THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION, 1917-1920 A STUDY IN NA TIONALISM -($' By JOHN S.YHETAR, JR. /'- PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 1952 , ... 4-:: Copyright, 1952, by Princeton University Press London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press (92 Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Princeton University Research Fund i Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER Preface HIS study is an attempt to do justice to a sorely neglected aspect of the Russian Revolution- the Ukrainian effort to attain independent state- hood which commenced in 1917 and ended in failure in 1920. English and American students Thave described and analyzed with adequate care events which occurred in Moscow and Petrograd, but there have been no comparable efforts to study the peripheries of the Russian Empire. In the case of Ukraine this negligence was due to a general unawareness of the existence of a people in Southern Russia distinct Erom those in the North. The fact that both the Ukrainians and the Russians claim the same early history has been a source of considerable consternation to the uninitiated observer. In the past vari- ous Russian writers, among them Prince Alexander Vol- konsky and Prince Serge Obolensky, have written polemics based on the thesis that there is no Ukrainian nation but only a Little Russian branch of the Russian nation. Ukrain- ian historians and polemicists have countered with the assertion that the Muscovite tsars usurped Ukraine's ancient name of Rus. An attempt to disentangle the various claims and counter- claims advanced by the Russian and Ukrainian historians would go beyond the scope of this study and would be of no practical value because the distinctiveness of the Ukrain- ians is now generally recognized. The fact that Ukraine enjoys the status of a separate republic as well as member- ship in the United Nations is indicative of the recocgnition which has been accorded it. The four years of painful suffering and bloodshed, of chaos and anarchy, and of un- derstandable but harmful compromises described in the following pages did not lead to independent statehood. There is much in this story that is heroic, and there is also the shabby, the tragic, and the ironic. In a narrow sense this is the study of a failure because the men who led the Ukrainian movement were defeated. Yet when viewed in vii 1; PREFACE its historical perspective, the Ukrainian Revolution of 1g 17- 1920 was not without effect for it compelled Russia's Com- munist rulers to acknowledge the existence of the Ukrain- ian people. This was no mean achievement. I The person who undertakes to describe and evaluate the events of this period of civil war and revolution cannot but be aware of the large number of works with an anti- Ukrainian bias which have come from the pens of Soviet and anti-Bolshevik Russian writers. Yet if the story of the national movement is to be told accurately it must be based primarily on the accounts of the men who made it possible. There are many questions which cannot be fully answered. Personal animosities and the usual desire of participants to avoid responsibility for errors have contributed to the difficulties encountered in this enquiry. Human motives and the causes of failures are not easily determined. If the present writer has been unjust to any of the participants in the events dealt with in this study he requests only that those who would pass harsh judgment upon him recall the complexity of this period before doing so. Transliteration is invariably a problem because those who are philologically inclined demand a system which incorporates every subtlety while for the average scholar the main function of a system of transliteration is to enable the reader who knows the language to consult a specific source. This writer has not distinguished between the IJkrainian "H" and "is' by rendering one as "y" and the other as '5"; nor has he transliterated "'i" as "yi" or "e" as "ye." This has been done in order to maintain simplicity and also for aesthetic reasons since if "i"' were to be ren- dered as "yi" it would necessitate spelling "Ukraina" as "Ukrayina." In the case of names of Ukrainians who have been living in exile for a considerable period of time an attempt has been made to render the person's name in the form which he himself has employed more or less con- sistently in his writings in the Western European languages. Whatever merit this work may possess is due in no small measure to the aid and encouragement which I have re- viii PREFACE ceived from my former teachers and from my associates and colleagues. The Social Science Research Council in granting me a pre-doctoral