Turning the pages back... April 17-21, 1917 (04/18/99)

Turning the pages back...

April 17-21, 1917

After the abdication of the Russian tsar, forced by the events in Petrograd in early March 1917 (February by the "old" Julian calendar), three political bodies made a claim to political authority in Ukraine. The first was the Provisional Government based in Petrograd (not yet headed by Alexander Kerensky); the second was a council of workers' and soldiers' councils, which represented the mostly Russian and Russified urban population of central Ukraine; and the third was the Central Rada, a broad and loose coalition led by nationally conscious Ukrainian activists.

Embroiled as it was in the chaos in the erstwhile imperial capital and in an ongoing war, in the initial months the Provisional Government was hard-pressed to make its influence felt outside Russia proper.

Meanwhile, under the leadership of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the activists of the Central Rada, until then a clearinghouse of various Ukrainian organizations, realized that the body had real potential to serve as a representative body for the majority of Ukraine's population - including Russians, Poles, Jews and other minorities - without regard to their nationality.

On April 17, 1917, the All-Ukrainian National Congress was convened in Kyiv with over 1,000 delegates from political, cultural and professional organizations representing workers, peasants, the intelligentsia, soldiers and clergy descending on the capital. Activists streamed in from across the country, from the front and from Ukrainian communities in Russia's major cities.

Over the first few days, delegates heard addresses concerning Ukraine's demands for autonomous status within a newly constituted democratic and federative Russia, the delimitation of Ukraine's borders, and projected participation in a peace conference that would bring the conflict in Europe to a halt.

On April 19, Hrushevsky was elected president, with Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Serhii Yefremov as vice-presidents. One hundred fifteen delegates were chosen as representatives of Ukraine's gubernias and major cities, as well as of the Ukrainian communities of Moscow and Petrograd, and the Central Rada was reorganized to function as a parliamentary and administrative body.

In the coming months, the Central Rada would be instrumental in organizing Ukrainian military councils, issuing universals on Ukrainian autonomy, and dealing with the increasingly hostile policies emanating from Petrograd - generally steering Ukraine's course on the way to statehood.

Sources: "All-Ukrainian National Congress," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Paul Robert Magocsi, "A History of Ukraine" (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

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