Retrieving History: Ukrainian People’s Republic

Vladyslav Starodubtsev

“I don’t want someone else’s, but I won’t give away my own.” Bogush Shippih, 1917. Poster depicting a woman as the Ukrainian People’s Republic defending its child against the Imperial Russian Eagle.

USUALLY THE HISTORY of the 1917 revolution is told from the perspective of Russia. But its most radical and transformative currents emerged from the empire’s colonized peoples.

Ukraine was first among equals. It managed to create a majority council based socialist and democratic republic, and provided an example of multi-parties, cooperative-based and decentralized socialism, that was later defeated by Russia. It was the forefront of a revolutionary shift — offering a bold vision of what politics could be.

Now is an ideal time for leftists and progressives to learn about Ukraine, about the bold, emancipatory, and radical projects spearheaded by people enslaved by Russia, and return these pages to socialist history.

With the February Revolution finally dealing with the Russian monarchy, revolutionary actions covered the whole of Russia. The Society of Ukrainian Progressives, a non-partisan organization founded in 1908 to defend against black-hundredist reaction in Ukraine, took the initiative to call for a meeting of all Ukrainian parties and organizations.

Meeting on March 17th, 1917, participants of this meeting founded the Central Rada It began with a small group of left-wing and liberal revolutionaries who occupied the Pedagogical Museum in Kyiv, but quickly expanded to represent millions of Ukrainians.

In the initial debates, moderate liberal-revolutionary forces argued for cultural autonomy within a broader Russian framework, while Marxists and Socialist-Revolutionaries pushed for political autonomy — or even full independence — for Ukraine.

The bold stance of the Radical Left and massive popularity amongst the Ukrainian peasants and workers placed two parties at the forefront of the revolution: the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Workers Party (USDRP) and the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR).

Once the Central Rada adopted the goal of political autonomy, it urgently needed to broaden its base to genuinely represent the Ukrainian people. Over the following months, massive demonstrations and congresses of workers, peasants, soldiers, and cooperatives — along with the formation of Ukrainian councils and national organizations — rallied behind the Rada.

Demonstration in support of the Central Rada, with Red and Ukrainian flags, Kyiv, 1917.

Support solidified around the Central Rada, which did its best to give voice to all segments of Ukrainian society. It was expanded by subsequent congresses, which elected and sent their delegates to Rada. From a small group of revolutionaries, it now represented a broad legitimate force, where all parts of Ukrainian society seated their representatives.

Workers’ deputies, soldiers’ councils, and representatives from peasant unions and national minorities were the largest part of the Rada. They were joined by representatives of student and cultural unions, women’s organizations, trade-unions, representatives from municipalities and parties.

In composition, the Rada functioned as a majority soviet (council) parliament: roughly 500 of the 800 deputies were representatives from various soviets.

The October revolution met uneasily with Ukraine. Amidst the chaos of revolt, the Central Rada cooperated with Bolsheviks to prevent any counterrevolutionary force from rising on the territory of Ukraine.

Threats of counterrevolution, instability, and Russian suppression of Ukrainian organizations prompted Central Rada to advance in the realization of political autonomy for Ukraine and to declare the Ukrainian People’s Republic.(1) Its platform echoed many of the slogans of the Russian Bolsheviks.(2)

Contradictions of 1917

November 1917 was a month of constant struggle, first against counterrevolutionary forces, then against the attempts to overthrow Central Rada by the Bolshevik militias. Not finding the support of the people against Central Rada, in December 1917 Bolsheviks declared war against Ukraine.

Russian Red forces dismantled cooperatives,(3) imposed party control over Ukrainian soviets,(4) persecuted Ukrainians on national grounds, and economically exploited the country.(5)

Even under these conditions, Ukrainian workers, peasants, students and socialists stood at the frontlines of resistance to the Russian invasion, while the government pressed forward, legislating progressive reforms despite scarce resources.

Following the invasion, Ukrainian forces abandoned an idea of political autonomy as a part of Russia and declared an independent peasant-worker republic.

“Moreover, the same Petrograd government is delaying peace and calling for a new war, labeling it a ‘holy’ one. Blood will be spilled again; once more, the suffering working people will be forced to give their lives.

“[…] Until then, we call on all citizens of the independent Ukrainian People’s Republic to steadfastly guard the freedom and rights gained by our people and to defend their fate with all their strength from all enemies of the peasant-worker independent Republic.”(6)

Independent Ukraine

Thus was the first modern Ukrainian state born. Despite the challenges it faced, the Ukrainian People’s Republic nevertheless succeeded in realizing many major socialist reforms. For example, it put in place a strong framework for a cooperative(7) and state-run economy.

