Ukraine under direct imperial Russian rule

Following the abolition of autonomy in the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine and the annexation of the Right Bank and Volhynia, Ukrainian lands in the Russian Empire formally lost all traces of their national distinctiveness. The territories were reorganized into regular Russian provinces (guberniyas) administered by governors appointed from St. Petersburg. The Right Bank, along with some adjoining territories, formed part of the Pale of Settlement, to which the Jewish population of the empire was residentially restricted. With the liquidation of the Sich and the annexation of the Crimean khanate in 1783, the sparsely settled southern lands (named Novorossiya, or New Russia) were colonized by migrants from other parts of Ukraine, as well as smaller numbers from Russia, the Balkans, and Germany. This colonization movement greatly expanded Ukrainian ethnic territory. The new Black Sea port of Odessa (Odesa) grew into a large and cosmopolitan metropolis.

Equally important developments occurred in the social sphere. As compensation for their lost rights as a ruling elite in the Hetmanate, the Cossack starshyna were equalized with the Russian nobility; many entered imperial service, and some achieved the highest government ranks. Through education, intermarriage, and government service, the Ukrainian nobility gradually became Russified—as the earlier Ruthenian nobility had been Polonized—though many retained a sentimental attachment to the land and its folklore. The Polish nobility in the Right Bank continued as the dominant landowning class, although its status eroded over time, particularly after the Polish insurrections of 1830–31 and 1863–64. The large Jewish population was bound by numerous legal disabilities and, from 1881, victimized by recurrent waves of pogroms. The gradual process of enserfment of the peasantry in the Left Bank culminated in 1783 under Catherine II. The obligations there, however, were less onerous than in the Right Bank. Agitation among the peasant class, coupled with the Russian defeat in the Crimean War (1853–56), hastened the decline of serfdom, but it remained the dominant lot of the peasantry until the emancipation of 1861. After emancipation, the peasants were still burdened by inadequate land allotments and heavy redemption payments that led to the impoverishment of many.

Nevertheless, the reforms stimulated the development of industry within the Russian Empire by releasing labour from the land. Industrial development was especially marked in eastern Ukraine, notably the Donbas region (Donets Basin). However, the workers attracted to the growing metallurgical industry and other industrial concerns generally came from other parts of the empire; the Ukrainian population seeking economic improvement more commonly emigrated to agricultural lands. As a result, the emerging working class and the growing urban centres in Ukraine became highly Russified islands in a Ukrainian rural sea.

As in the political and social realms, in religious policy the tsarist regime promoted the elimination of Ukrainian peculiarities. Although the largely Polish Roman Catholic Church was allowed to continue, Catherine launched a program of administrative conversion of Ukrainians from the Uniate church. The anti-Uniate campaign was partially reversed by her immediate successors but was renewed with vigour by Nicholas I. In 1839 the Uniate metropolitanate was abolished, the Union of Brest-Litovsk declared null and void, and the Uniates finally absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Church, while the recalcitrant clergy were harshly punished. The Russian Orthodox Church became an important vehicle for the Russification policies of the imperial regime in Ukraine.

In the 19th century the development of Ukrainian cultural life was closely connected with academic circles. The first modern university in Ukraine was established in 1805 at Kharkiv, and for 30 years Sloboda Ukraine was the major centre for Ukrainian scholarship and publishing activities. In 1834 a university was founded in Kyiv and in 1865 at Odessa. Though Russian institutions, they did much to promote the study of local history and ethnography, which in turn had a stimulative effect on the Ukrainian national movement.

Literature, however, became the primary vehicle for the 19th-century Ukrainian national revival. The most important writer—and unquestionably the most significant figure in the development of a modern Ukrainian national consciousness—was Taras Shevchenko. Born a serf, Shevchenko was bought out of servitude by a group of artists who recognized his talent for painting. Though considered by many to be the father of modern Ukrainian painting, Shevchenko made his unique mark as a poet. His poetry spanned themes from the fantastic in folklike ballads to epic romanticization of Cossack glory, from wrathful indictments of social and national oppression under the tsars to mystical reflections based on the biblical prophets. Apart from its seminal impact on the subsequent course of Ukrainian literature, Shevchenko’s poetry reflected a conception of Ukraine as a free and democratic society that had a profound influence on the development of Ukrainian political thought.

