Simon Petlura

At my command the Army of the Polish Republic has begun to march into the territories of the Ukraine. It is my intention to inform the population that these Polish forces will remove from the territories inhabited by the people of the Ukraine all foreign invaders, against whom these people have revolted and defended their houses with arms in their hands against violence and plunder.

The Polish forces will remain in the Ukraine long enough to allow the establishment of a rightful Ukrainian Government. When the national government of the Ukrainian Republic has created its authority, when the armed multitudes of Ukrainians will stand on their frontiers capable of defending the country against any new invasion and when the people will be able to decide their fate themselves, in that moment the Polish soldier will return to the Polish Republic having accomplished his creditable task of fighting for the freedom of the nations.

Together with the Polish troops, the valiant sons of the Ukraine are marching under the command of Ataman Semen Petlura, who in the darkest days of Ukrainian history, found shelter and support in the Polish Republic, to re-conquer their freedom, and secure the fortune, well-being and fertile soil of their Fatherland !  The forces of the Polish Republic will secure protection for all the inhabitants of the Ukraine, irrespective of their class, religion and nationality.

I ask the Ukrainian people and all the inhabitants of this country to endure with patience, the inevitable burdens which invariably accompany war, and to help the troops of the Polish Republic as much as possible in their bloody struggle for your life and freedom.

Russia and the Polish
Republic 1918 - 1941 by R. Umiastowski
London : "Aquafondata", 1945, pages 85 - 86.

 

Proclamation

by Semon Petlura, 26 April 1920

In this common battle of the united Ukrainian and Polish armies we will obliterate the faults of the past and this blood, unitedly shed in battle against the eternal historic foe—Muscovia, the same who once overthrew Poland and engulfed the Ukraine, will bless this new era of friendship between the Ukrainian and Polish people.

( ibidem )

From Communiqu�, Polish Foreign Ministry, 26 April 1920

� Poland acknowledged the right of the Ukraine to independence and recognized Ataman Petlura�s National Government. �

( ibidem )

From Russia and the Polish Republic 1918 - 1941 by R. Umiastowski, 1945

During that war [1918-1920], Bolshevik propaganda claimed (in the same way as it had done in Estonia, Latvia and the Ukraine), that the Red invaders entered Poland not as �enemies,� but as �friendly revolutionaries,� with the sole aim of helping her gain her freedom. Therefore, it was not, in their opinion, a war in the true sense of the term. They were later to issue a different explanation of their action, this time accusing the Poles �of invading Russian territory.� The absurdity of such a statement was obvious, since the war was fought on the territory of the Polish Republic, west of the river Dniepr (the Polish-Russian frontier ran East of this river or down stream). Only once during the course of the offensive of 1920, did the Poles, acting in support of the army of the Ukrainian Government under Ataman Petlura, pass over the frontier on to Ukrainian territory (not Russian), i.e., to Kiev, which had formerly belonged to the Russian Empire in the same way as the majority of Poland had also been under her occupation.

London : "Aquafondata", 1945, pages 79-80.

From Twentieth-Century UKRAINE, Clarence A. Manning, 1951

The Eastern Ukrainians under Petlyura . . . gradually retreated into Polish territory to prepare for a new onslaught against the Bolsheviks. These were offered by the policies of Marshal Pilsudski.

Pilsudski, the outstanding Polish military leader of the day, had been born near Wilno and differed in one respect from his fellow Poles. As a product of the old Polish-dominated Lithuania, . . , he conceived the idea not of forming a unified Polish state but of preparing around it a series of allies who . . . would round out Polish influence and restore the country to its seventeenth-century position.

Petlyura, a man of eastern Ukraine, could not feel that deep personal antagonism to the Poles that was characteristic of the Western Ukrainians. Perhaps he sympathized with some of the broader aspects of Pilsudski�s ideas. Perhaps he was merely impelled by the extreme straits to which Ukrainian cause was reduced at the moment. At all events a rapprochement took place between Pilsudski and Petlyura and this involved a break with the Western Ukrainians.

On April 24, 1920, the Ukrainian National Republic, with Petlyura at its head, made a formal military alliance with the government of Poland. Under this the Ukrainians of the east omitted all references to Eastern Galicia. In return it secured Polish recognition, the first which it had received since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the only formal recognition from one of the powers associated with the Allies.

Immediately after this the Polish and Ukrainian armies commenced to advance. On May 7 the first units entered Kiev and two days later they established a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. Many of the Ukrainian factions were angered at the appearance of the Poles and Petlyura was hotly denounced for abandoning Western Ukraine. The population in and around Kiev did not rally as expected.

