Monday, February 28, 2022

UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION CENTENARY 1917-2017


UKRAINESOLIDARITYCAMPAIGN.ORG

The following articles deal with the history of the forgotten Ukrainian Communist Party (Bolshevik) aka The Borotbitski (Ukrainian for Fighters).

The Party was formed in Kiev and was urban based and dealt with both its own reformist wing  in the Social Democratic Party of the Ukraine, and in the Ukraine Rada, or Congress, where they faced the real right wing nationalists around Anti Semitic pseudo Aristocrat Simon Petlurya (Petluria).

In the countryside closer to Russia the CPU(B) or as it is sometimes known CP(B)U held less power in the local soviets of peasants who gathered under the banner of the Revolutionary Anarchist Army of Nestor Makhno, the Social Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Revolutionaries, as well as Hetmanite bandit groups of Anti Semitic Anti Russian thugs and racists, and Petluraites aligned with the White Army against the Revolution.

The Russian Bolshevik Party under Trotsky's military leadership also used the Ukraine as a battle ground, with his Red Train of troops moving in out and across Ukraine fighting the Germans and White Russians who were combined to defeat the Revolution as part of their expansion into Russia during WWI.

Here then are the resources on the CPU (B) Borotbiski 

I have found on the Internet in English. 

The party continued to be the CP of the Ukraine until Stalin eliminated its leadership and absorbed it into the All Russian CP when he dissolved National Communist Parties in the 1930's.


CENTENARY OF UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION

2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, a decisive turning point in world history.  But the revolution was not only in Russia but across the entire Russian Empire, and Ukraine saw the largest and most powerful of the resurgence of all the oppressed nations of the Empire.   With the fall of Tsarism in February 1917 Ukraine witnessed unprecedented popular self-organisation and mobilisation of the masses of peasants, soldiers and workers to achieve social and national liberation.  Events in Ukraine would be decisive in deciding not only the fate of the Russian Revolution but events in Europe as whole.  Before the Revolution in the mind of Moscow there was no Ukraine; only the province of Malorossia — ‘Little Russia’ – the revolution shattered that colonial position – and challenges it to this day.  
To mark the Centenary of the Ukrainian Revolution we will be republishing histories, analysis and documents of the time.  Below we publish for the first time in English a section of the most important histories of the by Pavlo Khrystiuk, the four volume Zamitky i materiialy do istoriï ukraïns’koï revoliutsiï 1917–1920 rr. (Comments and Materials on the History of the Ukrainian Revolution, 1917–20, 4 vols, 1921–2).  
Khrystiuk_PavloKhrystiuk was a Central Committee member of the million strong Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (UPSR) and a deputy in the autonomous parliament the Central Rada, he held positions in the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and later he worked for the Society of Scientific and Technical Workers for the Promotion of Socialist Construction Kharkiv.  A publisher of several studies Khrystiuk was arrested in 1931 and perished in the Stalinist terror in a in a Soviet labor camp.  Reproduced here is section of Part I, The National Cultural Period of the Revolution, Chapter I, The Beginning of the Revolution.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE UKRAINE

Borotbists [Боротьбісти; Borotbisty]. The Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries-Borotbists (Communists) was the left faction of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists Revolutionaries (UPSR). At the fourth party congress on 13–16 May 1918 this faction gained control of the Central Committee of the UPSR. It advocated a form of government based on workers' and peasant's councils and demanded co-operation with the Bolsheviks.

These views were propagated by its weekly Borot'ba, edited by Vasyl Blakytny (see also Borotba).

After the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine at the beginning of 1919, the Borotbists collaborated with the Bolsheviks, and several Borotbists participated in Khristian Rakovsky's Workers' and Peasants' Government of Ukraine (Mykhailo Poloz, Hnat Mykhailychenko, Mykhailo Panchenko, M. Lytvynenko, and M. Lebedynets).

At the fifth party congress on 8 March 1919 in Kharkiv the Borotbists adopted a communist but independentist platform and changed their name to the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (Communists). Then in August 1919, after merging with a left group known as the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (Independentists), they founded the Ukrainian Communist party (of Borotbists) and demanded admission to the Communist International as an independent ‘national-communist’ party. Their application was rejected, however.

At this time the Borotbists had 15,000 members. Because the Borotbists had a strong following among the peasants, Vladimir Lenin accepted a compromise: he promised an independent Ukrainian SSR if the Ukrainian Communist party (of Borotbists) voluntarily abolished itself by merging with the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. In March 1920 the Borotbists joined the CP(B)U. They played an important role in promoting Ukrainization in the 1920s. In the 1930s former Borotbist members were politically persecuted and many were executed.

In Ukraine the All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, which convened in Kyiv on 17–19 December 1917, endorsed the Central Rada. The Bolshevik delegates rejected this action, however, and left Kyiv for Kharkiv to join an alternate congress of soviets from the Kryvyi Rih Iron-ore Basin and Donets Basin.

Calling itself the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, this body proclaimed Soviet rule in Ukraine and established the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTsVK). Ukrainian democratic and nationalist parties generally rejected the soviet system of government on the grounds that it gave too much power to Russian or Russified workers and soldiers at the expense of the peasantry; they advocated a single parliament elected on the basis of universal suffrage.

Eventually the Bolsheviks, with the support of the Borotbists and then the Ukrainian Communist party, were able to establish soviet power throughout the cities and towns of Ukraine. At the same time they were able to assert their authority over rural soviets, most of which had been organized and controlled by the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries.

Ukrainian Communist party (Ukrainska komunistychna partiia, or Ukapisty). 


A Communist group of no more than 250 members who in 1920–4 supported Soviet rule but opposed Russian domination of Ukraine through the CP(B)U. Its most prominent leaders were Yurii Mazurenko, Mykhailo Tkachenko, and Andrii Richytsky.

In January 1919, at the Sixth Congress of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party, a group called the nezalezhnyky [see Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (Independentists)] walked out and began to function as a separate party with its own press organ, Chervonyi prapor. It adopted an ideology of national communism, favoring a Soviet regime in Ukraine but rejecting both the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republicand the Communist Party of Ukraine. In June 1919 it formed a revolutionary committee under the protection of Otaman Danylo Zeleny, who had revolted against the Bolshevik regime. In August the group split: its left faction joined the Borotbists, and the majority co-operated in military matters with the Directory for a short period.

The Red and the Black - Anarchism and Marxism in The Russian Civil War

Published 2016

24 Pages
Most of the criticism and academic material related to the 1917 Russian Revolution is devoted to Bolshevism, Marxism and in part, Counter-Revolutionary forces. By contrast, not much attention has been paid to other revolutionary forces such as Anarchism. My aim is to show that Anarchism played a significant role in the Russian Revolution to the extent that it posed a critical challenge both at the theoretical and at the practical level, and that the two levels are closely interconnected. I will start by looking at what Anarchism is and how it relates to Marxism on a theoretical level, and then proceed to analyse the interplay between the two different ideologies during the course of the Revolution. In doing so I will retrace the episodes of the Revolution back to the debates of the 19th century and analyse the difference between theory and practice in both ideologies. As the period under consideration is very long, I will focus on the main events that saw the two factions facing each other, namely the peasant uprisings after the Revolution, involving mainly the Kronstadt Uprising in 1921 and Nestor Makhno in Ukraine. Many factors shaped the events that took place, and I will try to gain an understanding of how the two political theories, Anarchism and Marxism related to the general situation, and how their actions in practice, followed from their respective ideologies.


BONUS

History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918–1921)  PETER ARSHINOV

https://www.academia.edu/32475535/History_of_the_Makhnovist_Movement_1918_1921

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