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1917-1918 - Ukrainian Republic
National Ukrainian Republic
Ukrainian People's Republic

On February 23, 1917, the revolution broke out in Petrohrad (the empire capital St. Petersburg was renamed during the Russian-German war of 1914). Tens of thousands of soldiers from the local garnisson joined workers on the third day of conflict. Two authorities appeared in the evening of February 27, which played an essential part in the following events: Petrohrad council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and the Provisional Committee of the State Duma (Parliament). On March 2, Tsar Mykola II abdicated and the Duma Committee, in agreement with the Petrohrad Council constituated the executive organ of new power: the Provisional Government. It had to prepare democratic elections to Constituent Assembly which had to determine the form of the state system and to adopt Constitution.

Representative authorities in provinces came to civil organizations where representatives of trade-industrial circles and administrative bureaucracy occupied leading positions. As to their party belonging, almost all of them were constitutional democrats (cadets). A Council of United Public Organizations appeared on March 4 in Kyiv. The commissars of the Provisional Government were given the executive power, which had earlier belonged to tsarist governors and district police officers. Heads of province and district land administrations became such commissars. Elected committees began functioning in volosts instead of the officers.

The society of Ukrainian Progressionists (organized by M. Hrushevskyi, S. Yefremov, and E. Chykalenko in 1908 as the inter-party political block), having left the underground, used the recommendation of the Provisional Government to create the councils of united public organizations in provinces to form the All-Ukrainian Council. The Ukrainian Tsentralna Rada (Central Council) also appeared in Kyiv on March 4 - simultaneously with the Council of United Public Organizations. This representative democratic body (UTR) appeared on the wave of revolutionary events to head the national-liberation movement in all Ukrainian provinces. It included the representatives of the Society of Ukrainian Progressionists, Orthodox clergymen, progressive Ukrainian social democrats, and heads of cooperative culture-educational, military, students' and scientific organizations, societies and communities. Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, the recognized leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, was still in exile when elected as Head of the Tsentralna Rada.

The Organization of the Workers' Council began in Ukrainian industrial centers and that of soldiers' councils in harnisons and in the front immediately after overthrowing the monarchy. The workers' councils were established in Kharkiv, Kyiv, Katerynoslav and Kremenchuk. The councils were non-party organizations which had no historical analogues. Their first appearance during the revolution of 1905-1907, and again in 1917 was evidence of the workers' distrust of any state institution. The call for expropriation of the tools of production was most popular in these councils. By the middle of 1917, 252 councils had been created in 9 Ukrainian provinces - including 180 in Donbas.

Socialist parties of the socialist-revolutionaries (SRs) and social democrats (the Menshevists' part), who influenced the workers' and soldiers' councils during the first months of the revolution, wanted to create the democratic parliamentary republic. They had no intention of proclaiming the councils under their control or for the state organs to take the political power. This is why they supported the legitimate Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks' division of social democrats (after their chief V. Lenin came back from emigration in April 1917) added this motto to their armory: "All power to the Soviets". So, the Bolshviks stood in the way of democratic orientation of the revolutionary process. The acquisition of control over the councils (Soviets) and the announcement of the Soviet Republic meant the establishment of a political dictatorship of the Bolshevik party. The slogan of nationalization of the production tools proved to be equivalent to establishing their economic dictatorship.

The number of Bolsheviks in Ukrainian provinces grew quickly from 2 thousand before the revolution, to 10 thousand by the end in April 1917. Even as the minority in the councils, they began organizing the army for the civil war they foresaw. They organized workers' squadrons, militia, the red-guards detachments. The resistance of councils under the control of mensheviks and SRs and the counteractions of the local authorities of Provisional Government, hindered this work to a certain extent. However, the Red Guards' detachments were created in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Katerynoslav, and Odesa.

Meanwhile, the national revolution developed. In the first announcements of the Tsentralna Rada, the national program was mainly a cultural trend. M. Hrushevskyi, who had returned from exile, put the slogan of constitution of national territorial autonomy of Ukraine. The head of UTR called for the Ukrainians to not embrace the lands with the overwhelming Ukrainian population. These were 9 provinces (the Soviet Ukraine was later created on their territory) as well as Kuban, the northern and two southern regions of the Bessarabian prince, Kholmsk province, western districts of the Don Army region, and the southern regions of the Voronezh province.

The intense creation of political parties took place in Ukraine during the first two months of the revolution. A party of socialists-federalists had been formed on the basis of the Society of Ukrainian Progressionists. This party had great influence with the Tsentralna Rada, though it had not become the numerous one. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries had also been organized and became the most massive one among the national parties. By the middle of 1917, it accounted for about 75 thousand members. But the number of members of the all-Russian party of SRs was incomparably greater in Ukrainian provinces. The Party of Ukrainian Social Democrats, headed by V. Vynnychenko and S. Petliura, also essentially yielded in quantity in relations to the all-Russian party of mensheviks. By the middle of 1917, it included about 5 thousand members, while the number of mensheviks in Ukraine exceeded 50 thousand people.