At that time, the majority of economic activity in Ukraine was done by cooperative organizations, while state-owned enterprises focused on immediate issues like prosecuting the war and meeting social needs.

Ukraine adopted a proto-Keynesian economic approach and appointed the famous economist, Tuhan-Baranovskyi, as financial minister, who was one of John Maynard Keynes’ inspirations when he was developing his economic theory.(8)

The new Ukrainian government also undertook decentralization reforms, enhancing the authority of municipalities and local councils in governance, promoting gender equality, and enacting a long-overdue land reform.

National representation was safeguarded as a means of ensuring cohesion and realization of rights to self-determination for Polish, Russian, Jewish and Ukrainian citizens. Subsequently, the Central Rada became the first governing body in the world to implement the concept of national-personal autonomy, establishing distinct national territories and ministries to serve the needs of various national groups.

Politically, it was the first state in which the peasantry and the working class held all political authority. In the later stages of the Ukrainian revolution, the peasant-workers government further empowered what they called  “democratic cl?sses” and enshrined their role as important tools of local self-governance in its legal system.

The intimately social and egalitarian outlook of the Ukrainian Republican forces helped to create an unprecedented popular mobilization. Within just a year, Ukraine had placed itself on the map, organized its governmental institutions and army, realized the most innovative political, economic and social reforms, safeguarded the country from hunger and cold winter — all while facing hostilities from both Russian revolutionary and counterrevolutionary bureaucratic apparatus, factory owners and landlords, and with the majority of the population illiterate.

The scale, enthusiasm and achievements of the Ukrainian revolution at first glance seem to be a miracle, but in reality were the consequence of newfound power of the people, who are united against all forms of oppressions.

Factions in the Republic

By far the most influential political force in the country was the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR), a non-Marxist radical party advocating for decentralization and the socialization of the economy.

Distinct from Marxist factions, the party introduced the concept of the “laboring people” — a coalition of peasants, workers, and the laboring intelligentsia — regarded as equally progressive and historically oppressed under capitalist and feudal systems alike. From 1918 onward, the party embraced a platform based on soviet (council)-based governance.

While the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries was the largest political organization, the most influential was the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers Party (USDRP). Though smaller and nowhere near as popular as the UPSR, its ranks were composed of seasoned revolutionaries who had played a pivotal role in organizing the first soviets during the 1905 revolution.

Unlike many of their contemporaries, they already had a lot of revolutionary experience. Ideologically aligned with orthodox Marxism, the party advocated for a dual system of parliamentary and council-based rule — envisioning a structure in which national governance would be overseen by a parliament, while local affairs would be administered by councils, thus in its core, placing parliament higher than councils.

The moderates of the revolution banded around the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists, which had a relatively minor place in the government compared to the two radical left parties. The Socialist-Federalists have been described retrospectively as “New Dealers,” due to similarities with the future U.S. president platform — but with the crucial difference of the party’s focus towards decentralization and strong support for devolving power to municipalities.

Later, new factions also began to appear. Of note were the Communist Independentists, a communist bloc committed to internationalism and the right to self-determination, and who either opposed Bolshevik colonial policies or abandoned them later.

In late 1918, left wings of the USDRP and UPSR crystallized. These had a more anarchist and maximalist view of socialism, and disagreed with their party positions regarding the speed of reforms, the balance between deliberation and consensus on one side and revolutionary change on the other, and the mode of government.

The Communist Independentists initially supported the Ukrainian People’s Republic against the Bolsheviks, since they acknowledged that the Bolsheviks were waging a war of aggression. However, with the Ukrainian People’s Republic government weakened by military defeats against overwhelming forces, they tried to create a “Third Center” consisting of the two Ukrainian Communist parties and the anarchist Makhnovites.

Only when this option proved to be unstable did they hesitantly opt for negotiation with the Bolsheviks, who completely disregarded their demands and later outlawed them.

What Went Wrong?

The Provisional and, later, Bolshevik governments were both hostile to the Ukrainian and other national republics as a result of their Great Russian chauvinism and their ambition to keep the Russian Empire united and indivisible, albeit in new form. The Bolsheviks were rightly perceived in Ukraine as an imperialist force.

