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.
Career timeline
1893Commissioned as an officer in the Chevalier Guard regiment
1904–1905Commanded Cossack units in the Russo-Japanese War, decorated for bravery
1912Promoted to major general, aide-de-camp to Nicholas II
1914–1916Commanded cavalry divisions in WWI, promoted to lieutenant general
1917Commander of 34th Army Corps, Ukrainised it into the 1st Ukrainian Corps
1917.10Elected Otaman of the Free Cossacks
1918.04–12Hetman of the Ukrainian State
1919–1945Exile in Germany, led the Hetmanite movement
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.
Career timeline
1905Co-founder of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' Party
1917Vice-president of the Central Rada and first head of its General Secretariat
1918.01Premier of the Ukrainian People's Republic, soon resigned
1918.12Retook Kyiv as chairman of the Directory
1919–1920Wrote the memoir Rebirth of a Nation
1920Deputy head of the Ukrainian SSR Sovnarkom; soon re-emigrated
From Soviet economic planner to independent Ukraine’s first prime minister
In 2016, the man who had signed away the USSR revealed his own grief: 'As a man, I'm ashamed to admit it, but when Crimea was annexed, I cried like a child.'
Vitold Fokin was a Ukrainian Soviet economic official who began as a mining engineer and experienced both the operation of a planned economy and the pressures of state transformation. He led Ukraine’s government around independence while confronting economic crisis and the collapse of the Union. In December 1991, he signed the Belovezha Accords for Ukraine alongside Leonid Kravchuk, helping establish the post-Soviet order. Late in life, his controversial positions in the Donbas negotiations ended his public role.
Career timeline
1954–1963Mining engineer and manager in the Luhansk region
1963–1971Manager in the Donbas anthracite industry
1971–1987Department head and deputy chair of Ukraine’s State Planning Committee
1987–1990Deputy chair of Ukraine’s Council of Ministers and head of the State Planning Committee
1990–1991Chair of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR
1991–1992First prime minister of Ukraine
1991Ukrainian signatory of the Belovezha Accords
2020First deputy head of Ukraine’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group
