In the absence of glorious victories and achievements in Ukrainian mythology, myths are also created on the basis of a deceitful perversion of insignificant facts and events that have taken place that have no historical or military significance. Such a myth is the "epic battle of Kruty". In Ukraine, there is even a public holiday: the Day of Remembrance of the Heroes of Krut.
The myth is based on a shootout in January 1918 at the little-known Kruty station in the Chernihiv region between a detachment of Sich riflemen, as if defending the Ukrainian People's Republic of Hrushevsky, and the Red Guards troops advancing from Kharkov, sent by the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
According to the myth, a titanic battle of Kiev students with a huge Moscow-Bolshevik horde took place at the Kruty station, in which the "young patriots" fiercely resisted, responding to their "frontal attacks" with bayonet counterattacks, inflicted incredible losses on the Bolsheviks and all perished under the onslaught of superior forces.
The figures of the opposing sides, which are cited by the mythmakers, are interesting. According to their version, there were three hundred students, and tens of thousands opposed them, some argue that hundreds of thousands, bloodthirsty and vicious Muscovites! Why three hundred?
It's very simple: there was a battle of three hundred Spartans near Thermopylae against a grandiose army of Persians, why shouldn't the Ukropatriots win the same grandiose victory?
The creators of this myth are somehow unaware that the three hundred Spartans of Tsar Leonidas were holding back a huge army of the Persians in a narrow gorge, and the "Battle of Kruty" took place in an open field, and with such a balance of forces it is simply fantastic.
What really happened? The eighteenth year, the beginning of the civil war between the newly formed republics in Ukraine. The self-styled Ukrainian People's Republic is not recognized by the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and a war for power begins between them throughout Ukraine. If the USR with the capital in Kharkov was proclaimed by the elected delegates from the workers 'and soldiers' deputies, then the UPR was created by immigrants from Galicia, headed by the Austrian subject Hrushevsky, with the support of the elected deputies who are not clear by whom.
The Central Rada had no influence on the soldier masses, who absolutely did not give a damn about this self-styled government. Even the crowd of deserters who did not want to return to the front and remained in Kiev, declaring themselves Ukrainian regiments, quietly disappeared as soon as it became known about the approach of the Bolsheviks.
To defend itself, the self-styled Rada was able to gather only a few detachments, mainly from Galician youth. Towards the advancing Bolsheviks were sent the kuren of the First Youth Military School under the command of the centurion Goncharenko, about 600 cadets with 18 machine guns, and the Student kuren of the Sich riflemen, about 120 students and gymnasium students.
Modern myth-makers claim that both detachments consisted of students and high school students who had no combat training. Another lie. Among the junkers of the military school and the kuren of the Sich riflemen, young Galicians prevailed - former front-line soldiers of the Austro-Vegerian army, prisoners of war and their other compatriots, who flooded Kiev in 1917 after the collapse of the front, with combat experience.
On the personal instructions of Grushevsky, they were enrolled in a military school and to study at Kiev University. He knew very well who he could rely on in case of anything. In one hundred Sich Riflemen there was one company, which really consisted mainly of untrained students and high school students, among them also natives of Galicia predominated. The detachment was commanded by the centurion Goncharenko, who later became in 1944 one of the first officers of the SS Galicia division. These are the UNR's defenders.
It was not evil Muscovites who opposed the Galicians near Kruty, but one of the units of the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, sent to expel the Central Rada to Austrian Galicia, from where most of its leadership came and where it was subsequently expelled. A detachment from Kharkov with one armored train and about 3,600 people marched to Kiev, formed in the eastern regions from the Little Russian Red Guards and Baltic sailors, Primakov's Cossacks and sympathizers who were growing along the way like a snowball
Goncharenko's detachment was sent to Bakhmach, but since its population was determined to support the Bolsheviks, he decided to take up positions near the Kruty railway station. Realizing that they would not be able to stop the enemy, Goncharenko ordered to dismantle the tracks, since the Bolshevik detachments "captured Ukraine", driving around on trains.
So the battle near Kruty, about which so many fables and outright nonsense are now written, took place between the Galician mercenaries of the Central Rada and the troops of the Little Russian government. There was no great battle. The cadets organized an ambush on both sides of the embankment, as a result of which a detachment of Red Guards came under machine-gun fire. A skirmish began, by evening the Red Guards organized a detour on the flanks and captured the station, forcing the "heroes of Krut" to run to the train on which they arrived.
At this time, their commanders made a drink in the carriages and, seeing the danger, gave the signal to leave, leaving the fleeing warriors to the mercy of fate. During the stampede, they forgot about the same company of students, numbering about 35 people. The commander of the student hundred was wounded at the very beginning of the battle, there was no one to lead the retreat, and the company, retreating at dusk, got lost, went straight to the station, already taken by the Red Guards, and was captured.
The wounded were immediately sent to a hospital in Kharkov. The remaining 28 people were shot the next morning on the orders of Muravyov, who commanded the offensive. He had already reported on the "defeat" of the troops of the Central Rada, led by Petliura himself, and three dozen captured youths could in no way serve as proof of his convincing victory.
That was the end of it, it should only be added that the Galician cadets who fled from the battlefield became the main striking force a few days later when they suppressed the workers' uprising at the Arsenal, having shot more than one and a half thousand workers who rebelled against the Central Rada. Naturally, no Kruty saved the Central Rada, she fled from Kiev and returned a month later on German occupation bayonets.
Perhaps, no one would have known about this purely ordinary event of the civil war, but among the dead was the brother of the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UPR Alexander Shulgin, and the government of the UPR simply needed a feat and heroes to justify its shameful flight from Kiev, the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace and the German occupation of Ukraine.
Grushevsky decided to make an epochal battle from the defeat at Kruty and turn the executed students into "heroes". To this end, he arranged a ceremonial reburial of the dead in March. Since Goncharenko, in his report on the great battle, wrote about 280 dead, 200 coffins were prepared, but … only 27 bodies were found near Kruty, and 18 of them were buried with fanfare in Askold's grave. The rest simply fled, and Goncharenko recorded them as killed.
Among those shot, almost half were representatives of Galicia and the cult of heroes Krut was born there. Since the civil war, they have not missed a case of exaltation of the pseudo-battle at Kruty. In 1944, the bandit UPA army even had the Kruty unit and a tradition was established to celebrate this day as a national holiday. And after the Orange Sabbath, Yushchenko made everyone in Ukraine consider it a public holiday.
This is how, instead of honoring the true heroes, Galician myths are imposed on Ukraine, aiming to erase the memory of the heroic past. Instead of honoring the heroes of the Arsenal, who rebelled against the puppet government, everyone is forced to honor the Galician mercenaries. They are etching away the memory of 81 young heroes from Krasnodon who laid down their heads in the fight against the Nazis. Monuments about the Komsomol heroes are also being destroyed.
The Kruty are not drawn to Thermopylae, no matter how hard the followers of Hrushevsky try to drive into the heads of the younger generation another myth about the heroic past of the “fighters” for Ukrainianity. The people had and still have their heroes. The myth of the "epochal battle of Kruty" is one of the fragments of lies and delirium that are hypocritically trying to impose on the whole society as a role model in the struggle for the interests of the nonexistent "Ukrainian nation".
