Ukraine, the Bolsheviks and the Germans

The collapse of the Provisional Government put an end to the question of whether Russia was to be a unified or a federal state and raised the more urgent and ominous question of whether Ukraine was to be exist in its traditional mode of life or be swung within the Bolshevik orbit.

The new regime established in Petrograd, and soon to be moved to Moscow, was led by a man of a very different calibre from the men of the Provisional Government. Lenin was determined to carry through his ideas for the creation of a proletariat state to be entirely under the control of the Bolshevik party and to be administered through the soviets. On paper he was willing to be as liberal toward the minorities as the Provisional Government had been strict. But this was only on paper, for by insisting that the Communist soviets control everything, he provided for the continued role of the Communist party leaders who were for the most part Russians.

The advent of the new regime thoroughly befuddled the Allied representatives in Petrograd who were trying to foster the Western form of democracy in Russia and keep Russia in the war against the Central Powers. They could not believe in the permanence of a government which preached internationalism, immediate peace and the overthrow of the social order in all of its manifestations. It seemed at best some p44 form of German intrigue, for it was known that Lenin had passed through Germany in a sealed car with the approval of the German General Staff. Yet they did not wish or feel themselves in a position to declare war on the new regime. So began a period of uncertainty and confusion, with one Allied mission disagreeing with another, while the old empire fell to pieces and part after part declared its independence.

If this was the state of mind of the trained representatives of the great powers, what could be said of the Rada and the Ukrainian people who were struggling to their feet after a century and a half of absolute political subjection?

The impact of Bolshevism upon Ukraine was in the form of arms and propaganda. The land hunger of the peasantry and unrest among the city workmen grew daily and the Rada, following the mood of the people, swung toward the left, even against the better judgment of many who had up till now supported the revolution. The outstanding fact of the Ukrainian movement thus far had been its ability to include all classes and avoid much of the disorder that had come elsewhere. Now Bolshevik agents appeared with the frank object of stirring up discontent against the Rada, not so much on the ground of national separatism as by accusing it of reactionary tendencies which thwarted the will of the proletariat. The Rada was denounced as the agent of international capitalism, where but a few days before it had seemed to many dangerously radical.⁠1

The Russians in Ukraine who had fallen under Bolshevik influence no longer argued but fought. They gathered weapons and attacked each other's parties in the various cities. For a while it seemed possible that the Rada would be able to use this internecine warfare as a means of clearing its own territory and securing control, for the Bolshevik groups even with the aid of volunteers and bands from Great Russian territory were relatively weak. But their influence became threatening among some of the Ukrainian regiments, especially those which had not yet been properly trained.

The Rada strengthened its contacts with the non-Bolshevik p45 leftist parties and then issued the Third Universal on November 20.⁠2 This announced the formation of the Ukrainian National Republic (Ukrainska Narodna Respublika). The very name shows the strain and stress of the period, for it could be interpreted in all ways by all people. The word Naroda has two almost contradictory meanings. On the one hand it definitely and clearly means National. The new organization was that of the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian people. On the other, it means Popular, with a strong emphasis on the masses, the workmen and the peasants, and especially the proletariat. In this sense the word had become almost a slogan of the extreme left, including the Bolsheviks, who had established at Petrograd their People's Commissariats. The word called attention to both salient problems of the Rada — the national Ukrainian movement and the social agitation which was rampant.

The Third Universal separated Ukraine from the Soviet administration of Russia. It provided for the distribution of land to the peasants, the introduction of an eight-hour day in the factories, the abolition of capital punishment, a political amnesty, personal minority rights for non-Ukrainians in the country, and the taking of steps to end the war. In this way the Rada tried to satisfy both of the great movements of the day. It realized that the old disputes had become merely academic and that it was time for Ukraine to handle her own affairs. Provision was also made to elect a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly on January 9 to meet on January 22.

The Third Universal was of course badly received by the Soviets. They demanded that the Red army be admitted into the country to follow the Don Cossacks who were retiring from the front across Ukrainian territory and that the Rada turn over its authority to the Bolshevik and Communist soviets of workers and peasants. These demands obviously were intended to bring the entire state under the control of Lenin, and when they were turned down, the Bolsheviks openly declared war on the Ukrainian Republic. The Rada accepted p46 the challenge and began to expel Bolshevik troops from Ukrainian territory.

