Some , ethnic Russians would be joining the already large Russian minority in Ukraine. A somewhat similar approach was used in the three newly annexed Baltic republics, especially Latvia and Estonia, both of which had had very few Russian inhabitants prior to the s. The Stalinist regime encouraged ethnic Russians to settle in those republics from the late s on, and this policy continued under Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. Proportionally, the transfer of Russians to the Baltic republics was greater than in Ukraine, but in absolute numbers the transfer of Crimea brought into Ukraine much larger numbers of Russians and a region closely identified with Russia, bolstering Soviet control.
In , when Khrushchev himself was still the Communist Party leader in Ukraine, he reportedly had suggested to Stalin that transferring Crimea to the UkrSSR would be a useful way of winning support from local Ukrainian elites. The legal system in the Soviet Union was mostly a fiction, but the transfer did occur in accordance with the rules in effect at the time. A further tragic irony of the Crimean transfer is that an action of sixty years ago, taken by Moscow to strengthen its control over Ukraine, has come back to haunt Ukraine today.
Published in "Istoricheskii arkhiv" Document 4 15 February Letter from D. Korotchenko and V. Nizhnik to K. Published in "Istoricheskii arkhiv," issue 1, vol. Knyshevskii claims that Khrushchev told him in fifty years earlier about having raised this matter with Stalin when Khrushchev was visiting Moscow.
Norton, , p. The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies.
Read more. The History and Public Policy Program strives to make public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, to facilitate scholarship based on those records, and to use these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs. Close Search Search. Meanwhile, the status of rank-and-file Cossacks declined drastically. Deprived of political prerogatives by the starshyna , they also encountered debilitating economic difficulties.
Obliged to render extremely protracted, and therefore costly, military service throughout the 18th century, many of them fell into debt and lost or gave up their Cossack status and became state peasants. This downward mobility was reflected in the decline of their numbers in active military service: from 50, in to 30, in and 20, in Because the starshyna and Cossacks were not taxed, they often competed successfully with the burghers in local commerce and primitive, small-scale manufacturing and thereby undermined the prosperity of the relatively small urban stratum about 4 percent of the population.
Even more drastic was the decline in the fortunes of the peasantry. After they became free peasants who lived in self-governing communities and owed relatively minor obligations for use of the land to the Zaporozhian Host. But as the starshyna accumulated more land, it constantly raised the labor obligations of the peasantry. In Ivan Mazepa 's time peasants were forced to work , on the average, two days a week for local starshyna landowners. Within a generation the obligations rose to three days and more.
The final step in the enserfment of the Left-Bank Ukraine peasantry occurred in , when Catherine II deprived them of the right to leave their landlords under any circumstances. With the introduction of serfdom most traces of the social upheaval and experimentation that began with Bohdan Khmelnytsky 's uprising disappeared, and Ukrainian society became much like the noble-dominated societies of its neighbors.
Ukraine under imperial rule. From the late 18th century to —18, Ukrainians lived in two large land-based empires. During the reign of Alexander I —25 , the Russian presence in Ukraine consisted primarily of the imperial army and bureaucracy. By the s, during the reign of Nicholas I —55 , the process of establishing a centralized administration throughout Ukraine was completed. The abolition of Magdeburg law in and the Lithuanian Statute in put an end to non-Russian legal influences, elected officials, and municipal self-government in Ukraine.
Although the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasion of was minimal in Ukraine, secret societies nonetheless arose there as part of the Decembrist movement. Its members attempted unsuccessfully to stage the first revolution in the Russian Empire. After suppressing it in , the tsarist government instituted Russification policies on the Right Bank.
Harshly implemented by Governor-general Dimitrii Bibikov , they had a major impact on both the Ukrainians and Poles. To curtail the influence of the Polish nobles in society and local government, the estates of about 3, nobles were confiscated, and some , were deprived of their status and deported to the east. In the numerous Uniates in the region were forced to adopt Orthodoxy see History of the Ukrainian church.
