On January 22, Ukraine traditionally celebrates Unity Day, a holiday that probably has no less symbolic weight than Independence Day.. On a slightly snowy and at the same time sunny day on January 22, 1919, on Sophia Square in Kyiv, leaders of the UPR and WUNR proclaimed the Act of Zluka of the two republics, and in reality - the reunification of the two components of a single national body and the creation of an independent Ukrainian state. At that time, Ukrainians had already been trying for several years to survive the war with the Russian Bolsheviks. The treasury of people's memory already included the capture of Kyiv by Muravyov's troops and terrible terror against local residents, the use of poisonous gases, the destruction of Mikhail Grushevsky's house on Pankovskaya, the battle of Kruty and the signing of the Beresteysky Peace.
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Such a short excursion allows us to understand how geopolitically, economically, and militarily it was difficult to defend the borders of Ukraine and the living space of all nations and how important this open manifestation of the political aspirations of people who historically, culturally, and spiritually always felt whole was. Consequently, the Zluka Act was supposed to strengthen the fervor of the Ukrainian people in the struggle for freedom, emphasize the consolidation of all Ukrainians and their meaningful desire to realize their will through the tools of a single state.
Unfortunately, the loss in the war with Bolshevik Russia, the deceptive belief of some of our leaders that they would be able to come to an agreement with the Russian elites, who supposedly had similar leftist beliefs, in the end, the illusions and selfishness of Western states - all this led to the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–.
At the same time, analyzing this previous era, we see many similarities with the time in which we live. We are also at war with the Russian aggressor, we also hope for the support of Western partners and are indignant at the slowness or indifference of international institutions, we also want to live and act fully on our eternal land.
And that is precisely why on this holiday we need to talk not only about the significance of certain historical events, but also about the lessons that were given to us very hard and that are worth remembering. In particular, one of them should be the realization of the impossibility of finding a common language with someone who wants to destroy you.
The entire subsequent fate of the leaders and even ordinary participants in the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 confirmed that Russian imperialism, wrapped either in the communist red banner or in the current tricolor, does not provide for equal coexistence with other peoples and does not accept their cultural differences and political rights. Almost all the leadership of the period of the Ukrainian Revolution, for one reason or another, remained in the territory occupied by the Soviets, with some exceptions, was subjected to communist repressions. The authors of the book about the repressed ministers of the UPR “We will overcome grief” mention four waves of persecution and reprisals in different ways against UPR leaders (1919–1920, 1929 - mid-1930s, 1937–1938, 1945–1948).
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Moscow directed all its administrative and propaganda efforts not only to destroy the remnants of Ukrainian autonomy, but also to persecute those who preserved the memory of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921. In the Ukrainian SSR, repressions unfolded against the so-called petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, in particular with the help of fabricated trials in the case of the “Union for the Liberation of Ukraine” and the “Ukrainian National Center” (“the leader” of which they planned to declare academician Mikhail Grushevsky). And during the period of the Great Terror, most of the figures of the Ukrainian liberation movement were destroyed among those who did not have time to emigrate.
The Russian Bolsheviks acted cynically, but thoughtfully and persistently, because the discrediting or physical liquidation of the leaders seriously undermined the ability of the Ukrainian community to resist. By dispossession, the Holodomor-genocide of 1932–1933 and repressive measures, they cleared the public field and made it impossible for the emergence of real or even hypothetical opposition. In addition, the UPR leaders were for the Soviets a kind of living proof of the dreams and potential of Ukrainians, mental otherness and demands for national independence. And also witnesses of the Russian Bolsheviks coming to power, their manipulations, deception and lies. Therefore, the communist regime undertook to shoot and exile to camps representatives of the Ukrainian elite as bearers of liberation ideas.
The bloody years of 1937–1938 are considered the third wave of repressions against members of the government during the Ukrainian Revolution. According to scientists, eight of the eleven UPR ministers were shot by decision of extrajudicial bodies. In the Sandarmokh tract (Karelia, Russian Federation), the Minister of Public Education of the UPR A died from the bullets of security officers.. Krushelnitsky, head of the Council of People's Ministers of the UPR, one of the initiators of the signing of the Zluka V Act. Chekhovsky and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UPR N. Lubinsky. In Kyiv on September 22, 1938, a bullet overtook 46-year-old Feofan Cherkassky, about whom I would like to tell you more.
