Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

The party was reactivated following the February Revolution of 1917 and began publishing the newspaper Robitnycha hazeta (“The Worker’s Gazette”). At its conference at Kiev on 17–18 April 1917, it voted in favor of Ukrainian autonomy and federation with a democratic Russia; in July 1917, it dominated the First All-Ukrainian Workers’ Congress. At this time, although the USDLP had a vibrant intellectual leadership—among its most prominent members were Symon Petliura and Volodymyr Vynnychenko—unlike the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, it did not have mass support because of its cautious position on the socialization of land. In October 1917, its membership was around 5,000. Luminaries of the USDLP (including Dmytro Antonovych, Mykola Porsh, Vasyl Mazurenko, Leonid Mykhailiv, and Borys Martos) held key portfolios in the government of Vynnychenko (9–15 January 1918), but when their opposition to land socialization became clear, the party lost some influence.

The USDLP was banned in the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii—both Petliura and Vynnychenko were imprisoned—and it participated in underground work in preparation for the rising against him in November–December 1918. Following the reestablishment of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in December 1918, Vynnychenko became head of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, Petliura became commander of the Ukrainian Army, and other USDLP members packed the revived Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic: Volodymyr Chekhivsky served as prime minister and Dmytro Antonovych, Borys Martos, Borys Matiushenko, Vasyl Mazurenko, and Leonid Mykhailiv all held portfolios. Subsequently, at its Fourth Congress (10–12 January 1919), the party split into a Rightist (“official”) faction led by I. P. Mazepa and Vynnychenko, which supported the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, and a Leftist group, the USDLP (Independentists), which favored the immediate establishment of a socialist republic and peace with Soviet Russia. The Independentists later merged with the Borotbists to form the Ukrainian Communist Party. In February 1919, to facilitate an expected agreement with the Allied forces that had recently landed at Odessa, all USDLP ministers resigned from the Council of People’s Ministers of the UNR. At the same time, Petliura left the party, and Vynnychenko left the directory.

As the UNR collapsed in 1919–1920, most USDLP leaders went into emigration (chiefly to Czechoslovakia), where they remained active in the Socialist International. Of those who remained in Ukraine, some (including the Central Committee members Andrii Livytsky, Ivan Romanchenko, and Mykola Shadlun) continued to support the directory. In the Council of People’s Ministers appointed in April 1919, USDLP members were again prominent: Borys Martos served as prime minister until August, and Livytsky (deputy prime minister), Isaak Mazepa, Shadlun, and Hryhorii Syrotenko held portfolios. Mazepa then served as prime minister from August 1919 to May 1920. He added Serhii Tymoshenko to the Council of People’s Ministers and made Panas Fedenko a member of the Central Ukrainian Insurgent Committee. It was Livytsky who signed the UNR–Polish Treaty of Warsaw in April 1920, and from May 1920, only he, Mazepa, and Tymoshenko of the USDLP remained in the Council of People’s Ministers. The USDLP was banned in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

At the 9–13 September 1919 conference of USDLP émigrés in Vienna, the Central Committee members P. Chykalenko, P. Didushok, Iu. Hasenko, Ivan Kalynovych, Volodymyr Levynsky, Semen Mazurenko, H. Palamar, Hryhorii Piddubny, S. Vikul, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko demanded that the USDLP withdraw all support from Petliura’s directory and that its members resign from the Council of People’s Ministers. When that motion was not carried, that group left the USDLP and formed the so-called Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party (until 1921). The émigré majority formed the Prague-based USDLP Foreign Group, under the leadership of Mazepa (with Yosyp Bezpalko, Olgerd Ippolit Bochkovsky, Panas Fedenko, Oleksii Kozlovsky, Borys Matiushenko, and Volodymyr Starosolsky as prominent members). Although it was not part of the government-in-exile of the UNR, the USDLP Foreign Group remained loyal to it, and the former USDLP member Andrii Livytsky served as its prime minister until 1947.