To win over the Ukrainian peasantry and further alienate them from the Polish nobles, in Bibikov introduced Inventory Regulations limiting the obligations a peasant owed his landlord. The vast majority of the approximately 2. Their social structure was relatively simple, for the population in eastern Galicia consisted mostly of impoverished peasantry 95 percent and about 2, priestly families.
The nobles in Galicia were almost all Poles or Polonized Ukrainians, and Jews made up the overwhelming majority of the small urban population. The socioeconomic development of Western Ukraine lagged behind that of Russian-ruled Ukraine.
It was one of the poorest regions in all Europe. Galicia was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire during a time of major changes, and Emperor Joseph II developed a special interest in Galicia, viewing it as a kind of laboratory for his educational, social, and economic reforms.
After Joseph's death , many of his reforms, especially those pertaining to the peasants, were either subverted by the nobles or rescinded by his conservative successors. The rise of national consciousness. In Ukraine, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the rise of national consciousness was primarily associated with the impact of Western ideas especially those of Johann Gottfried von Herder , the French Revolution, and Romanticism and with the birth of an intelligentsia.
The institutions of higher learning established to provide the imperial governments with well-trained bureaucrats facilitated the development of the intelligentsia. Kharkiv University served as the intellectual center of Russian-ruled Ukraine until Kyiv University assumed this role in the s.
Initially, the Ukrainian intelligentsia under Russia consisted primarily of nobles by background. A small minority were priests' sons, burghers , or Cossacks. The intelligentsia's numbers were small; eg, prior to Kharkiv University and Kyiv University produced a total of only about 4, graduates. Later, noble representation in the intelligentsia declined and that of commoners, including peasants , rose.
Indicative of the first phase of nation-building was the interest shown by the intelligentsia in the late 18th and early 19th century in Ukrainian history, historiography , ethnography , and folklore. Given the central importance of the native language in the maintenance of national consciousness, the Ukrainian intelligentsia was anxious to raise its status. Despite their achievements in literature and scholarship, the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the early 19th century continued to view Ukraine and the Ukrainians in regionalist terms, convinced that in cultivating things Ukrainian it was also enriching the cultural heritage of Russia as a whole.
In the s a new generation of Ukrainian intellectuals, now based in Kyiv, emerged. Among its leaders were the historian Mykola Kostomarov , the author Panteleimon Kulish , and, most important, the poet Taras Shevchenko , whose works have exerted an unparalleled influence on Ukrainians. In they, together with a small group of other Ukrainian intellectuals, began the political phase of nation-building by founding in Kyiv the secret Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood , which was quickly uncovered by the tsarist police.
The trials and exile of its leaders marked the beginning of the long confrontation between the Ukrainian intelligentsia , which stood for national rights and social justice, and the Russian imperial authorities. In Austrian-ruled Western Ukraine , in the early 19th century the intelligentsia was practically synonymous with the Greek Catholic clergy —the only social group that could avail itself of higher learning.
Thus, of the 43 Ukrainian-language books that appeared there between and , 40 were written by priests. The first signs of interest in the native language appeared in Peremyshl , where, in , Rev Ivan Mohylnytsky organized a clerical society for the purpose of disseminating culture and enlightenment and preparing simple religious texts. In the s the center of nation-building activity shifted to Lviv , where young, idealistic seminarians captivated by romantic national ideas came to the fore see Ruthenian Triad.
Imperial change and reforms. Nationhood became a major political issue in Western Ukraine during the Revolution of —9 in the Habsburg monarchy , which shook the Habsburg Empire and much of Europe. Confronted by uprisings in Hungary , Italy , and Vienna itself, and threatened by a Polish revolt in Galicia, the Habsburgs sought to gain popular support by abolishing serfdom and establishing parliamentary representation.
These developments provided the impetus for political self-organization of Ukrainians. Rejecting the claims of the Poles to represent the entire population of Galicia, the Ukrainians established the Supreme Ruthenian Council as their representative body and clashed with the Poles at the Slavic Congress in Prague, Thus began a long period of Polish-Ukrainian political conflicts in Galicia.
