Simon Vasilyevich Petliura - Ukrainian military and political figure, head of the Directory of Ukrainian People's Republic in 1919-1920, Chief Ataman of the Army and Navy. He is an extremely controversial figure, controversy about which still continues to this day.
Born in Poltava. He studied at the Poltava Theological Seminary, from which he was expelled. In 1900 he joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP). He held left-wing nationalist views.
In 1902 he began his journalistic activities in the Literary and Scientific Bulletin. The magazine was published in Lvov (Austria-Hungary), and its editor-in-chief was M. S. Grushevsky. Petlyura’s first journalistic work was devoted to the state of public education in the Poltava region.
In 1902, fleeing arrest for revolutionary agitation, Petlyura moved to Kuban, where he first gave private lessons in Yekaterinodar, and later worked as a research assistant on the expedition of corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences F. A. Shcherbina, who was engaged in systematizing the archives of the Kuban Cossack troops. Petliura's work received positive assessment F. A. Shcherbiny.
Petliura stayed in Kuban for no more than two years. Continuing his revolutionary activities, he organized a RUP cell in Yekaterinodar - the Black Sea Free Community, and set up a secret printing house in his house to produce anti-government leaflets. This led to his arrest in December 1903. Only in March of the following year, on the basis of a fictitious certificate of illness, he was released on bail and kept under special police supervision, and later was forced to leave Kuban
Returning to Kyiv, he became involved in the secret work of the RUP, gradually gaining more and more influence in the organization. Fleeing from police persecution, in the fall of 1904 he emigrated to Lvov, where he edited the magazines of the Republican Unitary Enterprise "Selyanin" and "Trud", collaborated with the publications "Volya", "Literary and Scientific Bulletin", established contacts with I. Franko, M.S. Grushevsky. Without receiving a formal education, here he attended a course at the Ukrainian Underground University, where representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia of Galicia taught.
The amnesty of 1905 allowed Petliura to return to Kyiv, where he took part in the Second Congress of the RUP. After the split of the RUP and the creation of the USDRP, S. Petliura joined it Central Committee. In January 1906, he went to St. Petersburg, where he edited the monthly USDRP “Free Ukraine”, but already in July he returned to Kiev, where, on the recommendation of M. S. Grushevsky, he got a job as secretary of the editorial office of the newspaper “Council”, published by the Radical Democratic Party, and subsequently worked in magazine "Ukraine", and since 1907 - in the legal journal of the USDRP "Slovo". In the fall of 1908, Petliura again worked in St. Petersburg in the magazines “Mir” and “Education”.
Simon Petliura and his associates from the Poltava Theological Seminary.
In Russia, Simon met fellow countryman Olga Belskaya. This is how Odessa historian and writer Viktor Savchenko describes this novel in his book “Simon Petliura”:
“In 1911, Petlyura, as one of the three main speakers, spoke at a large meeting - an evening of the Ukrainian diaspora of St. Petersburg in the luxurious hall of the Assembly of the Nobility. The evening was dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of Shevchenko’s death. Among the main speakers was Maxim Maksimovich Kovalevsky, who noticed Petlyura and told those present at the evening that Petlyura “would be useful.” This characterization of Kovalevsky was a ticket to the influential circles of both Russian capitals. Perhaps it was Kovalevsky who arranged for Petlyura to find a good place in Moscow, where Simon was eager to move.
And matters of the heart called him to Moscow (...)
On one of these visits at the end of 1908, perhaps at Christmas, Petliura met his fate. (...) At one “evening” of the Ukrainian community, Petlyura meets Olga Afanasyevna Belskaya, a student at Moscow University. (...) Common views and origins brought Simon and Olga closer together. Every visit to Moscow became a holiday for Simon - a meeting with his beloved... In 1910, their romance turned into a civil marriage (quite in the spirit of revolutionary students). Only in 1915 this marriage was officially registered, and then the church wedding of the newlyweds took place.
Olga Belskaya became for Simon Petlyura the beloved woman of his entire life. Simon Vasilyevich, despite his revolutionary and journalistic authority and non-youthful age, was modest in “issues of gender”, and about his romance novels history is completely silent. His further life, already with Olga, shows that he was a monogamist and political activity for him was the main meaning of life.
Simon Petliura with his wife. 1920-26.
At the beginning of 1916, Petlyura entered the service of the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and Cities, created in 1914 to help the government Russian Empire in organizing the supply of the army, whose employees wore military uniforms and were contemptuously called “Zemgusars.”
In this job, Petliura had to communicate a lot with the masses of soldiers and thanks to this she managed to gain popularity among the military. Largely thanks to his energetic activities after the February Revolution, Ukrainian military councils were created on the Western Front - from regiments to the entire front. Petlyura’s authority among the soldiers and social activity promoted him to leadership of the Ukrainian movement in the army. In April 1917, he initiated and organized the Ukrainian Congress of the Western Front in Minsk. The congress created the Ukrainian Front Rada, and Petliura was chosen as its chairman.
On May 5-8 (18-21), 1917, Petlyura took part in the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress. More than 900 delegates gathered from all fronts, fleets, garrisons and districts not only of Ukraine, but also of the entire Russian Empire.
After heated and lengthy debates, they came to a compromise decision: to elect not a chairman of the congress, but a presidium, whose members would take turns leading the meetings. S. Petlyura thus represented the front-line units, N. Mikhnovsky - the rear, V. Vinnichenko - the Central Rada, sailor Competent - the Baltic Fleet. The delegates elected M. Grushevsky as the honorary chairman of the congress and invited the commander of the First Ukrainian regiment named after Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Colonel Yu. Kapkan.
Despite the fact that Petlyura's candidacy passed only a slight majority of votes, it was with his election as a member of the presidium of the Military Congress, and later as the head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee (UGVK) that Petlyura entered Ukrainian politics. On May 8, at the end of the congress, he was co-opted into the Central Rada.
Thanks to his repeated speeches at the congress, Petliura gradually gained popularity among the delegates. He chaired the meetings, made reports “On the nationalization of the army”, “On issues of education”, proposing to move on to training Ukrainian soldiers in native language and translate into Ukrainian military regulations, instructions, and also begin to transform the military schools existing in Ukraine. It is possible that this is exactly his practical approach impressed the military.
Rally in honor of the Third All-Ukrainian Soldiers' Congress.
In support of the demands for autonomy of Ukraine, the UVGK decided to convene the Second All-Ukrainian Military Congress.
Kerensky, in a telegram, prohibited the holding of the congress in all parts under the threat of a court-martial. In response, Petliura turned to Kerensky himself, as well as to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, commanders of the fronts and military districts, warning them that “the prohibition of the congress will cause an inevitable reaction and will sow distrust in the high command among the masses and will reduce the morale of the Ukrainians...”.
Despite the ban, the congress took place on June 5-10 (18-23), 1917 with the participation of about 2000 delegates. Researchers note a certain inconsistency in his speeches - on the one hand, guided by the program postulates of the USDRP, Petliura stated that “a standing army may have an element of danger,” and on the other hand, he recognized the need for real military force.
Sharp criticism was voiced at the congress regarding Kerensky's plans to prepare a major offensive. The delegates stated that this would only lead to massive losses among Ukrainians in favor of the interests of Russian government. When the situation became particularly tense, Petliura appeared on the podium, restraining radical delegates from speaking prematurely.
The situation that developed at the military congress pushed the Central Rada to adopt and promulgate the First Universal, which unilaterally proclaimed the national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine within Russia. The universal was read out by V. Vinnichenko at the congress on June 10 (23).
The congress brought out a number of important decisions in the field of military development, instructing the UGVK to develop a detailed plan for the Ukrainization of the army as quickly as possible and take measures for its immediate implementation. The staff of the UGVK, which was supposed to deal with this, was expanded from 17 to 27 people, and S. Petliura again headed it. The congress also elected an All-Ukrainian Rada of Military Deputies numbering 132 people. All members of the UGVK and the All-Ukrainian Rada of Military Deputies were co-opted into the Ukrainian Central Rada.
During June, Petliura managed to establish the work of all departments of the UGVK, establish close contacts with the majority of Ukrainian military organizations, and establish cooperation with the headquarters of the command of the Southwestern and Romanian fronts. Petlyura tried to unite military specialists from among former senior officers around the State Military Command Russian army and ensure that the committee fulfills the role of the highest body of the created national army.
In preparation for the offensive on the Southwestern Front, the command believed that the creation of “national units” (Polish, Latvian, Serbian, Czechoslovak, etc.) would help strengthen the combat capability of the Russian army, therefore it allowed the 34th and 6th to be Ukrainianized army corps and rename them the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian, and the 7th, 32nd and 41st corps were replenished with marching companies stationed in the rear provinces.
First General Secretariat of the UCR. 1917
On October 25 (November 7), 1917, a Bolshevik armed uprising took place in Petrograd, as a result of which the Provisional Government was overthrown. October 26 (November 8) at a meeting of the Small Rada (permanently operating between sessions of the Central Rada committee) with the participation of representatives of various political and public organizations The Regional Committee for the Protection of the Revolution was created, responsible to the UCR. At the same time, the Small Rada adopted a resolution on power in the country, in which it spoke out against the uprising in Petrograd and promised to “stubbornly fight all attempts to support this uprising in Ukraine.”
On October 28 (November 10), after an unsuccessful attempt at a Bolshevik uprising in Kyiv, the Central Rada abolished the Regional Committee for the Protection of the Revolution and vested it with the functions of the General Secretariat, in which Simon Petlyura again took the post of General Secretary of Military Affairs. On November 7 (20), by decision of the Small Rada, the Third Universal was adopted in an emergency manner, which proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic in federal connection with the Russian Republic.
