Symon Vasyliovych Petliura (, ; – 25 May 1926) was a Ukrainian revolutionary, politician and journalist. He was the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian People's Army (UNA) and led the Ukrainian People's Republic during the Ukrainian War of Independence, a part of the wider Russian Civil War.
Petliura was born to a family of Cossack heritage in Poltava. From an early age he embraced socialism and Ukrainian nationalism, which he advocated through his highly prolific career as a journalist. After the 1917 February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist monarchy, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed and Petliura was elected head of its military. The Republic was briefly interrupted by the pro-German Ukrainian State, but in late 1918 Petliura, along with other members of the socialist Directorate of Ukraine, organised a revolt and overthrew the regime, restoring the Republic. He became the leader of the Directorate in early 1919, after the Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine and captured its capital. Facing imminent defeat, Petliura entered an alliance with Józef Piłsudski's Poland. The Polish–Soviet War concluded with Poland remaining independent and gaining some Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, while most of Ukraine remained under Soviet control, forcing Petliura into exile. He initially directed the government-in-exile from Poland, but eventually settled in Paris.
During the Civil War, the UNA were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jewish civilians, and Petliura's role in the pogroms has been a topic of dispute. In 1926, Petliura was assassinated in Paris by Jewish anarchist Sholem Schwarzbard, who had lost relatives in the pogroms.
Career before 1917 Early years Born on in a suburb of Poltava (then part of the Russian Empire), Symon Petliura was the son of Vasyl Pavlovych Petliura and Olha Oleksiyivna (née Marchenko), of Cossack background. His father, a Poltava city resident, had owned a transportation business; his mother was a daughter of an Orthodox hieromonk (priest-monk). Petliura obtained his initial education in parochial schools, and planned to become an Orthodox priest.
Petliura studied in the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Poltava from 1895 to 1901. While there he joined the Hromada society in 1898. When his membership in Hromada was discovered in 1901, he was expelled from the seminary. In 1900 Petliura joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP). In 1902, under threat of arrest, he moved to Yekaterinodar in the Kuban, where he worked for two years – initially as a schoolteacher and later as an archivist for the Kuban Cossack Host helping to organize over 200,000 documents. In December 1903 he was arrested for organizing a RUP branch in Yekaterinodar and for publishing inflammatory anti-tsarist articles in the Ukrainian press outside of Imperial Russia (in Austrian-controlled Lemberg, currently named Lviv, in Galicia). Released on bail in March 1904, he moved briefly to Kyiv and then to Lemberg.
Work as a journalist
In Lviv, Petliura lived under the name of Sviatoslav Tagon,All pseudonyms and cryptonyms of Symon Petliura . (in reference to the Library of S.Petliura and A.Zhuk) working alongside Ivan Franko and Volodymyr Hnatiuk as an editor for the journal ("Literary Scientific Herald"), the Shevchenko Scientific Society and as a co-editor of newspaper. He also contributed numerous articles to the Ukrainian-language press in Galicia.
At the end of 1905, after a nationwide amnesty was declared by the authorities, Petliura returned briefly to Kyiv. As the Ukrainian language had been outlawed in the Russian Empire by the Ems Ukaz of 1876, Petliura found more freedom to publish Ukrainian-oriented articles in Saint Petersburg than in Ukraine, and soon moved to the Russian capital in order to publish the socialist-democratic monthly magazine Vil’na Ukrayina ("Free Ukraine") along with and Mykola Porsh. After Russian censors closed this magazine in July 1905, he moved back to Kyiv where he worked for the newspaper Rada ("The Council"). In 1907–09 he became the editor of the literary magazine Slovo (, The Word) and co-editor of Ukrayina (, "Ukraine").
In 1909, these publications were closed by Russian imperial police, and Petliura moved back to Moscow, where he briefly worked as an accountant. Soon he became a co-editor of the Moscow-based Russian-language journal Ukrayinskaya Zhizn, aimed to familiarize the local population with news and culture of what was known as Malorossia (Little Russia). He was the chief editor of the publication from 1912 to 1914 and served as its co-editor until May 1917.
During World War I, he expressed his position regarding the war in a response article titled "War and Ukrainians." In this publication, he argued that Ukrainians, as subjects of the Russian Empire, were obliged to loyally fulfill their duty to the Tsar, and expressed the hope that in the future the attitude of the Tsarist authorities towards the Ukrainian question would change.
Petliura assured the government that Ukrainians "will not succumb to provocative influences and will fulfill their duty as citizens of Russia at this difficult time until the end", and stated that he was in favor of the unification of all Ukrainians (including Galicians) under the auspices of Russia
Revolution in Ukraine
Rise to power In May 1917 Petliura attended the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soldier Deputies held in Kyiv as a delegate. On 18 May he was elected head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee. With the proclamation of the Central Rada on 28 June 1917, Petliura became the first Secretary (Minister) for Military Affairs.
Disagreeing with the politics of the then chairman of the General Secretariat Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Petliura left the government and became the head of the , a military formation of Sloboda Ukraine (in Kharkiv). In January–February 1918 the Haidamaky Kish was forced back to protect Kyiv during the Uprising at the Kyiv Arsenal Plant and to prevent the capture of the capital by the Bolshevik Red Guard.
