Pogroms

 Pogroms in Ukraine
Anti-Jewish pogroms accompanied the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War. The Ukrainian state promised Jews full equality and autonomy, and Arnold Margolin, a Jewish minister in Petliura's government, declared in May 1919 that the Ukrainian government had given Jews more rights than they enjoyed in any other European government.[5] However, Petliura lost control over most of his armed forces, who then engaged in killing Jews. During Petliura's term as Head of State (1919–20), pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian ethnic territory, and the number of Jews killed during the period is estimated to be from 35,000 to 50,000.
The debate about Petliura's role in the pogroms has been a topic of dispute since Petliura's assassination and Schwartzbard's trial. In 1969, the Journal of Jewish Studies published two opposing views by scholars Taras Hunczak and Zosa Szajkowski, views still frequently cited.
Some historians claim that Petliura, as the head of the government, did not do enough to stop the pogroms. They suggest this lack of activity knowingly encouraged them, thus strengthenng his base of support among his soldiers, commanders and the peasant population at large, by appealing to antisemitic sentiments.[6] They also suggest that many of the atrocities were committed by the forces directly under the command of the Directorate[7] and loyal to Petliura. According to a Jewish former member of the Ukrainian government's cabinet, Solomon Goldelman, Petliura was afraid to punish officers or soldiers engaged in crimes against Jews for fear of losing their support. Nevertheless, Goldelman consistently defended Petliura and his record.[8] Petliura is said to have once said, "it is a pity that pogroms take place, but they uphold the discipline of the army.[5]
FROM THE “ORDER ISSUED BY THE MAIN COMMAND OF THE ARMIES OF THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL REPUBLIC” – August 26, 1919
It is time to realize that the world Jewish population—their children, their women—was enslaved and deprived of its national freedom, just like we were.
It should not go anywhere away from us; it has been living with us since time immemorial, sharing our fate and misfortune with us.
I decisively order that all those who will be inciting you to carry out pogroms be expelled from our army and tried as traitors of the Motherland. Let the courts try them for their actions, without sparing the criminals the severest punishments according to the law. The government of the UNR, understanding all the harm that pogroms inflict on the state, has issued a proclamation to the entire population of the land, with the appeal to oppose all measures by enemies that instigate pogroms against the Jewish population…
Chief Otoman Petliura[9]
Historians have pointed out that Petliura himself never demonstrated any personal antisemitism, and it is documented that he actively sought to halt anti-Jewish violence on numerous occasions, introducing capital punishment for the crime of pogroming.[10][11] Taras Hunczak of Rutgers University writes that "to convict Petliura for the tragedy that befell Ukrainian Jewry is to condemn an innocent man and to distort the record of Ukrainian-Jewish relations".[12][13]
Because the Soviet Union saw Petliura and Ukrainian nationalism as a threat, it was in its interest to tarnish his reputation. A propaganda campaign to this end included accusations of anti-Jewish crimes.[14] Hunczak insists that "Petliura's own personal convictions render such responsibility highly unlikely, and all the documentary evidence indicates that he consistently made efforts to stem pogrom activity by UNR troops."[15]
In 1921 Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, signed an agreement with Maxim Slavinsky, Petlura's representative in Prague, regarding the formation of a Jewish gendarmerie which was to accompany Petliura’s putative invasion of Ukraine, and would protect the Jewish population from pogroms. This agreement did not materialize, and Jabotinsky was heavily criticized by most Zionist groups. Nevertheless he stood by the agreement and was proud of it.[16][17][18]
[edit]Assassination



Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko and his wife laying flowers at Symon Petliura's grave in Paris, 2005
On May 25, 1926, while walking on rue Racine, not far from boulevard Saint-Michel, Petliura was approached by Sholom Schwartzbard. Schwartzbard asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura did not answer, only raised his walking cane. Then as Schwartzbard claimed in court he pulled out a gun and shot him five times.[19] Some state the there were two more after he was lying on the ground. That is how Schwartzbard described the incident:[20]
"When I saw him fall I knew he had received five bullets. Then I emptied my revolver. The crowd had scattered. A policeman came up quietly and said: 'Is that enough?' I answered: 'Yes.' He said: 'Then give me your revolver.' I gave him the revolver, saying: 'I have killed a great assassin.' "When the policeman told me Petlura was dead I could not hide my Joy. I leaped forward and threw my arms about his neck."
Schwartzbard was claiming that he was walking around Paris with Petliura's photo in one pocket and his handgun in another, peering in the faces of the Paris residents just to find his victim.
Schwartzbard was a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist. He participated in the Jewish self defense of Balta, for which the Russian Tsarist government sentenced him to 3 months in prison for "provoking" the Balta pogrom,[21] and was twice convicted for taking part in anarchist "expropriation" (burglary) and bank robbery in Austro-Hungary. He later joined the French Foreign Legion (1914–1917) and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. It is reported that Schwartzbard 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 Schwartzbard to do so.[22]
The French Secret service had been keeping an eye out on Schwartzbard from the time he had surfaced in the French capital and had noted his meetings with known Bolsheviks. During the trial the German special services also informed their French counterparts that Schwartzbard had assassinated Petlura on the orders of Galip, an emissary of the Union of Ukrainian Citizens. He had received orders from the head of the Soviet Ukrainian government, Christian Rakovsky, an ethnic Bulgarian and a revolutionary leader from Romania. The act was consolidated by Mikhail Volodin, who arrived in France August 8, 1925 and who had been in close contact with Schwartzbard.[23]
Schwartzbard's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms in Odessa. The core defense at the Schwartzbard trial was — as presented by the noted jurist Henri Torres — 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:
(i) Petliura was not responsible for the pogroms and
(ii) Schwartzbard was a Soviet agent.
Both sides brought on many witnesses, including several historians. A notable witness for the defense was Haia Greenberg (aged 29), a local nurse who survived the Proskurov pogroms and testified about the carnage. She never said that Petliura personally participated in the event, but rather some other soldiers who did said that they were directed by Petliura. Several former Ukrainian officers testified for the prosecution.
After a trial lasting eight days the jury acquitted Schwarzbard.[24][25]
Petliura is buried alongside his wife and daughter in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.
Petliura's two sisters, Orthodox nuns who had remained in Poltava, were arrested and shot in 1928 by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). It is claimed that in March 1926 Vlas Chubar (the Russian Commissar to Ukraine), in a speech given in Kharkiv and repeated in Moscow, warned of the danger Petliura represented to Soviet power. It is after this speech that the command was allegedly given to assassinate Petliura.[26]
[edit]Petliura's latter legacy

[edit]Ukraine


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 Kiev, the Ukrainian capital and Poltava, the city of his birth, have erected monuments to Petliura, with a museum complex also being planned in Poltava. 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 Kiev by the 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 these take place annually at Kiev University.[27]
In June 2009 the Kiev city council renamed Kominterna Street (located in the Shevchenkivskyi Raion) into Symon Petliura Street to commemorate the occasion of his 130th birthday anniversary.[28]
[edit]Israel
In Israel and the Jewish world Petlura is mostly remembered by some as the leader in charge of Ukraine when pogroms took place[29] Yad Vashem[30] and the writing on the street sign honoring Schwartzbard in Beersheba). One of Ukrainian-Jewish leaders in independent Ukraine wrote that "Petlyura did not want or was not able to defend Ukrainian Jews from his own army".[31]
Recently uncovered documents and letters to prominent Jewish community leaders demonstrate Petlura's support for the re-establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. In a "in the name of" the Jewish population of Ukraine, former Jewish affairs minister Pinchas Krasny thanked Petlura for his support for the vote in the League of Nations of July 24, 1922 regarding the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.[32] A further reflection regarding Petlura's position regarding Jews is demonstrated by another interesting fact. In exile, as the Head Otаman of the Ukrainian forces he was functioning in great material difficulties. In February 1921 he assigned Jewish refugees from Ukraine in Poland 15 thousand Polish Marks in aid.[33]
[edit]Ukrainian Diaspora
In the Western Ukrainian diaspora, Petlura 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 been inspiration for original music,[34] and youth organizations .[35]
[edit]Petlura in Ukrainian folk song
During the revolution Petlura 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.[36] 15 songs were recorded by the ethnographer rev. prof. K. Danylevsky. In the songs Petlura is depicted as a soldier, in a manner similar to Robin Hood, mocking Skoropadsky and the Bolshevik Red Guard.
News of Petlura’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.[37] 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 Petlura. To date Petlura 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.[38]
The Soviets also tried their hand at portraying Petlura through the arts in order to discredit the Ukrainian national leader. A number of humorous songs appeared in which Petlura 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 Mamontov and the opera “Shchors” by Boris Liatoshinsky and “Arsenal” by Georgy Maiboroda portray Petlura 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.
Petlura 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.