or How not to build a state
The eighty-fifth anniversary of the Central Rada passed almost unnoticed a couple of weeks ago, albeit acknowledged at the official level (by a presidential order), because the Ukrainian political community was too busy. Why should The Day broach the subject again? Perhaps because its topicality is so clearly apparent. Can any of us be sure that we are building the kind of Ukraine her best sons once dreamed of and fought for? How come there is no other Ukraine?
Less than a year elapsed from the date on which the Ukrainian Central Rada started functioning (March 20, 1917, New Style) and the date of proclamation of the Ukrainian National Republic (January 22, 1918), but those ten months were packed with events! The history and chronology of the Central Rada offer vast room for research, but it is important for us to understand the reasons for the defeat of the national revolution.
March 16-20, 1917 (all dates are in the New Style), an organization emerged in Kyiv, the result of numerous consultations and heated discussions, aimed at establishing “territorial autonomy and official Ukrainian language.” The Rada’s leadership was elected on March 20 with Mykhailo Hrushevsky, historian and public figure, as Chairman of the Presidium. On March 22, the Rada adopted its first message addressing the Ukrainian people, calling for active participation in the elections to the Constituent Assembly preparations for the construction of a political and civil societies; for introducing Ukrainian in government, judicial authorities, and educational establishments. Was it a difficult task? Historian Isydor Nahayevsky writes in The History of Twentieth Century Ukraine: “...the 1917 revolution found Dnipro (Russian-ruled — Ed.) Ukraine spiritually, culturally, and nationally mutilated... Only the peasantry remained Ukrainian; the other strata were denationalized... most residents of the Ukrainian cities were outsiders, an element unfriendly to us.”
From the outset of the Central Rada, the differences between the deputies parties reached their peak. Old squabbles among parties, dating from the tsarist period, remained a heavy burden; in addition, the nationally conscious intelligentsia was in critically short supply, as were officials and military officers with the required professional training and political experience.
Still, owing to the chaos and anarchy in Petrograd and Moscow under the provisional government, the Rada had every opportunity to build a Ukrainian state. Perhaps the main reason for the defeat of the 1917-21 national revolution was that most leaders (Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and Serhiy Yefremov) long romantically believed in inviolable democratic ties with Russia. “The belief in the overall Russian Revolution and neglect of the national consciousness of the Ukrainian masses showed their fatal consequences when Bolshevik slogans began to infiltrate Ukraine, along with agents provocateur that supplied every Ukrainian village with so much propaganda literature,” Nahayevsky writes, referring to the 1917 model of Ukrainian socialists. The titles of reports delivered at the All-Ukraine National Congress (April 19, 1917) speak for themselves: “Public Law and the Federalist Aspirations of Ukraine” (Dmytro Doroshenko), “Ukrainian Autonomy within a Federal Republic” (Mykhailo Tkachenko), “On the Territorial Autonomy of Ukraine” (Valentyn Sadovsky)... As we see, the congress did not go further than claiming national autonomy. In fact, Vynnychenko was against general elections in Ukraine — and this at a time when the peasantry (almost 80% of the population) had no representatives in the Rada (they actually did, the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the biggest party in the Rada was based on the village cooperative movement —Ed.)
The first Rada Universal [Decree], of June 23, 1917, was yet further evidence of the leadership’s fatal indecisiveness. It read, “May Ukraine be free. May the Ukrainian people have a right to decide its life in its own land, without separating from Russia, without breaking ties with the Russian state...” Even as the Second Universal was proclaimed (July 16, 1917), reaffirming the federalist principle of Ukrainian-Russian relationships, it was clear that the leadership did not want to hear what the masses had to say, particularly the army that was becoming Ukrainized at a remarkable speed; up to 35% of the units at the fronts were made up of Ukrainians (up to 60% at the southwest front) and they wanted to fight for a free Ukraine. Nahayevsky writes, “people pressured the General Secretariat from all sides, urging, take power in your hands now! Be a strong, firmly resolved and real government! Yet even this fragile autonomy was protested by Moscow professors at the Kyiv University, Theological Seminary, Polytechnic Institute; there was a pitched struggle against the Ukrainization of Ukrainian schools at the Kyiv City Council...”
Too much time was wasted between the first and fourth universals, the latter legally sealing the independence of the Ukrainian National Republic (e.g., June 23, 1917 — January 22, 1918), as the Central Rada leadership took a full national independence stand only in early 1918. Too late.
The Bolshevik revolutionary leader, Lenin, said in early 1918 something very significant: only a revolution that can defend itself is worth something. The army becomes the final argument when there is nothing the diplomats can do. The Ukrainian romantics shrugged off this important revolutionary factor. How bad their mistake was is seen today, by taking a closer look at our Czech and Polish neighbors. Tomas Masaryk proved a Czechoslovak leader capable of directing all political trends toward a single goal. He brought back home trainloads of legionnaires from Siberia and they became the bulk of the Czechoslovak army and statehood. His merits are great the more so that he was not a career officer. He was a professor and scholar, just like Mykhailo Hrushevsky (with whom he was friends — Ed.). Poland had its Moses in the person of Jozef Pilsudski who had constantly and persistently worked on the formation of national military units, from the outset of World War I. That was what made the so- called miracle of the Vistula possible in 1920 when the absolute majority of Poles rose in arms to defend their newly reborn state.
Even as the Third Military Congress was called to order in Kyiv, on the eve of the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd (November 7, 1917), the Rada could assemble several hundred thousand soldiers in a matter of days. The congress ended on November 13, six days after the fall of the Kerensky government, passing a resolution marking Ukraine’s first step toward freedom. It is perfectly safe to assume that “Ukrainized units” held power in Kyiv at the time. The delegates demanded decisive actions.
At that fateful period, the Rada leadership — and that of the Ukrainian National Republic, as of January 22, 1918 — made every effort to rob the army of vitality, relying only on the militia. The Ukrainian socialists, forming the majority at the Military Secretariat of the Rada, told Colonel Viktor Pavlenko, responsible for organizing the Guard, “The army has been and will remain in implement of the ruling classes in their struggle against the peasants and workers.” Late in 1917, Pavlenko was relived of his post as commander of the Kyiv military district and the units he had organized were demobilized.
What happened a month later clearly indicated the political utopia of the Rada leadership. A total of 300 college and university students from an auxiliary regiment were dispatched to defend the young UNR against an almost 6,000 Red Guards and Baltic Navy sailors led by Colonel Mikhail Muraviov. The losing battle took place near Kruty, January 23, 1918. And the men and officers that could have defeated of the Bolshevik horde were back home, dividing plots...
The young Rada romantics “behind Hrushevsky’s gray beard” implicitly trusted the socialist “brotherhood of the peoples” and refused to see the Russian Bolshevik villainy. Their — and Skoropadsky’s — banking on the German Kaiser was another mistake. They invited Germany and Austria-Hungary to occupy Ukraine. It was a time bomb. A political coup took place in Kyiv on April 29, 1918. Pavlo Skoropadsky, a former tsarist general, was proclaimed hetman. Conservative bureaucrats and officers came to power. This was Ukraine’s first rift. The nation refused to accept the actual restoration of the monarchy in the person of an operetta hetman aided by German forces.
The Bolsheviks became increasingly active and powerful in the Ukrainian political arena under the circumstances. Meanwhile, Ukrainian society continued to be antagonized from within. One of the consequences was the civil war devouring all non-Bolshevik forces. After almost four years of hostilities, Ukraine awaited a terribly long and devastating communist experiment.
