The Revolutionary Era and Dnieper Ukraine’s Other Peoples

How did the revolutionary era affect other peoples in Dnieper Ukraine, and what, if any, views did they have toward Ukrainian national aspirations? Like the eth­nic Ukrainians, none of the Ukraine’s other peoples formed a united political front.

Despite such negative attitudes toward Ukrainian separatist aspirations, in 1917 the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic set out to attract support from Dnieper Ukraine’s “other” peoples. Already in July 1917 the Central Rada made provision for 30 percent of its membership to be comprised of members representing Russians, Poles, and Jews. The Rada’s executive body, the General Secretariat, also created a General Secretariat for Nationality Affairs with sub­departments (vice-secretariats) responsible for each of the above-mentioned groups. Adopting the nationality theories advocated by the Austrian socialists Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, the Central Rada enacted a law in January 1918 that provided for national-personal autonomy. National-personal, or national-cultural autonomy meant that an individual was guaranteed certain rights with a view to the protection of his or her language and culture regardless of place of residence. This autonomy was different in kind from territorial autonomy, in which a specifi­cally defined geographic area was granted autonomous status. Among the rights guaranteed by national-personal autonomy were schools, cultural institutions, and religious societies. All would receive financial support from the central govern­ment, which in turn would establish tax revenues according to a fiscal plan devised by the nationalities themselves.

The Jews

The Jews had fifty deputies in the Central Rada (equally divided among five Jewish political parties) and five deputies in the Little Rada. Jews also received posts in the General Secretariat and, later, in the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic, in which the Ministry of Jewish Affairs was created (headed at various times by Moyshe Zilberfarb, Ya’akov Latzky-Bertholdi, Avrom Revutsky, and Pinkhes Krasny). Yiddish was made an official language (it even appeared on some of the Ukrainian National Republic’s paper money); Jewish schools and a depart­ment ofJewish history and literature at the university in Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi were established; and plans were made to revive the historic Jewish self-governing com­munities (the kahals/kehilat) that had been abolished by the tsarist government in 1844. Of Jewish political parties, the socialists were the first to cooperate with the Central Rada, and others, including the Zionists, eventually followed. All Jewish parties, however, strongly opposed the idea of an independent Ukraine and either abstained from voting on or voted against the Fourth Universal.

The promising atmosphere in Jewish-Ukrainian relations created by the Cen­tral Rada during the first phase of Dnieper Ukraine’s revolutionary era changed during the Hetmanate of the second phase and then dissolved completely during the anarchy and civil war of the third phase (1919-1920). Hetman Skoropads’kyi’s government effectively ended the experiment in Jewish autonomy, but it at least maintained social stability in the cities and part of the countryside. During the third phase of the revolutionary era, maintaining such stability proved well beyond the powers of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic, faced as it was with foreign invasion, civil war, and peasant uprisings.

Regardless of whether the pogroms and excesses were carried out by White Russian armies, by forces loyal to the Bolsheviks, by troops under the banner of the Ukrainian National Republic, or by uncontrolled marauding bands nominal­ly under military chieftains (like Hryhoriiv and Makhno), the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic and particularly its leader, Symon Petliura, have been

Petliura and the Pogroms

... Officers and Cossacks! It is time to know that the Jews have, like the greater part of our Ukrainian population, suffered from the horrors of the Bolshevist-communist invasion and now know where the truth lies. The best Jewish groups such as the Bund, the Fareynikte [United Jewish Socialist Workers’ party], the Poale Tsiyon [Workers of Zion], and the Folkspartey [Folks party] have come out decidedly in favor of an inde­pendent Ukrainian state and cooperate together with us.

The time has come to realize that the peaceable Jewish population - their women and children - like ours have been imprisoned and deprived of their national liberty. They [the Jews] are not going anywhere but are remaining with us, as they have for centu­ries, sharing in both our happiness and our grief.

