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The Popular Base of Ukrainian Nationalism in 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Steven L. Guthier
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In 1917, Ukrainian nationalists took advantage of the deterioration of central authority in the Russian Empire to make a bid for Ukrainian self-determination. The struggle for Ukrainian statehood continued under three successive national governments until 1920.The first year of the revolution, however, is crucial to understanding the evolution of the national movement in the Ukraine. In 1917, the Ukraine was as free of Russian interference and military occupation as it would be during the era of revolution and civil war. Ukrainian institutions and parties developed in freedom, democratic elections exposed the Ukrainian masses to nationalist agitation and measured their response, and the Russian government was forced to deal with the Ukraine as a distinct political entity.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 30 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

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References

1. The best treatment in English on the Ukrainian national governments remains Reshetar, John S., The Ukrainian Revolution, 1917-1920 (Princeton, 1952)Google Scholar. See also Pidhainy, Oleh S., The Formation of the Ukrainian Republic (New York, 1966)Google Scholar. Analyses of Bolshevik policy toward Ukrainian nationalism include: Adams, Arthur E., Bolsheviks in the Ukraine (New Haven, 1963)Google Scholar; Jurij, Borys, The Russian Communist Party and the Sovietisation of the Ukraine (Stockholm, 1960)Google Scholar; and Richard, Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union (New York, 1968).Google Scholar A comprehensive discussion of the Ukrainian S.R.'s in general and the UPSR Left in particular is presented in I wan Majstrenko, , Borot'bism: A Chapter in the History of Ukrainian Communism (New York, 1954).Google Scholar The most complete discussion of the revolution in Ukrainian is Dmytro Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukrainy, 1917-1923 rr., 2 vols. (New York, 1954)Google Scholar. Doroshenko was a member of the liberal Ukrainian Socialist Federalist Party, and his interpretation, though not his selection of information, reflects an antisocialist bias. Pavlo, Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materialy do istorii Ukrains'koi revoliutsii, 1917- 1920 rr., 4 vols. (Vienna, 1921; reprint ed., New York, 1969)Google Scholar is valuable both for its Ukrainian populist view of the revolution and the extensive quotes from newspapers, minutes of congresses, and so forth, which are included in the notes. In Russian, see Korolivskii, S. M., Rubach, M. A., and Suprunenko, N. I., Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti na Ukraine (Moscow, 1967).Google Scholar Among the memoir literature, Kovalevs'kyi, Mykola, Pry dsherelakh borot'by (Innsbruck, 1960)Google Scholar is very useful on the prerevolutionary roots of Ukrainian populism and the UPSR in the revolution. For observations of the head of the Rada government, see V., Vynnychenko, Vidrozhennia natsii, 3 vols. (Vienna, 1920).Google Scholar

2. Iurii, Tyshchenko, Pershi naddniprians1ki ukrains'ki masovi politychni hasety (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Domanyts'kyi, V., “Ukrains'ka presa v 1906 r.,” Ukraina, 1 (1907), part 2, pp. 48–65Google Scholar.

3. Troinitskii, N. A., ed., Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii 1897 g., 89 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1899-1905)Google Scholar. The following volumes cover the Ukrainian provinces: vol. 8, Volhynia; vol. 13, Ekaterinoslav; vol. 16, Kiev; vol. 32, Podolia; vol. 33, Poltava; vol. 46, Kharkov; vol. 47, Kherson; and vol. 48, Chernigov; see tables 13 and 22 in each volume (hereafter this source will be cited as 1897 Census; when citing all of these eight volumes, only the appropriate table will be noted). While the continental districts of Taurida province were also ethnically Ukrainian, it has proven impossible to find sufficient information on these districts to merit inclusion of Taurida in the study.

4. Vsesoiusnaia perepis1 naseleniia 1926 goda, 56 vols. (Moscow, 1928-33), vol. 28, table 1, and vols. 11-13, table 6 (hereafter cited as 1926 Census).

5. 1897 Census, table 15; 1926 Census, vol. 11, table 6.

6. 1897 Census, table 24. The vast majority of non-Ukrainian peasants were concentrated in border zones: Poles and Germans on the border with Austria-Hungary, Rumanians adjacent to Bessarabia, and Russians in eastern Ekaterinoslav and Kharkov provinces.

7. Majstrenko, Borot'bism, p. 38.

8. Pidhainy, Formation of the Ukrainian Republic, pp. 28, 54—55; Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materialy, 1: 36-37.

9. In 1905, 96.5 percent of the households on the right bank, 82.1 percent of those in Poltava, and 68 percent in the Ukrainian districts of Chernigov held their allotments in hereditary household tenure. By contrast, communal tenure was nearly universal in the central Great Russian provinces. In Ukrainian provinces where communal tenure existed, the institu tion was weak and the Stolypin reforms inaugurated a flood of separations. In 1905, 99 percent of the 271, 000 households in Ekaterinoslav held their allotments communally; by 1914, 142, 000 had separated their holdings into personal property. By 1914, communal tenure remained the norm only in Kharkov and Kherson provinces, and, even then, 100, 000 households in each province had converted to hereditary holdings (see Dubrovskii, S. M., Stolypinskaia zemel'naia reforma [Moscow, 1963], pp. 572-73, 580–81 Google Scholar; Statistika semlevladeniia 1905 g., vol. 47: Chemigovskaia guberniia [St. Petersburg, 1906], table 4; and Korolivskii et al., Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti na Ukraine, pp. 47-48).

