Central Powers recognise Ukraine

On 1 February 1918 (19 January in the Julian calendar), towards the end of a plenary session of the peace conference at Brest-Litovsk, the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, Count Ottokar Czernin, spoke on behalf of the delegations of the four allied powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. He recalled that on 12 January they had recognised the delegation of the Ukrainian Central Rada as an independent representation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Now, he declared, they saw no reason to withdraw or restrict that recognition; on the contrary, they recognised “already now the Ukrainian People’s Republic as an independent, free and sovereign state, capable of concluding international agreements on its own”. Ukraine, which had proclaimed full independence only a few days earlier, thus obtained its first formal recognition from foreign powers.

The dispute over who speaks for Ukraine

The declaration closed a day-long dispute. Since the resumption of the negotiations on 30 January the Soviet delegation had included representatives of the Bolshevik government of Ukraine in Kharkov, and Leon Trotsky argued that the Kiev Rada was losing power in its own country. On 1 February the head of the Rada’s delegation, Oleksandr Sevriuk, stressed that his state was bound to Soviet Russia by no ties whatsoever. This was denied by Trotsky and by Medvedev, chairman of the Kharkov executive committee, according to whom Kiev now represented only the intelligentsia and the landowners, who wanted to break away from Russia to defend their privileges. Trotsky recalled that the Third Congress of Soviets in Petrograd had proclaimed Russia a federal republic, and that representatives of Ukraine had taken part in the congress. As long as the Rada’s delegation had held full powers, he had not protested against its participation in the negotiations. Now, however, since representatives of the Ukrainian executive committee had joined the Russian delegation, no agreement with the Rada could be recognised without the consent of the Russians.

The Rada’s delegates replied sharply. In a long speech Mykola Liubynsky accused the Bolsheviks of proclaiming the right of nations to self-determination only in order to fight it all the more effectively in practice, of having dispersed the Constituent Assembly and of relying on the bayonets of the Red Guards. He recalled that in the elections to the Constituent Assembly the Rada’s parties had won an enormous majority in Ukraine, and called the government in Kharkov the creation of a handful of Bolsheviks which did not represent even Kharkov itself. Czernin, who admitted that he had persuaded the Ukrainians to speak openly to the Russians “only too successfully”, watched Trotsky with satisfaction: he sat pale, with beads of sweat on his forehead, nervously drawing something on his blotting paper. Then the Russian retorted that the Rada’s delegation, deprived of a government, represented a territory no larger than the rooms it occupied in Brest. General Max Hoffmann noted that in view of the reports from Ukraine these words were unfortunately not without foundation.

Recognition despite protest

Czernin read out the declaration despite Trotsky’s objection. Trotsky replied briefly that his opinion of the character of the Ukrainian state had not changed, and that the powers which had just recognised the new republic would not even be able to indicate its borders. In peace negotiations, however, borders were not a matter of indifference. The dispute over Ukraine had nonetheless taken up several valuable days. When Trotsky tried to draw Richard von Kühlmann, State Secretary of the German Foreign Office, into a discussion of Poland’s representation, Kühlmann cut him short, saying that the delegates had not come to Brest for intellectual duels, and adjourned the talks until 7 February. Together with Czernin he left for Berlin, where a conference on German-Austrian relations awaited them on 4 February.

For the Central Powers recognition was a means to an end. Austria-Hungary was starving and needed Ukrainian grain, and it could sign a peace only with a sovereign state. The Rada had proclaimed Ukraine’s independence a few days earlier precisely so that its delegates could conclude a treaty in their own name. The Germans also saw in an independent Ukraine a wedge between Kiev and Petrograd and a means of putting pressure on Trotsky.

Yet they were recognising a government whose existence hung by a thread. In Kiev fighting with the insurgents from the Arsenal works was still going on, and from the east the troops of Mikhail Muravyov were approaching. On the night of 8–9 February the Rada left the capital, and a few hours later its delegates signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers at Brest.