The chivalrous troops who bring equality and liberty to all the nationalities of Ukraine must not listen to those invaders and provocators who hunger for human blood. Yet at the same time they cannot remain indifferent in the face of the tragic fate of the Jews. He who becomes an accomplice to such crimes is a traitor and an enemy of our country and must be placed beyond the pale of human society....

... I expressly order you to drive away with your forces all who incite you to pogroms and to bring the perpetrators before the courts as enemies of the fatherland. Let the courts judge them for their acts and not excuse those found guilty from the most severe penalties of the law.*

The excerpt above is from an order by Petliura issued on 26 August 1919 to the troops of the Ukrainian National Republic. Despite this and other actions taken by him earlier in the year to assist the Jewish population, the relation­ship of Petliura to the pogroms of 1919 has remained a controversial issue. Subsequent literature on the subject differs greatly, according to whether the authors are of Jewish or Ukrainian background. The following are examples of the often extreme difference of opinion about Petliura.

In 1976, the Jewish writer Saul S. Friedman published a book about the assas­sination of Petliura with the provocative title Pogromchik, which concludes with ten reasons why Petliura was “responsible for the pogroms.” Among them are the following:

1. Simon Petlura was Chief of State, Ataman-in-Chief, with real power to act when he so desired. No Ukrainian leader enjoyed comparable respect, allegiance or authority.

2. Units of the Ukrainian Army directly under his supervision (the Clans of Death) committed numerous atrocities.

3. Insurgents dependent upon Petlura for financial support and war material com­mitted pogroms in his name. Petlura maintained a special office to coordinate the activities of these partisans. Rather than punishing them, he received their leaders with honors in his capital.

6. There is good reason to believe that Petlura may have ordered pogroms in Proskurov and Zhitomir in the early months of 1919, and that the Holovni Ataman [Petliura] was in the immediate vicinity of these towns when pogroms were raging. Yet he did nothing to intervene personally; nor did he command the expeditious punishment of the major pogromchiks.

7. Petlura’s famous orders of August 26 and 27, 1919, forbidding pogroms, were issued eight months too late, at a time when the Holovni Ataman had no real power. They were designed specifically for foreign consumption.

8. What funds were authorized for the relief of pogrom victims were a trifle com­pared with how much was needed and how much had been stolen from the Jews. Like Petlura’s famed orders, they were too little and too late.¹'

In 1969-1970, the American scholarly journal Jewish Social Studies published a debate about Petliura and the Jews during the revolutionary years. The Ukrain­ian-American historian Taras Hunczak came to the following conclusions:

The frequently repeated charge that Petliura was antisemitic is absurd. Vladimir Jabotinsky, perhaps one of the greatest Jews of the twentieth century - a man well- versed in the problems of East European Jewry - categorically rejected the idea of Petliura’s animosity towards the Jews....

Equally absurd is the attempt on the part of some to establish Petliura’s complicity in the pogroms against Ukrainian Jewry. Particularly disturbing is the recent attempt by Hannah Arendt to draw a parallel between the case of Petliura and Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s notorious henchman.

In view of the evidence presented, to convict Petliura for the tragedy that befell Ukrainian Jewry is to condemn an innocent man and to distort the record of Ukrainian-Jewish relations.¹

*Pavlo Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materiialy do istorii'ukrains’koirevolutsii, 1917—1920 rr., Vol. IV (Vienna 1922), pp. 167-168.

¹Saul S. Friedman, Pogromchik (New York 1976), pp. 372-373

*Taras Hunczak, “A Reappraisal of Symon Petliura and Jewish-Ukrainian Relations, 1917-1921,” Jewish Social Studies, XXXI (New York 1969), pp. 182-183.

blamed in most subsequent Jewish writings. The pogroms have so clouded the his­torical record that authoritative sources like the Encyclopedia Judaica have conclud­ed that no Ukrainian government, neither the Central Rada, nor the Hetmanate, nor the Directory, was ever sincere about Jewish autonomy or about “really devel­oping a new positive attitude toward the Jews.”¹ Whoever or whatever is responsible for the pogroms of 1919-1920 in Dnieper Ukraine, there is no question that their occurrence poisoned Jewish-Ukrainian relations for decades to come both in the homeland and in the diaspora.

