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

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The Crossroads of the EuropeanRevolution: Ukrainian Social-Democrats and Communists(Independentists), the UkrainianRevolution and Soviet Hungary1917�1920Chris Ford

When considering the fate of the revolutionary wave in Europe during 1916�1921 the

traditional 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 1917�1919 the Ukrainian question was pivotal to the success of

the 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 he

meant 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 Critique

DOI: 10.1080/03017605.2010.522122

Critique

Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2010, pp. 565�605

Downloaded By: [Ford, Chris] At: 10:20 19 November 2010

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

1917�1921. According to Vynnychenko, the ‘universal current’ which strove to realise

this historical tendency of the revolution comprised the most radical of the socialist

parties, the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries*Borotbisty*and the

oppositional 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 1918�1919, set in the context of the

revolutionary 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 (1900�1905) through the USDRP (1905�1919) 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 (1917�1927 rr), zhurnal ‘Okhorona pratsi’, (Kyiv Oblast

Derzhauna Administratsiya, 1999), p. 523.3 John-Paul Himka, Comments on Manfred Turban, ‘Roman Rosdolsky’s 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. 135�147.

566 C. Ford


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

that existed in the period from the International Working Men’s Association through to

the Ukrainian revolution of 1917�1921. This current consciously organised themselves

as 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 Rosdolsky’s 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

Marx’s 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 principle’of

Ukrainianworkers’self-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 Marx’s 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 Marx’s 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. 3�33 (1982). Similarly Marx had emphasised that the peasant community

could 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 Plekhanov’s 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.

Critique 567


. 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 leaders

supported 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 USDRP’s sister party in Galicia, the Ukrainian Social-Democratic

8 Podolynsky participated in the International Working Men’s 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

Engels’s 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, L’internatonale socialiste et les peuples opprimes, (Vienna: Dzuin, 1920); A. Karpenko,

‘Lenin’s Theory of The National Question And Its Contradictions’, META, 2: 3�4, (1979); M. Yurkevich, ‘A

Forerunner of National Communism: Lev Yurkevych (1885�1918)’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies, 7:1(1982),

pp. 50�57. Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International: Documents : 1907�1916 (Communist International

in Lenin’s Time), Ed. John Riddell, New York, Monad, 1986, Lev Rybalka (Yurkevych) ‘Rosiiski marksysty i

ukrainskyi rukh’, Dzvin 7�8, 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. 99�100.

568 C. Ford


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 1900�1907. With

Special 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) L’Ukraine 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.

Critique 569


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’, Ukrains’kyi 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. 3�6.24 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. 226�234.

570 C. Ford


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 Ukraine’s 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, 1880�1920, (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 Ukraine’s

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. 132�230.29 Volobuyev, op. cit., p. 165.

Critique 571


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 1905�1917’, 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 Ukrainian

peasants 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. 26�28.33 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.

572 C. Ford


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 the

populace. 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. Ukraine’s 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. 45�66; Marko Bojcun, ‘Approaches to the Study of the

Ukrainian Revolution’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies 24:1 (1999), pp. 21�39; Theodore H. Friedgut, Iuzovka and

Revolution, Vol. 1: Life and Work in Russia’s Donbass, 1869�1924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994),

pp. 208�144.35 Isaak Mazepa, Bolshevyzm I Okupatsiia Ukariny, (Lviv, 1922), p. 13.36 Cited in Bojcun, The Working Class and the National Question in Ukraine, 1880�1920 (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.

Critique 573


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 People’s Republic (UNR) in 1917,

the upsurge of the worker�peasant 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 Ukraine’s 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 entirenation’s 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 1917�1920, (Chicago: Ukrainian Research and

information 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. 5�6, 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 (1917�1927 rr), Zhurnal ‘Okhorona pratsi’, (Kyiv

Oblast Derzhavna Administratsiya, 1999) pp. 532�533.

574 C. Ford


‘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 4�5 April 1917, considered it ‘as

the 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. 251�252.44 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 class

interests 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 Lypynsky’s 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. 46�47.47 The Central Rada’s 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.

Critique 575


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 Marx’s 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 historical

orthodoxies 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 Lenin’s 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 left’s

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.

576 C. Ford


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. 240�241.56 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 1918�1919. 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 diiet’sia 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

istoriı ukraıns’koı revoliutsiı 1917�1920, rr Tom II (Prague: Ukrains’kyi sociologychnyi instytut 1921�22),

p. 23�25.

Critique 577


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 People’s

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

58 In 7 out of ten of Ukraine’s 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 Ukraıny 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. 3�20.61 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. 195�223.

578 C. Ford


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 Rada’s 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 People’s 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 (1934�1959), (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 People’s 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 Republic’s) 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 People’s Republic, not against the Ukrainian people, not

in order to strangle it. No! This will be a struggle for power within the Ukrainian People’s Republic*this will be

a class struggle . . .’ Skorovstansky, op. cit., 110�111.70 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, Germany’s Drive to the East and the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917�1918 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

UP, 1971), p. 96.

Critique 579


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 d’etat 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 year’s experience of 1917�1918 is a necessary detour to appreciate the upsurge

of 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 Ukraine’s 300 soviets. After the

71 See Ambassador Baron von Mumm’s report to Berlin, 18 May 1918, quoted in Taras Hunczak, ‘The

Ukraine under Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky’ in The Ukraine, 1917�1921: A Study in Revolution, ed. Taras

Hunczak, (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.

580 C. Ford


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 People’s Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic,establishing People’s 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 People’s 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 Ukraine’s 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 Bolshevik�Ukrainian front, in which he

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

resolution on this matter, which the Council of People’s 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

Critique 581


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

People’s 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. Skoropodasky’s 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 Rada’s army will lead inevitably to a weakening of the

Central Rada’s 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.

582 C. Ford


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 12�14 December. There Mykhaylo

Avdiyenko 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.

Critique 583


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 People’s 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 of

the armies of Left-Bank Ukraine’ issued a decree on 25 November 1918 declaring

martial law in Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Poltava guberniya*forbidding all congresses

and 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 Nezalezhnyky’s 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 Entente’s 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 10�12 January

and 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 People’s 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 Directory’s 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. 167�168.91 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).

584 C. Ford


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 couldn’t 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 1917�1918 and the Bolsheviks’ attitude to the Ukrainian question had

seriously 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.

Critique 585


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 Vynnychenko’s 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 Directory’s

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-Ukraine Labour Congress ‘was an obvious concession to

Bolshevik slogans. The landowners and financial and business circles, which had supported the Hetmanate were

excluded.’ Maistrenko, op. cit., p. 100.105 At the time of elections to the Labour Congress, the Left Bank of Ukraine had already been taken by

Soviet troops. Thus elections could not be held there. On the Right bank there was a wave of pogroms. In the

south the French army and the Russian Volunteer Army had captured Odessa and were advancing. Whilst the

National Rada of the Western Province of the UNR were invited to participate with full voting rights, in sharp

contrast at the insistence of Petlyura, Konovalets and other otamans, the soldiers of the UNR were deprived of

electoral rights to participate.

586 C. Ford


the only one capable of carrying out the great tasks of the Ukrainian social

revolution*the worker-peasant councils.

A notable aspect of the Nezalezhnyky declaration was their call for ‘a provisional

worker-peasant government composed of representatives of parties and groups that

stand for the power of the soviets’ which would be ‘charged with transferring power

to the worker-peasant councils and convening a congress of worker-peasant councils

in Ukraine, which is to create the normal order of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic of

Councils and organize a permanent government.’106

Unsurprisingly the pro-Soviet Bloc failed to convince the congress, in response

they abstained and walked out. The right-wing of the congress ratified the Directory,

which continued its course with its credibility having rapidly eroded. The army of the

UNR had declined from 100,000 to 21,000 by the third week of January, whilst

peasant brigades were defecting en masse to the Red Army and Red militias.107

In the short period of their participation the Nezalezhnyky had attempted to utilise

their posts within the UNR to broker peace with Soviet Russia.108 Yurko Mazurenko

headed a diplomatic mission to Moscow on 15 January 1919.109 The mission was

sabotaged by the right wing securing a UNR declaration of war on Soviet Russia on

16 January 1919.110 The decision to safeguard Ukraine’s independence was reduced to

paper policies as the Directory surrendered it to the French. In return for the promise

of aid against the Bolsheviks, the Directory agreed to give the French control over the

army, the railroads, the finances and the composition of the government of the UNR.

