(The ‘Kiev is Russia’
leitmotiv can also be found in the Russia section and in a number of
places elsewhere. Its obvious colossal importance amply justifies its repeated
reoccurrence.)
Having told the story of Comrade
Artem in the previous entry, one particular episode of his colorful life is
of very special significance in the light of fairly recent events, and now it
becomes the focus of this entry.
For a very long time, it
seems, I used to be the only one who ever wrote about the historical existence
of the short-lived Donets-Krivorog Republic, headed by my grandfather
Artem. It was only fairly recently that the first acknowledgment of its
existence has taken its rightful place in the Internet’s Wikipedia, although
not at all in a sufficiently adequate form. Ironically, the English-language
version of the said article is grotesquely deficient and infinitely inferior to
the Russian-language version, even though the latter too, leaves too much to be
desired.
The Republic was created
mainly by the efforts of Artem, and was headed by him. It was created in late
1917, but existed formally from February 11, 1918, until February 17, 1919,
when it was abolished. (Some of this time, though, large parts of it were under
German occupation.) It began as an entity totally independent from the Ukraine,
emphatically declaring its total Russianness and offering to become a part of
the Russian Federation, but eventually, on Lenin’s fierce insistence, but with
great reluctance on the part of Artem and his patriotic Russian comrades, was
conditionally incorporated as an autonomy into Ukrainian Soviet Republic until
its inevitable disintegration in 1919.
The territory of this
republic was huge, despite its rather limiting appellation. It included
virtually all Eastern Ukraine with its capital in Kharkov. The other large
cities in it were Lugansk, Yekaterinoslav, Donetsk, Krivoy Rog, etc. Crimea was
obviously part of Russia proper and wasn’t incorporated into Artem’s Republic.
After the abolition of
the Republic, it was broken into several Governments, with Artem keeping the
post of the Head of the Government of Donbas, and also receiving the post of
Vice President of all Ukraine. At the same time, he was invited to Moscow in
1920, where he got several important national posts, including that of the Head
of the Moscow Communist Party Committee…
The following narrative
is adapted from my book Stalin, and Other Family. The last paragraph is
obviously more current, although clearly pre-Yanukovich, and in an important
aspect it has a more lasting effect than the rather premature jubilation over
the recent election of Victor Yanukovich as President of Ukraine may offer to a
cautious observer…
At the head of a
snowballing army of faithfuls, by the early 1918 Artem established himself as
the popular dictator of the richest territory in the Former Russian Empire. He
made his capital in the city of Kharkov, and his domain sprawled South to the
Sea of Azov, stretching from Lugansk in the East to Krivoy Rog in the West,
covering the whole Donbass Coal Basin, which alone supplied over three quarters
of all Russian coal.
With Lenin and the
Bolsheviks having taken power in St. Petersburg and Moscow, in late 1917, the
great Russian Empire had officially collapsed. Artem’s territory
administratively used to be part of Ukraine, and now was no longer under
Russia’s jurisdiction. Ukrainian nationalists, known as the Central Rada,
claimed Eastern Ukraine for themselves, but Artem only laughed in the face of
their emissaries. The population of his domain was overwhelmingly Russian, and
it was inconceivable for any ethnic Russian to recognize the authority of the
Rada. They refused to consider themselves connected to Ukraine, and proclaimed
the land an independent Donets-Krivorog Republic. The other option was to become a constituent part of Soviet Russia,
but there was no enthusiasm about it in Moscow.
Artem had no intention of
burning his bridges with Lenin, but Lenin was already unhappy, and preferred to
ignore the existence of a separate Donets-Krivorog Republic in official
communications. In Lenin’s grand scheme of things, the former Russian Empire,
over which he had no control anyway, had to be dissolved for now, so that it
could be reconstituted again, at a more appropriate time, as a Union of Soviet
Republics. For this reason, he needed Ukraine intact. Even if Artem’s
predominantly Russian Republic in Eastern Ukraine would surely be willing to
join the new Soviet Union, how on earth were they supposed to get back Kiev and Western
Ukraine, where the Russian population was not significant enough to fight off
Ukrainian separatism?
Lenin’s candid
communication with Artem during this period leaves no doubt about the explosive
character of the issue involved: Lenin was so vehemently opposed to Russian
separatism in Ukraine, just because he was determined to stifle Ukrainian
separatism in the future Greater Russia!!!
(This is the end of Part
I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)
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