After the April 1918 Ukrainian coup d'état, Pavlo Skoropadskyi's government arrested Petliura and incarcerated him for four months in Bila Tserkva.
Petliura participated in the Anti-Hetman Uprising of November 1918 and became a member of the Directorate of Ukraine as the Chief of Military Forces. Following the Bolshevik takeover of Kyiv (February 1919) and the emigration of Vynnychenko from Ukraine, Petliura became the leader of the Directorate on 11 February 1919. In his capacity as head of the Army and State, he continued to fight both Bolshevik and White forces in Ukraine for the next ten months.
1919
With the outbreak of hostilities between Ukraine and Soviet Russia in January 1919, and with Vynnychenko's emigration, Petliura ultimately became the leading figure in the Directorate. During the winter of 1919 the Petliura army lost most of Ukraine (including Kyiv) to Bolsheviks and by 6 March relocated to Podolia. In the spring of 1919 he managed to extinguish a coup-d'etat led by Volodymyr Oskilko who saw Petliura cooperating with socialists such as Borys Martos. During the course of the year, Petliura continued to defend the fledgling republic against incursions by the Bolsheviks, Anton Denikin's White Russians, and the Romanian-Polish troops. By autumn of 1919, most of Denikin's White Russian forces were defeated — in the meantime, however, the Bolsheviks had grown to become the dominant force in Ukraine.
1920 On 5 December 1919, Petliura withdrew to Poland, which had previously recognized him as the head of the legal government of Ukraine. In April 1920, as head of the Ukrainian People's Republic, he signed an alliance in Warsaw with the Polish government, agreeing to a border on the River Zbruch and recognizing Poland's right to Galicia in exchange for military aid in overthrowing the Bolshevik régime. Polish forces, reinforced by Petliura's remaining troops (some two divisions), attacked Kyiv on 7 May 1920, in what proved a turning point of the 1919–21 Polish-Bolshevik war. Following initial successes, Piłsudski's and Petliura's forces had to retreat to the Vistula River and to the Polish capital, Warsaw. The Polish Army, supported by Ukrainian units, defeated the Bolshevik Russians in the end, but the Red Army remained in parts of Ukraine and therefore Ukrainians were unable to secure their independence. Starting from late 1920, Petliura directed the affairs of the Ukrainian government-in-exile from Tarnów in Lesser Poland. When the Soviet government in Moscow requested Petliura's extradition from Poland, the Poles engineered his "disappearance", secretly moving him from Tarnów to Warsaw.
After the revolution Life in exile Bolshevik Russia persistently demanded that Petliura be handed over. Protected by several Polish friends and colleagues, such as Henryk Józewski, in late 1923, one year after the establishment of the Soviet Union, Petliura left Poland. Travelling through Budapest, Vienna, Zurich and Geneva under the pseudonym Stepan Mohyla, in October 1924 he arrived to Paris together with former Ukrainian prime minister Viacheslav Prokopovych.
In Paris, Petliura directed the activities of the government of the Ukrainian National Republic in exile. In October 1925 he established the Ukrainian-language newspaper Tryzub, and continued to edit and write numerous articles under various pen names with an emphasis on questions dealing with national oppression in Ukraine. These articles were written with a literary flair. The question of national awareness was often of significance in his literary work.
Living in Paris, Petliura spent a lot of time reading books and took daily walks around the city, visiting art galleries, museums and historical cemeteries.
Assassination
On 25 May 1926, at 14:12, by the Gibert bookstore, Petliura was walking on Rue Racine near Boulevard Saint-Michel of the Latin Quarter in Paris and was approached by Sholem Schwarzbard. Schwarzbard asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura did not answer but raised his walking cane. Schwarzbard pulled out a gun, proclaimed "dirty dog, killer of my people, defend yourself!" and shot him five times. Evading a lynch-mob attempting to avenge Petliura, Schwarzbard surrendered to the police with a note reading: "I have killed Petliura to avenge the death of the thousands of pogrom victims in Ukraine who were massacred by Petliura's forces without his taking any steps to prevent these massacres." The wounded Petliura was transported to the Charité hospital, where he died at 14:35 on the same day.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on 27 May 1926 that Petliura's "pogrom bands" were responsible for killing tens of thousands of Jews.
Schwarzbard was an anarchist of Jewish descent, born in Ukraine. He participated in the Jewish self-defense of Balta in 1905. The Russian Tsarist government sentenced him to 3 months in prison for "provoking" the Balta pogrom.Friedman (1976). p. 58. He was twice convicted of taking part in anarchist "expropriation" (burglary) and bank robbery in Austria-Hungary. He later joined the French Foreign Legion (1914–1917) and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. It is reported that Schwarzbard told famous fellow anarchist leader Nestor Makhno in Paris that he was terminally ill and expected to die and that he would take Petliura with him; Makhno forbade Schwarzbard to do so.
Schwarzbard's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms in Odesa. The core defense at the Schwarzbard trial was — as presented by the noted jurist Henry Torrès — that he was avenging the deaths of more than 50,000 Jewish victims of the pogroms, whereas the prosecution (both criminal and civil) tried to show that Petliura was not responsible for the pogroms and that Schwarzbard was a Soviet agent. After a trial lasting eight days the jury acquitted Schwarzbard.