By mid-November 1917, in conditions when the only real force was the army, the struggle for influence over which was not yet over, the post of head of the military department of the UPR became key.
Due to the fact that the leaders of the Ukrainian Central Rada intended to fulfill military obligations to the Entente, they rushed to form a national army, considering it one of the main attributes and guarantees of statehood. At first, the Bolshevik leadership did not interfere with the formation of national units, including Ukrainian ones, although Petlyura, in his addresses to Ukrainian soldiers, issued on November 11 (24), called on them to return to Ukraine immediately, regardless of the orders of the Council of People's Commissars.
Since November 21 (December 4), Ukrainianized units from different military districts and fronts began to arrive in Ukraine. During November, Ukrainization proceeded more slowly than the Kyiv authorities wanted, due to a number of objective circumstances, which included serious transport problems, the need to fill sections of the fronts that were abandoned by Ukrainized units, and difficulties with the Ukrainization of ethnically heterogeneous units.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian statehood, proclaimed by a unilateral act, did not yet have any international legal formalization - neither recognition by other states, nor official borders established through agreed demarcation with neighbors, including Soviet Russia - especially since the Central Rada refused to recognize the Bolshevik government in Petrograd.
Meanwhile, the All-Ukrainian Rada of Military Deputies demanded that the General Secretariat immediately begin resolving the issue of peace in accordance with people's commissars and democrats in other parts of Russia. The Small Rada on November 21 (December 4) was forced to adopt a resolution on the participation of its representatives in the delegation from the Southwestern and Romanian fronts to negotiate a truce and to submit a proposal for peace negotiations to the Entente and the Central Powers.
On the evening of November 23 (December 6), Simon Petlyura notified the Soviet Supreme Commander Nikolai Krylenko on the unilateral withdrawal of the troops of the Southwestern and Romanian fronts of the former Russian army from the control of the Headquarters and their unification into the independent Ukrainian front of the Active Army of the UPR, which was headed by the anti-Bolshevik-minded Colonel General D. G. Shcherbachev. Krylenko, without entering into a discussion, informed the Council of People's Commissars about what had happened and asked for instructions. Leon Trotsky gave instructions to Krylenko on November 24 (December 7). Trotsky approved the commander-in-chief’s instruction “not to create any political obstacles to the movement of Ukrainian units from north to south” and ordered the establishment of a representative office of the Ukrainian headquarters at Headquarters.
The People's Commissar suggested that the question of a united Ukrainian front should be considered open for now. At the same time, Trotsky instructed Krylenko to begin immediate preparation and deployment of armed detachments against the White Cossacks Kaledin and Dutov - and instructed to “ask the Ukrainian Rada whether it considers itself obligated to assist in the fight against Kaledin or whether it intends to consider the advance of our echelons to the Don as a violation their territorial rights." Krylenko on the evening of November 24 (December 7) asked Petlyura to give a “clear and precise” answer to the question about the passage of Soviet troops to the Don. The General Secretariat, however, based on Petliura’s report, decided to refuse entry to Soviet troops and decided to seek an agreement with the Don government.
Meanwhile, with the permission of the French military mission on the Romanian Front, General Shcherbachev concluded a truce between the combined Russian-Romanian and German-Austrian troops on November 26 (December 9). This allowed him to begin suppressing Bolshevik influence in the army.
The declaration of independence of the Ukrainian Front and the invasion of the Ukrainian authorities into the direct control of the fronts and armies led to disorganization and confusion, undermining the system of unity of command. The Extraordinary Congress of the Southwestern Front, held on November 18-24 (December 1-7), did not agree with the transition to subordination to the Ukrainian authorities, and on the issue of political power spoke in favor of the Councils of Soldiers', Workers' and Peasants' Deputies in the center and locally. General N.N. Stogov, who served as commander of the Southwestern Front, was concerned about the situation on the front line and reported to Kyiv that “Russian units are threatening to flee from the Ukrainian Front. A catastrophe is not far off."
The head of the UPR Directorate, Symon Petlyura, is among the political and military leaders of the UPR. 1918 – 1919.
On November 30 (December 13), Petliura sent a telegram to front commanders and Ukrainian commissars prohibiting the passage of military trains without special permission from the General Secretariat for Military Affairs. Having received a message about this, the chief of staff of the revolutionary Headquarters, General M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, ordered to “continue to give orders in accordance with the regulations on field command and control of troops.”
From the Southwestern Front, units of the Bolshevik 2nd Guards advanced to Kyiv army corps. In order to stop them, Petliura ordered the dismantling of the railway track, blocking of junction stations, and the immediate disarming of suspicious military units. The commander of the 1st Ukrainian Corps, General of the UPR Army P.P. Skoropadsky, was appointed commander of all the troops of the Right Bank of Ukraine (up to 20 thousand soldiers, 77 guns) covering Kyiv. Skoropadsky managed to disarm and disperse the masses of soldiers rushing towards Kyiv. The disarmament of garrisons and units occurred simultaneously in ten cities - those where Petliura's order to dismiss non-Ukrainian soldiers was not carried out - and in four more cities local Soviets were dissolved on suspicion of conspiracy.
In the period from December 4 to 11 (17-24), by order of Petliura and the commander of the Ukrainian Front, General Shcherbachev, troops captured the headquarters of the Romanian and Southwestern fronts, armies, right down to regiments, arrested members of the Military Revolutionary Committees and Bolshevik commissars, under Some of them were shot. This was followed by the disarmament by the Romanians of those units in which the Bolshevik influence was strong. Left without weapons and food, Russian soldiers were forced to leave on foot for Russia
Simon Petlyura in 1918 near Kyiv.
On December 4 (17), the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia sent the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, opening in Kiev, a “Manifesto to the Ukrainian people with ultimatum demands to the Central Rada,” which contained a demand for the UCR to stop disorganizing the united common front and passing through the territory controlled by the UCR military units, leaving the front for the regions of Russia.
The Council of People's Commissars stated that if a satisfactory response to the demands was not received within forty-eight hours, it would consider the Rada in a state of open war against Soviet power in Russia and Ukraine. The Central Rada rejected these demands and set its own conditions: recognition of the UPR, non-interference in its internal affairs and in the affairs of the Ukrainian Front, permission for the departure of Ukrainianized units to Ukraine, division of finances former empire, participation of the UPR in general peace negotiations.
Speaking at the Congress of Soviets, UPR Minister of War Petlyura made a statement:
“A campaign is being prepared for us! We felt that we, Ukrainian democrats, were preparing a knife in our backs... The Bolsheviks were concentrating their army for defeat Ukrainian Republic… »
On December 8 (21), trains with red detachments arrived in Kharkov under the command of R. F. Sivers and sailor N. A. Khovrin - 1600 people with 6 guns and 3 armored cars, and from December 11 (24) to December 16 (29) - up to five thousand more soldiers, led by commander Antonov-Ovseenko. In addition, in Kharkov itself there were already three thousand Red Guards and pro-Bolshevik soldiers old army.
On the night of December 10 (23), Soviet troops arriving from Russia in Kharkov arrested the Ukrainian commandant of the city and established dual power in the city. Arriving in Kharkov, Antonov-Ovseenko initially focused on the White Cossacks as the greatest danger to the revolution. A policy of passive opposition was pursued towards the UPR. Ukrainian administrators in Kharkov were released from arrest, and neutrality was established in relations with the local Ukrainian garrison.
With the arrival of Soviet troops, a group of delegates who left the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kiev arrived in Kharkov, joined by deputies from the Congress of Soviets of the Donetsk and Krivoy Rog basins. On December 11−12 (24-25), an alternative to the Kyiv 1st All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets took place in Kharkov, which proclaimed Ukraine a Republic of Soviets. He declared a “decisive struggle against the policy of the Central Rada, which was disastrous for the worker-peasant masses,” established federal ties between Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia, and elected the Provisional Central Executive Committee of the Councils of Ukraine (VUCIK). On December 14 (27), the People's Secretariat, the first government of Soviet Ukraine, was separated from the VUTsIK. The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR immediately recognized him.
The leaders of the Directory receive a military parade (Petliura in the center). 1918
In early December, Soviet Commander-in-Chief Krylenko addressed the front-line soldiers with a statement that the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR would fight "for an independent Ukrainian republic... where power will be in the hands of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies." By his order, up to 6 thousand soldiers of Ukrainianized units heading to Ukraine were disarmed in the Smolensk province and Belarus. In response to these actions, Petliura called on Ukrainianized units Northern Front stop Soviet troops heading to Ukraine. These calls from Petliura pushed the government of Soviet Russia to take decisive action.
UPR Prime Minister V.K. Vinnychenko said that Petliura was to blame for the conflict with the Council of People's Commissars and his resignation would help avoid war. Vinnychenko advocated replacing the professional army with a people's militia, which would weaken the position of Petliura, who insisted on preserving the old army and creating regular military units. Stalin’s article “To the Ukrainians of the Rear and Front” was published in Kyiv newspapers, in which the author directly pointed to Petliura as the main culprit in the conflict between the UPR and Soviet Russia. Vinnichenko began to insist on the immediate disarmament of Cossack trains passing through Ukraine. Petliura refused, declaring that it was not profitable to break ties with the Russian Cossacks.
From December 12 (25), Petlyura began to transfer Ukrainian units to the east of Ukraine in order to take under protection the most important railway junctions: Lozovaya, Sinelnikovo, Yasinovataya, Aleksandrovsk, hoping to maintain contact with the Don as a possible strategic ally in the war against the Bolsheviks. Railway trains passed through Lozovaya with Cossack units returning from the front. Having learned about these movements, the command of the Southern Group of Soviet Forces took active action against the UPR. The plan of the command of the Southern Group of Soviet Forces did not initially envisage a wide war against the UPR, a march on Kyiv and the liquidation of the Central Rada. It was only about organizing defense in the Poltava direction, capturing the junction stations Lozovaya and Sinelnikovo.
