The Bolsheviks and the Central Rada

SEMINAR 5

TOPIC 5

WORLD WAR I AND REVOLUTION

Ukrainians in the First World War

In 1914 a great war started in Europe which involved many countries in the world. Two powerful military blocks - the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) and the Entente (Great Britain, France, Russia, and others) - tried to redraw the map of the world.

    For Ukraine this war was especially tragic as Ukrainian soldiers had to kill each other (3.5 million Ukrainians fought in the Russian army and 250,000 served in the Austrian army).

At the beginning the war went well for Russia. When Russia occupied Western Ukraine in 1914 it decided to eradicate the Ukrainian national movement there. The tsarist government proclaimed Western Ukraine to be an “ancient Russian land” that now “reunited forever with Mother Russia”. All Ukrainian cultural institutions and periodicals were shut down. Russification policy in schools was introduced. Russian officials and Russophiles (Moskvophiles) replaced the old bureaucracy. The Greek Catholic church, a hallmark of West Ukrainian uniqueness, was persecuted. Moreover, the head of Greek Catholic Church was the Roman Pope. That made it very difficult for Russia to control the church. Thus Russia decided to eradicate this church gradually. Hundreds of Greek Catholic priests were exiled to Russia and replaced by their Orthodox counterparts who urged peasants to convert to Orthodoxy.[1] As a result, about 200 Greek Catholic parishes[2] were converted into Orthodoxy.

The Fall of the Monarchy and Its Consequences

The war was a heavy burden for all combatant sides. The first country to break down was Russia. In March 1917 demonstrations against food shortages in Petrograd (Russia’s capital at the time)[3] resulted in deposing the Russian tsar Nikolai II.[4] A liberal government (known as the Provisional Government) assumed power and proclaimed democratic freedoms in Russia. That was a great mistake as democracy is rarely effective during wars, especially in countries without democratic traditions. Censorship was abolished and newspapers started to criticize the government. Numerous socialist agitators, who had been released from prisons by the Provisional Government, went to the front and started to tell the soldiers that they were fighting for the interests of capitalists and not for their own. As a result of such propaganda the army was demoralized and started to disintegrate. Formerly forbidden political parties (including those struggling for autonomy or even independence from Russia) were legalized. The result of such a policy was horrible for Russia’s integrity. Numerous nationalistic organizations in different parts of the Russian Empire emerged and started to demand autonomies for their lands. Ukraine was no exception in this process. Nationally-minded Ukrainians formed a kind of parliament called the Central Rada (with the famous historian M. Hrushevskyi at its head) which proclaimed Ukraine’s autonomous status on 23 June of 1917(First Universal).[5] Shortly thereafter the General Secretariat (cabinet of ministers) headed by V. Vynnychenko was formed. The Central Rada was quite a democratic organization; one-fourth of the seats were given to national minorities. The political ideology of the Central Rada was socialism.

    The Central Rada initially enjoyed wide public support. The Ukrainian peasant believed that the Central Rada would solve the land problem faster than a government in far-off Petrograd, while the Ukrainian soldier hoped it would get him out of the war more quickly than a Russian government could.

    In time, the initial unity that Ukrainians had enjoyed earlier broke down and the political and ideological conflicts between various political groups emerged. Factually the Central Rada turned into a big discussion club. It seemed that the only aim of the deputies was to talk and accuse each other of wrong political views. Gradually disorder and anarchy started to spread all over Ukraine.

   

The Bolsheviks and the Central Rada

In early 1917, the Bolshevik party in Russia, consisting mainly of Russians and Jews, [6] was small and could not play a major role in politics. But the Bolsheviks possessed features that, in those chaotic times, were much more valuable than large membership. They were disciplined and strictly centralized party led by a very gifted politician Vladimir Lenin. Lenin invented very powerful slogans which touched the emotions of the masses: “Peace, Bread, and Land”. That led to the growth of the party’s popularity.

    Like most Russians in Ukraine, the Bolsheviks were against the Ukrainian movement. They feared that it would undermine the unity of the working class.

    In November 1917 the Bolsheviks staged a coup and seized power in Russia.[7] That caused a civil war between the Reds (Communists) and the Whites (supporters of the old regime) for the control over Russia. Ukraine with its vast resources was strategically important in this struggle.

    In December 1917 in Kharkiv the Bolsheviks established a government (made up mostly of Jews and Russians) and proclaimed the Soviet Ukrainian Republic. This government was in fact a puppet government completely controlled by Moscow. Lenin needed this government to justify the invasion of Ukraine by the Red Army. The Bolshevik government in Kharkiv “asked” the Bolshevik government in Moscow in the name of the Ukrainian working people (“трудящиеся массы”) to provide military help. The population of Ukraine was confused. There were two socialist governments in the country – the Central Rada in Kyiv and the Bolshevik one in Kharkiv which were at war.

    Confused by contradictory propaganda from both sides and tired of the long First World War the people decided to remain neutral and wait. Short of military forces the Central Rada even had to mobilize gymnasium (high school) students to defend Kyiv against the advancing Bolshevik troops. At the beginning of February 1918 Kyiv fell to the Bolsheviks who established a reign of terror in the city.