The Galician Soviet Socialist Republic was a short-lived, self-declared

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

political entity that existed from 15 July to formally 21 September 1920 with the capital in the city of Tarnopol (

Ternopil Ternopil, known until 1944 mostly as Tarnopol, is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Western Ukraine and the historical regions of Galicia and Podolia. The populatio ...

). The

communist state A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was ...

was established during a successful counter-offensive of the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

in the summer of 1920 as part of the Polish-Soviet War and in the course of which the Polish-Ukrainian joint military force (Polish Ukrainian Front) was forced to retreat from its positions along the

Dnieper The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

that it secured earlier in 1920 all the way to the foothills of the

Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe and Southeast Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Ural Mountains, Urals at and the Scandinav ...

History

The republic became a buffer zone of the ongoing conflict within the area of the South-Western front of the

. Due to the successful offensive in July 1920, the Soviet government also created the Polrevkom and had intentions of creating the Polish Socialist Soviet Republic. A similar, but less elaborate activity, of the communist Polrevkom, was related to the North-Western front of the Red Army (the "government" was seated in

Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the List of cities and towns in Poland, tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Biał ...

). The Galician SSR was established on 15 July 1920 when the Galician Revolutionary Committee (Halrevkom), a ''

revkom A revolutionary committee or revkom ({{langx, ru, Революционный комитет, ревком) were Bolshevik-led organizations in Soviet Russia and other Soviet republics established to serve as provisional governments and temporary S ...

'' (

provisional government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, a transitional government or provisional leadership, is a temporary government formed to manage a period of transition, often following state collapse, revoluti ...

) headed by

Volodymyr Zatonsky Volodymyr Petrovych Zatonsky (; July 27, 1888 – July 29, 1938) was a Soviet Union, Soviet politician, academic, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Communist Party activist, full member of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences (from 1929) ...

(Vladimir Zatonsky) and created on 8 July in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

under the auspices of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine (CP(b)U), issued its declaration. The communist government moved to Tarnopol in

Eastern Galicia Eastern Galicia (; ; ) is a geographical region in Western Ukraine (present day oblasts of Lviv Oblast, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil Oblast, Ternopil), having also essential historic importance in Poland. Galicia ( ...

on 1 August 1920 upon occupation of the region by the Red Army. The same day the Halrevkom adopted a decree "About establishing of Soviet power in Galicia". The national languages (of equal status) were declared to be

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

, Ukrainian and

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

. With its decrees, the communist government abolished private ownership of the means of production, established an eight-hour workday, separated church from state and nationalised church estates, established a single labour school with seven-year education, and nationalised the land. By the end of August, the Halrevkom tried to conduct elections to establish a permanent Soviet government and convene the All-Galician Congress of Soviets. The Galician Socialist Soviet Republic was severely understaffed, and while released Ukrainian memoirs leave the fate of the erstwhile ZUNR officials unknown, many do mention that local educated Ukrainians worked for the Soviet administration, being afraid of what letting Poles and Jews dominating every administrative ministry would entail. Exemptions from confiscations such as from the

Prodrazvyorstka ''Prodrazverstka'', also transliteration of Russian, transliterated ''prodrazvyorstka'' ( rus, продразвёрстка, p=prədrɐˈzvʲɵrstkə, short for , ), alternatively referred to in English as grain requisitioning, was a policy and ...

, were also attractive for educated Ukrainians. Bolshevik reports claim that the Western Ukrainian population supported them out of their hatred for Petlura, whose alliance with Poland was seen as betrayal of the Galician state. However, Stephen Velychenko reports that it's yet to be determined just how many Ukrainians worked for the Soviet government, given how the prevalent opinion amongst the Ukrainian population at the time was that Polish rule would be the lesser evil. All

s were officially supposed to be one-half Ukrainian, one-quarter Jewish, and one-quarter Polish, but in reality the ethnicity of the ministry's head determined which language was used and which group was represented in each ministry the most. Borys Kolodii, a clerk in the War Commissariat, described how every official would assign positions to their co-nationals and then impose either Polish or Ukrainian as the de facto office language. The republic’s education and economy staff, as well as the local military district leaders, were overwhelmingly Polish Jews who used Polish as the official language. The Soviet Union had granted

to Communist Poland as a province - Ukrainian Communists who wanted Galicia to be part of Soviet Ukraine were a minority, and contemporary reports claimed that Poles dominated the Galician revkoms. The majority of Polish Bolsheviks were from former

Congress Poland Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...

and wished Galicia to be annexed to a Communist Poland in its entirety. While the Ukrainian staff had to follow the official regulation and operate in all three languages, the Poles and Jews ignored it and used only Polish without any consequences. With the Polish offensive on 15 September, those plans failed and the Halrevkom withdrew from Tarnopol. On 21 September 1920, the republic was officially abolished and its revolutionary committee was transformed into the Galician Bureau of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of Ukraine The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU or KPU) is a banned political party in Ukraine. It was founded in 1993 and claimed to be the successor to the Soviet-era Communist Party of Ukraine, which had been banned in 1991. In 2002 it held a "unifi ...

. With the signing of the

Peace of Riga The Treaty of Riga was signed in Riga, Latvia, on between Poland on one side and Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus) and Soviet Ukraine on the other, ending the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921). The chief negotiators o ...

in March 1921, the bureau was liquidated. Halrevkom did not control the most important area of East Galicia: the

Lviv Lviv ( or ; ; ; see #Names and symbols, below for other names) is the largest city in western Ukraine, as well as the List of cities in Ukraine, fifth-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of It serves as the administrative centre of ...

area with its

oilfield A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the prese ...

s of

Boryslav Boryslav (, ; ) is a city located on the Tysmenytsia (river), Tysmenytsia (a tributary of the Dniester), in Drohobych Raion, Lviv Oblast (Oblast, region) of western Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Boryslav urban hromada, one of the hroma ...

and

Drohobych Drohobych ( ; ; ) is a city in the south of Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Drohobych Raion and hosts the administration of Drohobych urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. In 1939–1941 and 1944–1959 it w ...

Government composition

– chairman * Mykhailo Baran – deputy chairman * Fedir Konar – head of departments of justice and interior *

Kazimierz Litwinowicz Kazimierz (; ; ) is a historical district of Kraków and Kraków Old Town, Poland. From its inception in the 14th century to the early 19th century, Kazimierz was an independent city, a royal city of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, located south ...

– secretary * Ivan Nemolovsky – commissar of finances (later head of the department of railways) * Myroslav Havryliv – commissar of enlightenment * Mykhailo Kozoris – commissar of courts * Omelyan Paliiv – commissar of military * Ivan Siyak – secretary of the Sovnarkom (Council of commissars)

References

Notes

Citations

External links