The First Universal of Tsentralna Rada was announced on June 10, 1917 in Kyiv at the congress of delegates of Ukrainianized regiments of the Tsarist Army. It proclaimed that Ukrainian people had the right to manage their life through the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly called on democratic ground. Some days later, the executive organ of power, the General Secretariat headed by V. Vynnychenko was created at the closed meeting of the Rada.

The Provisional Government had to recognize the Tsentralna Rada as a state organ. After such a success, the Rada approved the Universal II, where it informed about the creation of the General Secretariat and the development of the law on Ukrainian autonomy.

The intensification of social economic crisis continued deteriorating the material conditions of proletarized masses. Under these conditions, the extremists' slogans of Lenin's branch of the All-Russian Party of Social Democrats proved more and more popular. The number of Bolsheviks in Ukraine reached 33 thousand people. As to its massiveness, Lenin's party essentially yielded to mensheviks as well as to Russian and Ukrainian SRs, but it was distinguished by its discipline and offensiveness. From the second half of the year, the Bolsheviks and their supporters began to prevail in the Soviets of the workers' and soldiers' deputies. On September 8, the Kyiv Soviet workers' deputies first accepted the Bolsheviks' revolution.

Threatened by the left extremism, the party of cadets began inclining to the settlement of national crisis before using force. With the consent of its leaders, the ruling clique of the army generals, headed by General L. Kornilov, a Supreme Commander in Chief, made an effort to overthrow the Provisional Government. But the plot was not discovered. The Bolsheviks played the main part in its discovery. Their influence essentially increased, especially in the southern and eastern provinces of Ukraine, while the Provisional Government, saved by them, gradually lost the support of people because of setting aside the immature reforms.

On October 25, 1917, Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government and at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrohrad, they created their own Government - the Soviet of People's Commissars (Sovnarcom), headed by V. Lenin. The October overthrow created a new political situation, to which the Tsentralna Rada had to react immediately. It issued its Universal III, where it proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian Republic (UPR).

In November 1917, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Government of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic was established in the eastern section of Southern Russia which from time immemorial has been inhabited predominantly by the Ukrainian People; and after a temporary overthrow by the German military force was reestablished. In November 1918, the Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia - Austrian (Western) Ukraine - (also predominantly Ukrainian and anciently, prior to the Polish conquest, integrally attached to the Ukrainian People as a whole) set up an independent republican government of Western Ukraine; and in January 1919, the Ukrainian National Council, in its capacity as legislative body for the Western Ukrainian (formerly Eastern Galician) territory, proclaimed the union of all the Ukrainian territories of old Austria-Hungary with those of former Russia under the Ukrainian Peoples Republic [Republic of the Ukrainian People].

The Ukrainian People's Republic, a new State carved out of the southwestern corner of the old Russian Empire, signed a treaty of peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk on Feb. 9, 1918. It was the first national unit to take that step. The next day the representatives of the Bolshevist Government of Petrograd formally withdrew from the war without signing a treaty, and the armies of the whole Russian front were ordered demobilized. The doors were thrown open for the rich products of Ukrainia to enter Austria and Germany, nullifying the Atlantic blockade to that extent. The remaining German forces on the eastern front were released for use against the Allies in France. The war had entered upon a new phase.

Long before the war the Ukrainian movement had been fomented by Austria through the Austro-German "Bund zur Befreiung der Ukraine." After the Czar's fall the movement gained new impetus, ostensibly distinct from Austro-German influence, but constantly suspected by the Provisional Government. The Rada, or Parliament, established at Kiev, was created by the leaders of the secret Austrian Bund, and the peace so easily negotiated was to some extent at least a product of German money and intrigue. The Rada's pro-Teutonic character was one (minor) cause of its conflict with the Bolshevist leaders, which has eventuated in civil war.

The British Government announced that it would not recognize the Ukrainian Treaty. Up to 15 February 1918 none of the nations except the Central Powers had taken any formal notice of the new treaty, or announced a recognition of the new State. In consequence of the ceding of the territory of Kholm in Poland to Ukrainia by Austria-Hungary, the Polish Ministry resigned, and it was announced that there was much dissatisfaction among Galician-Polish leaders.

The Ukrainian movement on its purely Russian side was partly a national, partly a land question, and herein lay the main cause of its clash with the Lenine-Trotzky regime. The Great Russians were mainly interested in getting and keeping the farm lands, while the Ukrainians stood for the recognition of their separate nationality and insisted that the "self-determination of peoples" must be as fully applied to them as to any other nationality in Europe. They demanded home rule, though they desired that their State would be part of a Federal Russian Republic. The explanation of events in the Ukraine is to be found in the struggle between these opposing points of view.

