Lyzohub government

In the first days of May 1918 Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi assembled the first government of the Ukrainian State. At the head of the Council of Ministers stood the 66-year-old Fedir Lyzohub, a landowner and experienced local government figure from the Poltava region. The British chronology of the war records under 9 May that “Ustimovich” had been proclaimed President of Ukraine, with Skoropadskyi remaining Hetman. This information is wrong. The Hetman state had no president, and Mykola Ustymovych was for one day the candidate for head of government. The order appointing Lyzohub is dated 3 May, the first meeting of the government under his chairmanship took place on 7 May, and on 9 May the cabinet decided to publish a declaration of its programme. Some Ukrainian studies give 10 May as the start of his term of office.

A failed start

When Skoropadskyi took power on 29 April, he had only a few candidates for ministerial posts ready. As head of government, under the new regulations the otaman of the Council of Ministers, he intended to appoint Mykola Sakhno-Ustymovych (PL), a landowner and horse breeder and one of the founders of the conservative Ukrainian People’s Hromada, the organisation that had carried out the coup. Ustymovych signed, together with the Hetman, the laws on the provisional system of government of the state, which served as its constitution throughout the Hetmanate. That same day he offered ministerial portfolios to activists of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Federalists (PL), the most moderate of the Ukrainian socialist parties, but its leadership forbade its members to join the government.

The next day Ustymovych was summoned by the chief of staff of the German command in Kyiv, General Wilhelm Groener. In the presence of German and Austrian diplomats the candidates for ministerial posts were discussed, and Ustymovych agreed to everything the allies proposed. He made no impression. The Austro-Hungarian envoy described him in a report as a “not very presentable” figure. The same day a group of influential landowners from the Poltava region persuaded the Hetman that Ustymovych was not fit to be prime minister. The candidate withdrew, pleading illness. Skoropadskyi entrusted the forming of the cabinet to the historian Mykola Vasylenko, a member of the leadership of the Kadet party, who for several days acted as head of government. By the evening of 2 May the core of the cabinet was ready, and the Hetman informed Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn and the German and Austro-Hungarian envoys of this by letter.

A prime minister from Poltava

Skoropadskyi knew Lyzohub only by reputation. Born in 1851 in Sedniv near Chernihiv, he came from an old family of the Cossack starshyna. His brother Dmytro, a Narodnik revolutionary, was executed in 1879 for his part in preparing an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II. Fedir himself headed the zemstvo board of Poltava Governorate for almost fifteen years, in 1915–1917 advised the Viceroy of the Caucasus on local government, and after the February Revolution headed a department in a Russian ministry. He belonged to the moderately conservative Octobrists. The Hetman wrote in his memoirs that Lyzohub’s reputation spoke for itself and that after brief negotiations by telegraph he came to Kyiv and accepted the offer. The new prime minister also took over the ministry of the interior.

A cabinet of Kadets

In its first composition the government had eight ministers, and the key portfolios of foreign affairs, war, agriculture and the interior were still unfilled. Vasylenko took education and, temporarily, foreign affairs, finance went to Anton Rzhepetsky, and justice to Mykhailo Chubynsky, son of the author of the words of the anthem “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina”. The minister of war was General Oleksandr Rohoza, a former Russian army commander. The Hetman wanted to make Dmytro Doroshenko foreign minister, but the Germans suspected him of pro-Austrian sympathies, and the appointment came only on 20 May. Only then was the government complete. It was dominated by experts, most of them Ukrainians by origin, and by members of the Russian Constitutional Democratic Party. The candidates for ministerial posts were agreed with the German command and embassy.

The Ukrainian socialist parties boycotted the cabinet and accused it of a non-Ukrainian, landowning character. United in the Ukrainian National-State Union, they tried to use the Germans to force their way into the government and into the key ministries, but Groener rejected these demands. With a few changes, the Lyzohub government lasted until November 1918. It fell when, after Germany’s defeat, Skoropadskyi proclaimed a federation with a future, non-Bolshevik Russia.