The Russians

The Russian minority in Dnieper Ukraine invariably opposed the idea of sepa­ration from Russia. This applied across the political spectrum, from the left-wing Bolsheviks, who actually made up the majority of the members in the Communist party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, to the right-wing monarchists, known as the Bloc of Unaffiliated Russian Electors and represented by the ukrainophobic Russian- language daily newspaper Kievlianin (Kiev, 1864-1919), edited by Vasilii Shul’gin. When, in July 1917, the Central Rada was opened to national minorities, the Rus­sians had fifty-four deputies. There were also eight Russians in the Little Rada and a few who at various times held ministerial portfolios in the Ukrainian National Republic’s General Secretariat and its Secretariat for Nationality affairs, which included an undersecretarial/ministerial post for Russian affairs (held by Dmitrii Odinets). As the Central Rada moved increasingly toward autonomy and then inde­pendence for Ukraine, however, the Russian deputies began leaving the assembly until only four Socialist-Revolutionaries and Minister Odinets remained. With the establishment of the Hetmanate in April 1918, the majority of Russians, especially from the center and right side of the political spectrum, supported the new govern­ment of the Ukrainian State. These same groups also welcomed the efforts of General Denikin’s Volunteer Army to restore Russian control over Ukraine in

¹9¹9.

The Russians’ attitude toward Ukrainian aspirations is not surprising. From their perspective, they lived in Little Russia, which for them was an inalienable part of the Russian homeland. As for Ukrainianism, most Russians considered it little more than a political idea concocted by a few misguided intellectuals or a byproduct of the anti-Russian designs of foreign powers, especially Austria-Hungary and Germany. According to such a scenario, the peasant masses were not Ukrain­ians, they were Little Russians. It was simply inconceivable to Russians (or, for that matter, russified Ukrainians) imbued with such attitudes that their beloved Little Russian homeland could ever be torn from mother Russia and transformed into an “artificial” independent Ukrainian state.

The Poles

Poles living in Dnieper Ukraine exhibited mixed reactions to the events that engulfed them during the revolutionary era. It was actually owing to World War I that the number of Poles in Dnieper Ukraine increased. This was the result of large numbers having fled eastward from the Congress Kingdom, the Russian Empire’s far-western Polish-inhabited entity, which for extensive periods of time was held by the invading armies of the Central Powers. Cities on the Right Bank received many Poles during this influx; for instance, in 1917 their number in Kiev alone reached 43,°°°, or 9.5 percent of the inhabitants.

Following the February Revolution in the Russian Empire, the Poles in Dnieper Ukraine organized themselves essentially into two groups. The Polish Executive Committee in Rus’ (Polski Komitet Wykonawczy na Rusi), led by Joachim Bar- toszewicz, primarily represented the landowning class and conservative National Democrats (Endecja), who were sympathetic to the Polish liberation movement. The Polish Democratic Center, an umbrella organization of several parties that included political activists like Mieczyslaw Mickiewicz, Roman Knoll, and Stanislaw Stempowski, represented more liberal political trends, although it too supported the interests of Polish landowners and shared their inclination for an independent Polish state. Leaders of the Polish Democratic Center party took advantage of the Central Rada’s invitation to participate in its administration, and it obtained plac­es for twenty deputies in the Central Rada and two in the Little Rada. Then, fol­lowing the Fourth Universal in January 1918, the ministerial portfolio for Polish affairs (headed by Mickiewicz) was created as part of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.

The Polish ministerial portfolio ceased to exist following the fall of the Cen­tral Rada in April 1918. The Skoropads’kyi-led Hetmanate cooperated instead with the Polish Executive Committee, which welcomed the conservative intention of the government to restore the large landed estates. The days of the Polish landlords and their hold over the Right Bank countryside were numbered, how­ever. In response to the peasant revolts and anarchic conditions which dominated the 1919-1920 period, and following the establishment of Soviet rule in Dnieper Ukraine, large numbers of Poles fled westward to the new Polish state. Conse­quently, the number of Poles remaining in Dnieper Ukraine decreased by at least one-third, from 685,000 in 1909 to 410,000 in 1926.

The Germans and Mennonites

The only numerically sizable national minority able entirely to avoid dealings with the Central Rada or with other non-Bolshevik governments in Dnieper Ukraine were the Germans. Maintaining the aloofness that had characterized them since tsarist times, the Germans remained in their rural communities and tried to keep as uninvolved as possible with both the Ukrainians and the Russians in their midst and in the urban centers. Because of the all-encompassing changes and cataclys­mic events of the revolutionary era, however, the Germans were unable to remain unaffected for long. In relative terms, perhaps they suffered the most of all Dnieper Ukraine’s peoples.

Already during World War I, the Germans living in Volhynia and in the Chelm region, that is, in areas closest to the front, had been deported in 1915 by the tsarist Russian government, primarily to Siberia. They were suspect in the eyes of Russian officialdom, who feared (and in some cases with justification) their possible collabo­ration with the advancing German Army. Then, during 1919 and the height of the peasant leader Makhno’s military ravages, many German villages, especially in Kat­erynoslav province, were attacked in destructive pogroms. Their inhabitants either were killed or, if they managed to escape, eventually reached Germany, the United States, or Canada. The pacifist Mennonites and their prosperous rural farms proved especially easy targets for Makhno’s anarchist bands. As a result of the World War I deportations and emigration abroad, brought about by the destruction of farm­steads during the revolutionary era, the number of Germans in Dnieper Ukraine decreased by almost two-fifths, from 750,000 in 1914 to 514,000 in 1926.

Mennonites Caught in the Revolution

The reaction of Ukraine’s indigenous German, in particular Mennonite, inhab­itants to the revolution and civil war is summed up by Dietrich Neufeld in a diary-like memoir from 1919-1920 later published under the title A Russian Dance of Death (1977). Of particular interest in the book are the Mennonites’ perceptions of their own place in the former Russian Empire, of the anarchist leader Makhno, of their Ukrainian neighbors, whom they refer to as Russians, and finally - because they are pacifists - of the difficult decision to take up arms in self-defense.

Even these peaceful Mennonite settlers who up till now have remained aloof from all history-making events are caught up in the general upheaval. They no longer enjoy the peace which dominated their steppe for so long. They are no longer per­mitted to live in seclusion from the world.

Makhno. Who doesn’t quake at that name? It is a name that will be remembered for generations as that of an inhuman monster.... His professed aim is to put all ‘capitalists’ to the sword. Even the Bolsheviks - dedicated to the same cause but more sparing of human life on principle - are too tame for him. His path is literally drenched with blood.

Presumably, the Makhnovites despoiled our people because of their alleged sym­pathy for Denikin. It can’t be denied that our colonists, though professing neutral­ity, do not show much sympathy for the peasants. While the peasants opposed the re-establishment of the old regime, the [Mennonite] colonists remained loyal to that cause. They even allowed themselves to be enlisted in Denikin’s army. Actually, they were tricked into doing so by being assured that they would be organized into local Self Defence units only.

Many of our young men, who as a consequence of the German occupation had developed distinctly anti-Russian attitudes, were eager to avenge the looting and suffering inflicted on our people [in 1918, before the German troops arrived].... They supported the German army of occupation and, in some cases, had been fool­ish enough to inform against certain of the revolutionary leaders.