Chekhivsky and Vynnychenko resigned from the government over the pro-Entente

turn.111 After retreating from Kyiv on 4 February, Chervony Prapor concluded ‘the

Directory’s positive role was finished’.112

The Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic

The Red Army entered Kyiv on 5 February 1919, welcomed by an announcement of

the Executive of the city soviet signed by the Nezalezhnyky, Bolsheviks and Borotbisty

106 Chervony Prapor, 30 January 1919.107 Bojcun, The Working Class and the National Question, op. cit., p. 398.108 There is speculation that it was without Lenin’s knowledge that the Red Army advanced into Ukraine in

late December 1918. Arthur Adams The Bolsheviks in the Ukraine: The Second Campaign, 1918�1919 (New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 82�85.109 I declared that I would go on the condition that decrees on the transfer of local power to the Soviets and

a call for a congress of Soviets (and not a Labour Congress) to be published immediately, as well as on the

condition that the communist party would be legalised. For this, of course, I was ostracised by the Directorate.

Yu.Mazurenko, ‘List chelna Tsk USDRP (Nezalezhnyky) Yu. Mazurenko Kkr. Rakovskomy Pro yoho Stavlnnya

Do Politiki i Diyalnosti KP(b)U’, P Bachinskyi, (ed) Dokumenty trahichnoy isiorıy Ukrayny (1917�1927 rr),

Zhurnal Okhorona, op. cit., pp. 248�53.110 An act complemented by Red Army commander Antonov also lobbying Moscow against an agreement

stating there was ‘nobody in Ukraine with whom we should negotiate’, Matthew Stachiw, Ukraine and the

European Turmoil, Vol. 2 (New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1973), p. 258.111 Mazurenko’s efforts are considered to have been sabotaged by the new head of the Directory of the UNR,

Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhennia natsii, Tom. 3, op cit., pp. 279�280.112 Chervony Prapor, 6 February 1919.

Critique 587


deputies, stating ‘the Directory has been driven from Kyiv and red Soviet battalions

under the leadership of the Worker-Peasant Government of Ukraine are entering the

city’.113 The situation was in stark contrast to 1917, not only in Ukraine but in world

events; the defeat of Central Powers had evoked a revolutionary upsurge in Europe,

Soviet Russia was no longer a solitary beacon and Ukraine’s role in the international

arena was now pivotal. Yury Lapchynsky recalled that in 1919 the ‘communist

movement and Soviet power in Ukraine were built in a political situation, which was

totally different to the first period’.114 The situation could not have been more

favourable for a convergence between the Ukrainian and the Russian revolutions. The

creation of a soviet republic with a plurality of pro-soviet parties was a viable

possibility.

The Nezalezhnyky, whilst welcoming the new government, had not abandoned

their earlier criticism and remained cautious:

If the Directory stupidly repeated an outdated policy that has already beencondemned by history, then the Russian Bolsheviks have come by the sameoutdated path . . . Under the slogan of the struggle for the power of the sovietsarrives a government that calls itself Ukrainian, but which we do not and cannotdescribe as such.115

Formed separately from the revolutionary process, the KP(b)U had established in

Russia a ‘Provisional Worker-Peasant Government of Ukraine’ in Russia.116 It was

initially led by Pyatakov who on 16 January 1919 was replaced by Christian Rakovsky

as the Chairman of Provisional Revolutionary Government.117 But, despite their

disagreement with the Rakovsky government, the USDRP (Nezalezhnyky) did not

reject cooperation. Their Organising Committee stated they were willing:

To enter the government and to take full responsibility for it only if: 1. All officialorgans of the supreme government*not only Ukrainian, but also Russian*recognize the independence and autonomy of the Ukrainian Socialist republic; 2.If a firm national and social course is taken in Ukraine, and Ukrainian is the onlyofficial language.118

The views of Rakovsky were already apparent before his arrival in Kyiv; recently

arrived from the Balkans he declared himself a specialist on the Ukrainian question.

Rakovsky endorsed the views of the more conservative ‘Katerynoslavian’ wing of

the KP(b)U of Emmenuil Kviring. In 1917 they sought to separate the Donets-Kryvi

113 The announcement was ‘From the Executive Committee of the Kyiv Council of Workers Deputies’ signed

by Bubnov and the following members: P. Syrodenko, P. Dehtiarenko, M. Maior, V. Cherniavsky, H. Volkov, H.

Myhailychenko, P. Liubchenko, I. Kachura, A. Chekhsis, I. Frenkel, and M. Avdiienko, Chervony Prapor, 6

February 1919.114 Chervony Prapor, 11 July 1920.115 Chervony Prapor, 6 February 1919.116 Adams, The Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, op. cit., pp. 25�64.117 Key texts are Christian Rakovsky, Selected Writings on Opposition in the USSR 1923�30, ed. Gus Fagan,

(London: Allison & Busby, 1980); Pierre Broue, Rakovsky, Cahiers Leon Trotsky, no.17�18; (Paris: L’Institut Leon

Trotsky, 1984). Neither of them engages critically with the policy of Rakovsky in Ukraine in 1919.118 Chervony Prapor, 6 February 1919.

588 C. Ford


Rih from Ukraine as a republic of the Russian proletariat ‘which does not want to

hear anything about so-called Ukraine and has nothing in common with it’. In

Izvestiia, he announced the following theses: the ethnic differences between Ukrainian

and Russians are insignificant, the Ukrainian peasantry lacked national conscious-

ness, national consciousness had been submerged in social class consciousness, and

the Ukrainian proletariat was purely Russian in origin. Rakovsky concluded that the

Ukrainian national movement was an invention of the intelligentsia.119 These ideas

combined with the ‘left-Communists’ and the Russophile ‘Katerynoslavians’ in the

KP(b)U laid fertile ground difficulties.

The state administration was constructed on administrators brought from Russia

and largely from the local Russian petit-bourgeoisie who joined the KP(b)U to

qualify for employment. Tkachenko reported that while the KP(b)U government was

establishing itself:

All sorts of Russian nationalist elements from the Black Hundreds to therevolutionary intelligentsia in Ukraine were joining forces with the Bolsheviks tohelp reconstruct a ‘united and indivisible Russia’ . . . Unreliable elements signed upwith the Bolshevik party and contributed to enhancing the nationalistic and evenchauvinist coloration of the Bolshevik proletarian movement . . . Even the Russiancommunist press was writing enthusiastically about the unification of Russia andthis milieu of ‘specialists’ as well as the nationalism of the Russian communiststhemselves deepened the split within the proletariat along national lines . . .promoting in its midst a fierce struggle out of which the reaction raised its head.120

The Nezalezhnyky viewed these developments with growing frustration:

. . . the kind of insane and disgraceful Russification sweeping Ukraine right now hasnever been seen before even during the Hetmanate rule in its last ‘federative’phase . . .

