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previous: Chapter 5 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 7

 p62  VI

The Decline of the Ukrainian National Republic

With the return of Petlyura and the directory to Kiev and the union of the two parts of Ukraine, there was again a momentary chance for the success­ful liberation of the country. The situation was not as favorable, however, as it had been a year earlier.

The signing of the armistice between the Western Powers and Germany had completely changed the situation and still more the temper of the times. From the very outbreak of hostilities, the Western Powers had always looked upon the Kaiser and the German general staff as the chief enemies. After the Kaiser had abdicated and the German army had been reduced to impotence, the object of the war seemed to be achieved. Austria-Hungary had disintegrated. Turkey had yielded. The old stories about an alliance between Germany and the Bolsheviks had lost all their point. The Allies were confident that Lenin and his associates could not maintain their power and were no longer inclined to take an active part in the various conflicts raging in the east of Europe.

More than that, during the war they had worked with and recognized certain of the new governments of Eastern Europe through their national committees in Paris, London and Washington and on the whole they made little effort to ascertain  p63 whether these bodies and the governments into which they turned were representative of the wishes of the people. They made no effort to maintain order in the new countries or to provide for a peaceful arrangement of boundaries by sending even token forces to the main centers to keep up transportation and similar services. They relied entirely upon the innate democracy of the new governments and seemed to believe that the boundaries would settle themselves automatically.

In their relations with the peoples of the former Russian empire, the Allied policy was even more irresolute. On the one hand, to oppose Bolshevism, they encouraged the German occupying forces to hold their positions.​1 As in Ukraine, the result was disastrous. Elsewhere it was little better, for the German armies melted away or were transformed into predatory bands under more or less able adventurers. These became a nuisance to the Allies as well as to the native peoples.

The opening of the Dardanelles made it possible to move supplies by sea into the long-closed ports of Ukraine, the Don Cossacks, Georgia and the other entities that were in open revolt. But the Allies continued to feel as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that these uprisings were primarily the work of German agents and they declined to cooperate actively with the struggling regimes. They continued to believe that the future of Russia should be decided at some sort of general meeting after Bolshevism had been overcome, and this led them to give some support to the various Russian White armies now trying to cut their way to the north and Moscow from the Caucasus and Siberia. At the same time they were afraid that these forces would prove to be reactionary or tsaristic and they opposed so many of their actions that they nullified any success which these might win.​2

There was thus created a real vacuum. On December 12, 1918, just as Petlyura was entering Kiev, the French landed a force of French and Greeks at Odessa and tried to set up an anti-Communist regime under command the command of a White Russian  p64 officer whom they appointed. The French soldiers, now that peace had come, had no will to serve and they soon became infected with Bolshevism. Disorders broke out among them and by early spring they had withdrawn, after turning over all supplies in the seaport town to a Bolshevik band of less than two thousand men.​3

Such episodes gave strength to the French desire to erect a strong Poland as a bulwark against both Bolshevism and Germany. The Ukrainian leaders now saw themselves forced to fight in the west against a Polish army which was receiving reinforcements and supplies from the Western Powers and of course the Poles were never weary of arguing that the Ukrainian movement was only a product of Hapsburg and Bolshevik machinations, exactly as the Russians swore it was of German derivation.

During the winter of 1918‑19, the pressure of the Poles on the Western Ukrainian armies never slackened. The Poles were supposed to be fighting the Bolsheviks but in reality and on various pretexts, they turned against the Western Ukrainian armies and drove them steadily eastward, preferring to risk national extinction and the ill will of the victorious Allies than make any concessions to the Ukrainians.

