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Battle of Kruty

The Battle of Kruty took place on January 29 or 30, 1918, near Kruty railway station, about 130 kilometres northeast of Kyiv, Ukraine, which at the time was part of Nizhyn Povit of Chernihiv Governorate.

Location
Starting from the 1890s, the station of Kruty was located at a crossing of two major railway lines and played an important strartegical role. The original wooden station building saw numerous battles during the following period and was eventually destroyed during World War II. == Order of battle ==
Order of battle
;Ukrainian forces (D. Nosenko) (fatally wounded) (116 soldiers) was split into four platoons • Cadet Corps of the 1st Ukrainian military school of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi — Averkii Honcharenko (~200 soldiers) • Hlukhiv Free Cossacks (80 soldiers) • Cavalry detachment • Ad hoc armed train (consisted of artillery gun on a flatcar) — S. Loshchenko • Armored train — M. Yartsev (wounded), withdrew to Nizhyn ;Russian forces (Mikhail Muravyov) • 1st Revolutionary Army (Komdiv Pavel Yegorov) — 1,500 • Baltic sailors of Remnyov • 1st Petrograd Red Guards • 1st battalion — Lifanov (wounded) • 2nd battalion — Vorobyov • 1st Moscow Red Guards — Ye. Lapidus • Armored train No. 2 • 2nd Revolutionary Army (Komdiv Reingold Berzin) • 436th Novo-Ladoga Regiment • 534th Novo-Kyiv Regiment • Detachment of Baltic sailors • Lenin armored train == The battle ==
The battle
As Bolshevik forces of about 4,000 men, commanded by Mikhail Muravyov, advanced toward Kyiv, a small Ukrainian unit of 400 soldiers of the Bakhmach garrison (about 300 of which were students), commanded initially by Captain F. Tymchenko, withdrew from Bakhmach to a small railroad station Kruty midway towards Nizhyn. The small unit consisted mainly of the Student Battalion (Kurin) of Sich Riflemen, a unit of the Khmelnytsky Cadet School, and a Free Cossacks company. At the funeral the then President of the Ukrainian Central Rada, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, called every one of the 400 students who fought in the battle, heroes. Poet Pavlo Tychyna wrote his poem "To the memory of the thirty" about the heroic death of the students. After the fall of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the bodies of the students were moved to the Lukyanivske Cemetery in Kyiv. Notable participants • Leonid Butkevych, the youngest soldier who was in the sixth grade • Yakiv Ryabokin-Rohoza-Rozanov • Volodymyr Shulhyn, a brother of the Ukrainian statesman Oleksander Shulhyn • Ivano Hrushetsky, later an Orthodox priest who eventually died in a Soviet prison in August 1940 • Mytrofan Shvydun, later continued to fight on the "Shooter" and "Free Ukraine" armored trains and in 1941 organized the Lutsk Battalion of OUN ==Legacy==
Legacy
The battle's first anniversary, which included a memorial service held by families of fallen students, was mentioned in Ukrainian press on 30 January 1919, a few days before the new capture of Kyiv by the Bolsheviks. An accurate history of the battle was long suppressed by the Soviet government. The memory about the event was preserved in Western Ukraine and among the Ukrainian diaspora, where it became a subject of numerous poems and other publications. The battle has been described as the "Free World's First Resistance To Communism" by historian Volodymyr Yaniv, as it was one of the earliest examples of a free people resisting an invasion by a foreign communist army intent on subjugating them, a precursor to the Russian invasion of Georgia two years later in 1921. On 29 January 1991 the People's Movement of Ukraine installed a birch memorial cross in the vicinity of the battlefield. In 1998 a mound with a stele was constructed nearby. {{Blockquote|Near Kruty the Kyiv military cadets and students became the forerunners of the Ukrainian political nation. Having different ethnic roots, they as one fought for our Ukrainian State. As the founding of the Ukrainian People's Republic became the base of the Ukrainian statehood, so the heroism of the Kruty's warriors became the beginning and the symbol of liberating struggles of Ukrainians for the liberty in the past 20th century. On 1 March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the area around the villages of Pamiatne and Khoroshe Ozero reportedly resulted in nearly 200 Russian troops being killed in action, according to local officials. Before the fighting, Russian soldiers took photos near the Kruty Heroes Memorial and fired on it. ==In culture==
In culture
Publications A bibliography of sources related to the battle was published in 1933-1934 in Lviv. For the 40th anniversary in 1958 a brochure was published by V.Yaniv. Art A watercolor painting depicting the Battle of Kruty was created by Ukrainian painter and Ukrainian People's Republic army veteran Leonid Perfetsky. In recent times, a mural dedicated to the battle's participants has been created in Kyiv. ==Gallery==
Gallery
File:Burying of the fighters of the Battle of Kruty.jpg|Photo showing the burial of Bolshevik terror victims, frequently mistaken for a photo of the burial of the students fallen at Kruty, 10 March 1918 File:Kruty Commemorative coin.jpg|A hryvnia coin commemorating the Battle of Kruty File:Kruty monument on Askold Grave.jpg|Kruty monument on Askold's Grave File:Крути Пам’ятний знак 2.jpg|Memorial stele at the site of the battle ==See also==
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