The people have a fairly widespread use of the term "green". During the Civil War, this was the name of the rebel detachments that fought against both the "whites" and the "red". Father Makhno himself is often considered to be "green", although the phenomenon of Nestor Ivanovich is of a slightly different nature. The Makhnovist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army nevertheless had a distinct anarchist ideology, relied on the support of broad strata of the peasant population of Yekaterinoslavshchyna, besides, Makhno himself was not just a field commander, but a revolutionary anarchist with pre-revolutionary experience. Therefore, the Makhnovists can rather be called “black”, according to the color of the anarchist banner, if we are to write about the opposing sides of the Civil, using analogies with the color scheme.
The "greens" are separate detachments of atamans and "bateks" who do not obey anyone, as they would say now - field commanders who do not have a clear ideology and any real chances to assert their power within even a single territory. Many detachments of the "green" were engaged in outright criminality, in fact, merging with the criminal world, others - where the leaders were more or less educated people with their own idea of the political structure of society - still tried to follow a certain political course, albeit extremely blurred in ideological terms …
In this article, we will tell you about several such detachments that operated on the territory of Little Russia - modern Ukraine. Moreover, in the light of the events currently taking place in the Donetsk and Luhansk lands, the topic of the Civil War, unfortunately, has become urgent again.
First of all, it should be noted that, as in our days, there was no unity in the ranks of the Ukrainian nationalists at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky actually personified the interests of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Simon Petliura strove for a more independent policy, focusing on the creation of an "independent" Ukrainian state and the inclusion of all lands in it, including even the Don and Kuban.
In the struggle for "independence", which had to be waged both with the whites - supporters of the preservation of the Russian Empire, and with the Reds - supporters, again, of including the Little Russian lands, only this time in the communist empire, Petliura relied not only on the units of the armed forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic that he had formed, but also on the numerous detachments of "bateks" and chieftains, operating in fact throughout the territory of the then Little Russia. At the same time, they turned a blind eye to the openly criminal inclinations of many "field commanders" who preferred to plunder and terrorize civilians rather than fight a serious organized enemy in the face of the regular army, be it the "white" Volunteer Army or the "red" Red Army.
"Green" - Terpilo
One of the largest detachments was formed by a man known by the romantic nickname "Ataman Zeleny". In fact, he bore a much more prosaic and even dissonant by modern standards surname Terpilo. Daniil Ilyich Terpilo. At the time of the February Revolution of 1917, which was followed by the collapse of the Russian Empire and the parade of sovereignties, including in Little Russia, Daniil Ilyich was thirty-one years old. But, despite his youth, he had a fairly large life experience behind him - this is revolutionary activity in the ranks of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries during the years of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907, with the subsequent five-year exile, and service in the imperial army in the First World War with obtaining the rank of ensign and the production of the St. George Knights.
From left to right: centurion D. Lyubimenko, chieftain Zeleny, artilleryman V. Duzhanov (photo
Ataman Zeleny was born in Kiev in Tripoli, returning where after demobilization from the imperial army, he began to create there an organization of Ukrainian socialists of a nationalist persuasion. Despite the leftist phraseology, Zeleny-Terpilo supported the independent Ukrainian authorities, including the Kiev Central Rada. Using a certain authority among the peasant population of the Kiev region, ataman Zeleny managed to form a rather impressive rebel detachment.
After the final transition to the side of the Directory of the Ukrainian People's Republic, Zeleny's detachment received the name of the Dnieper Insurgent Division. The number of this unit reached three thousand fighters. Taking the side of the Petliurites, Zeleny overthrew the power of Skoropadsky's supporters in Tripoli and disarmed the hetman's warta (guards). Zeleny's division was included in the corps commanded by Evgen Konovalets. The future founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Konovalets - at that time a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer from the Lviv region - was one of the most prominent military leaders of the Petliura region. It was the Siege Corps of Konovalets that took Kiev on December 14, 1918, overthrowing Hetman Skoropadsky and establishing the authority of the UNR Directory.
However, Zeleny's ideas about the political future of Ukraine ran counter to Petliura's doctrine of independence. Zeleny held a more leftist conviction and did not object to the participation of representatives of the Bolsheviks and other leftist organizations in the Ukrainian government. The Petliurists could not agree to this, and Zeleny began to seek an alliance with the Bolsheviks proper. However, the Reds, represented by the commander of the Red Army forces in Ukraine, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, did not agree with Green's proposed participation of his division as a fully autonomous unit within the Red Army.
However, since by that time there were already two rebel divisions in the First Insurgent Kosh of Green, the chieftain believed in his own potential and the ability to build a nationalist Ukrainian state without an alliance with any other external forces. The first insurgent kosh of Zeleny went on to active hostilities against the Red Army, acting in conjunction with another ataman, Grigoriev. The Greens even managed to free Tripolye from the Reds.
On July 15, 1919, in Pereyaslavl, occupied by the "greens", the chieftain officially read out the Manifesto on the denunciation of the Treaty of Pereyaslavl in 1654. Thus, the thirty-three-year-old field commander Terpilo canceled the decision of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky to reunite with Russia. In September 1919, Zeleny, who had abandoned his former leftist views, again recognized the supremacy of Petliura and, by order of the Directory, threw his insurgent detachments against Denikin's forces. However, the ataman Zeleny failed to resist them for a long time. A fragment of the Denikin shell ended the stormy but short life of the field commander.
The modern Ukrainian historian Kost Bondarenko, opposing Zeleny to Nestor Makhno, emphasizes that if the latter was a "bearer of the steppe spirit," Zeleny concentrated in himself the Central Ukrainian peasant worldview. However, it was Makhno who, despite the lack of education, had a worldview that allowed him to rise above the small-town complexes, everyday nationalism and anti-Semitism, to express loyalty to some more global idea of reorganizing society. Ataman Zeleny never went beyond the framework of local nationalism, which is why he was unable to create either an army comparable to the Makhnovist one, or his own system of social organization. And if Makhno became a figure, if not a global, then at least a national one, Zeleny and other atamans like him, which we will discuss below, remained regional field commanders.
Strukovshchina
Another no less significant than Zeleny, a figure of the Civil War in Little Russia on the part of the "rebels" was the ataman Ilya Struk. This figure is even more negative than Green, who had any political convictions. Ilya (Ilko) Struk for the period of the February Revolution was even younger than Zeleny - he was only 21 years old, behind him - service in the Baltic Fleet, transfer to the ground forces and graduation from the school of ensigns, "four Georgias". Struk loved and knew how to fight, but, alas, he did not learn to think constructively. A detachment of three thousand, formed by Struok from Little Russian peasants, operated in the Northern Kiev region.
Like Zeleny, Struk tried to flirt with the Bolsheviks, seeing them as a serious force and hoping to make a military career if the Red Army won. However, it was the very lack of internal discipline and the ability to think constructively, two weeks after Struk's troops joined the Red Army in February 1919, that forced him to turn his weapon against his recent allies. In particular, Struk did not hide his anti-Semitism and organized bloody Jewish pogroms in the townships of the Northern Kiev region.
Ataman Struk was not devoid of a certain conceit and called his unit neither more nor less - the First Rebel Army. The provision of the detachment with food, money, clothing was carried out at the expense of constant robberies of the civilian population and a banal racketeering of Jewish merchants and shopkeepers of the Northern Kiev region. Struk's ambitions led him to the storming of Kiev on April 9, 1919. On this day, the current Ukrainian capital, defended by the Bolsheviks, withstood blows from three sides - the Petliurists, Zeleny's rebels and Struk's people were pressing on the city. However, the latter showed themselves in all their "glory" - as notorious pogromists and marauders, but as worthless warriors. The Strukovtsy succeeded in plundering the Kiev outskirts, but the attack of the chieftain on the city was repulsed by the small and weak in terms of training and arming Red Army detachments - a guard company and party activists.
However, in September 1919, when Kiev was taken by the Denikinites, Struk's detachments nevertheless managed to break into the city, where they again marked themselves with pogroms and looting, killing several dozen civilians. In the same period, Struk's First Rebel Army officially became part of the A. I. Denikin. Thus, Struk turned out to be a de facto traitor to his own idea of "independence" - after all, the Denikinites did not want to hear about any Ukraine. In October 1919, when Denikin and the Red Army were mutually annihilating each other in Kiev, Struk, wasting no time, again burst into residential areas on the outskirts of the city and repeated the pogroms and robberies of the previous month. Nevertheless, the Denikin command, which appreciated the very fact that one of the Ukrainian field commanders went over to their side, did not object strongly to the pogrom activities of the Strukovites. The chieftain was promoted to colonel, which naturally flattered the pride of the 23-year-old "field commander", and in fact - the chieftain of the bandit gang.
After Kiev was finally liberated by the Red Army in December 1919, Struk's detachments, together with Denikin's troops, retreated to Odessa. However, Struk could not show his heroism in the defense of Odessa and after the onslaught of the "Reds" retreated, through the territory of Romania to Ternopil and further to his native Kiev region. At the beginning of 1920, we see Struk already in the ranks of the allies of the Polish army, advancing on Kiev occupied by the Bolsheviks.
From 1920 to 1922 detachments of the Strukovites, which had significantly decreased in number after the defeat by the Bolsheviks, still continued to operate in Polesie, terrorizing the local population and being engaged mainly in the murder and robbery of Jews. By the fall of 1922, Struk's detachment did not exceed the number of 30-50 people, that is, it turned into an ordinary gang. It ceased to exist after Ilya Struk himself miraculously moved to Poland. By the way, the further fate of the chieftain was quite happy. Unlike other leading figures of the Civil War in Ukraine, Struk lived safely to old age and died in 1969 in Czechoslovakia, half a century after the Civil War.
Even against the background of other rebel chieftains during the Civil War in Ukraine, Ilya Struk looks ominous. In fact, he was not so much a military leader as a pogromist and a bandit, although one cannot take away from him his well-known personal courage and adventurousness. It is also of great interest that Struk left behind memories of his role in the Ukrainian confrontation, which, despite all the exaggerations and the desire for self-justification, are of historical interest, if only because other atamans of Struk's level did not leave such memories (if, of course, not to "lower" Nestor Ivanovich Makhno to Struk or Zeleny - a man of a completely different order).
Pillager Grigoriev
Matvey Grigoriev, like Struk, was not distinguished by political scrupulousness or excessive morality. Famous for his incredible cruelty during the pogroms and robberies he carried out, Grigoriev was personally shot by Nestor Makhno - probably the only ataman who is irreconcilable to violence against civilians and to manifestations of nationalism. Initially, Grigoriev's name was Nikifor Aleksandrovich, but in Ukrainian historical literature he also gained fame by his second name - his nickname - Matvey.
A native of the Kherson region, Grigoriev was born in 1885 (according to other sources - in 1878) and received his secondary medical education at a paramedic school. Unlike other atamans, Grigoriev visited two wars at once - the Russian-Japanese, in which he rose to the rank of an ordinary ensign, and the First World War. After the Russo-Japanese War, Grigoriev graduated from the infantry school in Chuguev, received the rank of ensign and served for some time in an infantry regiment stationed in Odessa. Grigoriev met the First World War as a mobilized officer of the 58th Infantry Regiment, rose to the rank of captain and at the time of the February Revolution of 1917 was appointed head of the training team of the 35th reserve regiment stationed in Feodosia.
Grigoriev managed to be on the side of Hetman Skoropadsky, and in the ranks of the Petliurites, and in the Red Army. The first time after the proclamation of the power of Hetman Skoropadsky, Grigoriev remained loyal to the Ukrainian State and served as a company commander of an infantry regiment, but then moved to the Yelisavetgrad region, where he began a partisan war against the Hetman power. By the end of 1918, under the command of Grigoriev, there were about six thousand people, united in the Kherson division of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Grigoriev's "megalomania" manifested itself in the demand for the post of Minister of War from the leadership of the UNR Directory, but Petliura did the most he could - conferring the rank of colonel on Grigoriev. The offended chieftain did not fail to go over to the side of the advancing Red Army.
Armored train of Ataman Grigoriev. 1919
As part of the Red Army, Grigoriev's unit, which received the name of the 1st Zadneprovskaya brigade, turned out to be part of the 1st Zadneprovskaya division of the same name, commanded by the legendary sailor Pavel Dybenko, who at that time ideologically “floated” between left-wing radical Bolshevism and anarchism. After the capture of Odessa, it was Grigoriev who was appointed its military commandant and this, in many respects, led to numerous arbitrary expropriations and banal robberies committed by his subordinates not only in relation to food and other reserves of the city, but also in relation to ordinary citizens. Grigoriev's brigade was renamed the 6th Ukrainian Rifle Division and was preparing to be sent to the Romanian front, but the ataman-divisional commander refused to follow the orders of the Bolshevik leadership and took his units to rest near Elisavetgrad.
The dissatisfaction of the Bolsheviks with Grigoriev and Grigoriev with the Bolsheviks grew in parallel and resulted in an anti-Bolshevik uprising that began on May 8, 1919 and was called the Grigoriev rebellion. Returning to nationalist positions, Grigoriev called on the Little Russian population to form "Soviets without Communists". The Chekists sent by the command of the Red Army were destroyed by the Grigorievites. The ataman also stopped hiding his pogrom attitude. It is known that Grigoriev was not only an anti-Semite, out of his hatred of Jews giving odds to almost all other "father-atamans", but also a notorious Russophobe who hated the Russians who lived in the cities of Little Russia and adhered to the conviction of the need for the physical destruction of Russians on Little Russian soil …
Alexandria, Elisavetgrad, Kremenchug, Uman, Cherkassy - all these cities and smaller towns and suburbs - a wave of bloody pogroms swept through, the victims of which were not only Jews, but also Russians. The number of civilians killed as a result of the Grigoriev pogroms reaches several thousand people. In Cherkassk alone, three thousand Jews and several hundred Russians were killed. Russians, called "Muscovites" by the Grigorievites, were also viewed as the most important targets of pogroms and massacres.
However, during the second half of May 1919, the Bolsheviks managed to gain the upper hand over the Grigorievites and significantly reduce the number of formations under his control. The ataman decided to unite with the anarchist "dad" Nestor Makhno, which ultimately cost him his life. For the anarchist and internationalist Makhno, any manifestations of Grigoriev's pogrom nationalism were unacceptable. Ultimately, Makhno, dissatisfied with the Ukrainian nationalism promoted by Grigoriev, established surveillance over the ataman and revealed that the latter was secretly negotiating with the Denikinites. This was the last straw. On July 27, 1919, in the premises of the village council in the village of Sentovo, Makhno and his assistants attacked Grigoriev. Adjutant Makhno Chubenko personally shot Grigoriev, and Makhno shot his bodyguard. This is how another Ukrainian chieftain ended his life, who brought a lot of grief and suffering to peaceful people.
"Atamanschina" as a destruct
Of course, Zeleny, Struk and Grigoriev were not limited to "Batkivshchyna" in Little Russia and Novorossiysk during the Civil War. The territory of modern Ukraine was torn apart by rebel armies, divisions, detachments and simply gangs of dozens or even hundreds of large and small field commanders. Examples of the life path of the three considered atamans allow us to identify a number of common features in their behavior. Firstly, it is political lack of principle, which allowed them to block with anyone and against anyone, guided by momentary profit or simply self-interest. Secondly, this is the absence of a coherent ideology, populism based on the exploitation of the nationalist prejudices of the "gray mass". Thirdly, it is a tendency towards violence and cruelty, which makes it easy to cross the line separating rebels and just bandits.
Anarchist rebels
At the same time, it is impossible not to recognize such features of "atamanism" as the personal courage of its leaders, without which they probably would not have been able to lead their own detachments; some support from the peasantry, whose interests really expressed the slogans of land distribution without redemption or abolition of the surplus appropriation; the effectiveness of the organization of partisan detachments, many of which operated for three to five years, maintaining mobility and eluding attacks from an enemy superior in strength and organization.
The study of the history of the Civil War in Ukraine helps to realize how deconstructive by its nature the small-town nationalism of the “lords-atamans” is. Formed primarily as an opposition to everything Russian, that is, on the basis of a “negative identity”, the artificial construct of Ukrainian nationalism in a critical situation inevitably transforms into “Batkovshchina”, into civil strife between “Panami-atamans”, political adventurism and, ultimately, criminal banditry. This is how the detachments of "lords-atamans" began and ended both during the Civil War and during the Great Patriotic War after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Nationalist leaders failed to come to an agreement even among themselves, let alone build an effective sovereign state. So Petliura and Grigoriev, Zeleny and Struk cut each other, eventually yielding political space for those forces that were more constructive.
