Participant and Chronicler of the Ukrainian Revolution: Pavlo Khrystiuk (To the 130th Anniversary of the Birth)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to create a biography of P.Khrystiuk, a cooperator, a politician, a publicist, an author of the fundamental work about history of the Ukrainian Revolution.

The methodological basis is the principle of historicism in the unity of all its components. The research is based on a critical analysis of archival and printed sources. The microhistorical approach was also used.

The scientific novelty consists in the attempt to create a detailed description of the life path, activities and the significance of the intellectual heritage of P.Khrystiuk, based on the archival resources that were never used before along with those materials that were already published. The documents of the GPU–NKVD were also used in order to trace the circumstances of P.Khrystiuk’s tragic fate. All this made it possible to create the most complete biographical sketch so far, to clarify many important points, to refute certain inaccuracies in those publications in which P.Khrystiuk was mentioned.

Conclusion. P.Khrystiuk appears as a clear adept of socialistic ideas, as a representative of that group of people who had drawn a moderate, cooperative version of socialism with democratic political form for Ukraine and for entire Eastern Europe. At the same time, he professed tolerance towards those activists who used to held different positions, but seemed to him as possible allies in the building and preservation of independent Ukraine. P.Khrystiuk became not just a participant, but also a chronicler of events he was involved in. He created a fundamental work on the history of the Ukrainian Revolution. This work was suppressed during the existence of the USSR not for nothing. After all, P.Khrystiuk, along with other representatives of the Ukrainian revolutionary generation of those times, insisted that Ukrainian Revolution differed from the “Petrograd Model” of 1917, which ended up with Bolshevik’s party dictatorship. The Bolshevik ideologists interpreted such separation of the specifics of Ukrainian revolution as an assertion of independence of Ukraine. This understanding of Ukrainian revolution, as well as his previous political activity in times of Ukrainian Central Rada and the UPR Directory, put P.Khrystiuk (after his return from the forced emigration in 1923) in the circle of temporary “companions” of Bolsheviks for the next eight years. That is, he was included in the circle those, to whom the new political authorities had no trust. This determined his fate when the Bolshevik regime launched an attack on the Ukrainian intelligentsia, fabricating the “Case of the Union of Liberation of Ukraine” in 1930 and preparing the “Case of the Ukrainian National Center” for the upcoming year. It was exactly that case, within which P.Khrystiuk was convicted and killed later on.