Reconsidering the Ukrainian Revolution 1917–1921: The Dialectics of National Liberation and Social Emancipation

Abstract

On its ninetieth anniversary the Ukrainian Revolution remains a matter of both historical and contemporary political controversy. This article challenges the predominant national and Soviet historical paradigms, including those of the left which have restricted its views of the revolution through the prism of Petrograd. The article analyses the Ukrainian Revolution as a distinctive process and re-asserts the vernacular socialist movement as posing a viable alternative which was universal in its objectives of social emancipation and national liberation. The experience of the “rebirth of Ukraine” during those tumultuous years brings into question previously accepted explanations of the fate not only of the Russian Revolution but the entire European Revolution.

Notes

¹ Vynnychenko Rozlad i pohodzhennia (cited in Rudnytsky 419).

² Micro histories of the Ukrainian socialist parties are included in: Rudzienski; Mace; Reshetar; Borys. There is no specific history of the USDRP, though in addition to the above two important unpublished studies which address this party are: Boshyk; Bojcun “Working Class”.

³ An example of this is Reshetar who writes that the USDRP saw Marxism as a merely a “means by which national independence could be achieved” (51).

⁴ It is important to note that influence of the social historians was not as extensive as may be thought. One study of research on Russian history in the US revealed 20–25% of PhD work within this approach (Rowney).

⁵ Richard Pipes, the most notable of the anti-revisionists, in his works The Russian Revolution and Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, epitomizes the resurrection of the Western orthodoxy. He asserts that the revolution “was the result not of insufferable conditions but of irreconcilable attitudes […] attitudes rather than institutions or ‘objective’ economic and social realities determine the course of politics.” (Cited in Acton et al. 13.)

⁶ For example, of eighty-six articles in Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal in the eight years from independence, only seven on the revolution touched on peasants or workers.

⁷ It is necessary to recognize the deep-rooted antagonism of the Russian social democracy towards Ukrainian socialism. This can be traced to the very inception of both movements in the nineteenth century. Indeed it brought Engels into conflict with the “father of Russian Marxism”, Plekhanov, when he failed to support Ukrainian national rights. This revealing conflict arose in 1890 over Engels's essay, “The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsardom”. Plekhanov replied criticizing Engels for his consideration of Ukrainians as a nation. Engels had come to believe that one positive outcome of the overthrow of Tsarism would be that “Little Russia [Ukraine] will be able to choose its political connections freely”. The advice of Engels made little impact for the following year Plekhanov published The Blind Alley of Ukrainian Socialism in Russia. It depicted the Russian conquest of Ukrainian territories as an economic necessity, the Ukrainian movement was damned as utopian with no historical basis: “The abolition of serfdom, universal conscription, the development of commerce and industry, […] the influence of urban life and civilization—these are the factors that have definitively merged the rural population of Ukraine, even linguistically, […] into a sphere of influences shared with Russia” (cited in Rosdolsky 189). On the question of the “non-historic peoples” and Ukraine, see also Levynsky L’internatonale.

⁸ Volobuyev was an economist and government official heading a branch of the commissariat of education. His articles “On the Problem of the Ukrainian Economy” were published in Bilshovyk Ukrainy 30 January and 16 February 1928. Though an ethnic Russian he was a spokesman for the Ukrainian communists and defender of Ukraine's right to control its economy. Volobuyev showed how central control and continued Russian chauvinism perpetuated the exploitation of Ukraine within the USSR. He was attacked by the Stalinist authorities and killed in the 1930s (Volobuyev).

⁹ On this aspect of the division of labour see: Richtysky; Bojcun “Approaches”; Friedgut 208–144.

¹⁰ This was reflected in the higher level of rejection of peasant conscripts to the Russian Army Weinstein (26–28).

¹¹ Porsh complained that: “At first the Central Rada was a bloc of parties united around the slogan of autonomy and federation. When our party entered the Rada, it replaced its class orientation with a national one. Some of our comrades said quite plainly that until we achieve the goal of unity there can be no class struggle in the Central Rada. […] As far as I am concerned, Ukrainian social democrats had no right compromising on class interests in deference to general, national ones” (Robitnycha Hazeta 4 Oct. 1917). According to Vynnychenko this was not simply due to their sociology, or opportunism but that they acted as “democrats, republicans and national revolutionists rather than socialists” (Vidrodzhennia Natsii II 89–90).

