“I cocked my revolver...”

One cannot properly understand the history of the Ukrainian National Revolution of 1918-21 without examining such phenomena as the Ukrainian insurgent movement. At the time, the wide expanses of Ukrainian lands saw the emergence of peasant insurgent armies numbering tens and even hundreds of thousands of combatants armed with all kinds of weapons, including artillery.

The insurgents entered into alliances with other political forces (Bolsheviks, Petliurites, and even the Whites), but as a rule such alliances were temporary, which further attests to the political independence of these peasant movements. At the same time, the insurgents, who had much in common but were led by different otamans, often clashed with one another. These hostilities claimed the life of Nykyfor Hryhoriev, one of the best known Civil War peasant military leaders in Ukraine, who was killed by Nestor Makhno’s fighters in late July 1919.

THE OTAMAN OF THE KHERSON AND CRIMEAN INSURGENTS

Little is known about the early life of Nykyfor Servetnyk (Hryhoriev’s real name). He was born in the mid-1880s in the little town of Dunaivka, in Podillia Gubernia.

Later, for reasons that are still not clear, the future otaman changed his name to Nykyfor Hryhoriev and moved to the Kherson region. For a long time Hryhoriev did not distinguish himself. He was employed as a petty excise collector and later as a tsarist policeman. It is very likely that he would have led a humdrum and obscure life had it not been for the wars and revolutions that blew in like a storm and gave people like Hryhoriev power over thousands of people, as well as immense popularity.

Hryhoriev soon had an opportunity to see action: he fought in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War and then in World War One. The future otaman acquitted himself well on the battlefield, was promoted to staff-captain, and awarded St. George’s Cross for conspicuous gallantry.

After the tsarist government fell, Hryhoriev became a supporter of the Central Rada but later switched sides and served under General Pavlo Skoropadsky, who promptly suppressed all kinds of “socialist experiments” promoted by the Ukrainian socialists and Russian Bolsheviks. The former tsarist staff-captain carved out a brilliant career for himself in Skoropadsky’s army and soon was commissioned as a colonel of the hetman’s armed forces.

Later, however, Hryhoriev fell under the strong influence of politicians who were opposed to Skoropadsky, which marked a turning point in his life story. In August 1918 Hryhoriev returned to the Kherson region to organize a guerrilla movement against the Skoropadsky regime. In the large village of Verbliuzhky the former officer of the hetman’s army created an insurgent detachment of 120 people armed with pitchforks, revolvers, and Austrian-made rifles. The great success of his insurgents (who once seized an Austrian freight train) made the otaman a popular figure in the Kherson region and brought him hundreds of new peasant volunteers.

The guerrillas, whose numbers were mounting, quickly brought down Skoropadsky’s weak and unpopular government in a large part of Kherson Gubernia and then. After joining Symon Petliura’s republican army in early December 1918, they launched a campaign against the German interventionists concentrated in Mykolaiv and White Army units stationed in Kherson. The Kherson Division (as Hryhoriev’s detachments came to be known after they joined the UNR army) captured these cities and proclaimed the authority of the Directory, the new Ukrainian government.

Many facts indicate that the otaman used not only weapons to win this victory and others. For example, the German troops in Mykolaiv received two ultimatums from Hryhoriev. In the first he vowed that, if they put up armed resistance, he would disarm and drive them out of Ukraine in shame, and in the other he said that they would be wiped out like flies “at a wave of the otaman’s hand.” Trying to avoid these undesirable and realistic prospects, the Germans twice surrendered Mykolaiv to Hryhoriev’s men without a fight.

The geography of Hryhoriev’s insurgent movement was gradually expanding to embrace the Katerynoslav region. Here, the soldiers of the Kherson Division fought against the White Army and the guerrillas of the famous batko (“father”) Nestor Makhno, who also opposed the new Ukrainian government. Like other officers in Petliura’s army, Hryhoriev had orders to eliminate Makhno’s detachments as soon as possible because they posed a considerable danger to the Directory in the south.

