Additional information on Kedrowsky

An interesting historical footnote is brought out in Volodymyr Kedrowsky's memoirs of 1917. While mustering Ukrainians and Russians who were untainted by communism to a fight against the Germans and Austrians at the Ukrainian border, and being en route from Kyiv to a meeting of the Army Council, he recognized Leon Trotsky and Feliks Dzerzhinsky (first organizer of the Soviet Cheka, forerunner to the OGPU, NKVD and KGB) as prisoners of the Ukrainian troops.

As he recalled, the soldiers had these two men in their power and were going to shoot them. He said to them "no, soldiers, do not do this, we have enough army to fight them." Three weeks later, Trotsky became Soviet minister of war and later secretary of war. Had Kedrowsky not interfered, what would have been the history of the Russian Revolution?

Trotsky sent a corps into Ukraine that burned down 17 villages. This action was taken after the people of Ukraine refused to become Communist. Yet, Trotsky was born in the same Kherson district as Kedrowsky and they had attended the same school.

The Red Terror introduced by Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka in Ukraine in the years 1918-1922 was notorious for its mass killings, hostage executions, and sadistic torture. What misery might have been spared the Ukrainian people will never be known. Kedrowsky continued to second guess himself about this action for the rest of his life.

Kedrowsky's first wife had been threatened with execution in 1919 when Soviet authorities learned of her identity. The ordeal of standing with her face to the wall until peasants eventually overpowered the guards and released her, and then subsequently learning of the starvation of her four sons shattered her nerves. She died in New York in 1932 without ever fully regaining her health.

Kedrowsky's two younger brothers were executed for anti-Communist work. His mother died of shock after the death of the youngest. After being in the United States for several years, an immigrant who knew the family informed Kedrowsky of his other brother's execution. Although he had been living under an assumed name, someone had identified him as a Kedrowsky.

The blue and gold flag flown at the Second All-Ukrainian Military Committee Congress, held in Kyiv on June 18-23, 1917, was flown by Ambassador Kedrowsky at the Embassy in Riga in 1919, 1920 and 1921. He left this flag in the care of his only surviving son, George.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 6, 2003, No. 14, Vol. LXXI

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