By the mid-19th century the cultural and literary stirrings in Ukraine aroused concern in tsarist ruling circles. In the official view, dominant also in Russian historiography, the Ukrainians were a subdivision, or “tribe,” of Russians—“Little Russians”—torn from the unity of Rus by the Mongol-Tatars and deflected from their proper historical course by the baneful influence of Poland. Thus, it was deemed essential to reintegrate Ukraine fully into the Russian body politic. Shevchenko’s patriotic verse earned him arrest and years of exile in Central Asia. In 1863 the minister of the interior, Pyotr Valuev, banned virtually all publications in Ukrainian, with the exception of belles lettres. The ban was reinforced by a secret imperial decree, the Ems Ukaz, of Alexander II in 1876 and extended to the publication of belles lettres in Ukrainian, the importation of Ukrainian-language books, and public readings and stage performances in the language. The prohibition even extended to education—a major contributing factor to the low rate of literacy among Ukrainians (only 13 percent in 1897). With such restrictions, writers from Russian-ruled Ukraine could see their works published only in Austrian Galicia, and many figures in the national movement shifted their activities there.

Tsarist repression and the still premodern, largely rural character of Ukrainian society in the Russian Empire impeded the growth of a political movement. A secret society, the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, existed briefly in 1845–47. Its program advocated social equality, an end to national oppression, and a federation of Slavic states under the leadership of Ukraine. The brotherhood was quickly uncovered and suppressed and its leaders arrested and punished. In the second half of the 19th century, clandestine societies called hromadas (“communities”) were formed in various cities to promote Ukrainian culture, education, and publishing under conditions of illegality. Originally associated with the Kyiv hromada was the leading political thinker of the time, Mykhaylo Drahomanov, who advocated the transformation of the tsarist empire into a federative republic in which Ukrainian national rights would be assured. Toward the end of the century, younger, primarily student-led hromadas became involved in more overtly political activities. One such group in Kharkiv developed into the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, which in a pamphlet published in 1900 advanced for the first time as a political goal “one, single, indivisible, free, independent Ukraine.”

The revolution that shook the Russian Empire in 1905 spawned worker strikes and peasant unrest in Ukraine as well. The consequent transformation of the tsarist autocracy into a semiconstitutional monarchy led to some easing in Ukrainian national life. The ban on Ukrainian-language publishing lapsed, and societies to foster popular enlightenment and scholarship proliferated, as did theatrical troupes and musical ensembles. Nevertheless, the population affected by these cultural endeavours remained small, and the Ukrainian language was still excluded from schools.

In the political arena the introduction of an elected assembly, or Duma, in 1906 initially provided Ukrainians with a new forum to press their national concerns. In the short-lived First and Second Dumas, Ukrainians had a sizable representation and formed their own caucus. Changes in the electoral law to the detriment of the peasantry and national minorities, however, severely limited Ukrainian representation and effectiveness in the Third and Fourth Dumas. Until the Russian Revolution of 1917, the agenda of nationally conscious, politically active Ukrainians seldom exceeded demands for language and cultural rights and some form of local autonomy.

Western Ukraine under the Habsburg monarchy

The Habsburgs’ annexation of Galicia from Poland in 1772 was followed two years later by their acquisition of Bukovina, a partly Ukrainian (predominantly in its northern reaches) and partly Romanian territory, from Moldavia. Already under Habsburg rule, as part of the Hungarian crown, was a third ethnically Ukrainian region—Transcarpathia. Within the Habsburg realm these three territories underwent many experiences in common, but they were distinguished also by differences stemming from their specific ethnic environments and earlier histories.

Galicia

Under Austria, ethnically Ukrainian Galicia was joined administratively with purely Polish areas to its west into a single province, with Lviv (German: Lemberg) as the provincial capital. This and the fact that, in the province’s Ukrainian half, the Poles constituted overwhelmingly the landlord class and dominated the major cities (though many towns were largely Jewish) made Polish-Ukrainian rivalry a crucial feature of Galician life. Although, on balance, Habsburg policies favoured the Poles, Ukrainians (Ruthenians in the contemporary terminology) in Austria enjoyed far greater opportunities for their national development and made far greater progress than did Ukrainians in tsarist Russia.

