Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/84236

The purpose of this article is to examine the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian Empire during the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Over the past few years, a considerable number of studies have been made on the complex national and social situation on the Eastern Front of WWI, but little attention has been given to the activities of Ukrainian nationalists themselves. I attempt to illustrate that their activities and political statements were highly influenced by the destabilization of the trans-imperial order in Eastern Europe, caused by the war and the revolution. Section 1 examines the development of the political theory of Ukrainian nationalists in two continental empires. National activists in Russian Ukraine asserted that the Russian Empire should be reorganized into a federal democratic state, whose constituents are divided according to national principle. They strove to cooperate with Russian liberals, the Kadets, on the reorganization of the Russian state, but this ended in failure. In Galicia, the eastern border region in Austria-Hungary, Ukrainian activists advocated the division of the region into two separate Lands, an eastern Ukrainian one and a western Polish one. Thus, the main political streams of Ukrainian nationalism in these two empires did not seek independence and their political assertions were in general regulated by the respective imperial order. On the eve of the war, however, emerged a "third group" whose political standpoint was characterized by a claim for an independent statehood of Ukraine and Marxist socialism. The leaders of this group had gone into exile in Galicia after the Stolypin Coup (1907), which led to the prohibition of Ukrainian political parties and repressive measures against socialist causes. One of these figures, Dmytro Dontsov, wrote that the best way to secure the independence of Ukraine was the participation in a future conflict between the Central Powers and the Russian Empire in favor of the former. This statement foresaw the activities of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Section 2 addresses the political activities and political statements of two Ukrainian nationalist organizations, both of which were established in Lviv, the capital of Galicia, with the outbreak of the war: the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, which had its roots in the activities of the above-mentioned exiles, and the Supreme Ukrainian Council (later reorganized into the General Ukrainian Council), which consisted of prominent members of the three main Galician parties. The two organizations expressed their hostility towards Russian despotism and proclaimed that they stood by the Central Powers with a view towards liberating Russian Ukraine. The German and Austrian authorities had contact with their leaders and supported their activities, mainly financially. The Union for the Liberation of Ukraine insisted that Ukrainian independence be the best geopolitical solution to the Eastern European borderlands for Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy, on the grounds that an independent Ukraine could be a breakwater against the incessant "threats" of tsarism from the East. In propaganda works, they attempted to legitimize independence by invoking the distinctiveness of the Ukrainian people, culture, and history and their abundant economic resources. Their activities, however, were highly dependent on the Ostpolitik of the Central Powers. Therefore, the Union did not demand the independence of Galicia from Austria and subsumed their socialistic tendencies in official statements. The members of the General Council, who had played a leading role in Galician local politics, continued to ask for the division of Galicia and, at the same time, required two more reforms. First, they started to demand independence of Russian Ukraine in cooperation with the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Second, the Council now viewed the division of Galicia not only as a foundation of two separate Ukrainian and Polish Lands, but also as an indispensable part of a prospective federal reconstruction of the whole empire. Meanwhile, Austrian emperor Franz Josef decided to give Galicia die Sonderstellung (special position), which meant broad autonomy for the Galician Poles, the arch-enemy of the Galician Ukrainians. This decision aroused harsh indignation among the members of the Council. Section 3 discusses the development of Ukrainian nationalism after the February Revolution in Petrograd. Following the collapse of tsarism and the formation of the Provisional Government, some leading nationalists in Russian Ukraine gathered in Kiev to establish the Ukrainian Central Rada. Mikhailo Hrushevsky, a prominent Ukrainian historian and a major advocate of federalism who claimed that an autonomous Ukraine could be a strong foothold for the realization of a federative Russia, became president of the Rada. As a result of long and difficult negotiations with the Provisional Government, the Central Rada gained tentative autonomy for the Ukrainian regions. In spite of frequent conflicts over competence between the Rada and the Provisional Government, the Rada merely demanded national-territorial autonomy within one federal democratic Russia and criticized the political activities of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, which claimed independence and cast in their lot with Germany and Austria-Hungary against the Entente. After the revolution in Russia, the Union and the General Rada regarded an autonomous Ukraine beyond the border as a fait accompli, as did German and Austrian officials: the Central Powers cut support for the Union and this led to a termination of the Union's activities. The Galician Ukrainians continued to demand the withdrawal of die Sonderstellung and national-territorial autonomy for Ukrainians. It was in this moment that the political statements of the Russian and Galician Ukrainians gradually converged to a national-territorial autonomy within a federal multi-national state. However, the October Revolution forced a change in Rada's political position. When the victorious Bolsheviks in the capital sent the Red Army to Kiev, the leaders of the Central Rada determined to seek a protector in the Central Powers. The Rada declared the independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic as a sovereign power in the Fourth Universal and, based on this declaration, the Republic concluded a peace treaty with the Allied Powers in Brest-Litovsk. To sum up, moderate federalists in Kiev were obliged to gain independence in the chaos after the war and two revolutions. Interestingly, the provisions of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, that is, the independence of the Ukrainian state and territorial autonomy for the Ukrainian Land within the Austrian state, were remarkably similar to the earlier political assertions of the two Ukrainian organizations on the Allied side, the Union and the General Rada. I would like to emphasize the contingent and reactive nature of the formation of national statements during the war and the revolution. We may conclude that the activities of the Union and the General Rada were not so much self-directed movements for national liberation as a product of the war, the revolution, and the following collapse of the imperial order in Eastern Europe.