Germans occupy Nikolayev

On 17 March 1918 troops of the Central Powers entered Nikolayev, a port on the Southern Bug near its mouth on the Black Sea. The German war communiqué of 18 March reported briefly that “in southern Ukraine Nikolayev has been occupied”. Most studies say the city was taken by the Germans, some sources speak of German and Austro-Hungarian units, and a few give the date as 19 March. Four days earlier the Central Powers had entered Odessa, a little over a hundred kilometres to the west.

The forge of the Black Sea Fleet

Since the end of the 18th century Nikolayev had been the main centre of shipbuilding for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. During the war two large shipyards worked here: the former Naval works, from which the later Black Sea Shipyard grew, and Russud. They had built the Black Sea dreadnoughts, destroyers and submarines, and on the slipways and at the quays lay vessels left unfinished because of the revolution. The largest of them was the battleship Imperator Nikolai I, launched in October 1916 and renamed Demokratiya in 1917. The ship was roughly 60 per cent complete. The Germans took it over together with the city, but did nothing with it. Tens of thousands of workers were employed in the shipyards and factories, many of them sympathetic to the Bolsheviks.

Power changes hands

Soviet power had been proclaimed in Nikolayev in the second half of January 1918. When German and Austro-Hungarian troops approached from the west and Odessa fell, the Bolshevik authorities were unable to hold the city. The occupiers took the centre, began requisitioning food and carrying off factory equipment, and according to Russian studies closed both large shipyards on 19 March. Soon afterwards workers and Red Guards started a rising in the city which, according to various sources, lasted from 20 or 22 March to 25 March and was bloodily suppressed.

A port in the German zone

Nikolayev lay in the Kherson Governorate, which the Central Powers assigned to Austria-Hungary at the end of March. The Germans, however, kept Nikolayev itself for themselves, as they later did Sevastopol, and their troops were stationed here throughout the occupation. The port and the shipyards mattered for shipping on the Black Sea, and the mouths of the Bug and the Dnieper opened the way for exporting grain from southern Ukraine.

The Germans stayed in Nikolayev until the end of the war. After the armistice in November 1918 their garrison waited here for evacuation, and in the following months Entente troops entered the city.