The reforms initiated by the Austrian rulers Maria Theresa and Joseph II and the introduction of the imperial bureaucracy in Galicia improved the position of Ukrainians. The peasantry benefited from the limitation of the corvée and the abolition of personal bondage to the landlord in the 1780s, as well as from new methods in agriculture promoted by the “enlightened monarchs.” Municipal reforms reversed the decline of cities and led to an improvement in the legal and social position of the Ukrainian urban population. Undertaken as early as 1775, educational reforms allowed for instruction in the native language, although in practice Ukrainian-language teaching was limited largely to low-level parochial schools until the mid-19th century.

The fortunes of the Uniate church also rose. Renamed the Greek Catholic Church in 1774, it was, by imperial decree, equalized in status with the Roman Catholic Church, and in 1807 a metropolitanate was established, with its seat in Lviv. Imperial authorities took pains to raise the educational standards of the clergy. In the early decades of the 19th century, the clergy trained at newly established institutions almost exclusively formed the educated class, and their children, beginning to enter secular professions, gave rise to a Ukrainian intelligentsia. In the course of the 19th century, the Greek Catholic Church became a major national, as well as religious, institution.

The revolution of 1848 that swept the Austrian Empire politicized the Ukrainians of Galicia. The Supreme Ruthenian Council, established to articulate Ukrainian concerns, proclaimed the identity of Austria’s Ruthenians with the Ukrainians under Russian rule; demanded the division of Galicia into separate Polish and Ukrainian provinces, the latter to include Bukovina and Transcarpathia; organized a national guard and other small military units; and published the first Ukrainian-language newspaper.

Although suppressed, the revolution set in motion important transformations in Galician society. The corvée was abolished in 1848. Impoverishment of the Ukrainian peasantry increased, however, due to lack of land reform, rural overpopulation, and a near total absence of industry to absorb the excess labour force. Large-scale emigration to the Americas (specifically the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina) began in the 1880s and continued until World War I.

Also in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution, the imperial regime reached an accommodation with the Polish nobility that in effect ceded political control of Galicia to the Poles. The local Polish hegemony was little affected by the reforms of the 1860s that gave Austria a constitution and parliament and Galicia its provincial autonomy and diet. The governors appointed by Vienna were exclusively Polish aristocrats. The civil service and Lviv University, which had been Germanized in the early years of Habsburg rule, were Polonized. Elections to the parliament and diet inevitably produced commanding Polish majorities, as voting was based on a curial system that favoured the landowning and urban classes. (Curiae were the political groups, representing various communities and classes of people, that cast the votes.) The occasional efforts by imperial authorities to promote a Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation failed to gain more than minor concessions in the fields of culture and education. The major demands of Ukrainian parliamentary representatives—including the partition of Galicia along ethnic lines, the replacement of the curial electoral system by universal suffrage, and the creation of a Ukrainian university in Lviv—were not met.

Disappointment with the Habsburgs and concern over the new Polish ascendancy gave rise in the 1860s to pro-Russian sympathies among the older, more conservative, clerical intelligentsia. The Russophiles promoted a bookish hybrid Ukrainian-Russian language (derogatorily dubbed yazychiie by its critics) and a cultural and political orientation toward Russia. From the 1870s they consistently lost ground to the narodovtsi (populists), who fostered the use of the vernacular and stressed the ethnic identity of Ukrainians in Austria-Hungary and in the Russian Empire. The narodovtsi developed an extensive press and founded numerous associations (starting with the Prosvita society in 1868) that provided an important outlet for writers and scholars in Russian-ruled Ukraine. Self-organization in the late 19th century extended to women’s and youth groups, performing ensembles, cooperatives and credit unions, and, in the 1890s, political parties. By this time, however, the Russophiles had been largely discredited (although they retained control of many key Ukrainian institutions in Galicia), and the leading role of the narodovtsi in the emerging Ukrainian national movement in Galicia was being challenged, though never eclipsed, by a patriotically minded radical movement, whose leading figures included Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Pavlyk.

