The Ukrainian Navy in the Crimea has long traditions. In 1771, the Cossacks
jointly with the Russian army and with the support of Zaporizhzhian Cossack
boats overcame the short-lived resistance of the Turks and Tatars and conquered
the peninsula. The tsarist Black Sea fleet was built primarily in the shipyards
of Mykolaiv and Kherson, and many Ukrainians were its admirals, officers and
seamen. In 1917-18, part of the fleet was Ukrainianized and pledged allegiance
to the Central Rada.
Ukrainian Sevastopol in 1917
The Ukrainian national movement stirred the military
in the Crimea immediately after the February Revolution in Russia. In March
1917, the Sevastopol Ukrainian Black Sea Society was formed and headed by 24
personsrepresenting local residents, military units and the fleet’s ships. Its
first chairman was Professor Viacheslav Lashchenko, and his deputies were
teacher Mykola Kolomiiets and seaman Mykhailo Pashchenko.
In early April 1917, the society organized a Ukrainian
rally in Sevastopol involving many seamen from the Black Sea Fleet. Admiral
Kolchak, the then commander of the fleet, came to welcome the crowd. According
to an eyewitness account, he said (in Russian): “Now I have the honour of
speaking to Ukrainians who have gathered here to declareand prove that they
exist. The Black Sea Fleet, which I am honoured to lead, has a staff which is
90 per cent Ukrainian, comprised overwhelmingly of the sons of this nation. I
cannot but welcome the Ukrainian nation which has given me the best seamen in
the entire world.”
After Kolchak supported the rally, the Ukrainian
society in Sevastopol grew to 4,000 members. The Sevastopol Naval Sub-Depot
headed by Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Savchenko-Bilsky was Ukrainianized. All
its Russian staff were moved elsewhere and replaced with Ukrainians. The new
staff made a nice Ukrainian flag with a Taras Shevchenko portrait and the
orchestra wasted no time in learning how to play the Ukrainian anthem Ukraine
Has Not Yet Died.
In Simferopol, where reserve units were located, the
34th infantry reserve regiment of the Russian Army was partly Ukrainianized. It
was soon renamed as the Hetman Petro Doroshenko Simferopol Regiment. Yurii
Tiutiunnyk, a notable military and civic figure and UNR (Ukrainian People’s
Army) Army general, was one of the organizers of this unit.
However, in the revolutionary year of 1917, a
Ukrainian banner could be hoisted by a military unit alongside with a red or
St. Andrew’s flag. Moreover, the raising or hauling down of a flag depended
only on the attitudes of the seamen and soldiers as a group. And these could
oscillate almost on a daily basis. Mykola Nekliievych, one of the leaders of
the Sevastopol Ukrainian Society, recollected: “As our movement grew, Ukrainian
flags began to be hoisted on ships. Destroyer Zavidnyi was the first to do so. Other ships
alternated between raising the Ukrainian flag and hauling it down again. Our
Ukrainian state centre, the Central Rada in Kyiv, sided with the socialist
party camp, causing nothing but disorganization of our national movement in the
fleet to our enemies’ delight.
In this continuous struggle of the Ukrainian movement
for national identity in the Black Sea Fleet, one bright moment stands out. In
November 1917, Sevastopol received the Third Universal of the Central Rada
proclaiming the Ukrainian Republic, albeit still a federative one. At the time,
all the ships of the Black Sea Fleet ran up blue-and-yellow flags on an
appointed day – I think it was 25 November 1917 – but together with St.
Andrew’s flags and red banners. The cruiserPamiat
Merkuria, however, replaced St. Andrew’s flag with the Ukrainian
one. A Ukrainian parade was then held in the square by the Admiral Nakhimov
monument involving ship crews and military units of the Sevastopol fortress.
Lieutenant Colonel Savchenko-Bilsky surrounded by Rada members reviewed the
troops, because Rear Admiral Nemits was unable to attend. (Admiral Kolchak was
gone from the fleet by then.) The parade was a great success. The Ukrainian
seamen were able to show, amidst total revolutionary disarray (the Bolsheviks
already ruled in Saint Petersburg), their discipline, bearing and training –
all acquired before the revolution – and marched past the commandersin neat
files, dressed as one.
The parade made a great impression on both the
population and the enemy, which already started receiving reinforcement in the
form of new Bolshevik units coming from the north, the Baltic region and
Bolshevik-ruled Saint Petersburg.”
In November 1917, the crew of the Black Sea Fleet’s
most modern dreadnought Volia was also Ukrainianized. According to
one of the participants in this event, waving on its mast was a magnificent
flag with an image of a woman, a symbol of Ukraine, and an inscription that
read: “Don’t cry, Mother, don’t be sad; Your sons in the fleet are fighting for
Your Freedom – smile”.
The fate of the Black Sea Fleet
After the October coup in Petrograd, the most
patriotic officers and seamen of the Black Sea Fleet set up akurin(battalion) of 612
men. This unit soon went to Kyiv to provide armed support to the Central Rada.
