Revolutionary Ukrainian party

Home About IEU

User Info Index Search Contact Address

Search ADV Text Title

Revolutionary Ukrainian party

<<< print >>>

Revolutionary Ukrainian party (Революційна українська

партія, or РУП; Revoliutsiina ukrainska partiia, or RUP).
The first mass Ukrainian revolutionary party in Russian-
ruled Ukraine, established on 11 February 1900 by the then
Kharkiv Student Hromada leaders Dmytro Antonovych,
Petro Andriievsky, Bonifatii Kaminsky, Yurii Kollard,
Oleksander Kovalenko, Lev Matsiievych, D. Poznansky, and
Mykhailo Rusov. RUP was the culmination of earlier
attempts at creating a Ukrainian political organization in a
society whose intelligentsia was by and large apolitical, and
whose Ukrainophile activity was limited to the cultural
sphere. Its political antecedents were the Brotherhood of
Taras (est 1891) and the first Ukrainian Social Democracy
group (est 1896 in Kyiv), headed by Ivan M. Steshenko and
Lesia Ukrainka.

Initially RUP based its politics on a speech delivered by a

sympathizer, Mykola Mikhnovsky, at public
commemorations of Taras Shevchenko in Poltava and Kharkiv in March 1900; the speech
was solicited by the founding members and published as the first RUP brochure under the
title Samostiina Ukraïna (Independent Ukraine, 1900). Mikhnovsky called for ‘a single, unitary,
indivisible, free, independent Ukraine from the Carpathians to the Caucasus’ and the
immediate goal of the ‘restoration ... of rights defined in the Pereiaslav constitution of 1654
[see Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654] and the dissemination of its authority throughout the entire
territory of the Ukrainian people in Russia.’

The first RUP members were nationally conscious students at various schools in Ukraine and
elsewhere in the Russian Empire. In June 1901 they met for the first time at the clandestine
third Ukrainian student conference in Poltava. At the first RUP congress in December 1902
the six existing RUP ‘free communities’—based in the cities of Kharkiv, Poltava, Kyiv,
Nizhyn (the Chernihiv Community), Lubny, and Katerynodar, in the Kuban (the Black Sea

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CE%5CRevolutionaryUkrainianparty.htm[2/2/2018 1:33:41 PM]

Revolutionary Ukrainian party

Community)—and smaller groups in Romny, Pryluky, Saint Petersburg, Odesa, and Moscow
were united in one organization. The congress elected an RUP Central Committee (Dmytro
Antonovych, Yevhen Holitsynsky [replaced by Volodymyr Vynnychenko], V. Kozynenko,
and Mykhailo Tkachenko) based in Kyiv, and a Foreign Committee (directed by
Vynnychenko and Antonovych) and Publications Committee, both of which were to be based
in Austrian-ruled Lviv and Chernivtsi.

Initially RUP advocated the use of political terrorism and armed struggle against the tsarist
regime and the large landowners. By 1902 it had moved away from revolutionary
nationalism toward an agrarian Marxism that emphasized both national and social liberation.
Its members concentrated on politicizing the Ukrainian peasantry and rural proletariat,
organizing peasant groups, strikes, and boycotts in Kyiv gubernia, Chernihiv gubernia,
Poltava gubernia, and Kharkiv gubernia, and disseminating revolutionary literature written
in Ukrainian, such as its monthly organs Haslo (1902–3), Selianyn (1903–6), Dobra novyna
(1903), and Pratsia (1904–5), 38 brochures and books (including translations of the socialist
writings of A. Bebel, P. Lafargue, F. Lassalle, W. Liebknecht, and K. Kautsky), and many
proclamations. To that end it co-operated with non-Ukrainian parties in Ukraine, such as the
Russian Socialist Revolutionary party, Jewish Workers' Bund, Russian Social Democratic
Workers' party (RSDWP), and Polish Socialist party. Most of the RUP publications were
printed in Austrian-ruled Chernivtsi and Lviv and smuggled in with the aid of the
Ukrainian Social Democratic party there; some leaflets were printed by underground presses
in Russian-ruled Ukraine.

In 1903 RUP repudiated the extreme nationalism of Samostiina Ukraïna and adopted a draft
program based on the principles, goals, and tactics of international social democracy (ie, the
German Social Democratic party's Erfurt Program). For practical reasons the call for an
independent Ukraine was replaced by one for Ukraine's full national-territorial autonomy
within a federated, democratic Russia. Also that year the small Ukrainian Socialist party
(Kyiv) in Right-Bank Ukraine fused (for six months) with RUP, many RUP members were
arrested, and others fled to Lviv, where Mariian Melenevsky became the head of the Foreign
Committee.