RED BRIGADE COMMANDERS

Neither Hryhoriev nor other commanders under Petliura were able to carry out these orders because the Makhno movement was too strong and influential. Yet the followers of Makhno and Hryhoriev were not always destined to remain on opposite sides of the barricades. On Jan. 29, 1919, Otaman Hryhoriev, emulating Makhno, rose up against the Directory.

There were several reasons for the Kherson Division’s actions: the Ukrainian government had failed to proclaim Soviet power, which most of Hryhoriev’s men wanted, and approved the Entente intervention in southern Ukraine. Now, Hryhoriev — this time a Soviet commander, not a Petliura otaman — moved his detachments to Kherson.

At the same time, the troops of Hryhoriev and Makhno faced a quandary. Both otamans had to fight simultaneously against several powerful enemies: the armies of Petliura and Denikin, Entente interventionists, and German colonizers. The peasant commanders were not always winners in these battles. In late January 1919 the Whites seized the village of Huliai-Pole, the hub of the Makhno movement, and in early February the French interventionists drove Hryhoriev’s detachments out of Mykolaiv and Kherson. Makhno and Hryhoriev decided to join the advancing Red Army. Their intention suited the plans of the Soviet commanders, who wanted to reinforce the Red Army with local insurgents. Soon the Soviet military command resolved to form the Trans-Dnipro Rifle Division composed of three brigades. Hryhoriev and Makhno were appointed commanding officers of the 1st Trans-Dnipro and 3rd Trans-Dnipro Brigades, respectively.

Thus, the former enemies found themselves not only in the same army but also in the same division. Soon, however, the Trans-Dnipro Rifle Division ceased to exist as a single unit, which was only natural.

The paths of the Red Army officers, Hryhoriev and Makhno, were diverging more and more: Hryhoriev’s men were advancing in a southwestern direction towards Odesa, while Makhno’s fighters were moving southwest in the direction of Tahanrih. But despite the different roads of the Civil War, both Red brigade commanders were always in touch with each other. Their headquarters exchanged battle reports, and at the end of March 1919 batko Makhno sent Hryhoriev a cavalry detachment as reinforcement. Hryhoriev repaid Makhno with a large quantity of captured weapons.

The two Red Army commanders achieved impressive military successes during this campaign. Hryhoriev’s brigade liberated Znamianka, Yelysavethrad, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and other cities from the Petliurites, White Army troops, and Entente interventionists. Makhno’s brigade troops were no laggers: they expelled Denikin’s units from Huliai-Pole, Berdiansk, Volnovakha and Mariupil.

Hryhoriev and Makhno were later awarded Orders of the Red Banner “for achievements in the revolutionary struggle,” and the Soviet press lavished a great deal of praise on them. But the Soviet government would hardly have bestowed these honors on them if it had known well in advance the kind of danger the Hryhoriev and Makhno movements wouldlater represent.

POLITICAL ABOUT-FACE

It should be stressed that in the Civil War years the political situation in Ukraine often changed at a breakneck pace, and yesterday’s reliable ally could easily turn into a sworn enemy today, or vice versa. What united the Bolsheviks and Hryhoriev and Makhno’s men was the joint struggle against the armies of Petliura and Denikin as well as the foreign interventionists, but they were disunited, each possessing different visions of how to build a new life. As far as land management was concerned, the communists were in favor of instituting large state-run farms (“Soviet farms”), while most peasants in the Kherson and Katerynoslav regions preferred either an equitable distribution of landlords’ lands or voluntary communes, rather than those forced “from above.”

The peasants also rejected the all-out food requisition to which the communists resorted; they wanted either normal cash-commodity relations or a fair and equitable commodity exchange. However, Ukraine’s Bolshevik masters did not reckon greatly, to put it mildly, with the interests of the peasants, and thus propelled Hryhoriev, Makhno, and their men into a hostile camp.

Otaman Hryhoriev’s troops, who were advancing on Odesa, knew only too well from different sources what the Bolshevik authorities were doing in their rear lines. Naturally, the news of forced “communization” and the violent robbery of peasants of the fruits of their labors triggered their legitimate protests.