On May 14 the Soviets cut behind the Polish lines and severed their communications.  . . .  once again the Ukrainians saw their allies retire and had to leave with them. This was the last time that the troops of the Ukrainian National Republic penetrated their capital.

The campaign of 1920 was one of rapid movement. In quick succession the Soviets pierced the Polish positions wherever they were established and by the early part of August they were in the neighborhood of Warsaw. Poland as well as Ukraine seemed doomed. The Allies again and again tried to bring about a peace. The Poles refused to listen to any propositions as to the future of Eastern Galicia or any other of the Ukrainian or Byelorussian lands. Yet despite this the French sent General Weygand . . .  At the crucial moment Pilsudski, by a brilliant attack, placed his forces behind the Soviet lines and completely annihilated the Red army. It was then the turn of the Poles to advance and they reoccupied almost the same positions that they had had at the time of the Alliance with Ukraine.

During the battle of Warsaw the southern Red armies with whom Joseph Stalin was acting as leader and the cavalry forces of Budenny moved toward Lviv and tried to cut their way to the Carpathians to reach Hungary. The Ukrainian divisions played an important part in checking this movement and distinguished themselves in many battles in Eastern Galicia where they joined with the Poles in clearing the province of the last Red soldiers, who were forced again to the east.

Peace negotiations were opened at Riga, and on November 12 a treaty of peace was signed between Poland and the Russian Soviet Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. No mention was made of the Ukrainian National Republic. Despite the services of its troops to Poland during the war, it was as completely forgotten as if it had never existed. The Poles made no allusion to the alliance which they had signed only a few months before.

Comment : Confer the works by Lord Hankey, Messrs. Lloyd George, Ernest Bevin, L. Rosenfeld (Kamenev), Krassin, Adolf Joffe, Chicherin, etc. — (WPT).

This doomed the republic. The Ukrainian troops under Petlyura continued to fight on but without hope of success. Deprived of their base in Poland, they had to face without supplies the entire force of the reorganized Red army. Peace was slowly coming to Eastern Europe. The White Russian movement had ended, except for the continuing resistance of Baron Wrangel; but this was not serious and on November 16 the White army was evacuated by sea from the Crimea. The Ukrainian forces lasted a few days longer; after a defeat at Bazar on November 21, they too were forced to give up and seek refuge in Poland.

Thus ended the military phase of the Ukrainian National Republic. . .

( pages 67 � 70 )

New York : Bookman Associates, 1951.

From The Decisive Battles of the Western World
by Major-General J. F. C. Fuller (1954-6)

Because world revolution was Lenin�s strategical goal, his tactics also had to be revolutionary. Their aim was not to persuade the enemy to change his mind by force of arms, but by force of ideas — in other words, to rot him internally and bring him to destroy himself. Before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk he had said, �Let us give way in space, but gain time,� because he saw that, once revolution was kindled in the west it would give back to Russia the space she had bartered, and without a fight.

He said : �We must be able to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manœvres, illegal methods, evasions and subterfuges only so as to get into the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry Communist work within them at all costs. . . .  The Communist Party enters such institutions not in order to do constructive work, but in order to direct the masses to destroy from within the whole Bourgeois State machine and Parliament itself.�

Germany was the hub of the world revolution for Lenin and Trotsky because she was the strategical centre of gravity of Europe. Once she was won, the rest of Europe would become untenable and could be conquered. And when Europe was reduced to the position of a Soviet satrapy, the Mediterranean would also become untenable, and the Middle East could be Bolshevized and Africa subverted. Finally, when the whole of the Old World was sovietized, the psychological conquest of the New World could be undertaken and the Soviet Republic of the World established.

The composition of the Russian empire prevented Lenin from launching out on this grandiose scheme. It was a mosaic of subjugated peoples held together by the centripetal autocracy of the Muscovite Tsar, which alone prevented the explosion of the centrifugal forces of discontent. Because of this, the overthrow of the Tsarist government in March, 1917, at once led to national uprisings among the non-Muscovites, with the result that at various dates — mostly following the October Revolution — 15 groups of subjugated peoples declared their autonomy. The first to do so was the Ukraine, the most populous of them, in which a Central Council of Liberation was formed on March 17, 1917. Next, on November 20, 1917, the Ukrainians formally proclaimed themselves to be a National Republic, and because Lenin could not prevent this, he acknowledged Ukrainian independence, and immediately began to establish a Communist shadow government at Kharkov. On December 17 it came into the open. It proclaimed the Ukraine a Soviet Republic and in accordance with Lenin�s technique, appealed to the Soviet Government for aid. This was granted, and the Ukrainian War of Independence, which was to last until 1921, was started.