In 1904 Mykola Porsh became the new party leader. Under him RUP shifted its focus away
from the peasantry to the ethnic Ukrainian urban proletariat, adopted organizational
principles of ‘democratic centralism,’ theoretical training, and strict conspiracy, recruited
many new students, workers, and peasants, and expanded its influence to Right-Bank
Ukraine and Southern Ukraine and the Kuban. Yevhen Holitsynsky represented RUP at the
Socialist International Congress in Amsterdam in August; after Russian Social Democratic
Worker’s Party delegates protested against the participation of a separate Ukrainian
delegation, he was forced to join their delegation. In December 1904, at the second RUP
congress in Lviv, ideological and tactical differences among Porsh, Dmytro Antonovych,
Mariian Melenevsky, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko, especially regarding the national
question and the need for Ukrainian independence, split the party. In January 1905 an
orthodox Marxist minority faction headed by Melenevsky united with the RSDWP as the
autonomous Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka. During the Revolution of 1905 RUP

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CE%5CRevolutionaryUkrainianparty.htm[2/2/2018 1:33:41 PM]

Revolutionary Ukrainian party

members organized workers' and peasants' strikes and boycotts. At the third RUP congress
in December 1905, the remaining national-autonomist members renamed their party the
Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party.

Although it had many adherents and a mass appeal, RUP had only 116 known members.
Another 75 have been identified as possible members, and there were many unidentified
members. In addition to those already mentioned, the members who later played important
roles in Ukrainian political, cultural, and scholarly life were Kuzma Bezkrovny, Volodymyr
Chekhivsky, Dmytro Dontsov, Dmytro Doroshenko, Volodymyr Doroshenko, Mykola
Halahan, Maksym Hekhter, Hryhorii Ivanytsky, Hryhorii Kovalenko, Mykola M. Kovalsky,
Pavlo Krat, Mariia Livytska, Andrii Livytsky, I. Lychko, Stepan Manzhula, Borys
Matiushenko, Isaak Mazepa, Semen Mazurenko, Vasyl Mazurenko, Oleksander Mytsiuk,
Oleksa Nazariiv, Symon Petliura, Prokip Poniatenko, Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko, Ivan
Rotar, Ivan Rudychiv, Ivan Severyn, Mykyta Shapoval, Oleksander Skoropys-Yoltukhovsky,
Oleksander Sokolovsky, Oleksander Stepanenko, Volodymyr Stepankivsky, Mykola Trotsky,
Serhii Tymoshenko, Yurii Tyshchenko, Serhii Veselovsky, Mykola Vorony, Lev Yurkevych,
Andrii Zhuk and Anna Zhuk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Doroshenko, V. Ukraïnstvo v Rossiï: Noviishi chasy: Pam'iatkova knyzhka SVU (Vienna 1917)
———. Revoliutsiina Ukraïns’ka Partiia (RUP) (1900–1905 rr.): Narys z istoriï ukraïns’koï sotsiial-
demokratychnoï partiï (Lviv 1921)
Hermaize, O. Narysy z istoriï revoliutsiinoho rukhu na Ukraïni, vol 1: Revoliutsiina Ukraïns’ka
Partiia (Kyiv 1926)
Kollard, Iu. Spohady iunats’kykh dniv, 1897–1906: Ukraïns’ka students’ka hromada v Kharkovi i
Revoliutsiina Ukraïns’ka Partiia (RUP) (Toronto 1972)
Boshyk, G. ‘The Rise of Ukrainian Political Parties in Russia, 1900–1907: With Special
Reference to Social Democracy,’ D Phil diss, Oxford University, 1981

Arkadii Zhukovsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Revolutionary Ukrainian party
entry:

1 Antonovych, Dmytro
2 Autonomy
3 Brotherhood of Taras
4 Chernihiv region

5 Chykalenko, Yevhen
6 Dontsov, Dmytro
7 Federalism
8 Halahan, Mykola
9 Haslo

10 History of Ukraine
11 Hromadas
12 Kharkiv
13 Kohut, Lev
14 Kollard, Yurii
15 Kyiv

16 Livytsky, Andrii
17 Lozynsky, Mykhailo
18 Martos, Borys
19 Marxism
20 Matsiievych, Lev

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CE%5CRevolutionaryUkrainianparty.htm[2/2/2018 1:33:41 PM]

Revolutionary Ukrainian party

+ 20 Records >>

A referral to this page is found in 48 entries.

Click Home to get to the IEU Home page; to contact the IEU editors click Contact.

To learn more about IEU click About IEU and to view the list of donors and to become an IEU
supporter click Donors.
 

 
Home | Contact | About IEU | Donors

©2001 All Rights Reserved. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
 

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CR%5CE%5CRevolutionaryUkrainianparty.htm[2/2/2018 1:33:41 PM]