Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

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UBOREVICH(-GUBOREVICH), IERONIM PETROVICH (Uborevičius-Guborevičius, Jeronimas) (2 January 1896–12 June 1937). Sublieutenant (1916), komandarm (1935). Born at Antandriia, Kovno guberniia, into a Lithuanian peasant family, I. P. Uborevich, one of the most prominent and successful Red commanders of the civil-war era, was educated at the Dvinsk Realschule, from where he graduated with a gold medal. He then began a course of higher education in the Mechanics Faculty of the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute, but in 1915 transferred to the Constantine Artillery School, from which he graduated in 1916, becoming commander of first a battery and then a company.

Uborevich joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in March 1917, and following the October Revolution, became an organizer of Red Guards detachments in Bessarabia, where he was wounded, captured, and imprisoned by forces of the Austro-German intervention in March 1918. He escaped in August of that year, joined the Red Army, and became an artillery instructor and commander of the Dvinsk Brigade on the Northern Front. From December 1918, he was commander of the 18th Rifle Division of the 6th Red Army. Catching the eye of his superiors, he then rose to numerous command positions: commander of the 14th Red Army of the Southern Front and the South-West Front (6 October 1919–24 February 1920, 17 April–7 July 1920, and 15 November–15 December 1920); commander of the 9th Kuban Army of the Southern Front (1 March–5 April 1920); commander of the 13th Red Army of the Southern Front (10 July–11 November 1920); and commander of the 5th Red Army of the Eastern Front (27 August 1921–14 August 1922). Apart from action against the Whites and the Poles, he also participated in the suppression of the forces of Nestor Makhno and S. Bułak-Bałachowicz and was assistant to M. N. Tukhachevskii in the crushing of the Tambov Rebellion in 1921–1922, before being named minister of war of the Far Eastern Republic and commander in chief of its People’s-Revolutionary Army (17 August–22 November 1922). In the latter capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the storming of Spassk (9 October 1922) and the capture of Vladivostok (25 october 1922), and ultimately, the expulsion from the Maritime Province of the last significant White force on Russian territory, the Zemstvo Host of General M. K. Diterikhs. He was also a member of the Dal′biuro of the Russian Communist Party (August–November 1922).

After the civil wars, Uborevich was a member of VTsIK from 1922 and was then, successively, commander of a series of military districts: Urals (June 1924–January 1925); North Caucasus (January 1925–1927); Moscow (1928–18 November 1929); Belorussia (April 1931–20 May 1937); and Central Asia (20–29 May 1937). He was also was sent twice to study in the Supreme Military Academy of the German General Staff (1927–1928 and June 1933), and from 2 June 1930 to 11 June 1931 was a member of the Revvoensovet of the USSR. He also served as chief of armaments of the Red Army (November 1929–April 1931). From 1931 to 1937, he was a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and from 1934 he was a member of the Military Council of the People’s Commissariat for Defense of the USSR.

As a vocal critic of the invidious role in the Soviet military played by J. V. Stalin’s crony K. E. Voroshilov, Uborevich was arrested on 29 May 1937, and along with Tukhachevskii, A. I. Kork, and others, was arraigned in the “Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization” on 11 June 1937. Found guilty of espionage and sabotage by the (secret) military tribunal, he was condemned to death and shot the same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 31 January 1957.

UDOVICHENKO, OLEKSANDR IVANOVICH (20 February 1887–19 April 1975). Staff captain (November 1917), coronet general (Ukrainian Army, 5 October 1920). The Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Udovichenko was born into a noble family at Cherkassk (Livensk uezd, Orov guberniia). His father was a sublieutenant in the Russian Army. He graduated from the Military-Technical School (1908) and served with the Topographic Corps of the Russian Army. During the First World War, he served with the 129th Bessarabian Regiment, and in 1917, completed an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff, before becoming a senior adjutant on the staff of the 21st Infantry Regiment and then a senior adjutant on the staff of the 3rd Caucasian Corps. When the latter unit was Ukrainized, in August 1917, Udovichenko became its commander, but he was forced out of his post by revolutionary soldiers.

Following the collapse of the Russian Army in late 1917, Udovichenko offered his services to the Ukrainian Central Rada and became head of the Operational Department of its General Staff. In January 1918, he became chief of staff of the Haidamak Kosh of Free Ukraine, with which he participated in the early stages of the Soviet–Ukrainian War. He was subsequently commander of the 3rd Haidamak Regiment (12 March–1 April 1918) and was then assistant head of the reconnaissance section of the operational department of the main staff of the Hetmanite Army. In late 1918, when the Ukrainian National Republic Directory overthrew Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, Udovichenko joined its Ukrainian Army, in which he served as quartermaster general, first of the Chelm–Galician Front (from 26 December 1918) and then of the Right-Bank Front of the active army. From March 1919, he was chief of staff of the Gutsul′sk Kosh, and, from 6 June 1919, he was commander of the 16th Infantry Detachment of the Ukrainian Galician Army, which on 17 June 1919 became the 3rd Independent (Iron) Rifle Division, one of the most battle-hardened units of the Ukrainian Army. He distinguished himself in battle with this force during clashes at Vaniarka (near Odessa) with the Red Army group commanded by I. E. Iakir, but in October 1919 he fell ill with typhus and was captured by the Whites. He managed to escape from incarceration in Odessa and made his way to the Mogilev region, where he helped form the 5th Ukrainian Brigade, which later merged with the 4th Brigade to become the 2nd Rifle Division of the Ukrainian Army. Udovichenko then commanded this division (later renamed the 3rd Iron Division) until the remains of the Ukrainian Army were driven across the River Zbruch into Poland, in November 1920. There, he remained a close ally of Simon Petliura, supporting him in his clashes with the Ukrainian Army leadership and serving as inspector general of the army (from December 1920).

In emigration, Udovichenko settled in France, where he worked for a time as a miner. He was deeply involved in émigré politics, as head of the Brotherhood of Veterans of the Ukrainian National Republic and (from 1953) as head of the European Federation of Ukrainian Veterans Associations. He was also minister of war of the Ukrainian government-in-exile and (from 1954 to 1961) its deputy president. He died on his smallholding at Mentona, near Nice, where he was buried in the Russian (Staryi Zamok) cemetery.

UFA DIRECTORY. Also known, formally, as the Provisional All-Russian Government, this coalition, putatively all-Russian, anti-Bolshevik authority was created, during the Democratic Counter-Revolution, at the Ufa State Conference on 23 September 1918, partly in accordance with the polices of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, one of the leading anti-Bolshevik underground organizations of the time (and significantly, one that had engendered some sympathy among Allied representatives in Russia). According to its constitution, the directory was to be the single sovereign power on all territory liberated from the Bolsheviks until 1 January 1919, when it would transfer power to a 250-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly that had been elected in November 1917. If such a quorum could not be assembled by 1 January 1919, the directory was to transfer power to a 170-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly by 1 February 1919. The claims of all other anti-Soviet authorities (including the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region, Komuch, Alash Orda, the Provisional Oblast′ Government of the Urals, the Provisional Siberian Government, and the Siberian Regional Duma) to either regional or national power were annulled. The elected directors were N. D. Avksent′ev (chairman) of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR); N. I. Astrov of the Kadets; the politically moderate General V. G. Boldyrev; the Kadet (and premier of the Provisional Siberian Government) P. V. Vologodskii; and N. V. Chaikovskii, the veteran member of the Party of Popular Socialists (and head of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region). As neither Astrov nor Chaikovskii was present in eastern Russia, they were deputized for by the Kadet V. A. Vinogradov and by V. M. Zenzinov of the PSR, respectively. However, symptomatic of the problems faced by the directory was that Astrov refused to recognize his election; he, like many Kadets who preferred the right-liberal National Center to the left-liberal Union for the Regeneration of Russia, was dismayed that the All-Russian Government was to transfer power to any kind of rump of the Constituent Assembly elected in 1917, in which there had been a huge majority of socialist members (and a tiny number of Kadets), rather than to a newly elected assembly.

As the Red Army bore down on Ufa (it eventually fell on 29–31 December 1918), the directory was forced to move east, and from 9 October 1918, it was resident at Omsk. There, lacking any administrative machinery of its own, it co-opted, wholesale, the Council of Ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government and at the same time took nominal control of the Siberian Army. However, neither the members of the Siberian government nor the military leadership of White forces in Siberia had any sympathy for the directory, and it was toppled, without resistance, by the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918, to be replaced by the military dictatorship of Admiral A. V. Kolchak.

UFA STATE CONFERENCE. This gathering of anti-Bolshevik parties and organizations—one of the key events of the Democratic Counter-Revolution—met at Ufa from 8 to 23 September 1918, following two preparatory conferences at Cheliabinsk on 13–15 July and 23–25 August 1918. There were some 160–170 delegates (of whom 70 were members of the Constituent Assembly), representing various socialist parties, such as the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the Party of Popular Socialists, the Mensheviks, and the Kadets; various national and regional organizations, including Komuch, the Provisional Siberian Government, Alash Orda, the Astrakhan Cossack Host, the Eniseisk Cossack Host, the Irkutsk Cossack Host, the Orenburg Cossack Host, the Semirech′e Cossack Host, the Siberian Cossack Host, and the Urals Cossack Host; and organizations like Zemgor and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. Representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council and Allied diplomatic missions were also in attendance. The latter, like the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, were anxious to unite the anti-Bolshevik movement.

A “Committee of Elders” met 10 times to elaborate the final declaration of the conference (“The Act of Formation of an All-Russian Supreme Power”). This act, which decreed the creation of the Ufa Directory, was a compromise between those (chiefly the socialists) who wished for a new state authority to be responsible to the Constituent Assembly of 1917 and those (chiefly the Kadets and the Provisional Siberian Government) who were in favor of a provisional military dictatorship. Neither the Left nor the Right was happy with this outcome, and in retrospect, it could be said that the Ufa State Conference was no more successful in uniting Russia’s political forces than had been the Moscow State Conference of 1917, summoned by A. F. Kerensky in the weeks before the Kornilov affair.

UKRAINE, PROVISIONAL WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ GOVERNMENT OF. This regime—the second attempt to Sovietize Ukraine, after the thwarting of such efforts in early 1918—was established at Kursk on 20 November 1918, at the outset of the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and in the aftermath of the withdrawal from the country of the forces of the Austro-German intervention. Its chairman was Iu. G. Piatakov, and its commissar for military affairs was F. A. Artem.

On 29 November 1918, the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Ukraine issued a manifesto announcing the overthrow of the Ukrainian State and the rule of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, canceling all the laws, treaties, and decrees of the Skoropadskii regime and announcing the nationalization of industry and the redistribution (without compensation) of all landowners’ estates among the peasantry. In January 1919, as the Red Army enjoyed success in the latest stage of the Soviet–Ukrainian War, the regime moved to Khar′kov and announced the establishment of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. A new government, the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), was then formed, on the Russian model, with Cristian Rakovski at its head. On 25 January 1919, it announced a union with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, on the basis of “socialist federalism.” The regime lost control of much of Ukraine over the summer of 1919, and on 30–31 August 1919, was forced to abandon Kiev to the separately advancing Ukrainian Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and General A. I. Denikin’s Armed Forces of South Russia.

UKRAINIAN ARMY. Unlike the regular Ukrainian Galician Army of the Western Ukrainian National Republic, the Ukrainian Army—or the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR)—consisted of various semi-independent volunteer and partisan formations, with only a loosely defined structure and chain of command. Its home front was so unstable from 1917 to 1921 that it had to struggle constantly to marshal the material and human resources to maintain itself, and consequently it was unable to move from the status of an army in the process of formation into a stable national force.

The Ukrainian Army had its roots in the period of the Ukrainian Central Rada (March 1917–January 1918), partly through the detachment of Ukrainian units from the Russian Army (the Haidamak Cavalry regiment on the Western front, the three Shevchenko Regiments at Moscow, etc.), partly through the Ukrainization of Russian Army units, and partly (after November 1918) through the formation of new units from former units of the Austro-Hungarian Army (e.g., the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen). In part, these developments were spontaneous, but also influential were the All-Ukrainian Military Congresses (of Ukrainian soldiers’ committees), which convened at Kiev (on 18–21 May, 18–23 June and 2–12 November 1917) and called for the establishment of a separate Ukrainian army. The Central Rada, however, was dominated by socialists and was initially opposed to a standing army; it developed, instead, the idea of the Free Cossacks, whose position as a national militia was defined by the Rada on 13 November 1917. The invasion of Ukraine by Soviet forces under V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko in December 1917, marking the beginning of the Soviet–Ukrainian War, changed the Rada’s mind, but it was overthrown before much could be done. By April 1918, the Ukrainian Army consisted of the Zaporozhian Corps (four infantry regiments, one cavalry regiment, and two light artillery), the Sich Riflemen, the Bluecoats (formed from Ukrainian POWs in German camps), and the Greycoats (formed from Ukrainian POWs in Austrian camps), which were in the process of formation, and an indeterminate number of Free Cossacks, totaling approximately 15,000 men (of whom 2,000 were cavalry).

After the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress, the command of the Ukrainian Army was placed in the hands of the Ukrainian General Military Committee, headed by Symon Petliura, who became head of the General Secretariat of Military Affairs following the proclamation of the UNR on 20 November 1917 (and who remained the most important Ukrainian military leader throughout the civil-war period). The assistance of German and Austrian forces secured by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (27 January 1918) allowed this command to expel Soviet forces from most of Ukraine in March–April 1918, but the price extracted by the occupying forces was a heavy one: the German command demanded that Ukrainian forces abandon Crimea (which it did not recognize as belonging to the UNR), and on the eve of the coup of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, moved to reduce the army of the UNR to the Zaporozhian Corps alone, as the Bluecoats and the Sich Riflemen were disarmed by forces of the Austro-German intervention.

During the period of the Hetmanate (or Ukrainian State), a law on universal military service was promulgated (24 July 1918), with the aim of raising an army of 310,000 men. A decree of 16 October 1918 further determined that the army would be organized along Cossack lines, with territorial units (of seven regiments each) led by commanders (otamans) subordinate to one hetman. However, the resistance of both Russian officers in the army and the German high command limited the army’s development, and by the time of the collapse of the Skoropadskii regime in November–December 1918, the force numbered only some 60,000 men. (Characteristic was the abrogation of all Ukrainian army regulations on 11 November 1918 by the Russian General F. A. Keller, whom Skoropadskii had placed in command of the army.)

