Jewish Representation in the Independent Ukrainian Governments of 1917-1920
Keyword(s):
The experience of Ukrainian Jewry from 1917 to 1920 is a paradox in modern Jewish history. At the same moment that the leaders of the Ukrainian revolutionary movement extended unprecedented civil rights to Ukrainian Jews, pogromists operating in the name of that same movement brutally terrorized hundreds of Jewish communities with violence and robbery. This strange incongruity has not been satisfactorily addressed; studies of the period have either concentrated on the pogroms or focused on Jewish socialists in Ukrainian politics. Linguistic barriers and subsequent developments, notably the 1926 assassination of Symon Petliura, have further polarized an already dichotomous history. This article attempts to synthesize these two trends.