Військові аспекти українського державотворення на сторінках “Архива Русской революции” Йосифа Гессена

Abstract

In this article the explanation of the military aspects of the Ukrainian state formation of 1917–1920-s by the memoiristics of the White Russian emigration is analyzed using the materials of “The Russian Revolution`s Archives”. It was found out that practically all the authors were on chauvinistic imperial positions, they didn`t admit Ukraine as an independent state, they proved its incapability in the sphere of the military building. To discredit the Ukrainian liberating struggle they manipulated or confused the facts. The largest number of materials concerning the military building of Ukraine belong to the period of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (May – December, 1918). It was the time when ex-imperial bureaucracy and the old tsar army’s officers had saved themselves from the repressions of the Russian bolsheviks and they settled down on the territory of Ukraine. In spite of the sympathy of the Ukrainian government towards them, they considered the Ukrainian state being really temporary. Russian White emigrants’ authors gave very negative marks to the military activity of the Ukrainian People’s Republic during the period of Directory (December 1918–1920). Later, following the policy of the reestablishment of the “only and indivisible Russia” they denied the possibility of the forming of anti-bolshevik front together with followed tactical and not strategical opinion. The author proved that in the explanation of “The Russian Revolution`s Archives” the military aspects of the Ukrainian state formation are described through the prism of the Russian imperial chauvinism. The idea of the Russian imperialism dominated in the attitude of nearly all the Russian polities towards Ukraine. They principally denied the existence of the Ukrainian independent state with own military forces. The majority of the authors of “The Russian Revolution`s Archives” propagandized the thesis: Ukrainians could create neither state nor army. The army which had been created in Ukraine they treated as antisocial due to the depot formation. At the same time the White emigrants’ authors pointed out the faults of the Ukrainian military building: real lack of qualified military specialists, non-adapted military terminology, lack of practical experience in the military building. But they ignored the reasons of these faults which were conditioned by the Ukraine’s existence under the foreign empire authorities, the russification process, and not by the Ukrainians’ intellectual abilities. In fact, the judgment of the Russian White emigration stated in the materials of “The Russian Revolution`s Archives” outlived this emigration because of the empire policy of modern Russia towards Ukraine.