Authors

Yuki Murata¹;  ¹ University of Vienna, Austria

Discussion

In early July 1917, the successor of the central imperial administration, the All-Russian Provisional Government, and the Ukrainian Central Rada – the Ukrainian national representative body based in Kyiv – reached an agreement on the de facto territorial autonomy of Ukraine. But contrary to the traditional studies which emphasize controversies between St. Petersburg and Kyiv, this paper argues that the accord constituted a compromise between various local Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian (Russian, Jewish, and Polish) actors in Kyiv. Examination of contemporary sources reveals that it materialized as part of the larger process of reorganization of the imperial governing units combined with the intensive local-level negotiations over Ukraine's future administration. In parallel to that, discussions surrounding the rights of nationalities and their representation within the projected autonomous Ukrainian self-government, reflected Russia’s incipient transformation from a traditional dynastic empire into an empire of “institutionalized multinationality” (Rogers Brubaker). In this sense, the paper posits, the autonomy agreement is comparable to the series of regional national compromises that were reached in the Habsburg empire during 1900s-1910s (Moravia, Bukovina, and Galicia). Finally, it is suggested that Provisional Government’s initiated reforms of nationalities had impact on the evolution of these issues in both Soviet and Ukrainian histories after October 1917.