Youth took an active part in the civil war in Ukraine (1917-1923)
History must be told as it happened. Regardless of political sympathies and personal preferences. This also applies to the battle near Kruty. If only because many of its participants survived and left memories of this event. Professional historians know these documents well. But when quoting them, they prefer to keep silent about the most pressing points, falling into familiar cliches, like: “The Black Wave of the Red Invasion” and “The Day of Glory and Sorrow.”
The theme of the battle near Kruty in creativity. Lvov, 1937
I already wrote once that Kruty became the reason for the creation of a political myth, because among those killed there was the nephew of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Central Rada, Alexander Shulgin, Vladimir. The members of the Central Rada, who returned to Kyiv along with the Germans after the lost January battles for the city, were ashamed of their colleague. They were all alive and well. Everyone, led by Grushevsky and Vinnichenko, fled safely under the protection of German weapons. And only in one of the families, elevated to the then Ukrainian “elite” by the will of revolutionary events, did tragedy happen. Well, how could you not do something “pleasant” for your brother-minister?
But there were other reasons. Together with Vladimir Shulgin, almost three dozen more very young boys - students and high school students - died. A society accustomed to cruelty during the World War was difficult to amaze with anything. The fact that adults die at the front not even in thousands, but in millions, has already become commonplace. Anyone who leafs through newspapers from 1914-1917 will remember many photographs dead officers. But, sorry, the faces of adult mustachioed men in uniform, marked with funeral crosses, were no longer touched. The public's nerves became rough. Society needed something especially sentimental. And this is understandable. People for the most part are selfish and cruel. Only by playing on the most vulnerable points of their psyche can you arouse interest. And what could be more vulnerable than parental instinct?
That is why the song of Kiev resident Alexander Vertinsky “I don’t know why and who needs this...” - about the cadets who died in November 1917 in Moscow battles with the Red Guard, and the poem of the future Soviet classic Pavel Tychyna “They buried their funeral at Askold’s grave” became a symbol of the era. їх” - about thirty “tormenters” who laid down their lives near Kruty.
Old, cunning, passionately loving his only daughter Katya, who did not need to be sent to the army, the Chairman of the Central Rada and a great expert in composing various “stories” Mikhail Grushevsky unmistakably chose the topic for the next folk “fairy tale”. The reburial of the “krutyans” became, excuse the frankness, the first “holiday” of the Ukrainian authorities, behind which to this day the “tops” like to hide their cowardice and unprofessionalism. The cult of official state masochism began with Krut. The “children” in the coffins distracted attention from their sly faces and fidgety political backs. Although the battle near Kruty was by no means a child’s affair, and a few “children” got there on their own initiative, none of the adults in the Central Rada even tried to detain them.
Igor Losky, participant in the battle of Kruty
A participant in the battle near Kruty, Igor Losky, a student of the Kiev Cyril and Methodius Gymnasium in 1918, recalled: “The current Ukrainian order hopelessly missed the moment of national uprising, which had dug up the masses of the Ukrainian war, if it was possible to create an effective Ukrainian Yen army... True, there were a lot of regiments with more or less loud names, but at that time they lost more than a few elders. Those that were no longer in stock were already in great abundance. And only at the last moment, when the catastrophe was imminent, some of the powerful Ukrainian men became embarrassed and began to hastily create new parts, but it was already too late.”
So, among other improvised units, literally three weeks before the battle near Kruty, the Student Kurten of the Sich Riflemen arose. The division was considered voluntary. But in fact, they enrolled in it voluntarily and forcibly. According to Loskiy, the decision to form a kuren was made by the student council of the University of St. Vladimir and the newly formed Ukrainian People's University. It brought together those students who considered themselves Ukrainians. But since there were very few people willing to join the kuren, the “veche” decided that “deserters” would be subject to a boycott and expelled from the “Ukrainian student family.”
Nevertheless, the cunning Ukrainian student did not go well into the kuren. On January 3, 1918, the newspaper “Nova Rada,” edited by Grushevsky’s deputy Sergei Efremov, published a heartbreaking resolution of Galician students: “All comrades who bend to discipline and do not join in the chicken, contribute to the anti-commodity boycott.” In the same issue the following announcement was also published: “Smoked geese. Sold 100 krb. st. Khreshchatyk, 27, Ukrinbank, commodity branch.”
As we can see, Nova Rada successfully combined Ukrainian patriotism with commerce. This combination of incompatibles may have been one of the reasons why only a little more than a hundred people signed up for the student kuren. And even then, only because the Cyril and Methodius Gymnasium helped. Its director agreed to announce an official break in studies for two senior classes - 7th and 8th - “for the hour of re-study at school.” According to Losky, the director only asked “not to bother you before the students of the younger classes enter the smoking room. True, this did not help much, since a number of 6th grade students still entered the smoking camp.”
Kuren was placed in the empty Konstantinovsky Infantry School - its cadets, supporters of the Provisional Government, after the Kyiv battles with the Bolsheviks in the fall of 1917, left almost in full force for the Don. This building in Pechersk has survived to this day. Today this is the Military Institute of Communications.
