Symon Vasyliovych Petliura (Ukrainian: Симон Васильович Петлюра, Ukrainian pronunciation: [ˈsɪmon ʋɐˈsɪlʲowɪt͡ʃ petˈlʲurɐ]; 22 May [O.S. 10 May] 1879 – 25 May 1926) was a Ukrainian revolutionary, politician and journalist. He was the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian People's Army (UNA) and led the Ukrainian People's Republic during the Ukrainian War of Independence, a part of the wider Russian Civil War.
Petliura was born to a family of Cossack heritage in Poltava. From an early age he embraced socialism and Ukrainian nationalism, which he advocated through his highly prolific career as a journalist. After the 1917 February Revolution overthrew the Tsarist monarchy, the Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed and Petliura was elected head of its military. The Republic was briefly interrupted by the pro-German Ukrainian State, but in late 1918 Petliura, along with other members of the socialist Directorate of Ukraine, organised a revolt and overthrew the regime, restoring the Republic. He became the leader of the Directorate in early 1919, after the Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine and captured its capital. Facing imminent defeat, Petliura entered an alliance with Józef Piłsudski's Poland. The Polish–Soviet War concluded with Poland remaining independent and gaining some Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, while most of Ukraine remained under Soviet control, forcing Petliura into exile. He initially directed the government-in-exile from Poland, but eventually settled in Paris.
During the Civil War, the UNA were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jewish civilians, and Petliura's role in the pogroms has been a topic of dispute. In 1926, Petliura was assassinated in Paris by Jewish anarchist Sholem Schwarzbard, who had lost relatives in the pogroms.
Born on 22 May [O.S. 10 May] 1879 in a suburb of Poltava (then part of the Russian Empire), Symon Petliura was the son of Vasyl Pavlovych Petliura and Olha Oleksiyivna (née Marchenko), of Cossack background. His father, a Poltava city resident, had owned a transportation business; his mother was a daughter of an Orthodox hieromonk (priest-monk). Petliura obtained his initial education in parochial schools, and planned to become an Orthodox priest.
Petliura studied in the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Poltava from 1895 to 1901. While there he joined the Hromada society in 1898. When his membership in Hromada was discovered in 1901, he was expelled from the seminary. In 1900 Petliura joined the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (RUP). In 1902, under threat of arrest, he moved to Yekaterinodar in the Kuban, where he worked for two years – initially as a schoolteacher and later as an archivist for the Kuban Cossack Host helping to organize over 200,000 documents. In December 1903 he was arrested for organizing a RUP branch in Yekaterinodar and for publishing inflammatory anti-tsarist articles in the Ukrainian press outside of Imperial Russia (in Austrian-controlled Lemberg, currently named Lviv, in Galicia). Released on bail in March 1904, he moved briefly to Kyiv and then to Lemberg.
In Lviv, Petliura lived under the name of Sviatoslav Tagon, working alongside Ivan Franko and Volodymyr Hnatiuk as an editor for the journal Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk ("Literary Scientific Herald"), the Shevchenko Scientific Society and as a co-editor of Volya newspaper. He also contributed numerous articles to the Ukrainian-language press in Galicia.
At the end of 1905, after a nationwide amnesty was declared by the authorities, Petliura returned briefly to Kyiv. As the Ukrainian language had been outlawed in the Russian Empire by the Ems Ukaz of 1876, Petliura found more freedom to publish Ukrainian-oriented articles in Saint Petersburg than in Ukraine, and soon moved to the Russian capital in order to publish the socialist-democratic monthly magazine Vil’na Ukrayina ("Free Ukraine") along with Prokip Poniatenko and Mykola Porsh. After Russian censors closed this magazine in July 1905, he moved back to Kyiv where he worked for the newspaper Rada ("The Council"). In 1907–09 he became the editor of the literary magazine Slovo (Ukrainian: Слово, The Word) and co-editor of Ukrayina (Ukrainian: Україна, "Ukraine").
