Mychajlo Omelyanowytsch-Pavlenko

Mychajlo Omelyanowytsch-Pavlenko

Mykhaylo Wolodymyrowytsch Omeljanowytsch-Pavlenko ( Ukrainian Михайло Володимирович Омелянович-Павленко ; Russian Михаил Владимирович Омельянович-Павленко Mikhail Vladimirovich Omeljanowitsch-Pavlenko , * 8. December 1878 in Tbilisi , Government Tbilisi , Russian Empire ; † 29. May 1952 in Paris ) was an officer of the Imperial Russian Army , Lieutenant General of the Ukrainian People's Republic and during World War II Cossack Hetman in the service of the German Wehrmacht .

Life

Pavlenko was born in 1878 in the family of a Russian general who came from the nobility of the Bessarabia province .

Russian army service

He entered Russian military service on August 31, 1897, graduated from the Siberian Cadet Corps (1898), the Pavlovsk Military School (1900) and the Officer's Artillery School (1914). After graduating from military school, he enrolled in the Volynsk Bodyguard Regiment, which was garrisoned in Warsaw. In August 1900 he was made a lieutenant and from 1904 a lieutenant of the guard. In 1904/05 he took part in the Modlin Infantry Regiment No. 58 in the Russo-Japanese War . He was a participant in the battles of Liaoyang , Sandepu and Mukden and in the battle of Sipingai. For his participation in the war he was awarded the Order of St. Anna 3rd Class (1905); awarded the Order of St. Stanislaw 3rd Class with Swords (1905) and the Order of Anna with Swords. After the war he continued to serve in the Volynsk Life Guard Regiment, from 1906 as head of the training platoon and from 1908 as head of personnel for this unit.

In 1912 he changed his surname Pavlenko to Omelyanovytsch-Pavlenko in memory of his origins as a Cossack. On August 9, 1912 he was appointed captain and in 1913 he became the commander of the 6th Company of the Volynsk Life Guard Regiment, at the head of which he took part in the First World War . In October 1914 he was honored during the Battle of the Vistula for fighting in the Góra Kalwaria area and was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd class with swords. On November 1, 1914, during the fighting for Lodz and Toruń , he was seriously injured in the shoulder in a bayonet attack, after which his right arm was immobile for a long time. In 1916 he received the Order of St. George 3rd class for this assignment near the village of Chelmno . After treatment in the hospital, he was appointed chief of the headquarters of the 2nd Guard Corps and promoted to colonel . He had been suffering from typhus since the spring of 1916 and after his recovery in July was declared unsuitable for deployment to the front. In November 1916 he was entrusted with the supervision of the NCOs of the Petrograd garrison and was then appointed head of the 2nd Odessa Flag School.

Ukrainian and Polish commanders

After the February Revolution he joined the Ukrainian national movement and on April 26, 1917 was appointed leader of the Odessa Military Council, which set up Ukrainian military units from reserve infantry regiments in the city. From July to August 1917 he briefly commanded the Grenadier Regiment of the Life Guard. He refused to take part in hostilities and allowed the regiment to return to his garrison. In August 1917 he became chief of the garrison in Yekaterinoslav and in January 1918 he was appointed military commissar of the Central Council of the Odessa Military District. From March 1918 he was a member of the Demobilization Commission on the Romanian front. His activities led to his appointment as military commissioner of the Central Council on the Romanian border. In the spring of 1918 he was a member of the commission for the formation of the Ukrainian army. In the summer of 1918 he was appointed commander of the 11th Guardsmen on foot in Poltava in the army of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyj . On October 7, 1918, he was appointed major general. At the end of 1918, he joined the Hetman uprising and was at the headquarters of the troops of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR). From December 10, 1918, he was in command of the Western Ukrainian Armed Forces in Galicia and reorganized rearward communications. But he achieved no military success and was replaced by Oleksandr Hrekow . From June 9, 1919 he served again in the headquarters of the UNR Army. As a former guard officer and knight of St. George, he was instructed to conduct peace negotiations with the armed forces in southern Russia, but these failed. The White Guards did not want to recognize the independence of the UNR and spoke out in favor of a united and indivisible Russia. From September 8, 1919, he was in command of the Zaporizhia division of the troops of the Ukrainian People's Republic. On December 5, 1919, threatened by the Red Forces , he was appointed military commander of the Ukrainian People's Republic until July 1921. He led the Ukrainian cavalry during the “First Winter Campaign” in the hinterland of the fighting red and white troops. Under the command of General Omelyanovych-Pavlenko there were a total of 6,400 bayonets and sabers, 14 cannons and 144 machine guns. On May 6, 1920, his troops broke through the front in the Jampol region and united with the Ukrainian 3rd Division, which fought against the Red Army in the Soviet-Polish War as part of the Polish 6th Army . For the successful leadership of the troops in the "winter campaign" he was promoted to lieutenant general. From February 10 to July 11, 1921, he was also the Minister of War of the UNR government in Poland. In 1921 he came into conflict with the ataman Symon Petlyura , which led to the resignation of Omelyanovych-Pavlenko from all posts. On November 7, 1921, however, by order of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Vyacheslav Prokopovich , he was dismissed from the office of Minister of War and as commander of the UNR Army. On October 20, 1921, he had to leave Poland under pressure from Soviet Russia. He then lived in exile in Czechoslovakia , where he headed the Union of Ukrainian Veterans Organizations.

In the Wehrmacht

During the Second World War in 1942 he became chief (hetman) of the Ukrainian free Cossacks and was involved in the formation of Ukrainian military units for the German Wehrmacht. However, the Germans did not trust the Ukrainian leaders and took the "Cossack" units into the security battalions, thereby depriving them of their previous independence. Mykhajlos younger brother - Ivan Omeljanowytsch-Pawlenko (1881–1962) was a colonel in the Russian army and later a general in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, during the war he was appointed commander of the German-Ukrainian 109th Security Battalion. Since 1944 Omeljanowytsch-Pawlenko lived in Germany. In 1946 the Ukrainian National Committee appointed him head of the Supreme Military Council. From 1947 to 1948 he was Minister in exile of Military Affairs of the Government of the UNR, during which time he was appointed Colonel-General conveyed. In 1950 he emigrated to France and settled in Paris. He wrote his memoirs, which were published in full under the Ukrainian name "Спогади командарма 1917-1920" in 2007 in Kiev .

Web links

Commons : Mychajlo Omeljanowytsch-Pavlenko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• http://www.grwar.ru/persons/persons.html?id=1847