In the period of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, the forces that had come into being under the Rada (and which by and large had joined the uprising against the Hetman) remained at the heart of the army, although numerous new units were formed: the Volhynia Division (composed of the Hetman’s Nalyvaiko Regiment, the Galician Regiment, the Czech-Ukrainian Regiment, and others) and the Podilia Division, which was composed of various revolutionary groups that were active in Podilia—the Karmeliuk, Zalizniak, the Blackhoods (Chornoslychnyki), and other regiments. In December 1918, the Ministry of War of the UNR reorganized the army into four groups: Left-Bank (commanded by Otaman Petro Bolbochan, in charge of the front against the Red Army); North Right-Bank (under Otaman Volodymyr Oskilko, in charge of the Bolshevik–Polish front); Southern (under General Oleksandr Hrekiv, in charge of the front against the Entente, French, and Greek forces that had recently disembarked at Odessa); and Dnestr (on the Romanian front). In February 1919, as the directory moved to find common cause with the Allies, the Southern and Dnestr groups were disbanded and their units transferred to the remaining two fronts facing Soviet Russia and Poland. After a renewed advance by Soviet forces (which captured Kiev on 4–6 February 1919) obliged the Ukrainian Army to retreat southwest into right-bank Ukraine in the spring of 1919, the forces of the UNR were again reorganized, into 11 divisions (each consisting of three infantry, one artillery, and one cavalry regiment), distributed among five formations. Then, in mid-July 1919, Polish forces pushed the Ukrainian Galician Army back across the Zbruch River. The Galician army continued to exist as a separate unit under its own command, but from this point onward coordinated its actions with the Ukrainian Army, under a common operational command (the Staff of the Supreme Otaman). At this point, the armed forces of the Ukrainian state consisted of three Galician corps (50,000 men) and the five formations of the UNR Army (30,000 men). When various partisan forces are added to this, the total fighting strength of the various armies at the command of the UNR was probably in the region of 100,000 personnel (including 35,000 combat troops), 335 cannons, 1,100 machine guns, 2 air regiments, and various armored trains and motor vehicles.

From December 1918 to the fall of the directory in late 1920, the Ukrainian Army was engaged in constant action. A critical point was reached in the autumn of 1919, when the main body of the army found itself near Chortoryia, in Volhynia, surrounded by Polish, Soviet, and White forces. The army broke up and resorted to partisan warfare against its enemies in the first of its Winter Campaigns, before regular forces were put back together to assist the Poles in the invasion of Ukraine (part of the Soviet–Polish War) following the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920). By the time the Polish and Soviet sides negotiated an armistice at Riga in September–October 1920, the Ukrainian Army had again been reduced to little more than 20,000 men. It prepared an offensive against Soviet Russia, but the Red Army began its own offensive, and after intense battles (11–12 November 1920), the Ukrainian Army retreated westward. It crossed the River Zbruch on 21 November 1920 and was interned by the Polish authorities. Nevertheless, military activity continued, with partisan attacks against Soviet bases in right-bank Ukraine (the “Second Winter Campaign”). The Bolsheviks, however, soon routed the units involved in these incursions and executed 359 of their fighters on 23 November 1921.

After a long period of internment in the Polish camps (at Wadowice, Piotrków Trybunalski, Tuchola, Aleksandrów Kujawski, Łańcut, Strzałków, Kalisz, and Szczepiórno), the men of the Ukrainian Army were granted the status of refugees and were demobilized. The army staff continued to exist, as an institution subordinate to the government-in-exile of the UNR, although many commissioned individuals joined the Polish Army as “contract officers,” in the hope of a renewed attack on Soviet Russia by Poland. Various veteran associations flourished in émigré centers across Europe, the most active of which was the Society of Former Combatants of the Ukrainian Republican Democratic Army in France (established in 1927).

UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA. This rada (“council”), founded in Kiev in March 1917 to coordinate the Ukrainian national movement in the wake of the collapse of tsarism in the February Revolution, became the supreme legislative body of the Ukrainian National Republic, following the proclamation of that state in November 1917 and the declaration of its independence in January 1918. It was determined, in August 1917, that 75 percent of the seats on the Rada (of which, at that time, there were 798) should go to Ukrainians (some representing Ukrainian communities outside Ukraine), with the remainder filled by ethnic minorities: Russians (14 percent), Jews (6 percent), Poles (2.5 percent), Moldavians (four seats), Germans (three seats), Tatars (three seats), Belarussians, Czechs, and Greeks (one seat each). Representatives tended to be drawn from the urban intelligentsia and the professions, but the majority of the electorate were peasants. At one time or another, 19 political parties were represented in the Rada (with 17 of them defining themselves as socialist), the largest parties being the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (UPSR), the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDLP), and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists. Because of its influence among the peasantry, the UPSR held the most seats in the Rada, but the most influential cabinet posts tended to be held by members of the USDLP, who counted V. V. Vynnychenko and S. V. Petliura among their numbers. (This mirrored the situation in Petrograd, where the more popular Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries allowed Mensheviks to dominate the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.)

On 15 June 1917, an executive body, the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was established and was charged with “managing internal, financial, food-supply, land, agrarian, inter-ethnic and other issues in Ukraine and executing all resolutions of the Rada pertaining to these issues.” On 9 January 1918 (following the declaration of Ukrainian independence in the fourth of the Universals of the Ukrainian Central Rada), these functions were transferred to a new body, the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic. (The Rada had already been responsible for the declaration of the UNR as an autonomous entity within a federated Russia in its Third Universal of 7 November 1917.) This body was formally responsible for the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, on 27 January 1918. Following the coup that overthrew the UNR on 29 April 1918, Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii issued a “Charter to the Ukrainian People” that dissolved the Rada and annulled its laws.

UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA, UNIVERSALS OF THE. Derived from the Latin litterae universales, this was the term adopted in the Hetman State of 17th-century Ukraine to describe major governmental proclamations; it was revived by the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917–1918. The Rada issued four universals, which together had the character of a series of fundamental laws marking the progression of Ukraine from autonomy within Russia to full-blown independence. The First Universal (23 June 1917) was authored by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and declared Ukraine to be autonomous, presaging the formation, five days later, of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada (later the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic). The other universals were all authored by Mikhailo Hrushevsky. The Second Universal (16 July 1917), engendered by the stalling of Kiev’s negotiations with Petrograd, promised the expansion of the Rada and a new General Secretariat, as well as the formation of Ukrainian military forces, but still paid obeisance to the Russian Provisional Government. The Third Universal (20 November 1917), prompted by the October Revolution, proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic and the provisional governance of the General Secretariat, subject to the approval of a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly (set to meet on 22 January 1918), but stopped short of a declaration of independence. The Fourth Universal (9 January 1918) was consequent to the outbreak of the Ukrainian–Soviet War and declared Ukraine to be independent, as well as redubbing the General Secretariat the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.

UKRAINIAN COMMUNIST PARTY. Founded at a congress at Kiev on 22–25 January 1920, and popularly known as the Ukapisty, this party had its roots in the fourth congress of the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDLP) of January 1919, when a group known as the USDLP (Independentists) split away from the main party and advocated a national communist regime in Ukraine, while repudiating both the excessive nationalism of the Ukrainian National Republic and the Ukrainian National Republic Directory and the subservient attitude to Russia of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU). In August 1919, the Independentists themselves split, with the left faction joining the Borotbists and the remainder going on to found the Ukrainian Communist Party (UCP).

Although it remained a tiny party (never exceeding a membership of 250) and was based on the Russian (or highly Russified) working class of Ukraine’s major cities, the UCP sent a memorandum to the Komintern demanding that the Russian Bolsheviks treat them as equals; however, the party failed to gain membership in the Komintern. Its most prominent member was V. V. Vynnychenko, who organized a foreign representation of the UCP in Vienna in February 1920, but he soon disassociated himself from the party. Under pressure from both Moscow and the Komintern, both of which continued to recognize the CPU, the UCP dissolved itself in January 1925. Many former Ukapisty subsequently joined the CPU and participated enthusiastically in the Ukrainization drive of the late 1920s. However, they suffered disproportionately during the Terror of the 1930s.

ukrainian directory. See UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC, directory of the.

UKRAINIAN FRONT. This Red front was created on 4 January 1919, by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic, to combat the forces of the Ukrainian Army, as well as in response to the recent landings at Odessa of chiefly French and Greek forces of the Allied intervention. It initially consisted of the remnants of the former Ukrainian Soviet Army, the 9th Rifle Division, and various border defense units. These were divided into groups facing Poltava, Kiev, and Odessa, which in April 1919 were designated (respectively) the 1st Ukrainian Soviet Army, the 2nd Ukrainian Soviet Army, and the 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Army. On 5 May 1919, the Ukrainian Front was augmented by the attachment to it of the Crimean Red Army.

In January–February 1919, the forces of the Ukrainian Front undertook a major offensive that captured Khar′kov (3 January 1919), Kiev (4–6 February 1919), and all of left-bank Ukraine. In May 1919, following battles against the Ukrainian Army and the interventionists, they also suppressed the Hryhoriiv Uprising, which had been organized by a rebel commander of the Ukrainian Front in right-bank Ukraine. By an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic of 4 June 1919, the Ukrainian Front was reformed on 15 June 1919. The 1st and 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Armies then formed the basis of the 12th Red Army on the Western Front, while the 3rd Ukrainian Soviet Army became the 14th Red Army on the Southern Front.

The commander of the Ukrainian Front throughout its existence was V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko (4 January–15 June 1919). Its chiefs of staff were V. P. Glagolev (4 January–2 May 1919); A. I. Davydov (temporary, 2–12 May 1919); and E. I. Babin (12 May–15 June 1919).

UKRAINIAN GALICIAN ARMY. This force, constituting the army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR), was founded (following a WUPR law on military service of 13 November 1918) around the nucleus of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and other Ukrainian detachments of the former Austro-Hungarian Army. The army, built on battalion-sized units called (in tribute to the Zaporozhian Cossack formations of the 17th century) kureny, was originally divided into three corps (each consisting of from three to five kureny), augmented by two new corps formed in June 1919 (during the Chortkiv offensive), by which time it had reached a strength of some 75,000 men. However, the force was chronically short of small arms, ammunition, and medicines (relying on what could be taken from the few Austrian depots and demobilizing forces in the region) and had few trained officers, although it was comparatively well stocked with artillery and controlled some 40 aircraft.

Although there were some clashes with Romanian forces over Bukovina, until it was forced back across the Zbruch River on 16–17 July 1919, the Ukrainian Galician Army was chiefly engaged with the Ukrainian–Polish War. Thereafter (with the exception of its Mountain Brigade, which became isolated and retreated into Czechoslovakia, where it was deployed against the Soviet Hungarian forces of Béla Kun), the Ukrainian Galician Army joined the forces of the Ukrainian National Republic in its advances against Red forces around Odessa and Kiev, although the unsteady relationship between the Ukrainian commander Symon Petliura and the Western Ukrainian dictator Yevhen Petrushevych meant that the collaboration was never a smooth one.

By the autumn of 1919, the army, which had been ravaged by a typhus epidemic and was penned into a small corner of Podolia, near Vinnitsa, was threatened on all sides by Polish, Red Army, and White forces. Its fighting strength by this time had been reduced to about 5,000 men. In these desperate circumstances, General Myron Tarnavsky made an unauthorized truce with the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) on 6 November 1919, for which he was promptly dismissed, although his successor, General Osyp Mykytka, was forced to make a similar truce on 19 November 1919. When, over the winter of 1919–1920, the AFSR was driven out of the region by the Red Army, the remains of the Galician Army found it expedient to come to terms with the Bolsheviks, who assigned V. P. Zatonskii to reorganize the force as the Red Ukrainian Galician Army. However, when, in April 1920, under the terms of the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920), a joint Polish–Ukrainian offensive against Soviet forces was launched by Jozef Pilsudski and Petliura, two of the three brigades of the Red Ukrainian Galician Army deserted to the invading Polish–Ukrainian forces, and the other was surrounded and surrendered. Deserters and captives alike were then interned near Warsaw. Most of the few members of the force who remained on the Soviet side were imprisoned and shot. During the Second World War, many veterans of the Ukrainian Galician Army joined the ranks of the infamous 14th Voluntary Division SS Galizien to fight against the “Jew-Bolsheviks” of the USSR, although in its original manifestation the army had boasted its own Jewish Brigade.

Commanders of the Ukrainian Galician Army were General Mykhailo Omel′ianovych-Pavlenko (10 December 1918–7 June 1919); General Oleksandr Hrekiv (9 June–5 July 1919); General Myron Tarnavsky (5 July–7 November 1919); and General Osyp Mykytka (7 November 1919–6 February 1920).

Ukrainian Military Committee. This clandestine organization of Ukrainian officers in the Austrian army was created at Lemberg (L′viv) in September 1918. Working in close partnership with the People’s Committee of the centrist Galician National Democratic Party, it planned to seize power in Galicia as the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated following its anticipated defeat in the First World War. In October 1918, representatives of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen were added to the Military Committee, and one of their commanders, Dmytro Vitovski, was elected its chairman.

On orders of the Ukrainian National Rada, the Military Committee planned and staged a coup d’état in Lemberg, on 1 November 1918 (the November Uprising), marking thereby the opening of the Ukrainian–Polish War over the future of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine). With the proclamation of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian Military Committee was dissolved. Apart from Vitovski, the organization’s most prominent members were P. Bubelia, T. Martynets, L. Ohonovsky, Dmytro Paliiv, Ivan Teodor Rudnytsky, and Volodymyr Starosolsky.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL RADA. This 150-strong body was formed at L′viv on 18 October 1918, to serve as the constituent assembly of the Ukrainian ethnic territories within the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire, as they strove for self-determination at the end of the First World War. Its membership included all the Ukrainian deputies in both houses of the Austrian parliament and in the local diets of Galicia and Bukovina, as well as three representatives from each major Ukrainian political party in the two crown lands, nonpartisan specialists, and selected deputies from counties and towns. Several seats were also reserved for representatives of national minorities (chiefly Poles and Jews), but they were never filled; the Jews were wary of the Ukrainian nationalist bent of the Rada, and the Poles, seeking union with Warsaw, refused to recognize its authority.