The Kiev soviet, composed largely of Russian Bolsheviks, called a protest meeting on December 17. The Rada allowed this meeting of over two thousand deputies but saw to it that it was properly representative of the Ukrainian population. As a result there were fewer than one hundred and fifty Bolsheviks present and they withdrew when they proved unable to disrupt the proceedings. The meeting then took on a distinctively proletarian character, voted its support of the Rada, and added to its resolution the following passage:

On paper the Soviet of People's Commissars seemingly recognizes the right of a nation to self-determination and even to separation — but only in words. In fact the government of Commissars is brutally attempting to interfere in the activities of the Ukrainian government which executes the will of the legislative organ of the Ukrainian Central Rada. What sort of self-determination is this? It is certain that the Commissars will permit self-determination only to their own party; all other groups and peoples they, like the tsarist regime, desire to keep under their domination by force of arms. But the Ukrainian people did not cast off the tsarist yoke only to take upon themselves the yoke of the Communists."⁠3

This resolution aptly summarized in clear and unmistakable language the real meaning of the Soviet claims, doctrines and threats. It is as true today as it was then and is applicable to all relations between the Soviets and the rest of the world. The events of the next days showed clearly that the Bolsheviks had no intention of using persuasion or argument or any form of democracy to extend their power but that they relied entirely on force combined with disintegrating propaganda.

The frustrated Bolshevik representatives withdrew to Kharkov and here they established a Ukrainian Soviet Republic. It was headed by two Russians, Sergeyev of the Don basin and Ivanov of Kiev, and a Ukrainian Communist Horowits. To add to the general confusion, the Soviets took over the p47 titles of the Rada, called their leaders secretaries instead of commissars and named their gathering the Rada; and they still use the term the Rada Republic to denote the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. To support this, they sent to Kharkov, to quote Professor Hrushevsky, "a band of soldiers, sailors, and various hired hooligans, stationed at Bilhorod, as if trying to force their way to the Don." These succeeded in overcoming the Ukrainian garrison in Kharkov, and the Bolsheviks made this city their capital. It was near the border of Great Russia and it was much easier to maintain contact with Petrograd and Moscow from there than from Kiev. To give color to their Ukrainian mask, they employed as one of the leaders of their armed forces George Kotsyubinsky, the son of a prominent Ukrainian writer, who had been a friend of Gorky and Lenin.⁠4

The open warfare between the democratic Ukrainian government in Kiev and the Ukrainian Soviet regime in Kharkov was accompanied by effective Bolshevik propaganda in Kiev itself. This penetrated the Ukrainian army and some of the newly formed regiments either joined the Bolsheviks or went home, ostensibly for Christmas.

Up to this time the Rada had endeavored to remain in the war against the Central Powers. In this it was listening to the Western diplomatic representatives in Kiev. These promised all kinds of assistance to the hard-pressed government but found no way to deliver any supplies. And they refused to promise categorically any formal recognition of Ukrainian independence.

The situation became even more intolerable when the Germans and Bolsheviks met at Brest-Litovsk to conclude a peace.⁠5 The Rada was forced to send representatives to this gathering because Trotsky was presuming to speak for Ukraine as part of the old Russia. Everyone knew that it was Ukrainian grain for which the Germans and Austrians were bidding and a German-Bolshevik peace might easily force the country into a joint war against both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. The Western Allies stormed and threatened but could offer no p48 effective help. The Rada therefore sent to Brest on January 12, 1918, three young men, Michael Levytsky, Michael Lubinsky and Alexander Sevryuk, former students of Professor Hrushevsky. Their youth and inexperience surprised General Hoffmann, the German representative, and Count Czernin,⁠6 the spokesman for Austria-Hungary. But they had been well instructed as to their policy and they put forward claims not only for the recognition of Ukrainian independence but for the inclusion in the new state of the Ukrainian territories under Austro-Hungarian rule. This last clause the Ukrainians soon found it necessary to waive, for it struck too deeply at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and imperiled all other negotiations.

