Nikifor Grigoriev

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Bolshevik propaganda poster depicting the struggle against ataman Grigoriev

Nikifor Grigoriev (commonly known as Ataman Grigoriev; also known as Matvey Grigoriev and Mykola Grigoriev, born Nychypir Servetnyk; circa 1885 – July 27, 1919) was a Ukrainian insurgent "Green Army" leader during the Russian Civil War.

Grigoriev was a Cossack officer in the Russian Imperial Army from the region of Kherson. During the First World War, Grigoriev was awarded Cross of St. George medal for bravery. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he supported the socialist Ukrainian Central Rada government and was promoted to the rank of colonel.

In April 1918 he supported the conservative coup led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky and later the revolt against him by Symon Petliura in November 1918. In early February 1919, Ataman Grigoriev once again switched sides and joined the Bolshevik Red Army against the Ukrainian nationalists and the Russian Whites. Grigoriev was appointed commander of the 6th Ukrainian Soviet Division and his guerrilla units based in and around Kherson participated in the Red Army Ukrainian campaign and the capture of Odessa in April 1919. The Bolsheviks subsequently protested the plunder of Odessa by Grigoriev's bands. In May, Grigoriev deserted the Red Army together with his unit and captured the city of Yelizavetgrad (later renamed Kirovohrad).

Grigoriev was known for his militant anti-Semitism and his men carried out many pogroms against local Jews in the Yelizavetgrad, Cherkasy and Kherson regions he controlled in May and June 1919. Grigoriev's uprising was supported by some Ukrainian peasants who were outraged by the Bolshevik policy of "war communism" (which included the forced confiscation of food from rural areas) and were also hostile to the White movement (seen as being backed by large land-owners whose estates were taken over by peasants after 1917).

In July 1919, after suffering heavy losses against both Voroshilov's and Dybenko's Red Army and Denikin's White Army troops, Grigoriev escaped to the areas controlled by the anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine of Nestor Makhno, and offered to join the anarchist forces. However Grigoriev was unacceptable to the anarchist "republic" which had no anti-semitic ideology. Grigoriev was arrested and court-martialed, with his death-sentence carried out by Halyna Kuzmenko (Makhno's wife) on July 27, 1919.