Demanding autonomy , the Ukrainians established the first Ukrainian-language newspaper Zoria halytska and the popular enlightenment and publishing society Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia , pressured the Habsburgs to establish a chair of Ukrainian philology at Lviv University , began the construction of the People's Home in Lviv , formed pro-Habsburg militias, and established contacts with compatriots in Bukovyna and Transcarpathia see, eg, Adolf Dobriansky.
Thus, the revolutionary climate of allowed the Western Ukrainians to express and organize themselves as a distinct nation for the first time in modern history. Russia's defeat in the Crimean War of —6 brought to the fore the empire's socioeconomic backwardness and impelled Alexander II to introduce major reforms.
The most important of these was the abolition of serfdom in The impact of this emancipation on the Ukrainians was especially great because 42 percent of them compared to an average of 35 percent in the Russian Empire had been private serfs. Other reforms introduced by Alexander in the s included the sale of land to state peasants ; the introduction of local organs of self-government zemstvos to look after education , public health, the mail, and roads; expanded accessibility to higher education ; and the modernization of the court system.
Socioeconomic changes. In the latter part of the 19th century, the economic situation in the Ukrainian countryside steadily worsened as heavy redemption payments, taxes, and lack of land impoverished the peasantry.
Rapid population growth increased land hunger, and great numbers of peasants were forced to emigrate to the Asian regions of the Russian Empire see Emigration , Far East , Siberia , Turkestan ; by almost 2 million Ukrainians had settled permanently in these regions.
In the steppe regions wheat was the main cash crop, and 90 percent of the empire's wheat exports—and 20 percent of world production—came from Ukraine. Right-Bank Ukraine , where sugar beets were the chief cash crop, produced over 80 percent of the empire's sugar. With the abolition of serfdom the way was finally cleared for industrialization and economic modernization. The first railway track was laid in —71 between Odesa and Balta to facilitate the movement of grain.
As the railway network grew, even more Ukrainian food and raw materials were sent northward to Russia in exchange for an unprecedented quantity of finished products. As a result, Ukraine's economy, which theretofore had been relatively distinct and self-sustaining, began to be integrated into the imperial economic system.
The rapid growth of railroad transportation stimulated the demands for coal and iron. Consequently, between and , and especially during the s, the southeastern Ukrainian Donets Basin , with its rich coal reserves, and Kryvyi Rih Iron-ore Basin became the fastest-growing industrial regions in the Russian Empire. Developed by foreign capital, with the aid of state subsidies, by these regions produced almost 70 percent of the empire's coal and most of its iron ore.
In over , workers were employed here. During the 19th century Ukraine experienced much urban development. Between and , the population of Odesa, the largest city, grew from , to ,; Kyiv grew from 55, to , and Kharkiv from 50, to , In , however, still only 13 percent of Ukraine's population lived in the population centers officially designated as cities and towns.
A crucial aspect of the industrial and urban change was that Ukrainians, who constituted 73 percent of the population in , were little affected by them. They constituted 30 percent of the urban population, while Russians formed 34, Jews 27, and other national groups 9 percent of the urban total. Ukrainians were also a minority within the working class —39 percent of the total. They were also very weakly represented in the intelligentsia : 16 percent of lawyers, 25 percent of teachers, and less than 10 percent of the writers and artists in Ukraine.
Whereas at the turn of the 19th century there had been relatively few Russians in Ukraine , by they constituted 12 percent of its inhabitants and formed the vast majority of the workers in the coal industry and metallurgical industry, as well as of employees in state administration. Because of especially rapid population growth among the Jews, by the late 19th century they accounted for 8 percent of the population compared to 4 percent for the empire as a whole and they played a dominant role in trade and commerce in Ukraine.
The emergence of nationalism and socialism. After the death of the archconservative Nicholas I in , the nascent Ukrainian movement showed new signs of life. In Saint Petersburg and Kyiv , a new generation of Ukrainian activists, composed mostly of students , formed civic and cultural groupings called hromadas. A significant feature of the Hromada of Kyiv was that it attracted a small group of Polish and Polonized nobles from Right-Bank Ukraine who, guilt-stricken by the age-old exploitation of the Ukrainian peasantry by their class , resolved to draw closer to the masses among whom they lived.