Antonov-Ovseenko handed over command of the troops stationed in Ukraine to his chief of staff, Colonel Muravyov, and he himself led the fight against Cossack troops Don. Muravyov, advancing on the main direction Poltava - Kyiv, had an army of about seven thousand bayonets, 26 guns, 3 armored cars and 2 armored trains. The advance of Muravyov’s main column was supported by the small “armies” of P.V. Egorov following him in echelons from Lozovaya station and A.A. Znamensky (Moscow special forces detachment) from Vorozhba station.
At a meeting of the UPR government on December 15 (28), it became clear that the UPR troops were unable to stop the advance of the Red Army. Vinnichenko did not believe in the reality of the full-scale war that had begun and proposed demanding that the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR cease hostilities and recall the troops. Petlyura proposed organizing an immediate offensive of UPR units on Kharkov and creating small mobile units from the remaining composition of the old decayed divisions for use along the railway lines without declaring war.
The General Secretariat of the UPR, instead of taking decisive action to defend the territory, formed another management structure - a Special Committee - the Board for the Defense of Ukraine. On December 18 (31), 1917, by decision of the General Secretariat and the Central Rada, Petlyura was dismissed from the post of Minister of War and removed from the General Secretariat due to abuse of power. Nikolai Porsh was appointed General Secretary for Military Affairs.
Vinnichenko and Petliura. Kyiv, December 1918.
Removed from the leadership of the army, Petlyura decided to independently form a special volunteer combat unit in Kyiv - Gaidamak Kosh Sloboda Ukraine. It was meant that this formation would set as its goal the return of Sloboda Ukraine captured by the Bolsheviks ( historical name Kharkov province). At first (with money from the French mission) only the First Red Haidamaks Kurken of 170-180 volunteers was created. Later they were joined by 148 Kyiv cadets.
Proclamation of Soviet power in Kharkov and the occupation by the Bolsheviks of a number of industrial centers on the territory of Eastern and Southern Ukraine, while maintaining the Central Rada in Kyiv, which declared the independence of Ukraine, inevitably led to the transition of the struggle for power in Ukraine between the Bolsheviks and the Central Rada into an acute phase. The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, which recognized the Soviet government of Ukraine, on January 4 (17) decided to attack the troops of the Central Rada. Main blow it was decided to move from Kharkov to Poltava with a further movement to Kyiv together with the Bolshevized units of the former Russian army, which threatened Kyiv from different sides, including parts of the disintegrated Southwestern Front. The overall management of the operation was entrusted to the chief of staff of the Southern Group of Forces, M. A. Muravyov.
January 9 (22) in the face of the unfolding Soviet offensive Malaya Rada proclaimed the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic, instructing the new government of the UPR - the Council of People's Ministers - to begin peace talks with the states of the Austro-German bloc. On January 12 (25), parts of the Gaidamak Kosh of Sloboda Ukraine were thrown towards the Poltava direction in an attempt to stop the offensive. Ataman of the Gaydamat Kosh Petliura was asked to exercise overall leadership of the scanty remnants of the UPR forces on the Left Bank of the Dnieper.
On January 17 (30), however, Petlyura received an order to immediately return to Kyiv to eliminate the Bolshevik armed uprising, which threatened the very existence of the Central Rada. On January 19 (February 1), the Haidamaks broke through to Kyiv and on January 21 (February 3) they took part in the assault on the last stronghold of the rebels - the Arsenal plant. During the assault, Petlyura personally led his subordinates and, at the end of hostilities, allegedly stopped the impending execution of prisoners. The fighting against scattered groups of rebels continued the next day. By the evening of the same day, however, troops under the command of Muravyov approached Kyiv. A multi-day artillery shelling and assault on the city began.
On the night of January 25-26 (February 7-8), the government and the remnants of the UPR troops left Kyiv. Having retreated from the capital, Petliura refused to unite with the regular units of the UPR army and submit to the authority of the UPR military department, declaring that the Haidamaks are “partisan-volunteer” units with their own tasks and goals and are only in “alliance” with units of the UPR.
Simon Petlyura during a prayer service on Sophia Square. January 22, 1919.
On the morning of January 28 (February 10), Prime Minister Golubovich announced the signing of peace with the Austro-German bloc in Brest-Litovsk. In exchange for military assistance in ousting Soviet forces from the territory of Ukraine, the UPR undertook to supply Germany and Austria-Hungary by July 31, 1918, a million tons of grain, 400 million eggs, up to 50 thousand tons of cattle meat, lard, sugar, hemp, manganese ore, etc. Austria-Hungary also took undertakes to create an autonomous Ukrainian region V Eastern Galicia. The parties expressed a desire to live in peace and friendship, renounced mutual claims for compensation for losses caused by the war, and pledged to restore economic relations, exchange prisoners of war and surplus agricultural and industrial goods.
Petliura greeted the news of peace without much joy. Meanwhile, the retreat of the UPR forces continued in the direction of Zhitomir, where the commander of the Southwestern Ukrainian Front, Ensign Kudrya, and his subordinate troops were located. In the same area, however, was the 1st Hussite Czechoslovak Division from the Czechoslovak Corps, formed as part of the Russian Army mainly from captured Czechs and Slovaks - former soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army. Based on the decree of the French government on the organization of an autonomous Czechoslovak army in France, Czechoslovak units in Russia from January 15, 1918 were formally subordinated to the French command and were preparing to be sent to France.
The division command, having learned about the UPR’s alliance with Germany, began to show hostility towards the Ukrainian units. Already on January 30 (February 12), it was decided to withdraw the main forces from Zhitomir to the northwest, into remote Polesie, counting on the help of units of the Polish Corps, which rebelled against the Bolsheviks in Belarus, near Mozyr. Petlyura’s detachment headed to Ovruch and Novograd-Volynsky, and the Central Rada and the Sichov Kuren went further west, to Sarny, to the German-Ukrainian front itself. Rada leaders hoped to hold out here until they entered Ukrainian territory German troops.
Heads of the Directory, government and officers of the UPR. Kamenets-Podolsky. June 1919.
On January 31 (February 13) in Brest, the UPR delegation, by secret decision of several Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries from the Council of Ministers, submitted a memorandum to Germany and Austria-Hungary with a request for help from the UPR against Soviet troops, which became a logical continuation of the peace treaty signed a few days earlier. Although the military convention between the UPR, Germany and Austria-Hungary was formalized later, the German command on the same day gave its preliminary consent to enter the war against the Bolsheviks and began to actively prepare for a campaign in Ukraine.
Starting from February 18, German and Austro-Hungarian units numbering more than 230 thousand people (29 infantry and four and a half cavalry divisions) began to cross the Ukrainian section of the line Eastern Front and move deeper into Ukraine. On February 19, German troops entered Lutsk and Rivne, and on February 21 they ended up in Novograd-Volynsky. Austro-Hungarian troops invaded the UPR on February 25, crossing the border rivers Zbruch and Dniester, and immediately occupied the cities of Kamenets-Podolsky and Khotyn. Austrian military forces advancing on Odessa direction- along railway Lviv - Ternopil - Zhmerynka - Vapnyarka, quickly occupied Podolia. When the occupation forces advanced along the railway lines, the small Ukrainian UPR troops, although they were in the vanguard, were completely dependent on the decisions of the German command. The Ukrainian command had to coordinate all its military operations and tactical actions with him.
Right Bank Ukraine returned to the control of the UPR practically without a fight. Knowing that the Germans were preparing a ceremonial entry into Kyiv, Ataman of the Gaidamak Kosh Petliura demanded that the Ukrainian command give the Haidamaks the opportunity to be the first to enter Kiev. At a meeting of Ukrainian commanders, an acute conflict arose on this issue between Petliura, Prime Minister Golubovich and the new Minister of War Zhukovsky. The Prime Minister and the Minister of War were categorically against Petliura's proposal, believing that the main forces - the Germans - should enter Kyiv first. But on Petliura’s orders, one of his commanders, Ataman Volokh, deployed the Haidamaks’ machine guns at direct fire at the windows of the ministerial carriage and demanded consent for the Haidamaks to enter Kiev, threatening a military coup. The consent of the Prime Minister and the Minister of War was thus obtained, and Petliura’s detachment rushed to Kyiv along the railway, 8-10 hours ahead of the movement of German forces.
On March 1, the forward detachments of the UPR army - the Haidamaks, Sich Riflemen and Cossacks, entered the western outskirts of Kyiv. The next day, Petliura organized a parade on Sophia Square in Kyiv, along which the troops marched as they entered the city. At large cluster a prayer service was held for the people in honor of the expulsion of the Bolsheviks... The parade ended with a column of prisoners marching across the square Soviet soldiers. The next day, German troops, the UPR government, and the Central Rada arrived in Kyiv. The entry of Petliura's Haidamaks into the capital and their unauthorized parade infuriated the leadership of the Rada and the Germans (Petliura was considered a supporter of the Entente). Prime Minister Vsevolod Golubovich achieved the complete removal of Petliura, this “...adventurer who is very popular,” from the army. Petlyura was relieved of command of the Haidamaks and until mid-November 1918 remained a private citizen, outside the army and big politics.
On April 29, 1918 in Kiev at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Grain Growers (landowners and large peasant owners, about 7,000 delegates), taking advantage of the protracted crisis of the Central Rada of the UPR and relying on the support of the German occupation forces, the former tsarist general P. P. Skoropadsky was proclaimed hetman of Ukraine. Skoropadsky dissolved the Central Rada and its institutions, land committees, abolished the republic and all revolutionary reforms. Thus, the Ukrainian People's Republic was abolished and a Ukrainian state was established with a semi-monarchical dictatorial rule of the hetman - the supreme leader of the state, army and judiciary in the country.