( pages 335 )

 

By the close of 1918 the interventionist forces in Russia had reached a total of nearly 300,000 men — French, British, Americans, Italians, Japanese, German Balts, Poles, Greeks, Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, Estonians and Latvians . . .  In April, 1919, Kolchak reached Kazan and Samara on the Volga, while Denekin advanced northward from the Black Sea. As Kolchak was considered the more dangerous, Trotsky sent General Tukhachevski against him. . . .  Next, in October, an offensive was opened against Denekin . . .  He was pushed back, and once in retreat, because of the bandits and partisans who infested his rear communications, was unable to halt his demoralized men until they reached Novorossisk on the Black Sea. From there the remnants of his army were sent to General Wrangel in Crimea. About the same time, General Yudenich, then advancing on Petrograd, was driven over the Estonian border, and intervention began to collapse. Two Powers were unwilling to give in ; Japan, who had her eyes on territorial expansion in eastern Siberia, and France.

Because the French feared to lose the credits they had advanced Tsarist Russia, and that, in revenge for the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans would link up with the Bolsheviks, their policy was contradictory. One aim was to restore the Tsarist régime, which would be grateful to France, and the other was to create an enlarged Poland which as a French ally would threaten Germany from the east.

On November 4, 1916, the independence of Poland had been sanctioned by the Central Powers, and when on November 11, 1918, they collapsed, the Regency Council established by them appointed Joseph Pilsudski (1867-1936) to the supreme command of all Polish troops. His first act was to declare himself head of the National Government, and his second to notify all belligerent and neutral Powers that Poland was an independent state.

Pilsudski, assured of French good will, credits, and munitions, needed little encouragement to make enormous territorial claims,* for the key-note of his foreign policy was to restore the Polish frontiers of 1772 — roughly the line of the Dvina and Dnieper — and to make Poland the head of an anti-Bolshevik confederation. In April, 1919, he invaded Lithuania, stormed Lida and occupied Vilna. In May he invaded east Galicia, which had been proclaimed a West Ukrainian Republic by General Petliura who, in November, 1918, had become head of the Ukrainian National Government, and so began the Polish-Ukrainian war.

    * "Various motives were attributed to Pilsudski . . .  All he wanted was to win back for Poland that which had been taken from her. But he had another deeper reason, his fear and distrust of Bolshevism, which he believed would destroy any state in which it took root." (Aleksandra Pilsudska, Pilsudski, London, 1941, pp. 295-6).
    The history of Bolshevism ever since those times ought to be examined in order to judge whether somebody's 'fear and distrust' was justified or not. This, the reader, you can probably learn best from the USSR's neighbours, Poland, Finland, Hungary, etc. — (WPT).

Because the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers took little heed of these campaigns and failed to appreciate what manner of man Pilsudski was, on December 8, it fixed the eastern frontier of Poland along the line of the river Bug, and in the following year it became known as the "Curzon Line".* It in no way satisfied Pilsudski, and soon after it was suggested the situation in the Ukraine grew so critical that, in the spring of 1920, Petliura came to terms with Pilsudski, and on April 22, peace between then was signed at Warsaw. Poland recognized the independence of the Ukraine and undertook to support the Ukrainians against Russia.

* The Line was the idea of General Smuts from South Africa, a sort of dilletante historian, and Lord Curzon had originally nothing whatsoever to do with it. The term had been coined by David Lloyd George and I have not yet been able to determine for what reason, unless simply to confound the issues — which might be not out of character with David Lloyd George.
    If the "Line" had any truth to it, it was in reference to the earliest ethnic/linguistic subdivisions in that part of Europe, the eastern outskirts of Europe that is, between ca. 1000 and ca. 1700. As a matter of the boundary between Poland and Russia, the relative latecomer, the "Line" was not anywhere nearly true since any such boundaries would coincide with the extent of their respective influence zones by the Roman and the Russian (Greek) Orthodox Churches (perhaps the only more or less exact criterion there). In other words, the "Line" might be arguable as a boundary between Poland and an independent Ruthenia (Ukraine) but not between Poland and Russia if no independent Ukraine be considered. These distinctions seem to have been usually overlooked in favor of some general wrangling and various recriminations. Ruthenia (Ukraine) and Russia were never "the same thing", the relations between the Poles and the Ruthenians (Ukrainians) is a very different matter from the relations with the Russians, many historians have yet failed to observe this. (WPT).

( vol. iii, pages 337-8 )

 

Both Poles and Russians desperately wanted peace, yet only on their own terms, which were : for the former, the old frontier of 1772 ; for the latter, the continuance of world revolution. So it came about that, when on December 22, 1920 [1919?], the Soviet Government invited the Polish Government to negotiate peace, though the proposal was accepted, nothing came of it.

