From December 1918 to the fall of the directory in late 1920, the Ukrainian Army was engaged in constant action. A critical point was reached in the autumn of 1919, when the main body of the army found itself near Chortoryia, in Volhynia, surrounded by Polish, Soviet, and White forces. The army broke up and resorted to partisan warfare against its enemies in the first of its Winter Campaigns, before regular forces were put back together to assist the Poles in the invasion of Ukraine (part of the Soviet–Polish War) following the Treaty of Warsaw (21–24 April 1920). By the time the Polish and Soviet sides negotiated an armistice at Riga in September–October 1920, the Ukrainian Army had again been reduced to little more than 20,000 men. It prepared an offensive against Soviet Russia, but the Red Army began its own offensive, and after intense battles (11–12 November 1920), the Ukrainian Army retreated westward. It crossed the River Zbruch on 21 November 1920 and was interned by the Polish authorities. Nevertheless, military activity continued, with partisan attacks against Soviet bases in right-bank Ukraine (the “Second Winter Campaign”). The Bolsheviks, however, soon routed the units involved in these incursions and executed 359 of their fighters on 23 November 1921.
After a long period of internment in the Polish camps (at Wadowice, Piotrków Trybunalski, Tuchola, Aleksandrów Kujawski, Łańcut, Strzałków, Kalisz, and Szczepiórno), the men of the Ukrainian Army were granted the status of refugees and were demobilized. The army staff continued to exist, as an institution subordinate to the government-in-exile of the UNR, although many commissioned individuals joined the Polish Army as “contract officers,” in the hope of a renewed attack on Soviet Russia by Poland. Various veteran associations flourished in émigré centers across Europe, the most active of which was the Society of Former Combatants of the Ukrainian Republican Democratic Army in France (established in 1927).
UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA. This rada (“council”), founded in Kiev in March 1917 to coordinate the Ukrainian national movement in the wake of the collapse of tsarism in the February Revolution, became the supreme legislative body of the Ukrainian National Republic, following the proclamation of that state in November 1917 and the declaration of its independence in January 1918. It was determined, in August 1917, that 75 percent of the seats on the Rada (of which, at that time, there were 798) should go to Ukrainians (some representing Ukrainian communities outside Ukraine), with the remainder filled by ethnic minorities: Russians (14 percent), Jews (6 percent), Poles (2.5 percent), Moldavians (four seats), Germans (three seats), Tatars (three seats), Belarussians, Czechs, and Greeks (one seat each). Representatives tended to be drawn from the urban intelligentsia and the professions, but the majority of the electorate were peasants. At one time or another, 19 political parties were represented in the Rada (with 17 of them defining themselves as socialist), the largest parties being the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (UPSR), the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labor Party (USDLP), and the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists. Because of its influence among the peasantry, the UPSR held the most seats in the Rada, but the most influential cabinet posts tended to be held by members of the USDLP, who counted V. V. Vynnychenko and S. V. Petliura among their numbers. (This mirrored the situation in Petrograd, where the more popular Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries allowed Mensheviks to dominate the Central Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.)
On 15 June 1917, an executive body, the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was established and was charged with “managing internal, financial, food-supply, land, agrarian, inter-ethnic and other issues in Ukraine and executing all resolutions of the Rada pertaining to these issues.” On 9 January 1918 (following the declaration of Ukrainian independence in the fourth of the Universals of the Ukrainian Central Rada), these functions were transferred to a new body, the Council of People’s Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic. (The Rada had already been responsible for the declaration of the UNR as an autonomous entity within a federated Russia in its Third Universal of 7 November 1917.) This body was formally responsible for the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, on 27 January 1918. Following the coup that overthrew the UNR on 29 April 1918, Hetman P. P. Skoropadskii issued a “Charter to the Ukrainian People” that dissolved the Rada and annulled its laws.
UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA, UNIVERSALS OF THE. Derived from the Latin litterae universales, this was the term adopted in the Hetman State of 17th-century Ukraine to describe major governmental proclamations; it was revived by the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917–1918. The Rada issued four universals, which together had the character of a series of fundamental laws marking the progression of Ukraine from autonomy within Russia to full-blown independence. The First Universal (23 June 1917) was authored by Volodymyr Vynnychenko and declared Ukraine to be autonomous, presaging the formation, five days later, of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada (later the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic). The other universals were all authored by Mikhailo Hrushevsky. The Second Universal (16 July 1917), engendered by the stalling of Kiev’s negotiations with Petrograd, promised the expansion of the Rada and a new General Secretariat, as well as the formation of Ukrainian military forces, but still paid obeisance to the Russian Provisional Government. The Third Universal (20 November 1917), prompted by the October Revolution, proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic and the provisional governance of the General Secretariat, subject to the approval of a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly (set to meet on 22 January 1918), but stopped short of a declaration of independence. The Fourth Universal (9 January 1918) was consequent to the outbreak of the Ukrainian–Soviet War and declared Ukraine to be independent, as well as redubbing the General Secretariat the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic.