Front-Line Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

created in early July 1919 to lead underground party organizations and the rebel struggle of the workers on Ukrainian territory occupied by the White Guard troops of General Denikin.

The Front-Line Bureau was headed by S. V. Kosior, secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine. The bureau did not have a permanent location but was located for a time in Briansk and Serpukhov. It selected Communists for work in territory seized by the enemy and provided funds and literature for underground committees and assisted them in the organization and arming of partisan detachments. The bureau sent several hundred party workers in the enemy’s rear, including I. A. Amosov, M. I. Arsenichev, G. A. Kolos, I. E. Klimenko, P. A. Kurochkin, A. V. Mokrousov, E. F. Mironov, N. M. Nikitin-Makarov, A. M. Pankratova, P. F. Slin’ko, E. I. Sokolovskaia, and Mikhail Chernyi. The bureau also directed the party underground in the Crimea, on the instructions of the CC of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine.

The Front-Line Bureau helped party organizations to publish underground newspapers and leaflets, which was of enormous significance in informing the workers and peasants about the internal situation in the Soviet Republic and about the decrees and measures of the Soviet authorities. The activity of underground party organizations promoted the development of a mass partisan movement throughout the Ukraine in the autumn of 1919. “The Ukraine is seething with revolt against Denikin,” observed V. I. Lenin (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th edition, vol. 40, p. 41). The Front-Line Bureau created a military revolutionary council and a general staff of insurgent troops of the Left:bank Ukraine and of the southeastern part of the Right-bank Ukraine in order to improve the military operational leadership of the partisan movement. At the end of August 1919 the military department of the CC of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the Ukraine became a section of the Front-Line Bureau. The Front-Line Bureau was abolished in December 1919 after the restoration of Soviet power in the Ukraine.