At length, on April 25, diplomatic fencing was brought to an end by a sudden offensive launched by Pilsudski. Its aim was to seize Kiev, and then to turn northward against Tukhachevski, who faced his left wing. Led by Pilsudski the Polish army, supported on its right by two divisions of Ukrainians under the Hetman Petliura, as well as by some Rumanians, swept towards the Dnieper, and, on May 7, occupied Kiev.

The forces faced each other as follows :

Russian : North of the Pripet, the Army of the West, under Tukhachevski, consisted of the Fourth, Fifteenth, Third and Sixteenth Armies, and the IIIrd Cavalry Corps (Gay Khan) ; and south of the Pripet the Army of the South-West, commanded by Yegorov, comprised the Twelfth and Fourteenth Armies, and five divisions of cavalry under Budienny. In all — possibly — 200,000 men.

Polish : North of the Pripet, the First and Fourth Armies, with a Reserve Army in rear near Vilna in process of formation ; and south of the Pripet, the Third, Second and Sixth Armies. In all, some 120,000 men.²

    ² Correct strengths for both sides are impossible to give.  Throughout the campaign they changed constantly.

 

Though the Russian numerical superiority was important, more especially as the bulk of it was opposed to the far weaker Polish left flank, what was more important was that the area between the Bug and Dnieper was cut in half by the swamps of Polesia, a dead-level country practically impassable by large bodies of troops. This meant that a general action on the whole front of the two armies would at once develop into two separate actions which could not cooperate. When Comrade Sergei Kamenev, the commander-in-chief of all the Soviet armed forces, realized this, he ordered Tukhachevski to attack the Polish left wing. This he was eager to do, for frantic with revolution, dreamt of watering his horses on the Rhine^[1], carrying the war into western Europe.  . . . Trotsky . . , on May 2, made the following forecast :

�There can be no doubt that the war of the Polish bourgeoisie against the Ukrainian and Russian workers and peasants will end with a workers� revolution in Poland. It would be a pitiful lack of spirit to be frightened at the first successes of Pilsudski. They are unavoidable. They were foreseen. They were a result of the earlier development of our relations with Poland. The deeper the right wing of the Polish troops penetrates into Ukrainia, the more fatal for the Polish troops will be the concentrated blow which the Red troops will give them.�¹

    ^[1] Le chef de l�armée rouge, Fervacque, p. 123.
    ¹ History of the Revolution, Trotsky, (1932-35), vol. iii, book 2, p. 102.

 

Strategically this was correct, and when, on May 15, Tukhachevski selected as his objective the railway junction of Molodechno, and launched his Fifteenth Army against it, his aim was to drive it into the Pinsk swamps. Thought the attack failed, it shook Pilsudski ; but before he could reinforce his left wing, a formidable attack was launched against him in the south. There Budienny, who had served in the ranks during the Russo-Japanese War, at the head of 16,700 Cossacks, accompanied by 48 cannon, five armoured trains, eight armoured cars and 12 aeroplanes, struck at Pilsudski's right wing in the neighbourhood of Elizavetgrad on May 18. Next, he moved northward ; attacked the Polish forces south and south-west of Kiev ; broke through near Gaisin ; raided west of Kiev ; and swept into Berditchev and Zhitomir. On June 5th the Polish Third Army was nearly surrounded, but on the 13th it broke away and retired westward while Budienny�s horsemen swept onward, crossed the Horyn on July 3, and two days later occupied Rovno. From there they pressed forward to the outskirts of Lvov (Lemberg).

As Pilsudski informs us, panic followed, and "the work of the State itself began to crack." He writes : �For our troops who were not prepared to meet this new offensive instrument, Budienny�s cavalry became an invincible, legendary force. And it should be remembered that the farther in rear one goes, the more does such an obsession escape all reason — to become all-powerful and irresistible. Thus for me began to be created that most dangerous of all fronts — the inner one.�² At the time, all he could do to meet this critical development was to save his left wing, the right flank of which had been turned by the defeat of his right wing ; he therefore ordered its withdrawal.

    ² L�Année 1920, Joseph Pilsudski (1929), p. 51.

( pages 342 - 345 )

 

In spite of [the] great victory the campaign was not ended and two separate operations followed, one in the south and the other in the north. The first was carried out by Sikorski, who opened his offensive on September 12 and occupied Kovel, Lutzk, Rovno and Tarnapol on the 18th and Pinsk on the 20th. The second was led by Pilsudski who, after a masterful manœvre, attacked Tukhachevski on September 20, destroyed the Soviet Third Army in the Battle of the Niemen, and occupied Grodno on the 26th. This victory was at once followed by the battle of the Shara (Szczara),¹ in which the remnants of the Soviet Armies were driven back to Minsk. In these two battles Pilsudski took, 50,000 prisoners and 160 guns. On October 10 an armistice was agreed, and on March 18, 1921, by the Treaty of Riga the eastern frontier of Poland was fixed as it stood until 1939.