On 9 November 1918, the Ukrainian National Rada proclaimed the establishment of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. Subsequently, the Rada served as the legislature of the republic, to which the executive (the State Secretariat) was accountable. The post of president was filled first by Kost Levytskii and then by Evhen Petrushevych. It was the Rada that officially called (by a unanimous vote) for the union of the republic with the Ukrainian National Republic on 3 January 1919 (the Act of Zluka). When, during the Ukrainian–Polish War, the government of the republic was forced to flee abroad, and its Ukrainian Galician Army was pressed back across the Zbruch River, on 9 June 1919, all constitutional powers of the Rada and the Secretariat were transferred to Petrushevych as dictator. Following the occupation of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) by Poland, Rada meetings took place in Vienna until 1923.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC. This state was formally established, initially in a proposed federation with Russia, by the Third Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada of 7 November 1917. Following the invasion of Ukraine by Soviet forces in December 1917, the Rada then declared the independence of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in its Fourth Universal of 9 January 1918. At the same time, its executive was established as the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.

On 27 January 1918, the UNR signed an agreement with the Central Powers (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), bringing an end to Ukrainian participation in the First World War and obtaining formal recognition and the military aid of Germany and Austria-Hungary in expelling Bolshevik forces from Kiev (which they had captured the day before the treaty was signed) in exchange for the delivery of foodstuffs and other resources to Berlin and Vienna. However, failure to deliver the latter, as well as the regime’s socialist leanings, earned the republic the ill-will of the forces of the Austro-German intervention, which actively participated in the overthrow of the UNR and its replacement with the dictatorship of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, following the coup of 29 April 1918.

When, following the end of the First World War, German forces withdrew from Kiev in November–December 1918, the UNR was restored by the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, and in an act of union (the Act of Zluka) of 22 January 1919, it merged (as the dominant partner) with the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR). Historically, the UNR has been remembered for its association with the wave of pogroms that swept over Ukraine in 1919, but among the positive legislative achievements of the state were the creation of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (26 November 1918); a law on national-individual autonomy (16 December 1918); and a land law, based on socialist principles (8 January 1919). Numerous institutes of higher and military education were also founded and promoted by the UNR. However, the existence of the state was never secure, and at all times priority was given to military affairs. Indeed, throughout 1919, the republic was hemmed in between the Red Army (which captured Kiev on 4–6 February 1919), the White armies of the Armed Forces of South Russia (which captured Kiev on 31 August 1919, one day after the forces of the UNR’s Ukrainian Army had entered the town), and the Poles, with whom the WUPR was fighting the Ukrainian–Polish War. Eventually, the directory was forced to concede to Polish claims to Western Ukraine (Eastern Galicia), at the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920), in return for which the Poles proffered military assistance, helping the Ukrainian Army to drive the Bolsheviks from Kiev on 6–8 May 1920. However, the Red Army recaptured Kiev (10–12 June 1920) during the early stages of the ensuing Soviet-Polish War, and the Soviet government was confirmed in possession of Ukraine by the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921) that brought that war to an end. Long before that, in November 1920, the leaders of the UNR had fled abroad, where a government-in-exile would exist first in Warsaw and from 1939 in Paris, until a formal transfer of authority to the government of the newly independent Ukraine in 1992.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC, COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S MINISTERS OF THE. This was the body that, from 9 January 1918, succeeded the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic as the supreme executive branch of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR). It operated until the overthrow of the republic by P. P. Skoropadskii on 29 April 1918, when it went underground, and became active again during the period of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory. The council (in Ukrainian, the Rada narodnykh ministriv) was formed from a coalition of Ukrainian political parties (notably the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party, the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists, and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries) and representatives of the national minorities (e.g., the Bund) and controlled all levels of state administration. It derived its authority from the mandate of the Ukrainian Central Rada, with its organization, membership, and jurisdiction defined by Articles 50–59 of the Constitution of the Republic (until 29 April 1918), the laws passed by the Ukrainian Labor Congress of January 1919, and Articles 15–19 of the laws “On the Provisional Supreme Administration and the Legislative Agenda in the Ukrainian National Republic” and “On the State People’s Council” (12 November 1920). The council operated as a government-in-exile from the end of 1920, with its members scattered around the principal émigré centers (such as Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, and Paris). In 1992, it formally transferred its authority to the government of the newly independent Ukraine.

The chairmen of the Council of People’s Ministers of the UNR were Volodymyr Vynnychenko (9–15 January 1918); V. I. Holubovych (18 January–29 April 1918); M. I. Sakhno-Ustymovych (29–30 April 1918); V. M. Chekhivsky (26 December 1918–13 February 1919); Serhiy Ostapenko (13 February–9 April 1919); B. M. Martos (9 April–27 August 1919); I. P. Mazepa (27 August 1919–20 May 1920); V. K. Prokopovich (26 May–14 October 1920); and A. M. Livytskii (20 October–18 November 1920).

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC, DIRECTORY OF THE. This was the name by which was known the revolutionary national government for Ukraine created at Kiev on 14 November 1918, by the Ukrainian National Council and representatives of Ukrainian political parties and trade unions, as well as by the command of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. The directory replaced the crumbling Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii’s. Its aim was to restore the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), which had been overthrown by Skoropadskii and his German allies in late April 1918. Its members (initially including V. K. Vynnychenko, as chairman, and S. V. Petliura, as head of military affairs) called for the establishment of a provisional government (the Executive Council for State Affairs) and a Military Revolutionary Committee, before retiring to Bila Tserva (the headquarters of the Sich Riflemen) on 15 November 1918. On 19 December 1918, after Skoropadskii and the Germans had left the city, the directory entered Kiev.

On 26 December 1918, the restoration of the UNR was proclaimed, and on 22 January 1919 an act of union (the Act of Zluka) with the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic was signed. It had been intended that a Labor Congress, summoned at Kiev on 23 January 1919, would take over the functions of government, but the approach of units of the Red Army from the north made that impracticable, and the congress provisionally transferred power to the directory, whose leader henceforth acted as head of state. When Red forces entered Kiev on 5 February 1919, the directory relocated to Kamenets-Podol′sk, in Podolia. From there, efforts were made to gain the support of the Allies, but commanders of the French force that had landed at Odessa in December 1918 were suspicious of the radicalism of the directory’s leaders and recalled too that it had been the UNR that had signed the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers in January 1918. On 11 February 1919, therefore, in an attempt to appease the Allies, Vynnychenko resigned, and Petliura, who had renounced his membership in the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDLP), assumed the leadership of a government from which both the USDLP and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries agreed to exclude themselves. Even this, however, could not win Allied support, and in any case the French were forced to abandon Odessa in April 1919.

Other problems faced by the regime were the advance of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) toward and then into Ukrainian territory; the indiscipline of the numerous peasant bands that made up its “army” (particularly their taste for pogroms); and an uneasy relationship with the leader of the Western Ukraine, Yevhen Petrushevych, who had assumed dictatorial powers in an attempt to win the Ukrainian–Polish War. When the Ukrainian Galician Army was driven out of its home territory by the Poles, Petrushevych demanded the formation of a new government as the price for merging his forces with those of the directory. This was agreed to, and a new government was established, under Isaak Mazepa, on 27 August 1919. With an army of some 80,000 men now at its disposal, the directory (which was still based at Kamenets-Podol′skii) sought to recapture both Odessa and Kiev. Its forces entered the latter on 30 August 1919, but were promptly thrown out by the arrival of the advance guard of the AFSR. This prompted a new crisis between eastern and western Ukrainian leaders, as the former wanted to prioritize the struggle against A. I. Denikin (and even considered forming an alliance against him with the Soviet government), while the latter hoped to come to some accommodation with the Whites, whom they viewed as representatives of the Allies, and to ally with them in a joint struggle against the Soviet government. Thus, on 6 November 1919, the leaders of the Ukrainian Galician Army negotiated a cease-fire with Denikin.

The last plenary session of the directory took place on 15 November 1919, during which Petliura became head of state. The following day, Kamenets-Podol′skii was captured by Polish forces. After an aborted attempt at continuing the struggle through partisan warfare, on 5 December 1919 Petliura went to Warsaw to negotiate the internment of his forces by the Poles. Subsequently, on 21–24 April 1920, he signed the Treaty of Warsaw with Poland, recognizing the incorporation of Western Ukraine (Eastern Galicia) into Poland. The directory’s forces then assisted the Poles in the capture of Kiev, on 7 May 1920, as the long-rumbling Soviet–Polish War moved into its most active phase. When, however, as part of the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921) that ended the war, Poland signed a separate agreement with and recognized the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the directory’s hopes were dashed. Nevertheless, it continued to exist in exile until 1992, when its powers were transferred formally to the president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC, GENERAL SECRETARIAT OF THE. The General Secretariat was the chief executive organ of Ukraine (and subsequently the Ukrainian National Republic) from 28 June 1917 to 12 January 1918. During that time it held 63 meetings, at which were debated some 430 issues, chiefly of a political, economic, military, and diplomatic character. It was elected and authorized to act by the Ukrainian Central Rada. The Russian Provisional Government subsequently recognized the General Secretariat, although it insisted on greater representation in it of non-Ukrainian peoples (particularly, Russians, Poles, and Jews); demanded the right to appoint the secretaries itself; refused the Secretariat jurisdiction over certain areas (including foreign affairs, the army, food, legal affairs and transport); and limited the scope of its governance to Volhyn, Podilia, Poltava, and Kiev gubernii and the southern districts of Chernigov guberniia. (The General Secretariat claimed jurisdiction over these provinces plus Kherson, Tauride, Ekaterinoslav, and Bessarabia gubernii.) These issues remained unresolved by the time of the October Revolution. Following the Fourth Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada and the declaration of Ukrainian independence on 9 January 1918, the General Secretariat was superseded by the Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL-STATE UNION. This umbrella organization of center and center-right political parties (including the Ukrainian Democratic Agrarian Party, the Ukrainian Party of Independents-Socialists, and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists) and professional unions was active at Kiev from May to July 1918. Its primary aim was to defend Ukrainian independence against any threat of the restoration of Russian authority. Consequently, on 24 May 1918 it submitted a statement to Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii that was critical of the dominant position in his government of representatives of Russian political parties (Kadets, Octobrists, etc.). The union also attacked the regime’s dissolution of the zemstvos and its restoration of prerevolutionary institutions of local government. However, Skoropadskii ignored all appeals from the union, which reorganized itself as the Ukrainian National Union in July–August 1918.

UKRAINIAN NATIONAL UNION. Founded at Kiev in July–August 1918, as the successor to the Ukrainian National-State Union following the departure from the latter of some center-right parties (including the Ukrainian Democratic Agrarian Party) and the adherence to it of some left-wing parties (including the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries), this body served as a coordinating center for a number of Ukrainian political parties and professional organizations. Even more openly critical of the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii than its predecessor had been, the aim of the union was the reestablishment of the Ukrainian National Republic. Its first chairman was Andrii Nikovskii, who was succeeded by Volodymyr Vynnychenko on 18 September 1918. As his authority crumbled, on 5 October 1918 Skoropadskii agreed to the inclusion of five union ministers in the cabinet of Fedir Lyzohub. At the same time, however, the union was instrumental in the founding (at one of its meetings on 13–14 November 1918) of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, which would stage a successful uprising against the Hetman soon afterward. Following the overthrow of the Skoropadskii regime, the union was headed by Nikita Shapoval (14 November 1918–January 1919).

UKRAINIAN PARTY OF INDEPENDENTS-SOCIALISTS. This small Ukrainian nationalist party was founded in December 1917, at Kiev, on the basis of several radical factions of the former Ukrainian People’s Party. It campaigned from its birth, largely through its weekly newspaper Samostiinyk (“The Independentist”), for an independent Ukrainian republic and drew its support from the Ukrainian military and intelligentsia. The chairman of the party was A. Makarenko.

In 1917–1918, although it advocated a social program based on the peasants’ ownership of the land and workers’ ownership of factories, the party was, in fact, antisocialist and therefore opposed the Ukrainian Central Rada and criticized its land-socialization policies and its liberal position with respect to the ethnic minorities, accusing it of “demagogy.” In 1918, the party spoke also against the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, describing the latter as “a national traitor” for welcoming so many Russians into his government and army, and took the initiative in the creation of the Ukrainian National State Union in May of that year. With the collapse of the Hetmanate in December 1918, the party took five ministerial posts in the first cabinet created by the Ukrainian National Republic Directory. In the succeeding cabinet the party supplied the minister of war (A. Shapoval), the minister of marine (M. Bilinskii), the minister of state control (D. Simoniv), and the minister of religion (I. Lipa), but boycotted the later (socialist) ministry of Borys Martos, accusing it of “Bolshevism,” and supported the attempted coup against the directory by Ataman Volodymyr Oskilko in April 1919. The Party of Independents-Socialists was subsequently persecuted by the forces of Symon Petliura and lost most of its influence. By late 1919, the party’s complexion had changed, and it supported suggestions for a tactical alliance with the Whites to fight Bolshevism. Most of its leading members went into emigration in 1919–1920. Thereafter, the party was centered in Vienna (from 1922 under the name the Ukrainian People’s Party) but soon disintegrated.

UKRAINIAN PARTY OF SOCIALISTS-FEDERALISTS. Originally called the Ukrainian Party of Autonomist-Federalists, this political party was formed at Kiev in April 1917, by former members of the liberal-democratically inclined Ukrainian Democratic Radical Party and the Society of Ukrainian Progressives. Among its members were a number of experienced and respected political activists who were to play a leading role in the Ukrainian Central Rada and the governments of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), although a minority of its members served in the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii. The party was active in the formation of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory in November 1918, and from May–October 1920 one of its leaders, V. K. Prokopovych, chaired the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic. With the collapse of the republic, the party became centered in Prague, where it cooperated with the government-in-exile of the UNR.

Ukrainian party of socialists-revolutionaries. This political party was formed at Kiev, on 4–5 April 1917, by the merger of a number of groups of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries that had been active in Ukraine since the beginning of the century. Mykhailo Hrushevsky worked closely with the party, but was not formally a member. Key elements of the program of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (UPSR) were the advocacy of cultural and political autonomy for Ukraine and the socialization of the land (without compensation to private landowners). Utilizing the revived Peasant Union to boost its organization, and reaching out to the masses through its publications Narodna volia (“The People’s Will”) and Borot′ba (“The Struggle”), the party became the chief representative of peasant interests in Ukraine during the revolutionary period and boasted more than 75,000 members.

In 1917–1918, the UPSR held a majority of the seats in the Ukrainian Central Rada and controlled numerous secretariats (ministries) in the government of Volodymyr Vynnychenko. However, following the coup of 29 April 1918 that led to the establishment of the Ukrainian State of P. P. Skoropadskii, the party split at its clandestine fourth congress (13–16 May 1918): the right wing advocated legal opposition to the Hetmanate, while the left advocated armed resistance in collaboration with the Bolsheviks. The Leftists won, and after the overthrow of Skoropadskii, formally reconstituted themselves as the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionary Borotbists (Communists), while the Right assumed the old party name in April 1919. The Borotbists subsequently merged with the Moscow-controlled Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, while the new UPSR provided numerous members of the governments of the Ukrainian National Republic.