Despite the fact that the new government did not enjoy the support of either the Ukrainian population or “Russian circles”, who perceived the hetman as a separatist and an opponent of a united Russia, they came to terms with the coup - the Central Rada was not able to decisively fight for power and capitulated.
On May 3, a government was formed headed by F.A. Lizogub. Ukrainian socialist parties refused to cooperate with the new regime. Skoropadsky intended to seek support in the old bureaucracy and officers, large landowners and the bourgeoisie. By May 10, the delegates of the Second All-Ukrainian Peasant Congress were arrested, and the congress itself was dispersed. The remaining delegates called on the peasants to fight against Skoropadsky. The first all-Ukrainian conference of trade unions also passed a resolution against the hetman. The hetman prohibited the convening of party congresses of the USDRP and UPSR, but they, ignoring the prohibitions, secretly met and passed anti-hetman resolutions. Zemstvos of Ukraine became the center of legal, irreconcilable opposition to the hetman's regime.
Petlyura, who headed the Union of Zemstvos of Ukraine during this period, was engaged in disseminating his ideas among the small and middle peasantry through zemstvo institutions, cooperative organizations, provincial clergy and rural teachers. As Hetman’s own Chief of Staff B.S. Stelletsky later admitted, “all his [Petliura’s] orders from the center reached the masses much faster and more accurately than Skoropadsky’s orders through his bureaucratic apparatus. And vice versa, Petliura, through the same organizations, received much more accurate and complete information about the mood on the ground.”
S. Petlyura, V.K. Vinnichenko, N.E. Shapoval with other left Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries and in collaboration with the Peasant Union (Selyanska spilka) created shadow structures of opposition power throughout the country, held underground congresses of party cells and secret meetings influential local figures.
Meanwhile, in May 1918, a real peasant war began in Ukraine, which quickly engulfed its entire territory. The main reasons were the resumption of landownership and the terror of punitive and requisition detachments of interventionists. Against the violence of the Austro-German troops and the hetman’s “warta” (guards) free Cossacks, who refused to support his hetman. During the peasant uprisings in the spring and summer alone, about 22 thousand soldiers and officers of the occupation forces (according to the German General Staff) and more than 30 thousand Hetman Warts died. Peasant uprisings practically disrupted the collection and export of food.
A. Makarenko, F. Shvets and S. Petlyura on the porch of the residence of the UPR Directory. Kamenets-Podolsky. 1919
At the end of May, the inter-party center-right Ukrainian National State Union was created. At first, he limited himself to moderate criticism of the regime and the government, but with the weakening of German influence and, accordingly, the position of the hetman, his activities became more and more radical.
On the night of July 27, based on intelligence information received by the Hetman’s Headquarters about the preparation of an anti-government conspiracy, in agreement with German command Several dozen left-wing Ukrainian politicians were arrested (among them were, in particular, N.V. Porsh, Yu. Kapkan, and others). Petlyura was placed in Lukyanovskaya prison, where he was held without charge.
Meanwhile, in August, with the annexation of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries, the “Selyanskaya Spilka”, and the Petlyura Union of Zemstvos, the Ukrainian National-State Union became known as the Ukrainian National Union. In mid-September, it was headed by the leader of the USDRP, Vladimir Vinnichenko, who immediately began searching for contacts with the rebel chieftains. Vinnichenko and Nikita Shapoval, secretly from other leaders of the National Union, went to negotiations with Soviet representatives Kh. G. Rakovsky and D. Z. Manuilsky, who were negotiating peace with the Ukrainian State in Kyiv. Rakovsky and Manuilsky, for their part, hoped to push all opposition forces in Ukraine to revolt against the hetman and strengthen Bolshevik influence in Ukraine. They promised Vinnychenko that if the Ukrainian socialists won, Soviet Russia would recognize the new government of the Ukrainian Republic and would not interfere in its internal affairs.
Meanwhile, on November 3, a revolution began in Germany, on November 9, Germany was proclaimed a republic, Emperor Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands. On November 11, the First Compiegne Truce was signed between the Entente and Germany - an agreement to end hostilities in the First World War. According to one of the conditions of the armistice, Germany pledged to denounce the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Soviet Russia, while German troops had to remain on Russian territory until the arrival of Entente troops.
The defeat of the Central Powers in the war added determination to the future rebels, who were waiting for just such an opportune moment. Moreover, as N. Shapoval testified, the conspirators secretly sent envoys to Berlin in advance in order to establish contacts with German Social Democracy, which would “vigorously oppose the German regime in Ukraine and demand the withdrawal of divisions of German troops.” Soon this pressure on the German military command in Ukraine began to manifest itself - including on the issue of the fate of imprisoned socialists.
On November 13, Petlyura was released at the urgent request of the German command. Hetman Skoropadsky later wrote that “he was forced to release Petliura at the insistence of the Germans, who threatened otherwise free him by force."
Petlyura promised not to speak out against the authorities, but the very next day he went to Bila Tserkva, where he led the anti-Hetman uprising, joining the Directory formed the day before and taking the post of Chief Ataman of the Army and Navy.
Against the entire army of the hetman (about 30 thousand bayonets and sabers), which, moreover, could receive support from numerous German-Austrian troops (150 thousand bayonets and sabers), Petliura had at his disposal only a small detachment of Sich riflemen of 870 people (according to others according to data, 1500 or even 2000 people) and about 100 volunteers. With such forces, Petliura decided not only to carry out a coup in Bila Tserkva, but also to immediately attack Kyiv, which contained more than ten thousand regular hetman troops and “vartas”.
On November 15, the Directory concluded an agreement with the Soldiers' Council of the German garrison of Bila Tserkva on neutrality during the confrontation between the Directory and the hetman. On the morning of November 16, when the rebels completely captured the White Church and disarmed the hetman’s “varta” (guard) of 60 people, the railway workers, joining the rebels, provided them with trains for a quick march to Kyiv. On the morning of November 17, Petliurists captured the neighboring Fastov station, and then the Motovilovka station. But then the path to Kyiv was blocked: the Vasilkov station was already occupied by the Hetman’s punitive detachment - an officer squad under the command of General Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, an armored train and a regiment of Serdyuks - personal guard hetman. The officer squad was defeated, and the Serdyuks avoided battle. Having learned about the defeat of the squad, Hetman Skoropadsky announced a general mobilization of officers (the former army of the Russian Empire), of whom there were up to 12 thousand people in Kyiv alone. But only about 5 thousand officers responded to this call, and even two thousand of them chose to serve in numerous headquarters and departments over the front.
On November 19, the Petliurists approached Kyiv from the southwest and intended to storm the city with 600 bayonets, but were stopped by officer squads. In the face of this threat, Skoropadsky appointed General Count F.A. Keller, popular among the Russian officers, as the commander-in-chief of his army, but his open monarchism and non-recognition of an independent Ukrainian state caused protest from the Ukrainian commanders from the hetman’s army. This led to the Zaporizhian Corps, the Serozhupan Division, and some smaller units going over to the side of the rebels. Within a week, Skoropadsky would remove Keller, accusing him of conspiracy and preparing a “right-wing” anti-hetman coup, which would force some of the officers of the former Russian army to leave Kyiv and rush to the North Caucasus, to Denikin. On November 26, Commander-in-Chief Keller will be replaced by General Prince A.N. Dolgorukov.
At this time, the Hetman Black Sea Kosh (460 bayonets) rebelled in Berdichev, which, on the orders of Petliura, immediately set out for Kyiv and on November 20 approached it from the west. However, even the two thousand soldiers that the Directory had at that moment near Kiev were not enough for the final assault and fight against the hetman’s garrison of the capital. Having recovered from the first military failures, General Svyatopolk-Mirsky organized a new officer squad, which on November 21 pushed back the advancing Petliurists, who had to switch to trench warfare.
Petlyura, however, was helped by the transition of most units of the Hetman's army to the side of the Directory. Already on November 19–20, separate units of the Serdyuks, the Lubensky cavalry regiment, the Serozhupannikov division in the Chernigov region, and parts of the Podolsk corps went over to the side of the Petliurists. On November 20, the Zaporozhye Corps of Colonel Bolbochan (18 thousand bayonets and sabers) came out on the side of the rebels. The corps captured Kharkov and within ten days of the uprising took control of almost the entire territory of Left Bank Ukraine. On November 21–23, rebel detachments began to arrive from near Bila Tserkva to the capital, whom Petlyura supplied with weapons from captured warehouses.
Members of the Directorate of the UPR. Kamenets-Podolsky. 1919
Petliura scheduled a new offensive for November 27. From the south, from the area of the Goloseevsky forest, 500 rebels of Ataman Zeleny came to Kyiv, from the southwest - 4 thousand Sich, Black Sea and peasant rebels. But on the day of the general offensive, the Germans decided to intervene in the course of events: the protracted fighting evacuation was prevented near Kyiv German army. In order to free the railway route to the west, German troops stormed the Shepetovka station from the rebels and demanded that the rebels move 30 km from the capital and stop the attack on Kyiv until all German units were evacuated from the capital. Due to the superiority of the German army, the Directory was forced to accept the German ultimatum. On the other hand, representatives of the French forces intervened in the situation, for whom it was beneficial to delay the departure German units to prevent the rebels from entering Kyiv and maintaining the hetman's power.
On December 14, the troops of the Directory, which rapidly increased in numbers, took Kyiv. Hetman Skoropadsky fled. The Ukrainian People's Republic was restored, and the Directory became its highest authority.
