Ukraine marks Remembrance Day of Kruty Heroes

In December 1917, the government of the Soviet Russia launched an open aggression against the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR). The Bolsheviks were extremely annoyed by Ukraine’s declaration of independence.

At first, Moscow established a separate ‘Ukrainian Red Government’ with its capital in Kharkiv, which in fact declared war against an independent part of the state, and then turned the troops against it – Baltic sailors, Red Army thugs from Moscow, Petrograd, Pskov, Smolensk, etc. This was presented as a ‘civil war’.

The Battle of Kruty took place on January 29, 1918, between Nizhyn and Bakhmach in the Chernihiv region, 130 kilometers northeast of Kyiv, during the offensive of the troops of the Bolshevik Russia, led by Colonel Mikhail Muravyov, on Kyiv. Since late December 1917, a unit of the 1st Kyiv Youth School named after Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, under the command of centurion Honcharenko, had been defending the Bakhmach station, an important railway junction at the border between the UPR and the Russian SFSR. On January 27, 1918, they received reinforcements from Kyiv, namely the first hundred of the newly established student unit made up of volunteers – students of the Ukrainian National University, St. Volodymyr Kyiv University (known as present-day Taras Shevchenko National University) and high-school senior students led by centurion Omelchenko.

Ukrainian forces took up defense near Kruty Station. In the morning of January 29, 1918, the Bolshevik unit, consisting of 4,000 Petrograd and Moscow Red Guards, began an assault on Ukrainian positions. The Ukrainian army, which was destined to enter into a bloody clash with that horde, consisted of about 300 members from the student unit, 250 – from the 1st Ukrainian Military School and nearly 40 haidamaks.

The battle lasted until the evening. Thanks to the favorable position and heroism of troops, Ukrainians managed to hold off the offensive until the darkness, but under the pressure of the enemy Ukrainian forces stepped back to the echelons and moved toward Kyiv, destroying railway tracks behind them. A group of students, 27 young men, lost their way at night and returned to Kruty Station, which at that time was already seized by the Bolsheviks. Twenty-seven captured students were shot dead. The youngest of the fallen were 16 years old.

According to various estimates, from 70 to 100 Ukrainians were killed during the Battle of Kruty. The Bolshevik troops lost up to 300 soldiers.

After the shooting, the Bolsheviks did not allow local peasants to bury the bodies of the dead. Only after the liberation of Kyiv from the Reds, at the instruction of the Ukrainian government, on March 19, 1918, a solemn funeral of the fallen in the Battle of Kruty took place at the Askold’s Tomb in Kyiv.

In the Soviet era, the graves of the fallen in the Battle of Kruty were destroyed. For decades, the history of battle has either been silenced or overgrown with myths and fictions, both in foreign and in national historiography.

After Ukraine gained independence, the feat of Kruty Heroes took a worthy place in the pantheon of national glory, became a symbol of patriotism and sacrifice in the struggle for state independence.

mk