The material is a publication of an annotated excerpt from the memoirs of General Pyotr Semyonovich Makhrov about the events of the Civil War in Ukraine from the autumn of 1918 to the winter of 1919. The manuscript of Makhrov’s memoirs is kept in the Bakhmetev archive of Columbia University in the USA. This valuable testimony of an informed contemporary of crucial historical events is an important source on the history of the First World War, the Civil War in Russia and Ukraine, and Russian mili- tary emigration, and covers the period from the late nineteenth century to the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Makhrov was an offi cer of the Russian army, a graduate of the Nicholas General Staff Academy, a man of liberal views, and brilliantly wielded a pen. In 1918, Makhrov lived in Ukraine in Poltava and was an eyewitness to a series of sig- nifi cant events, including several changes of power. The memoir covers in detail the life of Ukraine under Hetman Pavlo P. Skoropadsky, the German occupation, the anti-Hetman uprising, the fall of the Hetmanate, the rampant ataman, and the establishment of the power of the Directory of Ukrainian People’s Republic in late 1918. The memoirs represent the view of a military man who was critical of the new Ukrainian state and was focused on the ideology of the White movement. Much attention is paid to the be- haviour of offi cers in the varied conditions of independent Ukraine and in its collapse.
In Ukraine under Hetman summer — autumn 1918