THE POGROMS IN UKRAINE, 1918-19

The signing of the armistice formally ending World War I did not end the
bloodbath in Ukraine, which continued to be ravaged by the Civil War
between the Soviet regime and the ‘Whites', by Polish attempts to seize
the former Austrian province of Galicia, and by Ukraine's campaign to
maintain its independence from both Poland and the USSR. Organized
armies, partisan units, and peasant gangs — with political objectives
that were at times opposing and at times overlapping — devastated
the land. As is often the case, unarmed civilians bore the brunt of
the suffering. These military forces — the Ukrainian National Army
headed by Symon Vasylyovych Petliura,1
the Tsarist Volunteer Army2
of Anton Ivanovich Denikin,3
the Army of the Second Polish Republic,
the gangs of such leaders as Nestor Makhno4
and Nikifor Grigoriev,5
and the Bolshevik Army — were guilty of specifically targeting Jewish
communities.
[Cambridge: 2019]

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