fellowship enabled me to be released from a considerable portion of my teaching duties. I am heavily indebted to Professor Rupert Emerson of the Department of Government at Harvard University and to Professor Philip E. Mosely of the Russian Institute at Co- lumbia University, without whose generous support this study could not have been undertaken. Professor Mykola Haydak placed his excellent private library of rare Ukrain- ian materials at my disposal, and the since deceased Pro- fessor Dmitro Doroshenko, during two delightful summer afternoons and evenings in Winnipeg, provided me with invaluable reminiscences. Professor Harold Sprout and Professor George Graham, my colleagues at Princeton, graciously consented to the lightening of my teaching du- ties. My former teachers-Professors Merle Fainsod and Michael Karpovich-contributed, each in his own way, to my graduate education and to the preparation which pre- ceded the writing of my doctoral dissertation from which this study emerged. I should like to express my gratitude to the staff members of the Widener Library at Harvard, the Columbia Uni- versity Library, the Princeton University Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Hoover Library at Stanford University for the many serv- ices rendered in connection with the research for this study. In addition, the publications gathered by the late Harold Weinstein, and bequeathed to Columbia University follow- ing his death in World War 11, were of inestimable value to me. The many persons who have contributed in so many different ways to this study are too numerous to be fully acknowledged. I do, however, wish to express my apprecia- tion to Professor Hans Kohn for providing me with certain background information with regard to various of the Jewish groups in Ukraine; to Katherine Reshetar and Marie Kalina for their typing of the manuscript with such PREFACE care and efficiency and for their aid in the preparation of the index; to Miriam Brokaw of the Princeton University Press who made innumerable suggestions in connection with the preparation of the manuscript for publication; to Helen Van Zandt for preparing the map; and to Marianne Ehrenborg for aiding in the proofreading. In accordance with custom, I must state that I alone.bear full responsibility for the conclusions expressed and for any errors of fact or interpretation which may have oc- curred. Publication of this study was aided substantially by a generous subvention from the Prince ton University Re- search Fund for which I am very grateful. JOHN S. RESHETAR, JR. Princeton December, 1951 Table of Contents I. INCIPIENT NATIONHOOD 1 11. THE RISE OF THE CENTRAL RADA 45 111. THE DEMISE OF THE RADA 87 IV. THE INTERLUDE OF THE HETMANATE 143 V. THE REPUBLICAN REVIVAL 209 VI. THE DEBACLE 261 VII. IN RETROSPECT 317 BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 INDEX 349 A map of Ukraine will be found on pages 220 and 221. CHAPTER I Incipient Nationhood And Ukraine shall rise from her grave and shall again appeal to all brethren Slavs, and they shall heed her call, and Slavdom shall rise and there shall remain neither tsar nor tsarevich, neither tsarina nor prince, neither count nor duke, neither Illustrious Highness nor Excellency, neither sir nor nobleman, neither serf nor servant; neither in Muscovy nor in Poland, neither in Ukraine nor in Czechia, neither in Croatia nor in Serbia nor in BU~~~~~~.-NICHOLASKOSTOMAROV, The Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian People (1846) We know that the struggle will be long and bitter, that the enemy is strong and unsparing. But we also know that this is the final conflict, not to be followed by another opportune moment for a new struggle. The night has been long, but the dawn has approached and we shall not allow the rays of na- ' tional freedom to shine on our chains: we shall break them before the rising of the sun of liberty. For the last time we shall enter the arena of history and either succeed or die. We no longer wish to bear foreign rule and indignities in our , own land. Numerically we are small, but in our love of Ukraine we are strong! . Let the cowards and renegades go, as they have in the past, to the camp of our enemies. They have no place among us, and we shall denounce them as enemies of the Fatherland. All in Ukraine who are not for us are against us. Ukraine for the Ukrainians! So long as a single foreign enemy remains on our territory we do not have the right to lay down our arms.-~~c~o~~sMIKHNOVSKY, Independent Ukraine (1900) HE collapse of the Russian Empire in February 191 7 led to one of the richest and most costly periods of political experimentation in mod- ern history-costly in human as well as in ma- terial terms.