This essay by Mykola Halahan, published here in English for the first time, examines a largely overlooked dimension of the Ukrainian and broader European revolutionary period: the fate of Ukrainian Marxists who opposed both the Russian Bolsheviks and the Ukrainian conservative elements in their struggle for an independent socialist Ukraine. The Ukrainian Communist Party (UKP)—known as the Ukapisty—was founded in 1920 and compelled to disband in 1925. It originated within the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (USDRP), marking the final dismantling of independent organisation of the generation that had led Ukraine’s national rebirth and the Ukrainian Revolution 1917-1920, that founded the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Emerging as the radical wing of the USDRP, the Nezalezhnyky (‘Independents’) acquired international significance, gaining the support of Béla Kun’s Soviet Hungary. In 1919, commanding a segment of the Red Army, the Nezalezhnyky led a pro-Soviet rebellion that was larger and more consequential than the Kronstadt uprising. Reconstituted as the Ukrainian Communist Party, they remained the last legal opposition party in the USSR, advocating both soviet democracy and genuine Ukrainian self-government. Mykola Halahan (1882–1946 or after 1955) was a leading figure in Ukrainian Social Democracy during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917–18. He served as a Ukrainian diplomat, including a posting to Soviet Hungary in 1919, and was active in the USDRP’s exile organisation part of the Labour & Socialist International. Arrested by the Gestapo during the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Halahan was imprisoned in 1944. In 1945, he was taken by the NKVD to Kyiv; according to one account, he died in prison in 1946, while other sources suggest he was released in 1955. His ultimate fate remains uncertain.The present text was first published in Nova Ukraina (New Ukraine), the Ukrainian socialist journal edited by Halahan in Prague, in May 1925. Translation by Mykhailo Kondrashyn.