¹² Raya Dunayevskaya identified a similar problem in the anti-colonial revolutions after 1945: “The greatest obstacle to the further development of these national liberation movements comes from the intellectual bureaucracy which has emerged to ‘lead’ them. In the same manner the greatest obstacle in the way of the working class overcoming capitalism comes from the Labor bureaucracy that leads it” (15).

¹³ This was the view expressed by the “Provisional Organizing Committee” in 1918, which consisted of most of the leaders of 1917 of the centre and right tendencies of the UPSR.

¹⁴ These problems of the revolution were highlighted in the writings of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks Serhii Mazlakh and Vasyl Shakhray (Do khvyli; English translation, The Current Situation). This became a key text of the pro-autonomy/independence currents of Ukrainian communism during the revolutionary years.

¹⁵ The USDRP policy was concurrent with the prevailing views of the Second International on the agrarian question. Favouring highly developed large farms, they considered it necessary to keep them from division, destruction and partition. This, however, gave an appearance, sometimes realized, of pushing against the tide of the agrarian revolution.

¹⁶ The Central Rada's indecision on the land question undoubtedly reflected the division within the Ukrainian peasantry itself. As early as the spring of 1917 the richer strata were making common cause with the landlords, fearing that the revolution of the poor and middle peasantry would not leave their holdings untouched. The Rada tried to appeal to both camps, relying increasingly on the Free Cossacks, the militia of the wealthier peasantry, while making declarations for the benefit of the poor and middle peasantry.

¹⁷ The Third Congress of the UPSR stated that: “the national side of the revolution begins to threaten the further successful development of the socio-economic class struggle”, warning the Central Rada could lose the support of the peasants and workers in Ukraine which will also threaten the national gains of the revolution (Khystyuk). The Fourth Congress of the USDRP declared that the: “The present Russian revolution, bringing in its wake a transformation in socio-economic relations unheard of in the history of all previous revolutions, finding a broad echo in the great worker masses of Western Europe, awakening in them an impulse to quit the path of capitalism, to make a social revolution and, at the same time, to stop the imperialist war, which may bring about an uprising of the proletariat in Western Europe—this revolution is a prologue to and beginning of the universal socialist revolution” (Robitnycha Hazeta 7 Oct.1917).

¹⁸ This support for re-election was particularly strong in towns in the northern gubernyas and in Kyiv, Kremenchuk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Kherson, Katerynsoslav, Odessa and Mykolaiv soviets.

¹⁹ The Kyiv Bolshevik Yevgenia Bosh records that the Third Universal was welcomed by “a significant number of soviets in Ukraine” (Bojcun Working Class 306). Similarly Shakhray, a Poltava Bolshevik, records the “Proclamation of the Ukrainian Republic was met with huge demonstrations all over Ukraine. A significant part of the Soviets also welcomed it” (Skorovstanskii 74).

²⁰ Robitnycha Hazeta 27 Oct. 1917.

²¹ In effect, this new body formed what the majority of workers, peasants and soldiers had been striving for, a socialist coalition based upon the popular revolutionary organizations. It was the refusal of the Menshevik and Russian SR. leadership to meet this demand, which had persuaded the majority of Bolsheviks in organizing the overthrow of the discredited bourgeois-socialist coalition Provisional Government. The Mensheviks and right-SRs, along with the Bund, sabotaged the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution in Kyiv. They pushed a motion through the Mala Rada, condemning the Bolshevik/Left SR. seizure of power in Petrograd. Ukrainian socialist parties had gone along with this, not out of support for the ousted Provisional Government, but because the Menshevik and Bund delegates on the Central Rada, happened to be Russian and Jewish minority representatives, whom the Ukrainians were anxious to keep on board. In practice, the Central Rada was prepared to acknowledge the Soviet government in Russia, but not its designs upon Ukraine.

²² In their campaign for the re-election of the Rada through a congress of soviets, the Bolsheviks did not seek unity with like-minded Ukrainian socialists, nor secure support from the soviets which had already backed such a congress. Instead it was called by the RSDRP Kyiv Committee (see Prymak).

²³ An exception to this was the Poltava Committee of the RSDRP (Bolsheviks) who were engaged in negotiations with the USDRP and sought a revolutionary socialist regroupment in Ukraine.

²⁴ An appeal to the Ukrainians on 8 December 1917 by the leading organs of soviet power in Russia, including the Central Executive Committee, demanded the “immediate re-election of the Rada” with the proviso: “Let the Ukrainians predominate in these soviets.” However when the Council of Peoples Commissars declared a war on the Central Rada behind the back of the CEC it did not receive unanimous or uncritical endorsement for its action (Keep).