    ¹ For these two battles see articles by General Faury (French) in the Revue militaire française of February and March, 1922, and March, 1929.  Faury was in 1920 attached to General Skierski, who commanded the Fourth Polish Army.

( page 360 )

London : Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1956.

From Allied Wartime Diplomacy, Edward J. Rozek, 1958

On May 6, 1920 Polish legions reached Kiev, but soon afterwards the Red Armies of Tukhachevsky and Budenny began to push them back towards Warsaw. What had been known as a defensive war against Pilsudski was for a brief time transformed by the military success of the Red Army into a revolutionary crusade. The Bolsheviks established a Polish "provisional government" (with Felix Dzierzinski [Dzerzhinsky], later to gain notoriety as the head of the Cheka, as one of its prominent members) behind the Red Army lines and attempted to set up local Soviets as they went along.

Local Polish support was not forthcoming as expected. however, and the cruel behavior of the Red Army unified national sentiment behind Pilsudski. The rural population was more loyal to the appeal of the peasant leader Wincenty Witos than to communist slogans.³ Tukhachevsky issued a proclamation which stated that the Red Army was marching through Warsaw, Berlin, and Paris to London.⁴

Prior to the launching of his offensive, Pilsudski reached an agreement with the Ukrainian leader, Petlura, which signified a future union of Poland and the Ukraine.* Pilsudski's political conception of the federation of Poland and the Ukraine met with criticism from Allied statesmen, with the sole exception of Winston Churchill. This unfavorable attitude seriously affected the decision reached at the Spa Conference of July 10, 1920 . . .

    * Apparently some way of confederation was considered rather than a union. — (WPT)

      ³ [ Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy (ed.), Jane Degras, London, Oxford University Press, 1951, Vol I ], p. 189.
      ⁴ Louis Fischer, Soviets in World Affairs (2 Vols.), Princeton University Press, 1952, Vol. I, pp. 268-270.

New York : John Wiley, London : Chapman & Hall, 1958, page .

From Bazhanov and the damnation of Stalin by Boris Bazhanov, 1979 (Eng. 1990)

I was born in 1900 in the village of Mogilev-Podolsky, in the Ukraine. At the time of the February 1917 Revolution, I was a senior in high school. During the spring and summer of 1917, our town knew all the vicissitudes of the revolution and, especially, progressive disintegration of the old way of life. This process was even more accented by the October Revolution. The front broke up, the Ukraine seceded, and the Ukrainian nationalists contested Bolshevik power in the Ukraine. Anarchy was widespread in my area. But in early 1918 German troops occupied the Ukraine, and with their support a certain amount of order was reestablished. A strange regime was formed under Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky, "hetman" of the Ukraine — theoretically a Ukrainian nationalist but in fact vaguely conservative.

    Life returned more or less to normal, my high school classes resumed, and I graduated in the summer of 1918 and left for the University of Kiev, for the department of physics and mathematics. Alas, the university's classes didn't last long. In November Germany was defeated and their troops began leaving the Ukraine. Revolutionary activities — meetings, discussions — boiled at the university, which the authorities closed. At that time I was not involved in politics. At eighteen I believed I didn't know enough yet about the fundamental problems of the life of society. But like most of the students I was very angry at the cessation of classes. I had come from a faraway province to Kiev to study. That was why, when a student demonstration in front of the university to denounce its closure was announced, I went along.

   ; I learned a very important lesson there. A detachment of state police came by truck, formed up in front of the demonstrators, and with no warning opened fire. The crowd had quickly dispersed at the sight of the police, but three or four dozen people stayed rather than flee like rabbits. Of their number about twenty were killed and the rest wounded. I was among the wounded, a bullet in the jaw. But it was a glancing blow, and I got away with two or three weeks in the hospital. Courses having ceased and fighting between the Bolsheviks and the Ukrainian nationalists having resumed, I returned to my hometown to recuperate and reflect on the events in which I had participated against my will.

    The Civil War flared up in 1919, and the [contra-Bolshevik] White armies made their way toward Moscow. But the Podolsky region was outside this campaign, and the fight for local power was only between Simon Vasilievich Petliura's Ukrainian nationalists and the Bolsheviks. During the summer of 1919 I decided to join the Communist Party.

