Independence or Federation: Foreign Policy and State System in Ukraine, 1918

Abstract

This article revisit Ukrainian political history in 1918, a year of turmoil, when three different states arose one after another in Kiev: the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian State, and the Directorate. In previous studies, this year is considered as an integral part of the history of the Ukrainian national movement, which struggled to defend the independence achieved by the fourth Universal (declaration) in January 1918 against foreign intervention. According to this national historical narrative, this effort ended in defeat when Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union. In contrast to those studies, the present article claims that the future political status of Ukraine was not yet decided in 1918; not only an independent state, but an autonomous part of the Russian (con-)federation remained one of the political aims of the Ukrainian activists even after the fourth Universal, and that the development of the idea of the future state system of Ukraine considerably depended on the interests of foreign actors. Lacking sufficient military strength, all the Ukrainian states that formed in 1918 needed outside assistance for their own survival. This paper examines the close interrelationship between the choice of the future political status of Ukraine (independence or federation) and the ongoing foreign policy.

After the October Revolution in Petrograd, both belligerent powers in World War I came into contact with various local governments in the former Russian imperial territory, aiming to take advantage of them for their own war efforts. The Entente desired the restoration of the strong Russian state as an ally, demanding incorporation of Ukrainian territory into the future federative Russia. The Central Powers, on the other hand, planned to construct a chain of buffer states between Germany and Russia for the security of German and Austrian eastern borders. This geopolitical consideration led to support for an independent Ukrainian state, as one such buffer state.

At first, the leaders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic advocated the formation of the democratic federative Russia. Offered more generous support by Germany, however, they declared independence and signed a treaty with the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk. This pro-German policy was inherited by the Ukrainian State, which replaced the People’s Republic in April 1918. In November, on the final defeat of the Central Powers, however, the Ukrainian State issued a statement that Ukraine should become an autonomous part of the restored federative Russia. The Directorate, the successor of the Ukrainian State, also adopted the pro-federation policy to gain support from the Allies, the winners of the Great War. Thus, the change of perspective on the state system accompanied the change of foreign policy.

While the pro-Entente policy failed because of disagreements with Russian Whites, the flexible Ukrainians finally found a third power―the Bolsheviks. The oppositional socialist group in the Directorate received the status of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a de-jure sovereign polity within the Soviet Union. In this sense, the establishment of the Soviet Ukraine could not be seen only as a symbol of the defeat of the Ukrainian national movement; rather, it was more or less a product of the federative idea employed by the Ukrainian activists themselves in those revolutionary years.