²⁵ The USDRP pre-meeting before the Congress had decided in favour of seeking agreement with the Bolsheviks. Porsh, the UNR Secretary of Labour, was actively engaged in negotiations with the Bolsheviks.

²⁶ Those delegates disaffected with the events in Kyiv walked out and made their way to the rival Congress of Soviets of the Donbas, Kryvyi Rih area being held in Kharkiv on 9 December 1917. Subsequent Soviet historiography would recognize this event as the First All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets. Though mainly consisting of RSDRP(b) and Russian Left-SRs; it also included UPSR and USDRP delegates. A split took place in the USDRP, a tendency known as the USDRP(Left), headed by Medvedev and Neronovych (see Butsenko 121–22).

²⁷ It would be an error to view the Kharkiv government as solely founded in order to give the Russian war against the UNR the appearance of an internal conflict. According to Shakhray: “Not one responsible member of the party ventured to protest against the promulgation and creation of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. On the contrary, in complete agreement with the programmatic demand of the right of nations to self-determination, they openly or at least tacitly stood on its ground. The will of the Ukrainian nation emerged, the Ukrainian people separated into a Republic, the federative union with other parts of Russia. Well and good! We in this Republic will wage a war not against the Ukrainian Peoples Republic, not in order to strangle it. No! This will be a struggle for power within the Ukrainian Peoples Republic—this will be a class struggle” (Skorovstanskii 110–11).

²⁸ Holubnychy writes: “This reminds one of Lypynsky's comments that the Ukrainian socialist parties ‘gave away’ the land ‘in order to be politically popular’. Unfortunately, they did not give away enough and therefore were not sufficiently popular. And this is why they failed, while Lenin succeeded” (Holubnychy 46–47).

²⁹ Vynnychenko wrote later: “We exerted valiant efforts in order to stop that ‘invasion’, as we used to call it, to win over our soldier masses, which were inert towards us, to our side. But they displayed no wish to fight against the Bolsheviks even in Kyiv, fraternizing with them and taking their part. The Ukrainian Government could not rely on any of the units quartered in Kyiv; it had no reliable unit even for its own protection” (Vidrodzhennia Natsii II 216–17).

³⁰ There was a retreat from the Kharkviv Congress of Soviets’ decisions with an array of splinter Soviet republics. Real power was revealed not to be the soviet government but the military forces of Soviet Russia. Shakhray, a minister, complained: “What kind of Ukrainian government is this when its members do not know and do not want to know the Ukrainian language? They have no influence in Ukrainian society. No-one has even heard their names before. What kind of ‘Ukrainian Minister of the Army’ am I when all of the Ukrainised divisions in Kharkiv will not obey me and defend Soviet power and I am compelled to disarm them? The only military support we have in our struggle against the Central Rada is the army Antonov brought into Ukraine from Russia, an army moreover that looks at everything Ukrainian as hostile and counterrevolutionary” (cited in Bojcun Working Class 327).

³¹ On 9 March 1918 Colonel von Stolzenberg told his High Command: “It is very doubtful whether this government, composed as it is exclusively of left opportunists, will be able to establish a firm authority” (Fedyshyn 96).

³² Amongst others this is the assessment of George Luckyj in his foreword to Borotbism in the 1954, New York edition.

³³ Vynnychenko writes the Directory “did not even give the population a chance to catch its breath and see at least some difference between itself and the Hetmanshchyna” (Vidrodzhennnia Natsii III 145).

³⁴ A soviet bloc was formed within the UNR between Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian socialists consisting of the USDRP (Independentists), UPSR left, the Socialist Revolutionary Internationalists, the Bund, the United Jewish Socialist Party and the RSDRP(Menshevik) Internationalists. The bloc resolved to defend the worker-peasant revolution, to mollify the national struggle and to correct the political errors of the Bolsheviks in Ukraine.

³⁵ At the time of elections to the Labour Congress, part of the Left Bank had already been taken by Soviet troops, and in part of it the peasants and workers were at war with the Directory's army. Thus elections could not be held there. On the Right bank there was a wave of pogroms. In the south the French army and the Russian Volunteer Army had captured Odessa and were advancing.

³⁶ Mazepa Ukraina 28; Adams 120–23. Even the Sich Rifleman, considered the staunchest of the Ukrainian regiments, declared their support for the soviet platform in March.

³⁷ Pyatakov's most well-known work on the national question is The Proletariat and the “Right of Nations of Self-determination” in the Era of Finance Capital, written under the name of “P. Kyivsky” and published in 1916.

