1. Viktor Fedorovych Bilash was a Ukrainian military commander who was the Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine under Nestor Makhno during the Russian Civil War.
15 Facts About Viktor Bilash
1. 2.
Viktor Bilash was born in the small Pryazovian town of Novospasivka, where he worked as a train driver during his youth.
3.
In December 1918, Viktor Bilash first arrived in the insurgent capital of Huliaipole, where he was immediately met with "drunk machine-gunners riding in a tachanka along the main street".
4.
Viktor Bilash formed the 6,200 insurgents into 5 regiments, each of which was composed of 3 battalions, which were in turn composed of 3 companies, which were in turn composed of three platoons.
5.
Viktor Bilash then transferred 2,500 of the insurgents to Tsarekostyantynivka and selected Simeon Pravda as his deputy, although he would not end up taking this post.
6.
Shortly before Lev Kamenev arrived in Huliaipole on a state visit in May 1919, Nestor Makhno cautioned Viktor Bilash to be "ready for anything", as he was worried the Bolsheviks may pull some "dirty tricks".
7.
Viktor Bilash reported that around 10,000 White troops had been killed during the battle of Peregonovka, while 5,000 more were taken as prisoners of war afterwards and their captured horses were redistributed to the local peasantry.
8.
The insurgents rapidly captured numerous cities throughout southern Ukraine, including Kryvyi Rih, Nikopol and Oleksandrivsk, where Viktor Bilash was elected to the VRS by a Regional Congress.
9.
Viktor Bilash himself paused in several places along the way, in order to raise autonomous partisan units to fight the White movement, causing the peasant insurrection to spread "like wildfire".
10.
Viktor Bilash estimated that, around this time, the Insurgent Army's ranks numbered 250,000 people.
11.
Viktor Bilash reported that some insurgents formed a temporary truce with the Ukrainian People's Army during this period, handing over surplus weapons to them in the regions of Chernihiv, Kherson, Kyiv and Poltava.
12.
Viktor Bilash expressed a desire to move their operations to Anatolia, where the Turkish National Movement's war of independence against the Entente was ongoing, but nothing came of this proposal.
13.
Some survivors managed to flee to Romania or Poland, while a wounded Viktor Bilash was himself captured by the Cheka and moved to a prison in Kharkiv, where he wrote his memoirs about the Makhnovshchina.
14.
Viktor Bilash's sentence was commuted and instead he was banished to Krasnodar, where he took up work as a mechanic in a Hunters' Union workshop.
15.
On 29 April 1976, Viktor Bilash was rehabilitated due to "insufficient evidence" against him.