the generalities of the “traditional” view. The fighters of Kruty are no longer perceived as sacrificial and helpless victims of circumstance or of a government ill prepared for action. Instead, they are transformed into individuals who grasped the opportunity that presented itself to reach a strategic goal, not only militarily speaking, but also in the realm of international politics and the symbolism of battle. From this perspective, it is not accurate to compare them with the Spartans of Thermopylae. A much better comparison is between the fighters of Kruty and the “Cyborgs” of the Donetsk airport: both the one group and the other distinguished themselves with their courage, their self-sacrifice, and their profound sense of responsibility to their country. They were able to mount a defence against a significantly greater number of enemy fighters. Consequently, they became that fighting force, limited though they were in number, that managed to tip the scales in favour of the Ukrainians.
Source LB.ua
Date 3.02.2015