As historians Semenenko and Radchenko write, the Directory in principle rejected not Skoropadsky’s program, but his policies. In the current situation, it turned out to be not a collective body, but a state institution due to the lack of clear powers of its members. Creating power structures, she either tried to copy the Bolshevik system, or was satisfied with the formal renaming of the hetman’s bodies. Simon Petlyura declared his commitment to “ national idea": On January 2, 1919, his order was issued to expel from the borders of the UPR all its enemies "involved in criminal agitation against the Ukrainian government." On January 8, a decree was issued on the arrest and trial of all citizens wearing shoulder straps of the Russian army and royal awards, except for the crosses of St. George, as “enemies of Ukraine.”
At the beginning of February 1919, Vladimir Vinnychenko and other socialists were recalled by the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labor Party (USDRP) from the Directory and the Council of Ministers, and from that time on it was actually headed by Petliura, establishing a military dictatorship.
Simon Petliura. Kamenets-Podolsky. 1919
On January 22, 1919, the UPR Directory signed with the government Western Ukraine“Act of Union” (Ukrainian: “Act of Zluki”). President of the Ukrainian national council ZUNR Evgeniy Petrushevich, who became a member of the Directory, left it in June due to the intention of Petliura and the other members of the Directory to come to an agreement with Poland by ceding Western Ukrainian lands to it.
Petliura conducted active negotiations with the Entente representative office on the possibility of joint action against the Bolshevik army, with the establishment of a French protectorate in Ukraine, but did not achieve success. The Western powers supported General Denikin.
Simon Petlyura and Yevgeny Petrushevich during a review of troops. Kamenets-Podolsky. October 1, 1919.
On December 31, 1918, the Directory proposed to the Council People's Commissars RSFSR peace negotiations. During the negotiations, the Council of People's Commissars rejected the UPR's accusations of undeclared war against her, declaring that “no troops of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic not in Ukraine." For its part, the Directory did not agree to the unification of the Directory with the Ukrainian Soviet government and refused to accept other demands that meant the self-liquidation of the UPR.
Heads of the Directorate of the UPR. Petliura is in the center (sitting).
On January 16, 1919, the Directory declared war on Soviet Russia. In January - April 1919, the main armed forces of the Directory were defeated by Ukrainian Soviet troops and rebels. Members of the Directory fled from Kyiv. The remnants of Petliura's troops were pressed against the border river Zbruch. Taking advantage of the transition of troops of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic to the territory of the UPR (under pressure from Polish forces), as well as the beginning of the offensive of Denikin's troops, the Petliurists, together with the Galician army, launched a counter-offensive and on August 30 (simultaneously with the Whites) occupied Kiev, but the very next day they were expelled from there by the White Guards.
The command of the AFSR refused to negotiate with Petliura, and by October 1919, Petliura’s forces were defeated. The command of the Galician Army in early November signed a truce agreement with the command of the Volunteer Army and went over to the side of Denikin. The “Evil Act” was actually denounced. In Ukrainian historiography, the signing of this treaty is called the “November catastrophe” (Ukrainian: “Listopad catastrophe”). One of the reasons for the breakdown in relations between the UPR and WUNR is cited as Petliura’s negotiations with Poland, which the Galicians regarded as a betrayal.
On April 21, 1920, Symon Petlyura, on behalf of the UPR, concluded an agreement with Poland on joint actions against Soviet troops. In accordance with the agreement reached, the Petliura government agreed, in exchange for recognition, to provide assistance to the Poles in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The terms of the agreement turned out to be extremely difficult - the UPR agreed to establish a border between Poland and Ukraine along the Zbruch River, thereby recognizing the entry of Galicia and Volyn into Poland. Poland took over the Lemkivshchyna, Nadsanje and Kholmshchyna, populated mainly by Ukrainians.
Jagiellonian University professor Jan Jacek Bruski, writing in the Ukrainian newspaper Den, assessed this agreement as a weak “position.”
The alliance with Petlyura allowed the Poles to significantly improve their strategic positions and launch an offensive in Ukraine. On May 7, the Poles occupied Kyiv, then the bridgeheads on the left bank of the Dnieper. However, as a result of the Kyiv operation of the Red Army in the second half of May, Polish troops were forced to begin a retreat in the strip from Polesie to the Dniester. Then, during the Novograd-Volyn and Rivne operations (June - July), the troops of the Southwestern Front of the Red Army were defeated Polish troops and Petliura detachments and reached the approaches to Lublin and Lvov, but were unable to capture Lvov and were forced to retreat in August. On October 18, after the conclusion of a truce with Poland, hostilities in the southwestern direction ceased.
Simon Petlyura and Polish General Antony Listovsky. 1920
In March 1921, the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR and Poland signed the Treaty of Riga, ending the Soviet-Polish War (1919-1921). Petliura emigrated to Poland.
In the fall of 1921, the UPR government in exile planned an invasion of the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, with the goal of organizing a “nationwide uprising against the Bolsheviks.” For this purpose, the “Rebel Headquarters” was created in Lviv, headed by UPR General Yuri Tyutyunnik. The governments of Poland and France assured Petlyura and Tyutyunnik that in case of first success they were ready to send their regular troops to Ukraine. In November, Soviet troops under the command of Vitaly Primakov and Grigory Kotovsky inflicted a crushing defeat on the participants of the “free raid” in the Zhitomir region.
The Soviet government lodged a strong protest with Poland, citing the provisions of the Riga Peace Treaty. In this regard, the leadership of Poland refused Petliura to support his hostile activities against the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1923, the USSR demanded that the Polish authorities extradite Petliura, so he moved to Hungary, then to Austria, Switzerland and in October 1924 to France.
Simon Petliura and Josef Piłsudski.
Despite the fact that the government of the Directory solemnly proclaimed the policy of national autonomy and granting Jews all national-political rights, and also created the Ministry of Jewish Affairs (see A. Revutsky), the activities of the Directory, which was actually controlled by the “ataman group” led by Petliura , was marked by bloody Jewish pogroms. The troops of the Directory, retreating in the winter of 1919 under the blows of the Red Army, turned into gangs of murderers and robbers, attacking Jews in many cities and towns of Ukraine (Zhitomir, Proskurov /see Khmelnitsky/ and others).
According to the Red Cross commission, about fifty thousand Jews were killed during these pogroms. Petlyura could not (according to numerous testimonies, and did not try) to put an end to the bloody atrocities that his army committed. To one of the Jews’ requests that he take advantage of his power to stop the pogroms and punish the pogromists, Petliura replied: “Don’t quarrel between me and my army.” Only in July 1919 did Petliura send a circular telegram to the troops, and in August 1919 issued an order to the army, sharply condemning the pogroms, declaring that Jews were not enemies of the Ukrainian people, and threatening severe punishment for the pogromists.
According to Ukrainian nationalist sources, several of the most zealous pogromists were executed. In October 1919, the remnants of Petliura's troops, defeated by the Red Army, fled to Poland. In 1920, Petlyura entered into an agreement with the Poles on joint military action against Soviet Russia. After the conclusion of peace between Soviet Russia and Poland (1921), Petliura continued to head his government and the remnants of the army in exile.
Pilsudski and Petlyura together with Polish officers and UPR officers.
Schwartzbard argued that the murder was solely an act of revenge for the Jewish pogroms of 1918–20. in Ukraine.
Lawyer Torres justified Symon Petliura’s personal responsibility for the pogroms of Ukrainian Jews by the fact that Petliura, as head of state, was responsible for everything that happened on the territory he controlled.
Petliura’s associates and relatives presented more than 200 documents at the trial, indicating that Petliura not only did not encourage anti-Semitism, but also harshly suppressed its manifestations in his army. However, they were not taken into account, since Torres showed that most of them were drawn up after the expulsion of the Petliuraites from Ukraine and none were signed by Petliura personally. According to the Red Cross Commission, during the pogroms carried out by the Directory troops in the winter of 1919, about fifty thousand Jews were killed. The prosecution was unable to cite a single case in which Petliura, through his direct actions, prevented a pogrom or punished pogromists. Petlyura’s words to the Jewish delegation at the Mameevka station appeared at the trial: “Don’t quarrel between me and my army.” Only in July-August 1919 did he condemn the pogroms and issue an order prohibiting them on pain of severe punishment.
Ukrainian historian Dmitry Tabachnik, who devoted several works to the murder of Petliura, refers to the Jewish historian Semyon Dubnov, who claimed that the archives of Berlin contain about 500 documents proving Petliura’s personal involvement in the pogroms. The historian Cherikover spoke similarly at the trial.
The Paris investigation in 1927 did not take into account the testimony of witness Eliya Dobkovsky, who gave written testimony about the participation in the case of Mikhail Volodin, whom he considered an agent of the GPU. Volodin, having appeared in Paris in 1925, actively collected information about the chieftain, was personally acquainted with Schwartzbard and, according to Dobkovsky, helped him prepare the murder. The involvement of the GPU in organizing the murder of Petliura in 1926 was testified in the US Congress by OGPU employee Pyotr Deryabin, who fled to the West.
Schwarzbard was completely acquitted by a French jury
According to his comrades-in-arms, Simon Petlyura tried to stop pogroms and severely punished those who participated in them. For example, on March 4, 1919, Petlyura’s “ataman” Semesenko, twenty-two years old, gave his “Zaporozhye Brigade”, stationed near Proskurov, the order to destroy everything Jewish population in the city. On March 5, more than a thousand people were killed, including women and children. A few days later, Semesenko imposed an indemnity of 500 thousand rubles on the city and, having received it, thanked in the order the “Ukrainian citizens of Proskurov” for the support they provided to the “People’s Army”. It was reported that because of this, on March 20, 1920, on the orders of Petlyura, he was shot. However, witnesses A. Chomsky and P. Langevin, who spoke at the Schwarzbard trial, testified that the “trial” and “sentence” were staged, and Semesenko himself was secretly released on the orders of Petliura.
