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previous: Chapter 2 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Twentieth-Century Ukraine by Clarence Manning published by Bookman Associates New York, 1951 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 4

 p30  III

Ukraine and Russia in Dissolution

On March 8, 1917, began the riots in Petrograd that marked the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. These became intensified and spread rapidly until on March 15, Nicholas II abdicated the throne and the Russian Empire was no more. It was a sudden and dramatic end to the Romanov dynasty that had ruled for over three hundred years, so sudden indeed that the success of the long-expected revolution could hardly be believed, even by its foremost advocates, and days and even weeks were required after its immediate impact upon the peoples of the empire before its significance could be fully appreciated.

The Ukrainians in the capital welcomed the new movement which was taking shape as they prepared to celebrate the birthday of the national poet, Shevchenko, which occurred on March 9. This had always been a special time for tsarist persecution; now, in the midst of the rioting and disorder, the exercises were held on a scale and with a freedom that had never been possible.

When the first flush of enthusiasm was over, the serious work of the revolution began — the welding of a new organization to take the place of the old, discarded system. At this point the unanimity which had held together all classes, except the hard-shelled supporters of the old regime, broke down.  p31 There were all kinds of questions to be decided. There was the problem of the participation of the new Russia in the World War which was still going on. There were the social problems involved in the distribution of land to the peasants, the rights of property and the position of the factory workers. There were the national problems presented by the various oppressed peoples that had been brought by force or by guile within the Russian Empire. It was soon evident that there was going to be no agreement about these or as to the ultimate form of a central government, if there was to be one.

In the capital itself a disagreement at once arose between the Provisional Government, formed largely out of the moderate parties of the old Duma, and the new Soviets of Soldiers and Workmen which had been called into existence by the more radical parties, among which the Bolshevik party was as yet almost negligible. The Provisional Government, which included only one Social Revolutionist, Kerensky, wanted to continue the war and adopt a form of government based generally upon the types of parliamentary democracy known in Western Europe. The Soviets argued for an immediate peace, the breaking up of the old army, and the organization of a government based upon soviets to be established throughout the country.

Outside of the capital the wealthier classes stood for principles fairly similar to those of the Provisional Government, while the peasants demanded the immediate distribution of the land of the great estates and were willing to use force to attain their goal. In the smaller cities or wherever there was a factory population, the revolutionary movement of the Soviets took hold.

Finally among all of the oppressed nationalities, there grew up with surprising speed an agitation for the recognition of special rights in their own territories, for permission to use their own languages, and for new relation­ships to the central government which usually involved either outright independence or reconstruction of the Russian Empire as a federal state.  p32 At the same time these sentences developed the same class bitterness and the same social demands that were appearing in purely Russian territory.

All this was repudiated by the Great Russians of both right and left. They could not conceive of a state which would be anything but the old monolithic unity. To win the support of the Allies they were willing to make some concessions in the cases of Poland and Finland, but that was about all. When they did grudgingly concede anything more, it was with the distinct proviso that all such questions could not receive a definitive answer until the meeting of a Constituent Convention, in which the Great Russians intended to have an absolute majority.​1

Of great importance in this connection was the relative isolation of the Russian Empire resulting from the war. Owing to the intervention of Turkey on the side of the Central Powers and the German advance into the Balkans, there was no access to the outside world through the Dardanelles. The Baltic sea routes were completely closed by the Germans. It was possible to reach Petrograd and Moscow from the West only by rail across Sweden or by the sea route to Murmansk and Archangel, the two ports on the Arctic Ocean. An alternative route was by way of Vladivostok on the Pacific and the long journey over the demoralized Trans-Siberian Railroad. The route from the Caucasus to the British positions in Mesopotamia and across Iran had indeed been traversed by a division of Russian Cossacks who had joined the British at Bagdad but it was not a practicable means of communication.

All of these routes led directly into Great Russian territory. This meant that the various non-Russian nationalities for the most part had no means of communicating with the Western Powers except across Great Russian territory. They were dependent, if war was to come, on their domestic manufacture of munitions and on captured materiel. Even if they were recognized by the Allies, these could extend them no direct help. That could come only from the Central Powers and to  p33 accept such assistance would inevitably bring forth the charge in the West that the movements were German-inspired and would work against Allied recognition in the event of German defeat, which was already becoming evident.