10. Kovalevs'kyi, Pry dsherelakh borot'by, p. 245. M. Iu. Shapoval (Revoliutsiinyi sotsializm na Ukrainy [Vienna, 1921], pp. 138-47) discusses the support of Ukrainian S.R.'s for small, inheritable private farms and their rejection of equalized, repartitional communes as reflected in the land reforms of the Central Rada and Directory. Shapoval was himself a member of the UPSR and chief architect of the Directory's land law.

11. Zemlia i volia, May 24, 1917.

12. Robitnycha hazeta, May 11, 1917. Throughout his speech, the UPSR delegate employed the term muzhits'ka (rather than the Ukrainian selians'ka, “peasant” ) to describe the lowly status to which Russian rule had reduced the Ukrainian language. Muzhits'ka was used by Russians to disparage the Ukrainian language, so that the speaker undoubtedly chose this term to further inflame his audience.

13. See Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materialy, 1: 132-34. Other examples, by no means exhaustive, can be found in Robitnycha hazeta, April 12, April 14, and May 11, 1917; and Vlast' naroda, May 7, May 27, and June IS, 1917.

14. Khrystiuk, Zamitky i materialy, 1: 137-38, n. 32.

15. The Ukrainian liberal daily Nova Rada and the USDRP organ Robitnycha hazeta each had circulations of about fifteen thousand (see Kovalevs'kyi, Pry dzherelakh borot'by, pp. 267-68). The Ukrainian daily Narodnia volia, published in Kiev, should not be confused with the Russian S.R. organ Volia naroda, which was printed in Petrograd.

16. Z., Kuzelia, Z kul'turnoho shyttia Ukrainy (Zal'tsvedel1, 1918), p. 56;Google Scholar Il'inskii, L. K., Spisok povremennykh izdanii za 1917 god (Petrograd, 1919), p. 185.Google Scholar

17. Kovalevs'kyi, Pry dsherelakh borot'by, pp. 101, 105, 200-21, 251-53. Kovalevs'kyi himself was a good example: before the revolution he worked in agricultural cooperation in Poltava; during the revolution he was editor of Narodnia volia and a member of the executive committees of the UPSR and Selians'ka Spilka.

18. Russkiia vedomosti, April 20, 1917.

19. Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukrainy, 1: 75.

20. Khrystiuk, Zamitky imaterialy, 1: 42-43.

21. Ibid., p. 43.

22. Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukrainy, 1: 83.

23. Volia naroda, October 17, 1917; Robitnycha hazeta, October 14, 17, and 21, 1917.

24. The most complete discussion of the election can be found in Radkey, Oliver H., The Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly in 1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1950)Google Scholar, returns are on pp. 78-80. Somewhat less useful are the tables found in Spirin, L. M., Klassy i partii v grazhdanskoi voine v Rossii (1917-1920 gg.) (Moscow, 1968), p. 416–25.Google Scholar Spirin groups the non-Russian parties under the rubrics “Petty-Bourgeois Nationalist” and “Bourgeois Nationalist”; his totals can be used only in conjunction with other sources. For provincial returns, these primary sources should be supplemented by Sobolev, M, “Vybory do vserossiis'kykh ta ukrains'kykh ustanovchykh zboriv na Poltavshchyni,” Litopys revoliutsii, 1931, no. 3, pp. 48–49;Google Scholar and Shcherbakov, V, “Chernigovshchine nakanune revoliutsii v dooktiabr'skii period 1917 g.,” Letopis’ revoliutsii, 1927, no. 2, pp. 64–65.Google Scholar City returns are compiled primarily from newspaper reports in late November and early December 1917 (see especially Vlasf naroda, Russkiia vedomosti, Pravda, Odesskiia novosti, and Robitnycha hazeta). Also see the sources given for table 1.

25. The appearance of two lists reflected a split between the Spilka and the UPSR executive committee over the composition of a proposed joint list. The Spilka objected to the exclusion of peasant candidates in favor of party regulars and decided to advance a separate slate. Some UPSR luminaries, including Mykola Kovalevs'kyi, joined the dissident Selians'ka Spilka/UPSR list. The authorized UPSR ticket was joined by the very small Left PSR organization of Poltava. Both Soviet and Western scholars have usually grouped the UPSR/PSR vote with the totals for the PSR. Unlike the other joint PSR/UPSR lists in Kharkov and Kherson, the Poltava ticket was dominated by the Ukrainians and has been grouped with the Ukrainian Socialist totals in the tables (see Sobolev, “Vybory,” pp. 54-57).

26. 1897 Census, vols. 8, 16, 32, table 13.

27. 1897 Census, vol. 48, table 13.