    For us, the student youth, the Party at that time looked like an exciting effort to create a new .. society. If I wanted to participate in politics in my small provincial town, the only choice was between Ukrainian nationalist and communism. The first choice didn't attract me at all, for in my view it was a renunciation of the Russian culture in which I was raised. I wasn't enthusiastic, either, about the practice of communism as it appeared around me, but I told myself (and I wasn't alone) that one mustn't ask too much of these uncultivated, primitive Bolsheviks, recruited from among uneducated workers and peasants who understood and applied communist dicta like savages. It was up to better-educated and more competent people to correct their errors and to build the new society so that it would better match the ideas of the leaders who — seen from afar — were obviously working for the welfare of the people.

    The bulled that struck me I Kiev had little effect on my political outlook, but the problems posed by war played a large role. the last years of my adolescence witnessed the long, insensate killing tat was World War I. Despite my youth I understood that war could never bring any benefit to the belligerents that could justify the millions of victims and the colossal damage inflicted. I understood that the techniques of extermination had reached such a level that the ancient process of settling disagreements between large powers by war had become insane,. If the leaders of these powers were still motivated by outmoded concepts of nationalism, acceptable a century earlier when it took two months to travel from Paris to Moscow and countries could exist independently of each other, then today when all nations were linked and that voyage took only two days, these leaders were following a false trail. They had a large share of the responsibility for the revolutions which followed war and shattered the old ways of life. I took on faith the antiwar arguments of the internationalists at Zimmerwald and Kienthal. It was only much later that I understood how war had served and enchanted the partisans of Lenin. Only war could have won them the Revolution.*

Once I joined the local Party organization, I was soon secretary of the district organization. It is significant that from the first I quarreled with the chekists, sent from the provincial capital to organize a local Cheka. This requisitioned the house of the notary Afeniev, an old and inoffensive rich man, and they shot him. I urged the Party to close the Cheka office immediately and send its men back to the provincial capital, Vinnitsa. The Party organization was reluctant, but I quickly convinced them. The town was mainly Jewish, and te Party members were mostly Jews. I asked them if they understood that the Jewish population, under threat of a pogrom following each of the frequent shifts in government, would be the first victims of the mindless executions of these sadistic chekists. They understood and supported me. The chekists were sent back to Vinnitsa.

    The Soviet authorities didn't last long, and Petliura's men arrived and took over. I stayed some time in Zhmerinka and Vinnitsa where, in January 1920, I was suddenly appointed head of the provincial department of education. My activities were interrupted by a recurrent fever, then by news of the death of my parents from typhus. I hastened back to my native town. Petliura's men were still there, but they did me no harm. The local population certified to them that I was an "idealistic communist" who had done only good and had saved the town from the chekist terror.

    Soon power changed hands again. The Bolsheviks came, then left again. It was the time of the Soviet-Polish war,. In the summer of 1920 the town of Yampol was again in Soviet hands and I was appointed member and secretary of the town revolutionary committee. . . .

    Mogilev was occupied a mont later. I was transferred there and again elected secretary of the Party district committee. The Soviet-Polish war ended in October, and the Crimea was occupied in November. . . .

    * "War is an accelerator" (Lenin, as quoted by Trotzky). The "pacifist" propositions by Lenin and his comrades did not fundamentally mean peace (those men did not care an iota about such sentiments, whatever the slogans for the masses) — except when the advantage of their revolution was concerned.
    The revolution was to take place, ideally, in both Russia and Germany (confer Comrade Liebknecht), and eventually in every other country. To the extent that the revolutionary activities disorganised the Russian armies, they played right into the hands of the Germans, who actually spent considerable sums on the subversive activities then in Russia. See notes on 'the Kaiser's millions for Lenin' (German Aims, etc., by Professor Fritz Fischer ; numerous other works). Those expenses "must be seen in a proper perspective" (F. Fischer) : the '40 to 80 million' marks spent in Russia were but a part of overall budget of over 300 million for such purposes — in many countries.
    Also, the '40 to 80 million' were distributed among several parties or bodies in Russia not all of them Bolshevik : in other words, "the Kaiser's millions" went not always "for Lenin" and perhaps far from being so. The latter was not "a German spy", as many a hysteric protest had been made by the Red apologists or propagandists, but it seems fairly certain that in the end Lenin had no chances whatever of success without the sort of contributions from outside to the revolutionary strikes in Russia.
    He did not in fact initially expect the Revolution, as he had first envisioned it, to occur within his lifetime, "Only war could have won them the Revolution (Bazhanov, as above). Karl Liebknecht's part in Germany was to be quite similar to Lenin's (or Trotzky's) in Russia : a certain irony might be seen in that the German Comrades had begun receiving funds from Russia as soon as the Russian Comrades took over (advantage taken of "the Kaiser's millions"). The Reds then had signally contributed to the Zusammenbruch in Germany 1918 (although they were obviously not the only factor).

From The SWORD and the SHIELD, C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin, 1999

The �counter-revolutionary groups� which were of most immediate concern to Lenin and the Cheka after the civil war were the remnants of the defeated White armies and the Ukrainian nationalists. After the last White forces left Russian soil late in 1920, they stood no realistic chance of mounting another serious challenge to Bolshevik rule. That, however, was not Lenin�s view. �A beaten army,� he declared, �learns much.� He estimated that there were one and a half to two million anti-Bolshevik Russian émigrés. [Etc.]

In the early and mid-1920s INO�s chief target thus became the émgré White Guards, based mainly in Berlin, Paris and Warsaw, who continued to plot—far less effectively than Lenin supposed—the overthrow of the Bolshevik regime.

The other �counter-revolutionary� threat which most concerned Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership came from Ukrainian nationalists, who had fought both Red and White forces in an attempt to win their independence. In the winter of 1920 and the spring of 1921 the entire Ukrainian countryside was in revolt against Bolshevik rule. Even after the brutal �pacification� of Ukraine by the Red Army and the Cheka, partisan groups who had taken refuge in Poland and Romania continued to make cross-border raids.⁴⁶ In the spring of 1922 the Ukrainian GPU received intelligence reports that Simon Petlyura�s Ukrainian government-in-exile had established a �partisan headquarters� under General Yurko Tutyunnik which was sending secret emissaries to the Ukraine to establish a nationalist underground.⁴⁷

The GPU was ordered not merely to collect intelligence on the émigré White guards and Ukrainian nationalists but also to penetrate and destabilize them.⁴⁸ Its strategy was the same against both opponents—to establish bogus anti-Bolshevik undergrounds under GPU control which could be used to lure General Tutyunnik and the leading White generals back across the frontier.

The first step in enticing Tutyunnik back to Ukraine (an operation codenamed CASE 39 ) was the capture of Zayarny, one of his �special duties� officers, who was caught crossing the frontier in 1922. Zayarny was successfully turned back by the GPU and sent to Tutyunnik�s headquarters with bogus reports that an underground Supreme Military Council (Vysshaya Voyskovaya Rada or VVR) had been established in Ukraine and was anxious to set up an operational headquarters under Tutyunnik�s leadership to wage war against the Bolsheviks. Tutyunnik was too cautious to return immediately but sent several emissaries who attended stage-managed meetings of the VVR, at which GPU officers disguised as Ukrainian nationalists reported the rapid growth of underground opposition to Bolshevik rule and agreed on the urgent need for Tutyunnik's leadership. Like Zayarny, one of the emissaries, Pyotr Stakhov, a close associate of Tutyunnik, was recruited by the GPU and used as a double agent.

Attempts to persuade Tutyunnik himself to return to Ukraine finally succeeded on June 26, 1923.⁴⁹ Tutyunnik, with his bodyguard and aides, arrived at a remote hamlet on the Romanian bank of the river Dniester, where Zayarny met him with the news that the VVR and Pyotr Stakhov were waiting on the other side. At 11 p.m. a light from the Ukrainian bank signaled that it was safe for Tutyunnik and his entourage to cross the river. Still cautious, Tutyunnik sent his bodyguard to make sure that no trap had been laid for him. Stakhov returned with the bodyguard to reassure him According to an OGPU report, Tutyunnik told him, �Pyotr, I know you and you know me. We won�t fool each other. Te VVR is a fiction, isn�t it?� �That�s impossible,� Stakhov replied. �I know them all, particularly those who are with me [today]. You know you can rely on me . . .� Tutyunnik got into the boat with Stakhov and crossed the Dniester. Once he was in the hands of the OGPU, letters written by Tutyunnik or in his name were sent to prominent Ukrainian nationalists abroad saying that their struggle was hopeless and that he had aligned himself irrevocably with the Soviet cause. He was executed six years later.⁵⁰

( pages 31 - 33 )

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46. Brovkin Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War, pp. 334-56. Leggett, The Cheka, pp. 334-8, 464-6.
47. k-9, 87.
48. The first of five foreign intelligence priorities set out in INO instructions of November 28, 1922 was �The exposure on the territory of each state of counter-revolutionary groups who are waging both active and passive activity against the interests of the RSFSR and also against the international revolutionary movement.�. vol. 7, ch. 1.
49. Mitrokhin�s handwritten note (k-9, 87) makes it difficult to determine whether the date was June 16 or 26. Since Zayarny crossed into Romania on June 15 to negotiate details of Tutyunnik�s return with him, it seems highly unlikely, particularly in view of earlier delays, that this could have taken place as early as Jun 16. Because CASE 39 was run by the internal departments of the OGPU, the file was kept in the special archival collections of the Second Chief Directorate, to which Mitrokhin did not have access. He was, however, able to note a classified history of the operation which was based on and quoted, the CASE 39 file.
50 k-9, 87. During the 1930s an illegal residency in Germany, headed by I. M. Kaminsky (codenamed MOREZ and MOND), specialized in operations against Ukrainian émigrés (vol. 7, ch. 9, paras, 1-2; vol. 6, ch. 5, part 1). The Administration for Special Tasks also carried out the assassination of several leading Ukrainian nationalists (Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, ch. 1, 2).