There were few persons in authority in Great Britain, France or the United States (which had by now entered the war) who understood or cared to understand the real nature of the Russian Empire. The Allied representatives, often with the best intentions in the world, listened to the Great Russians of either the old regime, the Provisional Government or the revolutionary Soviets. They were only too willing to believe that all important questions would be settled in the Western manner at the Constituent Convention and when they did get into contact with the minorities, they did not have the authority to promise them anything or to carry out what they did feel inclined to offer.

The Allies, while welcoming the downfall of the tsar and of the supposed pro-German clique among his associates, still felt themselves bound by their agreements with the empire. They remembered the sacrifices that the Russians (and here they did not bother to distinguish among the various nations in the empire) had made in the common cause. They believed that Russia's internal problems would be solved without delay and that a new and democratic government would emerge from the growing chaos. They therefore again hesitated to take any action which might embarrass the Provisional Government in its efforts to maintain itself in power and they jumped at the suggestion that everything be left to the Constituent Assembly.

In this setting the Ukrainians were compelled to steer their course. They occupied an important geographical position, yet they were completely cut off from any direct contact with the West. They formed the largest group next to the Great Russians, yet for two centuries their very existence as a group had been denied by Russians of all categories and they had had no chance to present their case to the world. They had only their own abilities and their confidence in the righteousness  p34 of their cause.

At the outbreak of the revolution, Professor Hrushevsky, the foremost Ukrainian historian, left Moscow, where he was under police supervision, and made his way to Kiev. Here he almost immediately became the mainspring of the Ukrainian movement. Hrushevsky was a liberal and a member of the under­ground Organization of Ukrainian Progressives, which had established contacts with all of the Ukrainian socialist parties.​2 The approach of the revolution allowed it to appear openly for the first time since its foundation in 1908 and take an active part in the spreading of Ukrainian agitation.

The ranks of Ukrainian patriots were swelled by the gradual return of many of the men and women who had been imprisoned or exiled during the last years of the imperial regime. They soon gave valuable support to the new movement.

In the beginning most of the leaders and the people undoubtedly thought that with the elimination of the tsar, the new regime at Petrograd would be eager to satisfy the legitimate demands of the various nationalities. The ardent separatist demands of the small Ukrainian Independence party seemed overwrought; its insistent calls for the declaration of Ukrainian independence went unheeded and its leaders took little part in the first deliberations.​3

There is no reason to wonder at this. For about a half century, the opponents of tsarism and of imperial control of Ukraine had been in touch with Russian revolutionary leaders of the same general type and had accepted their ideology and methods. There were no political parties in the sense known to the democratic world, these having been forbidden before the Revolution of 1905. There were only secret revolutionary groups without political or administrative experience; the parties formed in 1905 had been largely broken up in the following period of reaction and driven under­ground.

As we have seen, the imperial regime had taken advantage of the war to suppress even the embryonic Ukrainian press.  p35 It was therefore necessary, in the middle of the revolution, to create among a people with a high level of illiteracy a press which would voice Ukrainian desires. By the end of March there were at least three such papers, the New Council, the Labor Gazette, and the Will of the People,​4 but with the breakdown of transportation it was almost impossible to circulate them among the villages where the Ukrainian sentiment was the strongest.

From the beginning of the Ukrainian movement, emphasis had been laid upon its cultural aspects and little attention given to the restoration of the old Kievan state. Now in the days of the revolution, cultural rights became the chief plank in the national platform. To the masses and even to many of the intellectuals, the language question seemed to be the spearhead of their cause. They wanted to have their language introduced into the schools and officially recognized. They had connected Russian opposition to this with tsarism and bureaucracy and it never entered their heads that a Provisional Government, which loudly proclaimed its belief in democracy, would question this right.

In common with most of the citizens of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian leaders had almost ignored foreign affairs. Preoccupied with their cultural rights and other internal matters, they had not planned any course of action in the international arena. They had devoted far more thought to the ideology of the revolution and of socialism. It was only natural that in the enthusiasm of the first days, the growing party organizations were similar to those organized elsewhere in the Russian Empire. Soon the Ukrainian Social Revolutionary party and the Ukrainian Social Democratic party under the leader­ship of the writer Volodymyr Vynnychenko came to the fore. Both stressed the need for autonomy but like the corresponding parties in all European countries, they thought of themselves as members of some sort of world-wide parties which would work together without too much attention to such questions as boundaries and national feelings. They had not yet  p36 learned the full lesson of the situation in Germany in 1914, when the apparently international socialist parties had voted for the war credits in the Reichstag.

