Ukrainian Democratic Radical party

Ukrainian Democratic Radical party (Українська демократично-радикальна партія; Ukrainska demokratychno-radykalna partiia, or УДРП; UDRP). A liberal nationalist political party formed in Kyiv in December 1905 out of the merger of the Ukrainian Democratic party and Ukrainian Radical party (Kyiv) (URP). It consisted primarily of members of the intelligentsia (eg, Yevhen Chykalenko, Pavlo Chyzhevsky, Vasyl Domanytsky, Borys Hrinchenko, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Modest Levytsky, Fedir Matushevsky, Volodymyr Shemet, Illia Shrah, Yevhen Tymchenko, Andrii Viazlov, Fedir Vovk, Serhii Yefremov) who were active in the Prosvita societies and the co-operative movement. The party adopted a revised version of the URP program, without the independence clause. Its organs were Hromads’ka dumka, Rada (Kyiv), and Ridnyi krai. Many members of the Ukrainian caucus in the Russian State Duma (eg, three-quarters of the caucus in the Second State Duma) belonged to the UDRP. In early 1908 the UDRP, many of whose members also belonged to the Russian Constitutional Democratic (kadet) party, fell apart, and most of its members joined the clandestine Society of Ukrainian Progressives.

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