Ukrainian Military Committee

Ukrainian Military Committee (Український Військовий комітет or Центральний Військовий комітет; Ukrainskyi Viiskovyi komitet or Tsentralnyi Viiskovyi komitet). A clandestine organization of Ukrainian officers in the Austrian army formed in Lviv in September 1918. Working closely with the People’s Committee of the National Democratic party, it made preparations to transfer power in Galicia to the Ukrainian people. In October 1918 representatives of the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen were added to the Military Committee, and Capt Dmytro Vitovsky was elected chairman. On orders of the Ukrainian National Rada the committee carried out a coup d’état on the eve of the 1918 November Uprising in Lviv and other cities. With the proclamation of the Western Ukrainian National Republic, the Military Committee was dissolved. Besides Dmytro Vitovsky its more active members were P. Bubelia, T. Martynets, L. Ohonovsky, Dmytro Paliiv, Ivan Teodor Rudnytsky, and Volodymyr Starosolsky.

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