West Ukrainian People's Republic

The British chronology of the war records under 26 December 1918 the proclamation of a West Ukrainian Republic. Ukrainian studies, however, record no act under that date. The West Ukrainian People’s Republic had by then existed for nearly two months. On 1 November the Ukrainians took power in Lviv and in most towns of Eastern Galicia, on 9 November the government was formed, and on 13 November the Ukrainian National Council adopted a provisional fundamental law and gave the state its name. The republic laid claim to the lands from the San to the Zbruch, to northern Bukovina and to Carpathian Ruthenia. The news may have reached London late, because the Western powers had no contact with a government they did not recognise. The notes of the Council’s president, Yevhen Petrushevych, were passed on to the capitals by the Swedish government, and on 26 November a note was sent to President Wilson.

By the end of December the republic no longer had its capital. The Poles had taken Lviv, and the Ukrainian government, the State Secretariat, had been sitting in Tarnopol since 24 November. Ukrainian units, however, surrounded Lviv on three sides and threatened the railway line that linked the city with Przemyśl and the rest of Poland. The lands the republic still controlled had about four million inhabitants.

In November and December the government set about building a regular army. It announced the conscription of men aged 18 to 35 and divided the country into three military districts, those of Lviv, Tarnopol and Stanisławów. On 10 December (according to some sources 9 December) the supreme command passed from Colonel Hnat Stefaniv to General Mykhailo Omelianovych-Pavlenko, a former officer of the Russian army who had come from Dnieper Ukraine. The Galician units lacked above all staff officers, and the Ukrainian Galician Army had yet to be formed from scattered regular, volunteer and insurgent groups.

The most important political question was union with the Ukrainian People’s Republic. On 1 December at Fastiv delegates of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, among them Dmytro Levytsky, signed a preliminary agreement with the Directorate on merging the two Ukrainian states into one. The State Secretariat discussed it on 8 and 9 December with an envoy of the Directorate present, and on 22 and 23 December with the vice-president of the National Council, Lev Bachynsky. In December Kost Levytsky stepped down as head of the government, and his duties were taken over by the secretary of justice, Sydir Holubovych.

At the turn of the year the republic’s authorities moved from Tarnopol to Stanisławów. There the Ukrainian National Council met on 2–4 January 1919. On 3 January it approved the Fastiv agreement, and on 4 January it appointed a new government headed by Holubovych. On 22 January the Act of Unity was proclaimed in Kyiv, under which the republic became the Western Province of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. It nevertheless kept its own government and army, and went on fighting the Poles for Eastern Galicia on its own.