Where the Iron Crosses Grow

Russian authority all but collapsed in the Crimea after the October Revolution, and local Tatars, although reduced to less than 20 percent of the population, saw in this chaos their chance to recover their independence. Noman Çelebicihan, a 33-year-old Tatar lawyer, proclaimed himself president of the Crimean People’s Republic on December 13, 1917. Using a few hundred ethnic Tatar troops demobilized from the Russian Army and some pro-White officers, Çelebicihan established a provisional government in Bakhchisaray. However, the Bolshevik leadership in St Petersburg had dispatched Vasily V. Romenets and Aleksei V. Mokrousov, both former sailors, to whip up revolutionary fervor in the Black Sea Fleet, and their mission was a complete success. On December 16, sailors from the destroyers Fidonosi and Gadzhibey raised the Red Flag and anarchy spread rapidly across the fleet. While Romenets established a Revolutionary Committee (RevKom) in the fleet, Mokrousov organized 2,500 anarchist sailors into the Black Sea Fleet Revolutionary Force and seized the port of Sevastopol in the name of the Bolsheviks. After receiving telegrammed instructions from the Bolshevik Central Committee in St Petersburg to “act with determination against the enemies of the people,” Mokrousov’s sailors arrested and executed 128 officers on December 28. Naturally, the Black Sea Fleet Revolutionary Committee refused to recognize Çelebicihan’s provisional government and on January 14, 1918 Mokrousov sent a large detachment of his Red Guard sailors northward to Simferopol, where they arrested and executed Çelebicihan. They also murdered about 200 of his supporters, bayoneting and clubbing them to death in the Simferopol train station. Thereafter, the Bolsheviks found it increasingly difficult to control the armed groups of sailors, who favored drunken anarchy over socialist rhetoric. In a three-day orgy of violence, which now extended to families of officers and other members of the bourgeoisie, Mokrousov’s gangs of armed sailors murdered between 600 and 700 people in Sevastopol during February 21–23, 1918.¹⁰ Economic activity in the Crimea virtually collapsed as sailors turned to brigandage and hostage taking.

Recognizing that the revolutionary sailors were out of control, Anton I. Slutsky, a professional Bolshevik revolutionary, was sent from St Petersburg to take charge of the Crimea, and his first order of business upon arrival was to institute a Red Terror to crush the rising tide of Tatar nationalism. Slutsky then established a ramshackle government in Simferopol and took charge of the 3rd Soviet Army, which numbered fewer than 5,000 soldiers and sailors. Yet the Bolsheviks had little effective control over the Crimea, and as Professor Peter Kenez described: “The Bolshevik regime [in the Crimea], which lasted for three months, was remarkable only for its senseless cruelty. No one could control the looting and sadism of the sailors.”¹¹

There was one force that could control the anarchy-loving Black Sea Fleet sailors. Most of the Russian Army was demobilized after the Germans agreed to a temporary armistice in December 1917, but when the Bolsheviks withdrew from peace talks at Brest-Litovsk on February 10, 1918, the Germans were quick to take advantage of Russia’s helplessness. Dubbed Operation Faustschlag (Fist Punch), the Germans advanced into Ukraine virtually unopposed on February 18, 1918 and soon reached Kiev. With German encouragement, Ukrainian nationalists formed an independent government and the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR). Although the Bolsheviks quickly returned to the negotiating table at Brest-Litovsk, the Germans forced them into signing away their rights to Ukraine and the Crimea, as well as the Black Sea Fleet. On March 30, 1918, the German government announced that it did not regard the Crimea as part of Ukraine. Privately, a number of senior German military leaders such as Erich Ludendorff wanted to acquire the Crimea as a permanent German colony in the east. However, Ukraine also wanted to seize control of the Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet.