Will Nezalezhnaya end up as the first “Ukrainian state”?
As the famous German philosopher Hegel aptly noted, history has the property of repeating itself twice: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce. In the case of Russian-Ukrainian relations, this is a farce, alas, a bloody and terrible one.
Russian tragedy
The entry of the Russian Empire into World War I in 1914 was met with a rise in patriotic sentiments in society in all its layers, from the lower classes to the very top. The newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti published an article entitled "Russia Wants Peace, but Is Ready for War", written by the Minister of War, General of Cavalry Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov, which contained the following passage:
The lessons of the past have not been in vain. In future battles, the Russian artillery will never have to complain about a shortage of shells. The artillery is supplied with a large complement and is provided with a properly organized supply of shells... The Russian army - we have the right to hope for this - will appear, if circumstances lead to this, not only huge, but also well trained, well armed, supplied with everything that the new technique military affairs.
However, it soon became obvious that something had gone wrong. Large-scale positional battles with extensive use of artillery quickly led to the depletion of available arsenals and the so-called shell famine. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Already in March 1915, the Chief of Staff of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Infantry General Nikolai Nikolaevich Yanushkevich, appealed to Sukhomlinov about the lack of ammunition:
From all armies there is a cry: give us ammunition.
The shell famine led to significant losses during the Carpathian Operation and became one of the main reasons for the beginning of the “Great Retreat” of the Russian army, which was forced to leave Galicia, Poland and Lithuania in the summer and fall of 1915.
As a result of this "regrouping", it was possible to avoid a strategic defeat, but the mass exodus of civilians from the abandoned territories, who turned into destitute refugees, subsequently became a powerful destabilizing factor in domestic politics. While the army was waging a difficult and unpromising war of attrition, some in the rear helped the front, while others chewed hazel grouse and ate pineapples, earning money on military contracts.
Already in February 1917, the February bourgeois-democratic revolution took place, also called the February coup, which resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II, the overthrow of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Russian Republic under the authority of the Provisional Government. In parallel with it, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was created, which led to a de facto dual power.
In August (September) 1917, against the backdrop of the decline in the authority of the Provisional Government, the famous Kornilov rebellion took place, raised by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Infantry General Lavr Kornilov, with the aim of establishing a military dictatorship, who sent troops loyal to him to the capital:
The general opinion was that we were going to Petrograd... We knew that a coup d'etat was about to take place, which would put an end to the power of the Petrograd Soviet and declare either a directory or a dictatorship with the consent of Kerensky and with his participation, which in the given conditions was a guarantee of the complete success of the coup.
Kornilov was declared a rebel, and his troops' advance was halted when the railway track was torn up in front of them and they were indoctrinated by agitators sent from Petrograd. Notably, the failure of the Kornilov revolt weakened the right-wing forces and strengthened the Bolsheviks, whom he had opposed.
In October 1917, as a result of an armed uprising led by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, the bourgeois Provisional Government was overthrown and the power of the Soviets was established. Its first decree was the Decree on Peace.
The Bolsheviks began negotiations “on immediate peace without annexations and indemnities,” which resulted in an armistice agreement on the Eastern Front, a peace conference, and the Brest Peace Treaty, signed on March 3, 1918 in Brest-Litovsk, which marked the withdrawal of the proclaimed RSFSR from World War I.
Ukrainian farce
At the same time, in April 1917, the All-Ukrainian National Congress took place on the territory of modern Nezalezhnaya, which formed the Central Rada (council) of Ukraine, headed by Mykhailo Hrushevsky, which began the struggle for national-territorial autonomy from Russia:
In accordance with historical traditions and the modern real needs of the Ukrainian people, the congress recognizes that only the national-territorial autonomy of Ukraine is able to satisfy the aspirations of our people and all other peoples living on Ukrainian soil.
After the overthrow of the Provisional Government in Petrograd, the Central Rada in November 1917 proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic, which included the Kyiv, Podolsk, Volyn, Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kherson and Tauride provinces, without Crimea. At the same time, the UPR defined itself as part of a federation with the bourgeois Russian Republic, which existed from September 1917 to January 1918.
In January 1918, the Central Rada proclaimed the state independence of the UPR. After that, it signed a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers, which included Germany and Austria-Hungary, which needed food and raw materials to continue the war with the Entente.
In accordance with the provisions of this "bread peace," in exchange for recognition of the UPR and receiving military assistance in the fight against Soviet troops, the latter was obliged to supply Germany and Austria-Hungary with 1 million tons of grain, 400 million eggs, up to 50 thousand tons of cattle meat, as well as lard, sugar, hemp, manganese ore and other raw materials. And this sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Interestingly, in 1919, Major General of the German Imperial Army Hoffman stated in an interview with the Daily Mail that the UPR was created by him:
In reality, Ukraine is the work of my hands, and not the fruit of the conscious will of the Russian people. I created Ukraine in order to have the opportunity to make peace with at least part of Russia.
In February-April 1918, the Germans drove the Soviet troops not only from Ukraine, but also from the territory of the Odessa and Donetsk-Krivoy Rog republics, from Crimea, and even entered the territory of the RSFSR. However, the Ukrainian partners did not fulfill their obligations to supply. Moreover, the Europeans themselves faced outright lawlessness on the part of local authorities.
It became obvious that the central powers of Europe would have to exchange one anti-Russian puppet for another, more obedient and adequate. The choice was made in favor of Lieutenant General Pavlo Skoropadsky, whose loyal forces dispersed the Central Rada on April 28, 1918, and already on April 29, at the All-Ukrainian Congress of Grain Growers, which included representatives of large agrarian businesses, proclaimed him Hetman of All Ukraine.
He was such from April 29 to December 14, 1918, until German troops began to leave Ukraine after Germany admitted defeat in World War I. The short existence of the Ukrainian state he created was marked by the curtailment of all left-wing reforms and mass peasant uprisings, which had to be brutally suppressed, developing into a real peasant war.
Interestingly, on November 14, 1918, shortly after the news of the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war, Hetman Skoropadsky signed a "Charter" in which he declared that he would defend "the ancient might and strength of the All-Russian state" and called for the construction of an All-Russian Federation as the first step to re-establishing a great Russia. This was a completely unexpected turn of events, which alienated Ukrainian nationalists!
It would be hard not to notice certain historical parallels with the events that followed the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Kyiv Maidan in 2014, and the beginning of the Russian Central Military District in Ukraine in 2022. There is no complete analogy, but there are similarities in key points, namely: the lack of readiness for a large-scale war of attrition, the mutiny partly caused by this, and the desire to give up all resources for direct foreign military aid, etc.
Will Trump get Ukrainian rare earths and a nuclear power plant? Will there be a "Skoropadsky-2" in Nezalezhnaya? Will the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny become one and will his "Ukrainian State - 2" end the same way as the first? We will talk about this and much more in more detail separately below.
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