In emigration (chiefly in Prague, Vienna, and Paris), the UPSR underwent numerous further divisions during the 1920s and ceased to exist as a unitary organization. Most members remained in opposition to the Soviet government (e.g., the Prague group of N. Iu. Shapoval and the Vienna group of N. Zalizniak and N. Kovalevskii), but in 1924 a section of the party headed by Hrushevsky returned to the Soviet Union, where they and other remnants of the party would fall victim to the Terror of the 1930s. For example, members of the UPSR Central Committee featured in the trial of the “Ukrainian National Center” in February 1931, and many other arrests, exiles, and executions were to follow.

Ukrainian Party of Socialists-RevolutionarIES (Borotbists). See BOROTBISTS.

Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets. This Soviet polity (sometimes termed the Ukrainian People’s Socialist Republic) existed on Ukrainian territory from 12 December 1917 to 25 March 1918. It was led by an executive organ, the People’s Secretariat, and was regarded as being in a federal relationship with Soviet Russia. Its existence was announced at the 1st All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies at Kharkov of 11–12 December 1917 (pro-Soviet forces having earlier been driven out of Kiev by forces loyal to the Ukrainian Central Rada). The People’s Secretariat (a uniformly Bolshevik body) was recognized as the supreme law-making authority in Ukraine by Sovnarkom on 19 December 1917, although the commander of Soviet forces in Ukraine, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, regarded himself as answerable only to Sovnarkom, and the efforts of the People’s Secretariat to relocate to Kiev were thwarted by the Ukrainian Army, aided by the Central Powers in the wake of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 27 February 1918. It was subsequently forced to retreat to Poltava and Ekaterinoslav in March 1918, finally ceasing to operate at Taganrog in April 1918, as the Austro-German intervention swept across Ukraine.

Members of the People’s Secretariat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets included E. B. Bosh (secretary for internal affairs and chair); Mykola Skrypnyk (secretary for labor and subsequently chair); F. A. Artem (secretary for trade and industry); V. P. Zatonskii (secretary for education); and Vasyl′ Shakhrai (secretary for military affairs).

UKRAINIAN–POLISH WAR. This conflict between the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic (WUPR) and the Second Polish Republic over the control of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) erupted as a consequence of the November Uprising of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the formation of the Ukrainian National Rada at Lemberg (L′viv/Lwów) on 31 October–1 November 1918. In response to the Ukrainians’ claims to sovereignty over what, until the first partition of Poland in 1772, had once been Polish territory, Polish revolts broke out at Lemberg and in other towns. Although, on 13 November 1918, the Rada announced the formation of its own Ukrainian Galician Army, the more urbanized Poles had driven its forces out of the region’s towns by the end of that month. The Rada then retreated to Ternopil′ (Ternopol′) and then to Stanyslaviv in December 1918. By February 1919, however, the forces of the WUPR were in a position to launch a successful offensive to gain control of the Przemysl–Lemberg railway (the key conduit of Polish reinforcements to the front), but operations were halted on 25 February 1919, when the Allies intervened to negotiate a truce.

An Allied military-diplomatic mission, under General Joseph Berthélemy, subsequently demanded that the Ukrainians accept Polish control of Lemberg and the nearby Drohobych oil fields—terms that the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), with which the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic had merged on 22 January 1919 (in the Act of Zluka), was willing to accept, but that the Western Ukrainians were not. Poland then brought in further reinforcements and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Ukrainian Galician Army on 19 March 1919, recapturing the line to Przemysl. In May 1919, a second Allied mission (under General Louis Botha) offered Lemberg to the Poles and the oil fields to the Ukrainians. This time the Rada accepted the offer, but the Poles refused and began making use of their huge advantage in manpower and supplies (especially the Blue Army, which had been trained and equipped in France) to drive the Ukrainians back. By late May 1919, the Ukrainian Galician Army was penned into a small corner of Galicia between the Zbruch and Dnestr Rivers. One more offensive was attempted by the Ukrainian forces, in May–June, but on 16–17 July 1919 their army was forced to retreat across the Zbruch and subsequently merged with the Ukrainian Army of the UNR. Polish possession of Eastern Galicia was subsequently confirmed by the Ukrainian leader S. V. Petliura at the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920) and by the Allies’ Conference of Ambassadors (14 March 1923), on condition that Poland preserved the region’s autonomous status.

Approximately 10,000 Poles and 15,000 Ukrainians, the overwhelming majority of them soldiers, died during the war. Many of the Poles who died during the opening stages of the conflict were buried in an extension to Lviv’s Lychakiv cemetery, beyond an arch proclaiming it to be the site of interment of the “defenders” of L′viv. After the incorporation of the region into the USSR in 1939, and especially since Ukrainian independence in 1991, that sign has been many times defaced by Ukrainians, who object to the notion that Poles defended the city against its own Ukrainian inhabitants and their cousins. An oversized (and remarkably “Soviet”-style) bronze statue of Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian national poet, now also stands on L′viv’s Freedom (formally Lenin) Prospekt (in Polish times, the Street of the Legions), near where a statue of Lenin once stood (and before him, from 1898, a monument to Jan III, King of Poland).

UKRAINIAN SICH RIFLEMEN. Formed on local initiative at Lemberg in 1914, this 2,500-strong force constituted the sole, purely Ukrainian unit in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War. Its name, Sich, was derived from the Ukrainian term used in earlier centuries to denote a Cossack unit—especially a unit of the Zaporozhian Cossacks—which itself was related to words denoting chopping (e.g., of trees to clear an encampment, or of logs to construct a fortification)

Following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), the Sich Riflemen formed part of the Central Powers’ army of occupation in Ukraine and was used as a propaganda tool by Vienna (presenting the Austro-German intervention in Ukraine as some form of liberation). In October 1918, it was transferred from the Kherson region to Bukovina, but when the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed, on 1 November 1918, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated, it marched to Lemberg (now L′viv) and became the nucleus of the Ukrainian Galician Army.

A second, 600-strong corps of Sich Riflemen was also formed by POWs from Galicia and Bukovina at Kiev, over the winter of 1917–1918, and became an important element in the Ukrainian Army of the Ukrainian National Republic. It was this latter unit which (with the aid of the Central Powers) drove Bolshevik forces from Kiev in March 1918 and which, in November–December that year (by which time it had swelled to some 20,000 men), also played a key part in the overthrow of the regime (the Ukrainian State) of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii. In addition, in 1919 the Sich Riflemen fought on the Ukrainian Army’s fronts against both the Red Army and the White forces of the Armed Forces of South Russia.

UKRAINIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY. Founded in Kiev in 1905, as the successor to the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDLP) adopted a platform for an evolutionary, parliamentary road to socialism that was based on the Erfurt Program of the German Social-Democratic Party. It supported Ukrainian autonomy and sought (unsuccessfully) recognition from the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party as the representative of the Ukrainian proletariat, but faced the problem that that constituency, among the workers of Ukraine’s major cities and towns, was almost entirely Russian or Russified. It also suffered from persecution at the hands of the tsarist authorities following the 1905 Revolution and was dormant from 1907 onward, as many of its leading members fled to Galicia and Central Europe, where they collaborated with members of the Bund and the Mensheviks. The party formally united with the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Spilka in late 1911. During the First World War, some members of the party were active in the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, the Vienna-based émigré organization that sought the assistance of the Central Powers to establish an independent Ukraine at the end of the war.

The party was reactivated following the February Revolution of 1917 and began publishing the newspaper Robitnycha hazeta (“The Worker’s Gazette”). At its conference at Kiev on 17–18 April 1917, it voted in favor of Ukrainian autonomy and federation with a democratic Russia; in July 1917, it dominated the First All-Ukrainian Workers’ Congress. At this time, although the USDLP had a vibrant intellectual leadership—among its most prominent members were Symon Petliura and Volodymyr Vynnychenko—unlike the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, it did not have mass support because of its cautious position on the socialization of land. In October 1917, its membership was around 5,000. Luminaries of the USDLP (including Dmytro Antonovych, Mykola Porsh, Vasyl Mazurenko, Leonid Mykhailiv, and Borys Martos) held key portfolios in the government of Vynnychenko (9–15 January 1918), but when their opposition to land socialization became clear, the party lost some influence.

The USDLP was banned in the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii—both Petliura and Vynnychenko were imprisoned—and it participated in underground work in preparation for the rising against him in November–December 1918. Following the reestablishment of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in December 1918, Vynnychenko became head of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, Petliura became commander of the Ukrainian Army, and other USDLP members packed the revived Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic: Volodymyr Chekhivsky served as prime minister and Dmytro Antonovych, Borys Martos, Borys Matiushenko, Vasyl Mazurenko, and Leonid Mykhailiv all held portfolios. Subsequently, at its Fourth Congress (10–12 January 1919), the party split into a Rightist (“official”) faction led by I. P. Mazepa and Vynnychenko, which supported the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, and a Leftist group, the USDLP (Independentists), which favored the immediate establishment of a socialist republic and peace with Soviet Russia. The Independentists later merged with the Borotbists to form the Ukrainian Communist Party. In February 1919, to facilitate an expected agreement with the Allied forces that had recently landed at Odessa, all USDLP ministers resigned from the Council of People’s Ministers of the UNR. At the same time, Petliura left the party, and Vynnychenko left the directory.

As the UNR collapsed in 1919–1920, most USDLP leaders went into emigration (chiefly to Czechoslovakia), where they remained active in the Socialist International. Of those who remained in Ukraine, some (including the Central Committee members Andrii Livytsky, Ivan Romanchenko, and Mykola Shadlun) continued to support the directory. In the Council of People’s Ministers appointed in April 1919, USDLP members were again prominent: Borys Martos served as prime minister until August, and Livytsky (deputy prime minister), Isaak Mazepa, Shadlun, and Hryhorii Syrotenko held portfolios. Mazepa then served as prime minister from August 1919 to May 1920. He added Serhii Tymoshenko to the Council of People’s Ministers and made Panas Fedenko a member of the Central Ukrainian Insurgent Committee. It was Livytsky who signed the UNR–Polish Treaty of Warsaw in April 1920, and from May 1920, only he, Mazepa, and Tymoshenko of the USDLP remained in the Council of People’s Ministers. The USDLP was banned in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

At the 9–13 September 1919 conference of USDLP émigrés in Vienna, the Central Committee members P. Chykalenko, P. Didushok, Iu. Hasenko, Ivan Kalynovych, Volodymyr Levynsky, Semen Mazurenko, H. Palamar, Hryhorii Piddubny, S. Vikul, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko demanded that the USDLP withdraw all support from Petliura’s directory and that its members resign from the Council of People’s Ministers. When that motion was not carried, that group left the USDLP and formed the so-called Foreign Group of the Ukrainian Communist Party (until 1921). The émigré majority formed the Prague-based USDLP Foreign Group, under the leadership of Mazepa (with Yosyp Bezpalko, Olgerd Ippolit Bochkovsky, Panas Fedenko, Oleksii Kozlovsky, Borys Matiushenko, and Volodymyr Starosolsky as prominent members). Although it was not part of the government-in-exile of the UNR, the USDLP Foreign Group remained loyal to it, and the former USDLP member Andrii Livytsky served as its prime minister until 1947.

UKRAINIAN SOVIET ARMY. This Red force came into existence according to a decree of the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Ukraine of 30 November 1918. It was formed from the 1st and 2nd Insurgent Divisions operating on Ukrainian territory, as well as several other smaller formations, both regular and irregular. On 27 December 1918, a special collegium (chaired by F. A. Artem) was formed within the military section of the Ukrainian government to oversee the creation of the army. By the end of 1918, the army numbered more than 20,000 men and was engaged in capturing towns across northern and eastern Ukraine from forces of the Austro-German intervention and the Ukrainian Army. It took Khar′kov on 3 January 1918, and the following day was included among the forces of the Red Army’s Ukrainian Front.

The commander of the Ukrainian Soviet Army was V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko (from 30 November 1918). Its chief of staff was V. Kh. Aussem.

UKRAINIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC. The first attempts to establish a Soviet regime in Ukraine occurred soon after the October Revolution, when Bolsheviks at Kiev attempted a coup on 29 November 1917. However, they were defeated and disarmed by forces loyal to the Ukrainian Central Rada and were obliged to retire to Khar′kov, which had just been occupied by Red forces under V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, and where the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (11–12 December 1917) was summoned. It pronounced the founding of the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets and formed a government (the People’s Secretariat) that had an exclusively Bolshevik complexion. In late January 1918, in the opening stage of the Soviet–Ukrainian War, Red forces commanded by M. A. Murav′ev drove the Rada from Kiev, but they in turn were driven out of Ukraine in February–March 1918, in the wake of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (27 February 1918), by Austro-German forces and units of the Ukrainian Army.

Soviet forces reentered Ukraine in November 1918, as the Central Powers withdrew and the collapse of the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii became imminent. This time a Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government (renamed the Council of People’s Commissars on 10 March 1919) was established at Sudzha and proclaimed the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but in the course of 1919, Soviet forces were again driven from Ukraine by the advance of the White Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR), which captured Kiev on 31 August that year. When the AFSR collapsed, Kiev was again captured by Soviet forces (on 16–17 December 1919), but they were obliged to withdraw from the Ukrainian capital once more, on 6–8 May 1920, with the arrival of Polish and Ukrainian forces at the beginning of the active stage of the Soviet–Polish War. Moscow’s hold over Ukraine—but not Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine), which went to Poland—was, however, confirmed by the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921) that brought an end to that war and offered Polish recognition of the Ukrainian SSR (thereby dooming the cause of Ukrainian nationalists).

Following the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR became a constituent part of the Soviet Union in 1923. Its capital was initially sited at Khar′kov, until 1934, when that function was transferred to Kiev (which had by then been purged of most traces of the nationalist cause). The state ceased to exist on 1 December 1991, following Ukraine’s independence.

UKRAINIAN–SOVIET WAR. See SOVIET–UKRAINIAN WAR.