This gradually formed a fixed idea in their ranks that communist power was alien, not Ukrainian, that it had been brought to Ukraine by people of a different ethnic origin, above all, the Jews. Those who visited the otaman’s units at the time spoke of widespread anti-Semitic sentiments among the fighters. These were the sentiments that Hryhoriev’s men brought to their native Kherson region after capturing Odesa. The areas where Hryhoriev’s detachments were stationed saw mass murders of communists and their supporters, counterintelligence officers, and members of food-requisition squads. A major armed mutiny was brewing, which posed a grave danger to the Bolshevik government because Hryhoriev had about 20,000 well-armed soldiers at his disposal.

Documents show that there was also a complicated political situation in the Katerynoslav region, the sphere of Makhno’s influence, where peasants were also protesting against the imposition of state-run farms and food requisitioning. Makhno issued a decree banning food-requisition squads on his territory and disbanded the secret police unit in Berdiansk. But in contrast to areas under Hryhoriev’s control, the protest against communist policies did not assume an anti-Semitic coloring. This detail is very important for understanding why fatal shots were fired at otaman Hryhoriev in the village of Sentove, near Kherson, in late July 1919.

Meanwhile, on April 27, 1919, five people assembled at a safe house in Katerynoslav. Three of them were confidants of batko Makhno and two were messengers from otaman Hryhoriev.

Clearly afraid of attracting attention, the secret negotiators began quietly discussing a plan to seize Katerynoslav by Makhno and Hryhoriev’s troops. But there was a traitor among the plotters (Makhno’s man Goriev), who informed the Bolshevik authorities of the secret talks, and the Cheka (Soviet secret police) arrested the conspirators. A few days later Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, commander of the Soviet troops in Ukraine, visited Huliai-Pole and bluntly asked Makhno about his secret contacts with Hryhoriev. Makhno did not deny them, but emphasized that he did so in order to uncover the otaman’s secret intentions rather than to hatch an anti-Bolshevik plot together with him.

Makhno did not reveal the whole truth. Naturally, the batko had taken advantage of the opportunity to sound out Hryhoriev and his men for their political attitudes — not for a trivial reason but to size up the real possibility of a future Makhno-Hryhoriev putsch against the Bolshevik government. Makhno’s actions were quite expected: exactly 10 days earlier, the Soviet newspaper Kommunar had carried an article headlined “Down with Makhno’s Rule!” After reading it, Makhno understood that the communists no longer looked on him as a friend but as a potential enemy at the very least.

There were many hot heads among the Bolshevik functionaries of different levels, who stubbornly insisted that the “counterrevolutionary hotbeds” in Kherson and Katerynoslav gubernias be eliminated immediately. This might well have happened if Soviet Ukraine had not been experiencing simultaneous powerful blows from Petliura, the White Army, and anti-Bolshevik peasant insurgents. Thus, a moderate compromise line with respect to Hryhoriev and Makhno took the upper hand in the highest strata of the Bolshevik government.

Antonov-Ovseenko was an active supporter of this line. Contrary to numerous and extremely alarming facts, he claimed that Hryhoriev and Makhno’s troops “are our reliable combat reserve” and will never oppose the Soviet government. These illusions were dispelled late in the evening of May 9, 1919, when the Ukrainian Front commander received a telegram from Khristian Rakovsky, chairman of the Ukrainian SSR Council of People’s Commissars. The brief message was: “Hryhoriev has raised a revolt. Be careful!”

MAKHNO AGAINST HRYHORIEV

At first Hryhoriev, the former Soviet commander, who was now a rebellious otaman, managed to achieve major military successes. Supported by the peasantry and some Red Army units, within two weeks Hryhoriev’s rebellion had spread to the Kherson, Katerynoslav, Poltava, and Kyiv regions. The insurgents seized Kherson, Mykolaiv, Yelysavethrad, Katerynoslav, Oleksandriia, Cherkasy, and other cities. However, instead of promptly organizing a new life here “without communists and commissars,” the otaman and his insurgents set about exterminating the defenseless Jewish populace.

