Turning the pages back... May 22, 1976 (05/21/06)

Turning the pages back...

May 22, 1976

An article carried on May 22, 1976, in The Weekly remembered the slaying of a hero of the Ukrainian people. This May 25 will mark 80 years since the assassination of the supreme commander and head of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), Symon Petliura. On that fateful day of 1926, while perusing some books in Paris, Petliura was shot five times by a Bolshevik agent, Shalom Schwarzbard. The assassin was later tried and acquitted, claiming that he was merely avenging the death of his family in Ukraine at the hands of men under Petliura's command.

The article traced the history of Petliura from his birth in Poltava, Ukraine, on May 10, 1879. He was born into a priestly family with lineage traced to Kozak nobility and enrolled in the city's seminary. In 1901 he was expelled for his involvement in the anti-government Ukrainian Revolutionary Party.

From there, the article continues, Petliura began a journalistic career in 1902, publishing articles in various periodicals including the Literary-Scientific Herald, one of the most prestigious publications in Ukraine at the time. To escape persecution by the tsarist authorities, Petliura fled to the Kuban region, where he was arrested in 1903 and released on probation a year later. He moved to Lviv, then under Austro-Hungarian rule, and later to Kyiv, where he continued his journalistic career.

During the revolution to overthrow the tsar, he saw an opportunity to re-establish the Ukrainian state, and became involved in the organization of Ukrainian armed forces. He was elected head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee, and after the establishment of the General Secretariat (the chief executive body in Ukraine), he was named first secretary of military affairs.

At the time of the Hetmanate under Pavlo Skoropadsky, Petliura headed the All-Ukrainian Alliance of Zemstvos, an opposition group to the government. After the fall of the Hetman State, Petliura was elected to the five-member Directory, (a body with supreme legislative and executive powers), which restored the UNR. He was later named supreme commander (chief otaman) of Ukrainian armed forces and, with the departure of Volodymyr Vynnychenko, assumed the presidency of the Directory.

Petliura is credited with consolidating the Ukrainian military forces and with forging an alliance with Poland, reclaiming Kyiv from the Reds on May 8, 1920. But things fell apart in November after the Polish government reneged on its commitments, forcing Petliura and his government out of Ukraine to continue their efforts abroad with hopes of Western intervention in the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Source: "Symon Petliura: Symbol of Ukrainian Statehood" The Ukrainian Weekly, May 22, 1976, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 96.

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