Ladnyi Yu.
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, member of the Ukrainian
Foreign Policy Association, Kyiv, Ukraine
ETHNIC AND NATIONAL PROCESSES IN UKRAINE IN 1918
(To the 100
th
anniversary of the Ukrainian State
of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky)
Image of Pavlo Skropadsky against the background of the Ukrainian
Revolution. The 100
th
anniversary of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky’s Ukrainian State
reveals wide opportunities for comprehending the state-building processes, including
ethnopolitical that took place in Ukraine from April to December 1918. Due to
historical preferences and scientific interests, researchers have repeatedly turned to this
issue, leaving a significant mark in the estimates of the national policy of Pavlo
Skoropadsky. Three main views, rather contradictory and opposite to each other, were
formed in visions of the political heritage of the last Ukrainian Hetman.
In the priorities of Soviet historiography, Pavlo Skoropadsky, by definition, was
characterized as ‘one of the leaders of the Ukrainian bourgeois-landlord
counterrevolution’ [1, p. 519]. According to Mykhailo Shkilnik, one of the figures of
the Central Rada (Central Council of Ukraine), Hetman Skoropadsky was definitely an
ambiguous figure, since, on the one hand, ‘he accepted the face of the faithful son of
Ukraine and a fighter for the independent Ukrainian State, and, on the other hand, he
hid his long-time appearance of the faithful son of his great Russia and a fighter for its
restoration’. In general terms of comments and remarks on Hetman’s activities, M.
Shkilnyk expresses his sincere negative attitude to the fact that Hetman involved a wide
range of national minorities (Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, Bulgarians, Greeks and
others) to the development of the Ukrainian State [2]. Having listed all the weighty
virtues and ‘betrayals’ of Pavlo Skoropadsky, the author makes the final conclusion:
‘The purpose of Hetman’s coup – preparation of Ukraine for joining with Russia – was
generally known and was not subject to doubt’ [3].
Social and political aspirations of Hetman Skoropadsky found their subsequent
reflections in historical alternatives of the Ukrainian researcher S. Yekelchik, which,
in my opinion, objectively tried to highlight the figure of Pavlo Skoropadsky and his
state affairs: ‘He made the last attempt to build the Ukrainian State on the principles of
monarchy and landlord, inherent in Russian and European politics before the World
War I, and at the same time he tried to realize the Ukrainian state idea in the twentieth
century not as an amorphous socialist-federalist dream, but as a solid and sustainable
state system headed by the monarch’ [4].
- 1202 -