Symon Petliura

As the Ukrainian language had been outlawed in the Russian Empire by the Ems Ukaz of 1876, Petliura found more freedom to publish Ukraine oriented articles in Saint Petersburg than in Ukraine. There, he published the magazine Vilna Ukrayina (Ukrainian: Вільна Україна, "Independent Ukraine") until July 1905. Tsarist censors, however, closed this magazine, and Petliura moved back to Kyiv.

In Kyiv, Petliura first worked for Rada. In 1907 he became editor of the literary magazine Slovo. Also, he co-edited the magazine Ukrayina.

In 1909, these publications were closed by Russian imperial police, and Petliura moved back to Moscow to publish. There, he was co-editor of the Russian-language journal Ukrayinskaya Zhizn to familiarize the local population with news and culture of what was known as Malorossia. He was chief editor with this publication from 1912 to 1914. In Moscow he married his wife Olha Bilska in 1915 (later she was also known as her husband under the surname of Marchenko). There, in Moscow was born the daughter of Petliura, Lesia (Olesia).

In Paris, Petliura continued the struggle for Ukrainian independence as a publicist. In 1924, Petliura became the editor and publisher of the weekly journal Tryzub ("Trident"). He contributed to this journal using various pen names, including V. Marchenko, and V. Salevsky.

In May 1917 Petliura attended the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soldier Deputies held in Kyiv as a delegate. On May 18 he was elected head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee, today seen as the ultimate progenitor of the modern Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. With the proclamation of the Central Council of Ukraine on June 28, 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 Haidamaka Kish, a military formation of Sloboda Ukraine (in Kharkiv). In January–February 1918 the Haidamaka 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 Hetmanate Putsch (April 28, 1918), the Skoropadsky administration arrested Petliura and incarcerated him for four months in Bila Tserkva.

Petliura participated in the anti-Hetmanate putsch of November 1918 and became a member of the Directorate of Ukraine as the Chief of Military Forces.[7] Following the fall 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.

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 March 6 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.

Polish General Antoni Listowski and Symon Petliura in Berdychiv during the Kyiv Offensive

Józef Piłsudski and Symon Petliura Kyiv, May 1920

On December 5, 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 May 7, 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 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. Petliura directed the affairs of the Ukrainian government-in-exile from Tarnów in Lesser Poland, and when the Soviet government in Moscow requested Petliura's extradition from Poland, the Poles engineered his "disappearance", secretly moving him from Tarnów to Warsaw.

Bolshevik Russia persistently demanded that Petliura be handed over. Protected by several Polish friends and colleagues, such as Henryk Józewski, with the establishment of the Soviet Union on December 30, 1922, Petliura, in late 1923 left Poland for Budapest, then Vienna, Geneva and finally settled in Paris in early 1924. Here he established and edited the Ukrainian-language newspaper Tryzub.

Petliura introduced the awarding of the title "People's Artist of Ukraine" to artists who had made significant contributions to Ukrainian culture. A similar titled award was continued after a significant break under the Soviet regime. Among those who had received this award was blind kobza player Ivan Kuchuhura-Kucherenko.

He also saw the value in gaining international support and recognition of Ukrainian arts through cultural exchanges. Most notably, Petliura actively supported the work of cultural leaders such as the choreographer Vasyl Avramenko, conductor Oleksander Koshetz and bandurist Vasyl Yemetz, to allow them to travel internationally and promote an awareness of Ukrainian culture. Koshetz created the Ukrainian Republic Capella and took it on tour internationally, giving concerts in Europe and the Americas. One of the concerts by the Capella inspired George Gershwin to write "Summertime", based on the lullaby "Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon"[8] All three musicians later emigrated to the United States.

