Borotbism: A Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Editors Note

Introduction by Christopher Ford

1. The Ukrainian Revolution from today’s vantage point.

2. The Colonial Terrain and Social Forces of the Revolution

3. Problems of the Ukrainian Revolution

4. The Tragedy of the Russo-Ukrainian War

5. The War within the Ukrainian Peoples Republic

6. What might have been and legacy of the Borotbisty

Illustrations

Biographical Sketch of Ivan Maistrenko

Introduction by Ivan Maistrenko

1 Historical Antecedents

A. Components of Ukrainian Political Thought

1. The Russian Influence

2. The Cult of the Peasant

3. Romantic Nationalism: The Search for Self-Existence

B. Ideological Precursors of Borotbism

1. Drahomanov: The Father of Ukrainian Political Parties

2. Marxism Enters Ukraine

C. The Experience of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP)

1. The Problem of National Liberation

2. Formulation of the National Program

3. Nationalism Splits the RUP

4. The Lesson of the Spilka

2 Origins of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR), Predecessor of Borotbism

A. Ideological Background of the UPSR

B. The First Attempts at Formation of Ukrainian SR Groups Before 1917

C. The First SR Groups and Party Program

3 Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries in 1917

A. From the First to the Second Congress of the UPSR

1. The First Congress of the UPSR

2. The Growth and Influence of the UPSR

B. From the Second to the Third Congress of the UPSR

1. The Second Congress of the UPSR and its Turn to the Left

2. Influence of Bolshevik Ideas on the Ukrainian Revolution and on the UPSR

C. From the Third Congress of the UPSR to the Liquidation of Ukrainian Revolutionary Democracy

1. The Third Congress of the UPSR and the Party’s movement toward the Soviet position

2. The Impact of the Russo-Ukrainian War

3. Failure of a Left SR Coup and of a Right SR Government

4 The Borotbisty Under the Hetmanate

A. Worker and Peasant Opposition to the Hetman Coup

1. The Second All-Ukrainian Peasants’ Congress

2. The Second All-Ukrainian Workers’ Congress

B. The Fourth Congress of the UPSR and the Split

1. The Fourth Congress

2. Aftermath of the Congress

C. The Program of the Borotbisty

1. The Platform of the New Central Committee

2. The Weapon of Terror

3. The National Question

D. Movement of the Borotbisty Toward a Non-Bolshevik Soviet Platform

1. The Kharkiv Province Party Conference

2. The August Conference of Party Emissaries

5 The Borotbisty in Revolt Against the Hetmanate and the Directory

A. The General Uprising Against the Hetmanate

B. Disaffection with the Directory

1. Failure of the Directory’s Military and Foreign Policy

2. Peasants’ Congresses Under Borotbist Influence

C. Final Attempts to Reunite the UPSR

D. Borotbist Ties With Pro-Soviet Parties

E. Inherent Weakness of the Borotbisty

6 The Second Period of Bolshevik Rule in Ukraine

A. The Bolshevik Approach to the Ukrainian Problem

B. Borotbist Efforts to Form a Government

1. The Borotbist Central Revolutionary Committee

2 Attempted Use of Hryhoryiv’s Army

C. Implementation of Bolshevik Occupation Policy

D. Borotbism in Crisis

1. Internal Party Differences

2. Rejection by the CP(b)U

E. Joint Action Against Hryhoryiv

1. Bolshevik Detente with the Borotbisty

2. Hryhoryiv’s revolt against the Bolsheviks

7 Borotbisty in the Denikin Underground

A. Formation of the Ukrainian Communist Party (Borotbisty): UCP(B)

B. Two Views on the Formation of the UCP(B)

1. The “Dual Roots” Theory

2. The Bolshevik Argument

C. Borotbist Opposition to the Denikin Regime

1 The Borotbist Underground in Kyiv

2. Borotbist Activity Among the Partisans

8 The third Period of Bolshevik Rule in Ukraine

A. Bolshevik Re-Examination of the Ukrainian Problem

1. Bolsheviks Face To Face with the Ukrainian Problem

2. The Guiding Hand of Lenin

B. Bolshevik Resolutions

1. The Russian Bolsheviks

2. The Ukrainian Bolsheviks

3. The Borotbist-Ukrainian Bolshevik Agreement

C. Final Borotbist Attempt To Organize A Ukrainian Red Army

1. Interlude with Makhno

2. Alliance With Ataman Volokh

3. The Trotsky Order

D. The Growth and Dissolution of the UCP(B)

1. The Spread of Borot’bism Among the Masses

2. The Bolshevik Ring Around the Borotbisty

3. Dissolution of the UCP(B)

E. Divers Views on the Dissolution of the Borotbisty

9 The Borotbisty in the CP(b)U

A. The CP(b)U and the UCP(b) Compared

1 Composition of the CP(b)U

2. Composition of the UCP(b)

B. A Letter From a Ukrainian SR Emigre

C. Borotbism Versus Philistinism in the CP(b)U

D Shumskism

Appendix 1 Reminiscences of the Borotbist Organization in the District of Kobeliaky

Appendix 2 Biographical Sketches of Individual Borotbisty

Appendix 3 Platform of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries: The Present State of Affairs and Party Tactics (approved by Central Committee on June 3, 1918)

Appendix 4 Draft Decree on Encouraging the Development of Culture of the Ukrainian People

Explanatory Note to the Decree

Text of the Decree

Appendix 5 Memorandum of the Ukrainian Communist Party (Borotbisty) to the Executive Committee of the Third Communist International

I

II

IV [sic]

Special Supplement Soviet Responses to Maistrenko’s Borotbism

Bibliography

A. General Works

B. Congresses and Conferences

1. Communist International

2. CP(b)U

3. RSDRP(b) and RCP(b)

C. Articles

D. Letters, Speeches, Draft Projects, Resolutions

SPPS Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

Copyright

Levko Maystrenko

15 December 1925–20 June 2010

Dedicated to the memory of Levko without his support and solidarity the republication of his father’s book would not have been possible.

Ivan Maistrenko

28 August 1899–18 November 1984

The author records his affectionate gratitude to his friend Edward Dune, a noble fighter for freedom in Soviet Russia, who died in Paris on January 21, 1953. Mr. Dune assisted the author in locating rare source materials in the Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

The author wishes to thank the Research Program on the U.S.S.R., through whose assistance this study was made possible. Special thanks go to Dr. Alexander Dallin, former Associate Director of the Research Program, for suggesting the theme of the present study. The author thanks Dr. John S. Reshetar, Jr. of Princeton University for reading the manuscript, Dr. George S.N. Luckyj of the University of Toronto, who made the original translation, and Mr. Ivan L. Rudnytsky for his assistance in the translation and editing. Mr. Peter Dornan of the Research Program edited the text; the author is particularly grateful to him for this work. He also thanks Mr. Nelson Glover, who prepared the map.

The author’s thanks are extended to the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States and in particular Mr. Volodymyr Mijakowskij for his and their cooperation in providing photostatic copies of source materials, and to Mr. Hryhory Kostiuk and Mr. Jurij Lawrynenko for reading the biographical material and supplying additional data.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Columbia Univer­sity Press and Mr. Bertram D. Wolfe for permission to reprint excerpts from copyrighted material in Mr. Wolfe’s article “The Influence of Early Military Decisions upon the National Structure of the Soviet Union,” which appears in The Ameri­can Slavic and East European Review, New York, Vol. IX, No. 3, October 1950, pp. 169–179.

Foreword

MARKO BOJCUN

This new edition of Ivan Maistrenko’s 1954 study of the Ukrainian Revolution is a welcome and timely contribution to the English language literature. Appearing on the centenary of that epochal event that has come to be known as “the Russian Revolution” it provides valuable insights into its multinational and regional complexities and the diversity of the communist movement itself. Christopher Ford has also given us a new introduction here that will help the reader situate Maiestenko’s work in the broader context of a modern Ukraine emerging from an era of declining European imperialisms and ascendant movements for universal emancipation.

Maistrenko was not just a witness, but an active participant in the revolution and civil war of those years in Ukraine. He challenges several misleading generalisations and stereotypes that have come to dominate the historiography of 1917 and its aftermath. First, he shows on the basis of the Ukrainian case that this revolution was not Russian alone, nor just a working class achievement, but a richly diverse “festival of the oppressed” that broke out all over the Empire and drew into action millions of peasants and workers, nations and national minorities subjugated by Tsarism and Russian imperialism. It was not merely the arena of professional revolutionaries pursuing state power in Petrograd and Moscow, but the efforts of workers, soldiers and peasants in cities, towns and villages alike trying to overcome the major obstacles to their self-emancipation: the War, land hunger, the collapse of industry brought on by the War and national oppression.

Maistrenko illuminates this tumultuous process in Ukraine, focussing in particular on the rural population, the landless peasantry and the agricultural proletariat. He traces the evolution of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which became the largest political party by far in Ukraine at the head of repeated mobilisations of the peasantry in 1917 and during the civil war. He shows how and why the UPSR, a party with roots in the populist and anarcho-socialist traditions, was shaken and split by the events of that period and eventually yielded the Borot’bisty, an indigenous Ukrainian communist movement.

Maistrenko’s work helps us to understand how the Ukrainian Revolution differed from the Russian as well as how they intersected, and how the Bolsheviks could come to hold state power in Ukraine at the end of the Civil War only by occupying it militarily and subordinating all three communist parties then operating in it to the Russian Communist Party headquartered in Moscow.

The Ukrainian Communist Party (Borot’bisty), as opposed to the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, fought for an independent Ukrainian soviet republic allied through federation with the Russian soviet republic. It sought membership as an independent party in the Third (Communist) International. The Borot’bisty subsequently played a critical role in the life of their country after their own party was dissolved and they joined the official CP(B)U. They championed Ukraine’s cultural revival and its quest for greater political autonomy within the Soviet Union. Practically all of them perished in Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Ivan Maistrenko was one Borot’bist who survived to tell their story, a chapter in the history of the Revolution that might otherwise been buried in Stalin’s mass graves. Moreover, he has left us with more than a political history, but also a personal one with recollections of events he witnessed on the ground and of comrades with whom he worked in the underground, the peasant brigades and the insurgent republic of his own locality. Maistrenko was fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, as well as German by the time he wrote this history. That gave his access to the original documentary sources when he came to compose this study in the early 1950s.

We can now look back on the epoch-changing upheaval of the Revolution a hundred years ago through Maistrenko’s unique examination of its eruption in Ukraine.

Editors Note

This new edition of Ivan Maistrenko’s Borotbism has been reformatted and slightly re-edited from the original 1954 edition. Which was republished in the original format in 2007. A number of aspects of the original text have been updated such as the transliteration of Kiev which is published here as Kyiv. This edition includes not only a new introduction and foreword but also a biographical essay of Ivan Maistrenko and in supplement a review of Soviet responses to Borotbism. A number of illustrations have been added including rare pictures provided by Ivan’s son Levko Maystrenko and his granddaughter Ulyana. The title of the book has been slightly changed from it original Borotbism a Chapter in the History of Ukrainian Communism to Borotbism a Chapter in the History of the Ukrainian Revolution.

NOTE TO 1954 EDITION

1 Events occuring between February (March) 1917 and February 1 (14), 1918 are dated in both old style and new style.

2 The boundaries of geographical regions referred to in the text in the pre-revolutionary period are not necessarily co-extensive with boundaries established by the Soviet regime.

3 The Ukrainian word “rada” has been rendered English by the word council whenever councils in Ukraine are under discussion, except in the case of the Ukrainian Central Rada; the Russian word “sovet” also meaning council had been rendered in its English form soviet whenever councils in Russia are under discussion, except in the case of the Russian Council of Peoples Commissars. Soviet has also been used in the phrase Soviet platform, whether this applies to Russia or Ukraine.