10 Facts About Semen Karetnyk

Semen Mykytovych Karetnyk was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and military commander in the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine.

Semen Karetnyk often replaced Nestor Makhno as supreme commander of the Insurgent Army in 1920.

Semen Karetnyk was born into extreme poverty, growing up a poor peasant in the small southern Ukrainian town of Huliaipole.

Semen Karetnyk worked as a hostler until the outbreak of World War I, upon which he was drafted into military service and worked his way through the ranks until he became an ensign.

On 4 December 1919, after a conference of the insurgent command in Katerynoslav, Semen Karetnyk participated in the arrest and execution of a number of local Bolsheviks that had participated in the Polonsky conspiracy.

On 5 January 1920, Semen Karetnyk entered into talks with the Red Army for a truce.

When talks between the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks resumed in August 1920, Dmitri Popov and Semen Karetnyk were two of the insurgent command staff that argued against the proposed alliance.

Semen Karetnyk subsequently returned to the front at Huliaipole, where he reestablished a general staff to coordinate the insurgent counteroffensive against the Russian Army in Tavria.

Semen Karetnyk's detachment was then ordered to take up camp at Saky, where they were subsequently surrounded by the 52nd Rifle Division, 3rd Cavalry Corps and 2nd Latvian Brigade, preventing the insurgents from leaving Crimea.

Frunze then ordered the transfer of insurgent units in Crimea to the Caucasian front, but he did not send a copy of this order to Semen Karetnyk and concentrated Red cavalry armies around the Crimean insurgents.