In Ukraine, local chapters of the Russian Communist Party were active, but the Russian leaders were strongly against a separate Ukrainian Bolshevik party. Russian Bolsheviks relied on Russian cadres to rule Ukrainians.

This was not true for all Bolsheviks, however: Communist Independentists existed in the Bolshevik party as well. There was a significant faction, led by Ukrainian Bolsheviks S. Mazalkh and Vasyl Shakhray, who were highly critical of Lenin’s authoritarianism and Russian imperialist rule.

“As the sole military support for our struggle against the Central Rada we have only the army that Antonov-Ovseenko brought to Ukraine, which regards everything Ukrainian as something hostile and counterrevolutionary. What kind of Ukrainian government is this, when its members absolutely do not know and do not want to know the Ukrainian language?… What kind of ‘war minister’ am I when I have to disarm all Ukrainized units in Kharkiv because they refuse to follow me to defend the power of the soviets?” — Vasyl Shakhray, from Yuriy Lapchynskyi’s memoirs

“We do not know who has more right to say of himself, ‘I am the state!’: Louis XIV in France, or you [Lenin] in Soviet Russia. In any case, in your Bolshevik Party you could have said all of this in advance, before the revolution in October 1917. (…)

“If it is not possible to defend Ukraine’s independence in the way we defend it, then tell me: how should Ukraine’s independence be defended in order to remain a member of the Russian Communist Party?” — Vasyl Shakhray, “Question to Comrade Lenin”

Russian Aggression

With the Bolshevik government in place in Petrograd, the Ukrainian Central Rada pursued policies of cooperation, on the basis of their perceived ideological alignment. However, such cooperation came to a swift end when the Russian Bolsheviks decided to invade Ukraine.

“We cannot do without the petroleum of Azerbaijan or the cotton of Turkestan. We take these products which are necessary for us not as the former exploiters, but as older brothers bearing the torch of civilization.” — Grigory Zinoviev quoted in Michael Rywkin, Russia in Central Asia

In December 1917, the newly established Russian government issued an ultimatum to Ukraine, which it subsequently used as a pretext for invasion — thus igniting the first armed conflict between two socialist states.

At the time, Ukraine lacked both the industrial capacity and the institutional infrastructure to mount an effective defense. It was critically short of ammunition, vehicles, medical supplies, and logistical capabilities, and its nascent state apparatus lacked the bureaucratic coherence necessary for large-scale mobilization.

In contrast, the Bolsheviks were able to draw upon the remnants of the Russian imperial bureaucracy and had already begun establishing the centralized structures of governance that would later prove essential for military organization.

Ukraine, by contrast, faced internal resistance from reactionary and Russian as well as Polish nationalist forces and was compelled to build its state from the ground up. It relied heavily on cooperative activists — often the only individuals with administrative experience — who were inexperienced in managing the demands of wartime governance.

Outmatched in both resources and coordination, the Ukrainian forces ultimately faced defeat.

“Muravyov’s army did not have to be encouraged by orders to destroy the ‘enemies of the revolution:’ it consisted of elements that should have been restrained from murder and looting. Having captured Kyiv, the Bolsheviks committed a bloody massacre there, the likes of which the city had not seen since the time of Andrii Bogolyubsky. The number of victims is unclear: anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000. Altogether, at least 3,000 people were shot by the Bolsheviks on the first day.”(9)

“World peace in Ukraine,” 1919. H. Hasenko. On the poster, Russian Red and White, Polish and Romanian forces carve up Ukraine.

The Russian-Ukrainian war waged until 1922, with Ukraine facing invasions from both Red and White Russian forces, a German coup, Poland’s expansionist war, Romanian occupation, and a French naval invasion. The chaos of war, a flu pandemic, economic collapse, and a de facto five-front war all weakened the Ukrainian government’s control.

With significant losses on the battlefield, the army began disintegrating into different warlord factions with little oversight. When the authority of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and centralized army command weakened, Ukraine faced a massive wave of pogroms against the Jewish population.

While the Ukrainian high command executed pogromists where it could, and organized self-defence for Jewish communities, it didn’t have enough capacity to prevent violence.(10) The Ukrainian People’s Republic no longer had the capabilities to ensure order, and, in the face of military defeats, the coalition of revolutionary forces descended into internal conflict.

The government itself, rather than being stationary, became the government on wheels, settled more in trains than in one government hall. Furthermore, the Entente (World War I western alliance) introduced an embargo against Ukraine, including on weapons, food and medication.