The delegates to the Peace Conference and the leaders of the victorious Allies, Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, tried to check the warfare between the Poles and Ukrainians. Dmowski as the Polish representative in Paris played upon the Allied fear of a war of revenge by the Central Powers and charged that the Western Ukrainian Army was a hostile force because it had German or Austrian officers. In vain the Ukrainians offered to replace any such officers with persons nominated by the Allies. To every appeal the Poles made the answer that Galicia was an inalienable part of the Polish territory. Even at the very moment of receiving the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the Polish delegates in May and June refused to sign if any provision was made to recognize the Ukrainian population of Eastern Galicia.​4

 p65  This put an end to many proposals which had been drifting around as to the future of the province. Few of these had been truly realistic. Proposals had been submitted to set up an Eastern Galician state and every one recognized the folly of this. It was obvious that it would be dangerous to annex the territory to the Soviets and thus bring them to the Carpathian Mountains and make them a neighbor of Hungary which was just throwing off a Bolshevik experiment. It seemed the most practical move to make Eastern Galicia at least autonomous under Polish sovereignty; but this the Poles refused to admit.

The Allies, faced with the prospect of restraining Poland by force of arms and thereby weakening her stand against Bolshevism, finally yielded. On June 25 the Supreme Allied Council notified Poland that to check the Bolshevik bands, her army could advance to the river Zbruch, but that this did not affect the future political status of Eastern Galicia. This was a transparent fraud but it was enough for the Poles. Their new armies under General Haller rapidly pushed forward and by July, 1919, they had conquered the entire province.​5 Then some seventy-five thousand men of the West Ukrainian army retreated to join Petlyura at Kamyanets-Podolsky.

Those events in West Ukraine merely added to the difficulties of the directory in Kiev. Scarcely had the act of union between the two republics been proclaimed, when new troubles arose. The old differences between Petlyura and Vynnychenko were sharply accented. Vynnychenko as a leftist theorist was attacked, even by the Allies, as a Bolshevik. Petlyura, as a man of action, was assailed as a reactionary. A new attack by the Bolsheviks ended in Vynnychenko's resignation and Petlyura's accession to power as chief ataman of the army and chief of the cabinet.​6

On February 4 Petlyura, with his government and army, was forced to evacuate Kiev under Bolshevik pressure. He wandered toward the northwest until he reached the city of Kamyanets-Podolsky, where he was joined in July by the  p66 remains of the Western Ukrainian army. Under the conditions, it was futile to talk of plans for detailed legislation or even a unified military policy. All over Ukraine the way was open for ambitious leaders to raise their own private armies and operate in the name of the Ukrainian National Republic, the Bolsheviks or themselves.

The exactions of these men brought the Ukrainian forces into disrepute, for they often changed sides with amazing frequency. Thus Hryhoryev, the Bolshevik commander who took over Odessa from the French, had formerly been in the Ukrainian army and only a short time afterwards had assumed an independent position. The country was ravaged in a way that was strongly reminiscent of the ruin in the seventeenth century, when the various Kozak leaders were fighting for individual supremacy and seemed oblivious of the welfare of the state as a whole.

Even so, order began again to come out of chaos. The united Eastern and Western Ukrainian armies had so far recovered from the catastrophes of the spring that they were able to re-enter Kiev and re-establish their government. They decisively defeated the Bolsheviks, who were now posing as the army of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with its capital at Kharkov, the product of a new Soviet declaration of May 5, 1919. Whatever the Allies might think, the Ukrainian movement had become so widespread that even the Bolsheviks in Moscow tried to profit by it by recognizing the independence of their own Soviet republic and preaching an independent Ukrainian Communism.

Once more and almost immediately fortune turned against the new state. This time the threat came not from the Bolsheviks but from the White Russian armies under General Denikin which with Allied blessing were pushing across Ukraine from the southeast. Denikin was of course anti-Bolshevik but he was dedicated to the idea of Russian unity. Everywhere he went, he declined to compromise with any non-Russian anti-Bolshevist force and as he advanced in Ukraine, he expended  p67 all his energies in trying to bring back the situation as it existed before the Revolution of 1917. Ukraine was to become again Little Russia. The Ukrainian language and Ukrainian newspapers were suppressed. Ukrainian officers and soldiers were punished as severely for their disloyalty to Russia as were the Bolsheviks. The large estates were returned to the former owners. The old Russian laws were reintroduced. The only concession made was the utterly meaningless statement that when Bolshevism was overthrown, there would be a Constituent Assembly which would then consider what changes needed to be made in the old Russian regime. It was the exact policy that had led the Provisional Government of 1917 to its doom at the hands of Lenin.