One can criticize the Zagradovka [Zahradivka] Mennonites for taking up arms instead of holding fast to the principle of non-resistance. As good Christians they had no right to show hatred toward their neighbor. Their duty was to love him even when he wronged them. Instead, they made common cause with a soldiery which plundered and murdered - even though we have no reason to suspect any young Mennonites of a similar lack of restraint..

The Zagradovka Mennonites took up arms without hesitation. They are to be doubly blamed for that. First, it was politically unwise. Then again it was in glar­ing contradiction to their hitherto professed concept of non-resistance. The Rus­sian peasants pointed out this contradiction and called them hypocrites. A bitter truth was held up to the [Mennonite] colonists: ‘When our Russia, our women and children, were threatened with attack in 1914, then you refused to take up arms for defensive purposes. But now that it’s a question of your own property you are arming yourselves.’ Certainly it was a crying shame that the [Mennonite] colonists’ actions were inspired neither by a desire to protect the state nor by a true Christian spirit.

We Mennonites are aliens in this land. If we didn’t realize that fact before the war we have had it forced upon us during and after the War. Our Russian neighbors look on us as the damned Nyemtsy [Germans] who have risen to great prosperity in their land. They completely ignore the fact that our forefathers were invited here [one hundred and thirty] years ago in order to cultivate the vast steppes which lay idle at the time. They refuse to admit that our farmers were able to achieve more than Rus­sian farmers by dint of industry and perseverence, as well as through better organiza­tion and management, rather than through political means....

This is no longer our homeland. We want to leave! The magic word ‘emigration’ travels like a buran [winter wind] from place to place. Whenever two or three colo­nists get together the conversation is sure to be about emigrating. It is the one idea that keeps us going, our one hope.

source: Dietrich Neufeld, A Russian Dance of Death: Revolution and Civil War in the Ukraine, trans­lated by Al Riemer (Winnipeg 1977), pp. II, 18-19, 26-27, 63-64, 73, 79.

The Czechs

The smaller Czech community (ca. 30,000) based primarily in Volhynia main­tained good relations with the tsarist regime and with the Ukrainian nationalist governments which followed. It also took an active part in the political and mili­tary movement that was to result in the establishment of an independent Czecho­slovakia in late 1918. Kiev in particular became the center of Czech activity for the entire Russian Empire. It was home to the Charitable Society (Dobrocinny), the Comenius Educational Society, the newspaper Cechoslovan, and it was the site where in August 1914 a volunteer unit of Czech soldiers (Ceska druzina) was formed to fight within the ranks of the Russian Army against what was considered the “common enemy of the Slavs,” Germany and Austria-Hungary.

In the course of the war, Czechs from various parts of the Russian Empire as well as exiles from Austria-Hungary gravitated to Kiev. The most famous of these was the writer Jaroslav Hasek, who from 1916 lived in Kiev where he published the first installments of what was to become the extremely popular novel, The Good Soldier Svejk. In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia’s departure from the war in December 1917, the Czech military unit Ceska druzina formed by Czech and Slovak prisoners-of-war, was transformed into what became known as the Czecho­slovak Legion. The Legion’s purpose was to continue fighting against the Cen­tral Powers on behalf of independence for a future Czechoslovakia. Also in 1917, Ukraine’s Czechs formed a branch of the Czechoslovak National Council based in Paris and they greeted its leader and future president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas G. Masaryk, who arrived in Kiev in late 1917. Masaryk maintained favorable relations with the Ukrainian National Republic and he secured safe passage for Czechoslo­vak Legionnaires who left Ukrainian territory in February 1918. Among the Czechs who remained in their homes in Volhynia, plans were made to participate actively as a minority community in the Ukrainian National Republic, but the collapse of the Directory and the onset of Bolshevik rule precluded the fulfillment of such goals.

