Ukrainization under the Directory

The Directory was formed 90 years ago, in November 1918. On the night of November 14, representatives of all political forces that were members of the National Union attended a clandestine meeting in the building of the Ministry of Roads. The newly formed Directory proclaimed and largely aimed its work at the restoration and development of what was achieved at the first stage of the national liberation struggle between March 1917 and April 1918, the Ukrainization period under the Central Rada’s rule.

Historical documents point to the fact that Ukrainization was launched in 1917 by the Ukrainian Central Rada, which introduced the very concept of Ukrainization, put it in circulation, and started its core processes. In its April 22, 1917 resolution the Central Rada proclaimed that it would base its activities on “the principle of Ukrainization of all spheres in Ukraine.”

In his analysis of the events of those years, Volodymyr Vynny­chenko confirmed that the demand contained in the decisions and resolutions of all societies and organizations was unanimous: “Ukrainization of all spheres of life.” In other words, it was about Ukrainization as an all-encompassing process of bringing the national, statehood-building, political, socioeconomic, and spiritual aspects of life in conformance with the interests and demands of the Ukrainian people. The Central Rada Ukrainization, understood in this way, its “principle” and “program.” It used this term to designate the essence and form of Ukrainians’ wide-ranging progress and to determine the direction and meaning of processes in individual spheres of public life and in the activities of specific bodies and centers.

The Ukrainization policy lent systemic character to various forms of national self-organization and civil and state entities, above all the Central Rada, the Directory, the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), and the course of the entire national liberation struggle in 1917-21. Ukrainization was aimed at putting the Ukrainian people back in a worthy place among other nations and fostering its free and all-around development, the revival and expansion of national statehood, defense of the unity of Ukrainian lands, democratizing the entire social life, cultural development, resolving acute socioeconomic problems in the interests of both the indigenous ethnos and Ukraine’s entire population. The process of Ukrainization had to be combined with respect for a wide range of national minority rights.

The emergence and the mainstream activity of the Directory were the objective manifestation of renewed Ukrainization, which was launched in March 1917. This body was created by Ukrainian political parties and organizations that did not accept the hetman’s coup, which was effected with the assistance of German and Austrian troops. Unlike the Central Rada and the UNR that were democratically formed by Ukrainian political forces, the hetman was brought to power on the initiative and through direct intervention of the Central Powers.

Under their treaty with the UNR, their troops could be in Ukraine only to help defend the country against external aggression. The Central Rada was resolutely against foreign intrusion into Ukraine’s domestic affairs. The hetman’s government was essentially set up by a foreign army after the UNR was disbanded and its government and sociopolitical bodies were eliminated either directly by the German troops or with their assistance. The hetman’s government relied on these troops in its domestic policy whose socioeconomic, political, and statehood components reflected, above all, the interests of wealthy non-Ukrainian strata and those of foreign countries. They were not accepted by the majority of the Ukrainian people and were enforced largely by force.

Nonetheless, the alien forces were unable to totally suppress the powerful impetus that Ukrainization gave to the national liberation struggle. They were forced, at least partially and often formally, to acknowledge certain achievements of the Central Rada and the UNR. In particular, the hetman’s supporters and their German-Austrian patrons were afraid of a complete denunciation of national statehood — it was preserved in a curtailed form and called hetman’s and Ukrainian statehood (until 1917 this was not on the agenda). Also, the hetman’s government used the currency (karbovanets) introduced by the Central Rada, the national emblems, and various Ukrainian terms (hetman, otaman, starosta, etc.). It proclaimed the revival of Cossackdom, continued the diplomatic process with other countries earlier initiated by the UNR, and so on.

However, the hetman’s government was controlled and exploited by Germany and Austria-Hungary to suit their own interests. Ukrainian democratic sociopolitical bodies were closed down or forced to go into the underground. The hetman’s armed forces were formed and operated under the supervision, or even on direct orders, of the occupants and were brimming with former tsarist officers who were dreaming about restoring the “one and indivisible” Russian empire. With their active participation many thousands of Ukrainians were subjected to corporal punishment and execution, especially in cases when peasant or worker uprisings were suppressed, lands, estates, and enterprises were returned to their former owners, or food products and other material resources were requisitioned for the benefit of the Central Powers.

For example, in Lubny and Zo­lotonosha counties in Poltava region the hetman’s and German punitive squads pacified peasants using artillery and machine guns and shooting prisoners. After shelling the village of Kanizh in Kherson region, the occupants shot 60 insurgents, hanged eight on the windmill, and killed the total of 117 people. In Nizhyn county they destroyed nearly 3,000 people.