The White Russians, with their better-trained officers and the supplies furnished by the Allies, were able to win victory after victory. But these victories accomplished little or nothing. Behind their lines a continuous series of local revolts burst out among outraged populations which saw all their scanty gains of the last years completely nullified. Even after Denikin had taken Kiev, he was unable to hold it and before long the forces of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic reappeared in its streets and resumed their career of murder and devastation.​7

An epidemic of typhus broke out in the Ukrainian army which decimated its ranks and wrought havoc among the civilians. It seemed to be the last straw, yet the struggle for independence did not end.

The epidemic, the shortage of supplies and the military defeats in both east and west opened a new period of friction between the two armies. Hemmed in between the Poles, the White Russians and the Bolsheviks, the Western Ukrainians saw their worst enemy in the Poles. Unwilling to end this struggle, Dr.  Petrushevych and his followers crossed into Romania and from there the émigré Western Ukrainian government went on to Vienna and continued its work.

The Eastern Ukrainians under Petlyura took advantage of  p68 the new opportunities offered them and gradually retreated into Polish territory to prepare for a new onslaught against the Bolsheviks. These were offered by the policies of Marshal Pilsudski.

Pilsudski, the outstanding Polish military leader of the day, had been born near Wilno and differed in one respect from his fellow Poles. As a product of the old Polish-dominated Lithuania and a bitter enemy of Russia, Red or White, he conceived the idea not of forming a unified Polish state but of preparing around it a series of allies who as satellites would round out Polish influence and restore the country to its seventeenth‑century position.

Petlyura, a man of eastern Ukraine, could not feel that deep personal antagonism to the Poles that was characteristic of the Western Ukrainians. Perhaps he sympathized with some of the broader aspects of Pilsudski's ideas. Perhaps he was merely impelled by the extreme straits to which the Ukrainian cause was reduced at the moment. At all events a rapprochement took place between Pilsudski and Petlyura and this involved a break with the Western Ukrainians.

On April 24, 1920, the Ukrainian National Republic, with Petlyura at its head, made a formal military alliance with the government of Poland. Under this the Ukrainians of the east omitted all references to Eastern Galicia. In return it secured Polish recognition, the first which it had received since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the only formal recognition from one of the powers associated with the Allies.

Immediately after this the Polish and Ukrainian armies commenced to advance. On May 7 the first units entered Kiev and two days later they established a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. Many of the Ukrainian factions were angered at the appearance of the Poles and Petlyura was hotly denounced for abandoning Western Ukraine. The population in and around Kiev did not rally as expected.​8

On May 14 the Soviets cut behind the Polish lines and severed their communications. The Polish army, still bound  p69 to the tactics of the World War, was helpless against the unexpected attack and once again the Ukrainians saw their allies retire and had to leave with them. This was the last time that the troops of the Ukrainian National Republic penetrated their capital.​9a

The campaign of 1920 was one of rapid movement. In quick succession the Soviets pierced the Polish positions wherever they were established and by the early part of August they were in the neighborhood of Warsaw. Poland as well as Ukraine seemed doomed. The Allies again and again tried to bring about a peace. The Poles refused to listen to any propositions as to the future of Eastern Galicia or any other of the Ukrainian or Byelorussian lands. Yet despite this the French sent General Weygand to defend Warsaw. At the crucial moment Pilsudski, by a brilliant attack, placed his forces behind the Soviet lines and completely annihilated the Red army. It was then the turn of the Poles to advance and they reoccupied almost the same positions that they had had at the time of the alliance with Ukraine.

During the battle of Warsaw the southern Red armies with whom Joseph Stalin was acting as a leader and the cavalry forces of Budenny moved toward Lviv and tried to cut their way to the Carpathians to reach Hungary. The Ukrainian divisions played an important part in checking this movement and distinguished themselves in many battles in Eastern Galicia where they joined with the Poles in clearing the province of the last Red soldiers, who were forced again to the east.

Peace negotiations were opened at Riga, and on November 12 a treaty of peace was signed between Poland and the Russian Soviet Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. No mention was made of the Ukrainian National Republic.​10 Despite the services of its troops to Poland during the war, it was as completely forgotten as if it had never existed. The Poles made no allusion to the alliance which they had signed only a few months before.​9b

This doomed the republic. The Ukrainian troops under  p70 Petlyura continued to fight on but without hope of success. Deprived of their base in Poland, they had to face without supplies the entire force of the reorganized Red army. Peace was slowly coming to Eastern Europe. The White Russian movement had ended, except for the continuing resistance of Baron Wrangel; but this was not serious and on November 16 the White army was evacuated by sea from the Crimea. The Ukrainian forces lasted a few days longer; after a defeat at Bazar on November 21, they too were forced to give up and seek refuge in Poland.

Thus ended the military phase of the Ukrainian National Republic. It was a heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, a struggle of men with ideals but without supplies, without bases, without any of the necessities of modern warfare. It marked the end of one phase of the Ukrainian struggle for liberty. Not since the days of Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the seventeenth century had the initial moment been so favorable. With the Russian empire and Austria-Hungary in dissolution and Poland not yet reborn, Ukraine had a golden opportunity to become master of her own destiny. The movement failed. The prejudices of the past were too strong. The Allies who had it in their power to recognize the new state and to carry out their ideals of a free, democratic Europe were still under the spell of the old Russian and the new Polish propaganda and they allowed Ukraine to be overwhelmed.

Yet in estimating the significance of the movement, we must not forget that the Russian Communists, in order to maintain the grasp of the old empire over the wealth of Ukraine, found it necessary to create a Ukrainian puppet state, which could sign treaties and arrange its own affairs, albeit under the dominating control of the party in Moscow.

The fate of Ukraine was shared almost immediately by the smaller states that had likewise struck for national independence. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and many other groups in Europe and Asia had lashed out against the Russian tyranny. One and all had failed. Only Finland and the three Baltic states of  p71 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with their access to the sea survived the debacle.

The technique that was used against one was used against all. Ukraine was the model and the pattern by which the Russian Communists hoped to extend their control throughout the world. The system used in Ukraine was improved and standardized but it was never fundamentally changed. It called for the arousing of discontent, the encouraging of internal discord and confusion, the fomenting of disorder, the playing upon false idealism, and then the launching of an ostensibly independent Communist government which would call upon the Red army for support and assistance. There would be an immediate military response, and then would come massacres, the confiscation of property and the execution or deportation of the old leaders, while the country remained nominally free but in the chains of its masters.

For three years and more the Ukrainians had worked for their independence. For two years and a half they had fought for it, while the world had looked on with indifference. Poland, Romania and Czecho­slovakia had hoped to profit and so they did for a while but the same tactics were later to be applied to them. At the time it seemed a mere episode on the Continent but in 1950, in retrospect, the fall of the Ukrainian National Republic was but the first step in the creation of the modern Frankenstein that is threatening by the same policies to cause World War III and has forced an open struggle with the United Nations in Korea.

The Author's Notes:

1 For similar cases in the Baltic area, see E. W. Polson Newman, Britain and the Baltic (London, 1930), pp80 ff., in the cases of Von der Goltz and the still more complicated case of Bermondt-Avalov.

2 All histories of the White Armies point this out.

3 Hrushevsky, op. cit., p555; W. H. Chamberlin, The Ukraine, A Submerged Nation (New York, 1944), p48.

4 Buell, op. cit., pp268 ff.

5 Buell, op. cit., p270.

6 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p812.

7 Chamberlin, op. cit., p49.

8 Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, pp825 ff.; Przybylski, op. cit., pp130 ff.

9a 9b Velyka Istoriya Ukrainy, p827.

10 See extracts from the treaty printed in Stanislaw Skrzypek, The Problem of Eastern Galicia (London, 1948), pp72 ff.

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