UKRAINIAN STATE. The Ukrainian State (in Ukrainian, Ukrainska derzhava) was the official title of the generally conservative and nationalist polity (often referred to as the Hetmanate) that was established following a coup at Kiev on 29 April 1918, led by Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, that (temporarily) overthrew the pro-socialist Ukrainian National Republic (UNR). Skoropadskii’s regime rested on the support of the occupying forces of the Austro-German intervention, who were attempting to extract from Ukraine the food resources and other prizes promised to them under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (27 January 1918). The regime was markedly Russophile in complexion and faced opposition from much of the Ukrainian peasantry, as well as politicians associated with the UNR (notably those involved with the Ukrainian National-State Union) and military forces such as the Sich Riflemen (disbanded by Skoropadskii in May 1918, but reluctantly reformed by him in August).

On the day of the coup that brought him to power, Skoropadskii issued two edicts, a “Manifesto to the Entire Ukrainian Nation” and “Laws Concerning the Provisional State System of Ukraine,” which together constituted a provisional constitution for the new regime. The Ukrainian Central Rada and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic and their laws and land reforms were all abolished, and the right of private land ownership was reinstated. All legislative and executive powers were transferred to the Hetman, who was simultaneously proclaimed commander in chief of the Hetmanite Army. The edicts also created a Council of Ministers, with executive and legislative functions, to be appointed by the Hetman and to be responsible solely to him. Decrees and orders of the Hetman had to be countersigned by the prime minister (or another responsible minister), but the Hetman was to ratify all decisions of the council, thereby reinforcing his dictatorial powers. The name of the Ukrainian State was supposed to reinforce the notion that this new entity was a distinctly Ukrainian variant of a constitutional monarchy, based on some ill-defined aspects of the traditional Cossack Hetmanate of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Skoropadskii initially nominated Mykola Ustymovych and then Mykola Vasylenko to form a government from representatives of moderate Ukrainian parties, mainly the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists (UPSF). However, neither succeeded in establishing a stable cabinet because most Ukrainian political parties, including the UPSF, boycotted the regime. Eventually a cabinet was formed (on 10 May 1918) that included the following ministers: premier and minister of internal affairs, Fedir Lyzohub; foreign affairs, Dmytro Doroshenko; army, Aleksandr Rogoza; finance, Antin Rzhepetskii; trade, S. Gutnik; agriculture, Vasilii Kolokoltsov; food supply, Iurii Sokolovskii; religion, Vasilii Zenkovskii; health, Vsevolod Liubynskii; education, Vasylenko; communication, B. Butenko; justice, Mykhailo Chubynskii; labor, Iu. Vagner; state controller, Iurii Afanasev; and state secretary, Ihor Kistiakovskii. Numerous changes were made to that list during the summer of 1918; notably, S. N. Gerbel′ became minister of food provisions, A. Romanov became minister of justice, Kistiakovskii became minister of internal affairs, and S. Zavadskii became state secretary. The ministries of the UNR were also overhauled; most deputy ministers and many senior bureaucrats were replaced, although the majority of officials from the previous government remained in their posts. Local administration was entrusted to provincial and county commissioners appointed by the Hetman, who tended to distrust the elected zemstvos.

Although its social and economic policies were a failure, as a consequence of resistance from the peasantry, notably in southeastern Ukraine (where the forces of Nestor Makhno were burgeoning) and along the mid-Dnepr (where Iurii Tiutiunnyk had his base), the Hetman government achieved some successes in diplomacy, establishing diplomatic relations with the Central Powers and several neutral countries and strengthening relations with the Kuban Cossack Host and the Don Cossack Host. In accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), the Ukrainian State was even formally (albeit reluctantly) recognized by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, with which it signed a preliminary peace treaty on 12 June 1918. It also established the Ukrainian state universities of Kiev and Kamenets-Podol′skii, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, a national library (today the Central Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), a national archive, a state museum and a state music and drama institute in Kiev. It also “Ukrainianized” all schools and made the teaching of Ukrainian language, history, and geography compulsory. In addition, it built a reasonably effective Ukrainian Army (although the sympathies of its officers were often more pro-Russian or pro-UNR than pro-Hetman).

From its very beginnings, the Ukrainian State was opposed by most Ukrainian political organizations. Ukrainian nationalists despised its pro-Russian orientation (symbolized by the predominance of Kadets and Octobrists in its administration) and its subservience to Germany, while socialists condemned its reactionary policies, particularly with regard to the repeal of land reform (although that was forced upon Skoropadskii by the Germans). Over the late summer of 1918, as it became increasingly obvious that the Central Powers would lose the world war, Skoropadskii began negotiations with the opposition, united in the Ukrainian National Union (UNU), offering them cabinet posts, guarantees of freedom of speech, and (in a manifesto of 22 October 1918) a pledge to uphold the independence of Ukraine and to summon a national parliament. On 24 October 1918, a new cabinet, representing a compromise between Ukrainian nationalist and pro-Russian forces, was created: Fedir Lyzohub, premier; Dmytro Doroshenko, foreign affairs; Aleksandr Rogoza, military affairs; V. Reinbot, internal affairs (acting); Antin Rzhepetsky, finance; Oleksander Lototsky (UNU), religious affairs; Petro Stebnytsky (UNU), education; Volodymyr M. Leontovych (UNU), agriculture; Sergei Gerbel′, food supply; Andrii Viazlov (UNU), justice; Maksym Slavinsky (UNU), labor; Sergei Mering, trade and industry; B. Butenko, communications; Vsevolod Liubynsky, health; S. Petrov, state controller; and S. Zavadskii, state secretary. However, when the Central Powers finally capitulated to the Allies, Skoropadskii changed tack and appointed a new cabinet on 14 November 1918 that was purged of UNU elements and packed with mostly Russian monarchists: premier and minister of agriculture, Sergei Gerbel′; external affairs, Iurii Afanasev; army, D. Shchutskii; navy, Andrii Pokrovskii; internal affairs, Ihor Kistiakovskii; education, Volodymyr Naumenko; religious affairs, Mykhailo Voronovych; finance, Antin Rzhepetskii; communication, V. Liandeberg; trade, Sergei Mering; justice, V. Reinbot; health, Vsevolod Liubynskii; labor, Volodymyr Kosynskii; food supply, G. Glinka; and state controller, S. Petrov. At the same time, Skoropadskii was further alienating Ukrainians by touting an alliance with the Volunteer Army. This only served to hasten the speed with which the regime was overthrown by the forces of the Ukrainian National Republic Directory, supported by the Sich Riflemen, on 14 December 1918, as the Central Powers withdrew from the region under the terms of the armistice of 11 November 1918.

The chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian State were Mykola Illich Sakhno-Ustymovych (29–30 April 1918); Mykola Prokopovych Vasylenko (30 April–10 May 1918); Fedir Andriiovych Lyzohub (10 May–14 November 1918); and S. N. Gerbel′ (14 November–14 December 1918).

Ulagai, Sergei Georgievich (31 October 1875–20 March 1947). Colonel (1917), major general (12 November 1918), lieutenant general (1919). A controversial figure among the White military leadership, and probably best remembered for commanding the ill-fated effort to reestablish a White bridgehead in the Kuban during the summer of 1920, S. G. Ulagai was a graduate of the Voronezh Cadet Corps (1895) and the Nicholas Cavalry School (1897). He was a participant in the Russo–Japanese War and in the First World War rose, by 1917, to the command of the 2nd Zaporozhian Regiment of the Kuban Cossack Host (of which he had become a member through marriage, being born into a Cherkess family). He was arrested in September 1917, for complicity in the Kornilov affair, but escaped and made his way to the Kuban.

In the White movement, Ulagai served initially as an officer with a partisan detachment of the Kuban Cossacks (November 1917–January 1918) and was then a participant in the First Kuban (Ice) March, rising to command of the Kuban Cossack Infantry (Plastunskii) Battalion (May–July 1918) after the forces of the Kuban government had united with the Volunteer Army. After recovering from wounds, he then served as commander of the 2nd Kuban Cossack Division of the 2nd Army Corps of General V. P. Liakhov (22 July 1918–27 February 1919), contributing to the clearance of Red forces from the North Caucasus, and as commander of the 2nd Kuban Cossack Cavalry Corps that suffered defeats to Red forces around Rostov-on-Don (March–June 1919). From June to August 1919, he commanded a Cossack cavalry group of the Caucasian Army of General P. N. Wrangel at Tsaritsyn, before being hospitalized for illness. He returned to command the Composite Cavalry Group of Don and Kuban Cossacks in the Volunteer Army that suffered defeats in the Donbass and at Rostov (November–December 1919). In January 1920, he again fell ill with typhus, but again returned to service as commander of the remnants of the Kuban Army in the North Caucasus (29 February–13 April 1920). Together with his men, he was then evacuated to Crimea, where he was placed in the reserve of Wrangel’s Russian Army. Over the summer of 1920, he helped to plan and command the unsuccessful landing of Cossack forces along the coast of Kuban (sometimes termed “the Ulagai Landing”).

Evacuated back to Crimea as a general uprising in the Kuban failed to materialize and the operation collapsed, Ulagai was dismissed from the army by Wrangel and went into emigration in October 1920. He lived in Albania from 1920 to 1940, reportedly serving with the émigré Cossack group that helped bring King Zog to power and (from 1924) entering the ranks of the Albanian army. During the Second World War, he joined the collaborationist efforts of General P. N. Krasnov, seeking to raise Cossack forces in Yugoslavia and elsewhere to fight against the USSR in alliance with Nazi Germany, but (apparently because he had possession of full Albanian citizenship) he escaped extradition to Russia along with Krasnov and other Cossack émigré “victims of Yalta.” He moved to France, where he died at Marseille in 1947. On 22 January 1949, his remains were transferred to the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, Paris.

Ulmanis, Kārlis (4 September 1877–20 September 1942). Kārlis Ulmanis, the first prime minister of independent Latvia, was born at Bērze, in Courland guberniia, and studied agronomy at universities in Switzerland and Germany before embarking on a career as a teacher and manager in a variety of agricultural institutions in his native province. He was arrested and imprisoned during the 1905 Revolution, and thereafter fled to the United States to escape persecution at the hands of the tsarist authorities. Having furthered his studies (and later taught) at the University of Nebraska, then opened a dairy business in Houston, he returned home following the amnesty declared by Nicholas II during the Romanovs’ tercentenary celebrations in 1913.

As the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917–1918, Ulmanis helped found the Latvian Farmers’ Union (one of the most powerful political forces in Latvia at the time); joined the Latvian People’s Council (Tautas Padome), which declared Latvian independence on 18 November 1918; and became prime minister of the Latvian republic (19 November 1918–18 June 1921) during the Latvian War of Independence. He was returned to that office on several occasions, as governments came and went in interwar Latvia, before in 1934 intervening with military assistance to partially suspend the constitution and establish an authoritarian dictatorship (the “Nationalist Dictatorship”) under his command. (Ostensibly, he moved to forestall a coup that had been planned by an extreme-Right organization, the “Legion.”) In 1936, he merged the offices of prime minister and president and began styling himself “Tautas Vadonis” (“Leader of the Nation”).

When the USSR invaded Latvia in June 1940, Ulmanis advised nonresistance, which added to the controversies surrounding his part in Latvian history. The following month (on 21 July 1940), he was arrested by the occupying Soviet authorities and was deported to Stavropol′, in Russia, where he was initially assigned to agricultural work before being imprisoned in July 1941. The following year, as invading German forces approached the North Caucasus, he was among prisoners evacuated across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk, in Turkmenistan. He contracted dysentery and died soon after his arrival in Central Asia. Despite the controversy that surrounds a figure who imposed a dictatorship and ordered the passive surrender of his country to an invader, since 1989 Ulmanis has enjoyed some rehabilitation in independent Latvia. One of the major streets in Riga is named after him (K. Ulmaņa gatve), and in 2003 a monument of him was unveiled in a park at Bastejkalns, in the city center.

UNGERN VON STERNBERG, ROMAN FEDOROVICH (22 January 1886–15 September 1921). Sublieutenant (1908), esaul (1915), major general (1918), lieutenant general (1919). The “Bloody Baron” R. F. Ungern von Sternberg, one of the most notoriously cruel and violent characters of the civil wars and the personification of the Siberian atamanshchina, was born at Graz, Austria, as Robert Nicholas Maximillian von Ungern-Sternberg, but later changed his name. He was raised on the Estonian estates of his ancient Baltic German family, and even as a youth, he terrified and terrorized both his teachers and his classmates. He was expelled from the Revel (Tallinn) Gymnasium and later (February 1905) was withdrawn from the Naval Cadet Corps by his family, under threat of being cashiered, then served in the Far East as an ordinary soldier. After returning to European Russia and graduating from the Pavlovsk Military School (1908), he again served in Siberia, in the Argunsk Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossack Host. A wild, undisciplined character and a heavy drinker (remembered by P. N. Wrangel as “the type that is invaluable in wartime and impossible in times of peace”), he was expelled from the army in 1911, but not before, during a fight with a colleague, receiving a heavy saber blow to the head that may have left him mentally unbalanced. He then drifted around eastern Asia for some years, becoming attracted to the culture of the Mongols and studying Buddhism. (According to some sources, he joined the Mongolian forces that overthrew imperial Chinese rule in 1911.)

Despite his checkered past, on the outbreak of the First World War Ungern was accepted into Wrangel’s Nerchinsk Regiment of the Ussuri Cossack Host and fought with distinction in Galicia. However, he had to be sent into the reserves in January 1917, to avoid a court martial, having struck a senior officer during a drunken brawl, and was in a military prison at the time of the February Revolution. After he was released, he made his way to Transbaikalia to join his friend G. M. Semenov’s mission to raise volunteer units among the Buriats. Following the October Revolution, he became deputy commander of Semenov’s Special Manchurian Detachment, later establishing his own fiefdom around Dauria and applying methods of murderous tyranny that even Semenov had to admit were “frequently condemned.”

In October 1920, he appears to have split with Semenov, abandoning Dauria with his men shortly before his commander’s arrival there. Soon afterward he entered Mongolia, at the invitation of the head of the Mongolian theocracy, Bogdo Gegen (1869–1924), who had been dethroned during a Chinese republican invasion of the country in 1918–1919. In January 1921, Ungern’s forces attacked the Chinese garrison at Urga (now Ulaanbaatar) several times and were repulsed, but on 1–3 February that year entered the city without a fight, Ungern having duped the Chinese into believing that his forces were far more numerous than they actually were. The liberated Bogdo Gegen (who now assumed the title Bogdo Khan) then named Ungern a Mongolian “Prince of the First Rank” and “Supreme Commander of Mongolia” (31 March 1921). As the Bogdo Khan was a dissolute character and almost blind (reportedly as a consequence of contracting syphilis), Ungern was now, in effect, the country’s military dictator. However, it was now clear that he was acutely mentally disturbed; he had escalated from a vague philosophical attraction to Eastern cultures and a brand of “military Buddhism” to a fixed belief that he was the personal reincarnation of Genghis Khan, placed on Earth to cleanse and redeem Western civilization through a new Mongol invasion of Europe. Meanwhile, his forces instigated a reign of terror in the area under his control.

In late May 1921, having been joined by the forces of General A. S. Bakich, Ungern led a small, 5,000-man force (with a grand name, the Asiatic Cavalry Division) across the border onto the territory of the Far Eastern Republic (FER) near Troitskosavsk (Kiakhta), but was defeated by the superior 5th Red Army and local units of the FER’s People’s-Revolutionary Army. As his corps disintegrated and fell back into Mongolia, Ungern suggested to his men that they should march to Tibet. They refused, and attempted to kill him by strafing his tent with machine guns (possibly at the instigation of Cheka agents who had infiltrated his camp). He escaped (although wounded), but on either 19 or 22 August 1921 (sources differ), he and some 30 Mongol troops were waylaid and captured, in the open steppe, by the Red partisans of P. E. Shchetinkin. According to some accounts, Ungern’s men had bound him and forced him to surrender. He was then taken to Soviet Russia, according to some accounts being exhibited in a cage at railway stations along the way. The following month, on 15 September 1921, after a brief trial before the Supreme Extraordinary Revolutionary Tribunal at Novonikolaevsk—where, dressed in the yellow kaftan of a Mongolian lama, he was accused and found guilty of the mass murder of Siberian and Mongolian workers and peasants, banditry, the instigation of pogroms, plotting to restore the Romanov dynasty, and collaborating with the Japanese to overthrow Soviet power and divide Russia—he was executed by firing squad. Some accounts have it that after his death Soviet doctors performed an autopsy on Ungern’s head (which was remarkably small in comparison to the rest of his body) and found that the right lobe of his brain was almost completely atrophied. Others claim that, after his death, the 13th Dalai Lama declared Ungern to have been an incarnation of the Black Mahakala, a six-armed demon, prone to manifest itself in a necklace of human skulls. In 1998, Ungern’s family petitioned the Russian authorities for his posthumous rehabilitation, but the application was refused.

UNIFORMS (COSSACKS). For most Cossacks the basic uniform comprised the standard loose-fitting tunics and wide trousers of Russian regular troops during the period after 1881. However, men of the Kuban Cossack Host and the Terek Cossack Host wore the long, open-fronted, cherkesska coats, with ornamental cartridge loops and colored undercoats (beshmety), that are associated with the popular image of the Cossacks. In addition, members of most Cossack hosts wore fleece hats with colored cloth tops in full dress and with peaked caps for ordinary duties, although the Kuban and Terek hosts generally wore high fleece caps on most occasions. While most Cossacks served as cavalry, there were infantry (plastun) and artillery units in several of the Hosts. In addition, each Host was distinguished by elements of its uniform, as distinguished in table 3 (adapted from Tablitsi Form’ Obmundirovaniia Russkoi Armii, by Colonel V. K. Shenk, published by the Imperial Russian War Ministry, 1910–1911).

Table 3.

Host

Year Established

Cherkesska or Tunic

Beshmet

Trousers

Fleece Hat

Shoulder Straps

Don Cossacks

1570

blue tunic

none

blue with red stripes

red crown

blue

Urals Cossacks

1571

blue tunic

none

blue with crimson stripes

crimson crown

crimson

Terek Cossacks

1577

gray-brown cherkesska

light blue

gray

light blue crown

light blue

Kuban Cossacks

1864

gray-brown cherkesska

red

gray

red crown

red

Orenburg Cossacks

1744

green tunic

none

green with light blue stripes

light blue crown

light blue

Astrakhan Cossacks

1750

blue tunic

none

blue with yellow stripes

yellow crown

yellow

Siberian Cossacks

1750s

green tunic

none

green with red stripes

red crown

red

Transbaikal Cossacks

1851

green tunic

none

green with yellow stripes

yellow crown

yellow

Amur Cossacks

1858

green tunic

none

green with yellow stripes

yellow crown

green

Semireche Cossacks

1867

green tunic

none

green with crimson stripes

crimson crown

crimson

Ussuri Cossacks

1889

green tunic

none

green with yellow stripes

yellow crown

yellow

UNIFORMS (NATIONALIST ARMIES). The uniforms of non-Russian units were as varied as the myriad political and national forces involved in the civil wars. What follows is a brief description of the uniforms and insignia of the major non-Russian nationalist forces only.

Finland: White Finnish detachments initially wore the uniform of the Imperial Russian Army, with a white armband on the left sleeve that sometimes bore the Finnish arms: a gold lion rampant on a scarlet shield. These badges also began to appear on caps and helmets in 1918–1919. Swedish-style uniforms were also introduced in 1918–1919.

Estonia: General Johan Laidoner’s Estonian Army initially wore the uniform of the Imperial Russian Army, with armbands in the Estonian national colors of white, blue, and black. In 1919, they were issued with British uniforms, which were modified with a standing, German-fashion collar (in black cloth for officers) and decorated on the left sleeve with a shield-badge in the national colors: blue cloth with black border and white piping, plus devices indicating the branch of service. Ranks were indicated by five-pointed, German-style pips on the collar and shoulder straps. The cap was locally made and featured an oval cockade in Estonian colors.

Latvia: Throughout the Latvian War of Independence the uniforms of the Latvian Riflemen of the Imperial Russian Army continued to be worn by Latvian forces, with caps and sleeve badges decorated with devices in the red and white national colors of the new Latvian state. The latter were retained when British uniforms began to be supplied to the Latvian Army in 1919. Ranks were indicated by gold bars on shoulder straps for NCOs, five-pointed Russian-style stars for junior officers, and four-pointed German-style pips for senior officers.

Lithuania: As in the other emergent Baltic States, uniforms of the Imperial Russian Army predominated in 1918, with a triangular cloth badge in Lithuanian national colors (red, green, and yellow) on the right sleeve. British uniforms were introduced in 1919 and were worn with peaked caps.

Ukraine: The Ukrainian Central Rada introduced a cockade in Ukrainian national colors (light blue and yellow, symbolizing the sunny sky and abundant wheat fields of the country), which members of the Ukrainian Army wore on uniforms from the tsarist era in 1917–1918. It also adopted a new method of rank distinction, using lace chevrons on the cuff. In 1918, the forces of the Hetmanite Army of P. P. Skoropadskii wore a long blue coat (zhupan) and wide Ukrainian trousers (sharovari). Ranks and branch of service details were initially indicated by blue collar patches, stenciled in yellow (crossed rifles for infantry, crossed swords for cavalry, crossed cannons for artillery). From June 1918, this was changed to colored piping around the cap crown, collar, shoulder straps, and so forth (crimson for infantry, yellow for cavalry, red for artillery, etc.).

The Ukrainian Galician Army of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic wore uniforms of Austrian-style gray-blue cloth, with a Galician peaked cap of the same color with blue (infantry), yellow (cavalry), red (artillery), black (engineers), crimson (military police), or gray (technical units) facings. The cap also featured a cockade of light blue and yellow, with a silver trident device of Ukraine, while the branch-of-service colors were repeated on “wolf’s teeth” patches (zoobchatka) worn on the collar.

The Sich Riflemen were distinguished by their Mazepynka cap (with outward sloping sides and a V-shaped cutout at the front) and a blue collar patch with the stenciled yellow initials “SS” (“CC” in Cyrillic) for Sichovi Striltsi.

Georgia: Uniforms of the tsarist era predominated in the forces of the independent Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921, although some cavalry regiments wore national dress: fur hat (papakha), cloak (burka), long, high-waisted coat (cherkeska), and undercoat (beshmet), with soft leather breeches and heel-less leather boots. Epaulettes and cockades were in the national colors (dark red, black, and white) and bore various Georgian devices (including the Maltese cross).

Armenia: No regular new uniform was developed in the Democratic Republic of Armenia. Rather, units wore uniforms from the tsarist era that they had inherited from the stores of the Caucasian Front of the First World War, but replaced the imperial stars on the epaulettes with small crosses.

Azerbaijan: In the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, Imperial Russian Army uniforms predominated throughout the civil-war period, decorated with a yellow metal star and crescent cap-badge.

UNIFORMS (RED ARMY). Throughout 1918 and much of 1919, the Red Army (like the Whites and various nationalist forces) wore uniforms inherited from the tsarist era, customized with ranks and insignia and, with increasing frequency, revolutionary symbols, such as the red star. On 25 April 1918, a Commission on the Elaboration of Uniform was established by the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, which on 7 May 1918, announced a competition to design a new uniform for the Red Army. The results were announced on 18 December 1918 and officially adopted by the Revvoensovet of the Republic on 16 January 1919, although shortages of materials meant that very few kranoarmeitsy (“Red Armymen”) would have received their full kit until at least 1920.

Branch-of-service colors were crimson (infantry), blue (cavalry), orange (artillery), black (engineers), light blue (air force), and light green (border guards). Badges depicting the branch of service (to be worn on the left sleeve) were added on 3 April 1920. The essential elements of the uniform were as follows.

Helmet: After a 1918 design by the historical artist Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, this consisted of a blunt-pointed, peaked broadcloth helmet (shlem sukonnyi), with flaps that could be folded down and tied under the chin for warmth. On the front of the helmet was stitched a broad red (or sometimes black) stripe, and on it was a five-pointed cloth star, in branch-of-service color. The small, metal (usually tin) red star that had been adopted in July 1918 was pinned to the cloth star. The helmet was intended for winter use and could be worn under a metal helmet. It was modified, in April 1919, to include a peak at the front and a roll-up neck covering at the rear, with a stiffener in the peak to keep it erect. It was at first nicknamed the bogatyrka, after the warrior-knight heroes of Russian medieval legend (the Bogatyrs), who were depicted as wearing similarly shaped metal helmets in a famous 1898 painting (“The Bogatyrs”) by Vasnetsov; or a frunzevka (because the men of M. V. Frunze’s army group on the Eastern Front were among the first to wear it); but by 1920 came to be known universally as the budenovka, after S. M. Budennyi, as the design proved particularly popular with the men of his 1st Cavalry Army.

Greatcoat: Again based on an historical precedent, in this instance the uniform of a 17th-century Russian musketeer (strelets), the Red Army greatcoat (kaftan) was introduced on 8 April 1919. It was made of khaki cloth and for fastening had three distinctive cloth tabs (razgovory)—double-bastion shaped and in branch-of-service colors—across the chest. The kaftan had two vertical side pockets. The collar, cuffs, and pocket flaps were of darker khaki cloth and piped in branch-of-service colors.

Shirt: A smock-like, khaki cotton blouse (gimnasterka) with a two-inch standing collar with two hooks and two buttons on the cuffs for fastening was worn. The collar and the front of the shirt were decorated with pairs of razgovory in branch-of-service colors.

Breeches: A variety of types of trousers were in use, but most common were breeches (sharovari) of light gray cotton in summer and of dark gray cloth in winter (sometimes reinforced with leather for cavalry and horse artillery units).

UNIFORMS (WHITE ARMIES). Until substantial numbers of uniforms were imported from the Allies—Britain alone donated 200,000 sets to the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak and the Armed Forces of South Russia—White forces relied almost entirely on uniforms left over from the Imperial Russian Army. Its field uniform had last been regularized in March 1909. The single-breasted tunic was made of cloth and was grayish-green in color. It had five buttons (made of leather or metal) and two metal hoops and hooks at the neck for fastening. The top button was located 1.3 inches from the lower collar hook; the lowest was at waist level. There were two rectangular pockets on the chest, with flaps fastened by smaller buttons. There were no cuffs on the sleeves. The tunic measured 26–30 inches from the collar to the lower hem for infantry and 24–28 inches for cavalry. It was adorned with shoulder boards (pogony), which were up to 7 inches in length and about 3 inches wide. These were double-sided; one side displayed the regimental colors, the other was khaki. Both sides had insignia in branch-of-service colors: yellow (infantry), crimson (riflemen), scarlet (foot artillery), light blue (cavalry and horse artillery), black (commissary units), white (train units), brown (engineers), or orange (fortress troops). There was also a loose-fitting, smock-like summer blouse (gimnasterka), in khaki. The breeches (sharovari) were of khaki cloth for infantry, foot artillery, and engineers and gray-blue cloth for cavalry and horse artillery. Traditionally, the breeches were worn tucked into tall jackboots or with puttees and boots, but these were in very short supply during the civil wars, and a wide variety of footwear was adopted. Both soldiers and commanders were also issued with a single-breasted greatcoat, with a broad collar, roll cuffs, and hooks instead of buttons for fastening. Local customization of this basic pattern was common, as detailed below.

North Russia: Because of the number of Allied (especially British and American) troops in this theater, the wearing of their uniforms (or elements of them) by Russian forces was very common from the earliest stages of the civil wars. In addition, in August 1918, by order of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region, officers were banned from wearing shoulder boards (pogoni). Instead, they wore chevrons on their right sleeves. Pogony were reintroduced in 1919, but were made of cloth, with lettering stenciled on them in oil paint for soldiers and NCOs and embroidered (or in metal) for officers. NCOs were to wear red lace stripes on the cuff: one narrow stripe for an efreitor (lance-corporal), two for a mladshii unterofitser (junior NCO), three for a starshii unterofitser (Senior NCO), and a single wider stripe for a feldfebel (sergeant-major). By 1919, the wearing of British uniforms was nearly universal, with ranks indicated by black braid on the sleeve, the Russian imperial cockade (kokarda) displayed on headgear, and woolen braid on the cap, crown, and cuffs: white for the first regiment of a division, blue for the second, and red for the third, for infantry and cavalry; black for artillery; green for engineers; and black velvet for general staff.

Northwest Russia: In this region, the men of the North-West Army were usually distinguished by a sleeve badge made of cloth and consisting of a broad chevron in the Russian national colors (white, blue, and red), pointing upward and partly enclosing a broad white cross. Following the delivery of some 40,000 British uniforms to the region in August–September 1919, most units wore these, with Russian pogony and buttons. The men of Prince A. P. Liven’s army group, however, wore German uniforms, and even civilian dress was not uncommon.

South Russia: In the Armed Forces of South Russia, the uniforms of the imperial era mixed with an increasing concentration of British-supplied kit, as 1919 wore on. The most common insignia was a chevron on the left sleeve, downward pointing in the national colors. Badges and embroidery on the chevron distinguished units (e.g., a wolf’s head for the cavalry of General A. G. Shkuro, who had been nicknamed the “White Wolves”).

However, the colorful units had their own, often flamboyant, uniforms and insignia, which contrasted starkly with the dull khaki of others. The Kornilovtsy wore black tunics and breeches, with white piping on the collar, breast, pocket flaps, cuffs, and trouser seams. Their caps had a red crown and a black band, again with white piping, and were peaked for officers and unpeaked for others. Pogony were half red and half black. The uniforms of the Markovtsy were similar, except that the crown of the cap was white, with black piping, and the pogony were predominantly black. The Alekseevtsy wore black (or sometimes white) uniforms, with facings in light blue, and a white-crowned cap piped in light blue and with a light-blue cap-band piped in white. The Drozdovtsy wore khaki tunics, without piping, and gray-blue breeches piped in red, with crimson-crowned caps piped in white and with a white cap-band piped in black. As these regiments grew into divisions over the course of 1918–1919, only the original members—usually the 1st or Officers’ companies or regiments—displayed these colors, the rest of the men wearing Russian or British khaki.

In all units of the Armed Forces of South Russia, the most senior officers (notably General P. N. Wrangel) were often clad in a long, narrow-waisted, and collarless cherkeska (Circassian coat) and a tall papakha (Circassian hat) of black or white fur or astrakhan.

Siberia: As the Siberian Army was gathered in the summer of 1918, during the Democratic Counter-Revolution, it at first deliberately avoided the pogony, cockades, and other regalia of the imperial army. Also, to display the regionalist credentials of the Provisional Siberian Government, the army adopted as its field sign (displayed on badges, patches, chevrons, and armbands) the white and green colors of Siberian regionalism (symbolizing the snow and forests of Siberia). By September 1918, however, as the military sought to assert itself over the civilian authorities, tsarist patterns were being reintroduced; the army commander, General P. P. Ivanov-Rinov, even decreed that officers could be arrested on sight for failing to display their insignia of rank.

Uniforms of the Siberian Army and later the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak were generally khaki, on the imperial model, although British uniforms became increasingly common in 1919. Sleeve patches generally had the unit cipher stenciled in oil paint on the lower portion, with a branch-of-service badge on the upper portion (embroidered or of metal for officers, stenciled for others). The patches were of a variety of colors: dark blue (cavalry), crimson (riflemen), black with red piping (artillery and engineers), white (headquarters staff), black with white piping (general staff), and dark green (administrative services). Some units, however, had quite distinct uniforms and insignia. For example, the men of B. V. Annenkov’s forces in Semirech′e wore a skull-and-crossbones device on cockades, hat badges, buttons, and sleeve patches.

UNION FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. See CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, UNION FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE.

Union for the Defense of the Fatherland and Freedom. This underground anti-Bolshevik organization was founded in February 1918, by B. N. Savinkov. According to its charter, its aims were “the overthrow of the current [Soviet] government and the organization of a firm authority that will unyieldingly guard the national interests of Russia and re-establish the old army, together with the rights of the former commanding staff, with the aim of continuing the war against Germany.” According to Savinkov, in the formation of the union he was acting as the certified representative of General M. V. Alekseev and the command of the Volunteer Army. The organization’s headquarters were in Moscow, but branches were soon established in other centers of northern and eastern European Russia, notably at Kazan′, Iaroslavl′, and Murom.

At its height, the union may have numbered around 6,500 men, most of them officers of the old army, and attracted the financial support of Allied agents in Russia (notably Robert Bruce Lockhart). However, following the arrest and interrogation in Moscow of 13 of its members on 29 May 1918, further Cheka operations netted large numbers of conspirators in the capital and elsewhere (notably at Kazan′, where the entire leadership of the union, under Major General I. I. Popov, was captured), some 600 of whom were then executed in early July (and many more during the Red Terror). Despite these losses, Savinkov’s union soon afterward staged a series of uprisings against the Soviet government, beginning at Rybinsk and Murom on 7–8 July and culminating in the Iaroslavl′ Revolt, but the expected assistance from Allied forces landing in North Russia did not materialize, and the organization was crushed. In January 1921, Savinkov resurrected the organization in Warsaw as the People’s Union for the Defense of Russia and Freedom. In Moscow’s Bratskoe Cemetery there now stands a black granite memorial to the many members of the union who were executed there in 1918.

UNION FOR THE REGENERATION OF RUSSIA. This anti-Bolshevik organization, formed in the spring of 1918 in Moscow, united Rightist members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) and the Party of Popular Socialists, Mensheviks, Left-Kadets, and nonparty public figures around a program of the resurrection of the coalition politics of 1917, the formation of a coalition directory to govern the country until the resummoning of the Constituent Assembly, the rejection of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) and the support of Allied intervention in Russia for the continuation of the war against the Central Powers, and the resurrection of the Russian borders of 1914 (with the exception of independent Finland and Poland). Leading figures included the Kadets N. I. Astrov, N. N. Shchepkin, N. M. Kishkin, and D. I. Shakhovskii; the Popular Socialists S. P. Mel′gunov, N. V. Chaikovskii, V. A. Miakotin, and A. V. Peshekhonov; the Menshevik A. N. Potresov; and N. D. Avksent′ev, V. M. Zenzinov, and A. A. Argunov of the PSR, although all members of the union joined it as individuals rather than as representatives of their parties.

Its members fanned out across the country in May–June 1918 and had a significant impact on the development of the Democratic Counter-Revolution over the summer (although its influence in Moscow declined markedly, especially after the arrest there of Mel′gunov). At Arkhangel′sk, the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region was committed to the union’s program, the Provisional Oblast′ Government of the Urals was also largely the creation of its members, and at the Ufa State Conference it was the union’s conception of a directory (rather than a dictatorship) to rule anti-Bolshevik Russia that won the day. However, the facts that the Ufa Directory consisted of five figures, not the three envisaged in the union’s program; that its military representative was V. G. Boldyrev not M. V. Alekseev, as originally agreed; and that it was charged to hand power not to a new constituent assembly, but to a reconvention of that elected in 1917, alienated many of its Kadet members. Moreover, in South Russia it was less influential than the more right-wing National Center, made little impact on the composition of the Special Council of the Volunteer Army, and was unable to unify contending parties at the Jassy Conference.

Following the military coup launched at Arkhangel′sk by Captain G. E. Chaplin on 6 September 1918, and the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918 in Siberia, the influence of the organization waned in the autumn of 1918, and it could do little to temper the extremes of the White military regimes of 1919, although it did not formally cease to exist until 1920.

UNION FOR THE RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND. Branches of this émigré organization (sometimes known by its Russian acronym “Sovnarod”) arose among centers of the Russian emigration in the United States, France, and Bulgaria, after the decree of VTsIK of 3 November 1921 (supplemented by the decrees of VTsIK and Sovnarkom of 9 June 1924) offering amnesty to former rank-and-file members of the White armies and their civilian supporters. According to some estimates, the organization (which was encouraged in its activities by the League of Nations and its High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen) assisted in the return to Russia of some 181,432 émigrés in the decade after 1921 (many of them through Bulgaria, with the encouragement of the government in Sofia), despite the opposition to its activities of ROVS and other leading Russian émigré organizations. The fate of the returnees was frequently tragic: thousands were immediately executed, exiled, or imprisoned, while others fell victim to the Terror of the 1930s. The union itself also found its original mission perverted, as in 1922–1923, in Bulgaria, it became a conduit for Soviet propaganda aimed at encouraging more refugees to return.

UNION OF LANDOWNERS, ALL-RUSSIAN. The Union of Landowners was founded at a Moscow conference on 17–20 November 1905, during the revolution of that year, to defend the interests of landowners, who were under attack not only by socialists and liberals bent on land redistribution, but also, it was feared, by reformist elements among the tsarist bureaucracy (led by future prime minister P. A. Stolypin). Once the revolution had been crushed in 1907, the union became dormant, and many of its member migrated to the United Nobility. However, it was resurrected on 10 November 1916, by S. N. Balashov, on the initiative of the United Nobility, ostensibly to assist in the supply of food to the Russian Army but also to counter what was perceived as creeping state transgressions of the rights of private landholders during the course of the war (including a state monopoly on grain purchases and price fixing). Initially, membership was reserved for owners of 50 desiatiny of land or more, making it an elite organization. In May 1917, a new constitution was drawn up and a new board elected at a conference in Moscow for what was now called the All-Russian Union of Landowners. This, despite the presence in it of figures such as V. I. Gurko, was a more politically moderate organization (as indicated by the election to its chair of the moderate conservative N. N. L′vov), with a broader membership and an acceptance that expropriation of some private property (albeit with appropriate levels of compensation) might be necessary to solve the land question in Russia. This led to a significant increase in the union’s activities; on the eve of the February Revolution it had had only some 150 members and half a dozen branches, but by the autumn of 1917, it had 45 provincial branches across Russia and thousands of members.

After the October Revolution and the closure of the Constituent Assembly (to which it had succeeded in having just two delegates elected on its platform), the organization went underground and began to muster opposition to Soviet rule under the leadership of Gurko and the former tsarist minister of agriculture, A. V. Krivoshein. In March 1918, the union submerged itself within the anti-Bolshevik Right Center, and many of its members went on to play leading roles in the White movement, particularly in South Russia. Branches of the union also operated in emigration in the 1920s, in Paris, Sofia, Belgrade, Berlin, and London.

UNITED BALTIC DUCHY. This short-lived state (the Vereinigtes Baltisches Herzogtum) came into being in 1918, as a consequence of the German occupation of the former imperial Russian provinces of Courland, Livland, and Estland. In the wake of the collapse of Russia, and in light of the reconstruction of the region’s territories heralded by the Soviet–German negotiations toward the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), the local assemblies of Baltic German nobles (the Kurländische Landesrat and the Vereinigter Landesrat of Livland, Estland, Riga, and Ösel) declared themselves independent and united (on 8 March and 12 April, respectively) and then proclaimed their union with the Kingdom of Prussia.

The new state was recognized by Emperor Wilhelm II on 22 September 1918 (this was the only recognition it received), and on 5 November 1918 a Regency Council (Regentschaftsrat) was formed to govern it, under the former land marshal of Livland, Adolf Pilar von Pilchau (1851–1925). From its capital, Riga, the council declared Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1873–1969), its first head of state, and denouncing the pretensions to independence of the new nationalist governments of Estonia and Latvia (as well as claims to the territory by Soviet Russia), it proclaimed its own sovereignty over Courland, Latgale, Northern and Southern Livland, Ösel, and Estland. The collapse of imperial Germany in October–November 1918 meant that Adolf Friedrich could never take up his position, and the council ceased to function on 28 November 1918. However, the armed force that had been gathered to defend the United Baltic Duchy, the Baltic Landeswehr, continued to be influential in the region for the next year, during the Latvian War of Independence, the Estonian War of Independence, and especially, the Landeswehr War.

United Committee of the Union of Zemstvos and Municipal Councils. See Zemgor.

UNITED GOVERNMENT OF THE SOUTH-EASTERN UNION OF COSSACK HOSTS, MOUNTAIN PEOPLES OF THE CAUCASUS, AND FREE PEOPLES OF THE STEPPE. The South-Eastern Union of Cossacks and other peoples was created on 20 October 1917, and in theory remained operational until its disestablishment by a decree of its Supreme Council (Krug) on 11 January 1920. It grew out of meetings among the ataman of the Don Cossacks, A. M. Kaledin; his Kuban counterpart, A. P. Filimonov; and others at Novocherkassk in June 1917, and an All-Cossack Conference at Ekaterinodar in September of that year, and was intended to be the progenitor of a unified Cossack state that would eventually join a federal Russian republic. Its constitution granted broad autonomy in local affairs to each constituent member of the union and established a government in which each constituent was granted two seats. In the first instance, the government consisted of B. A. Kharlamov and A. P. Epifanov (the Don Cossack Host); I. A. Makarenko and B. K. Bardizh (the Kuban Cossack Host); G. A. Vertepov and N. A. Karaulov (the Terek Cossack Host); Pshemakho Kotsev and Aitek Namitok (the Mountain Peoples); Gaidar Bammat and Topa Chermoev (Daghestan); A. M. Skvortsov and Prince Tundutov (Astrakhan Cossack Host and the Kalmyks); and I. I. Ivanov and A. A. Mikheev (Urals Cossack Host). (The Orenburg Cossack Host had also agreed to join, but selected no representatives.) The chairman of the union government was Kharlamov, deputized by Makarenko.

The October Revolution and subsequent establishment of Soviet power across the Cossack regions led to the temporary immobilization of the government, but the project was taken up again by Ataman P. N. Krasnov, following the uprising of the Don Cossacks in the spring of 1918. However, with the resurgence of the Reds in the summer of 1918 and the concomitant rise of the Whites (who, fighting under the slogan “Russia, One and Indivisible,” were suspicious of all notions of regionalism and regional autonomy), the union remained largely dormant. Nevertheless, aspirations toward some rather vague mix of union and autonomy remained, and in February 1919, the Kuban Rada committed itself to summoning a regional council of representatives from the Cossack lands, Daghestan, Crimea, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan (although it never met). On 1 June 1919, the Don Krug voted for a formal completion of the South-Eastern Union. Subsequently, on 13 June 1919, a Cossack conference convened at Rostov-on-Don, with representatives from the Don, Kuban, and Terek Cossack Hosts. At the first session, N. S. Riabovol made a speech that was sharply critical of General A. I. Denikin and the policies of his Special Council; that night, Riabovol was shot dead by person or persons unknown. The conference subsequently dispersed, having failed to draw up a constitution for a new union. On 11 January 1920, as the Armed Forces of South Russia collapsed, representatives of the Don, Kuban, and Terek Cossacks did ratify a provisional union constitution, but it remained in the realm of the abstract, as the Red Army overran the Cossack territories.

UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING. See VSEVOBUCH.

UNIVERSALS OF THE UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA. See UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA, UNIVERSALS OF THE.

Upper don rebellion. See veshensk uprising.

URALS ARMY. This White force was created as a consequence of the decision of a congress of the Urals Cossack Host, in December 1917, to refuse to recognize Soviet power on its territory, and the subsequent arrest (in January 1918) of the Bolshevik authorities at Ural′sk by a group of officers under M. F. Martynov. The rising spread rapidly, and by 1 April 1918, Soviet power had fallen across the entire Urals oblast′. In the process, a Host government formed, and the Urals Army was attached to it. Its major constituent parts were originally the 1st Urals Cossack Corps and the 2nd Iletsk Cossack Corps, but it was later (July 1919) reformed into three components: the Buzuluk, Saratov, and Astrakhan-Gur′ev Corps. The Urals Army fell, in turn, under the operational command of the Siberian Army (June–August 1918), the Volga Front (under General S. čeček, August–September 1918), the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (December 1918–July 1919), and the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) (21 July 1919–March 1920), and at its height (in June 1919) it numbered 25,000 men (under 600 officers) and had 174 machine guns and 52 guns.

