1921 - Ukrainian Republic
After the withdrawal of Y. Pilsudskyi's troops to the Zbruch river, the S. Petliura's army fought in Left Bank Ukraine for about one month with the forces of O. Yegorov. In the winter of 1920-1921 there was a mass uprising of Ukrainian peasants against the Soviet power which S. Petliura had expected in spring of 1920 when he was in the offensive with the Poles against Kyiv. Possessed peasantry rise against the trade prohibition and surplus-appropriation system. Most efficient units of the Red Army, headed by V. Bliukher, H. Kotovskyi, O. Parkhomenko, were sent to struggle with the peasants' detachments. But the army itself also mainly consisted of peasants and became less and less reliable.
Later in 1920 Petlura's Ukrainian Government was temporarily housed at Reshoff, W. of Lemberg, and in Oct. Gen. Wrangel had temporarily become a power in the Ukraine. By the Treaty of Riga between Soviet Russia and Poland, in Oct. 1920, a further large part of the Ukrainian claim passed to Poland. By Oct. 23 Petlura had reestablished his Government at Kamenets Podolskiy, and his troops were pushing on towards Kiev, On 04 November 1920, in a written reply to a question in the House of Commons the Government stated that the Ukraine had not been recognized either as a de jure or de facto Government. On November 18, 1920 Petliura's troops left the frontier Volochysk and retreated to Poland.
Reports of happenings in the Ukraine during 1921 were extremely meagre. The defeat and withdrawal of Wrangel's army had no tranquillizing effect on the region, but was, on the contrary, followed by a crop of serious peasant risings. Poland terminated its alliance with Ukraine by signing a peace treaty with the Soviet government in Riga in 1921. The UPR army continued the hopeless struggle with partisan raids in the Right Bank. After numerous protests by Rakovskyi, the Polish government stopped them at the end of 1921.
Symon Petlura (1879-1926), Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Army and President of the Ukrainian National Republic, had their headquarters in southern Poland, at Tarnow. Petlura endeavoured to round up and centralize all the numerous active units of insurgents in Ukraine. Advancing from Western Ukraine, an expeditionary corps of his troops broke through the Soviet front and for a whole year carried on operations in the central Ukrainian territories under the command of General Omelyanovych-Pavlenko. For several more years the Ukrainian insurrections continued. The Soviet government was eventually forced to concentrate large troop units in Ukraine in order to ensure the forcible incorporation of Ukraine with the Soviet Union.
In May 1926, Symon Petlura was murdered by a Soviet agent in Paris. By 1928, when the Red Army was reorganized by Tukhachevsky, 34 infantry divisions of this army were stationed in Ukraine. The Soviet military potential was thus tied down in Ukraine, a fact which made all expansion westwards on the part of the Soviet Union impossible.
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