State Building in Revolutionary Ukraine

STATE BUILDING IN REVOLUTIONARY UKRAINE Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM This page intentionally left blank Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM STEPHEN VELYCHENKO STATE BUILDING IN REVOLUTIONARY UKRAINE A Comparative Study of Governments and Bureaucrats, 1917–1922 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4132-7 Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable- based inks. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Velychenko, Stephen State building in revolutionary Ukraine: a comparative study of governments and bureaucrats, 1917–1922/Stephen Velychenko. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4132-7 1. Ukraine – Politics and government – 1917–1945. 2. Public adminstration – Ukraine – History – 20th century. 3. Nation-building – Ukraine – History – 20th century 4. Comparative government. I. Title DK508.832.V442011 320.9477'09041 C2010-907040-2 The research for this book was made possible by University of Toronto Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grants, by the Katedra Foundation, and the John Yaremko Teaching Fellowship. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities. Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM To my parents and my children Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM This page intentionally left blank Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM Contents Maps xi Introduction 3 1 Ukrainians and Government Bureaucracy before 1917 15 2 Bureaucracy, Law, and Political Parties in Ukrainian Thought 48 3 The Central Rada, March 1917 to April 1918 66 4 The Ukrainian State, April to December 1918 105 5 The Directory, December 1918 to November 1919 120 6 Bureaucrats and Bolsheviks in Russia 151 7 Bureaucrats, Bolsheviks, and Whites in Ukraine 167 8 The Western Ukrainian National Republic, November 1918 to October 1920 208 9 Bureaucrats in Other New European Governments 224 Conclusion 246 Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM viii Contents Appendix 1: Tables 271 1 Total and urban population, by province, 1897 and 1917 271 2 Number of Russian and Ukrainian journals and newspapers published in Ukraine, 1917–1920 272 3 Bolshevik newspapers published in Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine, 1917–1920 272 4 Total and urban populations and estimated numbers of total and urban administrators, by province, in 1897 273 5 Estimated administrators and auxiliary personnel in government, civic councils, and private organizations, by province, in 1897 273 6 All and Ukrainian railway, communications, and legal personnel, by province, in 1897 274 7 Annual spending in small towns: Secretaries’ salaries, as percentage of administrative budget and of total budget, total administrative budget and total budget, 1913–1917 274 8 Number of Jews and Ukrainians who declared themselves to be literate in Russian, total and urban, by province, 1897 275 9 Results of Duma elections (in per cent) in major cities, including garrisons 275 10 Total number of Bolshevik Revolutionary Military Committees (revkoms) in Bolshevik-controlled territory, 1918–1922 276 11 Administrators in Ukraine in 1926: All, Ukrainians, Russians, and Jews 276 12 Population in 1910 of districts later controlled by the ZUNR: Uniates, Roman Catholics, Jews, and total 277 13 Estimated urban population in ZUNR-controlled territory, by confession and total, 1910 and 1917 278 14 Population of Soviet Ukraine in 1920 by nationality, urban/rural place of residence, and literacy (incomplete) 279 Appendix 2: Provisional List of Administrators’ Unions and Organizations (1917) 280 Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM Contents ix Appendix 3: Daily Life 283 Appendix 4: Prices and Wages 305 Notes 317 Bibliography 389 Index 415 Illustrations follow page 146 Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM This page intentionally left blank Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:49 PM Brought to youby|Cambridge University Library Download Date |3/31/17 3:53 PM Authenticated Map 1. Territories claimed by the Central Rada and the Ukrainian State in 1917 and 1918. Source: Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 476. Brought to youby|Cambridge University Library Download Date |3/31/17 3:53 PM Authenticated Map 2. Approximate territories controlled by the Ukrainian National and Russian Socialist Republics in January 1919. Source: http:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_map_1919.jpg. Brought to youby|Cambridge University Library Download Date |3/31/17 3:53 PM Authenticated Map 3. Approximate territories controlled by governments and groups in March 1919. Source: Loza, Ukraina, Istorychnyi Atlas, 3, 5–7; Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 496. Brought to youby|Cambridge University Library Download Date |3/31/17 3:53 PM Authenticated Map 4. Approximate territories controlled by governments and groups in August 1919. Source: Loza, Ukraina, Istorychnyi Atlas, 3, 5–7; Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, 496. STATE BUILDING IN REVOLUTIONARY UKRAINE Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:53 PM This page intentionally left blank Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:53 PM Introduction In a modern state the actual ruler is necessarily and unavoidably the bureaucracy, since power is exercised neither through parliamentary speeches nor monarchial enunciations but through the routines of bureaucracy. Max Weber (1917) During the four years following the October 1917 collapse of the Rus- sian Provisional Government seven major groups and/or governments claimed political authority in some or all of the Ukrainian provinces of the former tsarist empire. These were the Whites; the Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars; the Ukrainian Central Rada (March 1917 to April 1918); the Ukrainian State (April to December 1918); the Direc- tory (December 1918 to November 1919); the anarchists; and the Ukrai- nian Communists, former left-wing members (Borotbists) of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR) and the Ukrainian Social Dem- ocratic Labour Party (USDLP), who sought an independent communist Ukraine.1 Between November 1917 and January 1920 some towns in formerly tsarist Ukraine changed hands as many as twenty times, and no one government controlled for longer than eight consecutive months any sizable core territory – that is, regions behind lines delineated by towns garrisoned by troops of a particular government (see Maps 1, 3, and 4).2 In the eastern part of Habsburg Galicia Ukrainians established the Western Ukrainian National Republic (ZUNR), which lasted from November 1918 to July 1919. Later, Ukrainian national leaders would bemoan a dire shortage of Ukrainians able and willing to work as administrators as a major reason for Ukrainians’ failure to attain independence in those years. Brought to you by | Cambridge University Library Authenticated Download Date | 3/31/17 3:53 PM 4 State Building in Revolutionary Ukraine This book examines this claim and asks the following questions: Who were the administrators? What did they do? How did their nationality and interests affect their behaviour? How many stayed at their jobs despite the changing of governments? To better understand what hap- pened, the book will compare not only the state-building efforts of rival sides in Ukraine but also state building in other countries at the time. It focuses on state-building projects, initiated and led by nationalist and/ or socialist, educated elites, which were premeditated directed activities that involved making an administrative apparatus bigger, more complex, and more coordinated. These attempts to create or control government bureaucracies did not occur in isolation but within a larger context of state formation, that is, rival groups of educated minorities and their sup- porters, while engaged in state building, were fi ghting with each other for control over existing administrative organizations within specifi c territories. Ukrainian national state building began in June 1917 and ended in late 1921, when leaders failed at their last attempt to form a government and an army on Ukrainian territory. In December 1917 Russian Bolshevik armies invaded Ukrainian territory. Bolshevik state building and state formation that began that month in Ukraine ended success- fully fi ve years later, when the only powerful army and central bureaucracy left on formerly tsarist Ukrainian territory became formally subject to Kharkiv, the fi rst capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. State building refers to a rational, formal, organizational ‘top-down’ activity often moulded by the pressures of war and diplomacy. From this perspective traditional politics based on kinship and clientism do not reinforce but obstruct or undermine government. Historians have shown, however, that central government leaders

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