May 10, 2012 <Back to Index>
PAGE SPONSOR |
Symon Vasylyovych Petliura (Ukrainian: Симон Васильович Петлюра, also known as Simon Petlura; May 10, 1879 – May 25, 1926) was a publicist, writer, journalist, Ukrainian politician, statesman, and national leader who led Ukraine's struggle for independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917. During the period of Ukrainian independence in 1918 – 1920, he was Head of the Ukrainian State. On May 25, 1926 Petliura was assassinated in Paris by the Jewish anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard. Petliura was born on May 10, 1879, in Poltava, Ukraine, the son of Vasyl Petliura and Olha Marchenko, urban dwellers of Cossack extraction.
Cossack, as opposed to peasant heritage, allowed certain privileges
regarding land ownership, taxes and access to education in the Russian
Empire, of which most of Ukraine was then part. Petliura's initial
education was obtained in parochial schools, and he planned to become an Orthodox priest. In 1898 while attending the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Poltava, Petliura joined the Ukrainian Revolutionary Party (RUP).
When his membership was discovered in 1901, he was expelled from the
seminary. In 1902, under threat of arrest, he moved to Yekaterinodar in the Kuban where he worked for 2 years initially as a schoolteacher and later in the archives of the Kuban Cossack Host where he helped organize over 200 thousand documents. In December 1903, he was arrested for organizing a RUP branch
in Yekaterinodar and for publishing inflammatory anti-tsarist articles
in the Ukrainian press outside of Imperial Russia. He was released in
March 1904, moving briefly to Kiev and then emigrating to the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Lviv, Petliura lived under the name of Sviatoslav Tagon working alongside Ivan Franko, Volodymyr Hnatiuk publishing and working as an editor for the "Literaturno-Naukovy Zbirnyk" Journal (Literary - Scientific Collection), the Shevchenko Scientific Society and as a co-editor of "Volya" magazine. He contributed numerous articles to the Ukrainian language press in Galicia. At the end of 1905, after amnesty was declared, Petliura returned briefly to Kiev but soon moved to the Russian capital of Petersburg in order to publish the socialist - democratic monthly magazine Vil’na Ukrayina (Free Ukraine). After Russian censors closed this magazine in July 1905, he moved back to Kiev where he worked for the magazine Rada (Council). In 1907 – 09 he became the editor of the literary magazine Slovo (Word) and co-editor of Ukrayina (Ukraine). Because of the closure of these publications by the Russian Imperial authorities, Petliura was forced to once again move from Kiev to
Moscow in 1909, where he worked briefly as an accountant. There, he
married Olha Bilska (1885 – 1959), with whom he had a daughter, Lesia
(1911 – 42). From 1912 he was a co-editor of the influential
Russian language journal Ukrainskaya zhizn’ (Ukrainian life) until May 1917.
As
the editor of numerous journals and newspapers, Petliura published over
15 000 critical articles, reviews, stories and poems under an estimated
120 nom-de-plumes. His prolific work in both the Russian and Ukrainian
languages helped shape the mindset of the Ukrainian population in the
years leading up to the Revolution in both Eastern and Western Ukraine.
His prolific correspondence was of great benefit when the Revolution
broke out in 1917, as he had contacts throughout Ukraine. As the Ukrainian language had been outlawed in the Russian Empire by the Ems Ukaz of 1876, Petliura found more freedom to publish Ukraine oriented articles in Saint Petersburg than in Ukraine. There, he published the magazine "Vil'na Ukrayina" (Independent Ukraine, Ukrainian: Вільна Україна) until July 1905. Tsarist censors, however, closed this magazine, and Petliura moved back to Kiev. In Kiev, Petlura first worked for "Rada" (Council: Ukrainian – Радa). In 1907 he became editor of the literary magazine "Slovo" (The Word: Ukrainian – Слово). Also, he co-edited the magazine "Ukrayina" (Ukraine, Ukrainian: Україна). In
1909, these publications were closed by Russian imperial police, and
Petliura moved back to Moscow to publish. There, he was co-editor of
the Russian language magazine "Ukrayinskaya Zhizn" (Ukrainian Life)
to familiarize the local population with news and culture of what was
known as Malorossia. He was chief editor with this publication from
1912 to 1914. In Moscow he married his wife Olha Bilska in 1915 (later
she was also known as her husband under the surname of Marchenko).
There, in Moscow was born the daughter of Peliura, Lesia (Olesia).
In
Paris, Petliura continued the struggle for Ukrainian independence as a
publicist. In 1924, Petlura became the editor and publisher of the
weekly journal "Tryzub" (Trident: Ukrainian – Тризуб). He contributed
to this journal using various pen names, including V. Marchenko, and V.
Salevsky.
