Political Terror and Discord in the Society: The Secret War of the Russian Federation against the Ukrainian State (April—December 1918)

• Main Author: Pavlo Hai-Nyzhnyk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: RIUS 2020-07-01
• Series: Українознавство
• Subjects: більшовицький терор; рсфрр; п. скоропадський; українська держава; гібридна війна
• Online Access: http://journal.ndiu.org.ua/article/view/205229
• ISSN: 2413-7065; 2413-7103

The article highlights the extra-political policies of the hybrid-combined warfare of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic against the Ukrainian State during the government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (April–December 1918). The anti-Ukrainian activities conducted by the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, the ruling Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and its allied Russian parties of left and right socialist-revolutionaries and anarchists are studied. In particluar, these activities include the efforts of Soviet Russia to undermine the sociopolitical situation in Ukraine, the organization and provision of armed and financial assistance to anti-governmental insurgent units and battalions, the participation and direction of insurgent movements, the organization of large-scale strikes and sabotage through its agencies, as well as the organization of rallies and the underground network of revolutionary committees, etc. The secret aspects of the subversive anti-Ukrainian activity of Bolshevik diplomats in Ukraine, namely the Soviet consulate in Odessa, and their involvement in promoting anti-hetman movement and the respective awareness of German diplomatic factors in the Ukrainian State are exposed. Particular attention is paid to the Soviet-Bolshevist policy of creating in Ukraine secret military units of the underground socialist terrorist army, as well as to the facts of not only promoting and sponsoring the mass insurgent-terrorist movement by the Soviet Russian government but also those of individual terroristic acts against Ukrainian statesmen, directly organized and managed by the Council of People’s Commissars of RSFSR and leaders of Russian Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Those included several assassination attempts on Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky. The article points out the awareness of the Ukrainian security services (MIA Intelligence Department, MIA State Guard Department, Hetman’s Personal Staff) of the structure, system of network activity, subversion and assassination attempts on the Hetman of the Ukrainian State by the Soviet All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VCHK). The article covers the preparation of the armed invasion of Ukraine by the Soviet-Bolshevik troops and records the beginning of military aggression of the Russian Red Army against the independent Ukrainian State in the autumn of 1918.