Symon Petlura

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Symon Petlyura (Ukrainian: Симон Петлюра; also spelled Simon Petliura or Petlura, May 10, 1879 – May 25, 1926) was a Ukrainian socialist politician and statesman, one of the leaders of Ukraine's unsuccessful fight for independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917.

He was briefly the President of Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. Petlyura was assassinated in Paris in 1926.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Role in pogroms 3 Asassination 4 Notes 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Petliura was born in Poltava. He was co-founder (1905) of the Ukrainian Labor Party and editor (1905-1909) of Slovo (Word) and Ukrainskaya Zhyzn (Ukrainian Life). During World War I Petlyura served in the Tsarist Russian army. After the 1917 February Revolution he was a member of the Central Rada (a de facto parliament) which in June of 1917 proclaimed Ukraine an autonomous republic. In July he became minister of military affairs. Soon afterward, the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) occupied Ukraine and installed a puppet government, thereby ending the brief rule of the Autonomous Council.

In November 1918, after the start of withdrawal of German and Austrian-Hungarian occupation forces from Ukraine, Petlyura became one of the five members of the new government, the Directorate of the Rada, and again within it took up the post of Holovnyi Otaman (chief war leader). In January1919, following the start of the war between the Soviet Russia and Ukraine, he became the leading figure within the Directorate. In the Russian Civil War, he fought against Bolsheviks, Denikin, the Germans, Ukrainians under Pavlo Skoropadsky, and the Poles. In late 1918 Ukraine was occupied by White Russian forces, but in autumn 1919 most of the Whites were defeated by the Soviets, who became the dominant force in Ukraine.

At the end of 1919, Petliura withdrew to Poland, which recognized him as the legal government of Ukraine. In March 1920, as head of the Ukrainian People's Republic, he signed an alliance in Lublin with the Polish government, agreeing to a border on the River Zbruch and recognizing Poland's right to Lviv and Galicia in exchange for Polish help in overthrowing the communist regime. In 1920, Polish forces, reinforced by Petliura's remaining troops (some 2 divisions), attacked Kyiv in a turning point of the Polish-Bolshevik war (1919-1921). Following temporary successes, Piłsudski's and Petliura's forces were pushed back to the Vistula River and the Polish capital, Warsaw. The Polish Army managed to defeat the Soviet Russians, but were unable to secure independence for Ukraine, which after the Peace of Riga was divided between Poland and Russia, the latter taking the lion's share. Petliura directed the Ukrainian government-in-exile from Tarnów and, later, Warsaw.

In 1923, with the Soviet Union increasingly pressuring the Polish government to hand over Petliura, he fled first to Budapest, then Vienna and Geneva, and eventually settled in Paris in late 1924.

[edit] Role in pogroms

While Petliura's government was in power, a series of pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews of the Ukraine. Estimates of the number of civilian Jews murdered range from 35,000 to 100,000; sources vary regarding how many of these victims were killed by forces loyal to Petliura (others being killed by independent warlords, Denikin's White forces, and Bolsheviks), but the vast majority of Jewish victims and their descendants hold Petliura's forces responsible for the most extensive atrocities.

At the time, Ukraine was a major Jewish population centre, and during the Russian Civil War, an estimated 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews were killed in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire; the number of Jewish orphans exceeded 300,000. In the Ukraine itself, the estimates of civilian Jews killed range from 35,000 to 50,000 during the period 1919-20.

Most historical research and first-hand accounts from victims suggest that Petliura did nothing to stop the pogroms, and encouraged them as a means to strenghten his base of support among his soldiers and commanders, and the peasant population at large, by appealing to their deep-seeded anti-semitic sentiments. ^[1]

Petlura's supporters have claimed that Petliura himself was not an anti-Semite, and that he tried to stop anti-Jewish violence by introducing capital punishment for the crime of pogromming. The existence of such directives has not been verified, and the large numbers of Jews killed in parts of Ukraine under his sphere of influence underscore that Petlura's subordinates did not face serious obstacles from their leadership when carrying out ethnic cleansing against Jews.

[edit] Asassination

On May 25, 1926, while window shopping along a Paris boulevard, he was approached by a man who asked in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" When he responded in the affirmative, the man, a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist named Sholom Schwartzbard, shouted (according to his later deposition) "Defend yourself, you bandit!" Petliura raised his cane and Schwartzbard pulled out a gun, shooting him three times, while exclaiming "This, for the pogroms; this for the massacres; this for the victims." When police rushed to him to make their arrest, he reportedly calmly handed over his weapon, saying, "You can arrest me, I've killed a murderer."

Schwartzbald's parents were among 15 members of his family murdered in the pogroms. The core of his defence was—as presented by noted barrister Henri Torrès—that he was avenging the deaths of victims of the pogroms. This premise found favour with the French jury, which acquitted him.

Petliura is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

English

• Time Magazine on the Petlura trial (Time Magazine on the Petlura trial)
• Turning the pages back...May 25, 1926 (Ukrainian Weekly account of shooting of Petliura)
• Review of books on Petliura
• Review of Henry Abramson's A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times
• "Over The Years," Inem Loif Fun Yoren Excerpt from a book by Petlura's assassin explaining his actions[1].
• The Odyssey of the Petliura Library and the Records of the Ukrainian National Republic during World War II

Non-English

• "Unknown Symon Petliura: history of an interview," Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), July 7-13, 2001. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• "A Belated Idealist," Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), May 22-28, 2004. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• "Symon Petliura as opponent of Jewish pogroms," Zerkalo Nedeli (Mirror Weekly), July 25-31, 1996. Available online in Russian.

Presidents of Ukraine	v • d • e
West Ukrainian National Republic (1918–1919): Kost Levytskyi • Yevhen Petrushevych Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1926): Mykhailo Hrushevskyi • Volodymyr Vynnychenko • Symon Petliura UPR Government in-exile (1926–1992): Andriy Livytskyi • Stepan Vytvytskyi • Mykola Livytskyi • Mykola Plaviuk Ukraine (1991–): Leonid Kravchuk • Leonid Kuchma • Viktor Yushchenko