Tkachenko, Mykhailo

Tkachenko, Mykhailo [Ткаченко, Михайло; Tkačenko, Myxajlo] (pseud: Khvylia), b 1879 in Starodub county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 1920 in Moscow. Civic and political activist; husband of Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko. A lawyer by profession, he was a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian party (1902–4) and then of Ukrainian Social Democratic Spilka and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (USDRP). He became one of the leading ideologues of the USDRP, as well as its representative to the Central Rada. He was the Central Rada's secretary general (1917), and in the Ukrainian National Republic he served as minister of justice (November 1917 to March 1918) and minister of the interior (to April 1918). From January 1919 he led the left faction of the USDRP: Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party (Independentists), which in 1920 established the Ukrainian Communist party (UCP). He died during negotiations for the legalization of the UCP.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]