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The Crossroads of the European Revolution: Ukrainian Social-Democratsand Communists (Independentists), the Ukrainian Revolution and SovietHungary 1917-1920Chris Ford

Online publication date: 19 November 2010

To cite this Article Ford, Chris(2010) 'The Crossroads of the European Revolution: Ukrainian Social-Democrats andCommunists (Independentists), the Ukrainian Revolution and Soviet Hungary 1917-1920', Critique, 38: 4, 565 605To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2010.522122URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03017605.2010.522122

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The Crossroads of the EuropeanRevolution: Ukrainian Social-Democrats and Communists(Independentists), the UkrainianRevolution and Soviet Hungary19171920Chris Ford

When considering the fate of the revolutionary wave in Europe during 19161921 thetraditional view has been that the failure of European communism to carry the revolution

beyond its point of origin decided the fate of the infant Soviet Union negatively. This article

seeks to demonstrate that in 19171919 the Ukrainian question was pivotal to the success ofthe revolution in Europe. It examines the role of the Ukrainian Social-Democrat and

Communist Independentists, the Ukapisty. These Ukrainian Marxists challenged both the

Russian Communist Party and the Ukrainian nationalists in their quest for an independent

Soviet Ukraine. Their campaign had international significance and gained the support of

Soviet Hungary, their alliance brought into question the role of the Russian Communist

Party in undermining the communist project in Europe. An appreciation of the causes of

these little known events is essential to understand the subsequent fate of the revolutions.

Keywords: Ukrainian Revolution; Marxism; national liberation; Nezalezhnyky

(Independentists); Soviet Hungary; Ukrainian Communist Party

Introduction: Contours of Ukrainian Marxism

Volodymyr Vynnychenko, one of the most well known Ukrainian leaders in the 20th

century, coined the phrase vsebichne vyzvolennia * universal liberation.1 By this hemeant the universal (social, national, political, moral, cultural, etc) liberation of the

1 V. Vynnychenko, Rozlad i pohodzhennia in Ivan L. Rudnytsky Essays in Modern Ukrainian History

(Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1987), p. 419.

ISSN 0301-7605 (print)/ISSN 1748-8605 (online) # 2010 CritiqueDOI: 10.1080/03017605.2010.522122

Critique

Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2010, pp. 565605

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worker and peasant masses. This striving for such a total and radical liberation

represented the Ukrainian Revolution in the broad historical sense. However the

expression the Ukrainian Revolution may also be used in the narrower sense, of the

great upheavals aimed at this object, the most noteworthy of which marked the years

19171921. According to Vynnychenko, the universal current which strove to realisethis historical tendency of the revolution comprised the most radical of the socialist

parties, the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries*Borotbisty*and theoppositional federalist currents amongst the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, the Ukrainian

Social-democratic Workers Party (Independentists), or Nezalezhnyky.

The Nezalezhnyky refers to the title by which a current of Ukrainian Marxists defined

themselves who first organised as the Nezalezhnyky Fraction of the Ukrainian Social-

Democratic Workers Party (USDRP), then from March 1919 as a separate party, the USDRP

(Nezalezhnyky) re-launched as the Ukrainian Communist Party (UKP) in December 1919.

The formation of the Nezalezhnyky has traditionally been seen as originating in the

contending perspectives within the USDRP in 19181919, set in the context of therevolutionary wave which accompanied the post-war crisis. Yet the Nezalezhnyky did not

consider themselves so narrowly; writing to the Communist International in 1924 the UKP

leaders Andriy (Pisotsky) Richytsky and Antin Drahomyretsky explained:

The UKP has a 24-year history of its existence*beginning from the RevolutionaryUkrainian Party (19001905) through the USDRP (19051919) and finally theUKP, which is its revolutionary successor, although there are a few old members ofthe USDRP whom remained in the mire of the Second International and someceased their political existence.2

As opposed to a sovietophile splinter the Nezalezhnyky represented a re-articulation

of the Ukrainian Marxist tradition. This is not so easily defined; after all we can find

longstanding Russian, Polish and Jewish representatives of the Marxist tradition

organised on the territory of Ukraine, within both the Russian Empire and Austrian-

ruled Galicia and Bukovyna. According to John-Paul Himka:

The Ukrainian Marxist tradition was a particular Branch of a larger tradition whichPerry Anderson refers to as Classical Marxism (as distinct from WesternMarxism). According to Anderson at least three features characterize classicalMarxism. First, it flourished in a specific geographical locale: Central and EasternEurope. The languages of its great texts were German, Russian and to a lesserextent, Polish. Second it flourished in a specific period: from the late nineteenthcentury to the 1930s. Its representatives were for the most part murdered orsilenced by Stalin or Hitler. Third, its chief thematic concerns were historical,political and economic, in contrast to the philosophical bent of Western Marxism.3

2 Lyst TsK Vikonomy Kominternu Pro Vzayemovidnostini Mizh UKP i KP(b)U, 27 August 1924 in

P. Bachinskyi (ed) Dokumenty trahichnoi ision Ukrainy (19171927 rr), zhurnal Okhorona pratsi, (Kyiv OblastDerzhauna Administratsiya, 1999), p. 523.

3 John-Paul Himka, Comments on Manfred Turban, Roman Rosdolskys Reconsideration of the Traditional

Marxist Debate on the Schemes of Reproduction on New Methodological Grounds. In IS Koropeckyj (ed),

Selected Contributions of Ukrainian Scholars to Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research

Institute, 1984), pp. 135147.

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Ukrainian Marxism can be considered as a particular trend of the vernacular movement

that existed in the period from the International Working Mens Association through to

the Ukrainian revolution of 19171921. This current consciously organised themselvesas distinctly Ukrainian social-democratic/communist organisations; it was not until the

impact of the Ukrainian revolution that we find a wider layer of revolutionaries, notably

the Bolsheviks identifying themselves as Ukrainian; the core of the Ukrainian Marxist

tradition remained within the original nucleus.4 Roman Rosdolsky, probably the best-

known Ukrainian Marxist, considered:

All Ukrainian Marxism (although this is a rather wide concept) in one way oranother emerged from Drahomanovism, i.e., from populism. (This was our specificUkrainian local colour.) Therefore, for all of them the passage to Marxism wasbound up with a battle (often a very painful and drawn-out battle) againstDrahomanovist traditions.5

We may add to Rosdolskys observations that it emerged particularly from an

engagement and divergence from Russian populism, though many of its character-

istics, as opposed to being residual populism, were in fact more consistent with

Marxs original notions than many of the aspects of post-Marx Marxism.6 Key

features of the ideas that permeated the Ukrainian Marxist tradition were:

. Emancipatory ideals of a universal liberation*the social, national, political,moral and cultural liberation of the worker and peasant masses.

. Principles of self-emancipation expressed in terms ofboth the national principleof

Ukrainianworkersself-organisation and an independent working class perspective

for social change, distinct and separate from other parties and external powers.

. Conceptions of workers and peasants self-management of a communal,

cooperative economy within a self-governing Ukraine.7

4 While Georgii Plekhanov has been credited with being the father of Russian Marxism, he was in fact

neither the first Marxist theorist nor the first to popularise Marxs ideas in the Russian Empire. That was Mykola

Ziber, a member of the Hromada of Kyiv. The genesis of the Ukrainian Marxist tradition was already developing

in the activity of Ziber and Serhii Podolynsky when they set up a study group on Marxs economics in 1870.5 Roman Rosdolsky, Engels and the Nonhistoric Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848

(Glasgow: Critique Books, 1987), p. 13 n. 48.6 Serhii Podolynsky has articulated a vision of a society of communal self-government which would

transfer land to the peasant communes and of the factories to the workers artels. Roman Serbyn, In Defense of

an Independent Ukrainian Socialist Movement: Three Letters from Serhii Podolynsky to Valerian Smirnov,

Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 7:2, pp. 333 (1982). Similarly Marx had emphasised that the peasant communitycould be saved by serving as a point of departure within a communist revolution in Russia, the success of which

was conditional upon a corresponding proletarian revolution in the West. Given such a linkage Russia could

avoid going through the vicissitudes of capitalism. Marx, First Draft of Letter to Vera Zasulich, March 1881;

Marxist Internet Archive: http://www.marxiste.org/archive/marx/works/1881/03/zasulich1.htm. This was in

contrast to Plekhanovs economic determinist antagonism to the peasant community, and statist and

authoritarian conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat.7 Mykola Porsh wrote in 1907: Workers parties in Russia and abroad demand that land, water resources and

all the natural deposits should be alienated from the large owners and passed into communal use. They propose

to create communal, cooperative or municipal economy instead of the wasteful and detrimental capitalist order.

The people would greatly benefit from this communal property. Mykola Porsh, Pro Avtonomiyu Ukrainy (Kyiv:

Prosvita, 1907), p. 96.

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. The view that agrarian preponderance diminished neither the revolutionary

potential of the peasantry nor their contribution to the socialist project with the

developing working class.

