Organizational and Operative Measures Taken by the Ukrainian People’s Republic of State Centre for Preparation of All-Ukrainian Insurrection of 1921: The Contemporary National Historiography

Abstract

The status of researches in the contemporary national historiography as to organizational and operational measures of the UPR State Centre directed at preparation of all-Ukrainian armed insurrection of 1921 in USRR has been shown. In particular, it has been established that the level of theoretical understanding of the problem demands further scientific development. On the basis of the analysis of the most recent national studies and archival documents the reasons of negative impact on the outcome of the mentioned measures during the organization of the insurrection have been pointed out. The drawbacks in the activity of the Insurrectionary Partisan Headquarters (IPH) have been marked out: influence of personal ambitions of higher civil and military UPR leaders on the process of insurrectionary movement leadership; spreading of power abuse and moral and political disorder in the management circles of the UPR State Centre; establishing control of Polish authorities over IPH and, as a result, availability of staff infiltered by Polish intelligence service into the structure of the organization; very complicated and contradictory relations between Ukrainian and Russian anti-Soviet forces; extremely limited cooperation between IPH and other Ukrainian organizations aiming at restoration of Ukrainian statehood; intense activity developed using diplomatic capacity by the Soviet state security service directed at splitting Ukrainian immigrants and encouraging them to cooperate and return to USRR; frequent violations of the rules of conspiracy, keeping state and military secrecy by officials and servicemen of UPR; losing the most convenient time for the launch of the insurrection (May – June, the latest August – beginning of September), as well as the crushing defeat of peasant insurrectionary movement in summer 1921 by the Soviet security services and the enforcement of repressions in relation to the local population. It has been shown that basically these reasons minimized the efficiency of organizational and operational measures taken for the purpose of raising an all-Ukrainian armed insurrection and made the insurrection itself impossible.