At the turn of the century, the ethnic conflict in Galicia deepened. Massive peasant strikes against the Polish landlords occurred in 1902. Ukrainian university students engaged in demonstrations and clashes with the Poles, and in 1908 a student assassinated the Galician governor. The introduction in 1907 of universal manhood suffrage in elections to the Austrian parliament strengthened Ukrainian representation in Vienna and intensified pressures for a similar reform on the provincial level. Growing tensions with Russia prompted Vienna to seek a Ukrainian-Polish compromise, but Polish opposition kept the old curial electoral system in effect to the end.

By the outbreak of World War I, Ukrainians in Austrian Galicia were still an overwhelmingly agrarian and politically disadvantaged society. Nevertheless, they had made impressive educational and cultural advances, possessed a large native intelligentsia and an extensive institutional infrastructure, and had achieved a high level of national consciousness, all of which contrasted sharply with the situation prevailing in Russian-ruled Ukraine.

World War I and the struggle for independence

The outbreak of World War I and the onset of hostilities between Russia and Austria-Hungary on August 1, 1914, had immediate repercussions for the Ukrainian subjects of both belligerent powers. In the Russian Empire, Ukrainian publications and cultural organizations were directly suppressed and prominent figures arrested or exiled. As Russian forces advanced into Galicia in September, the retreating Austrians executed thousands for suspected pro-Russian sympathies. After occupying Galicia, tsarist authorities took steps toward its total incorporation into the Russian Empire. They prohibited the Ukrainian language, closed down institutions, and prepared to liquidate the Greek Catholic Church. The Russification campaign was cut short by the Austrian reconquest in spring 1915. Western Ukraine, however, continued to be a theatre of military operations and suffered great depredation.

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 brought into power the Provisional Government, which promptly introduced freedom of speech and assembly and lifted the tsarist restrictions on minorities. National life in Ukraine quickened with the revival of a Ukrainian press and the formation of numerous cultural and professional associations, as well as political parties. In March, on the initiative of these new organizations, the Central Rada (“Council”) was formed in Kyiv as a Ukrainian representative body. In April the more broadly convened All-Ukrainian National Congress declared the Central Rada to be the highest national authority in Ukraine and elected the historian Mykhaylo Hrushevsky as its head. The stated goal of the Central Rada was territorial autonomy for Ukraine and the transformation of Russia into a democratic, federative republic. Although the Provisional Government recognized Ukraine’s right to autonomy and the Central Rada as a legitimate representative body, there were unresolved disputes over its territorial jurisdiction and political prerogatives. Locally, especially in the Russified cities of eastern Ukraine, the Rada also had to compete with the increasingly radical soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, whose support in the Ukrainian population, however, was quite limited.

Ukrainian-Russian relations deteriorated rapidly following the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) on November 7, 1917. The Central Rada refused to accept the new regime’s authority over Ukraine and on November 20 proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic, though still in federation with the new democratic Russia that was expected to emerge from the impending Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks, in turn, at the first All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, held in Kharkiv in December, declared Ukraine to be a Soviet republic and formed a rival government. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks launched an offensive in the Left Bank and advanced on Kyiv. The Central Rada, already engaged in peace negotiations with the Central Powers, from whom it hoped for military assistance, proclaimed the total independence of Ukraine on January 22; on the same day, it passed a law establishing national autonomy for Ukraine’s Jewish, Russian, and Polish minorities. Almost immediately, however, the government had to evacuate to the Right Bank, as Soviet troops occupied Kyiv. On February 9 Ukraine and the Central Powers signed the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. A German-Austrian offensive dislodged the Bolsheviks from Kyiv in early March, and the Rada government returned to the capital. In April the Red Army retreated from Ukraine.

The socialist policies of the Ukrainian government, especially land nationalization, conflicted with the interest of the German high command to maximize the production of foodstuffs for its own war effort. On April 29, 1918, the Rada government was overthrown in a German-supported coup by Gen. Pavlo Skoropadsky. A collateral descendant of an 18th-century Cossack hetman, Skoropadsky assumed the title “hetman of Ukraine” (which he intended to become hereditary), abrogated all laws passed by the Rada, and established a conservative regime that relied on the support of landowners and the largely Russian urban middle class. The new government aroused intense opposition among Ukrainian nationalists, socialists, and the peasantry. To coordinate political opposition, the Ukrainian National Union was formed by the main parties and civic organizations, while the peasants manifested their hostility through rebellions and partisan warfare. The capitulation of Germany and Austria in November removed the main prop of Skoropadsky’s regime, and the Ukrainian National Union formed the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic to prepare for his overthrow. In a bid for the support of the Allied powers, Skoropadsky announced his intention to join in federation with a future non-Bolshevik Russia, triggering an uprising. On December 14 the hetman abdicated, and the Directory assumed control of government in Kyiv.

