Russian Executive Committee

Russian Executive Committee [Russian: Рисский исполнительний комітет; Russkii ispolnitelnyi komitet]. A political association of Galician Russophiles established in Lviv in December 1918. It supported the Hetman government in eastern Ukraine and approved the idea of a federation with a revived Russia ruled by the Whites. The committee’s organ was the renewed Prikarpatskaia Rus’. Its leading members were prominent Galician Russophiles, such as V. Kurylovych, Dimitrii Markov, M. Tretiak, and E. Valnytsky. It co-operated with the Ukrainian Interparty Council and boycotted the 1922 elections to the Polish Sejm. In 1923 the committee split into the socialist pro-Soviet People's Will party, which later joined the Sel-Rob party, and the conservative Galician-Russian People's Organization, which enjoyed the support of the Polish government and was given control of institutions such as the People's Home in Lviv and the Stauropegion Institute. From 1929 to 1931 the People's Organization was divided into two groups, the Russian Agrarian party and the Russian Peasants' Organization.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]