Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Ukrainian Military Committee. This clandestine organization of Ukrainian officers in the Austrian army was created at Lemberg (L′viv) in September 1918. Working in close partnership with the People’s Committee of the centrist Galician National Democratic Party, it planned to seize power in Galicia as the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated following its anticipated defeat in the First World War. In October 1918, representatives of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen were added to the Military Committee, and one of their commanders, Dmytro Vitovski, was elected its chairman.

On orders of the Ukrainian National Rada, the Military Committee planned and staged a coup d’état in Lemberg, on 1 November 1918 (the November Uprising), marking thereby the opening of the Ukrainian–Polish War over the future of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine). With the proclamation of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian Military Committee was dissolved. Apart from Vitovski, the organization’s most prominent members were P. Bubelia, T. Martynets, L. Ohonovsky, Dmytro Paliiv, Ivan Teodor Rudnytsky, and Volodymyr Starosolsky.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL RADA. This 150-strong body was formed at L′viv on 18 October 1918, to serve as the constituent assembly of the Ukrainian ethnic territories within the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire, as they strove for self-determination at the end of the First World War. Its membership included all the Ukrainian deputies in both houses of the Austrian parliament and in the local diets of Galicia and Bukovina, as well as three representatives from each major Ukrainian political party in the two crown lands, nonpartisan specialists, and selected deputies from counties and towns. Several seats were also reserved for representatives of national minorities (chiefly Poles and Jews), but they were never filled; the Jews were wary of the Ukrainian nationalist bent of the Rada, and the Poles, seeking union with Warsaw, refused to recognize its authority.

On 9 November 1918, the Ukrainian National Rada proclaimed the establishment of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. Subsequently, the Rada served as the legislature of the republic, to which the executive (the State Secretariat) was accountable. The post of president was filled first by Kost Levytskii and then by Evhen Petrushevych. It was the Rada that officially called (by a unanimous vote) for the union of the republic with the Ukrainian National Republic on 3 January 1919 (the Act of Zluka). When, during the Ukrainian–Polish War, the government of the republic was forced to flee abroad, and its Ukrainian Galician Army was pressed back across the Zbruch River, on 9 June 1919, all constitutional powers of the Rada and the Secretariat were transferred to Petrushevych as dictator. Following the occupation of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) by Poland, Rada meetings took place in Vienna until 1923.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC. This state was formally established, initially in a proposed federation with Russia, by the Third Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada of 7 November 1917. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Soviet forces in December 1917, the Rada then declared the independence of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in its Fourth Universal of 9 January 1918. At the same time, its executive was established as the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.

On 27 January 1918, the UNR signed an agreement with the Central Powers (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), bringing an end to Ukrainian participation in the First World War and obtaining formal recognition and the military aid of Germany and Austria-Hungary in expelling Bolshevik forces from Kiev (which they had captured the day before the treaty was signed) in exchange for the delivery of foodstuffs and other resources to Berlin and Vienna. However, failure to deliver the latter, as well as the regime’s socialist leanings, earned the republic the ill-will of the forces of the Austro-German intervention, which actively participated in the overthrow of the UNR and its replacement with the dictatorship of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, following the coup of 29 April 1918.