Petliura's
correspondence with all the noted Ukrainian literary figures of the
time and his many articles addressing the problems of Ukrainian
self-awareness and cultural development were unavailable during the
Soviet period and have only recently been made available for study.
Previously all the journals which he published and edited were only
available in main Academic library in Moscow, in the vaults with
restricted access. Currently scholarship in Petliura's monumental
legacy is being collected, published and carefully studied. New
documents continue to be discovered. Petliura attended the first All-Ukrainian Army Congress held in Kiev in
May 1917 as a delegate, where he was elected head of the Ukrainian
General Army Committee on May 18. With the proclamation of the Ukrainian Central Council on
June 28, 1917, Petliura became the First Secretary for military
matters. Disagreeing with the politics of the then Head of the General Secretariat Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Petliura left the government and became the head of the Haydamatskyj Kish of Sloboda Ukraine (in Kharkiv), a military formation that in January – February 1918 was forced back to protect Kiev during the Uprising on the Arsenal Plant and prevent capturing the capital by the Bolshevik Red Guard. After the Hetmanate Putsch (April 28, 1918), Petliura was arrested by the Skoropadsky administration and spent four months incarcerated in Bila Tserkva. After his release, Petliura participated in the anti-Hetmanate putsch and became a member of the Directorate of Ukraine as
the Chief of Military Forces. With the fall of Kiev and the emigration
of Vynnychenko from Ukraine, Petliura became the leader of the
Directorate in February 1919. In his capacity as head of the Army and
State, he continued to fight both Bolshevik and White forces in Ukraine for the next ten months.
With
the outbreak of hostilities between Ukraine and Soviet Russia in
January 1919, and with Vynnychenko's emigration, Petliura ultimately
became the leading figure in the Directorate. During the course of the
year, he continued to defend the fledgling republic against incursions
by the Bolsheviks, Anton Denikin's White Russians, and the Romanians. By autumn of 1919, most of Denikin's White Russian forces were defeated — in the meantime, however, the Bolsheviks had grown to become the dominant force in Ukraine.
Petliura withdrew to Poland December
5, 1919, which had previously recognized him as the head of the legal
government of Ukraine. In April 1920, as head of the Ukrainian People's Republic, he signed an alliance in Warsaw with the Polish government, agreeing to a border on the River Zbruch and recognizing Poland's right to Galicia in exchange for military aid in overthrowing the Bolshevik regime. Polish forces, reinforced by Petliura's remaining troops (some two divisions), attacked Kiev on May 7, 1920 in what became a turning point of the 1919 – 21 Polish - Bolshevik war. Following initial successes, Piłsudski's and Petliura's forces were pushed back to the Vistula River and the Polish capital, Warsaw.
The Polish Army managed to defeat the Bolshevik Russians, but were
unable to secure independence for Ukraine. Petliura directed the
affairs of the Ukrainian government - in - exile from Tarnów and
when the Soviet Union requested Petliura's extradition from Poland, the
Poles engineered his "disappearance," secretly moving him from
Tarnów to Warsaw.
Bolshevik Russia persistently demanded that Petliura be handed over. Protected by several Polish friends and colleagues, such as Henryk Józewski, with the establishment of the Soviet Union in December 30, 1922, Petliura, in late 1923 left Poland for Budapest, then Vienna, Geneva and finally settled in Paris in early 1924. Here he established and edited the Ukrainian language newspaper Tryzub (Trident).
During his time as leader of the Directorate, Petliura was active in supporting Ukrainian culture both in Ukraine and abroad.
He
also saw the value in gaining international support and recognition of
Ukrainian arts through cultural exchanges. Most notably, Petliura actively supported the work of cultural leaders such as the
choreographer Vasyl Avramenko, conductor Oleksander Koshetz and bandurist Vasyl Yemetz, to allow them to travel internationally and promote an awareness of Ukrainian culture. Koshetz created the Ukrainian Republic Capella and took it on tour internationally, giving concerts in Europe and the Americas. One of the concerts by the Capella inspired George Gershwin to write "Summertime", based on the lullaby Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon (The dream passes by the Windows). All three musicians later emigrated to the United States. In Paris, Petliura directed the activities of the government of the Ukrainian National Republic in exile. He launched the weekly Tryzub, and continued to edit and write numerous articles under various pen
names with an emphasis on questions dealing with national oppression in
Ukraine. These articles were written with a literary flair. The
question of national awareness was often of significance in his
literary work. Petliura's
articles had a significant impact on the shaping of Ukrainian national
awareness in the early 20th century. He published articles and
brochures under a variety of noms de plume, including V. Marchenko, V.