In 1909, these publications were closed by Russian imperial police, and Petliura moved back to Moscow, where he briefly worked as an accountant. Soon he became a co-editor of the Moscow-based Russian-language journal Ukrayinskaya Zhizn, aimed to familiarize the local population with news and culture of what was known as Malorossia (Little Russia). He was the chief editor of the publication from 1912 to 1914 and served as its co-editor until May 1917.
During World War I, he expressed his position regarding the war in a response article titled "War and Ukrainians." In this publication, he argued that Ukrainians, as subjects of the Russian Empire, were obliged to loyally fulfill their duty to the Tsar, and expressed the hope that in the future the attitude of the Tsarist authorities towards the Ukrainian question would change.
Petliura assured the government that Ukrainians "will not succumb to provocative influences and will fulfill their duty as citizens of Russia at this difficult time until the end", and stated that he was in favor of the unification of all Ukrainians (including Galicians) under the auspices of Russia
In May 1917 Petliura attended the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soldier Deputies held in Kyiv as a delegate. On 18 May he was elected head of the Ukrainian General Military Committee. With the proclamation of the Central Rada on 28 June 1917, Petliura became the first Secretary (Minister) for Military Affairs.
Disagreeing with the politics of the then chairman of the General Secretariat Volodymyr Vynnychenko, Petliura left the government and became the head of the Haydamaky Kish, a military formation of Sloboda Ukraine (in Kharkiv). In January–February 1918 the Haidamaky Kish was forced back to protect Kyiv during the Uprising at the Kyiv Arsenal Plant and to prevent the capture of the capital by the Bolshevik Red Guard.
After the April 1918 Ukrainian coup d'état, Pavlo Skoropadskyi's government arrested Petliura and incarcerated him for four months in Bila Tserkva.
Petliura participated in the Anti-Hetman Uprising of November 1918 and became a member of the Directorate of Ukraine as the Chief of Military Forces. Following the Bolshevik takeover of Kyiv (February 1919) and the emigration of Vynnychenko from Ukraine, Petliura became the leader of the Directorate on 11 February 1919. In his capacity as head of the Army and State, he continued to fight both Bolshevik and White forces in Ukraine for the next ten months.
With the outbreak of hostilities between Ukraine and Soviet Russia in January 1919, and with Vynnychenko's emigration, Petliura ultimately became the leading figure in the Directorate. During the winter of 1919 the Petliura army lost most of Ukraine (including Kyiv) to Bolsheviks and by 6 March relocated to Podolia. In the spring of 1919 he managed to extinguish a coup-d'etat led by Volodymyr Oskilko who saw Petliura cooperating with socialists such as Borys Martos. During the course of the year, Petliura continued to defend the fledgling republic against incursions by the Bolsheviks, Anton Denikin's White Russians, and the Romanian-Polish troops. By autumn of 1919, most of Denikin's White Russian forces were defeated — in the meantime, however, the Bolsheviks had grown to become the dominant force in Ukraine.
On 5 December 1919, Petliura withdrew to Poland, which had previously recognized him as the head of the legal government of Ukraine. In April 1920, as head of the Ukrainian People's Republic, he signed an alliance in Warsaw with the Polish government, agreeing to a border on the River Zbruch and recognizing Poland's right to Galicia in exchange for military aid in overthrowing the Bolshevik régime. Polish forces, reinforced by Petliura's remaining troops (some two divisions), attacked Kyiv on 7 May 1920, in what proved a turning point of the 1919–21 Polish-Bolshevik war. Following initial successes, Piłsudski's and Petliura's forces had to retreat to the Vistula River and to the Polish capital, Warsaw. The Polish Army, supported by Ukrainian units, defeated the Bolshevik Russians in the end, but the Red Army remained in parts of Ukraine and therefore Ukrainians were unable to secure their independence. Starting from late 1920, Petliura directed the affairs of the Ukrainian government-in-exile from Tarnów in Lesser Poland. When the Soviet government in Moscow requested Petliura's extradition from Poland, the Poles engineered his "disappearance", secretly moving him from Tarnów to Warsaw.