Its departure proved to be a grave mistake for the Ukrainian Society in
Sevastopol: Bolshevik seamen, primarily delegates from the Baltic Fleet,
agitated and won over the rest of the Black Sea Fleet for the Bolsheviks. There
was also one important political circumstance which precipitated the situation.
In the Third Universal, the Central Rada proclaimed the creation of the
Ukrainian National Republic comprised of all Ukrainian gubernias except the
Crimea, which it did not consider Ukrainian territory.
On 22 December 1917, Dmytro Antonovych, a noted public
figure, was appointed Secretary General for Naval Affairs in the Central Rada.
Professionally, he did not have anything to do with the sea but was a
conscientious and decent man.
Under his command, the General Secretariat for Naval
Affairs was created, initially having only three people on its staff:
Lieutenant Colonel Savchenko-Bilsky, Lieutenant Colonel Vadym Bohomolets and
Lieutenant Mykhailo Bilynsky.
Antonovych was supposed to have jurisdiction over the
Ukrainianized ships in the Baltic Sea Fleet, the Danube Naval Flotilla and
commercial vessels in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. However, his authority
was essentially limited to the ports in Kherson Gubernia of which Odesa was the
biggest. Odesa was to became the base of the Ukrainian Fleet, while
non-Ukrainian ships were supposed to move to Sevastopol. However, it was merely
a theory. In practice, Ukrainian influence in Odesa and the Black Sea Fleet was
too weak to implement the plan.
In late December 1917, Antonovych ordered to move all
Ukrainianized ships from Sevastopol to Odesa. Bolshevik-dominated
Tsentroflot (Central Fleet) instructed the fleet not to comply, but the ships
soon reached Odesa. The Volia, however, stayed in
Sevastopol as the Bolshevik-leaning seamen finally had the upper hand among her
vacillating crew members.
All Ukrainianized ships of the Black Sea Fleet were
soon gathered in Odesa. Several ships supporting Tsentroflot also arrived “to
keep an eye” on the Ukrainians. The political preferences among the seamen were
unstable, but a majority sympathized with the Bolsheviks. Military physician assistant
Zhuk was Chairman of the Ukrainian Naval Council in Odesa and was considered
the formal leader of all the ships loyal to the Central Rada.
On the night of 28 January 1918, street fights between
Red Guard men and Ukrainian troops broke out in Odesa. The Bolsheviks succeeded
in persuading the crews of Ukrainianized ships to stay away from the action.
However, on Bolshevik orders, the ships loyal to Tsentroflot fired over 100
shells at Odesa, killing many civilians. The local Bolshevik government seized
power in the city, and all the ships were again subordinated to Tsentroflot.
It was only on 13 March 1918 that the Ukrainian troops
together with Austro-Hungarians, their new allies, returned to Odesa. By the
end of April, the Crimea was also cleared of the Bolsheviks. A brigade of the
Zaporizhzhian Division of the UNR’s Army led by Colonel Petro Bolbochan took
part in this operation. The Central Rada, and later Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky,
did not demand taking possession of the peninsula, so a local Crimean
government was soon formed there under the protection of the Germans and the
Turks.
Rear Admiral Sablin, commander of the Black Sea Fleet,
hoped that the Ukrainian troops (Bolbochan’s brigade) would save the ships in
Sevastopol from being captured by the Germans. On 29 April 1918, at 4pm, the
commander of the fleet sent a signal from the battleship Georgii
Pobedonosets to the
fleet instructing ships crewsto hoist Ukrainian flags. Nearly all ships
complied, and only the torpedo boat Pronzitelnyi kept the red flag. In order to avoid
confrontation, Sablin ordered it to leave the Sevastopol Roads and move to
Novorossiysk.
The next day, the first German troops entered
Sevastopol. They did not know about the Black Sea Fleet’s switch of allegiance
to the Central Rada and began bombarding its ships. Thus, Sablin ordered his
ships to also go to Novorossiysk. Seven battleships, three cruisers, several
torpedo boats, 17 submarines and special-purpose ships, all under Ukrainian
flags, stayed in Sevastopol. The commander of this squadron was Rear Admiral
Ostrohradsky, who said he would take orders from the Ukrainian government.
However, the Germans did not want to see representatives of the Central Rada in
the Crimea. They soon disarmed the ships and took the crews to the shore. The
squadron that had left for Novorossiysk was sunk on orders from Lenin’s
government to prevent the Germans from seizing its ships.
An attempt to create a Ukrainian fleet in 1918
The Central Rada returned to Kyiv in early March 1918
and set about developing a naval secretariat. Earlier, on 18 January, it
approved “A Temporary Law on the UNR’s Fleet” drafted by the General
Secretariat for Naval Affairs. It proclaimed, among other things, that the
entire Navy and the commercial Black Sea Fleet was Ukrainian. It also placed
all of the ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov under the UNR’scommand.
The ships had to hoist Ukrainian flags.
In essence, the authority of the General Secretariat
for Naval Affairs extended only to the ports of Kherson Gubernia: Odesa,
Mykolaiv, Kherson and others. On 9 May 1918, the official sea traffic between
Odesa and Mykolaiv and Kherson, and later with Constantinople, was restored.