Led by Volodymyr Antonovych and others, they called themselves khlopomany peasant lovers. Because of their advocacy of populism and national traditions their members came to be called Ukrainophiles. The cultural and scholarly activities of the Ukrainophiles aroused the ire of Ukrainians of the Little Russian orientation see Little Russian mentality , Russian conservatives and government officials, and they were accused of fostering Ukrainian separatism.
Consequently, in July Petr Valuev , the minister of the interior, banned the publication in Ukrainian of all scholarly, religious, and educational books. Soon after, the hromadas were dissolved and some Ukrainophiles were sent into internal exile. About a decade later, the Ukrainophiles, still led by Volodymyr Antonovych , surreptitiously renewed their activities. They formed the Old Hromada of Kyiv , so named to differentiate it from the new hromadas formed by students , and in they expanded their cultural activities by gaining control of the semiofficial Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society.
That same year they also convinced Countess Yelysaveta Myloradovych and other wealthy philanthropists to fund the newly formed Shevchenko Society in Lviv see Shevchenko Scientific Society. As ties between the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the Russian Empire and in Austria became stronger, Galicia increasingly served as the main center of Ukrainophile activities because it was beyond the reach of tsarist restrictions. In , alarmed by the growth of the Ukrainophile movement, Alexander II banned the printing and importation of Ukrainian-language publications see Ems Ukase.
Several activists, most notably Mykhailo Drahomanov , were forced into exile abroad. Many revolutionaries in Ukraine, such as Andrei Zheliabov, Dmytro Lyzohub, Valeriian Osinsky, and Mykola Kybalchych , believed that it would be better for national distinctions to disappear so that a global socialist society might emerge. Consequently, a split between the socialist and more traditional Ukrainophiles occurred. A reflection of the political activism that swept through the Russian Empire beginning in the s was the appearance of illegal Ukrainian political organizations and parties: the Brotherhood of Taras —8 , the General Ukrainian Non-Party Democratic Organization — , the Revolutionary Ukrainian party —5 , the Ukrainian Socialist party Kyiv —3 , the Ukrainian People's party —7 , the Ukrainian Democratic party —5 , the Ukrainian Radical party —5 , the Ukrainian Democratic Radical party —8 , the Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka —13 , the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party —20 , and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives — The Revolution of had an important impact on the development of the Ukrainian movement because Ukrainian-language publishing was permitted, as was freedom of association.
Consequently by the number of Ukrainian-language periodicals had increased from 2 to 18, and Ukrainian publishing houses, Prosvita societies, co-operatives , and music and theater groups proliferated. These new initiatives were desperately needed to improve the cultural and educational levels of development of the Ukrainian population. In only 13 percent of Ukrainians were literate. In the wake of the revolution an imperial parliament—the State Duma —was established, and its Ukrainian members formed a caucus within it see Ukrainian caucus in the Russian State Duma.
By , however, government restrictions against the rapidly spreading Ukrainian movement had mounted again. Despite the repression that marked the — period, Ukrainian scholarship made great progress see Historiography , Legal scholarship, Economic studies, Linguistics , Ethnography , Folklore , Literature studies , Archeology , Archeography, Church historiography , Geography.
Ukrainian literature flourished, many scholarly societies were established, and by Ukrainian theater boasted five professional troupes, each with repertoires of 20 to 30 plays that were performed with great success throughout the Russian Empire.
Developments in Western Ukraine. In the population of Galicia was 4. By the population had almost doubled, to 8 million Ukrainians 42 percent; Poles [and other Roman Catholics], 47 percent; Jews, 11 percent. Over 90 percent of Ukrainians were peasants.
Inhabiting the poorest regions in the Habsburg Empire and only recently emancipated from serfdom , they made slow economic progress. Many had landholdings of less than 5 ha and were heavily in debt, mainly to Jewish moneylenders. Thousands of peasants were forced to auction their land.
