Ukraine

Scholar 1866–1934 ○ Died

Historian who wrote Ukraine as a distinct historical subject, and chairman of the Central Rada

In March 1917 the Central Rada elected him chairman in absentia while he was still in exile in Moscow, and his return raised hope for uniting the democratic forces.

The historian whose History of Ukraine-Rus wrote Ukraine as a distinct historical subject, he chaired the Central Rada in 1917 and 1918. He returned to Soviet Ukraine in 1924 and died under surveillance in 1934.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1873–1945 ○ Died

The last hetman of Ukraine, installed under German occupation in 1918

On 29 April 1918 in Kyiv, the All-Ukrainian Congress of Landowners rose and unanimously acclaimed Pavlo Skoropadskyi as Hetman of Ukraine with shouts of 'Long live the Hetman!'

A Ukrainian aristocrat and tsarist lieutenant general who commanded a corps in the First World War. In April 1918, backed by the German army that occupied Ukraine after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he overthrew the socialist Central Rada in a coup and was proclaimed Hetman of the Ukrainian State. During his eight-month rule he founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, established universities, and built diplomatic ties, but his pro-landlord agrarian policy and the German occupiers' forced grain requisitions provoked widespread peasant resistance. When Germany collapsed in November 1918, Symon Petliura's Anti-Hetman Uprising drove him from power; he abdicated in December and spent the rest of his life in German exile, refusing to collaborate with the Nazis.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1879–1926 ✕ Assassinated

Ukrainian independence leader who headed the People's Republic but whose role in pogroms remains fiercely contested

Do not separate the fate of Ukraine from the fate of Russia. If Russia suffers defeat, the consequences of this catastrophe will also affect Ukraine.

A social-democratic journalist from Poltava who rose from military secretary of the Central Rada in 1917 to commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian People's Army and head of the Directorate of the Ukrainian People's Republic. He fought to defend Ukrainian independence against Bolsheviks, White armies, and Poland, but was forced into exile, first in Poland and then Paris, after defeat in 1920. An estimated 50,000 Jews were massacred by forces under his command, and whether he was unable or unwilling to stop the killings remains fiercely disputed. In 1926 he was assassinated in Paris by the Jewish anarchist Sholem Schwarzbard, who called it vengeance for the pogroms.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1880–1951 ○ Died

Ukrainian Social Democratic writer who led the Rada's General Secretariat and the Directory

Just as you created the dictatorship of workers and peasants in Russia, we must create a dictatorship of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian Social Democratic writer, he led the Central Rada's General Secretariat in 1917 and retook Kyiv as first chairman of the Directory in 1918. Arguing for talks with the Soviets he broke with Petliura and resigned in 1919, dying in France in 1951.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1851–1895 ✕ Struck by a train at a crossing

He killed the tsar's gendarme chief with a dagger, then introduced the Russian revolution to the West with his pen

On the eve of assassinating Mezentsov in 1878, Kravchinsky wrote: 'Long enough have we preached love — the time has come to call forth hatred. Merciless, bloody vengeance shall henceforth be the answer to your crimes.'

A writer and revolutionary who served as a bridge between the Russian Narodnik movement and the West. After activity in the Chaikovsky Circle he assassinated gendarme chief Mezentsov with a dagger in 1878 and fled into exile; in London he published Underground Russia (1883), introducing the Russian revolutionary movement to the West for the first time, and founded the Russian Free Press Fund and the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, becoming the hub of émigré anti-tsarist agitation.

Imperial establishment and White movement 1859–1924 ○ Natural causes

The parliamentarian the Tsar called 'fat-bellied': last chairman of the Imperial Duma

In February 1917, Rodzianko telegraphed the Stavka: "The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralysed. Any delay is fatal. The last hour has struck." Nicholas II read it and told his court minister: "That fat-bellied Rodzianko has sent me some more nonsense."

Of Ukrainian noble stock, Rodzianko co-founded the Octobrist Party in 1905, pursuing constitutional reform of the Tsarist system through parliamentarism. As chairman of the Third and Fourth Dumas (1911–1917), he openly denounced Rasputin and confronted the wartime government's paralysis. During the February Revolution he led the Provisional Committee of the Duma and drove the negotiations for Nicholas II's abdication, but his constitutional-monarchy project collapsed when Grand Duke Michael refused the throne. He emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, dying in poverty after completing his memoir The Reign of Rasputin. Reviled by monarchist émigrés as a traitor and dismissed by the left, Rodzianko embodied the brief, thwarted experiment of Russian parliamentary politics.

Theorist 1865–1919 ○ Heart attack

From Legal Marxism to ethical socialism: the economist who pioneered business cycle theory

At the April 1900 Pskov meeting to organize Iskra, he sat alongside Lenin, Martov, and Struve — but he never actually joined the underground Social Democratic movement.

A leading exponent of Legal Marxism, Tugan-Baranovsky gained international recognition with his 1894 Industrial Crises in Contemporary England, which pioneered an endogenous theory of capitalist business cycles. Together with Pyotr Struve he advanced Marxist economic-historical analysis against the Narodniks and attended the 1900 organizational meeting of Iskra, but later broke with orthodox Marxism toward an 'ethical socialism' grounded in Kantian ethics, laying the theoretical foundations of the cooperative movement. After the February Revolution he served as finance minister in the Ukrainian Central Rada and was a founding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; his cycle theory influenced Keynes, Robertson, and Kalecki.

Scholar 1866–1934 ○ Died

Historian who wrote Ukraine as a distinct historical subject, and chairman of the Central Rada

In March 1917 the Central Rada elected him chairman in absentia while he was still in exile in Moscow, and his return raised hope for uniting the democratic forces.

The historian whose History of Ukraine-Rus wrote Ukraine as a distinct historical subject, he chaired the Central Rada in 1917 and 1918. He returned to Soviet Ukraine in 1924 and died under surveillance in 1934.