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Symon Petliura

(Redirected from Simon Petlyura)
The neutrality of this article is disputed.

Symon Petliura (Симон Петлюра; in English: Simon, Semen, Semyen Petliura or Petlura) (May 10, 1879 - May 25, 1926) was a Ukrainian politician. Petlyura was a socialist leader of Ukraine's unsuccessful fight for independence following the Russian revolutions of 1917. He was briefly president during the Russian Civil War.

Biography

Petliura was born in Poltava. He was the co-founder in 1905 of the Ukrainian Labour Party and the editor of Slovo ("Word") and Ukrainskaya Zhyzn ("Ukrainian Life") from 1905 to 1909. During World War I Petliura served in the Tzarist army. After 1917 and the February Revolution he was a member of the Ukrainian Autonomous Council, and later minister of military affairs. Until 1918 he was a member of Directoriat, and after 1919 leader of the body. In the Russian Civil War, he fought with Bolsheviks, Denikin, Germans, Ukrainians under Pavlo Skoropadsky and Poles. At the end 1919, he withdrew to Poland, who recognised him as the legal government of Ukraine. In March 1920, as the head of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic he signed an alliance in Lublin with the Polish government, agreeing to a border on the river Zbruch , recognising Polands right to Lviv and Galicia. In 1920 Polish forces, supplemented by Petliura's remaining troops, attacked Kyiv, which was a turning point in the Polish-Bolshevik war (1919-1920). After the Peace of Riga he directed the Ukrainian government-in-exile from Tarnow and, later, Warsaw.

In 1923, with the Soviet Union increasingly pressuring the Polish government to hand over Petliura, he fled first to Budapest, then Vienna and Geneva, and eventually settled in Paris towards the end of 1924.

Petliura's assassination

On May 25, 1926, while windowshopping along a Paris boulevard, he was approached by a man who asked in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" When he responded in the affirmative, the man, a Ukrainian-born Jewish anarchist named Shalom "Samuel" Schwartzbard, shouted (according to his later deposition) "Defend yourself, you bandit!" Petliura raised his cane and Schwartzbard pulled out a gun, shooting him three times, while exclaiming "This, for the pogroms; this for the massacres, this for the victims." Petliura sank to the ground, proclaiming, "Enough, enough, my God!"

Eyewitnesses reported that Schwartzbard then fired four more times. When police rushed to him to make their arrest, he reportedly calmly handed over his weapon, saying, "You can arrest me, I've killed a murderer."

Schwartzbald's motive for the assassination was that before Petliura's escape, when he was still in power in Ukraine, serious pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews of Ukraine. 100,000 Jews died, including Schwartzbald's parents. The core of Schwartzbard's defense was-- as presented by noted barrister Henri Torrès -- that he was avenging the deaths of victims of the pogroms. This premise found favor with the French jury, who acquitted him.

Some historians have claimed that Petliura did nothing to stop the pogroms, but some have claimed that he himself was not an anti-Semite and he tried to stop them by introducing capital punishment for the crime of pogromming, and that Petliura's only crime was being the head of state of country where the pogroms happened. The controversy over Petliura's role has continued to this day. The Journal of Jewish Studies, in 1969's issue 31:3, published two opposing views by scholars Taras Hunczak and Zosa Szjakowski which are still frequently cited.

Petlyura is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.

External References:

Turning the pages back...May 25, 1926 http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1996/209613.shtm (Ukrainian Weekly account of shooting of Petliura)

Review of books on Petliura http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1999/509914.shtm

Review of Henry Abramson's A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewas12.htm




Last updated: 02-07-2005 17:42:02
Last updated: 02-28-2005 11:21:10