Red Ukrainian Galician Army

Red Ukrainian Galician Army (Chervona Ukrainska Halytska Armiia [ChUHA]). The official name of the Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) after its forced absorption into the Red Army in February 1920. By December 1919 the 20,000-strong UHA stationed in eastern Podilia and northwestern Kherson gubernia was reduced to 5,000 active men by a typhus epidemic. The army began negotiations with the advancing Red Army and on 12 February 1920 agreed to become an autonomous part of the Red Army, on the condition that it would fight on the Polish front. Gen Osyp Mykytka, the commander of the UHA, and Gen Gustav Ziritz, his chief of staff, were deported to Moscow and executed. Under Volodymyr Zatonsky's direction the Bolsheviks reorganized the UHA into three brigades and assigned them to different Soviet divisions. The commanders of the brigades were Lt Col Alfred Bizanz, Capt Yuliian Holovinsky, and Capt Osyp Stanimir. The Bolshevik interference and propaganda aroused much hostility among the rank and file. In mid-April 1920, shortly before the Polish invasion of Ukraine, the Second and Third brigades of the ChUHA deserted the Red Army. Soon afterward they were surrounded by the Poles, and surrendered. The Bolsheviks retaliated by executing many Galician soldiers and officers left in the rear. The First Brigade continued to fight as part of the Tarashcha Division against the invading Polish army. The Poles defeated it at Makhnivka and then let most of the soldiers return home but interned the officers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hirniak, Nykyfor. Ostannii akt trahediï Ukraïns’koï Halyts’koï Armiï (Perth Amboy, NJ 1960)

Andrii Makuch

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]