The Ukraine lay claim territorially not only to Southwestern Russia, but also to large portions of East Galicia, Northeastern Hungary, and Bukowina, all inhabited by Ruthenians -- another name for Ukrainians - and the movement was said to be alive in these Austro-Hungarian provinces. This is due to the policy of the Austrian Government before the war, which favored the Ukrainians of East Galicia in proportion as the old Russian Government persecuted them. The result was that Lemberg became the intellectual centre of the Ukrainians, where refugees from Kiev found a ready welcome.

The name of Ukraine referenced a region of south-eastern Europe, embracing districts of South Russia and former Austria-Hungary which were said to be predominantly Ukrainian-speaking and which should, it was claimed, for this reason form an autonomous State. The boundary of this territory was as late as 1921 undefined, but, broadly speaking, the claim was that it extended from the mouth of the river Dniester in a north-westerly direction to the neighbourhood of Cracow, thence running roughly N. towards Byelostok, then E. slightly by S. to the Volga, then S.S.W. to near Rostov, S.E. to the Caspian Sea and W. to the Black Sea. The total population of this "ethnographic Ukraine," according to the census estimate of Jan. 1914, was 46,012,000.

The four original Ukrainian provinces of Tchernigov, Kiev, Poltava, and Kharkov had an area of 80,000 square miles, and a population of 25,000,000. But the new Ukrainian Republic claims additional areas, namely, Volhynia, Podolia, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and parts of Voronezh and Kursk - besides the portion of Poland annexed by the treaty with the Central Powers - which would increase the territory of the republic to about 195,000 square miles, with a population of about 45,000,000. If the Ukrainians succeeded in having their nationality recognized beyond Russia, it would have a meaning for about 4,000,000 Ruthenians, subjects of Emperor Charles. As it was, numbering in Russia at least 25,000,000, they claimed governing rights from Kiev to Odessa, from Odessa to Rostov, and from Rostov to Kharkov, with all the functions of an independent State.

The Ukrainians claimed to have a national language of their own, distinct from the Russian and Polish languages. Mr. Ralph Butler, in his New Eastern Europe (1919), says: " Whether Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian or a separate language is a vexed question. But if Ukrainian was a dialect in 1914 it is a separate language by 1919: for whatever may be the ultimate destiny of the two great divisions of the Russian people, the events of 1917-8 have carved lines which are beyond effacement in the ethnical development of the Ukrainian race. As written by the Nationalists, Ukrainian differs considerably in appearance from Russian; it discards six of the Russian letters and uses three which Russian has not got. The Nationalists have purposely made the orthography as different from the Russian as possible. They have created a neo-Ukrainian literary language from which they have excluded as far as possible all Great-Russian technical terms." The people furthermore claim to have a national culture of their own.

Ukrainians claimed that the relation between them and Russia was purely dynastic, inasmuch as the Tsar was, by treaty, Protector of their State, and that when there was no more a Tsar of Russia they declined to permit the Russian people to succeed to the rights and privileges of their deposed sovereign. They therefore resumed their long dormant autonomy and founded a provisional Government in the summer of 1917. This Government, supported by the Ukrainian National Congress and the Central Rada appointed by this body, refused to recognize the Bolshevist regime under which Kerensky was supplanted in October 1917.

Accordingly, the independence of the Russian Ukraine was proclaimed on Nov. 21 1917. The Province of Kherson, of which the great wheat exporting city of Odessa is a part, had been incorporated in the Ukrainian Republic, along with four other provinces of South Russia, by a decree of the Rada at Kiev dated Nov. 16, 1917. The Rada had taken over all the powers of the Provisional Government in these provinces at the time that these powers were supposed to pass into the hands of Lenine's commissaries.

General Povlavko was then sent to Odessa by the Rada for the purpose of taking over the succession from the Commissary of the Provisional Government, M. Kharita. But the latter refused to give up his powers, and he was supported by the majority of the population of Odessa, who were resolutely hostile to the Ukrainization of the great port. The arrival of Ukrainian battalions, sent by the Rada to make its decisions respected, provoked bloody street riots. While the partisans of the Provisional Government observed neutrality, the local Bolsheviki armed the Red Guard of Odessa and gave battle to the Ukrainians and their followers, the National Socialists.

Accredited representatives from France and Great Britain entered into relations with it in Dec. 1917 and Jan. 1918.

In the last days of December 1917 the Mohammedan Tartars of the Crimea held a congress in the City of Bashtshissarai and passed a solemn resolution establishing an autonomous " khanate " covering the whole peninsula. A proclamation similar to that of the Ukraine was published. The next day, after taking possession of the palace of the Khan, a great national Tartar feast was organized in the city, in the course of which a delegate from the Ukrainian People's Republie delivered an address recognizing the Tartars as the sovereign people of the Peninsula of the Crimea.