Because industry was practically non-existent except in the Drohobych-Boryslav Industrial Region , there were few alternatives to rural poverty. Consequently, pressure to emigrate was great, and between and the emigration of over , Ukrainians from Western Ukraine to the New World took place.
Following the Austro-Hungarian compromise of , the Polish nobility won total control over the recently formed Galician Diet , and Vienna promised not to interfere in the Polish conduct of Galician affairs. Discouraged by the Polish predominance, disenchanted with the Habsburg dynasty , and lacking confidence in the Ukrainians' ability to stand on their own, in the s a large part of the West Ukrainian clerical and conservative elite, which controlled most Ukrainian institutions, looked to Russia for support.
The Russophiles' tendency to identify with the tsar and the Russian people and culture was opposed by Ukrainophile students , younger clergy , and members of the rising secular intelligentsia.
Using Taras Shevchenko and the Ukrainophiles in Russian-ruled Ukraine as well as the Ruthenian Triad as their models, the Galician Populists championed the use of the vernacular, sought closer ties with the Ukrainian peasantry and its culture, and stressed the national distinctiveness of the Ukrainians see Western Ukrainian Populism. By the s, however, a small group of young intelligentsia, led by Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Pavlyk , concluded that neither the Populists nor the Russophiles addressed adequately the pressing socioeconomic needs of the West Ukrainian peasantry.
Greatly influenced by Mykhailo Drahomanov , they adopted a program that combined socialism with Ukrainian national demands, and in they formed the Ukrainian Radical party. This freedom, as well as examples set by the Czechs , Germans , and Poles, led to an upsurge of organizational activity in Western Ukraine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A harbinger of this tendency was the Prosvita society founded by the Populists in to spread literacy among the peasants. By it operated nearly 3, reading rooms and had close to 37, members. Later the gymnastic Sokil and the Sich societies were founded; by they had well over 50, members. From the s a Ukrainian co-operative movement flourished in Western Ukraine, as did the Ukrainian press, and by West Ukrainians could boast of having 80 periodicals, 66 of them in Galicia , 8 in Bukovyna , 4 in Transcarpathia , and 4 in Vienna and Budapest.
All this activity not only addressed the cultural and socioeconomic needs of the Ukrainian masses, it also spread national consciousness and encouraged close ties between the intelligentsia consisting usually of leaders of organizations and the peasantry.
With the arrival in of Mykhailo Hrushevsky from Kyiv to occupy the Chair of History at Lviv University a new era in Ukrainian scholarship began, and under his direction in the Shevchenko Society was transformed into the Shevchenko Scientific Society , a de facto academy of sciences.
As various ideologies crystallized, the organizational infrastructure grew, and the need to function effectively in a parliamentary system became more pressing, the West Ukrainians formed political parties, notably the above-mentioned Ukrainian Radical party — , the populist-independentist National Democratic party — , the Marxist Ukrainian Social Democratic party — , and the Catholic Ruthenian People's Union As a result of the widespread educational, religious, civic, cultural, literary, and economic activity, Galicia became the bastion of the Ukrainian national movement.
The Poles' increased efforts to limit it led to a rapid escalation of hostilities between the two communities, reflected in the fierce clashes between Ukrainian and Polish students at Lviv University and the assassination, in , of Vicegerent Andrzej Potocki by the Ukrainian student Myroslav Sichynsky.
Bukovyna 's , Ukrainians experienced an upsurge in activity similar to that of their Galician counterparts. They succeeded in establishing an effective educational system and gaining significant representation in the Viennese parliament.
By contrast, the , Ukrainians in Hungarian-dominated Transcarpathia had great difficulty in establishing their national identity because of the intense Magyarization policies of the government and strong Russophile tendencies among the tiny intelligentsia. Ukraine in the First World War. The impact of the First World War on the Ukrainians, who were caught between major adversaries in the conflict, was immediate and devastating.
About 3 million of them fought in Russia 's armies, and over , served in Austria 's forces. Some of the biggest battles on the eastern front occurred in Galicia , and much of Western Ukraine suffered terribly from repeated offensives and occupations. On the eve of the war, the West Ukrainians declared their loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. When war broke out, they formed an umbrella organization—the Supreme Ukrainian Council in Lviv —and organized a 2,man volunteer legion, the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen —the first Ukrainian military unit in modern times.