After Hetman Skoropadsky rose to power, the
secretariat asked the German command to hand over the old Russian battleships.
The first one, the gunboat Kubanets, was received in
September 1918. It was officially renamed as theZaporozhets. Moreover, the Ukrainian
government received several auxiliary warcraft. All ships were in Odesa, but
their condition was poor: the Kubanets was unable to leave her pier even one
prior to being captured by the White Guard. Skoropadsky took measures to obtain
other previously arrested warcraft from the Germans in Sevastopol. The Crimean
government also staked a claim to them. Rear Admiral Viacheslav Klochkovsky was
in the city starting from 10 June 1918 as a permanent representative of the
hetman in these matters. An agreement in principle was reached under which the
Ukrainian government was to receive the 17 submarines which were in Sevastopol,
but it was never implemented in practice.
Conducive conditions to free the Black Sea Fleet from
German possession emerged after Berlin and Vienna suffered a defeat in the
First World War and capitulated on 11 November 1918. That same day, Hetman
Skoropadsky claimed his right to the fleet and appointed Rear Admiral
Klochkovsky its commander.
Representatives of the Crimean government and the
White Guard command also claimed they had a right to the fleet. In these
conditions, the Germans decided not to hand over the ships to anyone until the
Entente’s fleet was in the Black Sea. On 24 November 1918, as its ships passed
through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and were headed for the Crimean
shores, the Germans finally let naval officers in Sevastopol come to their old
ships. That day, Rear Admiral Klochkovsky in collusion with Captain 1st rank
Tikhmenev, a representative of the White Guard, ordered to hoist St. Andrew’s
flags on all ships.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was swept by an insurgency against
Hetman Skoropadsky which erupted on 15 November, one day after he issued a
universal saying that the Ukrainian state may become enter a federation with a
future Russian state ruled by the White Guard. Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon
Petliura, former leaders of the Central Rada, fiercely opposed this move. Part
of the troops switched to their side, and they were soon joined by groupsof
armed peasant.
In order to stop the spiral of a civil war, the
Entente’s troops, the French and Greeks, landed in southern Ukraine and in the
Crimea in late November 1918. These territories found themselves under the
control of the Armed Forces of South Russia headed by General Denikin. War
ships that were in Sevastopol and Odesa were taken by representatives of the
Entente. In the course of several months after that, they were gradually handed
over to the “legitimate Russian authorities”. All these ships were involved in
evacuating the White Guard army led by General Vrangel in October and November
1920 and were later interned in Bizerte, a French port in Tunisia.
Naval institutions of the UNR
In Ukraine, the supporters of the UNR were finally
victorious in mid-December 1918. Hetman Skoropadsky was forced to emigrate to
Germany. The new authorities also planned to create a fleet. The government of
the Ukrainian National Republic created the Ministry for Naval Affairs which
formally existed until September 1919. It was then replaced by the Naval
Directorate in the Military Ministry, which was dismissed with all the staff of
the UNR’s government in Poland in June 1924.
The activities of the ministry and later the
directorate were purely theoretical, because the UNR did not actually have any
port or ship under its command by the end of 1918. All of them had been
captured by the Entente. However, in August 1919, after the Ukrainian troops
successfully advanced on Kyiv and Odesa, the Naval Directorate set up a Naval
cadet school in Kamianets-Podilsky and tried to form the Dnieper River Flotilla
in summer 1920.
The naval institutions of the UNR were headed by
patriotic naval officers. For example, Mykhailo Bilynsky, a nobleman, economist
by profession and talented organizer and commander, was the first naval
minister in the Directory. In May 1919, when it became clear that the Black Sea
Fleet could not be reclaimed, Bilynsky formed a marine division. A little more
than one regiment was actually formed, but this unit was one of the best in the
UNR’s army and successfully fought against the Bolsheviks and the White Guard.
In November 1921, Bilynsky participated in the Second Winter Campaign under the
command of General Yurii Tiutiunnyk. On 17 November, he was severely woundedin
a fight against the Red cavalry near village Mali Mynky. To avoid being taken
prisoner by the enemy, he killed himself.
General Savchenko-Bilsky, another naval leader of the
UNR, was also of noble origin. He served his entire life in Sevastopol. He was
among the founders of the local Kobzar Ukrainian circle in 1907and the
Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet Society in 1917. He lived a long life and died at age
88 in France. There is one more Ukrainian naval officer worth mentioning –
Sviatoslav Shramchenko, the invariable aide-de-camp of all the heads of
Ukraine’s naval institutions. Many members of his family had served in the
Russian Navy. He graduated from the Law Department of Saint Petersburg
University and volunteered to go to the front when the war broke out. He served
on ships in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. In 1917, he finished a naval
cadet course and was commissioned as a naval officer. He then returned to
Ukraine and immediately joined the Ukrainian navy. After demobilization,
Shramchenko lived in various countries abroad. He died and was buried in 1958
in Philadelphia (USA). Until his last days, Shramchenko kept the flag and
insignia of the Ukrainian Navy.
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