Petliura's grave at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
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("military general secretary") of the first Ukrainian government of the Central Rada in 1917-1918, head of the UPR Directory in 1918-1920.
3 feats of Simon Petliura.
1. He organized the first national armed forces in 1917.
As the first Ukrainian Minister of War ("Secretary General for Military Affairs") from June 1917.
He obtained permission from the Provisional Government of Russia, headed by Kerensky, to create the Ukrainian Armed Forces: only military units at the front remained subordinate to Petrograd, in the rear “the Ukrainization of the army began,” all garrisons on the territory of Ukraine, as well as reserve regiments, the replacement of the entire military administration with Ukrainian patriots and the transfer of Ukrainianized units from other fronts to the territory of Ukraine (to the Romanian and Southwestern fronts);
In November 1917 already from the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars Lenin achieved the reassignment of the troops of the Southwestern and Romanian fronts to the Ukrainian government, placing at the head of the front the anti-Bolshevik-minded Tsarist Colonel General D. G. Shcherbachev, the ex-commander of the Romanian Front;
Suppressed the first Bolshevik uprisings (General Pavel Skoropadsky, at the head of the 20,000-strong “UNR corps,” disarmed and dispersed to their homes the 2nd Army Corps, which had gone over to the Bolshevik side);
In December 1917, he arrested all Bolshevik members of the Military Revolutionary Committees and Bolshevik commissars at the headquarters of the South-Western and Romanian fronts, forcing a number of Bolshevik-minded regiments to disarm and “go home on foot without weapons to Russia”;
At the end of December 1917 organized the defense of Aleksandrovsk (Zaporozhye), Sinelnikov, Lozova during the offensive of the Bolshevik troops of Colonel Muravyov.
2. Petlyura at the head of the UPR Directory: the formation of Ukrainian statehood and its Armed Forces (December 1918-November 1920). Power in Kyiv changed with kaleidoscopic speed:
Bolsheviks (February - April 1918);
Hetman Skoropadsky (April-November 1918), who was put in charge of Ukraine by the German-Austrian occupation forces that entered under the Brest Peace Treaty of 1918 (they left with Hetman Skoropadsky after the revolution that broke out in November 1918)
In December 1918, having defeated the troops of Hetman Skoropadsky (the plot of M. Bulgakov's novel "Days of the Turbins"), the Directory came to the head, first headed by Vinnichenko, then from February 13 - with Petlyura. During this period, Symon Petlyura managed to lay the foundations of Ukrainian statehood and its armed forces.
Petlyura became a symbol of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine, proving that it is impossible to break them, they can only be stopped by death from the hired killer of Bolshevik Russia.
Iron Cross of the UPR
Biography of Simon Petlyura.
1901 - took part in the All-Ukrainian Student Congress, representing the society of the theological seminary, although by that time he had already been expelled from the educational institution for his political activity;
In the spring of 1902, he became one of the organizers of a speech by seminarians who demanded the abolition of the espionage system, the release of guards, and the introduction of Ukrainian studies subjects into the program. As a result of this, he began to face arrest. Simon Petliura, together with his friend Poniatenko, leaves for Kuban;
Immediately upon arrival he becomes a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party and begins his journalistic activities;
1903 - got a job in the archaeographic expedition of Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Fyodor Shcherbina, who was engaged in putting in order the archives of the Kuban Cossacks. He was arrested for his political activities, because of which he left for Kuban. His father posted bail for Petlyura, and he was soon released;
Autumn 1904 - changes his name to Svyatoslav Targon and crosses illegally, returning to his homeland. Settles in Lvov, where the Foreign Committee of the RUP is located at that time;
From March to April 1905 - edited the party "Selyanin";
December 1904 - spoke in Lvov at the RUP conference against the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party;
November 1905 - after the proclamation of political amnesty in the Russian Empire, he returns home;
August 1906 - goes to St. Petersburg to edit the central organ of the party - the month "Svobodnaya". However, the publication was soon closed, and Symon Petliura returned to Kyiv, where he became secretary of the Kyiv diary "Rada";
1908 - co-editor of the legal Social Democratic journal "Slovo";
1908-1910 - lives in St. Petersburg, where he takes an active part in the Ukrainian movement;
1911 - moves to Moscow, where a girl was waiting for him, born, who was named Lesya Petlyura. He worked as an accountant at the insurance company "". Gradually he turned into a famous public figure;
1916 - joins the Union of Zemstvos and Cities. He holds the position of Commissioner of the Main All-Russian Zemstvo Congress, as well as the head of the Control Board of the Zemstvo Congress on the Western Front. Moves to, where the headquarters of the Western Front is located;
1917 - Initiates the Ukrainian Congress of the Front in Minsk. Becomes the head of the front council and is delegated to the All-Ukrainian Military Congress;
1917-1918 - becomes the head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee, joins the Central Rada. Heads the Kiev provincial zemstvo and creates on its basis the All-Ukrainian community of zemstvos;
1918 - arrested for an anti-Hetman manifesto and served 4 months in the Lukyanovsky pre-trial detention center. After his release, he went to Bila Tserkva, where Yevgeny Konovalets’ detachment was based at that time;
December 6, 1919 - leaves for Warsaw to organize a military-political alliance there with Poland against Bolshevik Russia, which was signed in April 1920;
October 1924 - settled in Paris. He organized the publication of the weekly Trizub and continued to serve as head of the UPR Directory and Chief Ataman of the UPR.
A documentary film was made about Simon Petlyura:
Murder of Petlyura.
May 25, 1926 - Simon Petlyura was killed by S.-Sh. Schwartzbard, secret agent of the NKVD. Petlyura was shot at the intersection of Rue Racine and Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris at two o'clock in the afternoon, when the chieftain stopped near a bookstore. Schwartzbard fired seven bullets at him. He was caught at the crime scene and the wounded Petlyura was taken to the hospital, where doctors tried to save his life, but all efforts were unsuccessful.
Simon Petlyura was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
On the day of the funeral, 40 Polish generals knelt in a church in Warsaw.
Perpetuating the memory of Symon Petliura.
In 2005, a decree was signed to perpetuate the memory of Symon Petliura, as well as the installation of monuments to him in Kyiv and others, as well as the naming of individual military units after him;
Streets in the following cities were named in honor of Petlyura: Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Shepetivka, and many others;
February 11, 2008 - the Kyiv City Administration commission on issues of names and memorial signs decided to rename one of the streets in Kyiv to Simon Petlyura Street;
2009 - Kiev City Council Commission on local self-government, regional, international relations and information policy recommended that the Kyiv City Council rename Comintern Street in the Shevchenkovsky district of the capital to Simon Petlyura Street;
2009 - renaming occurred;
A monument to Simon Petliura was unveiled in the city of Rivne;
There is a Ukrainian library and museum named after Simon Petlyura in Paris.
.(1879-1926) Ukrainian politician
Until recently, Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura was considered more of a caricature than historical figure. Meanwhile, the life of this man is full of extraordinary events and hardly fits into the standard framework that has hitherto been limited to his official biography.
Simon Petliura was born in Poltava, a small city in Ukraine, famous for poem of the same name A. Pushkin and the works of N. Gogol. Petlyura's family came from the bourgeoisie, but proudly called themselves “Cossacks.” Simon Petliura himself was proud that his ancestor had proven himself back in the times of the Zaporozhye Sich.
After graduating from a three-year parish school, Simon was sent to the Poltava Theological Seminary. There he studied well and was repeatedly awarded certificates of merit. However, in his last grades, the young man became interested in revolutionary ideas and joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP).
The activities of this party were then prohibited, so he was expelled from the seminary with a “wolf ticket.” Hiding from police surveillance, he moved to Yekaterinodar, where he tried to continue his studies, but it was difficult to do, and then Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura passed the exams as an external student.
He continued to engage in revolutionary activities in Yekaterinodar, so in 1903, along with other members of the Kuban organization of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, he was arrested. True, his trial never took place, and in March 1904 he was released on bail.
Petliura immediately left for Kyiv, where he planned to continue his education. But the doors Kyiv University were closed to him. Then he went to Lvov, where he became a volunteer student at the local university. In parallel with his studies, Simon continued his party work. He becomes an employee of the editorial office of the magazine "Selyanin", the legal printed organ of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party.
In January 1906, Symon Petliura was sent to the congress of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party, where he represented the leadership of the RUP. When he returned to Lvov, the Galician police placed him under public surveillance. Fearing that he would end up in prison again, Petliura moved to Moscow.
With the help of friends, he gets a job as an accountant at the Rossiya insurance company. But his main occupation is publishing the magazine “Ukrainian Life”. He not only edited articles, but also published his own works there.
Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura spent almost ten years in Moscow, until the very beginning of the First World War. When he published his article-appeal “War and Ukrainians.” In it, Petliura wrote that Ukrainians would fulfill their duty as Russian citizens to the end, and argued that the Ukrainian population of Austria-Hungary supported Russia.
These views of his did not go unnoticed, and after being drafted into the army, Simon Petliura became chairman of the Main Control Commission of the All-Russian Zemstvo Union on the Western Front.
After the February Revolution, he was elected chairman of the Ukrainian Front Committee of the Western Front. At that time, Ukrainian soldiers were grouped around this organization, who sought to prevent the capture of their country by Austro-German troops.
Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura understood that without Russia Ukraine would lose its independence, so he advocated an alliance with the Provisional Government, although he remained a supporter of an independent Ukraine within the framework of a federal Russian state. It is known that his proposal was not accepted by either the Provisional Government or the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
However, supporters of Symon Petliura advocated war to a victorious end. Simon Vasilyevich headed the General Military Committee, which adopted a resolution on the immediate Ukrainization of the army and the preservation of the existing front.
The Provisional Government did not approve either the organization or Petliura’s post. However, at that time Simon Vasilievich had not yet decided to open performance against the Provisional Government.
After the October armed uprising in Petrograd, when all power in Ukraine passed to the Central Rada, he became general secretary military affairs in Ukraine. Already on November 15, 1917, he gave orders to the Ukrainian military units, located in Moscow and Kazan, begin moving to Ukraine.
In order to prevent the Bolsheviks from coming to power, by order of Petlyura, many units of the Russian army located on the territory of Ukraine were disarmed, and the soldiers were expelled to Russia.
At the same time, Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura appealed to the independent governments of Moldova, Crimea, Bashkiria, the Caucasus, Siberia and the Kazakh Union with an appeal to form an all-Russian federal government, which was supposed to become a counterweight to the government of Soviet Russia. These actions, of course, led to a break with Moscow.
But Petlyura did not stop there. He sent Ukrainian units to the front, which were supposed to fight against the Bolsheviks in the army of General Kaledin. On December 3, 1917, V. Lenin presented an ultimatum to the Ukrainian Rada, demanding that all power be transferred to the Bolsheviks.
At the Congress of Soviets of Ukraine, Symon Petliura made a famous statement in which he said that “Lenin is preparing a stab in the back for Ukraine.” At the same time, he addressed an appeal to Ukrainian army, proposing to maintain the existing front and prevent its disarmament. But the Ukrainian government supported the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk and agreed to the introduction of German and Austro-Hungarian troops into Ukraine.
Having learned about this decision, Petliura resigned and already in January 1918 left for left bank Ukraine, where he created the “Ukrainian Gaydamatsky Kosh”. The troops loyal to him played a major role in the battles for Kyiv and prevented the Bolshevik uprising from spreading throughout Ukraine.
In April 1918, Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura was elected head of the Kyiv provincial zemstvo, and a little later of the All-Ukrainian Union of Zemstvos. After the coup, as a result of which Hetman P. Skoropadsky came to power, Petliura began to openly oppose him.
After the new administration began persecuting the bodies of democratic self-government, Simon Petliura sent a memorandum to the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian ambassadors in Kyiv, in which he asked for help in combating violations of democratic freedoms in the republic.
On Petliura’s initiative, the All-Ukrainian Zemstvo Congress, convened on June 16, 1918, adopted a statement in which it warned Skoropadsky’s government that its policy was leading to disaster. However, Symon Petliura’s warning this time went unheeded. Moreover, he was arrested and sent to Bila Tserkva under guard. From there he led an armed uprising against the hetman's regime.
After the Directory came to power, Petliura became commander of the army of the Ukrainian People's Rada. But he lasted in power for about six months. Already at the beginning of 1919, he realized that he would not be able to achieve the independence of Ukraine.
At the same time, he had a negative attitude towards the Bolshevik government. Petliura wrote: “Between Tsarist Russia and communist Russia there is no difference for us, because both of them represent only different shapes despotism and imperialism."
Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura remained in Ukraine until October 1920, then, together with the government of the Ukrainian People's Rada, he emigrated to Poland. After repeated demands from the Soviet government for his extradition, he moved first to Budapest, then to Vienna and finally to Paris. There, at the end of May 1926, Simon Petliura was killed, according to one version, by agents of the OGPU, according to another - by one of the emigrants who took revenge on him for the Jewish pogroms in Ukraine.
On a hot spring day in 1926, a decently dressed monsieur stood on a Parisian sidewalk, looking through the glass at the books displayed in the window. Another gentleman approached him and quietly called out to him, calling his first and last name. The literature lover turned around, and shots were immediately heard, they thundered until the cylinder of the revolver made a full revolution. The gendarmes came running, they approached the killer with caution, and he calmly gave them the weapon and surrendered.
So in 1926, on May 26, the biography of Petlyura Simon Vasilyevich, one of the most famous fighters for Ukrainian independence, a forced emigrant and a convinced anti-Semite, ended. He was only forty-seven years old, but he managed to become famous and become the object of hunting Soviet security officers. The first suspicions fell on them. A carefully conducted investigation confirmed the veracity of the words of Samuil Schwartzbad (that was the name of the shooter), who claimed that what he had done was revenge for a family of fifteen people killed by Petliurists in Ukraine, and that he himself was not a Bolshevik agent, but a simple Jew.
The jury completely acquitted Schwartzbad, admitting that Vasilievich was to blame for the death of his relatives. The biography presented to the court rejected all doubts that the murdered man initiated numerous ethnic cleansings carried out against both the Jewish and Russian populations.
On May 17, 1879, a boy was born into a Poltava large poor family, who was christened Simon. His father was a cab driver; the young man could only receive an education at the seminary, which he entered. Ideas about what the future of Ukraine should be were formed by young man within the walls of this educational institution, where in 1900 he became a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, a nationalist political organization. The young man's hobbies were varied; he loved music and read Marx. In those years, there were many Jews among his friends, from which we can conclude that he became an anti-Semite for political reasons.
For protests and insolence, Simon was expelled from the seminary (1901), and two years later he was arrested. The freedom fighter of Ukraine did not languish in prison for long; a year later he was released on bail, after which he got a job as an accountant of the Rossiya insurance company, not forgetting about the party’s underground work. In 1914, the seditious man did not get to the front line, his service was not burdensome, he held the position of deputy commissioner of the Union of Zemstvos.
Active political biography Petlyura began after the February Revolution. He immediately became the head of the General Military Committee under the Central Rada. The political situation made it possible to declare the state sovereignty of Ukraine, which was done immediately. After the October coup, the armed forces of the independent republic were reorganized. sounded like a song for any nationalist patriot: “Kurenny Ataman”, “Koshev Ataman”, “Korunzhiy”...
The Ukrainian army must speak Ukrainian, and the Russian army must leave Nenka, these were the first orders. Independence, however, turned out to be more of a sham than a real one; after his imprisonment, the Minister of War came under the command of the German General Staff, along with the “Blue Zhupannikov” divisions under his control. The Germans soon preferred to deal with Hetman Skoropadsky. Petliura's biography during this period consists of continuous tortuous maneuvers. He promises Ukraine to the Ukrainians and, it’s unclear what, to the Germans and French.
Of all these tempting offers, the most realistic was the opportunity to rob with impunity. Of course, it was forbidden to requisition the property of Ukrainians, but in such confusion, how can you figure out who is a Jew and who is a “Muscovite”...
By 1919, the situation in Ukraine was completely confused. The Reds fought with the Whites, the Entente sent in troops, the Poles were not at a loss either, Nestor Makhno controlled significant territories, and the Petliurists sided with everyone who agreed to form a temporary alliance with them. The Reds and Denikin refused such help, and the Germans and French demanded too high a price for their intercession.
Petlyura's political biography ended in 1921. If anyone needed him, it was the Bolsheviks in order to shoot him. From Poland, whose leadership was increasingly inclined to decide on extradition, he had to flee to Hungary, then to Austria, and finally to Paris. Here Stepan Mogila (aka Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura) edits the Trizub magazine, a printed organ Ukrainian nationalists, articles in which are replete with the word “Jew” and all its derivatives.
This went on for another couple of years. It all ended in 1926. The funeral took place at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
Today at independent Ukraine Petliura is remembered much less often than Mazepa or Bandera. It’s not clear why this is so, because the methods of all three are so similar...
Three versions of a crime for which there was no punishment
On May 25, 1926, at the beginning of three o'clock in the afternoon, an already middle-aged and clearly worn-out man was sadly wandering along one of the Parisian streets (not crowded at this afternoon). He was sparsely dressed. A worn jacket and worn-out shoes indicated an unenviable financial situation. There was nowhere for the man to rush. A little before reaching the intersection, he stopped at the window of a bookstore, looking at the publications displayed there. At that moment, a man in a work blouse caught up with him and called him by name. As soon as the owner of the worn jacket turned around, the man pulled out a revolver and opened fire. The first shots knocked the unfortunate man onto the sidewalk. Turning pale from pain and fear, he managed to shout pleadingly: “Enough! Enough!” But the killer continued to shoot. A total of seven bullets were fired before a nearby police officer disarmed the gunman. The latter did not resist, did not try to break free and run away. His victim, writhing in agony, was taken to a nearby hospital. But the help of doctors was no longer needed. This is how I ended my life Simon Vasilievich Petliura.
The identity of the shooter was quickly established. He turned out to be Samuel Schwartzbard, a Jew, a native of the Russian Empire, for a long time lived in Ukraine. But what motivated the criminal? Why did he kill Petlyura? An exact answer has not yet been given. Schwartzbard himself stated that he wanted to avenge the death of his loved ones who died in pogroms against Jews during the Civil War. This version was also accepted by the French court, which acquitted the killer. In turn, leaders of the Ukrainian emigration almost unanimously (with a few exceptions) rejected the accusation of pogroms and declared Schwartzbard an agent of the GPU.
No consensus and in historical literature. The version of revenge for the pogroms was supported by many Western historians(mostly Jewish origin), as well as Soviet historians. On the contrary, representatives of historical science from the Ukrainian diaspora confidently spoke about the “hand of Moscow.” True, without providing any convincing evidence. The “Kremlin trace” is also actively “searched” by modern Ukrainian historians. But, again, so far unsuccessful. "Despite all the obvious connections between Schwarzbard and the NKVD, documentary evidence the involvement of the Soviet secret service was not found,” notes, for example, in the comments to the memoirs of Isaac Mazepa, the prime minister of the Petliura government, republished in Ukraine last year. And although the failure to find evidence does not prevent domestic Petliura scholars from repeating about the “massacre organized by the Chekists,” these statements sound unconvincing. So what really happened? Let's try to figure it out.