A wave of bloody Jewish pogroms swept over the cities captured by the insurgents, and thousands of Jews fell victim to Hryhoriev’s men, although the vast majority of Jews were poor and had nothing to do with the state-run farms, food requisitioning, the Bolshevik party, or politics in general.

This was undoubtedly the gravest political mistake of otaman Hryhoriev and his men. The mass-scale bloody pogroms alienated many workers and peasants who, quite naturally, did not consider the pogrom-minded Hryhoriev as a guarantor of a future quiet and stable life. Meanwhile, a large Bolshevik army, twice the size of Hryhoriev’s, was sent to crush the uprising. In early June 1919 the otaman’s troops were expelled from all the cities under their control, and their numbers fell to 3,000 because so many of them were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

Hryhoriev and his insurgents badly needed allies in early May and June. The otaman was pinning special hopes — not unjustifiably — on Makhno. Hryhoriev never forgot about the secret talks with Makhno’s men in late April 1918. As soon as the uprising broke out, Makhno received a few telegrams from the otaman, in one of which were these lines: “ Batko! Why are you looking at the communists? Kill them!” At the same time, Makhno was receiving messages from Lenin’s closest associate Lev Kamenev.

Fully aware of what catastrophic consequences the “counterrevolutionary” alliance of Hryhoriev and Makhno’s forces could have, Kamenev categorically insisted that Makhno decisively and irreversibly disengage himself from Hryhoriev’s rebellion.

Circumstances thus inexorably demanded that Makhno make what we now call a political choice. Clearly, Makhno could not resolve such an important political problem on his own. He gathered his commanders in Mariupil on May 12, 1919, to sound out their attitude to Hryhoriev’s uprising. The commanders were sharply divided. Most of them considered Hryhoriev a counterrevolutionary and even claimed that the real leader of the uprising was not the otaman but somebody from Gen. Denikin’s closest retinue. They came to an unequivocal conclusion: they should forget their differences with the Bolsheviks and strengthen the alliance with the Red Army aimed against both Denikin and Hryhoriev. A dissenting note came from Yakiv Ozerov, chief of Makhno’s staff, who called Hryhoriev’s men “our brothers” and suggested siding with their uprising.

Makhno also addressed the meeting. In his speech, the “father” rode roughshod over the Bolsheviks’ rural policies but also rapped Hryhoriev over the knuckles, calling him a true henchman of Denikin.

Still, Makhno left unanswered the question concerning the attitude to the otaman’s uprising, which is quite natural if we examine the difficult situation in which Makhno found himself in May 1919. On the one hand, the communists’ policy in the countryside was pushing him towards Hryhoriev, the Green Angel, and other rural otamans whose detachments had already been fighting the Bolsheviks. On the other, the real danger of a White Army-led restoration of the old regime moved him back to the alliance with the communists and the Red Army. In addition, when that military congress was being held, Makhno had a rather hazy view of the nature, goals, and real strength of the Hryhoriev uprising. He asked his close comrade-in-arms Oleksandr Chubenko to clarify all these matters, and the latter, together with some of Makhno’s men, soon crossed the Bolshevik-Hryhoriev front line.

Makhno’s envoys failed to reach the otaman’s headquarters, but they still managed to learn something about Hryhoriev’s rule. According to Makhno’s staff officer, the hero of the capture of Odesa and bearer of the Order of the Red Banner, Hryhoriev followed the way of Petliura’s otamans whose pogroms and atrocities were well known in Ukraine.

The news of a Jewish pogrom in Piatykhatky became the decisive argument for the batko. By an absolute majority of votes Makhno’s military council declared war on ruHHty Hryhoriev. Makhno’s headquarters soon released a communique with the characteristically debunking title “Who Is Hryhoriev?” which described the otaman as an anti-Semitic organizer of pogroms, a traitor of the revolution, and a public enemy.

