"What the Revolution Gave Us": Attempts at Uniting Sevastopol with Ukraine in 1917-1918
Attempts at uniting Sevastopol with Ukraine in 1917-1918.
Serhiy Konashevych. "Krymska Svitlytsa" newspaper, 2018, Issue No. 45
On June 5-10, 1917, the 2nd All-Ukrainian Military Congress took place, according to the decision of which the Sevastopol Ukrainian Council (hereinafter SUR) of Military and Workers' Deputies was created in Sevastopol, headed by Ensign Kostiantyn Velychko. In addition to this organization, defending the interests of the city's Ukrainians in the conditions of growing lawlessness were the Black Sea Ukrainian Military Committee and the Ukrainian faction of the Sevastopol "Soviet," which the Bolsheviks tried to take control of as quickly as possible. The Council demanded the Ukrainization of the Black Sea Fleet (hereinafter BSF) and its subordination to the Ukrainian Central Rada (UCR), contributed to the corresponding processes, and supported them.
SUR had its own printed organ — "Bulletin of the Ukrainian Council of Military and Workers' Deputies of the City of Sevastopol," which was published mostly in Russian: news and official reports from Kyiv were presented in Ukrainian, and even then not always. The editorial office of the SUR committee publishing house, like the Council itself, was located in building No. 33 on Nakhimov Avenue. The publication was printed in the printing house of the former editor-publisher of the local newspaper "Krymsky Vestnik," an Odesa townsperson Isaak Neyman. Unfortunately, only two copies of the "Bulletin" could be found in capital archives. However, they provide some evidence of the socio-political life of Ukrainians in Sevastopol in late 1917 – early 1918.
In No. 4 of the "Bulletin" for December 22, 1917 (apparently, the date is given according to the old style), an appeal of the District Commission of the Black Sea Fleet District for elections to the Constituent Assembly of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) was published. The task of the said elected legislative body was to approve the new order and establish the constitution of the Ukrainian State. According to the 3rd Universal, the election day was set for January 9, and the day of convocation — for January 22, 1918. However, in the conditions of Bolshevik aggression against the UPR, the Constituent Assembly was not convened.
The commission's appeal noted that the territory of Ukraine included: "Volyn, Katerynoslav, Kyiv, Poltava, Podillia, Kharkiv provinces with the annexation of Hrayvoron district of Kursk province, Kherson, Chernihiv with the annexation of Putyvl district of Kursk province, Ostrohokh, Valuyki, Biriuch, and Bohuchar districts of Voronezh province and Novo-Oskol district of Kursk province, Taurida province, which includes Berdiansk, Dnipro, and Melitopol districts." For conducting elections at the front, 5 front-line election districts were established — Northern (with troops located in Finland and subordinated to the commander of the Baltic Fleet), districts of the Western, Northwestern, Romanian, and Caucasian fronts. For conducting elections in the navy, 2 districts were established — Black Sea and Baltic, which consisted of "crews of ships, shore commands, as well as those serving the commanders of the fleets."
In these two districts, voting for special candidate lists was open to "military personnel belonging to military units or serving troops; persons of both sexes serving in the troops, ship crews, and shore units of the Black Sea and Baltic Fleets who have reached 20 years of age; officials of civil departments; clergy of all faiths; other employees, even contract workers, including workers of various parts of the military administration." At the same time, it was noted that the right to vote was also granted to persons who had not reached the age of 20, but on the condition of being on active military service. The commission also urged all units of the fleet and garrison of Sevastopol and Balaklava to hasten to submit electoral lists of all citizens of the UPR in duplicate, indicating the province and district of each, no later than December 23, 1917 (probably old style).
Rybka, the secretary, signed on behalf of the election commissioner. It was not possible to find out the name of the commissioner himself, since, unfortunately, the page of the archival copy was worn out at this place. Most likely, it was a member of the UCR from Crimea, Yuriy (Heorhiy) Dezhur (Zhurov): it was he who was contacted by telegraph in early January 1918 by Pavlo Horyanskyi, the head of the Community of Ukrainians of the Southern Coast of Crimea, reporting on the compilation of voter lists. In Crimea, due to terror and arrests by left-radical forces with the support of BSF sailors, elections took place only in a few places. On January 29, Horyanskyi reported to Sevastopol that elections would be held on February 2-4, despite the fact that in Yalta, which was changing hands, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was established on January 16. In the end, as on the entire peninsula.