In the summer of 1918, this force was responsible for clearing most of the southern Urals region of Bolshevik forces, from the Caspian to Samara and from Orenburg to Ural′sk, although the latter and much of the northern parts of the territory were lost to the Reds in the autumn and winter of 1918. During Kolchak’s spring offensive of 1919, the Urals Army marched on Ural′sk and, from April 1919, laid siege to the town, but could not recapture it, and the siege was broken by forces of the 4th Red Army under V. I. Chapaev on 11 September 1919. Although, following the capture of Tsaritsyn by the Kuban Army in late June 1919, some AFSR units had crossed the Volga and established contact with the left flank of the Urals Army (at which point operational command of the Urals Army passed from Kolchak to General A. I. Denikin), the army could not survive simultaneous attacks from the Red forces to the north and the Turkestan Red Army in its rear, as well as a major epidemic of typhus, and in October 1919 it disintegrated.

Following the Reds’ capture of Gur′ev on 5 January 1920, the army command and its staff retreated south along the eastern shore of the Caspian toward Fort Aleksandrovsk. They were accompanied by some 15,000 Urals Cossacks and numerous camp followers, of whom at least 13,000 perished in the course of a horrific, three-week, 200-mile trek through frosts of minus 20–25 degrees. Some of the survivors of this “ice march” subsequently crossed the Caspian to join the AFSR in the North Caucasus, but soon retreated into Daghestan. Others surrendered to the Reds’ Caspian Military Flotilla, which arrived at Krasnovodsk on 5 April 1920. Meanwhile, 215 (by some accounts 162) Cossacks and refugees moved further south, and on 20 May 1920, they crossed the border into Persia. There, some of the Cossacks enrolled in His Majesty’s, the Shah of Persia’s Cossack Division, but most were interned at Basra. In 1922, the British authorities in the region moved the latter group to Vladivostok, where they arrived just as the city was about to fall to the People’s-Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. After spending some time in China, in 1923 most of the survivors were then allowed to emigrate to Australia, where many of them worked in the sugarcane fields north of Brisbane.

Formal command of the Urals Army rested with General I. G. Akulinin, but the direct commanders of the army were Major General M. F. Martynov (April–September 1918); Major General V. I. Akutin (21 September–14 November 1918); Lieutenant General N. A. Savel′ev (15 November 1918–8 April 1919); and Lieutenant General V. S. Tolstov (8 April 1919–5 January 1920).

URALS ARMY MARCH. The name given to the much-fêted trek in the rear of White forces undertaken by south Urals Red partisan forces over the period 18 July to 12 September 1918, with the aim of uniting with the regular forces of the Red Army on the Eastern Front. In early July 1918, Red forces around Ural′sk, Iuzhnyi, Verkhneural′sk, and Troitsk, which had been cut off from the center by the uprisings of the Orenburg Cossack Host and the Czechoslovak Legion, began to concentrate around Beloretsk as the Free Urals Detachment, under the command of N. D. Kashirin and (after Kashirin was injured) V. K. Bliukher. After a prolonged series of battles against the Cossack forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov around Beloretsk, the partisans headed west to Petrovoskoe and then north, through the working-class settlements of Bogoiavlenskii Zavod, Arkhangel′skoe, Iglino, Krasnyi Iar, Askin, and Tiuno-Ozerskaia, gathering volunteers along the way. They covered 1,000 miles in 58 days, engaging en route in some 20 serious battles with White and Czechoslovak forces, before rendezvousing with units of the 3rd Red Army on the Kungur River, near Bogorodskoe. The force, thereafter dubbed the Urals Army, reached Kungur on 21 September 1918, where its men were reorganized into three brigades of the 4th Urals (later 30th) Rifle Division.

URALS COSSACK HOST. Occupying lands almost exclusively on the right bank of the Ural River in the Urals oblast′, by 1917 the Urals Cossack Host (formerly the Iaik Cossack Host) lived in some 30 stanitsy and 450 farmsteads (khutora) and smaller settlements. Its territory was divided into three administrative units (Ural′sk, Lbishchensk, and Gur′ev), with its capital at Ural′sk. By 1917, the Host population was 174,000, of which some 13,000 were under arms. Following the Cossacks’ rising against the Soviet authorities of April 1918, a Host government was formed, under G. M. Fomichev, that ordered the mobilization of all Urals Cossacks of 19–55 years of age. The units formed thereby were then assigned to the Whites’ Urals Army and shared its tragic fate. On 23 March 1919, the Host government dissolved, and all power was passed to the Host ataman, General V. S. Tolstov.

urals, Provisional Oblast′ Government of the. This regional anti-Bolshevik polity was formally established at Ekaterinburg on 13 August 1918, although it had been in existence, de facto, since soon after the Czechoslovak Legion had captured the city on 25 July 1918. Leftist Kadets dominated the Urals Oblast′ Government, notably the influential local businessman P. V. Ivanov (as premier and head of the department of industry) and the well-connected Freemason L. A. Krol′ (as deputy premier and head of the department of finance), but its coalition cabinet included also a number of Mensheviks (P. B. Murashov) and members of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (V. M. Anastas′ev and A.V. Pribylev) and the Party of Popular Socialists (N. V. Aseikin), as well as nonparty figures (N. N. Glasson and A. E. Gutt). The Urals government claimed sovereignty over Perm′ guberniia and parts of Viatka, Ufa, and Orenburg gubernii; sought to steer an independent path between Komuch and the Provisional Siberian Government; and set as its chief aim the restoration of the mining industries of the northern Urals. It claimed also (in its inaugural declaration of 19 August 1918) to be an administrative rather than a law-making body, proclaiming that legislation on political and social reform was the preserve of a future Urals Assembly, but it was broadly in favor of some state regulation of the economy (through a mandatory eight-hour working day and minimum wage) and professed the belief that land should belong to those who farmed it. However, the Urals government was unable to develop its progressive program, as it was subservient to the Provisional Siberian Government in most matters, not least because the Ekaterinburg garrison, consisting of units of the the 2nd (later 7th) Urals Mountain Rifle Division, commanded by General V. V. Golitsyn, remained subordinate to the Siberian Army. The regime sent representatives to the Ufa State Conference and (like other regional governments in the east) was formally disbanded in early November 1918 by order of the Ufa Directory.

URITSKII, MOISEI (MIKHAIL) SOLOMONOVICH (14 January 1873–30 August 1918). Born into a merchant family at Cherkasy, Podol′sk guberniia, the future Chekist and Soviet martyr Moisei Uritskii (sometimes known as “Boretskii” or “Ratner”) was a graduate of the Law Faculty of Kiev University (1897) and became involved in revolutionary politics during his studies there. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party upon its foundation in 1898, initially gravitating toward the Bund and then (from 1903) the Mensheviks. He endured several arrests and terms of internal exile in Russia, then went abroad on the eve of the outbreak of war in 1914. He made his way from Germany via Scandinavia to France, where he worked with L. D. Trotsky on the newspaper Nashe slovo (“Our Word”). He returned to Russia in 1917, and like Trotsky, joined the Bolsheviks and was elected to the party Central Committee in July 1917.

Uritskii played a prominent role in the October Revolution, as a member of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and as an elected member of VTsIK, and subsequently worked in the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. As a prominent member of the Left Communists in 1918, he opposed the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), but although he announced his resignation from the Bolshevik Central Committee, he continued to work as a member of the Committee for the Defense of Petrograd and (from March 1918) as head of the Petrograd Cheka and commissar for internal affairs of the Northern Regional Commune.

On 30 August 1918 (the same day as the attempt made on the life of V. I. Lenin by Fania Kaplan), Uritskii was assassinated by the officer cadet Leonid Kannegeiser, apparently in revenge for the Cheka’s execution of one of his friends. Kannegeiser was caught and subsequently executed. Uritskii was buried on the Field of Mars in Petrograd. It was partly in retribution for Uritskii’s assassination that the Soviet government unleashed the first major wave of the Red Terror the following week.

USSR, Treaty on the Creation of the (30 December 1922). This treaty, signed by the representatives of the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, united the separate Soviet republics in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (commonly referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR). It resulted from a meeting of delegates from the republics on the previous day that had formally constituted itself as the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR, but had been under consideration for some months. Subsequent amendments to the treaty admitted newly created Soviet republics to the union, the first being the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, which were formed from the former Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in October 1924. The treaty was terminated on 25 December 1991.

USSURII COSSACK HOST. Occupying lands in the Maritime Province stretching from Khabarovsk to Suifun (along the Ussurii and Sungacha Rivers, which mark the Chinese border), the Ussurii Cossack Host was divided among 6 stanitsy and 69 smaller settlements. Its territorial center was originally at Vladivostok, but from January 1918 (with Vladivostok in the hands of local Bolsheviks) it was at Iman. By 1917, the Host population was 35,000, of which some 2,500 were under arms.

At the 4th Host Congress at Iman in January 1918, the Soviet government was declared illegal, but in April 1918, Red units formally dispersed the Ussurii Host. The Cossacks fought back, marshaled by their ruthless Host ataman, I. M. Kalmykov, capturing Grodekovo (3 July 1918) and declaring a general mobilization. Following the collapse of the Soviet authorities, in the summer of 1918 the Ussurii Cossack Brigade was formed, as part of the Whites’ East Siberian Independent Army. A Ussurii Cossack Division also formed part of the Far Eastern (White) Army of Ataman G. M. Semenov from March 1920, but most of the men followed Kalmykov in flight across the border to Manchuria in February 1920, after the loss of Khabarovsk to forces of the People’s Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic. In emigration, many members of the Host lived in China, though some later moved to Australia.

USSURII REPUBLIC. This tiny pro-Soviet enclave was formed near Khabarovsk on 1 December 1919, in opposition to local White forces (notably those of the Ussurii Cossack Host, commanded by I. M. Kalmykov). It merged with the Far Eastern Republic on 10 December 1920.

Ustrialov, Nikolai Vasil′evich (25 November 1879–14 September 1937). One of the leading propagandists of White rule in Siberia, but one who nevertheless expressed doubts about whether the Bolsheviks could be beaten, the influential jurist and philosopher N. V. Ustrialov was a graduate of the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University (1913) and lectured there from 1916 to 1918. A prolific journalist and a leading member of the Kadets, chairing the party’s Kaluga branch in 1917 following the October Revolution, he moved to Perm′ University. When Perm′ fell to the Whites’ Siberian Army in late December 1918, Ustrialov moved to Omsk to become a legal consultant to the regime of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (the Omsk government) and director of its Russian Press Bureau, while at the same time serving as chairman of the Eastern Section of the Kadet Central Committee.

Following the collapse of the White movement in Siberia, in 1920 Ustrialov moved to Harbin. He worked there as a newspaper editor as well as a professor at the university from 1920 to 1934, but having become reconciled to Soviet rule, he was employed also by the Soviet administration on the Chinese Eastern Railway (from 1925 to 1928, as chief of the Education Section, and from 1928 to 1934, as director of the Central Library). In fact, as a contributor to the Smena Vekh (“Changing Landmarks”) collection published in Prague in 1921, he came to be considered the chief ideologue of Smenovekhovstvo: he was an admirer of the manner in which the Soviet government had, in effect, reconstructed the Russian Empire and held that the extremes of the regime would now be tempered by national concerns; therefore, Moscow should be supported. By the early 1930s, he was more circumspect about where the USSR might be heading, but as a Soviet citizen he was obliged to return there in 1935 after Japan had taken control of the CER zone in Manchuria. He then worked as a professor of economic geography at the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers and, briefly, at Moscow State University, but on 6 June 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD. On 14 September 1937, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR found him guilty of “espionage, counterrevolutionary activity, and anti-Soviet agitation.” Ustrialov was sentenced to death and executed that same day. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 17 October 1989.

USTRUGOV, LEONID ALEKSANDROVICH (23 November 1877–15 February 1938). Born in Moscow, L. A. Ustrugov was an engineer and railway administrator who was active in the anti-Bolshevik governments in Siberia throughout the civil wars and later worked for the Soviet government. He was a graduate of the Institute of Transport Engineers (1902) and from 1902 to 1906, worked on the Moscow Regional Railway Administration. He then filled a variety of posts on the Northern Railway (1907–1911) and the Samara–Zlatoust Railway, then in 1913 was appointed as a state engineer with the Ministry of Ways and Communications and assigned to service with Omsk Railway, becoming its chief controller on 1 May 1916.

Having established links with socialist and regionalist circles in Siberia, in January 1918 Ustrugov was named (in absentia) minister of communications in the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia (the “Derber government”). However, he subsequently entered, as minister of communications, the Far Eastern Committee of General D. L. Khorvat, which contested power in the Far East with P. Ia. Derber’s group over the summer of 1918. On 4 November 1918, Ustrugov was named minister of communications in the cabinet of the Ufa Directory, and on 18 November 1918, following the Omsk coup, entered the Omsk government of Admiral A. V. Kolchak in the same capacity (as well as serving as deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers). He was subsequently responsible for negotiating with Allied representatives the Inter-Allied Railway Agreement (9 January 1919). This placed Ustrugov at the head of the Inter-Allied Railway Commission, but effectively handed control of the Trans-Siberian Railway (and thus the supply of the White war effort in Siberia) to the American engineer John F. Stevens (and his Technical Board at Harbin), with whom Ustrugov repeatedly clashed.

When the White movement in the east collapsed, Ustrugov went into emigration, settling at Harbin, where from 1924 to 1925 he worked as director of the Polytechnical Institute of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). In 1935, in the wake of the Japanese assumption of control over the CER, he, like other employees of the line who were Russian passport-holders (e.g., N. V. Ustrialov), was obliged to return to the USSR. He worked for some time in the People’s Commissariat for Ways and Communications, but was arrested on 15 October 1937. On 15 February 1938, Ustrugov was sentenced to death and immediately shot, having been found guilty of espionage and counterrevolutionary activities by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 16 May 1989.

UZH-ZHUZ. This Kazak socialist party, led by M. Aitienov, was founded at Omsk in November 1917. With a program close to that of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries, it set itself up in opposition to Alash Orda and attracted support from among elements of the Kazak intelligentsia: teachers, doctors, etc. It was recognized as a legal party by Sovnarkom in early 1918, but by July of that year had ceased activity.