People & Histories
1917–21

The Ukrainian People's Republic

Amid revolution and civil war, Ukrainians proclaim an independent republic that is crushed within four years.

  • Ukrainian National Republic (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)

Well established statehoodwaridentity

When the tsar fell in March 1917, Ukrainian activists in Kyiv formed a Central Rada (council). Its chairman was the country’s leading historian, Mykhailo Hrushevsky.

  • Hrushevsky, Mykhailo (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
At first the Rada sought autonomy within a democratic Russia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, it proclaimed the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) in its Third Universal of 20 November 1917. On 25 January 1918, backdated to 22 January, its Fourth Universal declared full independence.
  • Ukrainian National Republic (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
Weeks later Germany and its allies recognised the new state at Brest-Litovsk.

What followed was chaos. A German-backed coup installed Pavlo Skoropadsky as hetman for most of 1918. Then a Directory restored the republic, and in January 1919 it proclaimed union with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic formed in former Habsburg Galicia.

  • Ukrainian National Republic (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
Ukraine became a battlefield for Bolsheviks, White Russian armies, Polish forces, anarchists and local warlords. All sides committed atrocities, including waves of pogroms against Jews that killed at least 31,000 people, by one 1920s count, and perhaps as many as 60,000. UNR troops were among the worst perpetrators: that same count attributed about 40% of the pogroms and over half of the deaths to troops of the Directory, though how far Petliura’s government controlled them is still debated. It is a dark chapter that complicates the republic’s memory.
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Jews (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)

By 1920 the UNR government had gone into exile. The 1921 Treaty of Riga left Galicia and western Volhynia to Poland; Romania and Czechoslovakia held other Ukrainian-inhabited lands (Bukovyna and Bessarabia, Transcarpathia), and the rest became Soviet Ukraine.

The Soviets first tried to win Ukrainians over with “Ukrainization” in the 1920s, before Stalin reversed it.
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation — Serhy Yekelchyk, Oxford University Press (2007)
  • Ukraine: A History (4th ed.) — Orest Subtelny, University of Toronto Press (2009)

The republic never disappeared from memory. Its government-in-exile kept going until 1992, when its president formally handed over his powers to independent Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk. The handover was symbolic: legally, independent Ukraine is the successor of the Ukrainian SSR. But it took up the republic’s flag, trident and anthem.

Why it matters today

Ukraine

Modern Ukraine sees the 1917–21 republic as its direct ancestor. The blue-and-yellow flag, the trident and the anthem all come from it. Its defeat, caught between Russia and Poland, is often recalled as a warning of what happens when Ukraine stands alone.