Symon Petliura
- The neutrality of this article is disputed.
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Biography
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 Zburch, 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.
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."
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.
The problem with Petlura responsibility for the Pogroms, is that he himself was not an Anti-Semite and he tried to stop them, introducing capital punishment for that crime. This decreased the number of the pogroms. Petlura is accused of being the head of state, on the territory of which there happened pogroms.
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.
Review of Henry Abramson's A Prayer for the Government: Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times
Petliura's assassination
External References:
Turning the pages back...May 25, 1926 (Ukrainian Weekly account of shooting of Petliura)