Fourth Universal

The Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada is dated 22 January 1918 (9 January in the Julian calendar, which Ukraine still used until the middle of February). This was the day set for the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly to convene. The most important sentence of the act read: “From this day forth the Ukrainian People’s Republic becomes an independent, free, sovereign state of the Ukrainian people, dependent on no one.” Two months earlier the Third Universal had proclaimed the republic as part of a future Russian federation. Now Kiev broke all ties with Russia.

The date on the document is not the date of the vote. According to the minutes of the Rada and the later findings of Ukrainian legal historians, the solemn session at which the Universal was adopted took place on the night of 24–25 January (11–12 January Old Style). This is why some accounts give the date as 24 or 25 January. On the copy preserved in the archives the day has been corrected in pencil from 11 to 9 January. The act was dated to the day on which the Constituent Assembly was to have met. According to some Ukrainian historians, the aim was also to make independence a fact before the treaty was signed at Brest.

Why January

The federation announced in November had no one to be formed with. The Central Rada did not recognise the Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars as the government of Russia, and Petrograd did not recognise the Rada. On 17 December the commissars issued an ultimatum to Kiev, and the Bolsheviks proclaimed a rival Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets in Kharkov. From the end of December troops under the overall command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko occupied eastern Ukraine. At the turn of the year most of the Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav governorates were in Bolshevik hands, and on 19 January the detachment of Mikhail Muravyov entered Poltava. A second column was advancing on Kiev from the north-east, from Gomel through Bakhmach.

At the same time talks were under way at Brest-Litovsk. Since the beginning of January a delegation of the Rada had been there; on 10 January it was admitted to the conference as a separate representation, and the Central Powers, especially starving Austria-Hungary, wanted to make peace with it. They put off, however, the formal recognition of Ukraine as an independent state. Kiev therefore needed an act that would allow its delegates to sign a peace in the name of a sovereign state, without regard to Trotsky, who claimed to be negotiating for the whole of Russia. The Ukrainian Constituent Assembly could not do this, because the elections, which had begun on 9 January, had been held in only some of the constituencies on account of the war and the chaos. On 19 January the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd, so in Russia the body that might one day have shaped a federation had also disappeared.

Night in Kiev

From 22 January the Little Rada, the committee of the Central Rada that sat between its sessions, was in continuous session in Kiev. The factions agreed the final text late into the night, and the hall was full of spectators. The session was opened just after midnight by the chairman of the Rada, Mykhailo Hrushevsky. In a short speech he explained that the Constituent Assembly had been unable to meet on the appointed day and that the matter could not be postponed any longer, because the people wanted peace, while the government in Petrograd was sending Red Guards into Ukraine and waging a fratricidal war against it. Then he read out the Universal himself. According to the minutes, when the words about an independent state were spoken, the hall burst into an ovation and cries of “Slava samostiinii Ukraini!” (“Glory to independent Ukraine!”).

The vote was by roll call. Of the 49 members of the Rada present, 39 voted in favour, 4 against and 6 abstained. In favour were the Ukrainian Social Democrats (USDLP), the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Socialist Federalists, as well as the Polish socialists of the PPS – Revolutionary Faction. Against were the Russian Mensheviks and the Jewish Bund. The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, Poale Zion and the Jewish Socialist Workers’ Party abstained. The result was greeted with the singing of “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina”. The text was then distributed in leaflets and published in the government’s official bulletin.

What the Universal proclaimed

The act began with a description of a country ruined by four years of war: the factories at a standstill, the railways in disarray, money losing its value, famine approaching. The government of people’s commissars, it declared, had declared war on Ukraine, and its Red Guards were taking grain from the peasants, even seed grain, and carrying it off to Russia. Having proclaimed independence, the Rada announced that it wished to live in harmony and friendship with all its neighbours, “such as Russia, Poland, Austria, Romania, Turkey and others”, but that none of them might interfere in the life of Ukraine. Until the Constituent Assembly met, power was to be exercised by the Central Rada and its executive body, which was henceforth to be called the Council of People’s Ministers.

The government was given several instructions. It was to conduct the negotiations with the Central Powers to their conclusion “entirely independently”, regardless of obstacles from other parts of the former empire. It was to fight the Bolsheviks “firmly and resolutely”, and the Rada called on citizens to clear the country, without sparing their lives, of the “hired oppressors sent from Petrograd”. Once peace had been confirmed, the army was to be disbanded and replaced by a people’s militia. The land was to pass into the hands of the peasants without compensation even before the spring field work, on the principle of the abolition of property and the socialisation of land, while forests, waters and mineral wealth became the property of the state. The state was to take over foreign trade and the most important branches of commerce, introduce monopolies on iron, coal, leather and tobacco, and establish control over the banks. The Universal confirmed the freedoms proclaimed in November, and any federal union with the republics that had arisen on the ruins of Russia was to be decided by the Constituent Assembly.

The Poles

Among Ukraine’s neighbours the Universal named Poland, although at that time a Polish state existed only as the Kingdom of Poland, dependent on Germany and Austria-Hungary, with a Regency Council in Warsaw. The large Polish population of Right-bank Ukraine could make use of the law on national-personal autonomy, also passed by the Rada on 22 January (9 January Old Style), which the Universal invoked. The law granted the right to self-government in national matters above all to Russians, Jews and Poles. The announcement that land would be taken without compensation nevertheless still struck at the Polish landed gentry in Volhynia, Podolia and the Kiev region.

More dangerous for Polish interests was the game being played at Brest. The Rada was counting on the Chełm Land, and the Austro-Hungarian foreign minister Ottokar Czernin, who urgently needed Ukrainian grain, was ready to make concessions at the expense of the Poles. Independent Ukraine could now sign a treaty in its own name.

The war for Kiev

The Universal was proclaimed when Muravyov’s troops were already in Poltava, and in Kiev itself the local Bolsheviks were preparing an uprising. On 29 January the workers of the Arsenal factory and some of the soldiers of the Ukrainian regiments rose in revolt, and the street fighting in the city lasted until 4 February. On 29 or 30 January, according to different sources, at Kruty station, about 130 kilometres north-east of Kiev, a few hundred Ukrainian cadets, students and volunteers of the Free Cossacks held back Red forces several times their number for several hours. The Battle of Kruty, in which several dozen defenders died, including prisoners shot after the battle, became one of the symbols of Ukrainian national memory. On 30 January the government of Volodymyr Vynnychenko was replaced by the cabinet of Vsevolod Holubovych, until then chairman of the delegation at Brest.

On the night of 8–9 February the Central Rada left Kiev, which Muravyov’s troops entered. A few hours later the delegates of independent Ukraine signed at Brest a peace treaty with the Central Powers, which in it granted Ukraine the Chełm Land. The Rada returned to Kiev at the beginning of March, but now with the help of German and Austro-Hungarian troops. A year after the Universal, on 22 January 1919, the unification of the Ukrainian People’s Republic with the West Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed on St Sophia Square in Kiev. Since then Ukrainians have marked both anniversaries on that day.