Feofan Vasilyevich was born in 1892 in the village of Rosishki, Kyiv region, he had varied interests, managed to teach, master the specialty of engineer-economist, and work at the famous publishing house " His young years were spent in a whirlwind of political struggle: member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, delegate of the Labor Congress (January 1919), Minister of National Economy of the UPR (June-August 1919), Minister of Press and Propaganda of the UPR in the government of Isaac Mazepa (August-.
Since Feofan Cherkassky already had experience communicating with the OGPU in 1931–1932, after his release from the camps he probably tried to hide away from Kyiv or Kharkov - in Yalta. Moreover, he became a Russian language teacher at Livadia Secondary School. But the NKVD officers did not let Ukrainian figures out of their sight for a minute. So on February 10, 1938 they came for Feofan Cherkassky. During the search, the security officers confiscated from him part of the archive (charters, minutes of meetings) of the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party, whose representatives, by the way, uttered ideas quite close to the Bolsheviks - the socialization of the land, the nationalization of factories and factories, the “dictatorship of the working masses”, etc.. But during the period of Stalinism, who was interested in “political proximity” or evidence base. The communist secret service accused Feofan Cherkassky of “organizing the underground Central Committee of the UPSR” and preparing an uprising. The so-called court hearing lasted 15 minutes. The sentence was carried out immediately, and the body of Feofan Cherkassky was buried in one of the mass graves of the secret special site of the NKVD in the Bykovnyansky forest on the outskirts of Kyiv.
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No less tragic was the fate of Stepan Posternak, an employee of the Ministry of Public Education (1919), as well as a librarian, teacher, historian, first director of the National Library of Ukraine (now the National Library of Ukraine named after V.. Vernadsky). Stepan Filippovich received a thorough education at the Nizhyn Historical and Philological Institute of Prince Bezborodko (graduated in 1908) and St. Petersburg University. For a long time he taught and, as a high-level specialist, was involved in the development of the national educational system during the period of the UPR. It is not known exactly what forced it to remain under Soviet occupation. Perhaps a sense of responsibility for his life’s work, since he took his scientific work seriously (he was the scientific secretary of the Encyclopedic Dictionary Commission, a member of the Local History Commission and deputy chairman of the Bibliographic Commission of the VUAN), and library activities. He was first arrested in 1929 in the case of the Young Academy, the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine and the Brotherhood of Ukrainian Statehood, but was then released in 1930.
For the second time, the “punishing sword” of the Bolshevik revolution hung over his head on December 30, 1937. During the arrest, the security officers turned out to be not particularly resourceful and simply counted all previous episodes of Stepan Posternak’s biography as guilt - work in the commissariat for the affairs of the Kyiv school district and the Kyiv provincial commissariat of public education, membership in the USDRP, etc.. So Stepan Filippovich, typical of the period of the Great Terror, was accused of participating in “anti-Soviet, nationalist, terrorist formations” and conducting counter-revolutionary work. He was shot on January 19, 1938 by decision of the troika at the Kiev regional department of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR.
Both were rehabilitated at the dawn of Ukrainian independence.
The physical liquidation of representatives of the Ukrainian state elite, which continued even after the Second World War, in combination with a broad propaganda campaign, was aimed at denigrating the names of the figures of the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921, erasing them from people’s memory, and falsifying the ideological heritage. And for some time the communist regime succeeded. However, now, remembering these names, studying their legacy, dedicating various projects to them, we not only honor our dead, but also insist on the consistency of our state aspirations, on the importance for us of previous historical lessons.
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And these lessons, in particular, are that it is necessary to maintain national unity and not allow the occupation of one’s territory by an enemy army, because the occupier will not take into account the status of an individual and will destroy both leaders and ordinary people. You also cannot shift responsibility for your state and your own destiny either to other countries, because there is competition in the world and no one will defend someone else’s land, or to other citizens, guided by the principle “I am not created for the army,” because our common salvation.
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