Under pressure from national patriotic forces, in the circumstances of spreading peasant and worker uprisings, the hetman wanted to somehow ease the tension in society and took a series of measures, starting from the second half of 1918, to expand the network of Ukrainian education and cultural-artistic institutions. He even founded the Academy of Sciences.

However, at the same time it was proclaimed that ethnic origin is a person’s private affair. Therefore, the hetman’s government did not consider the defense of the Ukrainian people’s national and social interests, which had been disregarded for centuries and called for special care and protection, a high-priority aspect of its state policy. Ukrainization under the Central Rada and the UNR or proposals to continue it were mentioned, as a rule, in negative contexts. Vynnychenko justly called this approach “the hetman’s national counterrevolution.”

In these circumstances Ukrainian political forces joined their efforts in a struggle for the revival of the Ukrainian National Republic earlier proclaimed by the Central Rada and the continuation of its Ukrainization policy in all aspects of social, state, economic, cultural, and spiritual life. In May 1918 Ukrainian parties (Socialists-Independentists, Laborites, Demo­crats-Farmers, Socialists-Federalists, the United Council of Railroads, and the Supreme Council of the Post and Telegraph Union) formed the Ukrainian National State Union. In its first public document entitled “Memorial” the Union declared: “Good state order can be instituted only by a national democratic, professional Cabinet mainly composed of notable Ukrainian figures and, in general, of Ukraine-oriented people who have the full trust of the wide Ukrainian masses.”

Later the Union was significantly restructured — Demo­crats-Farmers left, while a number of organizations joined it: the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ party (USDRP), the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR, centralists), the All-Ukrainian Union of Zemstvos, the Peasant Association, the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Association, the Ukrainian Law Society, the Student Union, the Galicia-Bukovyna Council, the Ukrainian Crimean Council, the Black Sea Council, and the Chelm Committee.

In August 1918 the organization, now called the Ukrainian National Union (UNU), published its “Political Foundations,” declaring that it was “mustering the Ukrainian political-public willpower, representing it, and taking all the necessary measures to manifest and realize it both inside and outside Ukraine.” The UNU Supreme Council was headed by the founders and leaders of the Central Rada, co-initiators and active champions of its Ukrainization policy — first Andrii Nikovsky and then Vynnychenko.

In order to realize these tasks, in November 1918 the Union created the Directory, which included notable Ukrainian figures (Vynnychenko, Opanas Andriievsky, Andrii Makarenko, Symon Petliura, and Fedir Shvets) who were ex-members of the Central Rada, the General Secretariat, and other government or social-public bodies of the UNR and actively participated in Ukrainization. Supporters of Ukrainization also made up the “supreme revolutionary body” designated by the Directory in Kyiv on November 14 — the Ukrainian Military-Revolutionary Committee (UVRK) whose members were, at different times, M. Avdiienko, V. Chekhivsky, A. Pisotsky, Z. Vy­sots­ky, P. Halahan, Y. Zavhorodnii, M. Marchenko, A. Drahomyretsky, K. Prokopenko, H. Cherepenko, V. Martos, M. Porsh, V. Ma­zu­renko, and L. Mykhailiv. The very composition of these bodies clearly spoke of their national character as opposed to many structures set up by the hetman’s government.

Under this government, the first and subsequent compositions of the Council of Ministers had a number of Ukrainian-born members. However, because their party membership and convictions and through their actions they represented Russian Cadets and Octobrists or other anti-Ukrainian forces. According to Vynnychenko, “in the entire Cabinet of Ministers only one or two ministers knew Ukrainian... The hetman did not speak Ukrainian (this is proved also by the fact that Skoropadsky wrote his memoirs Reminiscences and the unpublished Diaries in Russian. — Author). His entire escort consisted of ... unruly Russian officers who cursed and derided the Ukrainian state and language and all things Ukrainian using purely Russian words. In ministries the top offices were ... filled with people who suited the new regime.”

This was acknowledged by Skoropadsky himself. For example, the heads of the hetman’s commissions on preparing the city and zemstvo elections were, respectively, I. Diakov, who headed the Kyiv City Duma prior to the revolution, and O. Holitsyn, a wealthy landlord and the head of the Industrial, Commercial, and Financial Association (Protofis), which was reactionary and anti-Ukrainian in its composition and activities. Skoropasky said that they “had nothing in common with Ukrainians, although both were born in our land.”

This description applied to most of his officials because Skoropadsky, in his own words, “did not see true statesmen among Ukrainians.” He even believed that “our Ukrainians will always be ‘Russian’ Ukrainians in contrast to ‘Galician’ Ukrainians.” On this approach, it was out of the question to think about protecting the interests of ethnic Ukrainians in the state ruled by officials who were alien to the indigenous population.