The conference did not run smoothly. There was little friendship or confidence between the German and Austro-Hungarian representatives, for each of them was interested in advancing his own plans for Eastern Europe; and the Austrians, demoralized by the death of the Emperor Francis Joseph I,⁠7 were even more desperately eager for peace and grain than were the Germans. The Ukrainian delegates were especially aware of the Austrian situation, for on their way to Brest, they had passed through Lviv and had established contacts with the Ukrainian leaders in that city.

Trotsky bitterly opposed the presence of the Ukrainian representatives. He advanced all the arguments in the Russian and Bolshevik arsenal, now asserting that there was no such country or region as Ukraine, now arguing that the Rada was not a revolutionary government of the workers and peasants, now insisting that the Bolsheviks had captured Kiev and wiped out the Ukrainian government, and then on January 30 introducing two representatives of the Kharkov Communist regime, Medvedyev and Shakray, as the real representatives of Ukraine.⁠8

The young Ukrainian diplomats were in a particularly uncomfortable position, for during the conference the Bolsheviks renewed their efforts to capture Kiev and for a period at the end of the month were even able to isolate the delegation for p49 a few days by cutting all the telegraph wires out of Kiev. Yet they persevered and proved themselves far more reasonable and intelligent than the Bolsheviks, especially when Trotsky refused to sign the peace treaty in view of the Bolshevik theory that the Soviets as the spokesmen for the proletariat of the world could not sign an agreement with capitalistic and nationalistic governments like Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Germans then renewed their advance into Russian territory, whereupon Lenin compelled Trotsky to return and sign the treaty.

The treaty was finally signed on February 7, 1918. Under it the Central Powers formally recognized the independence of Ukraine, including the territory claimed by the Rada and that section which had fallen into German hands during the war. In return Ukraine promised the Central Powers a million tons of food. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians promised to return to Ukraine all of their prisoners of war and to arm and equip them for the struggle against the Bolsheviks. This was the most valuable item, for it insured a large number of trained men and of those military supplies that could not be manufactured in Ukraine under the stress of the revolution. There was also concluded a secret protocol, whereby the Austro-Hungarians would include Eastern Galicia and the Ukrainian parts of Bukovina in a new crown land in which Ukrainian would be the official language.⁠9

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was of the greatest significance to the young republic but it brought with it not only the expected compensations but many troubles. It secured for Ukraine international recognition by the only powers that were in a position to give her any tangible support. On the debit side it made Ukraine a German satellite state and rendered possible German interference in her internal administration. It drove a wedge between the new country and the Western Allies at a time when they were increasing in strength as a result of the active arrival of American troops. Yet it was the only possible course in view of the temporizing policy of p50 the Allies. Its unfortunate aspects were to appear only later.

Meanwhile the Rada had been making valiant efforts to maintain itself in Kiev against Bolshevik attacks and propaganda and against the opposition of Russians of every political party. A new government was formed under Volodymyr Holubovych, one of the Social Revolutionary leaders. But even in those critical days there was far too much argumentation in the Rada and too little effective action.

To strengthen the position of the delegates at Brest-Litovsk, the Rada had issued on January 22 a Fourth Universal which in direct and dignified language proclaimed the full independence of the Ukrainian National Republic — "From today the Ukrainian National Republic becomes the Independent, Free, Sovereign State of the Ukrainian People." It had taken ten months of endless talk and fighting to bring the Rada and the people to this clear-cut decision, so needful if the new government was to function smoothly and consistently.⁠10

The pressure on Kiev continued and on February 7, the very day that the treaty was concluded, the government withdrew to save the city from civil war. The troops retired into the suburbs and the Rada removed to Zhytomyr. On February 9 the Bolsheviks entered the city and commenced a reign of terror which must have been as destructive as the scarcely averted storming. Over five thousand civilians fell victims in the massacre that followed of those suspected of being anti-Bolshevik.⁠11

The efforts of the Rada at Zhytomyr to solve the pressing problems of the country constantly evoked hostility from some element of the population. To many of the peasants, its attempts to divide up the big estates seemed halting and hesitant. These same attempts were too strenuous for the great landowners, many of whom were either Russian or Polish in sympathy, and these classes did everything to prevent land reform and restore the old order. Thus the Rada was assailed by both the right and the left.

All this disorder and chaos made it difficult to organize and p51 equip a regular army. The country was overrun by various armed bands under self-appointed atamans who plundered indiscriminately in the name of the revolution. Fortunately at this moment there arrived the Riflemen of the Sich and the other units which had been formed among the prisoners of war by the Society for the Liberation of Ukraine. These new units gave the republic a stability and a reliable military force that it had hitherto lacked.

By March 1 the Bolsheviks had been driven out of Kiev and the Rada was able to return. The process of clearing the country continued and by the end of April nearly all the Bolsheviks had been expelled from Ukraine by hard fighting. On March 9 the Soviets had promised the Germans to respect the territories of the Ukrainian Republic, but it goes without saying that they broke the agreement and that the Germans, busily transferring their troops to the Western front to meet the Americans, French and British, took no steps to compel them to respect it.

On the anniversary of Shevchenko's death, the Rada announced that it intended to continue the democratic policies outlined in the Third and Fourth Universals. The government of Holubovych got the support of most of the Ukrainian parties but it had continuous difficulties with the wealthy and conservative classes and in general with the non-Ukrainian population, especially the Russians and the Poles, who would have no part of it.⁠12

The Germans acted as if they were the real masters of the country. In the spring, after a year of war and turmoil, with many harvests reduced or destroyed, it was hard to collect the promised grain from the peasants. The need for food was so acute in the Central Powers that they kept pressing the Rada and the government and even instituted their own methods of collection. Field Marshal von Eichhorn at Kiev became the most influential member of the German missions but he was constantly at odds with Baron Mumm, the representative of the Berlin Foreign Office. General Gröner also arrived to take p52 an active part in the grain collection.

The major concern of the Rada was to prepare for the holding of a Constituent Assembly. This had been scheduled to meet in January but the elections had not been completed because of Bolshevik aggression and because of protests that those who had been elected in various areas no longer represented the wishes of their constituents. The Rada proposed new elections and announced that the convention would open on June 12, as soon as half of the delegates had been selected.

Nevertheless the Rada was still plagued by discord and inaction. The two great movements of nationalism and of social reform were not too closely coordinated. The parties differed widely from each other and almost every measure was stubbornly debated. There was in fact a tendency to postpone decisions until after the elections and this did not fit in with German plans for securing an immediate supply of grain. The German authorities finally lost patience with the Rada. On April 28, 1918, they sent a force of troops to surround the Rada building. A small detachment entered and its commander ordered the Rada to disperse. Despite the protest of its president, Professor Hrushevsky, the order was carried out and the Rada, thus expelled from the seat of government, ceased to function.⁠13

The next day the conservative elements of the state, especially the Society of the Agriculturalists, the great landowners, held a congress and elected as a new hetman Paul Skoropadsky, who was installed at once. Skoropadsky was a member of that same family which had produced Hetman Ivan Skoropadsky, who had been selected by Peter the Great to take the place of Mazepa after his deposition in 1708. He had been educated in St. Petersburg as a Russian nobleman and despite his adherence to Ukraine, his opponents saw him still as a Russian. The new regime was as conservative as the Rada had been progressive. It repealed most of the land laws, even before they had been tried out, and it received German support to put down any dissatisfaction. The new leaders were able to p53 secure a considerable amount of grain but they met with increasing opposition and popular anger flared up against the Germans. Marshal von Eichhorn was assassinated in Kiev on July 30. He had no able successor and throughout the summer of 1918 German influence in Ukraine ebbed along with its power on the Western front.⁠14

Throughout the summer there were present in Kiev Bolshevik diplomatic representatives; their leaders were Rakovsky and especially Dmytro Manuilsky, a Ukrainian by birth who had spent most of his adult life among the Russians and was a close friend of Lenin. They were in Kiev ostensibly to draw up a peace treaty between the Ukrainian Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic but it was an open secret that they were carrying on disruptive propaganda. They had a great deal of money and they spent it lavishly. The Hetman and his officials vainly begged the Germans to allow them to limit or expel the offensive members of this group.⁠15

The policy of the Germans during this period was most inconsistent. They were opposed to the extension of Bolshevism but they did not want to take an openly hostile attitude and risk the reopening of an Eastern front. Even when their ambassador, Count Mirbach, was murdered in Moscow, the Bolshevik capital, the Germans kept quiet and thus unwittingly allowed the concentration of resources and people for their own downfall.⁠16

The Germans pushed on to the east. They gave aid to the Don Cossacks in their fight against Bolshevism, also to the Georgians and other peoples in the Caucasus, and under their protection a long series of more or less independent peoples sprang up along the north shore of the Black Sea. Farther to the east began that movement among the old Russian officers that was later to be led by General Denikin. This rallying of anti-Bolshevik Russians with the object of re-establishing a government for the entire country received the support of the Western Allies, who still had not adopted any concrete policy. They hampered the efforts of the anti-Bolshevik Russians by p54 banning all tsarist formulas, yet they would not support the democratic movements of those peoples who were trying to free themselves from both Russian and Bolshevik domination.

By autumn the defeat of the Central Powers was approaching and with each week the morale of their forces fell as Bolshevism made greater and greater inroads into them. At the end of October the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed. Turkey went out of the war on October 29. The Kaiser abdicated on November 9 and fled to Holland; and on November 11 came the armistice on the Western front. World War I was over.

It was a foregone conclusion that Skoropadsky could not retain his position without German support, for although he had tried to revive the traditions of the old hetmanate, he had won no popular approval except among the extreme conservatives. The final defeat of the Germans doomed him utterly. Rioting and disorders burst out anew as the people tried to rid themselves of the German "guests."

At this moment Vynnychenko tried to rally the forces of the Rada by forming a Directory of the various Ukrainian Socialist parties. He included Simon Petlyura, who had been one of the members of the original nationalist groups. Petlyura felt that action was needed even more than words. He went to Bila Tserkva, where the Riflemen of the Sich were camped, and with them he marched on Kiev.

Then came another one of those tangles that marked Allied policy toward Ukraine and the other states. Although the Germans had been defeated, the Allies in their fear of Bolshevism ordered them not to turn over their weapons or territory to the Ukrainians of any group but to maintain control pending Allied assumption of authority. It was a foolish order, for the defeated German forces were themselves heavily permeated with Bolshevism and even those who were not infected thought only of returning home with little emphasis on the order of their going. The Germans simply melted away and before long they were only too glad to make an arrangement p55 with Petlyura to take over. This was settled on December 11 at Kasatin; and three days later, on December 14, Colonel Evhen Konovalets entered Kiev at the head of a Ukrainian detachment. The same day Skoropadsky laid down his power and slipped out of Kiev to Berlin. Petlyura arrived on December 19 and re-established the Ukrainian Republic.

It was then almost two years since the establishment of the Rada and a year since the declaration of independence. It was necessary to begin work again in a country that was even more disorganized and devastated than it had been before. The Bolsheviks had had the opportunity of strengthening their position in Moscow and Great Russia, where they were relatively unchallenged, while to the southeast the anti-Bolshevik Russians were forming the White army to fight against Bolshevism and cement the unity of the country. The Allies vacillated. The task of Petlyura, Vynnychenko and the Ukrainians was growing more difficult all the time.

The Author's Notes:

4 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p768. Czubatyj, op. cit., p33. This was in connection with the Russian Council of Soviets of the Donets and Kriviy Rih. D. Doroshenko, Istoriya Ukrainy, Uzhhorod, 1930‑2, Vol. I, pp222 ff.

5 This interpretation of the Conference of Brest-Litovsk is highly controversial. Russian and anti-German writers use it consistently to discredit the Ukrainian movement. Cf. Pares, op. cit., p97; John Wheeler-Bennett, The Forgotten Peace, Brest Litovsk, March, 1918 (New York, 1938), etc. Russia-U. S. S. R., pp65‑6. On the other hand Ukrainian historians as Hrushevsky, op. cit., pp536 ff. and D. Doroshenko, Istoriya Ukrainy (Uzhhorod, 1930‑31), p202 emphasize that the Rada had no other course open to it.

7 Francis Joseph had died November 11, 1916, and the young emperor Charles was still floundering in his policies.

p43 IV Ukraine, the Bolsheviks and the Germans

The Author's Notes:

p43 IV

Ukraine, the Bolsheviks and the Germans