Byzantium Endures (71 page)

Although controlling most of the Ukraine, the Directory was almost immediately faced with the threat of invasion from a recently independent Poland, anxious to reclaim its Ukrainian empire, from the Bolsheviks and from the White Russians (who had supported the Hetman) in the northern Caucasus. By this time Entente (France-Greek) forces were supporting the White Russians and were threatening Odessa and Nikolaieff. Fundamentally a ‘moderate’ socialist regime, the Directory had support from a number of other left-wing elements, although Bolsheviks and Anarchists (who were inclined to take an internationalist view) refused to acknowledge it as anything but a ‘bourgeois-liberal’ government and continued to work against it. When the Bolsheviks began their second invasion in earnest (under the command of Trotsky and Antonov) many of these elements agreed to bury their differences and fight against the Red Army. By this time Makhno commanded a very large and effective fighting force, using innovative tactics which the Red Cavalry were eventually to borrow wholesale. Other ‘revolutionary’ or insurgent leaders of sometimes doubtful political conviction included Hrihorieff (Grigoriev) fighting in the Kherson region, Ataman Anhel in Chemihiv, Shepel in Podilia and Zeleny in northern Kiev province. These had some of the characteristics of the Warlords, who would later take advantage of China’s civil unrest, but by and large at this stage they were all content to hold their own territory rather than attack Petlyura or give active support to the Bolsheviks, whom they mistrusted as Russian imperialists. In January 1919, however, the Bolsheviks, now aided by some insurgents, drove for Kiev and in February the Directory forces evacuated the city and allied themselves with the French and, therefore, the Whites. This lost them considerable mass support. Hrihorieff, in particular, put his army at the disposal of the Bolsheviks and attacked the Directory’s forces. Hrihorieff then appears to have developed strong personal ambitions and begun a broad attack on various towns and cities with the object of reaching Odessa and ousting the Entente-White forces holding the Ukraine’s most important port. The best account of this may be found in
Bolsheviks in the Ukraine
by Arthur E Adams, Yale University, 1963. For a while Hrihorieff was enormously successful, emerging as the Ukraine’s most colourful leader to the chagrin of Antonov and Trotsky who tried desperately to control the insurgent troops and failed miserably.

Makhno soon turned against the Bolsheviks again and for a while he and Hrihorieff planned an alliance, but Hrihorieff’s ego centricity and pogromist activities (Reds, Greens and Whites were all responsible for uncountable atrocities against Ukrainian and Polish Jews) disgusted the Anarchist and, in a well-documented meeting at the village of Sentovo near Hrihorieff’s Alexandria camp, under the noses of Hrihorieff’s own followers, Makhno and his lieutenants assassinated the Ataman for ‘pogromist atrocities and anti-revolutionary activities’. But the insurgents never reclaimed their former glory. Bit by bit they were betrayed and conquered by the Reds, whose frequent tactic was to invite insurgent leaders to conferences and then (as Trotsky did with Makhno’s lieutenants) have them shot on the spot. In an atmosphere of chaos and mass-murder reminiscent of the worst days of the Thirty Years War, Petlyura and his men held out a little longer in Galicia but by early 1920 the Bolsheviks had gained most of the Ukraine and would soon turn the weight of Budyenny’s Red Cavalry upon the invading Poles and the remnants of the Whites. By this time, of course, Pyat had no personal interest in the matter.

Lobkowitz recommends Konstantin Paustovsky’s
Story of a Life
[
Six volumes published by Collins/ Harvill Press, 1964-1974
]
as ‘excellent, if diplomatically-edited’ background reading to this period of Ukrainian-Russian history. He also tells me that ‘al least one of Pyat’s claims is partially vindicated by Paustovsky: in Vol. III
(In That Dawn),
page 141, where he mentions a rumour circulating in Kiev that a “Violet Ray” was to be used by Petlyura to defend the city against the Bolsheviks.’ He goes on to suggest that it is ‘worth reading between the lines of Paustovsky’s account, which was, of course, published first in the Soviet Union and therefore tends to take an official view, on the surface at least, of Petlyura Makhno and various other personalities of those years’. He also recommends, as an academic source,
The Ukraine, 1917-1921: A Study in Revolution
, edited by Taras Hunczak and published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977 (distributed by Harvard University Press).