Although the Kyiv warehouses were bursting with equipment and uniforms, the government dressed the students, apparently anticipating their imminent death like homeless people. Kuren received torn overcoats, soldier's trousers and prisoner's caps instead of a headdress. “You can see for yourself,” writes Losky, “how grotesque the hundred looked. The cross-cut look was like this: light wool boots, soldier's trousers, knitted in the valley with a motuzka (there were no wraps), a gymnasium or student jacket or a civilian camisole and a flared overcoat, in which one was the least rejected ї poly". This warlike appearance was complemented by “old rusty towels... And all at that hour, when a month after that the Bolsheviks, who had gone out of school, found there new warehouses of new clothes, clothes, not even talking about ammunition and armor.”
Officially, after the departure of the Konstantinov cadets to the Don, the school building belonged to the I Ukrainian Military School. Bohdan Khmelnitsky, organized by the Central Rada. For more than a month, its students (in Ukrainian terminology, “junaki”) were at the front near Bakhmach, trying to stop the Bolsheviks. There were about 200 of them, and they sent to Kyiv for help. To rest, the envoys went to their barracks at the Konstantinovsky School and found the Student Kuren there. This was the only “reserve” that the Ukrainian government had. The “Yunaki” encouraged the students to go to Kruty. They happily agreed and hit the road.
Students arrived at Kruty station to defend Kyiv from the Bolsheviks Kruty station is located 120 km from Kyiv in the direction of Bakhmach. Its defense was led by a former career officer of the Russian army, Averkly Goncharenko, who at the time of the famous battle was the commander of the 1st military school kuren. He moved his forces two kilometers ahead of the station. The "juniors" were located to the right of the railway embankment, the students - to the left. The embankment was high. Therefore, the right and left flanks did not see each other. Orders were transmitted verbally along the chain.
The station itself also housed the district defense headquarters along with a train of ammunition. And in front of the echelon, between the flanks of the Ukrainian position, a homemade platform with one gun was cruising, which was driven by an officer of the Bogdanov regiment, centurion Semyon Loschenko, on his own initiative. Almost all participants in the battle remembered his smart blue and yellow cap. Apparently, this detail was especially striking to students wearing prison caps.
An excerpt from the memoirs of a sixth-grader at the Cyril and Methodius Gymnasium, Levk Lukasevich: “Kozhen of us, participants in the battle near Kruty, melodiously and kindly remembers the sergeant-major of the Bogdanovsky regiment in a blue-yellow casket, who, with one more warrior on our armored battle, By heavily shelling the beggars’ gate with buckshot, the Bolsheviks tried to seal the bundles between the two units of our line, both on a high, slick embankment.” But in order to shoot, artilleryman Loschenko had to take one of the students to help him - so that he would have someone to give the shells to.
In total, according to Averkly Goncharenko, the defense of Krut consisted of 18 machine guns, “500 young warriors and 20 elders. Some warriors were tortured by month-long battles, while others were innocent.” As part of these forces, the Student Kuren numbered, as the same Goncharenko writes, 115-130 people.
They were opposed by a Red armored train and several detachments of Red Guards and sailors of 3,000 people, led by a former colonel of the tsarist army, Muravyov. As Goncharenko recalls: “On the night from 26 to 27 September, I moved along a straight line from Muravyov. This order from the form sounded like this: “Prepare to meet the victorious Red Army, prepare lunch. I forgive the mistakes of the cadets, but I will still shoot the officers.” I hope everything is ready by the time.” In his memoirs, Goncharenko describes his skillful leadership of the battle - how wonderfully the machine guns he placed mowed down the Reds.
Ivan Shary, author of the first memoirs about the Kruts
But the author of the first memoirs about the Kruts, published back in 1918, is a student at the University of St. Vladimir Ivan Shary - painted a completely different picture. In the article “Sichoviki under Krutami” he wrote: “The headquarters, as soon as they began to rush out, the shrapnel, in a commotion, moved the office from the station to the carriage and with a full train of ducks versts on the 6th side of Krut, leaving the officer in the battle. and Goncharenka, who stood by the whole hour Tilly and, sadly, with absolutely no idea what I was going to do... Tilly, the headquarters buried wagons with cartridges and drove to the harmat, which finished off our right near Krutami. The positions were told over and over again to give them ammunition, but then they looked around - there were no cars with cartridges. That same officer Goncharenko left the battle and ran with his bare hands for ammunition at the headquarters. Run two miles, go far, and return back. The Cossacks came from the right wing, having noticed the lack of cartridges, and also those who had gone in train to get to another station, began to retreat. Vlasna, the commander and the commander stepped forward, and this order was immediately transferred to the Sichoviki (that is, the Student Kurken of the Sich Riflemen, which lay to the left of the railway embankment. - Author) and the stinks fought until the hour when, from the right wing, the station was occupied by the Bolsheviks ... The battle was lost.”
If we put aside the pathos, then main reason The lost battle was the banal flight of the headquarters train along with the ammunition. Goncharenko also hints at this: “Here the headquarters of centurion Timchenko would have given in even more, so that he now has active fighters”... Alas, he didn’t “give in” - he gave in. Finished the rest bad organization communications of the Ukrainian troops, which did not even allow them to exit the battle normally. Career officer Goncharenko could talk on the station telephone with his opponent Muravyov on another front line. But no one in the Ukrainian detachment, stretched along the front for 3 km and divided by an embankment that did not allow the left flank to see the right, thought to grab field telephones that would ensure instant transmission of orders.
