Skoropadsky, Pavlo

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Skoropadsky, Pavlo

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Skoropadsky, Pavlo [Skoropads’kyj], b 15

May 1873 in Wiesbaden, Germany, d 26 April
1945 in Metten, Bavaria. Ukrainian noble,
general, and statesman; scion of the
Skoropadsky family. He grew up on his
father's estate in Trostianets (Pryluky county,
Poltava gubernia), studied at the Starodub
gymnasium, and graduated from the elite

Page Corps cadet school in Saint Petersburg.

He served in a cavalry guard regiment and
commanded a company of the Chita Cossack
Regiment in the Russo-Japanese War. He was
appointed aide-de-camp to Emperor Nicholas
II in 1905, a colonel in 1906, commander of
the 20th Finnish Dragoon Regiment in 1910,

and a major general and commander of a

cavalry regiment in the emperor's House
Guard in 1911. During the First World War
he commanded the 1st Brigade of the 1st
Cavalry Guard Division, then the 5th Cavalry and 1st Cavalry Guard
divisions, and the 34th Army Corps (at the rank of lieutenant general).

After the February Revolution of 1917 Skoropadsky oversaw the Ukrainization

of the 34th Corps as the 1st Ukrainian Corps (see Army of the Ukrainian
National Republic). He was elected honorary otaman of the Free Cossacks at

their first congress in October 1917. In October–November of that year the

disciplined 60,000-man First Corps and the Free Cossacks under his command
controlled the Vapniarka–Zhmerynka–Koziatyn–Shepetivka railway corridor.
It disarmed and demobilized pro-Bolshevik military units returning from the

southwestern and Romanian fronts and thereby prevented them from

attacking Kyiv and plundering Ukraine. As an opponent of the Central Rada's

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Skoropadsky, Pavlo

socialist policies (especially its agrarian reforms) Skoropadsky initiated a right-

wing conspiracy known as the Ukrainian People's Hromada, consisting of his

fellow noble landowners and loyal officers. Its plans to overthrow the Rada
and establish an authoritarian state ruled by the Skoropadsky family gained
the support of the Ukrainian Democratic Agrarian party and the
All-Ukrainian Union of Landowners. On 24 April 1918 Skoropadsky was

assured by Gen Wilhelm Groener, the German chief of staff, that the German
army would support a coup d'état.

On 29 April 1918 the German-backed coup proved successful. Skoropadsky

was proclaimed hetman of the Ukrainian State (as the Ukrainian National

Republic [UNR] was renamed) at an agrarian congress convened by the Union

of Landowners. The Central Rada and all land committees were dissolved, all
UNR ministers were removed, the Rada's laws and reforms were revoked, and
censorship of the press was introduced. The Hetman government appointed
by Skoropadsky included members of the Russian Constitutional Democratic
(kadet) party and even anti-Ukrainian Russian monarchists (who were major
figures in Sergei Gerbel's November–December cabinet). The government's
social and economic policies were subject to and shaped by Germany's

imperialistic aims, as well as the interests of Ukraine's large landowners,

industrialists, and capitalists. The Hetman government also allowed Russian
anti-Bolshevik political leaders and military organizations to turn Kyiv into
one of their staging areas. Ukrainian democrats refused to take part in the
government, and in late May 1918 they formed the Ukrainian National-State
Union (later renamed the Ukrainian National Union [UNS]) to co-ordinate
political opposition. The left (including the Bolsheviks) exploited the
dissatisfaction, and it soon erupted in the form of agrarian uprisings (see Partisan movement
in Ukraine, 1918–22), railway and other strikes, sabotage (bombings and arson in Kyiv,
Odesa, and elsewhere), and assassinations (eg, of the German field marshal Hermann von
Eichhorn). The government and the German and Austrian military responded with repressive
measures.

Skoropadsky's attempts in October 1918 to diffuse opposition to his regime by entering into
negotiations with the Ukrainian National Union and asserting his support for Ukraine's
independence from the Central Powers proved unsuccessful, and his November manifesto of
federation with a future non-Bolshevik Russia only accelerated the momentum of the UNS-
led popular rebellion against his regime. On 14 December 1918, after German troops
abandoned Kyiv, Skoropadsky abdicated and fled to Germany via Switzerland, and his
government surrendered power to the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic.

For most of the interwar years Skoropadsky lived in Wannsee, near Berlin, and received
German financial support. From there he headed the hetmanite movement, consisting of
monarchist émigré organizations, such as the Ukrainian Union of Agrarians-Statists in
Europe, the United Hetman Organization in Canada and the United States, and the

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Skoropadsky, Pavlo

Ukrainian Hetman Organization of America. He was also honorary president of the

Ukrainian Hromada society in Berlin. Because of his links with governing Junker circles, in
1926 he was able to initiate the creation of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin.
Skoropadsky never relinquished his claim to Ukraine. During the Second World War he
lobbied the Nazi government for the release of the leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists imprisoned in German concentration camps. He was mortally wounded during
an Allied air raid on the railway station at Plattling, in Bavaria, and was buried in
Wiesbaden. Excerpts from his memoirs appeared in Khliborobs’ka Ukraïna (vols 4 and 5 [1922–
3, 1924–5]) and under separate cover as a 1992 Kyiv volume of his Spomyny (Reminiscences).
A collection of essays about Skoropadsky and his times, edited by Olena Ott-Skoropadska,
appeared in 1993 as Ostannii het’man (The Last Hetman). Skoropadsky’s memoirs regarding
events from late 1917 to December 1918, edited by Jaroslaw Pelenski (who also provided a
foreward) were published in 1995.

Oleksander Ohloblyn, Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Skoropadsky, Pavlo entry:

1 All-Ukrainian Union of Zemstvos

2 Army of the Ukrainian National Republic
3 Belarus
4 Bessarabia

5 Bila Tserkva
6 Bluecoats
7 Central Rada
8 Chekhivsky, Volodymyr
9 Conservatism

10 Constitution of the Ukrainian National Republic

11 Cossacks

12 Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic

13 Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic

14 Doroshenko, Dmytro
15 Federalism

16 First World War

17 Free Cossacks
18 Freemasonry
19 Hetman
20 Hetman government

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Skoropadsky, Pavlo

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