As Russian armies occupied much of Galicia and Bukovyna in September , the retreating Habsburg authorities, suspecting the Ukrainians of pro-Russian sympathies, arrested and executed hundreds without trial and deported over 30,, including many Russophiles , to internment camps , such as the one near Thalerhof in Austria.
Under Russian occupation, the West Ukrainians were also subjected to exceedingly harsh treatment. Intent on Russifying the population, the tsarist authorities arrested and deported thousands of Ukrainian activists, shut down Ukrainian institutions, and banned the use of Ukrainian.
They also launched a campaign to liquidate the Greek Catholic church , exiling Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky to Russia in the process. In Western Ukraine was reoccupied by Austria. In the rest of Ukraine, Ukrainian activities were almost totally suppressed until the outbreak of the Revolution of The rebirth of Ukrainian statehood — By the third year of the First World War , the multinational Russian Empire , Austria-Hungary , and Ottoman Empire all showed signs of internal weakness and disintegration.
In the Russian Empire, military defeats, disorganization, inflation, and serious food shortages provoked mass social discontent and unrest, which culminated in the February Revolution of and the collapse of the monarchy. The Bolsheviks , however, who came to dominate the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies in Petrograd and elsewhere, refused to participate in the government. In this situation of social and economic chaos and dual political authority, the Provisional Government found it impossible to maintain control.
Taking advantage of the revolutionary situation, Ukraine's national leaders put forth not only social but also national and political demands. On 17 March , the representatives of various Ukrainian political, community, cultural, and professional organizations gathered in Kyiv and formed the Ukrainian Central Rada as an all-Ukrainian representative body.
On 22 March, the Rada issued an appeal to the Ukrainian people to maintain peace, establish order, and form political, cultural, and economic associations. Almost immediately a Constituent Military Council and Ukrainian Central Co-operative Committee were established, and the Prosvita society banned in and the newspaper Rada Kyiv banned in , no w renamed Nova rada Kyiv , were revived.
The congress of co-operatives held in Kyiv on 27—28 March came out in support of Ukrainian autonomy , as did a mass rally of over , people in Kyiv on 1 April. Beginning in March, various political parties were reorganized or created. Kovalevsky enjoyed mass peasant support; it pushed for territorial autonomy and the nationalization of land and dominated the Peasant Association, a mass organization that pursued the socialization of land.
At the end of December , the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Independentists UPSS was founded by Ukrainian patriots who were military personnel or had army backgrounds; its members who in March had formed the Ukrainian Military Club headed by Mykola Mikhnovsky organized Ukrainian military formations see Army of the Ukrainian National Republic and were the first to propagate the idea of an independent Ukrainian state. The small, conservative but separatist Ukrainian Democratic Agrarian party UDAP was founded in May by Ukrainian landowners ; its ideologist Viacheslav Lypynsky promoted the idea of an independent monarchy ruled by a hetman and a Cossack elite.
In Petrograd itself, a rally of over 20, Ukrainians , mostly soldiers, came out in support of Ukraine's autonomy. A similar Ukrainian Council was created in Moscow in late May.
The congress reorganized the Rada and elected its president Mykhailo Hrushevsky and vice-presidents Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Serhii Yefremov. After the congress, the Rada elected from among its members an executive committee , later called the Little Rada.
Soldier, peasant, and worker organizations were also born in this period. These groups convened to proclaim their support for the Central Rada and elect delegates to it. With the Revolution of , all tsarist interdictions concerning the Ukrainian language were abolished and Ukrainian culture, education , and publishing flourished.
Ukraine's national minorities —the Russians, Jews , and Poles —also organized themselves. Russians continued to dominate in city elections. The Provisional Government appointed mostly Russian gubernial commissioners usually the heads of gubernial zemstvo executives in Ukraine. Thus, in the first months of the revolution in Ukraine, dual authority—that of the Central Rada and the Provisional Government—existed.