Under such unfavorable conditions, Ukraine still managed to forge strong and fruitful relations with other socialist or progressive republics, including the Belarussian People’s Republic, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Georgian Democratic Republic, Crimea People’s Republic, Alash, and others.

But after years of Russian and Russian Bolshevik settler colonialism, the movements for self-determination and democratic socialism faced major obstacles and were eventually defeated. The Empire, albeit in new form, won this battle, but not completely.

Recovering the Legacy

The legacy, however, remained. The Communist Independentists made a huge effort to continue the Ukrainian Revolution “from within” the Bolshevik regime. By hard work and solidarity, they managed to bring about genuine Ukrainization and ultimately constituted a serious internal opposition, which was later described as “the biggest threat to the Soviet Union” by Stalin himself.(11)

The forces of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, anarchists and Communist Independentists who didn’t compromise with Bolsheviks chose a strategy of armed resistance. During 1917-1923, the Bolsheviks faced more than 300,000 rebelling peasants and numerous socialist peasant republics organized by peasant self-defense units.

The underground resistance movement grew as well, with 1435 insurgent units active from 1917 to 1932. There was also a massive spike of uprisings, especially the ones led by Communist Independentists, during the early 1930s Holodomor (famine) genocide.

The legacy of the Ukrainian People’s Republic remains an example of resistance to Russian imperialism, a state in which authentic “soviet democracy” existed, and where the founding principles of democratic, laboring and cooperative socialism were tried.

This republic, with its massive decentralization and local self-governance effort and its huge cooperative movement consisting of millions of people, still inspires Ukrainians to think about what a progressive future might look like.

Sadly, the Soviet Union and, later, the Russian Federation have done everything in their power to control Ukrainian history, enforcing their own narratives, promoting xenophobia, and most importantly, denying and hiding an important, progressive, page of history that demands to be recovered.

Notes

1. https://static.rada.gov.ua/site/const/universal-3.html
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2. https://www.istpravda.com.ua/articles/2020/02/5/ 156989/
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3. Illya Vytanovych “chronicle” of Ukrainian cooperative movement quotes Russian Bolshevik I. Sammary, who, describing one of the major obstacles in conquering Ukraine, says: “In Ukraine we will have to count with a cooperative state.” In Illya’s Vytanovych “History of Ukrainian Cooperative movement” he described in detail the ideology of the Ukrainian cooperative movement, the Bolshevik struggle against it, and the subordination of Ukrainian cooperative movement under the party-state control.
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4. In Ukraine, Soviet democracy persisted longer than in Soviet Russia, due to lack of Bolshevik or White forces’ control. Different forms of Soviet power existed in the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Makhno’s anarchist forces and many insurgent Labour Republics aligned with the Ukrainian People’s Republic were based on Soviet democracy. The role of the Soviets was enshrined in the Ukrainian People’s Republic legal system afterward.
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5. https://suspilne.media/amp/51507-golod-v-ukraini-1921-1923-rokiv-hronika/
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6. 4th Universal of Central Rada, translation is mine https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/n0001300-18#Text
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7. According to Vytanovych, in 1920 60% of the Ukrainian population were part of the cooperative movement. There was more than 22,000 active cooperatives. See the Encyclopedia of Ukaine.
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8. Lopukh, K. (2014). M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky’s innovative ideas in the development of the theory of money. Ukrainian Society, 2014(4), 122–129. https://doi.org/10.15407/socium2014.04.122
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9. Д. Дорошенко, Історія України 1917-1923 Том 1. 213 ст.
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10. The story of how the Ukrainian government that introduced the most progressive reforms in terms of Jewish rights at the same time faced one of the biggest period of pogromist violence is best told and researched by historian Henry Abramson in his book Prayer for Government. Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920.
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11. “The most important thing now is Ukraine. Situation in Ukraine is completely bad (…) If we do not work now to correct the situation in Ukraine, we can lose Ukraine. Keep in mind that Pilsudski does not sleep, and his spies in Ukraine are much stronger than Redens or Kosior thinks. Keep in mind that in the Communist Party of Ukraine (500,000 members!) there are many (yes, many!) Rotten elements, conscious and unconscious Petlyurists, finally — direct agents of Pilsudski. As soon as things become worse, these elements won’t shy away to open the front inside (and outside) the party against the party” Stalin’s Letter to Kaganovich, 11.08.1932 https://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/1024676.
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January-February 2026, ATC 240