³⁸ In 1915 a tendency formed within the RSDRP opposed to Lenin on the national question, consisting of Pyatakov and Yevgenia Bosh, both leading Bolsheviks from Ukraine, along with Nikolai Bukharin, which developed into a left communist current during the revolution (Lenin's Struggle 365).

³⁹ Key texts are: Rakovsky Selected Writings; Broué. Neither of them actually engage critically with the policy of Rakovsky in Ukraine in 1919.

⁴⁰ Much has been written of this trend in Germany citing it as a libertarian alternative to Leninism, yet the record of this trend in Ukraine is noticeably neglected.

⁴¹ According to Balabanoff, first Secretary of the Communist International and a friend of Rakovsky's sent to assist him in Kyiv, “the Bolsheviks had set up an independent republic in the Ukraine. In actuality that section of it in which Soviet rule was established was completely dominated by the Moscow regime” (Balabanoff 234).

⁴² The Bolshevik leader Skrypnyk later recorded 200 decrees “forbidding the use of the Ukrainian language” under Rakovsky's rule by various bureaucrats (Skrypnyk 14).

⁴³ Under the protectorate of the “First Soviet Kyiv Division” commanded by Danylo Zeleny, the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee established its headquarters in the town of Skvyra in Kyiv gubernya. The revkom issued a call to arms “against the occupation government of Rakovsky”, and the “traitorous Directory, which is negotiating with the French and other imperialists”. They gave an assurance that an All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers and Peasants Councils, the sovereign body of the new Ukrainian Soviet Republic, would be convened. A good outline of the events can be found in a letter from Yu Mazurneko to Rakovsky (Mazurneko).

⁴⁴ With the exception of memoirs such as Vynnychenko and Halahan, and key accounts of the Ukrainian Revolution this episode remains absent from the work of historians. Tokes for example states: “Bela Kun was lacking in detailed information on the Ukrainian situation” (201).

⁴⁵ Cable sent 8 July 1919 (Tokes 202).

⁴⁶ On the attitude of the Volunteer Army towards the Ukrainian question, see Procyk.

⁴⁷ A Volunteer army spy reported on the mood in threatened Petrograd: “The worker elements, at least a large section of them, are still Bolshevik inclined. Like some other democratic elements, they see the regime although bad as their own. […] Psychologically, they identify the present with equality and Soviet power and the Whites with the old regime and its scorn of the masses” (Figes 675).

⁴⁸ The central organ of the USDRP reported: “the growth of uncertainty about the difference between our government, our system of rule and that of Denikin” (Robitnycha Hazeta 5 Oct. 1919).

⁴⁹ The West Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed on 19 October 1918. Evhen Petrushevych, the chairman, a former member of the Austro-Hungarian parliament, became the Republic's dictator. Shortly after the republic proclaimed independence Poland attacked. Most of the army, consisting of about 50,000 soldiers, crossed into the territory of the Ukrainian People's Republic.

⁵⁰ The Entente was uncompromising with regard to Ukrainian sovereignty. In General Order No. 28. General d’Anselm commander of the Allied forces of Southern Russia declared: “France and the allies have not forgotten the efforts made by Russia at the beginning of the war and they have now come to Russia to give all worthy elements and patriots the possibility of restoring order in the country, an order long since destroyed by the terrors of the civil war.”

⁵¹ This stands in stark contrast to the Volunteer Army with whom Skoropadsky and Petlyura sought an alliance, despite its refusal to recognize Ukraine other than as “South Russia”.

⁵² In addition to the Jewish communist organizations (Gurevitz).

⁵³ His thesis, officially condemned since 1927, was that the Soviet regime and Communist Party in Ukraine had two distinct ancestral roots, one extending from the Russian Revolutionary movement and another from the Ukrainian socialist movement (Ravich-Cherkasski 148).

⁵⁴ Nova Doba 14 Aug. 1920.

⁵⁵ In a letter to the Politburo on 2 November 1920, Trotsky reported that: “Soviet power in Ukraine has held its ground up to now (and it has not held it well) chiefly by the authority of Moscow, by the Great Russian Communists and by the Russian Red Army” (cited in Borys 295).

⁵⁶ The approach was unique; they were the only communist party that referred to theory of permanent revolution during the entire course of the Russian Revolution.

⁵⁷ This is how Ievhen Hirchak, a comrade of Skrypnyk, described Ukrainization (Dmytryshyn 71).

⁵⁸ This speech was not published in the Collected Works of Lenin but was reported in the press at the time (see Serbyn).

⁵⁹ “Marx” (389).