by Igor Ivanenko
[REGNUM] On August 12, 1925, the funeral of the legendary Grigory Kotovsky took place with great honors in Birzula, located near Odessa. In Odessa, the state flags were lowered on this occasion, and a mass farewell ceremony was organized. A special funeral train delivered the embalmed body to the resting place, where a mausoleum was subsequently erected.
The burial site itself was clearly chosen for political reasons. It was located on the territory of the Moldavian Autonomous SSR (MASSR), formed in 1924, allocated within Ukraine within the Odessa and Baltsky districts.
Three years after Kotovsky's death, the administrative center of the autonomy moved to Birzula, and in 1935 the town was renamed in honor of the Red commander. It is noteworthy that when a wave of "decommunization" swept across modern Ukraine, Birzula did not return its historical name, so the former Kotovsk is now called Podolsk.
The establishment of the MASSR became Kotovsky’s main political project; it was an important episode in the confrontation in the Soviet leadership between supporters of the development of the USSR along the path of confederation and centralized federation.
The MASSR initiated by Kotovsky essentially decentralized Ukraine, slowed down the policy of Ukrainization in Transnistria, and provided the Union center with an additional lever of influence on political processes in Kharkov and Kyiv. After all, the autonomy had its own representation in the all-Ukrainian party and Soviet bodies.
This weakened the position of the Ukrainian party elite, which set the tone among the supporters of preserving the broadest possible powers for the union republics. The "Ukrainian" draft of the Basic Law of the USSR, presented in 1923, provided for the right of the union republics to conclude international treaties and independently resolve all economic and internal governance issues.
It proposed the formation of an upper chamber of the union “parliament” – the Council of Nationalities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee – through equal representation from the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation.
Joseph Stalin, who sought greater centralization of the USSR, did not reject the latter principle, but supplemented it with representation in the Soviet "senate" of the autonomous regions as well. Thanks to this, the "confederalists" did not receive a blocking package of votes in the Council of Nationalities, since the leaders of the autonomous regions were heavily dependent on Moscow and were interested in reducing the powers of the union republics.
The White émigré historian Roman Gul claimed that the MASSR initially represented an unofficial "Kotoviya Republic." It was allegedly ruled by the commander of the cavalry corps stationed in Transnistria, Kotovsky.
And this is not far from the truth, since the military-consumer society really did control the main economic assets of the region, and the officers delegated by the command organized the work of the administrative apparatus of the autonomy.
This course of events on the southwestern border of the Ukrainian SSR was unlikely to suit the republican leadership. Especially since Kotovsky's previous military-revolutionary actions were clearly not perceived with much piety by nationally oriented circles in the Communist Party of Ukraine.
"HE WAS HEADING FOR ODESSA, BUT ENDED UP IN KHERSON"
Famous for his robberies under the "old regime", this native of Bessarabia found himself in the service of the Soviet government in January 1918, when Romania began to occupy his small homeland. As part of the Red Army detachments, he participated in the defense of Chisinau and Bender.
After the Soviets were driven out of Bessarabia, Kotovsky settled in Tiraspol, where he headed the cavalry reconnaissance detachment of the troops of the Odessa Soviet Republic (OSR). The same one that considered itself part of the RSFSR and did not recognize the inclusion of the Kherson province in the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR).
The forces of the OSR successfully resisted the troops of the Central Rada, and the expulsion of the Soviets from Odessa was ensured only by the Austro-German intervention.
In early 1919, after the evacuation of the occupiers, the power of the Reds over Odessa and Transnistria was restored. Kotovsky was appointed military commissar of Ovidiopol, a town on the left bank of the Dniester estuary. In anticipation of the revolutionary march to the West that was being prepared, he was instructed to form combat units from among his fellow countrymen – refugees from Bessarabia, as well as residents of Transnistria.
However, the expedition to help Soviet Hungary did not happen, and under the pressure of Anton Denikin’s advancing army, the Reds from Transnistria had to retreat north to join up with the main forces of the Red Army in Volyn.
In June 1919, Kotovsky was appointed commander of a rifle brigade that ensured the breakthrough of the Southern Group of Soviet troops through areas controlled by the UPR.
