Student Battalion of Sich Riflemen

Student Battalion of Sich Riflemen (Студентський Курінь Січових Стрільців; Studentskyi Kurin Sichovykh Striltsiv). A military unit organized in Kyiv during January 1918 to defend Kyiv and the Central Rada against Bolshevik insurgents within the city and the approaching Red Army. It consisted of university and senior secondary-school students, with a total of about 550 volunteers. After only one week of military training one of its companies left Kyiv to reinforce the volunteers of the First Khmelnytsky Cadet School (see Officer schools of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic). Thirty of its soldiers died in the Battle of Kruty. The other units of the battalion remained in Kyiv to resist the Bolsheviks. Most of the battalion’s surviving soldiers later joined the Haidamaka Battalion of Slobidska Ukraine.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]