In a sense the position of most of the leaders was similar to that of the American colonists in 1775, who had taken up arms to defend their rights as Englishmen and had required more than a year to realize that their goal was independence. The Ukrainian leaders wanted social reform and a recognition of their cultural rights. This meant some form of local autonomy, the need for which was emphasized by the growing disorder throughout the country which had to be countered by local initiative.

With these objects in view Professor Hrushevsky organized at Kiev the Central Rada with the aid of the Organization of Ukrainian Progressives. In its early days this conceived itself as a committee representing the various elements of Ukrainian society rather than as the nucleus of a government. At its maiden session on March 17 its first act was to send a telegram of congratulations to the prime minister of the Provisional Government, Prince Lvov, expressing the hope that that government would recognize the autonomy of Ukraine and protect the rights of the Ukrainian people.​5

The word autonomy was used in the same sense that it had had in Austria-Hungary. It meant the power to handle certain specific problems, especially local affairs, with the permission of the central administration. Autonomy was a gift and not a right. This distinction is at wide variance with the ideas of the Anglo-Saxon world as to the significance of local institutions. In the foundation of the United States, rights of the states as self-governing bodies were fundamental and behind even the Articles of Confederation. Under the European understanding, autonomy could be given, extended, abridged or revoked, and in all matters outside of those specified, the power of the central regime was still supreme. It thus seemed to the nationalist leaders that the Provisional Government could confer autonomy without jeopardizing its  p37 own position.

A Russia composed of autonomous districts could hardly be called a federal state, for the central authority derived its powers from itself. In a federal state the central authority would derive its powers from the component parts. The distinction was not clear at first to the Rada, and precious weekends and months were sacrificed in fruitless negotiations with the Provisional Government, which would not hear of any variation from the old monolithic system.

It was a period of meetings of all kinds. There were meetings of teachers, of co-operative societies, of peasants, of all classes, each of which demanded autonomy. When we consider that but a few weeks before, all of these groups had been organized on an imperial scale and were now talking of local needs, we can understand the effect of the upheaval and we can see why the few men who began from the definite idea of independence were scarcely heeded.

From the first moments of the revolution, the military element and those charged with maintaining public order had a deeper appreciation of what was coming. The Volynsky Guard Regiment,​6 those regiments of the old Russian Army mobilized on a regional basis from Ukrainian lands, was the first to join the revolution. When its imperial insignia were discarded, the regiment demanded some local insignia and called for the use of Ukrainian in its orders. Its example was followed by others and by the volunteers who were recruited for the emergency. Many of these insisted that they be allowed to take up arms to restore order at home and wanted a local commander. Thus, almost against its own will, the Rada was forced to decide about these new and Ukrainized organizations. Should they be sent to other sections of the empire to fight? Should they be retained as local forces? Who was to be their commander?

There was only one answer. The Rada could not act merely as a mouthpiece. It had to take over the definite task of administering the affairs of state for the Ukrainian population  p38 of Kiev. Events were rapidly passing beyond the most ardent dreams.

On March 22 the Rada issued an appeal to the people to demand their rights and on the same day the Ukrainian military leaders in Kiev formed a Ukrainian Military Council to enroll troops to maintain order. This looked to the Rada as the only possible directing head.​7

Each step in the assumption of responsibility by the Rada built up opposition among the Russians in Kiev. They felt strongly that the course of action on which the Rada had embarked was distinctly hostile to the attitude of the Provisional Government and was a threat to the unity of the state. Yet for their part they could receive no support from the Provisional Government, which was fully occupied with protecting itself against the demands of the Soviets of Soldiers' and Workmen's Delegates in Petrograd. They could only object to every action and set up their own institutions which were forced to act independently of the central government.

On April 1, when the Rada called for a public demonstration, over one hundred thousand persons appeared. These loudly demanded autonomy for Ukraine. Yet even such a vast demonstration and the previous telegrams to Petrograd brought no reply. Nor did the capital take any steps to assert its authority in Kiev.

