The War in Ukraine — Ukraine during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War (1917-1922)

After the fall of the Russian Empire, Jewish and Ukrainian activists worked to overcome previous mutual antagonism by creating a Ministry of Jewish Affairs within the new Ukrainian state, and taking other measures to satisfy the national aspirations of Jews and other non-Ukrainians. This experiement ended in failure as anarchic violence swept the countryside amidst civil war and foreign intervention. Pogrombist attacks resulted in the worst massacres of Jews in Europe for almost 300 years. Some 40 per cent of these pogroms were perpetrated by troops ostensibly loyal to the very government that was simultaneously extending unprecedented civil rights to the Jewish population.

Histories of the Russian Revolution often present the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 as the central event, neglecting the diverse struggles of urban and rural revolutionaries across the heartlands of the Russian Empire. This book takes as its subject one such struggle, the anarcho-communist peasant revolt led by Nestor Makhno in left-bank Ukraine, locating it in the context of the final collapse of the Empire that began in 1914. Between 1917 and 1921, the Makhnovists fought German and Austrian invaders, reactionary monarchist forces, Ukrainian nationalists and sometimes the Bolsheviks themselves. Drawing upon anarchist ideology, the Makhnovists gathered widespread support amongst the Ukrainian peasantry, taking up arms when under attack and playing a significant role - in temporary alliance with the Red Army - in the defeats of the White Generals Denikin and Wrangel. Often dismissed as a kulak revolt, or a manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism, Colin Darch analyzes the successes and failures of the Makhnovist movement, emphasizing its revolutionary character. Over 100 years after the revolutions, this book reveals a lesser known side of 1917, contributing both to histories of the period and broadening the narrative of 1917, whilst enriching the lineage of anarchist history.

The Ukraine, which had for centuries been ruled by other nations, finally gained its independence for a brief period after the First World War. During this revolutionary era, a series of Ukrainian governments were established whose political spectrum ranged from anarchism to monarchical rule.

Between 1918 and 1921 an estimated 100,000 Jewish people were killed, maimed or tortured in pogroms in Ukraine. Hundreds of Jewish communities were burned to the ground and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and destitute, including orphaned children. A number of groups were responsible for these brutal attacks, including the Volunteer Army, a faction of the Russian White Army.
The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19: Prelude to the Holocaust is a vivid and horrifying account of the atrocities committed by the Volunteer Army, written by Nokhem Schtif, an eminent Yiddish linguist and social activist who joined the relief efforts on behalf of the pogrom survivors in Kiev. Schtif's testimony, published in 1923, was born from his encounters there and from the weighty archive of documentation amassed by the relief workers. This was one of the earliest efforts to systematically record human rights atrocities on a mass scale.

Originally written in Yiddish and here skillfully translated and introduced by Maurice Wolfthal, The Pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-19 brings to light a terrible and historically neglected series of persecutions that foreshadowed the Holocaust by twenty years. It is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of human rights, Jewish studies, Russian and Soviet studies, and Ukraine studies.

This book is a survey of domestic governmental and party printed propaganda in revolutionary Ukraine. It is based on an illustrative sample of leaflets, pamphlets, and cartoons published by different parties and governments between 1917 and 1922.

State Building in Revolutionary Ukraine examines six attempts to create governments on Ukrainian territories between 1917 and 1922. Focusing on how political leaders formed and staffed administrations, this study shows that in Ukraine during this time, there was an available pool of able administrators sufficiently competent in Ukrainian to work as bureaucrats in the independent national governments. These people could sometimes implement policies, a significant accomplishment in light of the upheavals of the time.
Stephen Velychenko compares Ukrainian efforts to create an independent national government with the analogous successful efforts made in Russia, Poland, Ireland and Czechoslovakia. He questions the notion that Ukrainian attempts at national independence failed because its society was 'incomplete' and its leaders unable to organize an effective administration. Pointing out that Bolshevik administrations at the time were no more effective in implementing policies than their rivals, Velychenko argues that more effective governance was not one of the reasons for the Russian Bolshevik victory in Ukraine.