Even before the collapse of Austria-Hungary, an assembly of western Ukrainian political leaders in October 1918 declared the formation of a state, shortly thereafter named the Western Ukrainian National Republic, embracing Galicia, northern Bukovina, and Transcarpathia. On November 1 Ukrainian forces occupied Lviv. This act touched off a war with the Poles, who were themselves resolved to incorporate Galicia into a reconstituted Polish state. The Poles took Lviv on November 21, but most of Galicia remained under Ukrainian control, and the government, headed by Yevhen Petrushevych, transferred its seat to Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk). On January 22, 1919, an act of union of the two Ukrainian states was proclaimed in Kyiv, but actual political integration was prevented by the ongoing hostilities. These ultimately took an unfavourable turn for the Ukrainians, and by late July the Poles were in full control of Galicia. Petrushevych and his government evacuated to Right Bank Ukraine and in the autumn went into exile in Vienna, where they continued diplomatic efforts against recognition of the Polish occupation.

In Kyiv the Directory that had taken power in December 1918—initially headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and from February 1919 by Symon Petlyura, who was also the commander in chief—officially restored the Ukrainian National Republic and revived the legislation of the Central Rada. Its attempts to establish an effective administration and to cope with the mounting economic and social problems were stymied, however, by the increasingly chaotic domestic situation and a hostile foreign environment. As the peasants became restless and the army demoralized, partisan movements led by unruly chieftains (commonly known as otamany) escalated in scope and violence. In addition, a substantial irregular force emerged under the command of the charismatic anarchist leader Nestor Makhno. In many places the government’s authority was nominal or nonexistent. The Allied powers, including France, whose expeditionary force held Odessa, supported the Russian Whites, whose army was grouping around Gen. Anton Denikin in southern Russia.

As authority broke down in Ukraine, random violence increased. In particular, a ferocious wave of pogroms against the Jewish population left tens of thousands dead. The majority of the pogroms occurred in 1919, perpetrated by virtually all regular and irregular forces fighting in Ukraine—including Directory troops, the otamany, the White forces, and the Red Army—as well as civilians from both the peasant and landowning classes.

The Bolsheviks had already launched a new offensive in eastern Ukraine in December 1918. In February 1919 they again seized Kyiv. The Directory moved to the Right Bank and continued the struggle. In May Denikin launched his campaign against the Bolsheviks in the Left Bank; his progress westward through Ukraine was marked by terror, restoration of gentry landownership, and the destruction of all manifestations of Ukrainian national life. As the Bolsheviks retreated yet again, Petlyura’s Ukrainian forces and Denikin’s White regiments both entered Kyiv on August 31, though the Ukrainians soon withdrew to avoid overt hostilities. From September to December the Ukrainian army fought with Denikin but, losing ground, began a retreat northwestward into Volhynia. There, confronted by the Poles in the west, the returning Red Army in the north, and the Whites in the south, the Ukrainian forces ceased regular military operations and turned to guerrilla warfare. In December Petlyura went to Warsaw to seek outside support. At the same time, the Bolsheviks were beating back Denikin’s forces, and on December 16 they recaptured Kyiv. By February 1920 the Whites had been expelled from Ukrainian territory.

Petlyura’s negotiations with the Polish government of Józef Piłsudski culminated in the Treaty of Warsaw, signed in April 1920; by the terms of the agreement, in return for Polish military aid, Petlyura surrendered Ukraine’s claim to Galicia and western Volhynia. A Polish-Ukrainian campaign opened two days later, and on May 6 the joint forces occupied Kyiv. A counteroffensive mounted by the Bolsheviks brought them to the outskirts of Warsaw in August. The tides of war turned again as the Polish and Ukrainian armies drove back the Soviets and reentered the Right Bank. In October, however, Poland made a truce with the Soviets, and in March 1921 the Polish and Soviet sides signed the Treaty of Riga. Poland extended recognition to Soviet Ukraine and retained the annexed western Ukrainian lands.