. Upholding internationalist principles, with linkages to international socialism

through its various organisational initiatives, opposition to imperialism and

locating the Ukrainian revolution in an international framework.8

These ideas were not necessarily adhered to consistently; there were ruptures and

various efforts to reassert these principles. Such positions as on the national question,

the subjective forces of the revolution and the nature of the post-revolutionary order

were a source of controversy and also marked a point of demarcation with Russian

Marxism.9 The Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party (RSDRP) demanded the

subordination of all Marxists to a single party*their own. As a corollary their leaderssupported the assimilation of workers into the Russian nation as historically

progressive and refused to challenge the integrity of the Russian Empire.10 In contrast

the Ukrainian Marxists took up the national question as a task of the immediate,

minimum programme of social-democracy, considering that the social revolution and

advent of communist society would ensure the free development of nations and

national culture, promoting a new spring time of nations. In this regard they were

strongly influenced by the Austrian Marxists on the national question and party

organisation.11 The USDRPs sister party in Galicia, the Ukrainian Social-Democratic

8 Podolynsky participated in the International Working Mens Association, the Revolutionary Ukrainian

Party and USDRP participated in the Second International and the Zimmerwald movement.9 The antagonism of the Russian Social Democracy towards Ukrainian socialism was deep-rooted. It can be

traced to the very inception of both movements in the 19th century. Indeed it brought Engels into conflict with

Plekhanov, when he failed to support Ukrainian self-determination. This revealing conflict arose in 1890 over

Engelss essay, The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsardom. Plekhanov replied criticising Engels for his consideration

of Ukrainians as a nation. Engels had come to believe that one positive outcome of the overthrow of Tsarism

would be that Little Russia [Ukraine] will be able to choose its political connections freely. The following year

Plekhanov published O Bezvykhodnosti Uukrainskago Sotsializma v Rossii. It depicted the Russian conquest of

Ukraine as an economic necessity and the Ukrainian movement as utopian with no historical basis: The

abolition of serfdom, universal conscription, the development of commerce and industry . . . the influence of

urban life and civilization*these are the factors that have definitively merged the rural population of Ukraine,even linguistically . . . into a sphere of influences shared with Russia, cited in Rosdolsky, op.cit., p. 189.

10 There is no complete study of the Ukrainian question in these debates. Works which cover this period

include: V. Levynsky, Linternatonale socialiste et les peuples opprimes, (Vienna: Dzuin, 1920); A. Karpenko,

Lenins Theory of The National Question And Its Contradictions, META, 2: 34, (1979); M. Yurkevich, AForerunner of National Communism: Lev Yurkevych (18851918), Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 7:1(1982),pp. 5057. Lenins Struggle for a Revolutionary International: Documents : 19071916 (Communist Internationalin Lenins Time), Ed. John Riddell, New York, Monad, 1986, Lev Rybalka (Yurkevych) Rosiiski marksysty i

ukrainskyi rukh, Dzvin 78, Kyiv (1913).11 The Social-democratic Workers Party of Austria (SPO) congress at Brno stated that Austria was to be

transformed into a democratic federative state of nationalities (Bauer, Question of Nationalities, London: 2000,

422). The founding programme of the USDRP demanded the right of every nation to cultural and political self-

determination and that Russia be transformed into a Democratic Republic with broad local and territorial

self-government for the whole population of the state in which there would be equal rights of all languages at

schools, courts, local administrative and government institutions, Stalittia, Ukrainska Sotsiial-Demokratychna

Robitnycha Partiya, (Lviv, 1999), pp. 99100.

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Party (USDP), formed a component of the federal Social-Democratic Workers Party of

Austria.12

The question of the relationship between the social and national spheres proved to

be a repeated source of tension.13 Conversely, the quest for universality strengthened

the emancipatory attributes of Ukrainian Marxism. It was enriched by being open to

other currents, which significantly deviated, at times unacknowledged, from the

constraints of the established orthodoxy of the Second International. While populism

was rejected as turning back the clock, so too was an economic determinism, warning

against viewing things through the prism of distorted Russian Marxism.14 The

USDRP criticised the Russian Marxists for limiting themselves to an ideological

connection exclusively with the labour movement of Germany.15 Lev Yurkevych

summarised the USDRP in the following terms:

A second constitutional congress of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party took placein 1905 and adopted the maximum Erfurt programme of the German Social-Democrats and the minimum programme of the Russian Social-Democracy. Itdemanded extreme democratic autonomy for the territory within the ethnographicboundaries of Ukraine, with legal guarantees for the free development for thenational minorities living within its territory. The principle of national organiza-tion was based on the organizational model of the Austrian Social-Democracy.With regard to tactics, the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party took the same position asthe left wing of the Russian Social-Democracy (Bolsheviks), and instead of callingitself the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, adopted the name Ukrainian Social-Democratic Workers Party, the name under which it still exists today, and to whichthe authors of this letter belong.16

It had, according to Yurkevych, connected the question of national liberation to all

the problems of the emancipation of the proletariat, which he concluded appears as

the sole revolutionary and democratic power.17 Yet by 1917 these ideas formed but

one part of a spectrum of opinion in the USDRP. This had obvious consequences and

has proved a problem for historiography. An explanation of how this came about can

be found in the period of reaction following 1905, when the entire social-democratic

12 The views of Otto Bauer at the time were outlined in Ukrainian Social Democracy in the Polish Social-

democrat paper Naprzod, 9 January 1912.13 Symptomatic was the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP) where Mykola Mikhnovsky, prioritising

independence, led a split in 1902, his ideas being branded zoological nationalism. The RUP fractured again in

1905, with the Ukrainian Social-democratic Union or Spilka, led by M. Melenevsky-Basok, forming an

autonomous section of the RSDRP (Mensheviks). The Spilka saw the national question as an auxiliary issue.

Though initially successful Spilka was relegated to the role of peasant organisers and suggested it became an All-

Russian section. See: George Y. Boshyk, The Rise of Ukrainian Political Parties in Russia 19001907. WithSpecial Refrerence to Social Democracy, (PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 1981).

14 Haslo No. 3, 1903; Boshyk, op. cit., p. 171.15 Lev Yurkevych, Peredmova, in Volodymyr Levynsky (ed), Narys Rozvytki Ukrainskoho Rukh v Halychnyia,

Dzvin, (Kyiv 1914).16 Lev Rybalka (Yurkevych) LUkraine Et La Guerre, Lettre Ouvre adresee a la 2nd conference socialiste

internationale tenue en Hollande en mai 1916, Edition du journal social-democrate Ukrainyen Borotba

(Lausanne, 1916), p. 2117 Rybalka, op. cit., p. 22.

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movement went into decline. In their reports to the Second International the Central

Committee of the USDRP described a retrogression of the Party and its

organisations, and that a growing influence of bourgeois nationalist ideas were

causing haemorrhaging, notably of the intelligentsia to cultural institutions and de-

politicised nationalism.18 The leadership challenged this trend as being in sharp

contradiction to the revolutionary tradition of our party.19 While on a formal level

they were successful it did not stop the corrosion hindering efforts at regenerating the

party on the basis of its traditions.20

With World War I these divergences became acute. A majority of USDRP leaders

opposed the war, a minority adopting a pro-Russian or a pro-Austrian orientation as

taken by the USDP in Galicia.21 Efforts to uphold principles that really correspond to

the USDRP traditions were advanced by a foreign organisation of the USDRP, led by

Yurkevych, and supported the Zimmerwald anti-war movement.22 Under his

editorship Borotba was launched in Geneva, declaring: Above all, we should not

take sides, not besmirch our revolutionary cause in showing solidarity with the war

aims of any of the governments involved.23 It called for a new International where

the liberation of Ukraine will be the watchword of the Third International, and of the

proletarian socialists of Europe, in their struggle against Russian imperialism.24 These

views were to resonate in the USDRP revival, though Yurkevych did not participate;

he was terminally ill, and on reaching Moscow he remained there paralysed until his

death in 1919.25 His absence certainly contributed to the changed complexion of the

18 This was cited in the report to the conference of the Second International in Copenhagen, at which

Yurkevych attended as the USDRP delegate. See: Bericht der Ukrainischen Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiter-Partei in

Russland an den Internaionalen Sozialistfschen Kongress in Kopenhagen, Mit Parteigruss Das Zentralkomite der

Ukrainischen Arbeiterpartei (Verleger P. Buniak, Buchdruckerei Powszechna, Akademicka, Nr. 8, Lemberg,

1910).19 The USDRP CC reported: A central task will be to develop our national class politics opposed to the

Ukrainian bourgeois national movement and opposed to these intellectuals in the party which have sympathy

for this Ukrainian bourgeois national movement, Bericht der Ukrainischen Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiter-Partei,

op. cit., p. 13.20 Yurkevych bemoaned: The Ukrainian Marxist intelligentsia has almost no interest in a workers press. Our

generation, carelessly and without perspectives of its own, has gotten involved in Ukrainian bourgeois affairs. Its

path and that of the Ukrainian workers movement have parted ways apparently forever, Lev Yurkevych, Paki i

Paki (V Sparava Ukr Rob, Hazeti), Dzvin (Kyiv, 1914) p. 277.21 The pro-Austrian orientation that emerged from the ranks of the USDRP was represented by the Union

for the Liberation of Ukraine formed by Melenevskyi and the former USDRP General Secretary Andrii Zhuk.

On the SVU see Roman Rosdolsky, Do istorii Soiuzu vyavolennia Ukrainy, Ukrainskyi samostiinyk, 1 May 1969.22 P. Diatliv, a Central Committee member of the USDRP, wrote to Levynsky defending the anti-war stance

being espoused by Yurkevych: Thus, your statement that the views of Borotba are the personal views of Mr.

Rybalka [Yurkevych] is contrary to the fact. . . . But you, comrade, as a person familiar with the programme and

tactics of our party, undoubtedly know that the views of Borotba really correspond to the USDRP traditions,

Dymytro Doroshenko, Z Istorii Ukrainskoi Politychnoi Dumky Za Chasiv Svitovoi Viini (Praha, 1935), p. 62.23 Borotba No. 4, September 1915, pp. 36.24 Rybalka, op. cit., p. 54.25 Yurkevych had particular influence on the Retrograd and Moscow USDRP committees who republished

articles of Borotba in their journal Nashe Zhyttya. These branches of the USDRP provided a number of the

leaders of the Nezalezhnyky, see Mykhailo Avdiyenko, Lyutneva, revoliutsia v Petrohrad I USDRP, Letopis

Revolutsii, Kharkiv, No. 1. (1928), pp. 226234.

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USDRP, which rapidly revived. Dmytro Doroshenko characterised the conflict which

had surfaced in the Ukrainian movement as between two principles: the state-

national and the social-international.26 To the revolutionary social-democrats these

were false opposites, the former dismembering an integrated class-based perspective

of universal liberation.

The USDRP that revived in February 1917 now embraced not only former members,

energised youth and workers, but also, crucially, those who had fragmented in the

retrogression of the preceding years, unchanged in their outlook.27 In this changed

environment what had been the mainstream became a milieu relocated to the left wing

of their party, in the process of the revolution crystallising into the Nezalezhnyky.

The Social Forces and Causes of the Ukrainian Revolution

On the eve of the revolution Ukraine was partitioned between the Austro-Hungarian

and Russian Empires, the majority of its territory having been held in a colonial

position by Tsarist Russia for over two and a half centuries. Whereas movement of the

Ukrainians of Galicia developed apace, this was not so across the border, where the

Ukrainian movement developed gradually in a protracted struggle with Tsarist

absolutism. Subject to institutional Russification, Moscow responded with a hostility

qualitatively different from that towards other nationalities: Ukraine did not exist

only Malarossia, little Russia. This can be explained by the role Ukraine played in the

foundation of the empire. Its ingestion by the Muscovite state, which usurped

the name of the medieval state of Kyivan Rus, brought with it the acquisition of the

large natural resources of Ukraine. This was the step which transformed it into the

Russian Empire, a factor which is of no small importance in the minds of Russian

nationalists to this day.

The social and economic geography of Ukraine developed into what the Soviet

economist Mikhail Volobuyev characterised as a colony of a European type.28 The

peculiar mixture of backwardness and modernity arose during the combined drive of

the Russian state and European capital in the development of capitalism. Whilst

European capital appeared to relegate Russian capital to second place, it did not

diminish but compounded Ukraines position.29 Volobuyev observed a dual process

in the economy of the Russian Empire:

26 Doroshenko, op. cit., p. 37.27 The USDRP grew significantly in 1917; in early May the USDRP claimed it was transforming itself into a

mass workers organisation; by the end of 1917 it claimed 40,000 members (Robitnycha Hazeta 6 May 1917,

cited in Marko Bojcun, The Working Class and the National Question in Ukraine, 18801920, (PhD dissertation,York University, Toronto, 1985), p. 71.

28 Volobuyev was an economist and government official heading a branch of the commissariat of education.

His articles On the Problem of the Ukrainian Economy were published in Bilshovyk Ukrainy, 30 January and 16

February 1928. An ethnic Russian, he was a spokesman for the Ukrainian communists and defender of Ukraines

right to control its economy. Volobuyev showed how central control and continued Russian chauvinism

perpetuated the exploitation of Ukraine within the USSR. M. Volobuyev, Do problemy ukrainskoyi ekonomiky,

in Dokumenty ukrainskoho komunizmy, Ivan Maistrenko ed, (New York:, 1962), p. 132230.29 Volobuyev, op. cit., p. 165.

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Hence, the question of whether there was a single Russian pre-revolutionaryeconomy should be answered as follows: it was a single economy on anantagonistic, imperialist basis, but from the viewpoint of centrifugal forces of thecolonies oppressed by her, it was a complex of national economies . . . TheUkrainian economy was not an ordinary province of Tsarist Russia, but a landwhich was placed in a colonial position.30

The process of urbanisation reflected this position; Ukrainians constituted about

one-third of the urban population; nine out of ten lived in the rural districts,

mostly classed as peasants, with whom Ukrainians were synonymous.31 Ukraine was

one of the most highly industrialised parts of the empire with a strong penetration

of capitalism in agriculture. This had not ameliorated the agrarian question, which

by 1917 had grown increasingly acute. In the bread basket of Europe the majority

lived at subsistence level, exacerbated by a population growth that outpaced the

peasants ability to purchase land.32 The agrarian and national questions blended in

an explosive cocktail, into a situation where alongside the Russian state and church,

one-third of arable land was held by a class of which three out of four were

Russians or Poles.

The development of capitalism within this colonial framework impacted on the

state, capital, labour relations and composition of the social classes. The capitalist

class was overwhelmingly non-Ukrainian, prompting Ukrainian socialists to define

the nation as bezburzhaunist: bourgeoisless. The proletariat bore the stigma of

colonialism, emerging at the historic conjuncture when capitalism was shifting into a

phase of imperialism. This witnessed a transformation not only in capital but also

within the working class, seeing the growth of a privileged stratum, an aristocracy of

labour. Whilst it is rarely acknowledged, Russian imperialism was no exception.

According to the 1897 census, of the 23.4 million populace of Russian-ruled Ukraine,

17 million were Ukrainian, 2.8 million Russians and 1.9 million Jews.33 The

Ukrainian element of the proletariat increased slowly; it was initially comprised of

mainly Russian migrant labour, which provided the source for an upper layer in the

30 Volobuyev, op. cit., p. 167.31 Vladyslav Verstiuk, Conceptual Issues in Studying the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, Journal of

Ukrainian Studies, 24:1 (1999), p. 14. H.R, Weinstein, Land Hunger and Nationalism in the Ukraine 19051917, The Journal of Economic History, 2:1(1942), p. 24.

32 In 1917, there were 4,011,000 peasant households in Russian-ruled Ukraine. Of them, 15.8 per cent had no

land under cultivation, 20 per cent owned between 0.1 to 3.0 desyatinas per farm and 55.6 per cent owned 3.1 to

10.0 desyatinas per farm. These sections lived in relative scales of poverty, whilst the remaining 8.6 percent

owned more than 10.0 desyatinas each and were wealthy peasants*kurkuls (kulaks). The health of Ukrainianpeasants was on a scale markedly worse than European Russia. This was reflected in the higher level of rejection

of peasant conscripts to the Russian army: Weinstein, op. cit., p. 2628.33 The national composition of the nascent capitalist class in 1832 reveals the composition of factory owners

as: Russian 44.6 per cent, Ukrainian 28.7 per cent, Jewish 17.4 per cent, foreign 3.6 per cent and other 5.7 per

cent. The composition of merchants as: Russian 52.6 per cent, Ukrainian 28.7 per cent, Jewish 17.4 per cent,

foreign 1.9 per cent and other 2.4 per cent. Volobuyev, op. cit., p. 154.

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higher paid, skilled posts.34 Ukrainian new entrants found Russian not only

the language of the state and administration but of the labour regime, of their

immediate class adversary. By 1917 amongst the 3.6 million proletarians almost 50

per cent were in the mining and steel enclave of the Donbas. Inclusive of their

dependents, the working class amounted to some 6.5 million*21 per cent of thepopulace. The overall Ukrainians compoment stood at 73 per cent of wage labourers,

and only 50 per cent in industry, trade and transport, 90 per cent of day labourers

and 88 per cent of the agricultural proletariat.35

These developments posited the national question at the point of production

through a division of labour, which relegated Ukrainians to the low paid, flexible

labour strata, under-represented in heavy industry and over-represented in service

and agricultural sectors. Ukraines position as a colony of Russia and semi-colony of

European capital was summed up by Karl Kautsky, who observed that:

Capitalism develops in only one dimension for the Ukrainian people itproletarianises them, while the other dimension the flowering of the productiveforces, the accumulation of surplus and wealth is mainly for the benefit of othercountries. Because of this, capitalism reveals to Ukrainians only its negative,revolutionizing dimension . . . it does not lead to an increase in their wealth.36

In this historical context we may delineate from the problems that faced Ukraine in

the revolution. Which of the social classes could attain hegemony and transcend these

social cleavages, establishing a cohesive and viable system? It followed from the class

structure and composition that as a nation of workers and peasants with no

nationally conscious bourgeoisie, the leading role in the struggle for hegemony

should correspond to its character.37 That is a bloc of these subaltern classes

combining the goal of the emancipation of labour with the quest for national

liberation. Ukrainian Marxism from its beginnings grappled with these perplexities,

attempting to develop a totalising perspective, one which reached beyond those

orthodoxies of the time predetermining a bourgeois ascendancy. Concurrently Myola

Porch, the founding theorist of the USDRP asserted that:

Thus only the proletariat can assume the leadership in the struggle forautonomy . . . the Ukrainian national movement will not be a bourgeois movementof triumphant capitalism as in the case of the Czechs. It will be more like the Irishcase, a proletarian and semi-proletarianised peasant movement.38

34 On this aspect of the division of labour see: Andrii Richtysky, Memorandum Ukrainskoi Kumunistichnoi

Partii Kongresovi III Komunistychnoho Internationalu, Nova Doba, in Ivan Maistrenko (ed) Dokumenty

Ukrainskoho Komunizmu, (New York: Prolog, 1962), pp. 4566; Marko Bojcun, Approaches to the Study of theUkrainian Revolution, Journal of Ukrainian Studies 24:1 (1999), pp. 2139; Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka andRevolution, Vol. 1: Life and Work in Russias Donbass, 18691924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994),pp. 208144.

35 Isaak Mazepa, Bolshevyzm I Okupatsiia Ukariny, (Lviv, 1922), p. 13.36 Cited in Bojcun, The Working Class and the National Question in Ukraine, 18801920 (Toronto: Graduate

Program in Political Science, York University, 1985), p. 7137 Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhennia natsii, Tom.II, (Kyiv-Vienna, 1920), p. 102.38 Mykola Porsh, Avtonomiy Ukrainy, (Kyiv, 1907), p. 131.

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Dialectics of the Ukrainian Revolution

With the overthrow of the autocracy in 1917 the Ukrainian Revolution soon

differentiated itself from the wider Russian Revolution, setting as its task the

achievement of national liberation through the creation of a Ukrainian state. The first

phase spanned from the February Revolution to the October seizure of power by the

Central Rada and proclamation of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic (UNR) in 1917,

the upsurge of the workerpeasant revolution and the dislocation of the revolu-tionary movement, defeated by the Austro-German and conservative forces in 1918.

This period was one of unprecedented self-organisation and mobilisation of the

Ukrainian masses, the movement comprised a bloc of the middle class, peasantry and

the Ukrainian section of the working class, centred in the Central Rada (Council).

The Central Rada was a mass assembly consisting of councils of peasants, soldiers

and workers deputies elected at their respective congresses; it later expanded its

constituency, drawing in national minorities, and included the pioneering organisa-

tion of Jewish national autonomy.39

The Ukrainian word rada and Russian sovet, meaning council, are direct

transliterations, the Bolshevik leader Yuri Lapchynsky recalled that there always

seemed to be a Ukrainian who would claim he supported Soviet power and also the

Rada because it was a soviet.40 Vynnychenko thought the revolution appeared to be

following a course concurrent with Ukraines class composition:

Thus, it seems that it would have been logical to continue establishing only theworkers and peasants statehood, which would have corresponded to the entirenations character. And it seemed to have been so planned during the first period,especially during the struggle against the Provisional Government. And our powerseemed to have been established in such a way. The Central Rada really consisted ofcouncils of peasants, soldiers and workers deputies, who were elected at therespective congresses and sent to the Central Rada. And the General Secretariatseemed to have been consisting only of socialists. And the leading parties, Social-democrats and Social-Revolutionists, seemed to have been standing firmly on thebasis of social revolution.41

The USDRP grew in size and influence during the struggle with the Provisional

Government: considered by Ukrainian Social-democrats to be their Bolshevik

period, although this Bolshevism was upheld by the national struggle more than by

the class struggle.42 This leading role contained a duality; on the one hand the

Bolshevism described Andriy Richytsky and on the other what Vynnychenko saw as

39 Solomon Goldelman, Jewish National Autonomy in Ukraine 19171920, (Chicago: Ukrainian Research andinformation institute, 1968); Moses Silberfarb, The Jewish Ministry and Jewish National Autonomy in Ukraine

1918/19 (New York: Aleph Press, 1993).40 Yurii Lapchinsky, Z pershykh dniv vseukrainskoyi vlady, Letopis revoliutsiyi, 1927, No. 56, p. 56,41 Volodymyr Vynnychenko; Vidrodzhennia natsii, listoriya Ukrainsko Revoliutsii, Tom. 1 (Kyiv-Vienna:

Dzvin, 1920).42 Memorandum Ukrainskoi Kumunistichnoi Partii Kongresovi III Korrunistychnoii Internatisionaly, 1920,

P. Bachinskyi (ed) Dokumenty trahichnon ision Ukrainy (19171927 rr), Zhurnal Okhorona pratsi, (KyivOblast Derzhavna Administratsiya, 1999) pp. 532533.

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subsequent errors.43 Underlying these errors were differences over conceptions of the

revolution and requisite strategy. On the burning questions, the war, agrarian

revolution44 and workers self-management, the leaders of the Central Rada

prevaricated and at key moments lagged behind the pace of the movement from

below, even on the national question with which it was preoccupied.45

The question which could make or break the revolution was the agrarian

question.46 The agrarian revolution grew apace, peasants and returning soldiers

proceeded to expropriate estates and redistribute the land, whilst the Central Rada

delayed taking decisive action until the convening of a Constituent Assembly.47

Relations strained between its leading circles drawn largely from the intelligentsia and

the middle class, and the rank and file of the movement.48

The prevailing opinion was that the recognition of autonomy was a precondition

of progress; the conference of the USDRP held on 45 April 1917, considered it asthe very first and urgent present objective of the Ukrainian proletariat and the entire

country.49 This corresponded with the dualist view that while a social revolution

could be achieved in the West, only after the Russian Empire had passed into the

phase of advanced capitalism and democracy would the requisite conditions become

available for such an advance. There were differences over who comprised the camp

of the revolutionary democracy, whether it should be an alliance of the working class

with the liberal bourgeoisie or an independent bloc of the workers and peasantry,

excluding the latter. Either way, few believed that the requisite material and social

conditions were available for a social/communist revolution. The national question

43 Vynnychenko, op. cit., pp. 251252.44 The USDRP policy was concurrent with the prevailing views of the Second International on the agrarian

question. Favouring highly developed large farms, they considered it necessary to keep them from division,

destruction and partition. This however appeared to be pushing against the tide of the agrarian revolution.45 Porsh complained that: At first the Central Rada was a bloc of parties united around the slogan of

autonomy and federation. When our party entered the Rada, it replaced its class orientation with a national one.

Some of our comrades said quite plainly that until we achieve the goal of unity there can be no class struggle in

the Central Rada . . . As far as I am concerned, Ukrainian Social-democrats had no right compromising on classinterests in deference to general, national ones, Robitnycha Hazeta, Organ of the Bureau of the Central

Committee and Kyiv Committee of the USDPP, 4 October 1917.46 Holubnychy writes: This reminds one of Lypynskys comments that the Ukrainian socialist parties gave

away the land in order to be politically popular. Unfortunately, they did not give away enough and therefore

were not sufficiently popular. And this is why they failed, while Lenin succeeded. Holubnychy, op. cit., p. 4647.47 The Central Radas indecision on the land question undoubtedly reflected division within the Ukrainian

peasantry itself. As early as the spring of 1917 the richer strata were making common cause with the landlords,

fearing that the revolution of the poor and middle peasantry would not leave their holdings untouched. The

Rada tried to appeal to both camps, relying increasingly on the Free Cossacks, the militia of the wealthier

peasantry, while making declarations for the benefit of the poor and middle peasantry.48 Raya Dunayevskaya identified a similar problem in the anti-colonial revolutions after 1945: The greatest

obstacle to the further development of these national liberation movements comes from the intellectual

bureaucracy which has emerged to lead them. In the same manner the greatest obstacle in the way of the

working class overcoming capitalism comes from the Labor bureaucracy that leads it, Raya Dunayevskaya,

Nationalism, Communism, Marxist Humanism and the Afro-Asian Revolutions (Cambridge: Left Group,

Cambridge University Labour Club, 1961), p. 15.49 The decisions of the All-Ukrainian Conference of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Workers Party held in

Kyiv were published in Robitnycha Hazeta, 7 April 1917.

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brought an additional dimension, as the urban working class was largely Russian;

critics considered the dictatorship of the proletariat would exclude the Ukrainian

peasantry, negating national liberation. In his self-critical history, Rebirth of a Nation,

Vynnychenko believed they had taken Marxs theory of the development of capitalism

in an ideal context; recalling the comparably large size of the French peasantry at the

time of the Paris Commune he wrote:

But socialism of the enslaved is not the socialism meant by those socialists whohave put on a mask in order to obtain the masses trust. And it is not the socialismmeant by the Ukrainian democracy, including our Marxist Social-democrats. We,the Ukrainian Social-democrats, have emasculated Marxism. We have cut out itsvivid, constructive and active part, having become sterile, inert and fat boars.50

Traditional opinions were challenged, on the one hand by the popular movement from

below and on the other hand by the antagonism towards the Ukrainian national

democratic movement by the liberal and conservative wings of Russia. The deepening

crisis of 1917 all pointed in one direction*a socialist transformation. The historicalorthodoxies have largely neglected this tendency within the Ukrainian Revolution,

considering its location of origin as Bolshevik influence in the soviets, or in Russia itself.

This view holds but a partial truth, for to grasp fully this conjuncture it is necessary to

recognise that this tendency grew organically out of the development of the Ukrainian

Revolution itself; a fact illustrated by the increased levels of class consciousness of workers

and peasants, confirmed in the evolution experienced by the Ukrainian socialist parties.

Even before Lenins April Theses, the opinion was being voiced within the USDRP

that the revolution needed to advance, symptomatic was the USDRP weekly Nashe

Zhyttya which reminded readers their aim was not only to overthrow the political

dominance of the classes hostile to us, but also the social dominance of the capitalists

and the landlords . . . . We must not stand still.51 In a number of Soviets, USDRP

deputies described themselves as Bolsheviks, only Ukrainian ones.52 The lefts

influence was most evident at the Fourth Congress in September 1917, which declared:

The present Russian revolution, bringing in its wake a transformation in socio-economic relations unheard of in the history of all previous revolutions, finding abroad echo in the great worker masses of Western Europe, awakening in them animpulse to abandon the path of capitalism, to make a social revolution and, at thesame time, to stop the imperialist war, which may bring about an uprising of theproletariat in Western Europe*this revolution is a prologue to and beginning ofthe universal socialist revolution.53

50 Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhennia natsii Tom. 2, op. cit., p. 91.51 Nashe Zhyttya, 24 March 1917, organ of the Petrograd USDRP Committee. Very few projected these ideas

until the return of Lenin with his April Theses. Ironically among the first people he took his opinions to were the

soldiers of the USDRP stronghold, the Izmailovsky Regiment, on 10 April 1917.52 Bojcun, op. cit., p. 28253 The principle resolutions adopted by the Fourth Congress of the USDRP was drafted by Mykola Porsh, the

congress itself was influenced not only by the traditional left leaders but the new generation of militants such as

Neronovych and Richytsky. The report and resolutions of the congress were published in Robitnycha Hazeta 1, 3,

5 and 7 October 1917.

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The Central Rada was condemned as being composed of representatives of the petty

bourgeoisie, and because of its class composition was incapable of maintaining a

proper and resolute revolutionary-democratic tactic, inclining at every turn toward

petty bourgeois nationalism.54

In the circumstances that prevailed, the left-wing faced difficulty translating

the resolutions of the congress into actual practice. The contradiction was

pointed out by the Bolshevik Fiyalek, who asked why Ukrainian social

democracy did not dictate its policy to its intelligentsia; on the contrary, the

intelligentsia dictated its instructions to it.55 Whilst in Russia the radicalisation

saw the different strands of the popular movement brought into unity by the

Bolshevik-Left SRs leadership in the Soviets, which caught up with the changed

mood. In Ukraine the situation stood in sharp contrast, the salient feature of the

revolution was of the divergence between the subjective forces: the division

between the Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian sections of the working class, the

estrangement of the peasantry from the urban workers and the fragmenting of

the social and national dimensions.56

These cleavages on the social and national questions found their resolution

encapsulated in the idea of an independent Ukraine based upon the organisations of

workers and peasants self-government. On 7 November the Central Rada had issued

proclaimed the Ukrainian Peoples Republic (UNR) in federal union with Russia. A

favourable conjuncture for a rapprochement between the divergent elements now

arose from two trends offering the possibility of a radical reconstitution of the UNR.

The first was the growth in support in the USDRP and the UPSR for the regeneration

of the Central Rada on a thoroughly socialist basis.57 The second was the surge of

support in the councils of workers and soldiers deputies recognising the UNR and

54 Robitnycha Hazeta, 1, 5 and 7 October 1917.55 Vynnychenko, Vidrozhennia Natsii, Tom.I, op. cit., pp. 240241.56 These problems of the revolution were highlighted in the writings of the leading Ukrainian Bolshevik

leaders Vasyl Shakhray and Serhii Mazlakh and in a series of books in 19181919. See Vasyl Skorovstansky(Shakhrai), Revoliutsiia na Ukraine, 2nd ed, (Saratov: Borba, 1918); Vasyl Shakhray and Serhii Mazlakh in a

series of books in 1918 and 1919, see Vasyl Skorovstansky, (Shakhray). Revoliutsiia na Ukraine, (Saratov, Borba,

1918), Vasyl Shakhray and Shakhrail i Maslakh. Do khvyli: Shcho diietsia na Ukrayni i z Ukrainoiu, (Saratov,

Ukrainian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 1919). The latter is also in an English edition, Vasyl Shakhray and

Serhii Maslakh, ed. Peter J. Potichnyj, On the Current Situation in the Ukraine, (University of Michigan Press,

1970.) These became key texts of the pro autonomy/independence currents of Ukrainian communism during

the revolutionary years. In 1919 Yury Pyatakov ordered Do Khvyli confiscated and Shahkray exiled from the

Ukrainian SSR, he was later murdered by White troops following the occupation of Saratov. See report by Hryts

Sokura in Chervony Prapor, Organ of the Organising Committee of the Fraction of Nezalezhnyky of the USDRP,

Kyiv, 17 April 1919.57 This was expressed at the Fourth Congress of the USDRP and the Third Congress of the UPSR which

stated that: the national side of the revolution begins to threaten the further successful development of the

socio-economic class struggle warning the Central Rada could lose the support of the peasants and workers in

Ukraine which will also threaten the national gains of the revolution. Pavlo Khystyuk, Zamitky i materiialy, do

istori ukransko revoliutsi 19171920, rr Tom II (Prague: Ukrainskyi sociologychnyi instytut 192122),p. 2325.

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seeking its re-election to widen its constituency.58 This demonstrated a radical

evolution in working class opinions on the Ukrainian national question, splitting

opinion of the Bolsheviks in the USDRP.59

However the forces that could bring this about did not combine and moved

unevenly; the rapprochement necessary for its realisation was retarded. Neither the

fractious Bolsheviks, who had no territorial organisation in Ukraine, nor their

leadership in Russia were unified around such a perspective from within the UNR.60

Their approach was tactless, taking no account of the Ukrainian peculiarities and

attempting to superimpose the model of the Russia.

The initial defence of the uprising of the Petrograd proletariat by the USDRP was

followed by a Menshevik resolution being passed condemning it in the executive

body, the Central Rada.61 In the large cities and key centres local soviets were already

taking power. Typical of the debates at this time was that in the Katerynoslav soviet,

where the USDRP and Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party-Bolsheviks

(RSDRP(b), united in supporting the uprising in Petrograd, recognition of the

UNR, for soviet power in the city and for the Central Rada to be re-organised along

the same lines as the soviets are based.62

The All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies on 16

December 1917 proved to be a strategic catastrophe. The leaders of the Central Rada

denied urban soviets proportional representation, whilst the USDRP delegates vote to

seek an alliance with the Bolsheviks in order to establish a workers and peasants

government was undermined by the Party resolutions commission.63 The whole

event was ignited by the surprise ultimatum of the Russian Council of Peoples

Commissars threatening war on the UNR.64 In an atmosphere of recriminations the

58 In 7 out of ten of Ukraines largest cities, the councils of workers and soldiers deputies supported the

formation of a socialist government with the Central Rada as its supreme organ. This support for re-election

was particularly strong in towns in the northern gubernyas and in Kyiv, Kremenchuk, Kharkiv, Luhansk,

Kherson, Katerynsoslav, Odesa and Mykolaiv. See: Yury Markovych Hamretsk, Rady Ukrany v 1917 r (Kyiv,

Nauk dumka, 1974).59 The Kyiv Bolshevik Yevgenia Bosh records that the Third Universal was welcomed by a significant number of

soviets in Ukraine. Bojcun, Working Class and the National Question, op. cit., p. 306. Similarly Shakhray, a Poltava

Bolshevik, records the Proclamation of the Ukrainian Republic was met with huge demonstrations all over

Ukraine. A significant part of the Soviets also welcomed it. Skorovstanskii, Revoliutsiia na Ukraini, op. cit., p. 74.60 In their campaign for the re-election of the Rada through a congress of soviets, the Bolsheviks did not seek

unity with like-minded Ukrainian socialists, nor secure support from the soviets which had already backed such

a congress. Instead it was called by the RSDRP Kiev Committee. See Thomas M. Prymak The First All-

Ukrainian Congress of Soviets and its Antecedents, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 6 (1979), pp. 320.61 Robitnycha Hazeta, 27 October 1917.62 Robitnycha Hazeta, 3 November 1917.63 The USDRP pre-meeting before the Congress had decided in favour of seeking agreement with the Bolsheviks.

Porsh, the UNR Secretary of Labour, was actively engaged in negotiations with the Bolsheviks at the time.64 An appeal to the Ukrainians on 8 December 1917 by the leading organs of soviet power in Russia,

including the Central Executive Committee, demanded the immediate re-election of the Rada with the proviso:

Let the Ukrainians predominate in these soviets. However when the Council of Peoples Commissars declared a

war on the Central Rada behind the back of the CEC it did not receive unanimous or uncritical endorsement for

its action. See John Keep (ed), The Debate on Soviet Power, Minutes of the All-Russian Central Executive

Committee of Soviets, (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1979), p. 195223.

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Congress endorsed the Central Rada, but it was a pyrrhic victory, and an opportunity

lost.65

The internal fragmentation produced two rival bodies claiming the government of

the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. In January 1918 in its Fourth Universal, the Central

Rada declared independence of the UNR.66 The USDRP then withdrew from the

General Secretariat handing it over to the right wing of the UPSR.67 Their authority

was challenged by the Peoples Secretariat of the UNR.68 Formed in Kharkiv at the

rival congress of Soviets this was mainly but not solely a Bolshevik affair, and

comprised the pro-soviet USDRP (left), with several posts including the president,

Yukhym Medvedyev.69

The role of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers in Ukraine deepened the malaise;

through the substitution of internal elements by external forces, the revolution

consumed itself. Lured by the appeal of the Germans, the General Secretariat entered

a union with them at Brest Litovsk on 9 February 1918. The Germans then deposed

both UNR governments; first, after a bitter struggle, the Peoples Secretariat, and then

the General Secretariat, condemned as unreliable left opportunists.70

65 As relations deteriorated, Robitnycha Hazeta blamed the Bolsheviks for deepening a divisive wave of

national feelings by struggling against the Central Rada, which the Ukrainian people rightfully regard as the

expression of their interests. So we can note that the Bolshevik party, which is to all appearances the most

revolutionary and democratic, has by its tactics caused a total rupture between the Russian and Ukrainian

democracies and the obfuscation of contradictions among the Ukrainian people in a wave of nationalism,

Robitnycha Hazeta, 5 December 1917.66 According to the Radas president, Hrushevsky, the first motivation for declaring independence was the

conclusion of the peace. The need for a more decisive policy in the struggle with the crusade of Great Russia

under the leadership of the Peoples Commissars against Ukraine was the second motivation. Mykhailo

Hrushevsky, Ukrainska samostiinist i ii istorychna neobkhidnist, in Mykola Halii (ed), Vybrani pratsi. Vydano z

nahody 25-richchia z dnia ioho smerty (19341959), (New York, 1960), p. 37.67 The USDRP predicted the worst of the right-wing UPSR: the revolutionary situation is marked now by a

transition to the stage of anarchy, after which it will pass to reaction and entirely other elements that are far from

the proletariat will stand at the helm of the state. At this moment our party cannot be responsible for the

devious policy of the SRs, Robitnycha Hazeta, 16 January 1918.68 The official title was Peoples Secretariat of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Ukrainian Soviets

of Workers, Soldiers and Peasants Deputies, Ukrainian Peoples Republic.69 The first Soviet government is portrayed in official Ukrainian history as a Russian invention, downplaying

its Ukrainian characteristics and the events of 1917 as a Russian invasion. The role of the USDRP (left) has been

downplayed by both Soviet and Ukrainian national historiography. Vasyl Shakhray (V. Skorovstansky) an

opposition Ukrainian Bolshevik and Minister wrote: When open, armed struggle with the Central Rada began,

Bolsheviks from all parts of Ukraine . . . were of one mind in proposing that a Soviet centre should be

established in Ukraine as a counterweight to the Central Rada, and not one responsible member of this party

ventured to protest against the promulgation and creation of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. On the contrary,

in complete agreement with the programmatic demand of the right of every nation to self-determination, they

openly or at least tacitly stood on its (the Republics) ground. The will of the Ukrainian nation emerged, the

Ukrainian people separated into a Republic in federative union with other parts of Russia. Well and good! We in

this Republic will wage a war not against the Ukrainian Peoples Republic, not against the Ukrainian people, not

in order to strangle it. No! This will be a struggle for power within the Ukrainian Peoples Republic*this will bea class struggle . . . Skorovstansky, op. cit., 110111.

70 On 9 March 1918 Colonel von Stolzenberg told his High Command: It is very doubtful whether this

government, composed as it is exclusively of left opportunists, will be able to establish a firm authority. Oleh

Fedyshyn, Germanys Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 19171918 (New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUP, 1971), p. 96.

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The German General Staff replaced it with the even more pliant Hetmanate of

Pavlo Skoropadsky and considered the hetman himself to be only a puppet.71

Vynnychenko noted that the conservative coup detat of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky

only completed and crystallised in a precise form that which existed during the time

of the Central Rada; on its return to Kyiv its revolutionary essence was dissipated. 72

Reasons for Failure in Year One of the Revolution

The one years experience of 19171918 is a necessary detour to appreciate the upsurgeof the Ukrainian Revolution in pivotal year of 1919. The salient feature of the revolution

had become clear; the question to be examined is the ability of the key actors to

transcend the cleavages which arose in the next more decisive phase of the revolution.

As the revolutionary process radicalised why did was the UNR unable to transform

into a republic based on the soviets. From September many members of the USDRP

sought a social revolution, but in their view, the relationship of the soviets to the

Central Rada presented no consensus. Should it be reformed or overthrown? Mykola

Porsh who had written the Fourth Congress policies had told Stalin: We consider the

Central Rada to be by its composition a soviet of workers, peasants, and soldiers

deputies who were elected at congresses of peasants, workers and soldiers.73

Increasingly however, considering the ripening of the revolution in the west, the

USDRP did not take the path of socialist revolution, but assumed a waiting position,

setting itself the task of organising the Ukrainian republic internally as a necessary

condition for the successful course of the socialist revolution in Ukraine.74 The

soviets were also not unified in their course of action and slow in addressing events,

as the Ukrainian Bolshevik Vasyl Shakrai noted:

The disunited scattered struggle of the separate Soviets could not be sufficientlysuccessful, it was necessary for a Central Organ of Ukrainian Soviets to oppose theCentral Rada. But the Ukrainian Soviets did not have such an organ. The Soviets inUkraine devoted little time to the national movement. They were seized with thestruggle with the coalition government in Petrograd, and did not sufficiently valuethose organised processes which were going on in their own eyes; they stood, so tospeak, with their face to Petrograd, and their back to Ukraine.75

The Bolsheviks were very weakly represented in Ukraine prior to the revolution and did

not play a role within the national democratic movement per se, failing to develop a

Ukrainian perspective. When a section of soviets did cohere in a new centre around the

Peoples Secretariat it represented between 90 and 95 of Ukraines 300 soviets. After the

71 See Ambassador Baron von Mumms report to Berlin, 18 May 1918, quoted in Taras Hunczak, The

Ukraine under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky in The Ukraine, 19171921: A Study in Revolution, ed. TarasHunczak, (Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 71.

72 Vynnychenko Vidrodzhennia natsii Tom. 3, op. cit., p. 24.73 Cited in Mace The Ukrainian Problem and how Stalin tried to solve it, op. cit.74 Chervony Prapor, organ of the Organising Committee of the fraction of Nezalezhnyky of the USDRP, Kyiv,

22 January 1919.75 Vasyl Skorovstansky, Revoliutsiia na Ukraine, 2nd ed. (Saratov, Borba, December 1918), p. 79.

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debacle of an attempted reformation of the Central Rada the left was now divided over

the national question. The USDRP split, some aligned with the Peoples Secretariat but

much of its left were paralysed by the conflict with Soviet Russia.

Correspondingly the weakness of the course taken by the General Secretariat became

apparent in its conflict with the Peoples Secretariat. There were altogether about 12,000

Red Guards and Workers Militia units in Ukraine. Nevertheless the war, which lasted

from December 1917 to early February 1918, was marked by paradox. The war-weary

and revolutionised soldiers were not prepared to fight against Antonov-Ovseenko; the

commander of the Bolshevik intervention forces had to make do with revolutionary

detachments, who concentrated on organising local uprisings. At the same time the

Central Rada was unable to muster troops for its defence.76 The Rada was not so much

defeated by Bolshevik troops as destroyed by its own unpopular policies.

However, despite its ability to disperse the Central Rada and mount strong

resistance to the occupation the Peoples Secretariat revealed deep problems. Antonov

and others in Soviet Russia refused to recognise its authority whilst sections of the

army had displayed unbridled Russian chauvinism. Nezalezhnyky recognised that if

opportunist elements had sabotaged the Central Rada then:

It must be said that the leaders of the first Soviet government in Ukraine tried to usethe forms, created by the national-bourgeois revolution to advance the proletarianrevolution by recognising the Ukrainian Peoples Workers and Peasants Republic,establishing Peoples Secretariat as a government body etc. But the masses of theRussian and Russified urban proletariat and their party organisation*the KP(b)U*were unprepared for this policy to such an extent that their fight with the petty-bourgeois Central Rada was combined with destroying everything Ukrainian,ignoring plans of their official leaders from the Peoples Secretariat.77

Prior to the final defeat a Second All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets took place in

Katerynoslav on 17 March 1918 with 1,100 delegates. The congress adopted a

declaration of Ukraines independence of the Ukrainian Republic.78 This was already

76 We exerted valiant efforts in order to stop that invasion, as we used to call it, to win over our soldier

masses, which were inert towards us, to our side. But they displayed no wish to fight against the Bolsheviks even

in Kyiv, fraternising with them and taking their side. The Ukrainian Government could not rely on any of the

units quartered in Kyiv; it had no reliable unit even for its own protection. Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhennya natsii,

Tom.II, op.cit., p.77 There was a retreat from the Kharkiv Congress of Soviets decisions with an attempt to establish an array

of splinter Soviet republics and partition Ukraine. The power of the Peoples Secretariat was undermined by the

conduct of the military forces of Soviet Russia and the authorities in Russia. Shakhray complained: What kind

of Ukrainian government is this when its members do not know and do not want to know the Ukrainian

language? They have no influence in Ukrainian society. No-one has even heard their names before. What kind of

Ukrainian Minister of the Army am I when all of the Ukrainised divisions in Kharkiv will not obey me and

defend Soviet power and I am compelled to disarm them? The only military support we have in our struggle

against the Central Rada is the army Antonov brought into Ukraine from Russia, an army moreover that looks

at everything Ukrainian as hostile and counterrevolutionary. Cited in Bojcun, Working Class, op. cit., p. 327.78 Neronovych gave an interesting report on the situation on the BolshevikUkrainian front, in which he

argued that the struggle with the Central Radas army was hopeless and harmful. He intended to propose a

resolution on this matter, which the Council of Peoples Commissars had already adopted (by four votes to three

with two abstentions). The theses of this resolution were the following: 1) Soviet power in Ukraine, established

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the end of its activity on the territory of Ukraine but it confirmed an important

landmark as regards the trend of the Ukrainian revolution; both authoritative bodies,

the Central Rada and Central Executive Central Executive Committee of Soviets, had

come to independence.

At the Fifth Congress of the USDRP on 10 May 1918 it was agreed that the

revolution had developed beyond the limits of a national revolution, concluding that

the ultimate resolution of the tasks of the Ukrainian revolution is connected with the

growth of the revolutionary proletarian movement in the west.79 All these factors

would now take central stage.

The November Ukrainian Revolution: Revival and Retrogression in the Ukrainian

Peoples Republic

The Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadsky was a regime of comprador capitalists and

landlords aimed at the destruction of the revolutionary gains in the social, then

national spheres.80 It proved to be a defining moment, sharpening the process of

differentiation in the Ukrainian revolution. The occupation effectively cut Ukraine

off from events in the rest of the former empire. It was sheltered from the excesses of

war communism; the idea of the self-managing democracy of the soviets was

preserved. Whilst in the eyes of many workers and peasants the occupying armies

discredited both the Central Rada who had invited them and its successor Ukrainian

State.81 As soon as his German guardians were defeated on the Western front, in

1918, Skoropadsky bowed to Entente pressure and declared Ukraine part of an all-

Russian anti-Bolshevik federation. Skoropodaskys fate was sealed.

The primary organisational initiative to reconstitute the Ukrainian Peoples

Republic came from the Ukrainian National Union, a coalition of parties and trade

with the help of the armed revolutionary proletariat, mainly Great Russian, has almost no local forces of support

for its existence; 2) The further struggle with the Central Radas army will lead inevitably to a weakening of the

Central Radas democratic position and may create a situation, in which the Fourth Universal will be lost; 3) It

is, therefore, necessary to conclude peace with the Central Rada and reorganize it immediately, joining its

existing membership to the Central Executive Committee of Ukraine, elected at the Second All-Ukrainian

Congress of Soviets, to implement jointly the principles enunciated in the Fourth Universal. However, the

faction of left Ukrainian Social-democrats itself did not agree with this resolution and it never saw the light of

day. With this, Ievhen Neronovych split completely with the Bolsheviks, left the congress, resigned as Peoples

Secretary and went to Poltava. On 24 March he was arrested in the village of Sorochyntsi by the O. Shapoval

detachment and on 25 March he was shot.79 Pavlo Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materiialy, Tom III, p. 18.80 Ivan Maistrenko, Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of Ukrainian Revolution, (Hanover: Ibidem-Verlaag,

2007), p. 72.81 There was also a shift in working-class opinion on the national question, with significant support for an

independent Ukraine. This was confirmed by the Second All-Ukrainian Workers Congress on 13 May 1918;

despite a non-Ukrainian majority it agreed to a united struggle with the peasantry for an independent Ukrainian

Peoples Republic, sentiments further expressed at the All-Ukrainian Conference of Trade Unions, again largely

non-Ukrainian in composition. See Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materiialy, Tom III, op. cit., p. 18; Bojcun Working

Class, op. cit., p. 373.

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unions.82 The Directory of the UNR was formed to lead the rising; of the five

members two were bitter rivals, the chair Vynnychenko, and Petlyura. The November

Ukrainian Revolution was conducted exclusively by the indigenous national-

revolutionary forces.83

What is clear is that from the start the subjective forces were radically to the left of

the Directory. There was a rejuvenation of the idea of soviet power, both in the sense

of workers self-management and the parochial desires of the peasantry for control of

their affairs. Workers Councils revived, leading risings in Poltava and Katerynoslav, in

Kharkiv province and across the Left-Bank peasants support for soviet power was

extensive.84 Large sections of the insurgent army stood on a soviet platform. When

the Dniprovska Division entered Kyiv it was under red banners and slogans of All

power to the Soviets! and All land to the peasants. Fearing they would make an

attempt to take power, Petlyura transferred them from the city.85

The pro-communist left of the USDRP began to cohere into a faction, the

Organising Committee of the Independentists, established in early December 1918 in

Kharkiv.86 The Nezalezhnyky made public their views at the State Conference

convened by the Directory in Vynnytsia on 1214 December. There MykhayloAvdiyenko argued it was necessary:

1. to recognize that a profoundly socio-economic, as well as political, revolution istaking place in Ukraine; 2. to recognize that its engine is the proletariat and the toilingpeasantry, and 3. in accordance with this, to declare the principle of the dictatorship ofthe toiling masses in the form of councils of workers and peasants deputies.87

The Nezalezhnyky also sought to differentiate themselves from the Russian

Communist Party RKP(B), now organised in Ukraine as the Communist Party

(Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (KP(b)U). Founded at the ad-hoc conference at Tahanrih on

19-20 April 1918, the left-communists led by Pyatakov had allied with the Ukrainian

Bolshevik element of Shrink, Shakrai and the USDRP(Left). It was to be an

independent party, a section of Communist International with a particular strategy

82 The decision of the Central Committee to join caused consternation in local committees of the USDRP,

provoking a response in Robitnycha Hazeta insisting that the party would not abandon its distinctive

organisation and working class tactics. Robitnycha Hazeta, 8 October 1918.83 Bachinskyi, Dokumenty trahichnoyisioriy, op. cit., p. 534.84 Mark Baker, Peasants, Power and Revolution in the Village: A Social History of Kharkiv Province, PhD

dissertation (Harvard University, 2001), p. 166.85 K.B.Petrichenko, Malovidomi Fakty z Zhyttya ta Diyalnosti Danylo Ilkovicha Terpylo (Otoman Zeleny),

(Institute of Ukrainian studies Kyiv, December 2006), [unpublished].86 The Nezalezhnyky counted a number of prominent figures in its ranks: Mykhaylo Tkachenko, their main

theorist, had been Minister of Internal Affairs of the Central Rada; Volodymyr Chekhivsky, the Head of the

Council of Ministers of the revived UNR government. The other leading theorist was Andriy Richytsky; he was

one of the editors of the USDRP central organ Robitnycha Gazeta in 1917. Mykhaylo Avdiyenko was the most

active practical figure, originally from the strong Petrograd USDRP organisation where he was soldier; later in

Kyiv he was close to Vynnychenko. Another prominent member was Antin Drahomyretsky, a Kyiv functionary

and Yurko Mazurenko; he was in command of the USDRP Revolutionary Committee and in 1917 played a key

role in blocking the passage to Petrograd of Kornilov.87 Khrystiuk, op. cit., p. 52.

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for Ukraine. This was overturned by the RKP(B), as opposed to a party formed

through a process of unification of the vernacular revolutionary left the KP(b)U was

reduced to regional subordinate of the RKP(B). In the Nezalezhnyky organ the

Ukrainian Peoples Socialist Republic the faction considered:

It is a party that aims not for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the revolutionarypeasantry, but for the dictatorship of a section of the proletariat and of its own party. Itis, therefore, profoundly violent and it will replace proletarian dictatorial violenceagainst the bourgeois order with the violence of a small group.88

It had proven itself a hypocritical party which continually violates its own principles

and in view of this cannot be trusted until it is transformed organisationally and

merges with the interests of the Ukrainian working people.89

The revival of the UNR was accompanied by an extreme retrogressionist trend, the

Directory having incorporated the conservative elements of the Hetmanate, particu-

larly the military, who engaged in widespread pogroms and indiscriminate repression

of the labour and peasant movement.90 Otaman Bolbochan*commander-in-chief ofthe armies of Left-Bank Ukraine issued a decree on 25 November 1918 declaring

martial law in Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Poltava guberniya*forbidding all congressesand assemblies without his permission. I will not tolerate any soviets of workers

deputies and monarchist organisations and in general any organisations striving to

seize power.91 The middle class and moderate elements, though favouring a

parliamentary democracy, found themselves political prisoners of this element on

whom they were reliant.92 The revived UNR was further divided in its international

position; Vynnychenko and the Nezalezhnykys Volodymyr Chekhivsky, the head of

council of ministers, saw Soviet Russia as their natural ally as opposed to the Entente as

advocated by Petlyura. The Ententes main concern was the Russian volunteer army

fighting to restore the empire.93 On 18 December 1918, French and VA troops took

Odessa, proclaiming a South Russian government.

The debate on the course of the Ukrainian revolution came to a head at two

congresses in January 1919, at the Sixth Congress of the USDRP on 1012 Januaryand then on 23 January at the All-Ukrainian Labour Congress. The central question

88 Robitnycha Hazeta, no. 430, 7 January 1919.89 The pamphlet The Ukrainian Peoples Socialist Republic was published in Kharkiv, December 1918 and

republished more widely in Robitnycha Hazeta, 7 January 1919.90 An illustration was Colonel Bolbochan, the former Hetmanate commander of the Zaporozhian Division,

who was appointed the Directorys commander in chief in Left-Bank Ukraine. Bolbochan instituted a reign of

terror against the resurgence of the agrarian revolution and the workers councils. Baker, op. cit., p. 167168.91 Ibid., p. 163.92 Assessing what had arisen within the UNR Andr. Mykh of the Nezalezhnyky wrote: Whatever was alive

and popular in it has passed to the masses where it works. But remnants of the nationalist bourgeoisie and

intelligentsia cling to the blue and yellow banner, arrange buffoonery, meetings to the sound of church bells,

prayer services and other attributes of national sentimentalism, which only serve to discredit the popular

movement and its leaders. Our task and the task of the Directory at the present moment is to break completely

with remnants of the national front. Robitnycha Hazeta, 25 December 1918.93 See Anna Procyk, Russian Nationalism and Ukraine The Nationality Policy of the Volunteer Army During the

Civil War (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1995).

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was soviet power, and it was already being decided in practice. In Kharkiv on

2 January an independent workers uprising had established the authority of their

Soviet, the troops of the Directory troops refused to fight or were defeated by the

workers militia. The Red Army rushed across the border to enter the city, by mid

January it had captured most of the left-bank in the rest there was insurgency against

the Directory.

The USDRP Congress ended in a split in the Party and with the Ukrainian working

class. The Central Committee member Pisotsky (Richytsky) presented the Nezalezh-

nyky thesis on Soviet power. The task, it was asserted, was the transformation of the

UNR into the sovereign and independent Ukrainian Socialist Republic.94 Power

would be organised on the principle of the dictatorship of the urban and rural

proletariat and the poorer toiling peasantry, organised in worker-peasant councils.95

While defending the independence of Ukraine they demanded:

a) a rapprochement with the Russian Soviet Republic, on the basis of mutualrecognition of the sovereignty of both socialist republics, complete and mutualnon-interference in the internal affairs of the neighbouring republic, the immediatewithdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine (including the Crimea),their non-interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine and, in the case of refusal,an active defence of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic against imperialist attack.96

It was supported by V. Mazurenko, M. Avdiyenko, M. Tkachenko and others who

pointed to the beginning of the world revolution and demanded that Ukraine have

the closest ties with the German and Russian revolutions, as well as immediate peace

with Soviet Russia and a common armed struggle against the VA and the Entente. A

majority of the Central Committee of the USDRP spoke in favour; the opposition was

Vynnychenko, of the centre, with his Labour Council conception and the right-wing

Katerynoslav group of Issak Mazepa, Panas Fadenko and Ivan Romanchenko, joined

surprisingly by Porsh.97 It is debatable how representative the conference was in a

situation where members of the Central Committee couldnt sleep in their own beds

for fear of arrest.98 The Congress resolved that the socialist revolution is a long

process and they were only the beginning preparatory stage; democracy had to be

established first, and until then they endorsed the Directory and the military. This

prompted the Nezalezhnyky to walk out.

94 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 69.95 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 69.96 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 69.97 The discussions that Porsh held with Mazepa on their own do not explain such a volte-face by Porsh. One

can surmise that the experience of 19171918 and the Bolsheviks attitude to the Ukrainian question hadseriously disillusioned Porsh, as it had others. It was his last speech to a USDRP audience in Ukraine after which

he was dispatched as UNR ambassador to Germany. In January 1921 he began to adopt a more sovietophile

politics; he made a speech at a student meeting calling on the emigres to recognise the Soviet Ukrainian

government and return to the Ukraine. Porsh applied to return to the Ukraine himself in 1922; in January 1923

the Ukrainian Politburo decided to allow him to return, though he never took up the offer. He started to drift

away from political activity and suffered a tragic death in Germany in 1944.98 Vynnychenko, op. cit., p. 242.

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They proceeded to launch the weekly Chervony Prapor as organ of the Organising

Committee of the Fraction of Independentists of the USDRP. It appeared

symbolically on 22 January the day of the act of unification of the Ukrainian Peoples

Republic and the newly created West Ukrainian Peoples Republic, and the first

session of the All-Ukrainian Labour Congress.99 The launch issue of Chervony Prapor

contained the Declaration of the Fraction written by Tkachenko and Richytsky.

Despite formal similarities the Nezalezhnyky differed sharply from the official party

which had reached a dead end, there was no middle ground for Ukraine at a time

when the world war is breaking up into a whole series of partial wars, on the basis of

the necessity for the socialist revolution being introduced in national-political

forms. 100 Responding to the nationalist criticism that soviet power would lead to the

dominance of the non-Ukrainian urban element, they pointed out that the

proletariat was not entirely foreign and emphasised it can and must come to

power together with the revolutionary peasantry.101 In the course of the revolution

the non-Ukrainian workers would be drawn more and more into all forms of internal

life in Ukraine and rid themselves of the remnants of old Russia and will join the

Ukrainian people and proletariat.102

It was necessary also to avoid a repetition of the failures of year one of the

revolution, warning:

A repetition of the Bolsheviks anti-Ukrainian experiments would be very quicklydefeated by the course of the national movement itself. But the workers must notsuffer a new defeat. We believe that the time has come for the non-Ukrainianworkers to be drawn into the work of the social-political construction of theindependent Ukrainian Republic.103

The Labour Congress was meant to legitimise the UNR in a forum of the popular

movement and realise Vynnychenkos concept of a republic based on labour councils

of workers and peasants.104 The Nezalezhnyky opposition declaration was read by

Zinovyev on 26 January, damming the whole event as the fruit of the Directorys

vacillating and ambiguous policy the Labour Congress was convened simultaneously

with the destruction of the organs of the working people.105 It had no right to exist

and must transfer this power to the true representative of the revolutionary masses,

99 Chervony Prapor, 22 January 1919.100 Deklaratsiya Fraktsii Nazalezhnykh USDRP, Chervony Prapor, 22 January 1919.101 Deklaratsiya Fraktsii Nazalezhnykh USDRP, Chervony Prapor, 22 January 1919.102 Deklaratsiya Fraktsii Nazalezhnykh USDRP, Chervony Prapor, 22 January 1919.103 Deklaratsiya Fraktsii Nazalezhnykh USDRP, Chervony Prapor, 22 January 1919.104 According to Mazepa the decision to call the All-Ukrai