( Notes on pages 575-6 )

The SWORD and the SHIELD :
The MITROKHIN ARCHIVE and the secret history of the KGB
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.
New York : Basic Books, 1999.

Bazhanov and the damnation of Stalin / Boris Bazhanov ; translation and commentary by David W. Doyle. Publisher Athens : Ohio University Press, c1990. Paging xviii, 285 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 cm. Notes Translation of: 1979 French version of Bajanov r�v�le Staline. Includes bibliographical references (p. [273]-275) and index. Vospominaniia byvshego sekretaria Stalina. English

Symon Petliura : zbirnyk studiĭno-naukovo� konferentsi� v Paryzhi (travenʹ 1976) : statti, zamitky, materiialy / redaktor Volodymyr Kosyk. Publisher Miu&nkhen : Ukr. vilʹnyĭ universytet, 1980. Description 237 p. : port. ; 24 cm. Series Seriia; Monohrafi� / Ukra�nsʹkyĭ vilʹnyĭ universytet ;ch. 32 Note Title on added t.p.: Simon Petlura. At head of title: Biblioteka im. Symona Petliury. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.

Stepanenko, Mykola, 1918- Title Symon Petlura : National hero of Ukraine : President of The Ukrainian National Republic / Mykola Stepanenko. Publisher Vashington : Ukraina, 1979. Description 74 p. : ports. ; 21 cm. Note Text in Ukrainian and English. Note Includes bibliographies.

Desroches, Alain. Title Le problème ukrainien et Simon Petlura (Le feu et la cendre) Publisher Paris : Nouvelles Éditions latines, [1962] Description 220 p. 18 cm. Language French

Murdered by Moscow: Petlura, Konovalets, Bandera, three leaders of the Ukrainian national liberation movement, assassinated at the orders of Stalin and Khrushchov. Publisher London : Ukrainian Publishers, 1962. Description 73 p. illus. 23 cm. Language English Subject Petliura, Symon Vasylʹovych, 1879-1926. Konovalets;ʹ, IEvhen, 1891-1938. Bandera, Stepan, 1908-1959.

Petlura, Konovalets, Bandera, asesinados por Mosc� / Organizaci�n de los Nacionalistas Ucranianos en el Extranjero (ZCH OUN) Publisher Madrid : La Organizaci�n, 1962 Description 80 p., [4] p. of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 cm Language Spanish Note Includes bibliographical references Note Restricted: material extremely fragile; please use the microform copy: SSH Micro XF 1898 reel 6, item 244

Comité pour la défense de la memoire de Simon Petlura. Title En notre ame et conscience: la verité sur Simon Petlura. Publisher Paris, [1958] Description 96 p. illus., ports., map. Language French Note Includes bibliography.

Fuller, J. F. C. (John Frederick Charles), 1878-1966. Title(s) A military history of the Western World. Publisher New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1954-56. Paging 3 v. illus., maps. 24 cm. Notes London ed. (Eyre & Spottiswoode) has title: The decisive battles of the Western World and their influence upon history.

Fuller, J. F. C. (John Frederick Charles), 1878-1966. Title(s) The decisive battles of the Western World, and their influence upon history. Publisher London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954-56. Paging 3 v. Illus., maps. 23 cm. Notes Bibliographical footnotes.

Documents sur les pogromes en Ukraine et l'assassinat de Simon Petlura à Paris (1917-1921-1926). Publisher [Paris : Comité commémoratif Simon Petlura; en vents: Librairie du Trident, 1927] Description viii, 291 p. 20 cm. Language French Note "Recueil de documents concernant la lutte du Gouvernement de la République Démocratique Ukrainienne contre les pogromes antijuifs en Ukraine et relatifs à l'assassinat de Simon Petlura à Paris."

Tokarzhevs'kyĭ-Karashevych, Ian, b. 1885. Title Simon Petlura, 22 (10) mai 1879-25 (12) mai 1926 / par Jean de Tokary Tokarzewski Karaszewicz. Publisher Paris : Éditions "France-Orient", [1927?]

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