Petliura's uprising

On 15 November 1918 in Bila Tserkva, about 80 kilometres south of Kiev, Ukrainian socialists called on the nation to rise against Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi. The proclamation was issued by the Directorate, a five-member body that was to lead the overthrow of the Hetmanate and the restoration of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. A universal of his own was issued by Symon Petliura, who as Chief Otaman took command of the republic’s troops. The same day leaflets with the same call appeared on the walls in Kiev. According to Ukrainian accounts, the first shots were fired the next day, 16 November, when the insurgents disarmed a detachment of the Hetman’s State Guard in Bila Tserkva.

A hetman without the Germans

Skoropadskyi’s Hetmanate had lasted since April thanks to the German and Austro-Hungarian occupation troops. When the Central Powers lost the war in the west, the Hetman was left without support. He now pinned his hopes on the victorious Entente and on the Russian Whites, who were fighting the Bolsheviks in the name of one, indivisible Russia. On 14 November he issued the federation charter (hramota): Ukraine was to be the first to join a future federation with a non-Bolshevik Russia. The same day he dismissed the government of Fedir Lyzohub and entrusted the formation of a new cabinet to Serhiy Gerbel (PL), in which mainly supporters of union with Russia sat. For the Ukrainian parties this meant the end of the independence that the Hetman himself had proclaimed not long before.

The conspirators were ready earlier. During the night of 13–14 November, at a secret meeting in Kiev, representatives of the opposition Ukrainian National Union elected the Directorate. Its chairman was the writer and former prime minister Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and beside him sat Petliura, Fedir Shvets, Opanas Andriievskyi (PL) and Andriy Makarenko. Petliura, in 1917 the Central Rada’s secretary for military affairs, had been in a Kiev prison since the end of July. The Hetman released him only on 12 November, according to accounts from his circle under German pressure.

The Sich Riflemen

The centre of the uprising became Bila Tserkva, where the Sich Riflemen of Yevhen Konovalets were stationed, a unit formed in 1917 from Ukrainian prisoners of war from Galicia, former Austrian soldiers. Vynnychenko wrote in his memoirs that this disciplined regiment, some fifteen hundred bayonets strong, was the main force he counted on. The insurgents feared the German troops still stationed in Ukraine, but the German soldiers’ councils now wanted only to go home. According to Ukrainian accounts, the Directorate concluded an agreement on neutrality with them.

The uprising spread quickly. On 17 November the riflemen took Fastiv, and on 18 November at Motovylivka station, near Vasylkiv, they routed the Hetman’s forces, made up of a druzhina of Russian volunteer officers and of serdiuks, soldiers of the Hetman’s guard. In the same days Ukrainian units in other provinces rose against the Hetman, and peasants flocked to the insurgent otamans. Skoropadskyi was defended mainly by the Serdiuk Division and the officers’ druzhinas, in which mostly Russians served.

For the time being the Germans did not let the insurgents enter Kiev, and the siege of the capital lasted several weeks. On 14 December the Hetman renounced power and left the country under German protection, and a few days later the Directorate made a ceremonial entry into Kiev. The restored Ukrainian People’s Republic, however, faced war with the Bolsheviks, with the Russian Whites, and from November also with the Poles in Galicia, where the Galician Ukrainians of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic were fighting for Lviv. Petliura, in time chairman of the Directorate, concluded an alliance with Józef Piłsudski in 1920.