In No. 2 of the "Bulletin" for January 5, 1918 (the date is also likely given according to the old style), an appeal to "comrades Ukrainian sailors" was published, signed by "E. S." (the cryptonym could not be deciphered), the text of which we present below in translation, with abbreviations.
"...Currently, you are a wide field on which everyone who is not lazy sows their disgusting seeds, setting you against your fathers and brothers. Think and understand with a cold, healthy mind where they are calling you and what mud your imaginary well-wishers pour on our fathers and brothers. We are all so crippled by the old regime that we do not know ourselves — we do not know what nationality we are and what our history is. We were told that we were kh**ols, and at best — Little Russians. The word 'Ukrainian' could not be pronounced, because anyone who pronounced or wrote it was arrested by gendarmes and condemned as a revolutionary (now for the same thing — as a counter-revolutionary). A coup took place.
We, Ukrainians, declared that this revolution must liberate both the oppressed class of working people and the nations that were oppressed under tsarism. We resolutely declared that we are no longer kh**ols and Little Russians, but Ukrainians, who have their own history, their own territory, their own language, their own customs, and that this gives us the right to a sovereign existence of the nation and state. For this, we were accused of conducting our policy in the interests of Germany, that all this is done with German money.
This was said and written by the 'Little Russian' bourgeoisie, and Russian socialists — revolutionaries and Mensheviks — helped them in this. The Bolsheviks were silent, or praised the Rada1. We, Ukrainians who wish good to our oppressed peasantry and proletariat, did our work — organizing this oppressed class around Ukrainian socialist parties...
...I ask the comrades Bolsheviks of Ukrainian origin: do you recognize the Ukrainian nation? And if you do, why do you call yourselves not the Ukrainian, but the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party of Bolsheviks? If they answer me that this party is international, then why does it bear the name Russian, and not just the party? Therefore, if it can bear the name of the Russian party, then with the same success there can exist a German party of Bolsheviks, and an English one, etc., etc., and from here the final conclusion is that there can also be a Ukrainian party of Bolsheviks.
Welcoming any socialist party, if it does not turn into a monster, I will sincerely welcome Bolsheviks of Ukrainian origin when they show their national face and stop calling themselves the Russian SDLP. Comrades Bolsheviks of Ukrainian origin, become Ukrainian Bolsheviks and take up the state construction of your nation yourselves, and then it will be clearer to you where the bourgeois are and where your well-wishers are. If you do not take up this matter as socialists should, it will be a crime with the help of our Russian comrades to destroy what has been created in Ukraine with such difficulty by your fathers and brothers.
I draw your attention to the following: what did the revolution in Sevastopol give us, Ukrainians? Here is what: we all know that former Lieutenant Blahovishchenskyi2 was tried by the revolutionary democracy in the person of the revolutionary tribunal only because he is a Ukrainian. But this is not convincing for you, because Blahovishchenskyi is an officer, and if he is an officer, he is therefore a bourgeois and a counter-revolutionary, although no such accusation was made, and Blahovishchenskyi recognized himself as a Ukrainian not yesterday, but when the Bolsheviks praised the Ukrainians and the Rada... Come to your senses, comrades, start forging your own happiness, for a time may come when you too will be tried for daring to call yourselves Ukrainians..."
However, to our great regret, these appeals did not produce the proper result.
Since mid-December 1917, arbitrary "revolutionary courts" took place in Sevastopol, the results of which were mass executions of army and navy officers. In early January 1918, a "campaign against the Tatars" was conducted, which eyewitnesses called a "brilliant victory of a Soviet robber gang over the peaceful Tatar people" (in particular, Soviet historiography mentions the defeat of "bands of Tatar nationalists" in Feodosia, Yevpatoriya, and near Sevastopol by Red Guards and sailors). At the same time, a meeting of sailors, soldiers, and port workers took place in Sevastopol, the resolution of which stated: "We brand with shame the Kyiv Rada and its general secretaries — compromisers with the bourgeoisie and Kaledinites3, who put a noose around the crippled neck of peasants and workers.
