Germans occupy Odessa

On the afternoon of 13 March 1918 the troops of the Central Powers occupied Odessa, the largest port on the Black Sea and one of the largest cities of the former Russian Empire. According to the Vienna communiqué, German battalions were approaching from the west, while the advance guard of an Austro-Hungarian division under Major-General Alfred von Zeidler broke into the city through the goods station. The German communiqué of 14 March presented it the other way round: Odessa had been taken by the Germans, who entered the city after fighting “bands” in Moldavanka, and the Austrians had come after them. The two powers were racing for the city and each wanted to be there first.

The Odessa Soviet Republic

Since January power in Odessa had been held by Rumcherod, the executive committee of the soviets of the Romanian Front, the Black Sea Fleet and Odessa. After street fighting with the troops of the Central Rada in the second half of January, at the turn of January and February it proclaimed the Odessa Soviet Republic, which recognised the authority of Lenin’s government. Its armed forces were commanded by Mikhail Muravyov, who had earlier taken Kiev. Terror raged in the city. Sailors held arrested officers on warships, where many were murdered, and according to some Russian researchers as many as 2,000 people were killed in Odessa without trial.

The republic was also waging its own war with Romania over Bessarabia. At the end of February Muravyov’s troops won several victories on the Dniester, and on 5 and 9 March Romania and the Soviet authorities signed a protocol in which the Romanians promised to withdraw from Bessarabia. The real threat, however, was approaching from the north-west. From 27–28 February Austro-Hungarian troops had been entering Podolia, mainly from the Second Army of Field Marshal Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli. At the beginning of March they took the railway junction at Zhmerynka and set off by rail towards Odessa. At the same time German units moved out of Romania through Brăila, Galați and Bendery, with the consent of the government in Iași, which a few days earlier had accepted preliminary peace terms.

The Bolsheviks flee

The Bolsheviks had nothing with which to defend the city. After defeats at the stations of Birzula and Slobidka, their troops fell back to the very outskirts of Odessa. Muravyov is said to have complained that out of a city of 120,000 workers only five hundred Red Army men had come forward to defend it, and the regular units refused to fight. The Odessa soviet decided not to defend the city. The republic’s authorities, Rumcherod and some of the troops sailed to Sevastopol on the battleships Sinop and Rostislav and the cruiser Almaz, taking archives, money and military equipment with them. On 13 March the Odessa Soviet Republic ceased to exist.

The partition of Ukraine

The race for Odessa was a symptom of a wider dispute. Germany and Austria-Hungary had entered Ukraine as allies of the Central Rada, but they had no joint command and no agreed zones. Each power wanted to occupy as much fertile land as possible, and the ports through which Ukrainian grain was to flow. The dispute was settled only at the end of March. Under an agreement between the two supreme commands, the Austro-Hungarian zone took in the governorates of Podolia, Kherson and Yekaterinoslav and the south-western part of Volhynia, and the German zone the remaining governorates, including Kiev, Poltava, Kharkov and Taurida. On the Black Sea the Austrians kept Odessa and Kherson, and the Germans Nikolaev and Sevastopol. The railways and shipping throughout Ukraine came under German control.

Odessa became the headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian army in Ukraine. The occupation lasted until the end of 1918. After the defeat of the Central Powers the troops of the Ukrainian Directorate entered the city, followed by Entente troops.