28. Shcherbakov, “Chernigovshchine,” pp. 63-65; D., Doroshenko, Moi spomyny pro nedavne-mynule (Munich, 1969), pp. 179, 211-12.Google Scholar

29. Volia naroda, December 9, 1917.

30. There was a substantial decline in the Ukrainian-speaking element along the ethnic border between 1897 and 1926. Russification is indicated by the fact that a significant minority of those who gave Ukrainian as their nationality in 1926 gave Russian as their native language (compare 1897 Census, vol. 48, table 13 and 1926 Census, vol. 11, table 6).

31. Ukrainians comprised 69 percent of the area's population in 1897 and 71 percent in 1926.

32. Calculated using I. K., Rybalka, “Rabochii klass Ukrainy na vyborakh vo vserossiiskoe i vseukrainskoe uchreditel'nye sobraniia,” Istoriia SSSR, 1965, no. 1, pp. 114–25Google Scholar, and Utro Rossii, November 30, 1917.

33. Volia naroda, November 25, 1917.

34. Oliver H., Radkey, The Sickle Under the Hammer (New York, 1963), pp. 114, 116, 120-21, 296, 311-14.Google Scholar

35. Kuzelia, Z kul'tumoho zhyttia Ukrainy, p. 56, and Il'inskii, Spisok, p. 185.

36. Volia naroda, May 7, 1917; Robitnycha haseta, May 11, 1917.

37. Volia naroda, August 6, 1917.

38. Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti na Khersonshchine, 1917-1920 gg. (Kherson, 1957), p. 81.

39. Russkiia vedomosti, November 26 and December 1, 1917.

40. The Sborniki dokumentov i materialov issued by the various Ukrainian oblast committees on the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of the revolution contain numerous such denunciations of the Rada (see references in note 38 for examples). These collections are, of course, very selective and can be countered with the many expressions of peasant support for the Rada found in November and December 1917 issues of Robitnycha hazeta.

41. Korolivskii, S. M., ed., Velikaia oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia na Ukraine, 3 vols. (Kiev, 1957%), 1: 215–16.Google Scholar

42. Bor'ba za Velikii Oktiabr’ na Nikolaevshchine, fevral’ 1917 g. mart 1918 g. (Nikolaev, 1957), pp. 215-16.

43. Bisk, I. S., K voprosu o sotsial'nom sostave naseleniia g. Kieva (po dannym perepisi 1917 g.) (Kiev, 1920).Google Scholar The census was conducted in September and covered the civilian population only. The test for nationality was self-identification; the Ukrainian percentage includes those identifying themselves as “Little Russians” (4.7 percent). In 1897, the civilian population was 21.3 percent Ukrainian.

44. Reshetar, The Ukrainian Revolution, pp. 136-38; Russkoe slovo, November 15, 1917; Russkiia vedomosti, December 8, 1917.

45. Russkiia vedomosti, July 26, 1917.

46. V. Andrievs'kyi, Z mynuloho ﹛1917 rik na Poltavshchyni), 2 vols. (New York, 1963), 1: 110.Google Scholar

47. Doroshenko, Istoriia Ukrainy, 1: 61-66; Volia naroda, June 6, 1917.

48. At the time of the February revolution, Odessa had a garrison of over fifty thousand troops; Kharkov had over forty thousand; Kiev and Nikolaev both had thirty-five thousand; Ekaterinoslav, twenty thousand; and Poltava, fifteen thousand. Smaller garrisons were found in nearly every town (see Korolivskii et al., Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti, p. 118).

49. The Third All-Ukrainian Military Congress, held October 21, 1917 in Kiev, was notable for its aggressively nationalistic resolutions. The Congress was attended by three thousand delegates, mainly Ukrainian S.R.'s, who were elected by nearly three million soldiers at the front and in the garrisons (see Pidhainy, Formation of the Ukrainian Republic, pp. 150-51, and Kievskaia mysl', October 21 and 22, 1917).

50. 1926 Census, vol. 28, table 1.

51. 1897 Census, vol. 13, tables 21 and 22; 1926 Census, vol. 30, table 1.

52. Istoriia mist i sil Ukrains'koi RSR: Dnipropetrovs'ka oblast’ (Kiev, 1969), p. 67; Kharkivs'ka oblast’ (Kiev, 1967), pp. 74-75.

53. As quoted in Elwood, Ralph Carter, Russian Social Democracy in the Underground: A Study of the RSDRP in the Ukraine, 1907-1914 (Assen, The Netherlands, 1974), p. 10.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., pp. 208-18.

55. Kovalevs'kyi, Pry dsherelakh borot'by, pp. 255-57.

56. See Oskar, Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921 (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; on the Ukraine specifically, see Iu. Hamrets'kyi, M., Tymchenko, Zh. P., and Shchus, O. I., Rady Ukrainy v 1917 r. (Kiev, 1974).Google Scholar

57. Radkey, The Sickle Under the Hammer, pp. 311-14.

58. Lenin, V. I., “The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (December 1919)Google Scholar, in Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, vol. 30 (Moscow, 1965), p. 270–71.Google Scholar In Russian, see Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 40 (Moscow, 1963), p. 19.Google Scholar