Averkly Goncharenko, former Russian army officer,
commanded the Kyiv students
in the battle of Kruty
For example, according to Goncharenko, three students were appointed to communicate with the student hundred. As a result, the order to withdraw, transmitted orally, was mixed up. The left flank, where the students were, instead of retreating, went on the attack. During it, the commander of the student hundred, Omelchenko, died. This, according to battle participant Igor Losky, only “made the mess even worse.”
Meanwhile, Goncharenko could take care of the phones. Even according to the 1910 staff, each Russian regiment was assigned a communications team, which included 21 telephone operators. Goncharenko served as an officer since 1912, spent the first two years of the World War at the front, and rose to the rank of battalion commander. But he preferred to send orders, as in the time of Napoleon, with the help of ordinary orderlies. And his older comrades, who escaped on the train, alas, were no more prudent than he.
As a result of a disorderly retreat, one student platoon ran out of fear into the Kruty station, already occupied by the Bolsheviks, and was bayoneted. It was in this platoon that the nephew of Foreign Minister Shulgin served. Levko Lukasevich recalled that the machine guns “didn’t work because of defective ammunition.” “Amunition,” according to Ukrainian military terminology, is the same ammunition that the escaped headquarters took away. A few kilometers of retreat seemed like an “eternity” to Lukasiewicz: “Here, on the fifth day of the evening, a collection of wounded people who had come up and were buried, under the orders of the elders, were strong enough to pull... The ribs of our kuren no longer showed the thirsty strength from the military look.”
When the train arrived in Darnitsa, the commanders ordered the students to go home in small groups. The bridge over the Dnieper was controlled by units that sympathized with the Reds. As Lukasevich writes: “All of us who were still in Darnytsia were ordered to cross the Dnieper in small groups, which in 1918 was slightly frozen... Even here, the unfortunate fate took away from us many comrades, who tragically died under the unsung ice Dnieper... Demiivka was buried by Bolshevik henchmen - robot workers from local factories. We found our military documents and all our foreign signs, threw away our armor and personal skins, having washed ourselves first, so that we will remove the demobilized soldiers of the Russian army."
After Krut, Averkly Goncharenko also did not want to fight. In the UPR army in the same 1918, he got a cushy job as treasurer of the Main School Administration under the War Ministry. Then he served as Letichevsky district commandant and staff officer for assignments under the Minister of War of the UPR. Last position Goncharenko in the Ukrainian army is a course officer at the Kamenets-Podolsk military school. No desire to serve in his ranks achievement list does not discover - the main “hero Krut” was always looking for a quiet rear position. Even in the SS division “Galicia”, where he ended up in September 1944, 54-year-old Goncharenko got a job at the headquarters of one of the regiments.
And no one remembers that the First Armored Division of Lieutenant Colonel Cherny, consisting of 4 armored vehicles, sent from Kiev to help Ukrainian cadets and students near Kruty, simply refused to unload from the train, citing the fact that the terrain was not suitable for an attack. According to Lieutenant Colonel of the UPR Army Stepan Samoilenko, “all the service of the autopanzers (I was standing on the platform of the heavy autopanzer “Khortytsia”) was inactively bearing witness to the battle near Kruty.”
A participant in this battle, Igor Losky, concluded his memoirs, published in Lvov in 1929, with the following: “The mention of the tragic tragedy can be deprived of the terrible memento of our Ukrainian inevitability by organizing the moral forces that exist in Ukraine.” This assessment is especially important considering that it was given by one of the survivors of what he himself called a “tragedy.”
History in different parts the globe flows unevenly. For this reason, some states have been experiencing large-scale cataclysms in the form of wars and revolutions for centuries, saturating their historical path with them. Others, far from the world's main battlefields, live without much turmoil, content with provincial tranquility.
But often powers which, by virtue of their recent or artificial origins, are not content with real history, desperately invent and propagate myths designed to create a “new” history, in accordance with political views ruling classes.
AiF.ru about real story wrote about modern Ukraine more than once. Ukraine, which emerged within its current borders thanks to the efforts of those now cursed in Kyiv Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, today is trying to prove that it has completely different historical roots.
Very cool story
According to modern Ukrainian historiography, in 1918, Ukrainian youths who did not have a special military training, stood in the way of the “Bolshevik hordes”, and for five hours heroically held back their advance towards Kyiv.
From 400 to 600 students, high school students and cadets, loyal to the Ukrainian People's Republic, stopped a Bolshevik detachment numbering from 3,000 to 6,000 people. At the same time, the Bolshevik losses at Kruty are estimated at several hundred people.
The “promotion” of this historical plot in Ukraine took place during the revolution and the Civil War, before the establishment of Soviet power, and also after 1991, after the creation of independent Ukraine. The battle near Kruty began to be extolled especially fiercely during the reign of President Viktor Yushchenko, and have not stopped since then.