Makhno did not confine himself to a verbal condemnation of Hryhoriev’s mutiny. Soon after, the commander of the 3rd Trans-Dnipro Brigade sent against Hryhoriev’s army the 6th Trans-Dnipro Regiment and the Spartacus armored train which, together with other Soviet units, routed the rebels near Katerynoslav. Thus, Makhno again helped the Bolsheviks, who soon repaid the batko with black ingratitude.

AN INSURGENT ALLIANCE

On May 25, 1919, the commanding officer of the Red Army’s 3rd Trans-Dnipro Brigade, batko Makhno, was outlawed. Soviet troops began disarming Makhno’s units, and on June 12 secret agents managed to capture most of Makhno’s staff officers, who were later shot and killed. The Cheka was also hunting for Makhno, but he managed to escape arrest. Makhno and his fighters found themselves in a real quandary, with Denikin’s troops pressing in front and the Red Army in the rear.

Makhno was very well aware that he clearly lacked forces to successfully oppose both the Reds and the Whites. There is evidence that at this time Makhno hit upon the idea of forming a mighty insurgent army based in the Kherson region. But this area was still crawling with Hryhoriev’s guerrillas with whom Makhno’s fighters were at war. The new realities finally forced Makhno to revise his attitude to the “counterrevolutionaries,” and very soon he led a large detachment to the Kherson steppes with the intention of forming a military alliance with them against the Bolsheviks and the White Army.

En route, Makhno’s troops attacked Yelysavethrad but were quickly repelled by Red Army troops, who outnumbered them. But even this short period of time was enough for Makhno to gain additional — and by no means encouraging — information about Hryhoriev and his insurgents. He learned that Hryhoriev’s men had recently killed 2,000 Jews there. Some of them were confirmed anarchists.

This information stunned Makhno, forcing him to think twice about his future alliance with the otaman. He believed that Hryhoriev’s rank-and-file soldiers, who Makhno thought were a blind instrument in the hands of the “adventurer,” should be incorporated into his army and reeducated, while the anti-Semitic officers should be executed. Having conceived this plan, which in fact amounted to a secret plot against otaman Hryhoriev and about which the “father” did not breathe a word to anybody, Makhno headed for the village of Verbliuzhky. Failing to find Hryhoriev there, he went to the village of Kompaniivka, where the otaman and his chief of staff also came a short while later.

Hryhoriev, who had suffered a number of crushing defeats at the hands of the Reds, was not at all averse to having Makhno as a long-awaited ally rather than an enemy. But anti-Hryhoriev sentiments were still strong among Makhno’s leading commanders, and most of them resolutely opposed the alliance with a “counterrevolutionary bent on pogroms.” Some of them even suggested arresting and shooting the otaman. Makhno had to reveal his secret plan to his close colleagues, telling them they should take in Hryhoriev’s rank-and-file fighters and that they could shoot Hryhoriev any time they wanted.

Soon Makhno and Hryhoriev’s detachments merged into a single guerrilla army whose commander-in-chief, Hryhoriev, was supposed to follow all the instructions of the army’s Revolutionary Council headed by Makhno. A joint insurgent headquarters was set up, with Makhno’s men constituting the majority. It was decided that the joint insurgent army would fight against the Reds, the Whites, and the Petliurites.

Bowing to the batko’s demand, Hryhoriev also firmly promised to refrain from carrying out Jewish pogroms.

These facts prove that the insurgent army quickly came under the control of Makhno’s top officers. All they had to do now was “neutralize” Hryhoriev himself.

SHOOTOUT IN SENTOVE

It is clear that Makhno had no real possibilities to carry out his plot immediately against the otaman and his men. First it was necessary to collect sufficient compromising information against Hryhoriev in order to expose him convincingly in the eyes of the ordinary insurgents, and this required some time. Makhno’s counterintelligence was brought into the picture, and his agents began shadowing every step of the otaman. They did not have to wait long for compromising evidence.

