How the Black Sea Fleet chose flooding over captivity

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On April 30, 1918, on the eve of the seizure of Sevastopol by the troops of Germany and the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), Russian sailors took the main part of the Black Sea Fleet from the Crimean Peninsula to Novorossiysk, and a few weeks later they were flooded so as not to leave the enemy.

Kiev's attempts to establish control over the ships remaining in Sevastopol are interpreted by the authorities of modern Ukraine as "the creation of the republic's naval forces." However, already at the beginning of May 1918, the German flag was raised over the ships.

Little Russian reserve

In the late 18th - early 19th centuries, the authorities of the Russian Empire facilitated the resettlement of peasants from Little Russia to the territories annexed by Catherine II in the Northern Black Sea region. However, few immigrants from Little Russia got to Crimea: according to the results of the 1897 census, on the territory of the peninsula, only 11% of residents believed that they spoke Little Russian.

Therefore, when in 1917, against the backdrop of revolutionary events in Kiev, the creation of a Ukrainian autonomy within the Russian Republic was announced, the Ukrainizers had no special claims to Taurida. Ukrainian actions, however, took place in Russian Sevastopol: after the declaration of the First World War, peasants living in the Little Russian provinces were massively called up to the fleet.

“On April 9, in Sevastopol, at the Truzzi circus, a meeting of 5 thousand Ukrainians, mainly sailors, took place, at which the statute of the Black Sea Ukrainian community in Sevastopol was discussed. Lashchenko was elected chairman of the community, said Valery Krestyannikov, a historian and writer, ex-director of the Sevastopol State Archive, to RT.

In May 1917, the Ukrainian military congress held in Kiev demanded that the Provisional Government formalize the autonomy of Ukraine as part of Russia, and the Black Sea Fleet “Ukrainize” by replenishing it with personnel from the territory of the former Little Russian provinces. Kiev also sent nationalist agitators aboard the ships, carrying out the ideological indoctrination of illiterate people from the peasantry.

And it had some effect at first. In the fall of 1917, Ukrainian organizations arose on several ships of the fleet and Ukrainian flags were raised. However, this did not affect the status of Crimea and Sevastopol, where there were very few immigrants from Little Russia among the local population. Even when the Kiev Central Rada proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) within Russia in November 1917, it did not lay claim to Crimea.

The Sevastopol Council condemned attempts to fly Ukrainian flags over ships, calling it incitement to hatred and a blow to revolutionary democracy. Against the background of the revolution in Petrograd, Kiev, although officially still did not consider Crimea as its own, began to interfere more and more actively in the affairs of the fleet, provoking Ukrainian sailors to political actions and seeking control over individual ships.

However, on December 3, by the decision of the Black Sea naval crew, all ships of the fleet, with the exception of one destroyer, lowered the Andreev and Ukrainian flags, raising red flags instead. And when an open conflict began between the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR and the Central Council, most of the fleet personnel condemned Kiev's actions.

In late 1917 - early 1918, the Rada declared the Black Sea Fleet to be the UPR fleet and refused to pay monetary compensation to the families of servicemen who supported the Bolsheviks. However, the power of the Central Rada by this time had seriously weakened, since in a significant part of the territories to which it claimed, the people had already recognized the power of the Soviets.

In December - January, Soviet power was established on the Crimean peninsula. The crews of all ships of the Black Sea Fleet, including those previously considered Ukrainianized, openly opposed the Central Rada. And when the legislature on January 24, 1918 announced the independence of the UPR and tried to re-subordinate the fleet to itself, the Sevastopol Council and Centroflot called the Rada an enemy of the Ukrainian and Russian working people, directly refusing to fulfill its demands.

In early February, the UPR authorities staged mass executions of civilians in Kiev and then fled the city.

Puppets of Germany

In February 1918, the fugitive UPR government turned to Germany and Austria-Hungary for support, inviting them to occupy Ukraine. In addition, representatives of the UPR set up the Ukrainians at the talks in Brest-Litovsk, appearing there as a separate delegation, although representatives of Ukraine were part of the Soviet delegation. As a result, Germany declared the UPR an independent state.

Under pressure from the Germans, the RSFSR, in exchange for peace, pledged to recognize the UPR, effectively ceding Ukraine to Germany. However, as it soon turned out, the Germans did not even think to fulfill their obligations. In March 1918, they crossed the previously established borders of the UPR, annexed the Odessa and Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Soviet republics by force, and in April launched an attack on Crimea and mainland Russia. The armed forces of the UPR, completely controlled by Germany, joined the Germans.

The German group in the Crimean direction was led by General Robert von Kosh. Subordinate to him was a former intelligence officer of the Russian Imperial Army, and at that time the commander of a separate corps of the UNR army, Pyotr Bolbochan, a Romanian by nationality, whose units operated in the first echelon.

On April 22, Dzhankoy fell under the attacks of the invaders, on the 24th - Simferopol and Bakhchisarai. But two days later, the Germans expelled the Ukrainian troops that were subordinate to them from Crimea, and the UPR officially announced that it did not claim the peninsula and considered it a foreign territory. From that moment on, German troops operated in Taurida without their satellites.

The enemy does not surrender

The Sevastopol command of the fleet did not have reliable information about what was happening in the steppe part of the Crimea. There were rumors that they managed to stop the Germans, and no one began to withdraw the ships from Sevastopol. Therefore, on April 29, the ships were under the threat of capture by German troops. Admiral Mikhail Sablin assumed command of the fleet. To avoid a seizure by force, the idea arose to raise the flags of the UPR, which was an ally of Germany, over the ships.

However, the crews of some ships refused to hang these banners even formally, and on the night of April 29-30, they took the ships out to sea, heading for Novorossiysk.

“On the 30th, when, after negotiations between the delegation of the fleet and the German command, the last illusions that the fleet would be transferred to the Ukrainian People's Republic disappeared, Sablin, under fire from German guns, brought out the remaining part of the fleet in Sevastopol and transferred it to Novorossiysk under the Andreevsky flag,” he told RT Peasantnikov.

We got to Novorossiysk, though not all of them. The destroyer "Wrath" was knocked out by the Germans, and the destroyer "Zavetny" was sunk by the crew right in the port.

On the ships that remained in the Sevastopol bays, mostly old or out of order, on May 3, Ukrainian flags were lowered, which had hung for four days, and German ones were raised.

In Kiev, these events today are interpreted as "the creation of the Ukrainian fleet."

The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko wrote on his Twitter page: “On April 29, 1918, a blue and yellow flag flew over most of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. The proclamation of the creation of the Ukrainian Navy finally recorded the victory of the Ukrainian movement in the fleet, and the actions of the Ukrainian army led to the fall of the Bolshevik regime in Crimea."

However, in reality, the events in Sevastopol in the spring of 1918 developed according to a different scenario.

On May 1-2, 1918, the main forces of the Black Sea Fleet were concentrated in Novorossiysk. At the same time, the Germans continued to rush to the east and could soon take the city, and there was nowhere to retreat beyond Novorossiysk. Moreover, an acute problem arose with the supply of fuel, ammunition and provisions to the ships.

On May 24, Vladimir Lenin decided to flood the fleet. Negotiations began between Moscow and the naval sailors, who did not want to carry out the order at first, which dragged on for almost a month.

As a result, on June 17, several ships moved back to Sevastopol. The sailors who remained in Novorossiysk sent them a signal: "To the ships going to Sevastopol: shame on the traitors to Russia!" In the Crimea, the Germans immediately raised German flags over the arriving ships, and the crews were taken prisoner.

Further events unfolded, which in literature are often called the Black Sea Tsushima.

On June 18-19, the sailors sank the ships remaining in Novorossiysk in the Tsemesskaya Bay. When the ships sank, they had a signal on their masts: "I am dying, but I am not surrendering!" Many of the residents of Novorossiysk who watched what was happening did not hide their tears.

The last ship of the squadron - the destroyer "Kerch" - was sunk near Tuapse, having previously sent a radiogram: “Everyone, everyone, everyone. He died, destroying part of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which preferred death to the shameful surrender of Germany. Destroyer "Kerch".