It is curious that most non-Ukrainian historians, both Russian and foreign, working on the period of the Civil War, never particularly highlighted the battle of Kruty due to its insignificance.
But the Ukrainian comrades are so consistently promoting the newly created myth that they are drawing careful attention to it. And when studying this issue, no stone remains unturned in the picture of the battle currently being propagated by Ukraine.
How “Independence” was born
But first, let's go back to the spring of 1917. When did it happen in Petrograd? February Revolution, taking advantage of the confusion, local authorities and activists in different parts former empire began to try to create their own small state" In some places they were ideologically based on the local “right to self-government,” but the most actively used “ national question“—even in regions that have never previously constituted independent states.
The Central Rada was created in Kyiv ( Central Council), which first took on the functions of a representative body of Ukrainian political, social, cultural and professional organizations, and then the highest legislative body. In June 1917, the Rada proclaimed the national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine within Russia. The provisional government in Petrograd, occupied with other problems, limited itself to only allowing the possibility of creating Ukrainian autonomy.
The October Revolution in Petrograd caused an incredible surge of emotions in the Central Rada, at which its leaders announced the extension of their power to the Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Kholm and partially Tauride, Kursk and Voronezh provinces.
Chairman of the Rada, historian Mikhail Grushevsky, believed that in this moment there is an excellent chance to create an independent Ukraine, while taking control of even those lands that never considered themselves Ukraine.
On November 20, the so-called Small Rada adopted the Third Universal, which proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in a federal connection with the Russian Republic. At the same time, it was especially emphasized that the final formation of borders should occur in accordance with the “will of the people.”
Can't there be too many governments?
All this sounds loud and pretentious if you do not know that the power and influence of the Rada at that time was very limited even in Kyiv. In the current capital of Ukraine, the Russian-speaking population predominated, which looked at all initiatives to create a Ukrainian state with suspicion.
And by January 1918, at least five governments were operating in the territory claimed by the Rada: in addition to the Rada, this was the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic in Kharkov, and there the Central Executive Committee of Soviet Ukraine, the Councils of Deputies of the Odessa and Tauride Republics.
Add here the local atamans, the emerging detachments of the White Guards, and so on - there were many authorities, but little order.
And in Kyiv itself there were Soviets of Workers' Deputies, oriented toward the Bolsheviks.
In addition, the Central Rala was a heterogeneous phenomenon, where radical nationalists were a minority. Mikhail Grushevsky and Vladimir Vinnichenko, the leaders of the Rada, were socialists, and at first the Bolsheviks in Petrograd hoped to find a common language with them.
Mikhail Grushevsky (left) and Vladimir Vinnichenko. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Armed forces: virtual and real
But when it became clear that a compromise was impossible, and the Central Rada entered into an allied relationship with Ataman Kaledin, who had started a rebellion on the Don, the Bolsheviks began creating parallel structures in Kharkov.
During the Civil War, the determining factor that made this or that power real and not fictitious was the presence of armed force. At the beginning of its activities, the Rada believed that the former South-Western Front, numbering three million bayonets, could become the new Ukrainian army.
But after February 1917, large-scale desertion began from the army. Some units managed to be declared Ukrainian, but soldiers left them in the same way as others. By the beginning of 1918, the Rada could theoretically count on 15-20 thousand fighters. However, these formations were also disorganized.
Mikhail Muravyov. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
When, in January 1918, the Bolshevik anti-counter-revolutionary detachment led by Socialist Revolutionary Mikhail Muravyov moved to Kyiv, it turned out that the Rada did not have these thousands either.
At the end of January 1918, an uprising of supporters of Soviet power began at the Arsenal plant in Kyiv. The Rada threw all its available forces into suppressing it - about 3,000 people, including a detachment of sad famous Simon Petlyura.
Bloody battles in Kyiv continued until February 4, and ended with the victory of the Rada, as well as the execution of about 300 participants in the uprising.
But this will happen a few days later, and in last days January, the Rada had absolutely no one to send to meet Muravyov’s detachment.
“The unfortunate youth were taken to the Kruty station and dropped off at their “position”
Former Chairman of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada Dmitry Doroshenko in his memoirs he was extremely frank: “When Bolshevik echelons moved towards Kyiv from Bakhmach and Chernigov, the government could not send a single military unit to fight back. Then they hastily assembled a detachment of high school students and high school students and threw them - literally to the slaughter - towards the well-armed and numerous forces of the Bolsheviks. The unfortunate youth were taken to the Kruty station and dropped off here at their “position”.
Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Tinchenko writes that 420 people took part in the battle near Kruty: 250 officers and cadets of the 1st Ukrainian Military School, 118 students and high school students from the 1st hundred Student Kuren, about 50 local free Cossacks - officers and volunteers.
On January 29, 1918, they took up positions at the railway station near the village of Kruty (130 km northeast of Kyiv, 18 km east of Nizhyn).
Averky Goncharenko. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
Led this detachment Averky Goncharenko, former teacher at the Kyiv school of warrant officers, decided that he would make a brilliant career in the new Ukrainian army.
How did Goncharenko lead the battle of Kruty? A word to the already mentioned Dmitry Doroshenko: “At a time when the young men (most of whom had never held a gun in their hands) fearlessly opposed the advancing Bolshevik detachments, their superiors, a group of officers, remained on the train and organized a drinking party in the carriages; The Bolsheviks easily defeated the youth detachment and drove it to the station. Seeing the danger, those on the train hastened to give the signal for departure, not having a minute left to take those fleeing with them... The path to Kyiv was now completely open.”
Local fight
It is curious that there were many witnesses to the battle from the side of “students and high school students.” Simply because there was no trace of “300 Spartans in Ukrainian”.
And it was, if we deduce the arithmetic average from the stories of witnesses, that’s what. The vanguard of Muravyov's Red Guards reached the positions of Goncharenko's detachment and was met with volleys. The Bolsheviks, who did not expect to find the enemy here, suffered losses. Which ones are unknown. Information about 250-300 dead is not confirmed by anything.
The "Troops of the Rada", however, did not develop their initial success - the command did not issue any orders in this regard. Soon, Muravyov’s main forces, as well as a Bolshevik armored train, approached the scene of events. Goncharenko immediately considered it best to retreat. The soldiers of his squad then left their positions. One student platoon got lost and was captured.
Directly in the battle, the “heroes of Krut” killed, according to various estimates, from 11 to 18 people. Those taken prisoner were subsequently shot, which is not surprising, given the way the representatives of the Rada treated the captured participants in the uprising at the Arsenal plant.
Myth to cover German bayonets
Muravyov's detachment entered Kyiv four days after the suppression of the uprising at Arsenal. By this time the Central Rada had fled to Zhitomir.
This is where its story would have ended if on the same day the “Ukrainian patriots” had not signed a separate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, promising to supply a million tons of grain, 400 million eggs, and up to 50 thousand tons of meat by July 31, 1918 cattle, lard, sugar, hemp, manganese ore in exchange for military assistance against the Bolsheviks.
The Central Rada returned to Kyiv in March 1918, literally at German bayonets.
This, of course, did not in any way resemble an act of national liberation struggle. The historian Grushevsky understood: we immediately need a story about the self-sacrifice of pure and innocent souls in the name of Ukraine. There was nothing at hand except the story about the battle near Kruty, but Grushevsky, as a talented man, was able to inflate this episode to truly epic proportions.
Just a month later, in April 1918, a patrol of German occupation forces would disperse the Rada, putting an end to its history.
The head of the Rada became a Soviet academician, and the commander of the “heroes Krut” served in the SS
Socialist Revolutionary Mikhail Muravyov, appointed commander of the Eastern Front, would raise an anti-Bolshevik rebellion in June 1918, be defeated and killed during an arrest attempt.
The head of the Rada, Mikhail Grushevsky, will first go to Austria, create the Ukrainian Sociological Institute in Vienna, and then repent before the authorities of Soviet Ukraine, be forgiven, return to Kyiv, and return to historical activities. In 1929, Grushevsky was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the early 1930s, he would again be accused of counter-revolutionary activities, but Grushevsky would die of natural causes in 1934 during treatment in Kislovodsk.
But the most interesting thing, perhaps, was fate Averkia Goncharenko. After the battle of Kruty, he no longer appeared on the front line, occupying various clerical positions, first under Hetman Skoropadsky, and then under Petliura.
After the Civil War, he settled in Western Ukraine, which was then part of Poland, worked in cooperation, and surfaced again in 1943, during the formation of the SS Galicia division. Goncharenko, who was considered a seasoned and experienced officer, the “hero of Krut,” received the rank of Hauptsturmführer.
In July 1944, the Galicia division was thrown into battle for the first time in the Battle of Brody. The Ukrainian SS men were completely defeated by Soviet troops. But Goncharenko really turned out to be an experienced man, being among those who escaped death and captivity.
Having survived the war, Goncharenko managed to emigrate to the United States, where he lived happily until 1980, and passed away just six months shy of his 90th birthday.
Ukraine today remembers the battle near Kruty. What happened, how and what it mattered - these are three questions about Kruty, to which not every Ukrainian can answer.
The Reds are coming!
On January 29, 1918, about 400 high school students, students and “free Cossacks” tried to delay the advance of the Bolshevik army of four to six thousand people. In fact, there is no historically accurate description of the battle. Only indirect eyewitness accounts have survived, on the basis of which there is a description of the event.
In January-February 1918, the sailors of the Bolshevik “Eastern Front” of Mikhail Muravyov were rapidly approaching Kyiv from the direction of Bakhmach and Chernigov. On January 19, Muravyov entered Poltava, where he established the power of the revolutionary committee instead of the local council that was disloyal to him. During the occupation of Poltava, the Bolsheviks shot 98 cadets and officers of the local cadet school. Many of those executed were under 18 years of age. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks approached Nezhin, encountering virtually no resistance on their way. There were less than 120 kilometers left to Kyiv...
The UPR authorities did not have the resources to send a single regiment to intercept the enemy. Muravyov knew this very well. The vanguard of his army moved forward openly, without proper reconnaissance of the area. Unexpectedly, the rapid advance encountered heavy machine-gun and rifle fire at the railway station in the village of Kruty, 18 kilometers from Nizhyn. This is how the Bolsheviks were greeted by several hundred local students and high school students of the 1st Ukrainian Military School and the 1st Hundred of the Student Kuren, who were quickly collected and sent to the front line a few days before the battle itself under the command of Averky Goncharenko.
Some Krutovo members held rifles for the first time in their lives, but many already had combat experience gained on the fields of the First World War. A fierce battle ensued, which lasted about five hours. According to various estimates, which were often used for propaganda purposes, from 30 to 300 students and officers died in the battle. The losses of the attackers are not known for certain, but according to indirect evidence, they were significant.
By the way, the commander of the Ukrainian detachment, Captain Goncharenko, died in the USA in 1980. He was 89 years old. For services in the First World War, he was awarded the Order of St. George by the Russian Army.
The commander of the "Reds", a left Socialist Revolutionary, Lieutenant Colonel Muravyov, was killed during his arrest in 1918 in Simbirsk at the age of 37. The Soviet government declared him a "traitor to the people"
The significance of the battle for Ukraine
The importance of this military clash is twofold: firstly, the Krutovoites gave Ukraine a symbol of struggle and patriotism at the level of three hundred Spartans from the Greeks, and secondly, they delayed the capture of Kyiv by the “Reds” for four days. Thanks to this, the Central Rada managed to conclude the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, Germany and Austria-Hungary. Under the terms of the agreement, the four countries recognized Ukrainian statehood, and the Ukrainian People's Republic pledged to supply the allies with grain. From the point of view of history, this agreement was the first real step towards the recognition of Ukraine as independent state one of the most strong powers that time.
IN Soviet times the history of the battle was kept silent. Both in domestic and in foreign literature the battle itself, its prerequisites, and its consequences have become overgrown with numerous volumes of myths, legends, and alternative interpretations. Despite this, Kruty remains a symbol of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for the right to self-determination of their destiny.
In 2006, a memorial was erected at the site of the battle. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the battle, the Mint issued a commemorative coin with a denomination of two hryvnia. Every year January 29 is revered as the day of remembrance of the heroes of Krut at the official level.
And we have learned this lesson very well, and I am here to give you, our children and grandchildren, an absolutely clear guarantee - the army will always be the first priority of the Ukrainian President. No more pacifist illusions! – Poroshenko summed up.
Battle of Kruty |
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Near Krut, Ukraine |
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The offensive of the RSFSR on the territory of the UPR. |
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Tactical victory of the RSFSR, defeat of the UPR |
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Opponents |
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Commanders |
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Averky Goncharenko |
Mikhail Muravyov |
Strengths of the parties |
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UPR Army: |
Red Guard: |
Military losses |
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127-146 people |
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Battle of Kruty(Ukrainian Biy pid Krutami) - armed clash on January 16 (29), 1918 at the railway station near the village of Kruty, 130 kilometers northeast of Kyiv. An armed clash occurred between the RSFSR detachment of Mikhail Muravyov and the UNR detachment, sent to meet the attackers to protect the approaches to Kyiv.
Course of events
There is no reliable description of the event that took place on January 29, 1918. The versions of the parties, as well as the participants in the events themselves, are contradictory. According to historian Valery Soldatenko on the morning of January 16 (29th New Style), a detachment of Baltic sailors under the command of Remnev (according to some sources, up to two thousand) (according to information from participant in the events S.A. Moiseev, these were not sailors but Moscow and Tver Red Guard detachments ) unexpectedly came under fire from cadets and students, supported by artillery fire from one (according to other versions, two guns). After some time, part of the defenders retreated, and the advance of the attackers was stopped by the previously dismantled railway tracks. Due to the onset of a strong snowstorm, part of the retreating troops (according to other information, a reconnaissance detachment of the defenders returned to the station without knowing that it had been abandoned) was captured and shot. There is also information about eight wounded defenders sent to Kharkov, where no one was interested in them, and they disappeared from the hospitals where they were taken for treatment. According to military historian Yaroslav Tinchenko, 420 people from the UNR side took part in the battle: 250 officers and cadets of the 1st Ukrainian Military School, 118 students and gymnasium students from the 1st hundred Student Kuren, about 50 local free Cossacks - officers and volunteers. On January 29, 1918, only a few people died; all the rest, carrying away the bodies of their comrades, retreated to the trains and left for Kyiv. And only one platoon out of a hundred students, consisting of 34 people, was captured due to its own oversight. Six of them were wounded, one turned out to be the son of a driver mobilized by the attackers. Everyone was put on a train and sent to Kharkov (they would later be released from captivity). The 27 remaining at the station were shot.
Losses of the parties
As for the number of deaths on the defending side, in addition to Grushevsky’s mythical “three hundred Spartans,” different figures were given. Thus, Doroshenko gives a name list of the dead 11 students, although he says that several of them died earlier, in addition, 27 prisoners were shot - as revenge for the death of 300 Red Army soldiers. In 1958, in Munich and New York, the publishing house “Ways of Youth” published the results of S. Zbarazhsky’s 40-year study “Cool. The 40th anniversary of the great rank was 29 June 1918 - 29 September 1956.” The list names 18 people. who are buried in Kyiv at Askold’s grave. Although the retreating UPR troops brought 27 killed in that battle to Kyiv.
The losses of the attackers have varied estimates, but researchers have not found any documentary sources confirming any of the versions.
Contemporary assessments
This is how he evaluates these events Political Party"Rus" (Ukraine):
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Positions regarding the celebration of the so-called “Battle near Kruty Station” on January 29. This holiday, like many other “stealing” holidays, does not carry a positive and unifying idea for the population of Ukraine. Emphasis is placed on the sacrificial death of young guys, but nothing is said about the fact that the officers, who were supposed to fight to the death along with the soldiers, cowardly ran away from the battlefield. We mourn the dead, but remember those who thoughtlessly, for the sake of their political interests threw unprepared young men to the bayonets and bullets of the Bolsheviks, many times superior to them. The episode with the Krutys is used by Ukrainian national patriots to incite anti-Russian hysteria. Although the battle itself took place between the troops of the RSFSR and the UPR, and the Bolsheviks did not represent the interests of Russia at that time. At that time, on the territory of the Russian Empire there was Civil War, there were several governments claiming supreme power. The UPR also did not represent the interests of the Ukrainian population, since it was not popularly elected. To talk about the ethnic nature of the conflict in this case is criminal. The battle near Kruty is a local conflict between two political entities and an example of the meanness of the Ukrainian authorities of that time, who turned their tactical military mistake into the anti-Russian myth. |
This is how he describes these events former chairman General Secretariat of the Central Rada of the UPR Dmitry Doroshenko:
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“When Bolshevik echelons moved towards Kyiv from Bakhmach and Chernigov, the government could not send a single military unit to fight back. Then they hastily assembled a detachment of high school students and high school students and threw them - literally to the slaughter - towards the well-armed and numerous forces of the Bolsheviks. The unfortunate youth was taken to the Kruty station and dropped off here at the “position”. While the young men (most of whom had never held a gun in their hands) fearlessly opposed the advancing Bolshevik detachments, their superiors, a group of officers, remained on the train and organized a drinking party in the carriages; The Bolsheviks easily defeated the youth detachment and drove it to the station. Seeing the danger, those on the train hastened to give the signal for departure, not having a minute left to take those fleeing with them... The path to Kyiv was now completely open” (Doroshenko, “War and Revolution in Ukraine”). |
Modern assessment
According to the doctor historical sciences Valery Soldatenko - assessing the events taking place in Ukraine since 2005.
The battle near Kruty took place on January 29, 1918. This is a memorable, but tragic event for Ukraine - a 5-hour battle between a four-thousand-strong unit of the Russian Red Guard under the leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionary Mikhail Muravyov and a detachment of Kiev cadets and Cossacks of the Free Cossacks, which in total numbered from 400 to 800 soldiers.
At Askold's grave
They praised them -
Thirty tormented Ukrainians.
Nice, young...
These are words from Pavel Tychina's poem "In Memory of Thirty". They are dedicated to the young Ukrainians who died in the battle near Kruty on January 29, 1918. A fight that has become legendary. And, despite the defeat, he became a prototype of courage and bravery for the Ukrainian people.
Background
December 1917. The Council of People's Commissariats of Russia issues an ultimatum to the Ukrainian authorities - to legalize Bolshevik military units in Ukraine and stop their disarmament. Refusal will be considered a declaration of war. The Ukrainian Central Rada did not respond to these demands in any way, but proclaimed the IV Universal, which proclaimed the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic from Russia. On January 22, 1918, the country found itself in a virtual state of war with Bolshevik Russia.
At that time, from Kharkov, a twenty-thousand-strong Bolshevik detachment under the command of Antonov-Ovseenko set off to seize lands in eastern Ukraine. Mikhail Muravyov’s detachment was advancing from Russia - about 6 thousand people, mainly Moscow and Petrograd Red Guards and sailors. It is with them that the Ukrainian troops will have to fight in battle near Kruty.
After the Bolsheviks captured the Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav and Poltava provinces, they had to go to Kyiv. And they left. By rail.
Progress of the battle
On January 26, a message came from the commander of this detachment, Averky Goncharenko, from near Bakhmach, that help was immediately needed against the Bolshevik detachments that were attacking. And already on January 27, reinforcements arrived: the first hundred of the new Student Kuren.
In general, the Student Kuren consisted of junior students from the Kyiv University of St. Vladimir and the Ukrainian People's University, which were joined by senior students of the Ukrainian gymnasium named after the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood of Kyiv. In this way, it was possible to form two hundred (but only the first hundred took part in the battle). They were headed by a student of the Ukrainian People's University - foreman (centurion) Andrey Omelchenko.
In general, there were 600 students near Kruty alone (4 hundred at a rate of 150 people per hundred). In addition to them, they took part in the battle artillery battery centurion Loschenko, a group of officers from the previously formed headquarters of the Free Cossacks - according to the most conservative estimates, there were at least 800 participants in the battle on the Ukrainian side. The students, according to the testimony of the battle commander Averky Goncharenko, were sent as an auxiliary unit.
Battle of Kruty – drawing by Yuri Zhuravl
Not daring to meet enemies in Bakhmach, Ukrainian troops decided to stop the Bolsheviks near the Kruty railway station. The positions, located a few hundred meters from the station itself, were well prepared for battle. On the right flank they had an artificial obstacle - an embankment of a railway track, on the left - a hundred student units as part of the detachment already there began to dig trenches and build earthen fortifications.
The next morning, January 29, at about 9 am, the Bolshevik offensive began. Losing killed and wounded, the Bolsheviks stubbornly moved forward. Their cannon battery, which had not fired successfully until now, concentrated fire on the Ukrainian positions. The battle lasted more than 5 hours, the Ukrainians repelled several attacks, during which they also suffered losses.
The course of the battle could have turned out in favor of the Ukrainians if at that time a larger detachment under the command of Symon Petlyura, who was near the Bobryk station, had come to the rescue. However, they had to go to Kyiv and suppress the armed uprising at the Arsenal plant. This decision was made by Petlyura, because, in his opinion, it was there that the most great danger(To a certain extent, this decision justified itself).
Meanwhile, the students and cadets were running out of ammunition, as well as shells for the cannon. Bolshevik detachments began to bypass the positions of the defenders from the left flank - there was a danger of encirclement and the cadets and students began to retreat in the direction of Kyiv. Most managed to escape on the train that was waiting for them.
Map of the battle near Kruty
27 students and high school students who guarded the station were captured. Retreating at dusk, the students lost their bearings and went straight to the Kruty station, already occupied by the Red Guards. A little later, two more Ukrainian warrant officers fell into Soviet hands, covering the withdrawal of their units.
Red commander Yegor Popov, enraged by significant losses from the side Soviet troops(about 300 people), ordered the liquidation of prisoners. According to eyewitnesses, 27 students were first bullied and then shot. Therefore, these 29 heroes were shot or tortured. After the execution local residents For some time it was forbidden to bury the bodies of the dead. They were subsequently buried at Askold's grave in Kyiv.
In addition to those who were captured by the Bolsheviks, another 10-12 young men died on the battlefield, whose bodies were taken to Kyiv. In particular, the 1st hundred of the auxiliary student kuren of the Sich Riflemen, which at the beginning of the battle included 116 volunteers, returned to Kyiv with about 80 people. Almost half a hundred were gymnasium students of the 2nd Ukrainian Cyril and Methodius Gymnasium. Only eight of them died near Kruty. The rest subsequently took part in battles with the Bolsheviks on the streets of Kyiv, and then in the retreat of Ukrainian troops to Polesie.
The exact number of deaths is still not known - Goncharenko in his memoirs talks about 250 fighters, modern estimates– 70-100 people. At least 300 Bolsheviks were killed.
Most of the young men who returned to Kyiv from Krut remained in their homeland and subsequently settled in Bolshevik Kyiv. Only a few of them decided not to put up with the “red” domination and shared the fate of the UPR Army.
The fate of the young men (junkers) of the 1st Ukrainian Military School named after Bogdan Khmelnitsky was quite interesting. Almost all of them remained in service in the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Only the senior year of the school was promoted to the rank of cornet in the spring of 1918, and junior year boys were forced to wait until 1921. All of them, of course, formally were already foremen of the Ukrainian troops, but the actual confirmation of their official position did not have.
Consequences of the battle
Despite the defeat in the battles near Kruty, the fighters completed the task assigned to them - they delayed the advance of Muravyov’s troops towards Kyiv. The retreat of the Krutyans was not simply abandonment of the battlefield: while retreating, the Krutyans destroyed, or at least seriously damaged, part of the railway track, thereby delaying the Bolshevik offensive. The Bolsheviks were forced to spend time repairing the track, which, thanks to the efforts of the Student Kuren, became temporarily unusable. So, the Bolshevik armored trains, which at that time were their main weapon when it came to control over railway communications, turned into a burden.
With his sabotage on railway track The Krutyans detained the Bolshevik troops for several days - the Bolsheviks were able to take Kyiv only on February 5, 1918. During this time, central authorities, documents, and valuables were evacuated from Kyiv, an organized retreat of troops took place - that is, everything possible was done to quickly regain lost positions. The retreat itself was not too deep - the headquarters of the UPR troops was located in the village. Gnatovka near Kyiv. The most important thing is that this delay made it possible to complete negotiations with the Kaiser’s Germany on the signing of a peace treaty, which meant international recognition of the Ukrainian state and made the Bolsheviks occupiers of the territory of a sovereign state.
Honoring memory
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!" (It is sweet and good to die for the Motherland). It is from this statement on Latin Mikhail Grushevsky began his speech at the funeral of the participants in the battle of Krutami in Kyiv at Askold’s grave on March 19, 1918. Then 18 fighters of the Student Kuren who died near Kruty were brought to Kyiv, whom they managed to find on the battlefield and identify. Their bodies were met at the station by a procession and escorted to the ceremonial burial site.
During the transport of the bodies, the Russian symbols from this house were removed from the Central Rada. Grushevsky stated this, turning the event into a kind of ritual.
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