The growing call for action in Kiev and the inaction of the Provisional Government convinced the Rada that it had to take over some of the functions of government. Ukrainian organizations were springing up throughout the country and were looking to Kiev for guidance. The influence of the metropolis was asserting itself. From the time of the old Kievan state, the city had been the capital. It was the spiritual, intellectual and economic center of Eastern Ukraine and now it was destined to become the political center. The pressure finally became overwhelming.

The Rada summoned an All-Ukrainian National Congress to meet in Kiev on April 19.​8 This was attended by over  p39  fifteen hundred delegates from all parts of the country and was the first large public gathering to represent more than the province of Kiev. It provided for a re-organization of the Rada to include delegates from all the Ukrainian provinces and co‑operative societies. It adopted definite resolutions for Ukrainian autonomy within the Russian federation and declared itself the supreme authority in Ukraine, with a right to be consulted in the drawing up of plans for a federated Russia. There were the usual demands for Ukrainization of the schools and army forces and an insistence that Ukraine share in any Russian participation in international conferences. Again all these resolutions passed unnoticed by the Provisional Government.

The re-organization of the Rada with the appointment of a special executive committee, or Little Rada, marked a new stage in the process of the movement. It did not lead to any better relations with the Provisional Government; and even when a delegation, after a new series of congresses and petitions, went to Petrograd, the authorities refused all recognition to the Rada, still maintaining that it could make no change in the prerevolutionary setup before the meeting of the Constituent Assembly.

This blunt rejection poured oil on the fire. A Congress of Peasants' Delegates which met soon after in Kiev declared that the Rada should not have presented a request to the Provisional Government but instead a definite program for the federation of Russia. For the first time a large congress openly mentioned the possibility that if the Provisional Government refused to accept the conditions, there could only result a positive break between Ukraine and Great Russia.

The military units which had passed under Ukrainian control grew more and more restive and their feelings were not relieved when Kerensky as minister of war forbade the holding of a second military congress in June. The sole effect of Kerensky's orders was to popularize this congress, which was  p40 held on June 18‑23 and again stressed the need for Ukrainian autonomy.​9

As the Russian elements in Kiev, both radical and reactionary, were becoming more aggressive, the Rada now decided to act and on June 23 it issued its First Universal.​10 The mood of this was still conciliatory but it advanced Ukrainian thinking to a point nearer that of the nationalists. It named the Rada as the supreme government in Ukraine and the body which would speak for Ukraine in all matters concerning its relation­ship with the Russian Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly.

The First Universal was of paramount importance in Ukrainian development, for while it proclaimed Ukraine as one of the federated states of the Russian republic, it laid responsibility for the development and protection of the country on the people themselves and on the Rada as their chosen vehicle of government. It did away with the old idea of autonomy as something to be granted by Petrograd and took its stand upon inherent rights.

It could not fail to widen the breach with the Provisional Government and with the Russians in Ukraine, no matter of what party they were, for all held to the unity of the country. Only the Russian Bolsheviks in Kiev welcomed its defiance of the central government but they repudiated it for assuming that Ukraine should have something more than local autonomy.

Upon the issuance of the First Universal, the Rada could now establish itself as a government. On June 28 it organized the Council of General Secretaries, with Vynnychenko as president. This was the first real executive body of the Ukrainian state. It had nine members, eight of whom belonged to the socialist groups, for the constant addition of deputies of workmen and soldiers had driven the Rada steadily to the left.

This new action finally aroused the Provisional Government. On the eve of a new offensive against the Germans, Kerensky, Tereshchenko and Tsereteli came to Kiev to consult the Rada.​11  p41 They proposed among other things, that the Council of General Secretaries be subject to the Provisional Government as well as to the Rada. A compromise was finally reached under which Ukraine would be governed by the Rada but would not press its demand for autonomy until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, and the supreme command of the Ukrainized armed forces would still be in Russian hands. The results were embodied in a Second Universal, issued jointly with the Russian Commission on July 16.​12

This clear retreat by the Rada was bitterly opposed by the military elements. The correctness of their judgment was amply confirmed by Kerensky's disastrous offensive against the Germans which commenced a few days later and which marked the final ending of the old Russian army, despite the efforts of the Ukrainian regiments. It weakened the Rada in its general position at home and benefited no one, including the Provisional Government.

Yet even this recognition of the Rada was enough to upset the Provisional Government. The Constitutional Democrats in the cabinet resigned and threw the control to the Socialists. Lenin and the Bolsheviks started another uprising in Petrograd which, though it was finally suppressed, harassed and weakened the government still further.

