Central Council’s Military Policy in the Soviet Historiography of the 1920’s – 1980’s

Abstract

The article examines the degree of studying the Ukrainian Central Council military policy by the Soviet historians from the beginning of 1917 to April 1918: considered the level of clarifying the issue about Ukrainianization Russian army military units, the creation of Ukrainian armed forces on Naddniprianschyna. The periodization was determined and the peculiarities of Soviet historiography formation on the topic under study were revealed. According to the results of the study, in the majority of Soviet historians’ works, the question of the Ukrainianization of the Russian army military units was considered solely in the context of the revolutionization process of the Russian army military units. Volunteer Ukrainian regiments and free-wing detachments were assessed in the line of Soviet class-based methodology as "punitive", "bourgeois-nationalist" formations. There are no reliable figures on the number of Ukrainian troops. The uncritical use of the materials of the state archives, the Soviet and the party press necessitated the ignoring of historicism and objectivity principles. At the same time it should be noted that even under the ideological scrutiny and political censorship of the 1920s and 1980s, Soviet researchers A. Likholat, S. Korolivsky, M. Rubach, N. Suprunenko, P. Garchev, A. Senderskyi, M. Yakupov, A. Tkachuk cited numerous facts in his writings that testified to the significant importance of the national component of the revolutionary processes, the significant influence of the national factor on the mass consciousness of soldiers and officers - Ukrainians. Under these conditions the main reasons for the defeat of Ukrainian military policy become apparent: the Central Council failed to form capable regular units using the support of the soldiers in the first stage of the revolution; the delay in carrying out agrarian reform contributed to the growing influence of the Bolsheviks in the Ukrainian village; refusal to build a regular army had fatal consequences for Ukrainian statehood.

Keywords

• ukrainian central council
• soviet historiography
• sources of research
• military policy