Salevsky, I. Rokytsky, and O. Riastr. Anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied
the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War. The Ukrainian
state promised Jews full equality and autonomy, and Arnold Margolin, a
Jewish minister in Petliura's government, declared in May 1919 that the
Ukrainian government had given Jews more rights than they enjoyed in
any other European government. However,
Petliura lost control over most of his armed forces, who then engaged
in killing Jews. During Petliura's term as Head of State (1919 – 20), pogroms continued
to be perpetrated on Ukrainian ethnic territory, and the number of Jews
killed during the period is estimated to be from 35,000 to 50,000. The
debate about Petliura's role in the pogroms has been a topic of dispute
since Petliura's assassination and Schwartzbard's trial. In 1969, the Journal of Jewish Studies published two opposing views by scholars Taras Hunczak and Zosa Szajkowski, views still frequently cited. Some
historians claim that Petliura, as the head of the government, did not
do enough to stop the pogroms. They suggest this lack of activity
knowingly encouraged them, thus strengthenng his base of support among
his soldiers, commanders and the peasant population at large, by
appealing to antisemitic sentiments. They also suggest that many of the atrocities were committed by the forces directly under the command of the Directorate and
loyal to Petliura. According to a Jewish former member of the Ukrainian
government's cabinet, Solomon Goldelman, Petliura was afraid to punish
officers or soldiers engaged in crimes against Jews for fear of losing
their support. Nevertheless, Goldelman consistently defended Petliura
and his record. Petliura is said to have once said, "it is a pity that pogroms take place, but they uphold the discipline of the army." Historians have pointed out that Petliura himself never demonstrated any personal antisemitism,
and it is documented that he actively sought to halt anti-Jewish
violence on numerous occasions, introducing capital punishment for the
crime of pogroming. Taras Hunczak of Rutgers University writes
that "to convict Petliura for the tragedy that befell Ukrainian Jewry
is to condemn an innocent man and to distort the record of
Ukrainian - Jewish relations". Because the Soviet Union saw Petliura and Ukrainian nationalism as
a threat, it was in its interest to tarnish his reputation. A
propaganda campaign to this end included accusations of anti-Jewish
crimes. Hunczak
insists that "Petliura's own personal convictions render such
responsibility highly unlikely, and all the documentary evidence
indicates that he consistently made efforts to stem pogrom activity by
UNR troops." In 1921 Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, signed an agreement with Maxim Slavinsky, Petlura's representative in Prague, regarding the formation of a Jewish gendarmerie which
was to accompany Petliura’s putative invasion of Ukraine, and would
protect the Jewish population from pogroms. This agreement did not
materialize, and Jabotinsky was heavily criticized by most Zionist
groups. Nevertheless he stood by the agreement and was proud of it. On May 25, 1926, while walking on rue Racine, not far from boulevard Saint-Michel, Petliura was approached by Sholom Schwartzbard. Schwartzbard asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura
did not answer, only raised his walking cane. Then as Schwartzbard
claimed in court he pulled out a gun and shot him five times. Some state that there were two more after he was lying on the ground. That is how Schwartzbard described the incident: "When
I saw him fall I knew he had received five bullets. Then I emptied my
revolver. The crowd had scattered. A policeman came up quietly and
said: 'Is that enough?' I answered: 'Yes.' He said: 'Then give me your
revolver.' I gave him the revolver, saying: 'I have killed a great
assassin.' "When the policeman told me Petlura was dead I could not
hide my Joy. I leaped forward and threw my arms about his neck." Schwartzbard
was claiming that he was walking around Paris with Petliura's photo in
one pocket and his handgun in another, peering in the faces of the
Paris residents just to find his victim. Schwartzbard was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist. He participated in the Jewish self defense of Balta, for which the Russian Tsarist government sentenced him to 3 months in prison for "provoking" the Balta pogrom, and was twice convicted for taking part in anarchist "expropriation" (burglary) and bank robbery in Austro-Hungary. He later joined the French Foreign Legion (1914 – 1917) and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. It is reported that Schwartzbard told famous fellow anarchist leader Nestor Makhno in
Paris that he was terminally ill and expected to die, and that he would
take Petliura with him; Makhno forbade Schwartzbard to do so. The
French Secret service had been keeping an eye out on Schwartzbard from
the time he had surfaced in the French capital and had noted his
meetings with known Bolsheviks. During the trial the German special
services also informed their French counterparts that Schwartzbard had
assassinated Petlura on the orders of Galip, an emissary of the Union of Ukrainian Citizens. He had received orders from the head of the Soviet Ukrainian government, Christian Rakovsky, an ethnic Bulgarian and a revolutionary leader from Romania. The act was consolidated by Mikhail Volodin, who arrived in France August 8, 1925 and who had been in close contact with Schwartzbard. Schwartzbard's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms in Odessa. The core defense at the Schwartzbard trial was — as presented by the noted jurist Henri Torres —
