Nikifor Grigoriev - Allying With Bolsheviks

Allying With Bolsheviks

After the withdrawal of the Ukrainian forces out of Kiev, Otaman Grigoriev continued his negotiations with the Bolsheviks on February 18, 1919. Grigoriev together with his brigade became now part of the Red Army 1st Trans-Dnieper Riflemen Division (later expanded to the 6th Ukrainian Rifle Division), while Nestor Makhno led his troops as another brigade of that division and Pavel Dybenko who commanded the division was in charge of another brigade. He was still closely connected with the Socialist-Revolutionaries who had great influence over the rural population of the country. During that time he attacked the Askania-Nova preserve and started food requisitioning in the name of Revolution. The head of government of the Soviet Ukraine Christian Rakovsky sent Grigoriev a note of protest in that regard. In short time, however, April 1919 the preserve would be nationalized. In March 1919 he took Kherson where 4,000 Greek POWs were executed afterward. Later Grigoriev managed to take Mykolaiv and after a two-weeks battle on April 8 he occupied Odessa forcing the Greek-French forces to withdraw. At first he was appointed the commandant of the city, but Bolsheviks subsequently protested the plunder of Odessa by Grigoriev's bands. In May, Grigoriev deserted the Red Army after being ordered to assault into the Romanian territories in order to provide military support for the Soviet Hungary and with his units captured the city of Yelisavetgrad (modern Kirovohrad).

Grigoriev was known for his militant anti-Semitism and his men carried out many pogroms against local Jews in the Yelisavetgrad, Cherkasy and Kherson regions, which he controlled in May and June 1919. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica,

The ataman Grigoryev, who in May 1919 seceded from the Red Army with his men, was responsible for pogroms in 40 communities and the deaths of about 6,000 Jews in the summer of 1919.

Grigoriev's uprising was supported by some Ukrainian peasants who were outraged by the Bolshevik policy of "war communism" (including rural confiscation of food), and were also hostile to the White movement that was backed by land-owners.