The Crimean Tatars

The Crimean Tatars were different from other peoples in Dnieper Ukraine in that they were concentrated in one area, the Crimea, a territory claimed by the Hetmanate, but in which no Ukrainian government had any authority during the revolutionary era. Under tsarist rule, hundreds of thousands of Tatars had, in the course of the nineteenth century, fled from the lands of the former Crimean Khanate and settled in the Ottoman Empire. It was among these exiles, especial­ly in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, that the Crimean Tatar nationalist move­ment arose during the first decade of the twentieth century. The most important Istanbul-based nationalist organization was the Vatan/Fatherland Society, whose goal was independence for the Crimea. The slow but steady return to the Cri­mea of nationally conscious Tatar activists from Ottoman exile, which began in 1908, was to continue even after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Among the most prominent of these returnees were the founders of the Vatan Society, Noman Gelebi Cihan and Cafer Seydahmet, who in the first years of the war were drafted into the tsarist Russian Army. Both served in the army’s Crimean Cavalry Regiment, where they helped to transform many of its soldiers into patriots who one day might fight on behalf of the Crimean Tatar cause.

Developments in the Crimea were in many ways analogous to the three phases of the revolutionary era in Dnieper Ukraine. In the first phase, immediately following the Russian Revolution of February 1917, the representatives of the Provisional Government in St Petersburg tried to establish its authority in the region by working with former tsarist officials and the established conserva­tive elements (landowners and clerics) among the Crimean Tatars. Meanwhile, younger Crimean Tatar national activists with ties to the Istanbul-based emigre Vatan Society convoked in Simferopol’ in March the All-Crimean Muslim Con­gress. The congress formed a Crimean Muslim Central Executive Committee and elected (in absentia) as its leaders Noman Gelebi Cihan and Cafer Seydah­met, both of whom were still serving in the tsarist army. Still other activists creat­ed in the summer of 1917 a nationalist political party Milli Firka, whose program was socialist in orientation, calling for the break-up of the large estates held by private landowners and the church. The nationalist leaders were determined to replace the Muslim clergy as the leading force in Crimean Tatar society. This was not an easy task, since the conservative clerical leaders (mullahs) together with Crimea’s Russian and Tatar large landowners (pomeshchiks) continued to be recognized by the Provisional Government in St Petersburg.

Unable to find a common ground with the Provisional Government, the Crimean Muslim Central Executive Committee and the Milli Firka party made plans to convene a “national parliament” which they called the Kurultay, the historic name for the gathering of tribal leaders that chose Crimea’s khans. On 24 November 1917, the Crimean Tatar Kurultay was held on the grounds of the former palace of the khans in Bahyesaray/Bakhchysarai. The Kurultay elected a Crimean Tatar government, or National Directorate, to be based and headed by Qelebi Cihan and Seydamet. Before the end of 1917 a constitution was adopted which declared the formation of an independent Crimean Democratic Republic. The new government gained control of the Crimean Cavalry Regiment demobi­lized from the tsarist army, and it began to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire to support Crimea’s political demands.

Throughout 1917, Crimean Tatar leaders had maintained cordial relations with the Central Rada of the Ukrainian National Republic in Kiev, which was sym­pathetic to their demands for cultural and territorial autonomy. The reaction of the local Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants who made up no less than a half of the Crimea’s population was quite different, however. Particularly problematic were the armed forces of the imperial Black Sea Fleet based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol’, which after the Revolution of November 1917 supported the Bolsheviks. In January 1918, the Bolshevik-led sailors and marines from the Black Sea Fleet attacked the Crimean Republic’s headquarters in Simferopol’, dispersed the Crimean Tatar nationalist leadership, and two months later (19 March 1918) called into being the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic. While in power for a few months, the Soviet regime ravaged the Crimean countryside, with the express goal of eliminating Tatar “bourgeois nationalists,” Muslim cler­gy, and wealthy landowners. To drive their point home, the Bolshevik forces captured and killed the president of the Kurultay, Noman Qelebi Cihan, thereby unwittingly transforming him into a national martyr. From then on he has been remembered as the ultimate patriot whose love for his country is embodied in the words he wrote that became the Crimean Tatar national anthem, “Ant Etke- men” (I Pledge).

In the spring of 1918, the second phase of Crimea’s revolutionary era began, and it too was quite analogous to the Hetmanate period unfolding at the same time in Dnieper Ukraine. The German Army, already in Ukraine, moved toward the Crimea and brought with them a Muslim cavalry unit comprised of Crimean Tatar exiles from Dobruja in Romania and commanded by a Tatar from Lithua­nia, the former tsarist General Matwiej Sulejman Sulkiewicz. In the second half of April 1918, the German forces took over all of Crimea and brought to an end the Taurida Soviet Republic. The Crimean Tatar leadership welcomed the arrival of the Germans and, in return, they were allowed to restore the Kurultay in the hope that some form of Tatar self-rule could be achieved, this time under the protection of the German Army and General Sulkiewicz, who from June headed the government of the Crimean People’s Republic. Sulkiewicz favored a future independent Crimean Tatar state, but those hopes were never realized, because the Germans returned home soon after the armistice that ended World War I was signed in November 1918.

The third phase of the revolutionary era in Crimea encompassed the years 1919 and most of 1920. This was an incredibly complex period when, as in Dnieper Ukraine, attempts to continue nationalist rule (in this case Crimean Tatar) were challenged by pro-Russian liberal forces, the anti-Bolshevik Whites, and the Bol­shevik Reds in alliance with Soviet Russia. The least effective of these was the administration that succeeded General Sulkiewicz, and that from November 1918 to April 1919 was headed by Solomon Krym, a Karaite Jew and wealthy Crimean landowner. In contrast to the independentist orientation of his predecessor, the Crimean Regional Government under Krym supported a unified Russia along the lines of western European liberal democratic states.

For a few months (April-June 1919), Bolshevik rule was restored in the form of the Crimean Soviet Socialist Republic based in Simferopol’, but by early July this entity collapsed following the arrival of White Russian armies (and thousands of anti-Bolshevik refugees) headed by General Anton Denikin. As the cause of the Whites throughout Russia gradually faded, Denikin and his successor Gen­eral Petr Vrangel’ hoped to transform the Crimea into an “island bastion” of anti­Communism. It was to be a purely “Russian bastion,” however, and with that in mind the White forces showed no tolerance for the Crimean Tatars or for any of their political demands. Therefore, for nearly a year Denikin’s troops actively repressed Crimean Tatar activists until the Whites themselves were entirely driven from the peninsula. In the face of widespread repression, many Crimean Tatars in the Milli Firka nationalist party joined guerilla units known as “green bands” to fight against the Whites. Whereas some Milli Firkists (Cafer Seydahmet) remained adamantly opposed to Russian rule, whether White or Red, the leftists in the party (Veli Ibrahimov) favored an alliance with the Bolsheviks in common cause against the Whites. The alliance did not last long, however.

In October 1920, the Red Army succeeded in driving the last White Russian forces and refugees out of the Crimea, allowing the Bolsheviks to establish again Soviet rule throughout the peninsula. Almost immediately the Soviet regime outlawed the Milli Firka nationalist party, and under the direction of Bela Kun, the exiled Hungarian Communist leader in Soviet service, an estimated 60,000 real or suspected opponents of Soviet rule (including “Tatar nationalists”) were killed. Whereas local Bolsheviks had little appreciation for the Crimean Tatars and their national interests, the Soviet leadership in Moscow, especially Vladimir Lenin, was more sympathetic. Acting on a report about the devastated conditions in the peninsula, in October 1921 the Communist authorities in Moscow created a distinct Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, although not within the jurisdiction of Soviet Ukraine but rather within the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic. To what degree, if any, the Crimean Soviet Republic would be Tatar in nature is a topic discussed below in chapter 45.