Shortly after merging with Makhno’s army, Hryhoriev’s fighters again attacked Oleksandriia and Yelysavethrad. After capturing these cities, the insurgents killed about 70 Jews, despite Hryhoriev’s solemn promise not to lay a finger on the Jews. Makhno’s counterintelligence also discovered the otaman’s suspicious contacts with a local landlord with whom Hryhoriev had left a machine-gun and a large quantity of clothing. Still more alarming were the agents’ reports that Hryhoriev’s men were contemplating the assassinations of Makhno, his brother, and the united army’s chief of staff. Makhno could not help wondering whether his ally was hatching a revolt in the army.

But all this paled before what happened one July day in 1919. On that day Makhno’s soldiers brought Makhno two intelligent-looking men, who insisted on seeing otaman Hryhoriev. Aware that the strangers did not know what the otaman looked like, Makhno said he was Hryhoriev and soon learned that the men were White Army officers, who had come as messengers to his ally. They had a letter to the otaman from General Romanovsky, which clearly indicated that Hryhoriev had long been on the payroll of Denikin’s headquarters.

Makhno flew into a terrible rage and personally shot the White officers. He and his commanders were no less eager to shoot Hryhoriev. However, being experienced in all kinds of situations, Makhno considered that the men who said they were Denikin’s officers may have been Cheka operatives, who had a mission to provoke a Makhno-Hryhoriev armed conflict, much to the Bolsheviks’ pleasure. It was decided to shadow Hryhoriev’s every step.

On a July day in 1919 Hryhoriev and part of his army were marching to the Pleteny Tashlyk railway station with the intention of stopping the White Army’s advance units. However, the behavior of the usually dauntless otaman was very strange and suspicious. Instead of resisting Denikin’s units, Hryhoriev surrendered the station without engaging in combat.

Later, when Hryhoriev was recounting this episode to Makhno, he put everything down to the Whites’ essential advantage in personnel and equipment. It is quite possible that at any other time Makhno would have believed the otaman, but the story of the people pretending to be Denikin’s officers compelled Makhno to look at this situation from an absolutely different angle. Makhno no longer doubted that Hryhoriev had sided with the Whites. Shortly afterwards (in late July 1919) Makhno’s top officers proclaimed a death sentence on the otaman.

Were Makhno and his commanders correct in considering Hryhoriev a secret ally of Denikin? In my view, this important issue requires additional research. But considerable direct and indirect evidence allows one to presume that he was. I will add that, in principle, there was nothing unnatural in this. Disgruntled with the Bolshevik government, Hryhoriev could very well have sided with Denikin, who would restore freedom of trade, so dear to the peasants, and would not impose state-run farms.

On July 27, 1919, the united forces of Hryhoriev and Makhno entered the village of Sentove near Kherson and soon assembled a large village meeting (according to other sources, this was a congress of insurgents). Hryhoriev was the first to speak. In his speech the otaman stressed that the chief goal of the Ukrainian insurgent movement was a relentless struggle against the “communist oppressors” and that, by fighting them, the insurgents could conclude any kind of alliance, even with Denikin.

In saying this, the otaman had clearly set himself up, to use a modern phrase. In reply, Makhno’s comrades-in-arms Chubenko and Shpota branded Hryhoriev a pogrom-monger and counterrevolutionary in whose eye “one can see, like before, the glitter of tsarist epaulets.” Naturally, Hryhoriev immediately demanded that the batko and his speakers explain themselves. The otaman heard them out in the premises of the local village council, where he went accompanied by Makhno and some of his top commanders. Cocking his revolver and concealing it behind his back, Chubenko reminded Hryhoriev of the bloody Jewish pogroms, his friendship with landlords, and contacts with the White Army.

The otaman went for his pistol, but Chubenko stepped forward and shot Hryhoriev in the head. A few seconds later the “defendant” was hit by Makhno’s bullets and those fired by his well-known commander Semen Karetnykov. Hryhoriev, seriously wounded, mustered enough strength to run into the courtyard, but his assassins ran after him and shot him to death. Soon, on Makhno’s orders, the otaman’s staff officers were also liquidated. As for Hryhoriev’s rank-and-file men, they were surrounded in good time by the batko ’s soldiers, not daring to offer armed resistance to their allies, although they loved their otaman. Most of them soon recognized the authority of Nestor Makhno, their new military commander.