Dear Editor:
No, Orysia Paszczak Tracz, it happened three days later.
This is what I thought as I started reading Ms. Tracz’s column “What happened to January 22, 1918?” (February 15).
She writes, “Yes, January 22, 1918 – the first Ukrainian Independence Day, the Fourth Universal, the Ukrainian National Republic.”
In truth, the third reading and the vote on the Fourth Universal bill in the Central Rada in Kyiv took place shortly after midnight on January 25, 1918. But Mykhailo Hrushevsky, president of the Rada, was attached to January 22. It was the date set for the Constituent Assembly to write the constitution of independent Ukraine.
Unfortunately, members of the Constituent Assembly failed to be elected. In the Rada representatives of national minorities demanded that a draft legislation on national-personal autonomy be passed before the final vote on the Fourth Universal. The second reading of the Fourth Universal took place near midnight on January 24, and a recess was called. When the session resumed it was after midnight and therefore January 25.
Before the final vote Hrushevsky announced that work on the Fourth Universal bill started on January 22 and this is the date that would appear on the final document. Apparently no member of the Central Rada protested Hrushevsky’s arbitrary decision. So, independent Ukraine started with a small falsehood that has stuck for nearly 100 years.
To be exact, the date on the Fourth Universal document is January 9, because in those days Ukraine was on the Julian calendar. If you add 13 days to January 9, you get January 22, the Gregorian calendar date for that day. There is a detailed chronicle of the Ukrainian Revolution by Pavlo Khrystyuk that narrates day-by-day events that led Ukraine to independence. It was published in 1929 and republished in New York in 1969. Yes, it is in Ukrainian. But in English there is a note about the date attached to the Fourth Universal text in Taras Hunczak, ed., “The Ukraine, 1917-1921: A Study in Revolution” (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1977).
Yes, it was important to reassure the diverse population of Ukraine in 1918 to take the country out of the Russian colonial system into independence. But why pretend that this decision was made three days earlier just because Hrushevsky so decreed? When Western Europe was getting organized after World War II, on two or three occasions the clock was stopped in the negotiation hall for a week to iron out the details of the agreement before the set deadline. But every schoolchild in Western Europe is taught that.
Yet we teach our children that Ukraine became independent on January 22, while in fact it became independent on January 25. Why hide the truth? State-building is not easy whether in Russia or in Sudan. Missing a deadline is no sin. But let’s not cover up the difficulties. In Ukraine’s case it was the non-Ukrainian minorities who held up the final vote on the Fourth Universal and it was aggression from Russia that prevented Ukrainians from electing their constitution writers. Let our grandchildren know about it. They will understand better what is going on in Ukraine today.
Washington