The Rada, continuing on its course, proceeded to draw up a constitution, or Statute of the Higher Administration of Ukraine, which it published on July 29. It was again a moderate document, avoiding any mention of the troublesome question of boundaries and carefully preserving the rights of a Russian government. Yet even this document was too strong for Petrograd, which sent down its own instructions to the Ukrainians and treated the Council of Secretaries as its own organ. Renewed protests and congresses followed and the Provisional Government was planning to arrest the members of the secretariat when it was itself overthrown by the Bolshevik revolution.

It is easy to criticize the actions of the Rada, the first Ukrainian  p42 instrument of government since the Sich of a century and a half before. Its faults were those of all of the organizations set up by the nationalities of the old empire. They had been so long under the tyrannical and centralized rule of St. Petersburg that they could not grasp the fact that that rule had vanished and that the moment had come to disregard it. The Ukrainians did not want a civil war to be started while the German forces were occupying part of their country. They believed the Russians were sincerely working toward a democratic government. They had started from nothing, and from the vague desire for a cultural and economic autonomy they had progressed to the point of trying to help build a truly federal Russia. They had established contact with the various other nationalities of the empire in a congress of minority peoples held in Kiev on September 21‑28 to make plans for a united front of non-Russians at the Russian Constituent Assembly. The Rada had grown steadily and almost consistently from the time of its inception despite the constant and unyielding opposition of the Provisional Government, which was bound to the old Russian tradition of unity and uniformity. Its chief fault was the same as that of the Provisional Government, for each was guilty of failure to devote its main energies in time of war and revolution to building up its armed forces and its means of self-defense.

The Rada had shown the Ukrainian people their possibilities. It had secured the controlling position in Kiev, but although it had brought into its member­ship the representatives of the minorities, it was still opposed by Russians of all types and schools of thought. It could not rely upon a single foreign friend. It had insisted that Ukraine have representatives on all Russian delegations but it was unable to take any steps to make this effective. The downfall of the Provisional Government turned the struggle from words to deeds. In the coming days the military and national aspects were to be of prime importance, aspects that were secondary so long as the conception of a federalized Russia held out hopes of peace.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Historians of all schools of thought agree as to the nature of the problems confronting the Revolution and vary only as to the emphasis which they place upon the different factors. However, most Russian historians and others trained under their influence pass over almost in silence the problem of the nationalities. Thus Bernard Pares, Russia (New York, 1943), hardly refers to it. Geroid Tanquaray Robinson, Russia under the Old Regime (New York, 1932), pp148‑49, mentions the rise of nationalism in the border states prior to 1905 but pays no attention to its development between the Revolutions as affecting the rural population. On the other hand, C. Tcheidze in Russia-U.S.S.R. (New York, 1933), pp103 ff. notes the increasing tension between the Russians and the other nationalities and in the same volume, p65, Peter Malevsky-Malevitch mentions the important role of the separatist movements in the events of 1918. He emphasizes that by 1918 the opponents of the Communists were of "two very different groups: One comprising the property-owning classes (who had been deprived of their all by the Bolsheviks), the officers, the civil servants and all those devoted to the ideals of the Russian State as constituted before the October Revolution; the other, the national separatist groups, which desired complete separation from Russia. It is easy to see that, no matter how antagonistic these groups might be to Communism, their aims were absolutely dissociated. The unity of the Russian State could only be re-established in one of two ways; either by a restoration of the Monarchy or by federation. Neither alternative appealed to the anti-Bolshevik groups."

2 Nicholas D. Czubatyj, "National Revolution in Ukraine," The Ukrainian Quarterly, I, 23.

3 Czubatyj, op. cit., p23.

4 Hrushevsky, op. cit., p522.

5 See Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p763.

6 Pares, op. cit., p86, does not mention that the bulk of the soldiers in this regiment were Ukrainian.

7 Hrushevsky, op. cit., p524.

8 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p763.

9 Czubatyj, op. cit., p25.

10 See Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, pp766 ff.; Czubatyj, op. cit., p27; Hrushevsky, op. cit., pp526 ff.

11 Czubatyj, op. cit., p29.

12 Hrushevsky, op. cit., p527. This precipitated the downfall of the cabinet in Petrograd and was contemporary with the July uprising in that city.

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