UDOVICHENKO, OLEKSANDR IVANOVICH (20 February 1887–19 April 1975). Staff captain (November 1917), coronet general (Ukrainian Army, 5 October 1920). The Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Udovichenko was born into a noble family at Cherkassk (Livensk uezd, Orov guberniia). His father was a sublieutenant in the Russian Army. He graduated from the Military-Technical School (1908) and served with the Topographic Corps of the Russian Army. During the First World War, he served with the 129th Bessarabian Regiment, and in 1917, completed an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff, before becoming a senior adjutant on the staff of the 21st Infantry Regiment and then a senior adjutant on the staff of the 3rd Caucasian Corps. When the latter unit was Ukrainized, in August 1917, Udovichenko became its commander, but he was forced out of his post by revolutionary soldiers.
Following the collapse of the Russian Army in late 1917, Udovichenko offered his services to the Ukrainian Central Rada and became head of the Operational Department of its General Staff. In January 1918, he became chief of staff of the Haidamak Kosh of Free Ukraine, with which he participated in the early stages of the Soviet–Ukrainian War. He was subsequently commander of the 3rd Haidamak Regiment (12 March–1 April 1918) and was then assistant head of the reconnaissance section of the operational department of the main staff of the Hetmanite Army. In late 1918, when the Ukrainian National Republic Directory overthrew Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii, Udovichenko joined its Ukrainian Army, in which he served as quartermaster general, first of the Chelm–Galician Front (from 26 December 1918) and then of the Right-Bank Front of the active army. From March 1919, he was chief of staff of the Gutsul′sk Kosh, and, from 6 June 1919, he was commander of the 16th Infantry Detachment of the Ukrainian Galician Army, which on 17 June 1919 became the 3rd Independent (Iron) Rifle Division, one of the most battle-hardened units of the Ukrainian Army. He distinguished himself in battle with this force during clashes at Vaniarka (near Odessa) with the Red Army group commanded by I. E. Iakir, but in October 1919 he fell ill with typhus and was captured by the Whites. He managed to escape from incarceration in Odessa and made his way to the Mogilev region, where he helped form the 5th Ukrainian Brigade, which later merged with the 4th Brigade to become the 2nd Rifle Division of the Ukrainian Army. Udovichenko then commanded this division (later renamed the 3rd Iron Division) until the remains of the Ukrainian Army were driven across the River Zbruch into Poland, in November 1920. There, he remained a close ally of Simon Petliura, supporting him in his clashes with the Ukrainian Army leadership and serving as inspector general of the army (from December 1920).
In emigration, Udovichenko settled in France, where he worked for a time as a miner. He was deeply involved in émigré politics, as head of the Brotherhood of Veterans of the Ukrainian National Republic and (from 1953) as head of the European Federation of Ukrainian Veterans Associations. He was also minister of war of the Ukrainian government-in-exile and (from 1954 to 1961) its deputy president. He died on his smallholding at Mentona, near Nice, where he was buried in the Russian (Staryi Zamok) cemetery.
UFA DIRECTORY. Also known, formally, as the Provisional All-Russian Government, this coalition, putatively all-Russian, anti-Bolshevik authority was created, during the Democratic Counter-Revolution, at the Ufa State Conference on 23 September 1918, partly in accordance with the polices of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, one of the leading anti-Bolshevik underground organizations of the time (and significantly, one that had engendered some sympathy among Allied representatives in Russia). According to its constitution, the directory was to be the single sovereign power on all territory liberated from the Bolsheviks until 1 January 1919, when it would transfer power to a 250-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly that had been elected in November 1917. If such a quorum could not be assembled by 1 January 1919, the directory was to transfer power to a 170-member quorum of the Constituent Assembly by 1 February 1919. The claims of all other anti-Soviet authorities (including the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region, Komuch, Alash Orda, the Provisional Oblast′ Government of the Urals, the Provisional Siberian Government, and the Siberian Regional Duma) to either regional or national power were annulled. The elected directors were N. D. Avksent′ev (chairman) of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR); N. I. Astrov of the Kadets; the politically moderate General V. G. Boldyrev; the Kadet (and premier of the Provisional Siberian Government) P. V. Vologodskii; and N. V. Chaikovskii, the veteran member of the Party of Popular Socialists (and head of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region). As neither Astrov nor Chaikovskii was present in eastern Russia, they were deputized for by the Kadet V. A. Vinogradov and by V. M. Zenzinov of the PSR, respectively. However, symptomatic of the problems faced by the directory was that Astrov refused to recognize his election; he, like many Kadets who preferred the right-liberal National Center to the left-liberal Union for the Regeneration of Russia, was dismayed that the All-Russian Government was to transfer power to any kind of rump of the Constituent Assembly elected in 1917, in which there had been a huge majority of socialist members (and a tiny number of Kadets), rather than to a newly elected assembly.
As the Red Army bore down on Ufa (it eventually fell on 29–31 December 1918), the directory was forced to move east, and from 9 October 1918, it was resident at Omsk. There, lacking any administrative machinery of its own, it co-opted, wholesale, the Council of Ministers of the Provisional Siberian Government and at the same time took nominal control of the Siberian Army. However, neither the members of the Siberian government nor the military leadership of White forces in Siberia had any sympathy for the directory, and it was toppled, without resistance, by the Omsk coup of 18 November 1918, to be replaced by the military dictatorship of Admiral A. V. Kolchak.
UFA STATE CONFERENCE. This gathering of anti-Bolshevik parties and organizations—one of the key events of the Democratic Counter-Revolution—met at Ufa from 8 to 23 September 1918, following two preparatory conferences at Cheliabinsk on 13–15 July and 23–25 August 1918. There were some 160–170 delegates (of whom 70 were members of the Constituent Assembly), representing various socialist parties, such as the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the Party of Popular Socialists, the Mensheviks, and the Kadets; various national and regional organizations, including Komuch, the Provisional Siberian Government, Alash Orda, the Astrakhan Cossack Host, the Eniseisk Cossack Host, the Irkutsk Cossack Host, the Orenburg Cossack Host, the Semirech′e Cossack Host, the Siberian Cossack Host, and the Urals Cossack Host; and organizations like Zemgor and the Union for the Regeneration of Russia. Representatives of the Czechoslovak National Council and Allied diplomatic missions were also in attendance. The latter, like the Union for the Regeneration of Russia, were anxious to unite the anti-Bolshevik movement.