Down with the compromisers! Do not count on the BSF, for we will be the first to point 12-inch guns at you." On January 20, the Bolshevized executive committee of the Sevastopol Council of Military and Workers' Deputies (hereinafter "the Council") and the "Centroflot" at a joint meeting adopted a resolution on non-recognition of the "counter-revolutionary" UCR. SUR, in turn, did not recognize Bolshevik power, but refrained from active protests. On January 26, the executioner of Ukraine, People's Commissar Volodymyr Antonov-Ovsiyenko telegraphed from Kharkiv: "Soviet power triumphed in Sevastopol. All ships went over to its side. The Rada (probably SUR – author's note) has been dispersed."
On February 2, the heads of the Sevastopol Council and "Centroflot," M. Pozharov and S. Romanovskyi, sent a telegram to the Council of People's Commissars (CPC) in Petrograd (copies were sent to Kyiv, Kharkiv, etc.) with assurance that the BSF recognizes as the "sole expression of the will of the working people" only the central government in the person of the CPC, and in Ukraine — only the "power of the working people" in the person of the puppet Kharkiv All-Ukrainian Executive Committee. The Black Sea sailors declared to the UCR that they would not carry out its orders and instructions. On February 9, having signed the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany, the UCR voluntarily renounced Crimea as Ukrainian territory. The error would be corrected a few months later by the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi.
In mid-February, passionate speeches were heard in Sevastopol about the need to destroy the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie, about the triumph of the proletariat, etc. Soon, terror unfolded in the city, provoked by riots among sailors who decided to "force the bourgeoisie to bow their heads, raised under the influence of German successes at the front" (at that time, the offensive of the German army on the Eastern Front, destroyed by demobilization, began). The Central Committee (CC) of the Council knew nothing about this and, having received reports of the gathering of 2,500-3,000 armed sailors on the Kamyana (Stone) Pier, who did not want to listen to anyone and acted at their own peril and risk, decided to stop this action and sent two of its representatives to the mutineers.
In response, the sailors declared that the time for words had passed — it was time to destroy the "bourgeois" in the city, after which they split into separate groups and began mass arrests. On February 21, the CPC issued Lenin's decree "The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!", which introduced the death penalty, abolished by the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets in October 1917. Only in the night of February 23 in Sevastopol, 250 people were killed, according to recorded testimonies, whom the executioners brutally tortured before death: among the victims, in particular, were the Crimean Tatar spiritual and political figure Noman Chelebidzhikhan and the Sevastopol artist of Karaite origin Mykhailo Kazas.
In the morning, the CC allowed a blasphemous march through Sevastopol under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets," which took place to the solemn musical accompaniment of an orchestra. With the aim of stopping arbitrary searches, detachments led by commissars were organized to conduct searches and seize valuables. According to historical evidence, the slogans of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" did not meet with the support of the majority of the population, but were imposed by force of arms.
Destroyer "Zavidnyi", on which there was an influential Ukrainian council
Similar actions took place in Simferopol, where 170 people were shot in the night of February 24, and in Yevpatoriya, where secret executions took place on March 2; calls for lynching were heard in Alushta and Yalta. The mass slaughter in Sevastopol was put to an end by workers forming effective self-defense detachments, after which they demanded re-elections to the Bolshevized city council, whose leadership, having publicly condemned what had been done, did nothing to punish the perpetrators — except that the head of "Centroflot" Romanovskyi was removed from office. For a long time, storms washed corpses ashore.
Crimea was liberated from the Bolsheviks by German and Ukrainian troops, whom the local population met as liberators, in late April 1918. At the same time, Ukrainian flags were raised over Sevastopol and over the ships of the BSF. However, unfortunately, not for long.