The Period of the Hetmanate

The second phase of the Ukrainian revolution was shorter than the first. It lasted less than eight months, from late April to mid-December 1918. This phase has come to be known as the period of the Hetmanate, because the government which replaced the Central Rada was headed by a chief of state who carried the title of hetman.

The establishment of the Hetmanate

When Germany and Austria-Hungary could tolerate no longer what they consid­ered the Central Rada’s lack of enthusiasm in supplying them with foodstuffs, on 24 April 1918, the chief of staff of the German Army stationed in Dnieper Ukraine (General Wilhelm Groener) decided to act. He met with Pavlo Skoropads’kyi, a lieutenant-general in the former tsarist army, to propose that he become ruler of Ukraine. The conditions put forth by the German military amounted to a virtual surrender of Ukraine’s sovereignty to the occupying powers. The Germans had already begun to requisition grain themselves from the peasants; given a choice, however, they preferred to have a “Ukrainian” government do this and more. Skoropads’kyi was given several conditions, among which were (1) acceptance of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, (2) abolition of the Central Rada’s constituent assem­bly, (3) German control over the size and disposition of the Ukrainian army, (4) German approval of all cabinet ministers, (5) abolition of all limitations on the export of raw materials or manufactured goods, (6) recognition of the rights of the large landowners, and (7) payment for land when and if holdings should be divided. Skoropads’kyi accepted.

Skoropads’kyi’s acquiesence to German demands represented a swing to the right in the political spectrum of the Ukrainian revolution. Aside from limit­ing Ukraine’s sovereignty, the Hetmanate also reversed the generally leftist orien­tation of the Central Rada on social issues and land tenure as outlined in the Third Universal of 20 November 1917.

Skoropads’kyi was a descendant of the early eighteenth-century hetman Ivan Skoropads’kyi, Tsar Peter I’s candidate to hold the highest Cossack office after Mazepa’s defection. Pavlo Skoropads’kyi, therefore, had a long and distinguished Cossack gentry (starshyna) lineage and was from that social stratum which had entered voluntarily into the Russian imperial nobility and which became entrenched as part of the leading group in nineteenth-century Dnieper Ukraine. It was this Cossack gentry which most easily had adopted the hierarchy of multiple loyalties. In other words, its members were simultaneously Little Russians, Rus­sians, and loyal subjects of the tsar. Notwithstanding his sociocultural background, Pavlo Skoropads’kyi, in the wake of the first revolution in the Russian Empire, began to ukrainianize the 34th Corps during the summer of 1917. And it was the First Ukrainian Corps, as the 34th later came to be known, which protected the Cen­tral Rada in Kiev from demobilized Bolshevik sympathizers returning home after the disintegration of the imperial army. The ukrainianization of his corps did not necessarily mean that Skoropads’kyi was sympathetic to either the national or the social goals of the Rada, many of whose members continued to view him sim­ply as a “Russian general of Little Russian extraction.”¹ Essentially, Skoropads’kyi remained opposed to revolution of any kind, nationalist or socialist, throughout his career.

On 29 April, following a meeting of the congress, Skoropads’kyi proclaimed himself Hetman of All Ukraine. He was also welcomed by that other element in Dnieper Ukraine which desired political and social stability - the Orthodox Church hierarchy. Like the Congress of Landowners, the church had hardly been enamored of the Central Rada, whose Third Universal of November 1917 had, among other things, confiscated church landholdings. Anticipating a return of sta­bility and order, the Orthodox bishop of Kiev (Nikodim) blessed the new hetman in a special service (moleberi) held in the historic Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, the St Sophia. Skoropads’kyi thus received the imprimatur of the church as well as of the established economic and social strata of Dnieper-Ukrainian society. Supported thus by the local establishment and backed by the German military, Skoropads’kyi proceeded to dissolve the Central Rada (actually meeting at the same time in Kiev in another building). He also immediately restored the right of private ownership according to the terms that existed before the revolution. In theory, Skoropads’kyi was supposed to be heading a provisional government which later would be replaced by an elected Ukrainian parliament. In practice, elections were never held, and Skoropads’kyi ruled as a dictator. All power - legislative, exec­utive, and control of the military - was vested in him. The country referred to here as the Hetmanate (which some scholars prefer to call the “Second Hetmanate,” in order to stress continuity with the eighteenth-century Cossack entity) was formally called the Ukrainian State (Ukrains’ka Derzhava).

Not surprisingly, the Hetmanate-Ukrainian State under Skoropads’kyi was opposed by all left-of-center political parties, whether or not they were sympa­thetic to Ukrainian nationalist demands. Therefore, any attempts to include in the hetman’s cabinet the Social Democrats, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, or even the moderate Socialist-Federalists - parties which had dominated the Central Rada - failed.

