Ukraine Leader Warns Ukrainians Against Glorifying Petlura

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

M. Vinitchenko, former Prime Minister of the Ukrainian Directory of which Petlura was one of the three members, has just issued a leaflet warning the Ukrainian Socialists against representing Petlura as representative of the Ukrainian national movement.

“The Jewish Press.” he writes, “and the Russian bourgeoisie are speaking of Petlura as the head of the Ukrainian movement, and if the Ukrainian Socialists follow their example they are doing something extremely dangerous. In representing Petlura as the head of the Ukrainian movement they make the whole Ukrainian people responsible for his crimes.”

M. Vinitchenko goes on to explain that the Council of Ukrainian Workers who held the supreme power in the Ukraine elected a Directory of which Petlura was one of the members. “But Petlura was not the head of the Directory,” he says. “Graually Petlura usurped all power, thus violating the principles of the Constitution of the Directory and of its election. In this way Petlura broke with the Council of Workers, the institution which was the legal representative of the people and of the Ukrainian Nationalist movement. The whole of his subsequent activity was carried on entirely on his own personal responsibility. He should therefore be regarded as a usurper, and not as the real leader of the Ukraine, and the legal leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. All his crimes fall upon his own head and not on the head of the Ukrainian movement. Schwartzbard in shooting Petlura shot the man who in his eyes was responsible for the pogroms, not the head of the Ukrainian movement.

“The word ‘Petlurovstchina’, meaning the era of Petlura’s power,” M. Vinitchenko proceeds, “must be used only to indicate a certain phase in the history of the Ukrainian movement. It covers only the period of Petlura’s personal activity and that of a small group of his friends.

“If the friends of Petlura,” M. Vinitchenko concludes, “wish to defend his memory and his honor, it is for them to do so, but they would do well to avoid injuring thereby the honor of the Ukrainian revolution and what it stands for. For to us, the rest of the Ukrainians to whom the honor of the Ukrainian movement for national freedom is dear, it is important that the Petlurist movement should be identified solely with the personal activities of Petlura. The deeds and the honor of the Attaman Petlura are by no means the same thing as the honor of the Ukrainian people. This must be made quite clear by all who do not want to be identified with the group of Petlura’s friends.”