The Rada was also confronted in the Russified cities by the soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies, but these had little Ukrainian support. Most non-Ukrainian political and civic organizations were hostile to the idea of Ukrainian autonomy , let alone independence. When the Central Rada 's autonomist demands were presented by a delegation to the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet in May and rejected, the Rada issued the first of the four Universals of the Central Rada on 23 June during the second All-Ukrainian Military Congress.
It called for the creation of an elected people's assembly diet to ratify the laws determining the political and social order of an autonomous Ukraine. These important steps were accepted by the majority of Ukrainians. Consequently the Russian government had to come to terms with the Central Rada and its demands.
The legal basis for Ukraine's autonomy was elaborated in the Statute of the Higher Administration of Ukraine and approved by the Little Rada on 29 July The Rada reluctantly accepted the instruction as a temporary truce and the basis for obtaining further rights. Ukrainian-Russian relations continued to deteriorate, as did economic conditions, military discipline, law and order, and the situation at the front.
Interparty relations within the Central Rada and its control outside Kyiv became even more unstable. Although the Rada did succeed in organizing the Congress of the Peoples of Russia 21—28 September and a congress of 80 gubernial commissioners and county commissioners 16—17 October , the Provisional Government continued to oppose the attempts of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada at functioning as an autonomous government. Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky , they soon took power throughout most of ethnic Russia.
But they were unsuccessful in Ukraine, the Kuban , and the Don region. The Central Rada condemned the coup on 8 November, but tried to remain neutral. On 10—13 November, however, battles took place in Kyiv between the units of Kyiv Military District, still loyal to the Provisional Government, and local Bolshevik forces. The new General Secretariat of the Central Rada also guaranteed freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly, announced a political amnesty , and decreed that land was to be socialized without compensation.
Workers were to be given control over their workplaces and production was to be state controlled. National-personal autonomy was granted to national minorities. The relations between the Central Rada and Bolshevik Russia deteriorated further.
On 12 December, an attempted Bolshevik armed takeover in Kyiv was suppressed, and Bolshevik attempts to turn the All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies 17—19 December against the Rada failed after the Council of People's Commissars in Petrograd sent an ultimatum on 17 December, demanding that the Rada allow Bolshevik forces to fight counterrevolutionaries on Ukrainian territory and that it prevent the passage of Don Cossacks leaving the southwestern front to join Aleksei Kaledin's anti-Bolshevik army in the Don region.
The Bolsheviks proclaimed a Ukrainian soviet republic at the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kharkiv 24—25 December and appointed a workers' and peasants' government the Peoples' Secretariat on 30 December.
By December the Central Rada's leaders concluded that a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers and German military aid were the only way of saving the Ukrainian National Republic. Since only a full-fledged independent state could conclude an international agreement, on 25 January the Rada issued its Fourth Universal back-dated to 22 January proclaiming Ukraine's independence. The General Secretariat of the Central Rada was renamed the Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic , and 2 February was announced as the date for the convention of the Constituent Assembly of Ukraine , elections to which had taken place on 9 January in regions not occupied by the Bolsheviks.
A week later Volodymyr Vynnychenko resigned as prime minister, and on 30 January Vsevolod Holubovych formed a new government dominated by the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries.
The German high command interfered in Ukrainian internal affairs as soon as its offensive began. Germany was interested mainly in exploiting Ukraine economically as part of its war effort, and the disorder, anti-German guerrillas, and policies of an uncooperative Ukrainian socialist government made the attainment of this goal difficult.
To ensure the delivery of foodstuffs, the Germans took control of the railways. To force the recalcitrant peasants to sow their fields, Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn issued an order on 6 April reversing the Rada's land nationalization policies, and on 25 April he formally introduced martial law. Gen Wilhelm Groener began secret negotiations with Gen Pavlo Skoropadsky , a representative of conservative and landowning circles in Ukraine, about forming a new government that would be favorably disposed to the Germans' aims and policies.