The German military, who had made Skoropads’kyi’s accession to power possible, were now given a free hand in obtaining the grain that the Central Powers, espe­cially Austria-Hungary, needed so badly. With the tacit approval (and sometimes active cooperation) of Dnieper Ukraine’s large landowners, German and Austro- Hungarian army units led punitive expeditions against an uncooperative peasantry. By the summer of 1918, the forced collection of fines and the shooting of hos­tages had become commonplace. Faced with this violence, the Ukrainian Peasant Congress meeting in Kiev (8-10 May) lodged protests against the Skoropads’kyi government, and the secretly held Second All-Ukrainian Workers’ Congress (13­14 May) and the fifth congress of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor party (13-14 May) called for the overthrow of the Hetmanate and the establishment of a constitutional Ukrainian National Republic. The opposition forces crystallized into a new organization, eventually called the Ukrainian National Union, which included representatives of most political parties; of postal, telegraph, and railroad workers; and of the All-Ukrainian Alliance of Zemstvos, headed by Symon Petliura, which represented rural areas. Skoropads’kyi attempted to cooperate with these groups, but his initiatives failed, especially following an increase in peasant attacks on German soldiers and the assassination of their commander in Ukraine, Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn, on 30 July 1918.

Authoritarian inform, Ukrainian in content

While it is true that Skoropads’kyi’s rule was based externally on the German mil­itary presence and internally on the support of the traditional elite in Dnieper- Ukrainian society, the period of the Hetmanate had some positive impact on Ukrainian national development. First of all, the very fact that Skoropads’kyi’s government accepted - albeit at the insistence of the Central Powers - the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk meant that it represented an internationally recognized state called Ukraine.

Nor was it a Ukrainian state in name only. The educational reforms initiated by the Central Rada in 1917, which had begun to ukrainianize elementary schools and gymnasia, organize Ukrainian courses for teachers, and publish Ukrainian textbooks, were all continued under the Hetmanate. The years 1917-1918 in fact witnessed a true renaissance of the Ukrainian word. During those two years alone, over 1,800 Ukrainian-language titles were published in 16.2 million copies, a level of publication not to be attained again until 1930. Just as impressive were gains at the highest educational levels. In October 1918, new Ukrainian-language univer­sities were opened in Kiev and in Kam’ianets’-Podil’s’kyi, and a historical-philo­logical faculty in Poltava. Each of these institutions had departments (katedry) in Ukrainian subjects, and departments in Ukrainian language, history, art, and law were opened as well at the older universities in Kiev (St Vladimir), Kharkiv, and Odessa. In the fall of 1918, Kiev became the seat of the National State Library, the National State Archives, and, on 14 November, the Ukrainian Academy of Sci­ences. Thus, the Hetmanate deserves credit for significant advances in creating an intellectual and educational infrastructure for a Ukrainian state.

The specifically Ukrainian aspect of developments in religious affairs was more ambiguous during the period of the Hetmanate. Developments in Ukraine were inevitably dependent on those within the Russian Orthodox Church.

The “autonomists” and the “autocephalists” met at the First All-Ukrainian Church Congress, which opened in Kiev in January 1918, but nothing was achieved because the meeting was abruptly ended owing to the Bolshevik invasion from the east. When the church congress reconvened seven months later, in July, the sup­porters of autocephaly were barred from the meeting, and the remaining dele­gates reiterated their jurisdictional subordination to the patriarch of Moscow, Tikhon. Kiev’s metropolitan, Antonii Khrapovitskii (reigned 1918-1919), main­tained close relations with Hetman Skoropads’kyi, who welcomed the creation on 22 July of an autonomous Orthodox Exarchate for Ukraine. This meant (1) that Ukrainian could be used in sermons and some parts of the liturgy; (2) that the metropolitan of Kiev and Halych would henceforth be elected by a council of bishops (sobor) from Ukraine; and (3) that the Ukrainian Exarchate would make its own appointments, all subject, however, to the blessing of the body’s supreme authority, the patriarch of Moscow. Not all Orthodox clergy or lay supporters were pleased with autonomy within the Russian Orthodox Church - the Moscow Patriarchate, and in November the Hetmanate’s minister of religion, Oleksander Lotots’kyi, openly called for jurisdictional independence (autocephaly) for the Ukrainian Orthodox. The autocephalous movement was not to make serious headway, however, until after the fall of the Hetmanate.

The fall of the Hetmanate

By the autumn of 1918, the Hetmanate’s days were numbered. Because it was dependent exclusively on Germany, as the war efforts of the Central Powers declined so too did the status of the Skoropads’kyi German client state. Faced with such bleak prospects, the Hetmanate’s minister of foreign affairs, Dmytro Doro­shenko, attempted negotiations with the Allied Powers, who were opposed to the Bolsheviks but in favor of retaining the territorial integrity of the former Russian Empire. This meant, of course, that they were opposed to an independent Ukrainian state. The Hetmanate also began to negotiate with its internal oppo­nents, the Ukrainian National Union, headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko. This time, negotiations were successful, and in late October a new cabinet was formed in which members of the National Union received five portfolios. Plans were even begun to introduce a land reform and to convoke a parliament.

Within a couple of weeks, however, relations between the government and the opposition deteriorated to such a degree that the National Union decided to organize an uprising against Skoropads’kyi. Moreover, the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, who had undertaken an abortive revolt against Skoropads’kyi in August, were still capitalizing on Ukrainian peasant discontent against his regime and also spread­ing revolutionary propaganda among the war-weary German soldiers. Finally, it became clear to all that the end of the war was in sight and that it was only a matter of time before the German Army would return home, leaving Skoropads’kyi to fend for himself. With an unenviable fate looming, the Hetmanate’s representa­tives actively looked for support among the Allied Powers (through the French in Odessa). Then, in an attempt to save the rapidly deteriorating situation, Skoropads’kyi carried out his own coup. He appointed a new cabinet and, appar­ently in an effort to curry favor with the Allies and at the same time obtain military aid from anti-Bolshevik White Russian forces, he abandoned the idea of Ukrainian statehood. On 14 November he proclaimed the federative union of Ukraine with a future non-Bolshevik Russia.

Skoropads’kyi’s turn to a Russian alliance convinced the opposition that the time had come to act. The Ukrainian National Union formed its own revolution­ary body, called the Directory, headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura to restore the Ukrainian National Republic. Vynnychenko obtained a guarantee of neutrality from the Central Powers, and he also reached an agree­ment with representatives of the Soviet Russian government (Khristiian Rakov- skii and Dmytro Manuil’s’kyi), who had been in Kiev since the spring, ostensibly negotiating a peace treaty with Skoropads’kyi. Vynnychenko received assurances from the Soviet representatives that Moscow would recognize the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic after it came to power in return for his own assur­ances that the Bolshevik party would be allowed to operate on Ukrainian territory.

Thus, the Directory was doing as the Rada had done a year before - cooperating with the Bolsheviks against a new common enemy, this time Skoropads’kyi.

The Directory’s uprising began on 14-15 November 1918, when its spokes­persons demanded the surrender of Skoropads’kyi and his supporters. In order to obtain military support, Vynnychenko and Petliura left Kiev for Bila Tserkva, farther to the west, where they attracted to their cause discontented peasants and, more important, the well-organized volunteer Sich Riflemen, the battalion of former Galician and Bukovinian prisoners of war on the eastern front headed by Colonel levhen Konovalets’ and Andrii Mel’nyk. The Directory leaders and the army of the restored Ukrainian National Republic reached Kiev on 21 November, but they were unable to take the city, which was being defended by some units still loyal to Skoropads’kyi, by the Germans, and by Russian volunteers. The next three weeks saw a stalemate between the Directory and the Hetmanate.

Meanwhile, on 11 November 1918 Germany signed an armistice with the Allied Powers, thus ending World War I. German troops in Dnieper Ukraine finally could begin their long-awaited return home. On 14 December they abandoned Kiev. The Directory allowed the Germans safe passage and, in turn, entered the city. Skoropads’kyi abdicated and fled to Germany, and on 19 December the Directory reinstalled in Kiev the Ukrainian National Republic.

Despite its authoritarian nature and its dependence on Dnieper Ukraine’s rus­sified elite, the Hetmanate had managed for most of its eight-month existence to remain Ukrainian both in form and, at least in education and cultural institutions, in content. Skoropads’kyi never resolved the problem of peasant discontent with the German requisitions, however, nor could he arrive at a lasting modus vivendi with the political opposition. His government initiated a vain attempt to obtain support from the Allied Powers, and then in October made a last-minute effort to create an alliance with an anti-Bolshevik Russia. But all this had failed to save him, and by the end of 1918 his German protectors were gone as well. In place of the Hetmanate, a restored Ukrainian National Republic under the leadership of the Directory was now left to deal by itself not only with the anti-Bolshevik Russians, the so-called Whites, but also with an even greater threat to its existence, the Bol­shevik Reds.