Version one: crime of the GPU
Purely hypothetically, one can, of course, assume that Schwarzbard acted on orders from Moscow. But the question arises: “Why?” Why did the Kremlin need to kill Petliura? The explanations given by the supporters of the “Chekist” version boil down to the fact that, they say, Petliura posed a danger to the Bolsheviks as the leader of the Ukrainian movement. The point, however, is that by the mid-1920s he was not a leader of any kind. It was later, after the death of Simon Vasilyevich, that the Ukrainian emigration began to talk about what a “great man” he was. Obituaries appeared in the emigrant press recognizing his “outstanding merits.” Collections were published dedicated to the memory of Petlyura, etc.
On the eve of his death, and indeed in the last years of his life, the attitude towards him was different. Simon Vasilievich had to endure many unpleasant moments. Many former comrades turned their backs on him. Petlyura was blamed (and, admittedly, not without reason) for the catastrophe that befell the Ukrainian movement, for the defeat in the civil war. In addition, the Galicians (and they were the backbone of the Ukrainian movement) fiercely hated former head Directory as a traitor who agreed on behalf of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) to give Galicia to the Poles. Without power, without an army, without money, hated and despised, Petliura had no chance of becoming a leader again. Suffice it to remember that only a few hundred people signed up for the Pro-Petliura Union of Ukrainian Emigrant Organizations of France. (Despite the fact that there were tens of thousands of emigrants from Ukraine in France at that time). Simon Vasilyevich’s political rival Nikolai Shapoval gathered three times as many people around his “Ukrainian Community”. And there were other Ukrainian organizations that were also openly hostile towards Petliura.
The Bolsheviks knew all this very well. And although Soviet propaganda still called the entire Ukrainian movement “Petliurist”; the Kremlin was not at all mistaken about this. Any attempts by Simon Vasilyevich to become a leader again were doomed to failure. They could only cause new squabbles among the emigrants, which, naturally, played into the hands of the Bolsheviks. There was no need to kill such a GPU figure.
Something else also attracts attention. Murder of Ataman Alexander Dutov. The kidnapping and murder of Ataman Boris Annenkov, generals Alexander Kutepov and Evgeny Miller. Liquidation of Colonel Yevgeny Konovalets. These are operations brilliantly carried out by Soviet intelligence. Having completed the “work,” the performers calmly walked away from persecution. Not a single agent was caught. In the case of Petlyura, the killer did not even run away. This does not look like a special operation by the GPU. Thus, the version of the “hand of Moscow,” even if it has a right to exist, still seems unlikely.
Version two: revenge for pogroms
This version seems more plausible. Refuting it, domestic historians point out that Petliura was not an anti-Semite, did not organize Jewish pogroms, and sometimes even tried to prevent them. This is true. The “army” of the UPR largely consisted of individual gangs led by their own atamans (“batkas”). They submitted to the command of Chief Ataman Petlyura only nominally, recognizing his authority in words, but not in deeds. In fact, each “father” arbitrarily gave orders controlled territory. It was these atamans who basically organized the pogroms. They organized it in defiance of Petliura’s prohibitions (they didn’t care about his prohibitions). Simon Vasilyevich most often could not prevent them or punish them for what they had done. And even if in some cases he could, he was afraid to do it. It didn’t cost the “fathers” anything to oppose him, undermining the already precarious position of the head of state.
Was Schwartzbard aware of these nuances? Hardly. He saw only what an ordinary man in the street who found himself in the whirlpool of those events could see. Were there pogroms in Ukraine? Were. Those who called themselves soldiers of the UPR “army” took part in them. And this “army” and the republic itself was led by Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura. Is it any wonder that he was blamed for what was happening? This means that it is quite possible that, by pulling the trigger on that May day, Schwartzbard was really taking revenge on the one whom he quite sincerely considered the main organizer of the pogroms. But something else is possible.
Third version: Masonic
This version is not discussed by historians. Journalists don't talk about her. Lovers of all kinds of “historical research” ignore it. In domestic (as well as in foreign) Petliur studies, it is practically not covered. Isn't it in vain?
Long before the revolution, Simon Vasilyevich joined the Masonic lodge. This boosted his career. Largely thanks to the assistance of the “Order of Freemasons” (as the Masons are sometimes called), Simon Vasilyevich ascended to the heights of power and found himself at the head of the UPR. However, in 1919, significant differences emerged between Petliura and the order.
The events that took place in Ukraine in 1917-1919 convinced the top leadership of the organization that attempts to implement the idea of an independent Ukrainian state were premature. Indeed: the majority of Ukrainians (Little Russians) in national terms did not separate themselves from the Great Russians. Slogans of independence were not popular among the population. A forced separation of Ukraine from Russia would cause a backlash among the masses, strengthening the desire for unification. "The Ukrainian people have no consciousness, do not show organizational abilities, the Ukrainian movement arose thanks to German influences, current situation so chaotic,” said the influential American freemason Lord in 1919 in Paris to the former Minister of War of the UPR Alexander Zhukovsky.
In connection with the current situation, the Freemasons adjusted their political plans. In the Parisian lodges (Paris was one of the world centers of Freemasonry) the project of transforming the former Russian Empire into a Union of Republics was discussed. An important place in this project was given to Ukraine. It was to become one of the union republics, in a federal connection with other parts of the disintegrated empire. Only after a long time, when the Ukrainians managed to firmly establish the consciousness that they were an independent nationality (and not the Little Russian branch of the Russian nation), did the Masons consider it possible to raise the question of state independence of Ukraine.
The project was actively supported by the head of Ukrainian Freemasonry Sergei Markotun. But Petliura didn’t like the plan. Probably, deep down in his soul, he realized that his Masonic “brothers” were right when they spoke about the prematureness of building Ukraine as an independent state. Simon Vasilyevich saw better than anyone else that the people do not want separation from Russia. IN narrow circle he even once called the Ukrainians an “immature nation” for this. The problem was different. In an independent Ukraine, Petliura could lay claim to the leading role. In Ukraine, which is in a federal connection with Russia, no. And this was the decisive factor for Simon Vasilyevich.
Petlyura rejected the project, demanding immediate support from the Freemasons for the idea of complete independence of the country. He quarreled with Markotun and left his subordination. True, in order not to break with the order, Simon Vasilyevich immediately founded and headed the new “Grand Lodge of Ukraine”. But the highest Masonic authorities did not approve of the “rebellion.” The order was strong because it knew how to place strategic plans higher than the ambitions of its individual members. The newly created “box” was ignored. Its self-proclaimed head was deprived of support. And without such support, Simon Vasilyevich quickly became what he was before - a political zero.
Petlyura did not give up. Finding himself in exile, he negotiated with the “free masons,” sought recognition of his “lodge,” and tried to regain the support of the order. To no avail. And yet hope did not die. Simon Vasilievich passionately desired to return to big politics. Most likely, this desire was especially inflamed in May 1926. Just then in Poland there was a massacre organized by the Freemasons. coup d'etat. A member of the order, Józef Pilsudski, who several years ago seemed to have lost power forever, again became the head of the country. The Order helped him return.
Petlyura wanted the same for himself. He probably again began to seek support in the Masonic lodges. And, perhaps, having again encountered a refusal, he snapped, tried to blackmail the “brothers”, threaten with exposure, giving away Masonic secrets. The order always responded to such threats in the same way. The answer to Simon Vasilyevich was Schwartzbard’s shots...
It’s worth repeating: this is just a version. However, the demonstrative nature of the murder speaks in her favor. In broad daylight, on the street, almost in the center of Paris, practically in full view of the police. They don't just kill like that. This is how they execute...
Confirms this version and the acquittal of the killer. The French judicial system at that time was under full control Freemasonry You can have different attitudes towards the identity of the killer and his victim. The extent of Petliura’s responsibility for the Jewish pogroms can be assessed differently. The judges could take into account mitigating circumstances and punish the offender not too harshly. In the end, it was possible to obtain a pardon from the President of France. But the jury was faced with clearly formulated questions: “Is the accused Samuil Schwartzbard guilty of voluntarily shooting at Simon Petliura on May 25, 1926? Did his shots and the wounds from them lead to death? Did Schwartzbard have the intention to kill Simon Petliura?” To give a negative answer to these questions meant to openly mock justice. In France, only one force could afford this.
In conclusion, an interesting detail. On the eve of the trial, Leon Blum, a prominent French politician and member of parliament (who later became prime minister), was approached by Schwartzbard's wife. She asked politician to use all her influence to save her husband from a death sentence (which, according to the law, was quite possible to receive for murder). Blum replied to Madame Schwartzbard that she had nothing to worry about - the defendant would be acquitted. And so it happened. Leon Blum was a Freemason. He knew what he was saying...
These are the versions. Which one is true? Everyone is free to choose for themselves. There is no doubt that what happened on May 25, 1926 was a crime. The crime, unfortunately, remained unpunished. But it is also undeniable that Petliura fully deserved what he received. Hundreds of thousands of people died due to the fault of the regime he led. Not only (and not so much) Jews. Everyone suffered from Petliurism. And most of all - Ukrainians. Murders, which remained unpunished by the authorities and, moreover, encouraged by the authorities, became the norm in Petliura’s Ukraine. And probably there is some higher meaning the fact that Simon Vasilievich himself became a victim of a similar crime. There is a saying: “What you fought for is what you ran into.” It seems to be fully applicable to Petlyura...
Alexander KAREVIN