Not one pamphlet in Ukrainian for the Ukrainian peasant, not one brochure, notone newspaper of the soviet government in Ukrainian! The Ukrainian language hasbeen driven out from wherever it was. A whole series of orders on using the‘generally understood language’ is a sign of the times. And to the modest demandsof the Ukrainian citizen that at least his national and cultural rights, like those ofthe ‘fraternal’ people here in Ukraine, be safeguarded, there is but one reply:chauvinism and the spirit of the bourgeoisie and the counter-revolution.121

When Rakovsky came to the Kyiv soviet on 13 February he never mentioned the

national question at all. This provoked a string of criticism from Ukrainian and

Jewish deputies who pointed to the mistakes of 1917 and the need for the

involvement of other parties. Avdiyenko attacked this failure to address ‘the

important national question in Ukraine and the question of the proletariat’s role

in resolving the national question’:

119 S. Mazlakh and V. Shakhray, The Current Situation in the Ukraine (Michigan: Canadian Institute of

Ukrainian Studies, 1970), pp. 115�117.120 Mykhailo Tkachenko, Borotba Vienna No. 7�8 April 1920, p. 3.121 Chervony Prapor, 9 March 1919.

Critique 589


In every country the struggle with the bourgeoisie is the affair of the proletariat ofthat country. For the success of that struggle the proletariat of every country mustbe organized. Moreover comrade Rakovsky said nothing about what the provisionalgovernment must do in order to organize the Ukrainian proletariat and draw itinto the revolutionary struggle.122

Rakovsky’s defence poured oil on the flames; he ridiculed calls to introduce the

Ukrainian language in education and government as ‘linguistic music’ branding it a

‘reactionary and completely unnecessary measure’.123 As opposed to internationalism,

Chervony Prapor charged that behind ‘their cosmopolitanism lies nothing other than

a not very hidden Russification in continuity with Tsarist practices’.124

The rift that grew within The Ukrainian SSR stemmed not only from dissatisfac-

tion with policy on the national question but the breach with previous assurance on

the ‘rebirth of soviet power locally’. Despite campaigns by the Bolsheviks to

encourage the formation of soviets the republic was ruled through appointed

revolutionary committees, revkomy, and committees of poor peasants or kombedy

similarly restricted full participation.125 Workers’ councils existed largely in an

advisory capacity. In April the Ukrainian trade union movement was purged,

subordinated to the state and absorbed into All-Russian structures.126

This was compounded by the more dangerous retarding of the agrarian revolution

through excesses of grain requisitioning, ‘in actuality the Ukraine was plundered

randomly, like a vast treasure chest for food and fuel’.127 This was exacerbated by an

attempting in a number of areas to organise agricultural communes, not by the self-

activity of the peasants but on a compulsory basis. The Economic Council of Ukraine

withdrew large tracts of land around nationalised sugar mills and distilleries

transferring them to state farms, leaving peasants with the allotments they had

before the revolution. Simultaneous with action against the Kurkuls (wealthy

peasants), the government was alienating the poor peasantry.

In late February Chervony Prapor pointed out that these policies were starting to

produce centrifugal forces, most violently amongst the peasantry. It emphasised that

there was grain in Ukraine which must be given voluntarily to the ‘starving Russian

worker and as much as he needs’, but instead the requisition squads ‘come and take

122 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 90.123 Khrystiuk, IV. op. cit. p. 90.124 Chervony Prapor, 15 February 1919. At the time Chervony Prapor ran a string of articles on the official

instructions for the use of the Russian language in the administration of the Soviet Republic; this even involved

the reversal of practices introduced in the Hetmanate. Chervony Prapor, 13 February 1919 reported ‘A letter of

the Commissar of the Chief Military Administration’, stating ‘In Soviet Russia only the Russian language is

written, and it is not permitted to spend the people’s money for translators. Please write in Russian.’125 Adams, The Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, op. cit., p. 125.126 There were major debates between Nezalezhnyky and supporters of ‘statisation’ in the congresses of the

chemical workers’ union, trade and industrial office workers, the tobacco workers, the metal workers, printers,

the miners’ union, sugar refinery workers and the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Union; Bojcun, Working Class and the

National Question, op. cit., p. 446�449.127 Thomas Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, Ideology and Industrial Organisation 1917�

1921. (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1984), p. 167.

590 C. Ford


not just grain, but everything that they can take and carry off.’ It required proper

transparent trade agreements, ‘this is possible only if Ukraine is sovereign not in

words but in reality, only if the workers themselves are masters in their own socialist

republic and not foreign pretenders.’128

The Nezalezhnyky response to the growing crisis was to consider it ‘necessary to

quickly devise a communist programme and organise a Ukrainian Communist Party’,

and in this endeavour they were engaged in discussions with a number of critical

Bolsheviks, looking to found the new UKP at a congress on 30 March 1919. This

decision also coincided with the founding of the Communist International. At the

founding congress held on 2�6 March 1919 in Moscow, Mykola Skrypnyk

representing the KP(b)U gave an upbeat report on Ukraine, welcoming the USDRP

and saying that: ‘Although these Independentist Socialists differ from the Commu-

nists on fundamentals, they are nevertheless working harmoniously with our party

today and participate in the soviets’.129 Yet this was far from the approach being taken

at the Third Congress of the KP(b)U then underway in Kharkiv.

Skrypnyk, a personal friend of Lenin and veteran Ukrainian Bolshevik was not

elected to the KP(b)U leadership. The congress endorsed the policy of war

communism and that Ukrainian SSR enter the RSFSR as an autonomous republic.

More ominously, by a narrow margin of 101 to 96, a resolution was carried against

co-operation with other pro-soviet parties, stating ‘agreements with such parties as

the Right SR’s, Independentist Ukrainian Social-democrats and others are admissible’. 130

These parties were to be denied ‘any responsible posts in the soviets’ and excluded from

the government of Ukraine, ‘which should consist solely of the representatives of the

Communist Party of Ukraine’.

This approach undermined the previous promise to ‘hand over power in the

country’ to the soviets.131 When the Third All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers’

Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies was held between 6�10 March, of the 1,719

delegates about 80 per cent were Bolsheviks, and out of the minority the

Nezalezhnyky mustered 42 deputies.132 Formal elections had been held in only parts

of four guberniya, and the majority of delegates were from revkomy not soviets.133

Far-reaching policies were outlined in the resolutions of the congress and the new

Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic: the problem was their

implementation. Furthermore Ukraine remained, and was considered by the government,

128 Chervony Prapor, 28 February 1919.129 John, Riddell (ed), Founding the Communist International, Proceedings and Documents of the First

Congress (New York: Pathfinder, 1987), p. 98.130 Mazurenko, Bachinskyi, Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., p. 248�253.131 ‘Manifest Vremennogo Raboche Krestianskogo Pravitel’stva Ukrainy’, 1 December 1918, Serhii Mazlakh

and Vasyl Shakhrai, On The Current Situation In Ukraine, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970),

p. 27.132 Jujij Borys, The Sovietization of Ukraine 1917�1923, (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies,

1980), p. 419.133 Bojcun, The Working Class, op. cit., p. 465.

Critique 591


a regional unit of Russia.134 Some Communist-Borotbisty were ‘elected’ to the Central

Executive Committee, comprising 90 KP(b)U and 10 Borotbisty. This concession

complained that the Nezalezhnyky were window dressing ‘in order to show a bit of

Ukrainian colour’ in what was branded the ‘commissar state’.135

Drahomyretsky wrote from Kyiv that ‘notwithstanding the disillusionment with

the present regime, the masses continue to raise soviet slogans’.136 Indicative of this

was the subsequent Kyiv District Congress of the Councils of Workers’ and Peasants’

Deputies held on 24�25 March. The congress called for the inadequate representation

of the peasantry in organs of power to be remedied, stating that ‘Soviet power must

not be undermined by a bureaucratic apparatus’. On the national question it declared

the ‘Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic must be sovereign and not dependent on

anyone, but in a strong alliance with other socialist republics’.137

In the spring of 1919, in response to their challenge the government turned on the

USDRP(Nezalezhnyky); they were ‘deluged on all sides with accusation of nationalist

chauvinism, of being counter-revolutionary and petty-bourgeois’.138 How the

KP(b)U actually defined these ‘counter-revolutionary’ politics is revealing. Cheskis,

a member of the Executive Committee of the Kyiv Soviet, had explained:

The most difficult thing is this question with the independent Ukrainian social-democrats, who have not yet given up their national demands and autonomist viewof the political system of Ukraine. If, of course, the Nezalezhnyky renounce the lastpoint of their programme and come closer to a true soviet platform, theparticipation in the government will certainly be possible.139

As such the mere adherence to a particular view on the national question was guilt

enough. On the night of 25 March, Richytsky, Mazurenko and other leaders were

arrested by the Cheka and Chervony Prapor was closed down.140 The planned

congress to launch a Ukrainian Communist Party was thus derailed.141 After several

days they were released and Chervony Prapor reappeared with an open letter

demanding an end to the repression, in an article by Kachinivsky on the way ahead he

summarised: ‘It is now two months since the soviet authorities occupied Kyiv, but we

134 According to Balabanoff, first Secretary of the Communist International and a friend of Rakovsky’s sent

to assist him in Kyiv, ‘the Bolsheviks had set up an independent republic in the Ukraine. In actuality that section

of it in which Soviet rule was established was completely dominated by the Moscow regime’, Angelica,

Balabanoff, My Life as a Rebel (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938), p. 234.135 Khrystiuk, op. cit., pp. 131�133.136 Cited in Bojcun, The Working Class, op. cit., p. 464.137 Khrystiuk, op. cit., pp. 131�133.138 ‘The Ukrainian Nezalezhnyky do not recognise the government; the Ukrainian Nezalezhnyky incite the

workers and peasants against the government; the Ukrainian Nezalezhnyky agitate against helping starving

Soviet Russia with grain from Ukraine; the Ukrainian Nezalezhnyky inflame national hatred; the Ukrainian

Nezalezhnyky insist on drawing the rural proletariat into revolutionary construction and oppose the proletariat’,

Khrystiuk, op. cit., p. 134.139 Chervony Prapor, 9 February 1919.140 Chervony Prapor, 3 April 1919.141 Mazurenko, Bachinskyi, Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 248�253.

592 C. Ford


have yet to see real soviet power or the dictatorship of the proletariat. All we have is

the dictatorship of the communist party.142

The Intervention of the Hungarian Soviet Republic

The policies of the Rakovsky regime began to produce powerful centrifugal forces;

engulfed by worker and peasant unrest, the Ukrainian SSR started to fragment and

disintegrate into internecine conflict. This crisis saw two tendencies which have

complicated historical analysis ever since: on the one hand the attempted

revolutionary mobilisation of society and on the other fragmentation and class

decomposition.143 The decomposition of industry became catastrophic with

‘shortages of electricity, food, materials, and skilled workers’.144 Indicative of this

decomposition were pogroms, brigandage and otaman adventurers. No sides in the

conflict escaped being tainted by the effects of this vortex.

Engulfed by worker and peasant unrest, Soviet Ukraine started to disintegrate into

internecine conflict. This crisis became acute just as the communist revolution in

Europe unfolded; the Hungarian Republic of Councils was founded on 22 March

1919, this was soon followed by the proclamation in April of the Bavarian Soviet

Republic, and in June by the Slovak Soviet Republic. A key revolutionary bridgehead

was established in the Transcarpathian region of Carpatho-Ukraine, where over 500

workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils were established in November 1918. Soviet

Hungary organised as a federal republic granting autonomy to the minorities. The

councils of Carpatho-Ukraine began organising as a self-governing region on 5 April

1919. The Ukrainian question became the decisive factor in the fate of the soviet

republics as it was from Ukraine that any direct links could be made by which

Russian aid could be provided.145

Historian Rudolf L.Tokes asserts that ‘Bela Kun was lacking in detailed information

on the Ukrainian situation’, and as such he did not appreciate the selfishness of

Russian Bolshevik polices with regards to Soviet Hungary.146 L. Tokes saw this in

terms of their failure to deploy Hungarian units of the Russian Red Army in a drive

towards Hungary, and putting their own survival before world revolution. In fact the

142 Chervony Prapor, 3 April 1919.143 The working class had reached the point of exhaustion by the third year of the revolution in Ukraine.

Industrial production plummeted to between 15�20 per cent of its pre-war level by 1920. Many unemployed

workers volunteered or were drafted into the armies; 50,000 Donbas workers were in the Red Army by October

1918, and 40,000 were conscripted in May 1919. Many in local areas joined their local militia or irregulars. In

urban areas there were food shortages and a typhus epidemic in 1919�1920. For many it was better to escape to

the countryside.144 Vladimir Brovkin, ‘Workers Unrest and Bolshevik Responses in 1919’, Slavic Review, 49:3 (1990), p. 353�

373.145 This had been long recognised; Karl Radek had said on 20 October 1918 at the KP(b)U congress that the

‘our road to aid the workers of the Central Powers lies precisely over Ukraine, over Romania, over Eastern

Galicia and over Hungary’, Borys, Sovietization of Ukraine, op. cit., p. 205.146 Rudolf L. Tokes, Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic (Stanford: The Hoover Institute, 1967),

p. 201.

Critique 593


opposite is the case; the government in Budapest had a very good understanding of

the Ukrainian situation and sought to assist in bringing about a change in a manner

which stood in stark contrast to the practices of the Russian Communists.

The new government of the Hungarian Republic of Councils proved to be friendly

towards the Ukrainian cause. A Ukrainian diplomatic mission headed by the old

Social-democrat Mykola Halahan was in Budapest, and a Ukrainian communist

group was also organised publishing a weekly Chervona Ukraina along with a free

press in Carpatho-Ukaine.147 Halahan had already received a sympathetic response in

the socialist daily Nepszava toward coverage of the Ukrainian question. The interest

of the left reached a new level with the formation of the Soviet government.148 The

Soviet government recognised the West Ukrainian Peoples Republic, establishing

trade links and negotiations on aid in its war with Poland. The Deputy People’s

Commissar for Foreign Affairs Erno Por promptly initiated discussions with

Halahan, who advised him that the destiny of Soviet power in Hungary was

dependent on the plight of Ukraine; as long as the conflict with the UNR continued

‘assistance from Moscow will not come, because between Moscow and Budapest lies

Ukraine’.149 The Hungarian government, proposed Halahan, should not simply

consult but demand from Moscow an end to the war with Ukraine. Bela Kun declared

his own support for an ‘independent Soviet Ukraine’ and intervened with Erno Por,

to assist in resolving the Ukrainian question.

Bela Kun followed up these talks emphasising the necessity of a Soviet Ukraine and

seeing no need for peace with the ‘bourgeois Directory’. Halahan in turn sought to

convince Kun that it was not possible to impose the Russian model, and the

Ukrainians did support a form of state which corresponded to the interests of the

working masses.150 In this regard Kun’s disdain of Rakovsky became apparent,

describing him repeatedly as an ‘idiot’. In Hungary he said communists were able to

work with the social-democrats because the national question did not divide them

into warring camps. Kun’s solution was an ‘independent Soviet Ukraine’ and

proposed establishing contact with those adhering to that viewpoint*Vynnychenko

was the figure they identified to take this forward.151 Confident that Lenin now

supported an independent Ukraine, Kun agreed to take on the role as mediator in

achieving this outcome.

By the middle of March 1919, Vynnychenko was in Vienna having broken with the

Directory and rightist leaders of the USDRP. Whilst he had begun to advocate the soviet

model, he continued to have misgivings about the Bolsheviks. In his diary he asked

whether their victory and the creation of the socialist order, ‘the birth of which

147 Its critical articles on the great disagreement in the international communist family caused some

consternation with Soviet Russia; as a result one Russian and one Pole were imposed on the editorial staff.

Mykola Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, 1880 ti 1920 r (Kyiv: Vidavnitsvo Tempora, 2005), p. 455.148 Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, op. cit., p. 419.149 Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, op. cit., p. 442.150 Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, op. cit., p. 443.151 Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, op. cit., p. 444.

594 C. Ford


I welcome with ecstasy in my soul’, would also mean defeat for the Ukrainians. Enthused

by events in Hungary, he placed his hope on the success of international revolution.152

On 28 March, a mere week after the Soviet Republic was formed, Vynnychenko received

a telegram asking him to go to Budapest; Kun even provided the transport.

On 30 March Vynnychenko arrived in Budapest with another social-democrat,

Yury Tyshchenko, and met Kun on the same day. The ensuing discussion between the

emigres Ukrainians and the Hungarian officials resulted in the following programme

drawn up by Vynnychenko and Tyshchenko, which Kun presented to Moscow:

1. Fully independent and sovereign Ukrainian Soviet Republic within theethnographic borders including Galicia with Lviv as per the line of the Syan andthe Kuban region.2. Until its establishment on an All-European scale, the establishment of a militaryalliance between the existing socialist republics on the grounds of equal rights ofeach member of the alliance3. The military of another member of the alliance should remain on the territory ofa member of the alliance only with the consent of that Soviet republic.4. The Government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic to consist of the NezalezhnykyUkrainian Social-democrats, the left Ukrainian Social-Revolutionaries [Borotbisty],and Ukrainian communists as well as those Ukrainian socialist parties who acceptthe platform of soviet power.5. All allied socialist republics are obliged to if necessary provide render all materialaid to another member-republic in defence of its territory in the fight againstimperialist encroachments on behalf of neighbouring bourgeois countries and in thefirst place against the Entente, Poland and Romania, as well as the fight againstinternal counter revolutionaries which endanger the existence of Soviet republics.153

Kun assured Vynnychenko that he had been in contact with Lenin by radio and he

accepted the points. ‘But concerning the government, then it would depend on who is

chosen by the councils of workers and peasant deputies of Ukraine.’154 The ‘triple

alliance of Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian soviet republics’155 caused interna-

tional uproar over a new red plot when the text was intercepted by a Paris radio

station. But there was silence from Moscow.

The only news was of continuing unrest. Vynnychenko felt the Rakovsky

government was turning the ‘Ukrainian peasantry and all national Ukrainian layers’

against itself, posing a serious danger ‘especially bearing in mind the necessity as soon

as possible to constitute a direct connection with Hungary’.156 It was a week before

Budapest received a response. It was not from Lenin but Rakovsky. Vynnychenko

was not named but sarcastically described as that ‘poet’ who was a ‘typical

representative of petit bourgeois ideology’ who belongs to the left wing of the

152 Volodomyr Vynnychenko, Shchodennyk. Tom 1, 1911�1920, ed. Hryhorii Kostiuk, (Edmonton and New

York: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1980), p. 328.153 Halahan Z Mokh spomyniv op. cit., pp. 445�446.154 Volodomyr Vynnychenko, Schodennyk , op. cit., pp. 331�332.155 Halahan, Z Moikh spomyniv, op. cit., pp. 445�446.156 Vynnychenko, Schodennyk, op. cit., pp. 331�332.

Critique 595


‘Directory band’.157 With whom there was no sense in discussing any kind of

alliances. It was not what Por and Kun had expected, they were, said Halahan,

‘baffled’. Vynnychenko met again with Kun and Por, but they made no progress with

Rakovsky.158 They vehemently believed that Moscow and Kyiv would agree. When

Vynnychenko expressed his doubts they protested: ‘Never in the world, can’t Russian

communists be imperialists and nationalists.’ Vynnychenko said to them: ‘Mark my

words: They will lose you, us and themselves on the Ukrainian question.’159

Exasperated, Vynnychenko returned to Vienna, leaving Halahan to represent him.

Kun became convinced that Rakovsky was engaged in outright sabotage, despite

Lenin’s repeated reassurances that this was not the case, he was not convinced

otherwise. But it was the Nezalezhnyky who were to be blamed, not their RKP

practices in Ukraine; the representatives of the KP(b)U made precisely this point in

later debates with the Nezalezhnyky at the Comintern. The Nezalezhnyky uprising

they said had:

. . . interfered with the prepared movement of soviet troops into Bessarabia andGalicia to join Soviet Hungary. As a result of this, the power of Polish andRumanian Bourgeois was solidly established in Bessarabia and Galicia, and SovietHungary was strangled under the active participation of that same Rumanian armywhich now had no basis to fear for its rear lines.160

However this view of the USDRP (Nezalezhnyky) was not shared by the Hungarian

communists, importantly it was also not the analysis of the Red Army commander of

the Ukrainian front Antonov-Ovseenko.161 Antonov’s First Army was located west of

Kyiv and responsible for resisting the Poles and Petlyura’s forces, then on 18 April he

was ordered by Lenin and Trotsky to go on the offensive towards south-eastern

Galicia and establish ties with Soviet Hungary. Antonov responded with a

memorandum to Lenin on 17 April 1919, in it he attacked the erroneous polices

of the Rakovsky government, writing that in particular the ‘land and national policy

in Ukraine cuts at the roots of the military leadership to overcome these

disintegrating influences’. The solution that was urgently proposed was the following:

It is necessary: 1) to bring into the Ukrainian government representatives of theparties which represent the middle and poorer peasants (the Nezalezhnyky SDs andUkrainian SRs); 2) to change the land policy to conform with the interests of themiddle peasantry; 3) to force the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs to workthrough the Soviets in the localities; 4) to compel foreigners, ‘Great Russians,’ toadjust themselves with the greatest tact to local peculiarities and local people; 5)to halt the plundering of the Ukraine’s bread and coal; 6) to persuade the partyto throw two-thirds of its strength into the villages and the army; to reduceby two-thirds all Soviet institutions, throwing [party and soviet] workers

157 Halahan Z Moikh spomyniv op. cit., p. 446.158 Vynnychenko, Schodennyk, op. cit., p. 331.159 Vynnychenko, Schodennyk, op. cit., p. 335.160 Memorandum TsK KP(b)U Vikonkomu kominternu, November 1924, M. Skypnik, A. Shumsky N.

Popov, Bachinskyi, P. ed., Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 551�552.161 Adams, The Bolsheviks in the Ukraine, op. cit., p. 266.

596 C. Ford


into practical affairs; to bring the Donets workers into the ranks of our peasantarmy; 9) in the food policy to carry out not a requisitional, but a productivedictatorship.162

Antonov supported this with a second memorandum of 8 May 1919, but all to no

avail. Through most of April in Carpatho-Ukraine the small Red Army had fought

fierce battles against the intervening Romanian troops, and on 3 May the exhausted

troops retreated with their Hungarian allies. The bridgehead to Hungary and Central

Europe was rapidly retreating. A desperate Kun wrote to Lenin that: ‘Forcing

Rakovsky on the Ukrainians against their wishes, in my opinion, will be an

irreparable mistake’.163

The Ukrainian Kronstadt � All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee

From the time the Nezalezhnyky leaders were released by the Cheka in early April

their own situation and that of the country went from bad to worse.164 There had

been a rash of strikes in March by impoverished workers who perceived the

Bolsheviks to have departed from their principles of soviet democracy. Kopanivsky

reported in Chervony Prapor that the situation had deteriorated to such a level that

the ‘food detachments have made the peasants discontented, just as those of the

Hetman and the Germans did’.165 The number of peasant revolts soared to a total of

328 from 1 April to 15 June 1919.166

Unable to see scope to reform the Ukrainian SSR the Nezalezhnyky turned to open

rebellion. The decision of the Nezalezhnyky to start ‘fighting between the Russian

Bolsheviks and Ukrainian Bolsheviks’ appears closely related to the mutiny of the

First Kyiv Soviet Division led by Zeleny.167 Chervony Prapor had rose to his defence

arguing that ‘Zeleny stood and stands on the Soviet platform’. It was one of numerous

such ‘misunderstandings’ arising from the reneging on assurances that units would

form part of a Ukrainian Red Army in an independent Republic. 168 An official press

campaign began against Zeleny, whilst on 8 March the Kyivsky Komunist wrote that

‘Otaman Zeleny and his army, deployed in the region of Obukhiv, Hermanivka and

162 Adams, The Bolsheviks in Ukraine, op. cit., p. 266.163 Cable sent 8 July 1919; Tokes, op. cit., p. 201.164 Yu Mazurneko whilst under arrest by the Cheka read he had been arrested in connection to the uprising

led by Sokolovskii and others. After being released he was faced with the reality that some members of his party

participated in the uprising. Dokymenti Trahichnoi Istorii Ukrayini, op. cit., pp. 248�253.165 Chervony Prapor, 16 April 1919.166 Brovkin, op. cit., p. 358.167 Elias Tcherikover, The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1919 (New York: YIVO Institute forJewish Research,

1965), p. 373.168 The cause of the breach between Zeleny and the Bolshevik authorities was their decision to refuse the

redistribution of the land of large sugar factories sought by the peasants. This fed into disagreements over

the unit’s status as a regiment of the Red Army, Chervony Prapor reporting that: ‘Zeleny stood and stands on the

Soviet platform. The reason for the misunderstanding is Zeleny’s unwillingness to meld into one with the Red

Army, and Antonov knows why he is unwilling’. Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 179.

Critique 597


Trypillia, maintains soviet power’, a week later it was boasting ‘Zeleny is finally being

liquidated’.169

The Nezalezhnyky, whilst recognising there was a counter-revolutionary element,

criticised such generalisations about the insurgency which branded the whole

movement as ‘White Guardist’, ‘kulak’, ‘Black Hundred’, and similar terms of a very

large vocabulary of ‘reptilic hack writers’. ‘It is characteristic that in the areas of the

Hryhoriiv and Makhno armies i.e. where the writ of the communist party does not

reach, there is no insurgency, also there are no Jewish pogroms, nor is there any

Nezalezhnyky aunt sally’.170 Of course whilst this may have been the case at the time

as regards pogroms, it certainly did not remain so.

Partly pulled, partly pushed, the Nezalezhnyky joined the insurgency spreading

across Ukraine. The Nezalezhnyky ‘presumptuously threw itself into the seething

masses, hoping to prevent their seizure by counter-revolutionary forces’ and to try to

‘direct the uprising not against Soviet power as such, not against communist power,

but against the power of the current government as an occupation power’.171 On 10

April they concluded a draft agreement with representatives in Kyiv of the UPSRs and

the ‘official USDRP’ for an uprising which stated:

The policy of the parties signing this agreement, both in the Council of theRepublic and in other organs of state power, must be built on the followingprinciples: 1. Strengthening and defence of the independence and autonomy of thenational Ukrainian Republic; 2. Establishment of the government of the WorkingPeople (excluding elements which exploit the work of others); 3. Organization ofthe national economy in the interests of the working masses and a plannedtransition from the capitalist order to the socialist, with the immediate expropria-tion of non-working landed property.172

According to this ambitious plan, the struggle would begin simultaneously on the

territory held by the Ukrainian SSR while on the territory of the UNR they would

oust Petlyura’s Directory.173 The Nezalezhnyky ran into problems from the start. The

Borotbistsy was not prepared to break with Rakovsky government and condemned

the ‘reckless escapades’ of the Nezalezhnyky.174 The idea did not rest easy with all

Nezalezhnyky either; at a party conference in Kyiv on 22 April, a small group led by

Hukovych and Pankiv opposed a rebellion. They split, forming the ‘USDRP

(Nezalezhnyky) Left’ and began publishing the legal daily Chervonyi Styah.175

169 It is worth noting that Antonov complained of the manner in which the press wrote about the insurgents

describing articles as works of ‘fiction’. M. Malet, Makhno and his Enemies, META, Toronto,170 Chervony Prapor, 24 April 1919.171 Mazurenko, Bachinskyi, Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 248�253.172 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., pp. 131�133.173 Mazurenko, Bachinskyi, Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 248�253.174 Blakitny used precisely these words in telegram to Hryhoriiv, Adams, Bolsheviks in Ukraine, op. cit.,

p. 234.175 Along with the Borotbisty and the KP(b)U they later signed a joint statement charging Otaman

Hryhoriiv’s rebellion in the South as ‘betraying the revolution’, Bilshovyk 13 May 1919; Bachinskyi, Dokumenty

trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 137�139.

598 C. Ford


Having played their hand, events escalated on 30 April when the Central

Committee of the KP(b)U decided to ‘arrest and bring to trial for counter

revolutionary activities all members of the Nezalezhnyky party, regardless of their

point of view’.176 Not waiting for other parties the Nezalezhnyky established an All-

Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee led by Mazurenko, Richytsky, Avdiyenko and

Drahomyretsky, with a Supreme Insurgent Council of Mazurenko and Richytsky,

their forces included the First Kyiv Soviet Division and a number of other Red Army

and red militia units.

Basing itself in the town of Skvyr the Nezalezhnyky Revkom began to issue a series

of proclamations the most famous being ‘Order no.48’ calling for a ‘struggle against

the betrayers of the toiling masses’, the ‘occupation government of Rakovsky’, and for

the arrest of the ‘traitorous Directory, which is negotiating with the French and other

imperialists’.177 In their struggle the Nezalezhnyky stood on the ground of the

Bolsheviks, the rising was not so much a struggle against the Ukrainian SSR but a

struggle for power within it.178 Though larger than the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 the

Nezalezhnyky rising has remained undistinguished from the wider Ukrainian

‘jacquerie’. Yet it was historically unique: the Russian communists were challenged

with demands for a republic of workers and peasants councils by Marxists committed

to communist revolution. The Nezalezhnyky subsequently explained to the Com-

munist International:

This struggle was a historically unprecedented occurrence, a result of the conflictbetween the internal and external forces of the Ukrainian revolution, a result of theimperialist heritage of old Russia persistence in KP(b)U. All this hindered aconsolidation of the internal social forces of the Ukrainian revolution andhampered the maturation and the crystallisation of the Ukrainian communistproletariat.179

The uprising spread rapidly and within three or four weeks the Revkom ruled several

districts of the Right Bank. According to Bolshevik descriptions the rebel camp

numbered 25,000, though others put it at between 5,000 and 10,000.180 Buoyed by

their initial success Mazurenko sent an ultimatum to Rakovsky:

Attention; Rakovsky, head of the so-called Ukrainian Workers and PeasantsGovernment

Executed 25th of June 1919 in the town of Skvyra

176 Dokymenti Trahichnoi Istorii Ukrayini, op. cit., pp. 130�132.177 Signed by Drahomyretsky, Dybichenko, Selyanskyi, Vlasivskyi, Syrotenko, Secretary: Didych, Bachinskyi,

Dokumenty trahichnoy isioriy Ukrayny, op. cit., pp. 125�126.178 ‘Memorandum Ukrainskoi Kumunistichnoi Partii Kongresovi III Komunistychnoii Internatsionaly’,

1920, in P. Bachinskyi (ed) Dokumenty trahichnoi isiori Ukrainy (1917�1927 rr), Zhurnal ‘Okhorona pratsi’ -

(Kyiv Oblast Derzhavna Administratsiya, 1999), pp. 532�533.

A full English translation of this key text of Ukrainian Communism is available in Debatte, 17:2, (2009), pp.

247�263.179 Bachinskyi, op. cit., p. 537.180 Tcherikover, op. cit., p. 250.

Critique 599


In the name of the insurgent Ukrainian working people I announce to you that theworkers and peasants of Ukraine have risen in arms against you, as the governmentof the Russian conquerors, which, having draped itself in slogans that are sacred tous: 1) a government of soviets of workers and peasants; 2) the self-determination ofnations, including secession; and 3) the struggle against imperialist conquerors andplunderers of the toiling masses, desecrates not only these sacred mottoes andruining the true power of the workers and impoverished peasants of in theneighbouring country, but also uses them for aims that are remote from anysocialist order.

It was in Mazurenko’s words their ‘swan song’. Having believed that they had taken

the leadership of the spontaneous movement, events started to prove otherwise.

They had been misled over a change in the government of the UNR ‘that the

reactionary wing had left, and that a new cabinet composed of socialists was nominated,

which supports Soviet authority’.181 In fact the UNR government was now headed by

Borys Martos on the right wing of USDRP whilst Petlyura remained dictatorial head of

the Directory.182 A joint letter of the Central Committees of the ‘official USDRP’ and

UPSR denounced the ‘intention of some parties (Left SRs and SD Nezalezhnyky) to

establish some sort of Ukrainian communism is a complete fantasy’.183

The official USDRP refuted the agreement made in Kyiv and with the Army of the

UNR starting to make advances an ‘additional agreement’ was made in Chorny

Ostriv on 9 June 1919. The Nezalezhnyky were sidelined with an assurance of legal

existence, on the condition of loyalty to an USDRP-UPSR government.184 Agitators

were dispatched into rebel areas to undermine the Nezalezhnyky Revkom and to

subordinate rebel units to Petlyura. Meanwhile the forces commanded by Zeleny

suffered serious defeat in a four-day battle between Obukhov and Tripilii in early July.

Zaleny retreated towards Uman, whilst the Supreme Insurgent Council of

Mazurenko, forced to abandon its operations towards Kyiv, fought their way through

towards Kamyanets on 18 July.

The Nezalezhnyky considered that the semi-proletarian elements whom the party had

leadership were beginning to degenerate: ‘The revolutionary armed groupings began to

181 Bachinskyi, op. cit., pp. 248�253.182 It appears the more moderate leaders of the UPSR and USDRP still aligned with Petlyura did not know

about the agreements made by their emissaries in Kyiv with the Nezalezhnyky. They then subsequently refused

to back the pro-soviet positions of the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee. In a joint letter to the insurgent

groups by, they stated: ‘Any party in Ukraine that stands for soviet power is liable to the same fate as the party of

the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism in Russia is collapsing mainly because of internal disorder, because of the

dissatisfaction of the peasants with soviet power. To model Ukrainian Soviet power on Russian Soviet power is

absurd, because in principle these Bolshevisms do not differ from one another.’ Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materiialy,

Tom. IV, op. cit., pp. 134�139.183 Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., pp. 134�139.184 To be implemented with the following additions: (1) Organs of local power must be organized on the

labour principle; (2) All parties (in particular the USDRP Nezalezhnyky), which stand for the defence of

Ukraine’s independence, must be legalised on the condition that they do not oppose the government with armed

force; (3) This additional agreement must be transmitted by the government of the Directory.’ Khrystiuk, IV, op.

cit., p. 138.

600 C. Ford


fill with counterrevolutionary elements; degeneration and a pogrom movement

started.’185 The forces under the command of Zeleny were to become tainted by

controversy over the treatment of the Jews in this period. According to Elias Tcherikover,

Zeleny prevented a pogrom in Trypillia which had one-thousand Jewish residents, but in

a number of other places Tcherikover records a litany of brutality against the Jewish

populace.186 Sources certainly conflict as to the responsibility of Zeleny and other

commanders but there is no doubt that atrocities occurred. This retrogression and loss of

political leadership moved the Nezalezhnyky to end the uprising. Mazurenko concluded:

‘The party overrated its strength, misread objective conditions and the consequences that

could result from its false step, and was forced to concede defeat and to withdraw with its

remaining force.’187 Faced with the advance of the Russian Volunteer Army, a meeting on

18�19 July of members of the Organisational Committee and responsible workers took

the decision to abandon the uprising. They later explained:

Some Nezalezhnyky organizations assumed the task of giving the rebel movementthe ideological content of a struggle against the occupation policy of the Sovietgovernment in Ukraine. They wanted to force the Soviet government to change itstactics but, lacking the strength to master the movement, were themselves beatenout of it by the Petlyurite counter-revolution, which itself was beaten by Denikin’scounter-revolutionary army.188

Considered as the ‘Ukrainian Bolsheviks’, Petlyura’s forces disarmed the rebel units

who had retreated into UNR territory; Mazurenko, Tkachenko, Richytsky and others

were arrested.189 Commander Diiachenko was shot and the others were also ordered

to be shot, they were only saved by the intervention of the UPSRs.

In the summer of 1919 the Ukrainian SSR went into meltdown. This changed the

correlation of power; it provided for a temporary revival of the UNR, whose army

arrived at Kyiv at the same time as the Russian Volunteer Army of Denikin. The

‘official USDRP’ saw it as a victory over Russian and Ukrainian Bolsheviks boasting

‘history, as we foresaw, went according to Marx and not according to Lenin’.190 It was

short-lived; in the face of Denikin the UNR also fragmented; Robitnycha Hazeta

complained citizens saw little difference between Petlyura and Denikin.191 The

185 Bachinskyi, op. cit., pp. 45�66.186 Tcherikover, op. cit., pp. 250�268.187 Bachinskyi, op. cit., pp. 248�253.188 Chervony Prapor, 25 December 1919.189 The moderate USDRP declared: ‘We did not believe what seemed to us absurd, that the peasants wanted

to exchange strong Russian Bolsheviks for a sickly ‘Ukrainian bolshevism’ of those, who began ad hoc to call

themselves left SRs or Nezalezhnyky . . . We declared to the Chief Staff and to the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary

Committee that they had become the victims of self-deception. The peasants rose up not for any Ukrainian

soviet power, but in their own interests, both social and national’. The Nezalezhnyky were accused of threatening

to execute ‘those who agitated for the people’s government and Otaman Petlyura’, Vyzvolennia, 25 July 1919,

Khrystiuk, IV, op. cit., p. 144.190 Robitnycha Hazeta, 25 August 1919 in Khrystiuk, op. cit., p. 153.191 The central organ of the USDRP reported: ‘the growth of uncertainty about the difference between our

government, our system of rule and that of Denikin’, Robitnycha Hazeta, 5 October 1919, in Khrgstiuk, op. cit.,

p. 161.

Critique 601


conservative head of the West Ukrainian government Petrushevych placed the

Galician Army at the service of Denikin, with Petlyura then turning to Pilsudski’s

Poland, signing away Eastern Galicia in return for an alliance.

Conclusion

In revisiting the role of the Ukrainian Marxists in the Ukrainian revolution it is

necessary to recognise that the vernacular current has fallen victim to the prevalent

paradigms that have dominated historiography for eight decades.192

On the one hand, the official Soviet history served as a source of legitimacy for the

system. This current did not consider the Ukrainian revolution to possess an

independent momentum, and presented the Russian Bolsheviks as playing in the

leading role in the entire revolutionary process of 1917�1920. The omega can be

found in the literature of the national paradigm developed mainly, though not

exclusively, by Ukrainian emigres. It gives the national dimension primary place to

the detriment and subordination of social questions. What is often overlooked is the

similarity of the two paradigms: traits considered negative in one are portrayed

positively in the other. This is notable in the treatment of the socialist/communist

element of the Ukrainian Revolution. Both orthodoxies put emphasis on their more

moderate tendency as if it were their overall character and demean the relative

influence of the vernacular revolutionary left.193

One criticism made of the radical Ukrainian parties by the national school is that whilst

the contest remained an internal affair they were defeated by their moderate socialist

rivals; evidence of this is seen in the revival of the UNR in late 1918, and not the soviet

republic they envisaged. The Russian Red Army shifted the balance towards them.194 In

fact in 1919 the Bolsheviks could not have attained power without a shift internally.