A bust of Petliura in Rivne

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, previously restricted Soviet archives have allowed numerous politicians and historians to review Petliura's role in Ukrainian history. Some consider him a national hero who strove for the independence of Ukraine. Several cities, including Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital and Poltava, the city of his birth, have erected monuments to Petliura, with a museum complex also being planned in Poltava. Petliura's statue, unveiled in Vinnytsia in October 2017, was denounced as disgraceful and deplorable by the World Jewish Congress.[42] To mark the 80th anniversary of his assassination, a twelve-volume edition of his writings, including articles, letters and historic documents, has been published in Kyiv by Taras Shevchenko University and the State Archive of Ukraine. In 1992 in Poltava, a series of readings known as "Petlurivski chytannia" have become an annual event, and since 1993, they take place annually at Kyiv University.[43]

In June 2009, the Kyiv City Council renamed Comintern Street (located in the Shevchenkivskyi District) into Symon Petliura Street to commemorate the occasion of his 130th birthday anniversary.[44]

In current Ukraine Petliura has not been as lionized as Mykhailo Hrushevsky (who played a much smaller role in the Ukrainian People's Republic) since Petliura was too closely associated with violence to make a good symbolic figure.[45] In a 2008 poll of "Famous Ukrainians of all times" (in which respondents did not receive any lists or tips) Petliura was not mentioned (Hrushevsky came in sixth place in this poll).[46] In the 2008 TV project Velyki Ukraïntsi ("Greatest Ukrainians") he placed 26th.[47]

A nephew of Symon Petliura, Stepan Skrypnyk became the Patriarch Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 6 June 1990.

For part of the Western Ukrainian diaspora, Petliura is remembered as a national hero, a fighter for Ukrainian independence, a martyr, who inspired hundreds of thousands to fight for an independent Ukrainian state. He has inspired original music,[48] and youth organizations.[49]

During the revolution Petliura became the subject of numerous folk songs, primarily as a hero calling for his people to unite against foreign oppression. His name became synonymous with the call for freedom.[50] 15 songs were recorded by the ethnographer rev. prof. K. Danylevsky. In the songs Petliura is depicted as a soldier, in a manner similar to Robin Hood, mocking Skoropadsky and the Bolshevik Red Guard.

News of Petliura's assassination in the summer of 1926 was marked by numerous revolts in eastern Ukraine particularly in Boromlia, Zhehailivtsi, (Sumy province), Velyka Rublivka, Myloradov (Poltava province), Hnylsk, Bilsk, Kuzemyn and all along the Vorskla River from Okhtyrka to Poltava, Burynia, Nizhyn (Chernihiv province) and other cities.[51] These revolts were brutally pacified by the Soviet administration. The blind kobzars Pavlo Hashchenko and Ivan Kuchuhura Kucherenko composed a duma (epic poem) in memory of Symon Petliura. To date Petliura is the only modern Ukrainian politician to have a duma created and sung in his memory. This duma became popular among the kobzars of left-bank Ukraine and was sung also by Stepan Pasiuha, Petro Drevchenko, Bohushchenko, and Chumak.[52]

The Soviets also tried their hand at portraying Petliura through the arts in order to discredit the Ukrainian national leader. A number of humorous songs appeared in which Petliura is portrayed as a traveling beggar whose only territory is that which is under his train carriage. A number of plays such as The Republic on Wheels by Yakov Mamontov and the opera Shchors by Boris Liatoshinsky and Arsenal by Georgy Maiboroda portray Petliura in a negative light, as a lackey who sold out Western Ukraine to Poland, often using the very same melodies which had become popular during the fight for Ukrainian Independence in 1918.

Petliura continues to be portrayed by the Ukrainian people in its folk songs in a manner similar to Taras Shevchenko and Bohdan Khmelnytsky. He is likened to the sun which suddenly stopped shining.

• (in English) Symon Petliura, Yevhen Konovalets, Stepan Bandera - Three Leaders of Ukrainian Liberation Movement murdered by the Order of Moscow (audiobook).
• Biography of Petliura on website of the Ukrainian government
• Petliura site in Poltava (Documents, articles and photographs)
• "Petlura Trial". Time. November 7, 1927. Archived from the original on April 14, 2005. Retrieved 2008-08-09. (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
• The Odyssey of the Petliura Library and the Records of the Ukrainian National Republic during World War II
• "Petlura, Simon" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.

• "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.
• Article published in the "Archives of the Ukrainian Security Service" on Petlura and the GPU re his assassination based on recently discovered materials from the vaults of the Ukrainian Security Service in Ukrainian.
• Symon Petliura in opposition to Jewish Pogroms (in Russian)
• Petliura web site in Poltava Web site of documents pertaining to Symon Petliura in Ukrainian, Russian and English.
• Newspaper clippings about Symon Petliura in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW