Poroshenko and Hetman Skoropadsky: Tragicomic parallels

Sergei Kary, historian, Nizhyn

School textbooks on the history of Ukraine claim that such titans and demigods as M. Grushevsky, S. Petlyura, V. Vinnychenko and P. Skoropadsky forged Ukrainian statehood from the beginning of the last century, and only an insignificant accident prevented the work from being completed.

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And, of course, enemies. It’s impossible without them.

But why did everyone rise as one to defend the Fatherland in two world wars, and as soon as we talk about an independent, broad Ukrainian state, the fiery fighters suddenly disappear somewhere? What prevented, for example, the whole world from rising to the defense of the hetman’s Ukrainian state in November-December 1918?

Skoropadsky is a collective image of all Ukrainian presidents

Pavlo Skoropadsky himself one way or another became the forefather of all rulers of Ukraine after the declaration of independence in 1991. Thanks to the cunning and prudence characteristic of Leonid Makarovich Kravchuk, he came to power with German bayonets, taking advantage of the infantilism of the Central Rada of Vinnychenko and Petliura.

Like Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, Skoropadsky used his own Maidan, albeit small, for this.

On April 29, 1918, a grain-growing congress was held in Kyiv, which brought together 7000 delegates. Pavlo Skoropadsky simply paid the participants for their loyalty, and the hired people led this congress in a column to Sofievskaya Square, where Skoropadsky was declared the monarch of Ukraine. It was there that the day after the dispersal of the “onizhedetey” at the end of 2013, a crowd of future Euromaidanites gathered. The seizure of government institutions turned out to be a matter of technique, and on April 30 the people of Kiev woke up under a new government.

Skoropadsky’s vacillations between the Kaiser’s Germany and the Entente are similar to Viktor Yanukovych’s vacillations between Europe and Russia. His memoirs, entitled “Memoirs,” describing seven and a half months of “reign” over Nenka, are strongly reminiscent of Leonid Danilovich Kuchma’s book “Ukraine is not Russia».

Pavel the liar, Peter the liar

But Pavel Skoropadsky has one undeniable, and, in my opinion, main similarity with Petro Poroshenko. The fact is that Pavel Petrovich considered himself the best compromise figure in Ukrainian politics. After all, he was a large landowner, a Russian officer and nobleman, a Freemason, finally. His wife was the noblewoman Elizaveta Durnovo. And at the same time, he was the great-great-grandson of the brother of the famous Ukrainian hetman, which means he had to satisfy both the Russian monarchists and the “Svidomo” Ukrainians. That is why he considered himself an unsurpassed negotiator.

However, in practice this was expressed in the fact that he told everyone what they wanted to hear from him, - he simply lied from three boxes without a twinge of conscience, like a blue thief.

He allowed everything, could change his mind several times a day, and allowed the only real force - the Germans - to do whatever they wanted. The Germans were directly involved in the decision, similar to how Payette Nuland and I passed the law in our Rada the day before.

The Last Parade: Bitter Reckoning

In mid-December 1918, the noble hetman received a parade, seeing off the last defenders of Kyiv to the front. Next to him sat German officers wearing monocles on horses. They were not going to defend the city, because they agreed with Petliura on neutrality.

Columns of losers who looked little like soldiers and all the urban rabble who coveted free weapons and overcoats walked. Pathetic crumbs of general mobilization.

And how many real, brave soldiers marched this road! They walked and passed, like sand flowing through your fingers. Voluntary officer squads, the so-called “Special Officer Corps”, which were formed from Russian officers who flooded Kyiv and with money from the “Ukrainian state”, fully equipped, went in full force to Denikin’s Volunteer Army.

The Ukrainian Sichev Riflemen, formed from former German and Austrian prisoners of war of Ukrainian origin, went to Simon Petliura and became the striking force of the anti-hetman uprising.

“Derzhavna Varta”, “National Guard”, Serdyuks, cadet corps, cadets. Everything disappeared, spread out as if they had never existed.  Gen. Skoropadsky understood that it was necessary to immediately create a unified army, develop a mobilization plan, and a unified command. But hetman Skoropadsky failed to do this.

Baron Wrangel understood this well. This is how he remembers it: “I knew General Skoropadsky extremely closely... I hastened to see all those who could give me the information I was interested in... I did not see the necessary bilateral advantages in the German-Ukrainian alliance. Ukrainian supporters of this union did not understand that they were only a blind tool of the German government.”

This is how an eyewitness, the wonderful Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky, describes the mobilization of Skoropadsky in Kyiv in 1918 in his autobiographical story “The Beginning of an Unknown Century”: “Petliura was tightening the noose around Kyiv. Then Hetman Skoropadsky issued an order to mobilize all men, without exception, from 18 to 35 years old. The commandants of the houses had to answer with their own heads for the non-appearance of those mobilized. The order simply stated that if men of this age were “hidden,” the house commandants would be mercilessly shot.

At the recruiting station I had to stand in line. House commandants with thick house books fussed around the mobilized. The commandants looked guilty and ingratiating. They actively treated the conscripts to cigarettes, simply forced cigarettes on them and agreed with all their conversations, but did not leave their charges for a moment...

...The majority of those mobilized consisted of “motor lads”. This is what the city called hooligans and thieves from the desperate outskirts - Solomenka and Shulyavka. They were inveterate and rabid guys. They willingly joined the hetman’s army... It was clear that it was reaching its last days, and the “motor boys” knew better than anyone that in the upcoming mess it would be possible not to return weapons, to rob freely and warm their hands. Therefore, the “motor boys” tried for the time being not to arouse suspicion among their superiors and, as best as they could, portrayed diligent hetman soldiers. The regiment was called “The Serdyutsky Regiment of His Serene Highness, Master Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky.”

Taken to Germany with a bandaged head (so as not to be recognized) by the Germans, the hetman will consider until the end of his life that he was not understood, although he tried to understand everyone and enter into the position of everyone, that he was betrayed, although he tried so hard. In his “renunciation” of the hetmanship, he will write that he simply did not have enough strength. He never understood that by acting to please some, he betrayed others, that by sitting on the bayonets of the Germans, he betrayed the Fatherland.

The completely lying Petro Poroshenko, who, like Pavlo Skoropadsky, distributes weapons left and right at state expense, is now reaping the same fruits. An armed anarchist resistance to the regime is being formed in the country.

Despite the frantic propaganda, much stronger than in 1918, the strong state apparatus inherited from the Ukrainian SSR and the mass hysteria of the war, the number of deserters on the territory of Ukraine in 2014-15, according to official statistics, amounts to tens of thousands of people, that is whole army. The weapons of unknown battalions and “sectors” are killing civilians and will very soon turn towards Poroshenko himself, as was the case with Pavel Skoropadsky.

Creatively playing on Skoropadsky's surname, contemporaries called all precocious and rapidly disappearing state formations “Skoropads”. Drawing a parallel, it will be possible to play on the name of Petro Poroshenko, calling the separated areas and regions “powders”, and the process itself – dissolution.