Draft:Battle of Mali Mynky

Battle of Mali Mynky was a battle fought on 17 November 1921 near the village of Mali Mynky, Ovruch district, Volyn province. During this battle, the Volyn group of the UPR Insurgent Army under the command of General-Corporal Yurii Tiutiunyk was defeated in the fight against the Bolsheviks.

Most historians believe that the November raid had almost no chance of success, it was rather a campaign of desperation and an act of heroism.

Background
After the occupation of the Ukrainian People's Republic by the Bolsheviks, units of the UPR's regular army were interned in the Polish Republic. However, in 1921, it was decided to raid Ukraine in order to support anti-Soviet protests. The plan was to raise a national uprising and reach Kyiv.

The Bolsheviks deployed their best forces against the UPR Army under the command of the battalion general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. According to historians, the advantage in manpower was forty times greater than that of the rebels. Day and night, for two weeks, the red cavalry pursued the half-dressed, hungry, exhausted UPR soldiers.

Battle progress
On 15 November, between the villages occupied by the Kotovtsy in the freezing cold, Tyutyunnyk's forces forced their way to Teteriv. On the morning of 17 November, Ukrainian forces reached the village of Mali Mynky in deep snow. The Volyn Group fought its last battle with the Bolsheviks on 17 November 1921 near Mali Minky. There, 1000 exhausted insurgent soldiers confronted several thousand well-armed Bolshevik troops.

The 2nd and 3rd Brigades of Kotovsky's 9th Cavalry Division surrounded the Ukrainian forces. With a combined attack, they separated the vanguard, which included Tyutyunnyk, Otmarstein, Yanchenko, two brigadiers and a dozen sledges with wounded, from the rest of the column. The second strike again split the retreating Ukrainian forces in two. The soldiers fought to the last bullet. Some soldiers blew themselves up with their last grenade to avoid being captured by the Bolsheviks. This was done by a government official, Minister of the Ukrainian Navy M. Bilynsky, Roy Andrievsky and others.

After the rebels had used up all their ammunition, the Red Army began to cut down the defenceless Cossacks. They killed everyone: the wounded, those who surrendered, people who could barely stand. This continued until H. Kotovskyi arrived.

The army headquarters, the cavalry hundred and the wounded who were on the front wagons managed to escape and return to the Polish Republic.

Massacre of prisoners
After the destruction and looting, the captured Ukrainian soldiers were lined up in four lines and taken to M. Mynki, where they were locked in a church. At night, the Red Army continued to loot. The prisoners were mocked and not allowed to eat.

H. Kotovskyi offered the rebels to join the Red Army, but all the soldiers refused this offer.

On 18 November, the prisoners, surrounded by a horse-drawn escort, were transferred to Bazar, where they were tried. The interrogation was conducted by H. Kotovskyi and Cheka officer I. Harkavyi. Ukrainian prisoners were brought to pits and shot with machine guns. Around 10 p.m. on 21 November, the first 25 officers were shot. The minutes of the Extraordinary Commission show that more than 400 soldiers were killed near Mali Mynky, and 537 soldiers were captured along with the wounded, of whom only 443 survived to see the trial. The highest form of punishment - execution - was imposed on 360 insurgents. The commanders were sent to Kyiv for additional interrogation, and most of them were executed. Within a week, 95 prisoners "died of wounds", 83 were sent to Kyiv for interrogation, and the rest, including the younger brother of the Minister of Military Affairs of the UPR Oleksiy Salskyi, were sentenced to death by firing squad.

The representative of the Ukrainian SSR in the Polish Republic, Oleksandr Shumsky, after reading the commission's verdict, proposed turning this trial into a major political process, information about which should be disseminated in the European and American press. At the same time, he asked to keep silent about the actions of the Red Army near M. Mynky, because "...the way the Kyiv comrades eliminated this raid would make an unfavourable impression on us".

On 22 and 23 November, the "trial" continued, with the rebels being brought in small groups to pits dug by local peasants on the orders of the Bolsheviks and shot.

According to Ukrainian historian Roman Koval, among the soldiers who died near Bazar were not only Ukrainians, but also representatives of other nations. According to the questionnaires of the executed, 85.88% of them were Ukrainians, 9.41% were Russians (at least 32 people), Poles - 1.47%, Belarusians and Jews - 1.18%, Germans - 0.59%.

The Red Army near Mali Mynky also suffered significant losses. According to memoirs, they took their wounded to Ovruch for several days, and the hospitals in Bazar, Khabnym and Narodychi were filled to capacity.

With the defeat of the Second Winter Campaign, the armed epic of the regular Ukrainian army came to an end.

Retreat of the remaining forces
A "flying detachment" of 90 horsemen was formed to pursue Tiutiunnyk and the headquarters with the order to kill the retreating soldiers and capture the general; the Red Army failed; the headquarters, a cavalry unit and up to 120 seriously wounded people under Tiutiunnyk's leadership, making their way through the villages of the present-day Ovruch and Olevsk districts, crossed into Polish territory on 20 November.

Battle participants
Below are just some of the known names of those shot:


 * Ivan Pylypovych Artsyk
 * Atnabunt Zakhar Ilyich
 * Babych Ivan Dmytrovych
 * Berezhnyi Sidir Petrovych
 * Biletskyi Ivan Omel'kovych
 * Bondarenko Averkiy Isakovych
 * Hrytsariuk Nestor Pavlovych
 * Dziachkivskyi Ivan Vikentiiovych
 * Dugelnyi Hrytsko Makarovych
 * Kovtunenko Ivan Naumovych
 * Marinych Petro Ivanovych
 * Myronenko Kuzma Davydovych
 * Petrenko Ivan Dionysiiovych
 * Shura-Bura Ivan Leontiiovych
 * Yasko Anastas Stefanovych

Commemorating the memory

 * In 1941, in the German-occupied Ukrainian lands, Ukrainian activists, among whom Melnyk's OUN members predominated, initiated the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the events. On 21 November, about forty thousand Ukrainians from different districts of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine gathered in Bazar to commemorate the execution of 359 soldiers of the Ukrainian National Army by the Russian Bolsheviks - "soldiers who refused to go over to the Bolsheviks and defended the ideals of a free Ukraine to the end".
 * The memorial to the Heroes of the Bazaar, erected in 2000 with donations from Ukrainians in the UK.


 * Heroiv Bazaru Street in Zhytomyr.

In cinematography
This battle is shown in the film The Secret Diary of Simon Petliura.

Literature

 * Oleg Shatailo. Heirs of Cossack glory. pp. 42