The Hetman government. Pavlo Skoropadsky assumed all executive and legislative power and supreme command of the army and navy; only judiciary functions were left to a General Court. The new regime, its legislation , and administration resembled those of tsarist times. Many of the other members belonged to Russian parties, mainly to the Russian Constitutional Democratic kadet party aka the Kadets ; some were even Russian monarchists.
The repressive, pro-German, and reactionary social and economic policies of the new regime and its mostly Russian collaborators engendered opposition from most of the Ukrainian political parties and the zemstvos , and led to strikes , widespread peasant rebellions and peasant guerrillas eg, Nestor Makhno and Yurii Tiutiunnyk , arson and bombings, assassinations eg, that of Hermann von Eichhorn , and even increased support for the Bolsheviks.
After Germany 's surrender in November and the withdrawal of its troops, the danger of a renewed Bolshevik occupation led Pavlo Skoropadsky to turn to the anti-Bolshevik, but also anti-Ukrainian and pro-White, Entente Powers.
To appease them he proclaimed his intention to federate with a future non-Bolshevik Russia and appointed a new cabinet made up mostly of Russian monarchists. These developments triggered the popular uprising that the Ukrainian National Republic had been planning.
Commanded by the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic , the uprising was supported militarily by the Sich Riflemen , various guerrilla detachments, thousands of peasants , and, towards the end, Ukrainian soldiers in the hetman's army. The period of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic.
To counter widespread pro- Bolshevik propaganda, the socialist Directory built its authority on the basis of gubernia and county labor councils of workers , peasants , and toiling intelligentsia.
Upon assuming power, the Directory was faced with an extremely difficult internal and international situation. Anton Denikin 's anti-Ukrainian as well as anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in the Don region and hostile Romanian forces in Bessarabia and Bukovyna ; to contain the Franco-Greek Entente expeditionary forces that had occupied the Crimea and Odesa and were helping Denikin; and to cope with an unruly Partisan movement in Ukraine, —22 eg, Nestor Makhno and Nykyfor Hryhoriv , whose activities and excesses compromised and even endangered the new government.
The only solution was to come to an agreement with either Moscow or the Allied Powers. The failure of Premier Volodymyr Chekhivsky and Directory chairman Volodymyr Vynnychenko to arrange peace with the Bolsheviks prompted the government to accept the pro-Entente orientation proposed by Symon Petliura , the supreme military commander.
On 10 February , Vynnychenko and Chekhivsky resigned and Petliura became the new chairman. To facilitate negotiations with the Entente, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party and Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries withdrew from the government, and on 13 February a new cabinet, headed by Serhii Ostapenko and composed mainly of ministers belonging to the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists , was formed.
The new government tried to negotiate a common strategy against the Bolsheviks with the French commander in Odesa , Col Henri Freydenberg. Beaten on several fronts, the government was no longer in control. Ukrainian army units became more demoralized, increasingly more and more partisan otamans appeared, and forces associated with the UNR engaged in a series of pogroms that took thousands of Jewish lives, as did Volunteer Army units, Red Army troops, and sundry partisan units.
On January 26, , a helicopter carrying former pro basketball player Kobe Bryant, his year-old daughter Gianna and seven others crashes in Calabasas, California, roughly 30 miles north of Los Angeles; everyone onboard dies. On January 26, , the Indian constitution takes effect, making the Republic of India the most populous democracy in the world. Mohandas Gandhi struggled through decades of passive resistance before Britain finally accepted Indian independence.
Self-rule had been promised The first Prohibition law in the history of the United States is passed in Tennessee, making it a misdemeanor to sell alcoholic beverages in taverns and stores. In , King Alfonso XIII approved elections to decide the government of Spain, and voters overwhelmingly chose to abolish the monarchy in favor Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.
On January 26, , John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor, gives the first public demonstration of a true television system in London, launching a revolution in communication and entertainment. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. First taken prisoner when his plane was shot down on August 5, , he became the longest-held POW in U.
Alvarez was downed over Hon Gai during the first bombing raids against On January 26, , just about a week after his inauguration, President John F. Kennedy appoints Janet Travell, 59, as his personal physician, making her the first woman in history to hold the post.
0コメント