During this 400-kilometer march, an amusing incident occurred when the brigade commander's comrade, a native of Bessarabia, Mikhail Neagu (the prototype of Petri Bessarabets from "The Wedding in Malinovka" brilliantly performed by Nikolai Slichenko ) led 60 horses from his native Soroca County across the Dniester. This action gave life to Kotovsky's favorite brainchild - the Bessarabian Cavalry Regiment. Many participants in the Khotyn Uprising of 1919, defeated by the Romanians, served in it.
ON THE POLISH FRONT
Shortly before the Polish invasion of Ukraine in 1920, Kotovsky's unit was reformed into a Separate Cavalry Brigade.
During the Soviet-Polish war, Kotovsky's cavalry brigade was one of the most motivated units of the Red Army, since many of its fighters perceived the new Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an ally of the hated Romania. Bucharest did indeed provide military supplies to Warsaw at that time.
During the Soviet offensive, the Kotovtsy's combat route ran from Belaya Tserkov through Volyn to Galicia. The brigade covered the left flank of the First Cavalry Army. During the Polish counteroffensive, it fought heavy rearguard battles and ended the war in the northwest of the Podolsk province, not far from Transnistria, where it was created.
The war with Poland formally ended with the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty in 1921. But in reality, it took the form of a "hybrid conflict" waged against the USSR by the partisan-insurgent headquarters of the UPR, operating under the Polish General Staff and formally led by Symon Petliura.
The headquarters made a significant contribution to the growth of the "atamanshchina" - a movement of anti-Bolshevik partisan detachments in many rural regions of the Ukrainian SSR. The main task was to provoke a mass uprising against the Soviets, which could be used by the remnants of the UPR army hiding in Poland and Romania.
Meanwhile, the Red Army was going through a painful process of radical reduction. The loyalty of a number of military units stationed in Ukraine to the Soviets was questionable, since their fighters and commanders had themselves been through rebel detachments and service in the UPR troops. The case of Leonid Kryuchkovsky, commander of the 60th Rifle Brigade, who was found to have ties to the Petliura underground, caused a great stir in those conditions.
Józef Pilsudski and Symon Petliura in the same carriage, 1920
In anticipation of the invasion of the "rebel army" of the UPR in the autumn of 1921, the stake was placed on proven Bessarabian personnel. Kotovsky headed the 9th Crimean Cavalry Division, which included the "Bessarabian" cavalry brigade.
The latter played a key role in the defeat of the Volyn (main) group of Petliurites in November 1921 near the town of Bazar north of Zhitomir. Of the 900 people, only one hundred managed to return to Poland. In 1926, the All-Ukrainian Photo and Cinema Administration shot a feature film about those events, “Pilsudski bought Petliura.”
After the defeat of Petliura's regime, Kotovsky's career took off. His separate cavalry brigade was expanded into a division, which was officially named "Bessarabian". The Red commander himself began to command the newly created Second Cavalry Corps.
The corps commander joined the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and became a candidate from the Ukrainian SSR for the All-Union Central Executive Committee. His political status was very useful to Kotovsky when lobbying for the creation of the Moldavian ASSR, as was the support of the main "Moldavian" in the Soviet leadership, Mikhail Frunze. Shortly before his death, Kotovsky became his deputy in the leadership of the Revolutionary Military Council.
The mysterious murder of the military leader actually took place during his summer vacation near Odessa, on the eve of his already planned departure to Moscow.
POLITICS SINCE THE TSARIST TIMES
It may seem that the Soviet policy of involving Bessarabian personnel in "Ukrainian" affairs is something innovative. In fact, the Bolshevik government followed the path of reproducing the experience of the Russian Empire. After all, Peter I initially saw the Moldavian ruler Dmitry Kantemir, whom he had saved, as the head of Sloboda Ukraine.
The military-settlement province of New Serbia (on the territory of today's Kirovograd region), created later under Elizabeth Petrovna, was predominantly Moldavian in ethnic terms. After the annexation of the Ochakov regio, Catherine II ordered the active distribution of lands to settlers from the Moldavian Principality, and the appointment of Moldavian boyars to administrative positions.
Emperor Alexander I continued this policy by developing the Bug Cossack army, formed by people from Moldova and the Balkans.
The small peoples of the Lower Danube and the Balkans, who sought protection from Russia, were objectively interested in the strong power of the imperial center, and therefore were objective allies in the fight against Ukrainian “independence.”