The hetman himself and the heads of his governments (F. Lyzohub and S. Herbel), many ministries, and local government bodies were from wealthy, largely Russified or non-Ukrainian strata-big landowners, entrepreneurs, merchants, pre-revolutionary tsarist officials, officers, and high-ranking lawyers. Above all, they cared for themselves and the narrow preferences of their respective clans, while neglecting the needs of peasants, workers, and working intelligentsia who constituted the absolute majority of both the Ukrainian people and national minorities.

The hetman rejected the democratic methods of governance that were introduced during the Ukrainization period and, in an autocratic way, concentrated in his hands the highest legislative, executive, and judicial power, which was contrary to the desire of most people. Ukrainian forces that opposed him created collegial bodies that were national in their composition and democratic by nature (the National Union, the Directory, the Military-Revolutionary Committee, and the Labor Congress) and strove to achieve the revival of Ukrainization in all spheres of life.

They appealed to the hetman, the German people, and the occupants’ military authority, while Vynnychenko and Petliura personally met Skoropadsky and tried to convince him and German officials to change the government structure, replace the officials in the highest bodies, and make the essence and the form of the hetman’s government’s activities conform to the needs of the national majority-Ukrainians.

There was no positive response, while the initiators of such reforms were imprisoned. Ukraine was governed by force and the occupants’ troops and the hetman’s units launched mass reprisals against dissenters, causing sporadic uprisings and the partisan movement. In these circumstances the only remaining option was to call to overthrow the hetman’s government. On November 15 he proclaimed a federation with the White Guard regimes in Southern Russia, thereby distancing himself from the national-patriotic forces even more.

The Directory tried to make use of the existing opportunities, especially those presented by a revolution in Germany, in order to minimize possible negative consequences of military confrontation. In its first proclamation it offered to Skoropadsky and his ministers to abandon the official posts “they had occupied through fraud and violence”: “In the name of peace and order in the Republic, we suggest that you do this immediately and without bloodshed. The organizations of Russian officers are to lay down arms and [their members are to] leave Ukraine in the directions of their choice.” At the same time, the Directory expresses its hope that the German military understood the strivings of oppressed Ukrainians. Unfortunately, this appeal was ignored by the hetman’s government, which forced the Directory to rally Ukrainians against it, depending on the circumstances.

On November 26 the Directory passed a resolution calling to firmly resist the opponents of the UNR revival, who would “in every way hinder the [Ukrainian] people in its efforts to govern itself... Authority in villages, towns, and cities belongs to people’s self-government bodies and the commissars of the people’s government of the Directory. The Directory’s commissars are ordered to ... arrest and send to the court martial everyone who will incite people to robbery, banditry, and destruction of people’s property-landlords’ estates and sugar refineries, etc. Everyone who hinders the people at this moment to create the people’s government of the Republic is a criminal.”

The UVRK emerged as the Directory’s center of struggle for power in Kyiv and immediately started rallying social forces and military units and organizing intelligence and communications. With the assistance of the revolutionary committees of Ukraine’s railroads and the Supreme Council of the Right-Bank Railroad Unions, their appeals and other documents issued by the Directory that called for an uprising were sent by telegraph, while the hetman’s regulations were blocked. Great attention was paid to agitation and explanation among German soldiers, resulting in their non-interference in the events that ensured. The Saxonian regiment even declared its support of the Ukrainian democratic forces in their struggle against the hetman’s government.

Jointly with the workers’ trade unions and the Democratic Center of Socialist Parties, the UVRK set up the Operations Center (M. Avdiienko, P. Halahan, and H. Horobets) to coordinate the anti-hetman uprising in the city that started on the night of November 23, when the revolutionary militant groups seized a number of districts (Podil, parts of Lukianivka, Kurenivka, Lybidska, and Starokyivska di­stricts). Over 800 agitators were sent to various di­stricts of the capital, and they convinced large numbers of city dwellers to support the uprising. When the Directory’s troops launched an attack on Kyiv, workers’ units and military groups, supported by Kyivites and on the order from the Operations Center, disarmed the hetman’s units on the night of Dec. 14, 1918 and seized the hetman’s chancellery, the military ministry, the General Staff, and the main parts of the city.

On December 14 the UVRK appointed the provisional Council of Commissars that was headed by Volodymyr Chekhivsky and operated until the Directory came to Kyiv. Notable Ukrainian figures were on this council: M. Halahan, V. Mazurenko, Dmytro Dontsov, O. Lototsky, B. Martos, and others. The next day special commissars were sent by the URVK to all the ministries and institutions for up to three weeks in order to ensure that they operated “in accordance with the needs of the moment and the instructions of the Directory.” With their assistance the Council of Commissars quickly took control of the technical apparatus of the ministries and ensured its proper functioning.

To be continued in the next Ukraine Incognita column