that he was avenging the deaths of more than 50,000 Jewish victims of
the pogroms, whereas the prosecution (both criminal and civil) tried to
show that: Both
sides brought on many witnesses, including several historians. A
notable witness for the defense was Haia Greenberg (aged 29), a local
nurse who survived the Proskurov pogroms
and testified about the carnage. She never said that Petliura
personally participated in the event, but rather some other soldiers
who did said that they were directed by Petliura. Several former
Ukrainian officers testified for the prosecution. After a trial lasting
eight days the jury acquitted Schwarzbard. Petliura is buried alongside his wife and daughter in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France. Petliura's two sisters, Orthodox nuns who had remained in Poltava, were arrested and shot in 1928 by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). It is claimed that in March 1926 Vlas Chubar (the Russian Commissar to Ukraine), in a speech given in Kharkiv and repeated in Moscow, warned of the danger Petliura represented to Soviet
power. It is after this speech that the command was allegedly given to
assassinate Petliura. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, previously restricted Soviet archives have allowed numerous
politicians and historians to review Petliura's role in Ukrainian
history. Some consider him a national hero who strove for the
independence of Ukraine. Several cities, including Kiev, the Ukrainian
capital and Poltava,
the city of his birth, have erected monuments to Petliura, with a
museum complex also being planned in Poltava. To mark the 80th
anniversary of his assassination, a twelve - volume edition of his
writings, including articles, letters and historic documents, has been
published in Kiev by the Taras Shevchenko University and the State Archive of Ukraine. In 1992 in Poltava a series of readings known as "Petlurivski chytannia" have become an annual event, and since 1993 these take place annually at Kiev University. In June 2009 the Kiev city council renamed Kominterna Street (located in the Shevchenkivskyi Raion) into Symon Petliura Street to commemorate the occasion of his 130th birthday anniversary. In Israel and the Jewish world Petlura is mostly remembered by some as the leader in charge of Ukraine when pogroms took place (Yad Vashem and the writing on the street sign honoring Schwartzbard in Beersheba).
One of Ukrainian - Jewish leaders in independent Ukraine wrote that
"Petlyura did not want or was not able to defend Ukrainian Jews from
his own army". Recently
uncovered documents and letters to prominent Jewish community leaders
demonstrate Petlura's support for the re-establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine. In a "in the name of" the Jewish population of
Ukraine, former Jewish affairs minister Pinchas Krasny thanked Petlura
for his support for the vote in the League of Nations of July 24, 1922
regarding the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine. A
further reflection regarding Petlura's position regarding Jews is
demonstrated by another interesting fact. In exile, as the Head Otаman
of the Ukrainian forces he was functioning in great material
difficulties. In February 1921 he assigned Jewish refugees from Ukraine
in Poland 15 thousand Polish Marks in aid.
In
the Western Ukrainian diaspora, Petlura is remembered as a national
hero, a fighter for Ukrainian independence, a martyr, who inspired
hundreds of thousands to fight for an independent Ukrainian state. He
has been inspiration for original music, and youth organizations. During
the revolution Petlura became the subject of numerous folk songs,
primarily as a hero calling for his people to unite against foreign
oppression. His name became synonymous with the call for freedom. 15
songs were recorded by the ethnographer rev. prof. K. Danylevsky. In
the songs Petlura is depicted as a soldier, in a manner similar to Robin Hood, mocking Skoropadsky and the Bolshevik Red Guard. News
of Petlura’s assassination in the summer of 1926 was marked by numerous
revolts in eastern Ukraine particularly in Boromlia, Zhehailivtsi,
(Sumy province), Velyka Rublivka, Myloradov (Poltava province), Hnylsk,
Bilsk, Kuzemyn and all along the Vorskla River from Okhtyrka to Poltava, Burynia, Nizhyn (Chernihiv province) and other cities. These revolts were brutally pacified by the Soviet administration. The blind kobzars Pavlo Hashchenko and Ivan Kuchuhura Kucherenko composed a duma (epic
poem) in memory of Symon Petlura. To date Petlura is the only modern
Ukrainian politician to have a duma created and sung in his memory.
This duma became popular among the kobzars of left-bank Ukraine and was
sung also by Stepan Pasiuha, Petro Drevchenko, Bohushchenko, and Chumak. The
Soviets also tried their hand at portraying Petlura through the arts in
order to discredit the Ukrainian national leader. A number of humorous
songs appeared in which Petlura is portrayed as a traveling beggar
whose only territory is that which is under his train carriage. A
number of plays such as the “Republic on wheels” by Mamontov and the
opera “Shchors” by Boris Liatoshinsky and “Arsenal” by Georgy Maiboroda portray
Petlura in a negative light, as a lackey who sold out Western Ukraine
to Poland, often using the very same melodies which had become popular
during the fight for Ukrainian Independence in 1918. Petlura continues to be portrayed by the Ukrainian people in its folk songs in a manner similar to Taras Shevchenko and Bohdan Khmelnytsky. He is likened to the sun which suddenly stopped shining. |