Authors

Discussion

This presentation will explore the transition made by many Ukrainian socialists in the revolutionary period of 1917 to 1921 from a democratic stance to a soviet “democratic” or even authoritarian stance when it came to ideas for implementing a system of rule in Ukraine. The critical distinction here is between favoring “wide” democracy - that is, voting and input by those across the socio-economic and national spectrum, and class-based “democracy” via organs such as soviets/radas/councils. A particular focus will be the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (UPSR), who were the largest and most electorally successful political party in Ukraine, at least into early 1918. Their shift toward pro-soviet (not the same as pro-Soviet) positions over the course of the revolutionary period, as well as the splitting off of their left wing to form the Borot’bisty, who allied with the Soviets, is particularly illustrative of this change in self-conception, as a party that no longer pushed so much for parliamentary power as for soviet power. The other major Ukrainian socialist party of the period, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (USDWP) experienced much less of this shift, but still had moments of accommodating pro-soviet positions and also had a left-wing offshoot that allied with the Soviets. These dynamics tell part of a much larger story about Ukrainian socialist politics and the different approaches to socialism that existed during a time when such ideas had opportunities to be tried out or at least proclaimed, and how even within the ideological world of “soviet power,” there were different versions of this idea, including those put forth by anti-Soviet parties, as these Ukrainian socialist parties were. Other important questions this issue gives attention to are whether the shifts explored here were enduring beyond the revolutionary period, after the Bolsheviks had consolidated control of Ukraine, and what pro-soviet but anti-Soviet identity, such as it may have been, looked like in the diaspora.