The Ukrainian peasants rapidly went into opposition to the Directory; a string of

additional partisan brigades actively supported the soviet platform of the Borotbisty

and Nezalezhnyky.195 As the Red Army advanced on Kyiv, its ranks were swollen by

Ukrainian troops who went over en masse, seeing in the revolt the means by which to

realise their social aspirations so neglected by the Directory.196

192 John-Paul Himka, ‘The National and the Social in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917�20: The

Historiographical Agenda.’ Archiv fur Sozialgeschichte 34, (1994), pp. 95�110; Edward Acton, ‘The Revolution

and its Historians’, 1�17, in E. Acton, V. Cherniaev and W. Rosenberg (eds), Critical Companion to the Russian

Revolution 1914�1921, (London: Indiana, 1997).193 An example of this is Reshetar who writes that the USDRP saw Marxism as a merely a ‘means by which

national independence could be achieved’, John Reshatar, The Ukrainian Revolution 1917�1920, (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 51.194 Amongst others, this is the assessment of George Luckyj in his foreword to Ivan Maistrenko, Borotbism,

(New York: Research Program on the USSR, 1954), p. ix.195 Adams, op. cit., pp. 120�123. Even the Sich Rifleman, considered the staunchest of the Ukrainian

regiments, declared their support for the soviet platform in March 1920.196 Adams, op. cit., p. 93.

602 C. Ford


In the spring of 1919 the creation of a Ukrainian republic based on workers’ and

peasants’ self-governance with a plurality of pro-soviet parties was a viable

possibility. Why was their conception of Ukraine not realised? Could the historical

tragedy of have been prevented? The analysis that maintains its validity was that

outlined by the Ukrainian Communist Party (Nezalezhnyky), launched during the

resistance to Denikin on 16 December 1919.197 Their analysis was developed more

fully in their Memorandum to the Second Congress of the Communist International in

1920.

Written by Richytsky the Memorandum explained that arising from the tendencies

of the development of world capitalism in its phase of imperialism, new subjective

forces had arisen. While the principal force manifested was ‘world proletarian

revolution which started in Russia’, it was necessary to recognise that ‘capitalist

development fosters the tendency of the enslaved colonial peoples into a struggle for

national liberation*towards independent statehood’. The task of the national

revolutions was to unshackle the productive forces from the constraints and

distortions of imperialism; creation of independent workers’ republics was an

indispensable resource if the working class was to transcend world capital. If the

working class sought to create communist society on the basis of only one of the two

contradictory tendencies of the productive forces, then it would result in a

fragmentation and negation of itself. The Memorandum summarised:

It is, therefore, unthinkable and reactionary to attempt any forcible transfer ofthe proletarian revolution inside borders of the old imperialist states. The task ofthe international proletariat is to draw towards the communist revolution andthe construction of a new society not only the advanced capitalist countries butalso the less developed peoples of the colonies*taking advantage of theirnational revolutions. To fulfil this task, it must take an active part in theserevolutions and play the leading role in the perspective of the permanent revolution,prevent the national bourgeoisie from limiting them at the level of fulfilling demandof national liberation. It is necessary to continue the struggle through to theseizure of power and the installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and tolead the bourgeois democratic revolution to the end through the establishment ofnational states destined to join the universal network of international union ofthe emerging Soviet republics based on the forces of local proletarian andworking masses of each country with the mutual aid of all the detachments ofworld revolution.198

The approach of the UKP was unique; they were the only communist party that

referred to the concept of permanent revolution during the entire course of the

Russian Revolution. It was from this understanding of the dialectics of the world

197 (1) The Organisational Committee of the USDRPN proclaims itself to be the Organisational Committee

of the Ukrainian Communist Party (USDRPN), based on the ‘Draft programme of the UKP’. (2) All USDRPN

Organisations are to discuss the ‘Draft programme’ and to proclaim themselves to be the Organisations of the

UKP (USDRPN). Chervony Prapor, 21 December 1919.198 Bachinskyi, op. cit., pp. 539�540.

Critique 603


revolutionary process that one could ‘comprehend the course and character of the

Ukrainian revolution, and thus determine the tasks of the Ukrainian proletariat and

its communist party’.199 These were the unresolved contradictions of the struggle of

both internal and external social forces in Ukraine which retarded the revolution.

This had ‘affected the entire course of the Ukrainian revolution, which has so far been

unable to develop fully into a communist revolution’.

The rift that grew in 1919 within the left stemmed not only from dissatisfaction

with policy on the national question but an overall absence of self-government. The

resulting rebellions’ most popular demand was that of democratically elected soviets.

A Central Committee member of the UKP, Ivan Maistrenko considered that the

Bolsheviks had ‘more chances than the Jacobins to continue the national revolution,

in other words to organize the creative impetus of the masses which was directed

towards the construction of a new society’.200 One such opportunity was in the calls

in 1919 for the reconstitution of Soviet Ukraine as a genuinely independent and self-

governing republic echoed in Budapest. Lenin wrote that the ‘Hungarian proletarian

revolution is helping even the blind to see’.201 This enlightenment didn’t reach

Rakovsky or Lenin. The opportunity was lost.

The experience of this and preceding episodes brings into question the long

accepted explanation for the fate of the Russian Revolution that is the primary role of

external factors in its degeneration and the rise of Stalinism. Coupled with this

assessment is the contention that unfavourable circumstances restricted the choices

available to the Bolsheviks. The Soviet historian Volodymyr Chyrko contended that

the experience of the Nezalezhnyky disproves ‘that a single-party system was

established in our country as a consequence of Bolsheviks not being willing to

collaborate with anyone’.202 There is no doubt that the Bolsheviks did work with

others, but it was a relationship strained by conflicting conceptions amongst the

Bolsheviks and other parties as to exactly what revolution they were creating. A

conflict summed up by the Nezalezhnyky in 1918 as between the dictatorship of the

workers and peasants or the dictatorship of a section of the proletariat and of its own

party. In the end the latter won out.

For the Bolsheviks, socialism could not be developed in a single, isolated, backward

country such as Russia without the aid of more developed countries in Europe. Their

project was predicated on extending the revolution westward. The entire approach in

Ukraine contributed to undermining the very perspective on which the October

Revolution was based.

199 Bachinskyi, op. cit., pp. 539�540.200 A. Babenko, Bolshevist Bonapartism, (Geneva: Nasha Borotba, 1948), p. 6.201 V. I. Lenin, Greetings to the Hungarian Workers, Pravda, 29 May, 1919 (Moscow: Progress Publishers,

1972) Lenin, Collected Works, (4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29), pp. 387�391.

202 V. A. Chyrko, ‘Khokh ideolohii ta polityky natsionalistychnoi partii ukapistiv’, Ukrainsky istorychnyi

zhurnal, 12 (1968): pp. 24�35.

604 C. Ford


What is striking about this key juncture is that despite despair with the Bolsheviks

there was not a collapse or decline in support for the soviet idea. Indeed the opposite

occurred. In winter 1919�1920 the largely peasant-based Borotbisty, having re-

launched as the ‘Ukrainian Communist Party (Borotbisty)’ witnessed a surge in

support. One explanation for this mobilisation is that it was based on a choice

between restoration and resistance; however this does not fully explain Ukraine.

Despite circumstances which would appear most favourable to the parties of the

remnant UNR, they did not gain hegemony over the popular resistance in the winter

of 1920. But the pro-soviet surge of 1920 that defeated the Russian Volunteer Army

could not re-create March 1919, as Vynnychenko concluded in his Rebirth of a

Nation, if their plan had been accepted and a common soviet front established the

Hungarian Soviet Republic and Soviet Bavaria would have been saved.203

203 Vynnychenko, Vidrodzhenia Natsii, III, op. cit., p. 321.

Critique 605


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