Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists

Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists [Українська партія соціялістів-федералістів; Ukrainska partiia sotsiialistiv-federalistiv, or УПСФ; UPSF). A numerically small but influential liberal democratic party that superseded the Society of Ukrainian Progressives (TUP) in April 1917. Until June 1917 it was called the Union of Ukrainian Autonomists-Federalists. The UPSF leader was Serhii Yefremov. Its organ was the daily Nova rada (Kyiv). Of all the Ukrainian political parties that arose after the February Revolution of 1917 the UPSF had the largest number of experienced politicians and members of the elite intelligentsia, who had long been involved in national-cultural work. Its program was based on that of the Ukrainian Democratic Radical party (1905–8), the predecessor of TUP.

In 1917–18 Serhii Yefremov was vice-president of the Central Rada, and he and other UPSF members, such as Oleksander Shulhyn, Petro Stebnytsky, Oleksander Lototsky, and Mykhailo Tuhan-Baranovsky, held portfolios in its General Secretariat of the Central Rada; the latter two secretaries resigned after the proclamation of the Third Universal in November 1917 (see Universals of the Central Rada). In the 1918 Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic portfolios were held by the UPSF members Ivan Feshchenko-Chopivsky, Petro Kholodny, Ivan Kraskovsky, Lototsky, Viacheslav Prokopovych, Serhii Shelukhyn, and Shulhyn, and Andrii Yakovliv served as UNR emissary to Austria-Hungary. The UPSF boycotted the 1918 Hetman government and took part in organizing the oppositional Ukrainian National-State Union and Ukrainian National Union. Dmytro Doroshenko, however, resigned from the UPSF to become acting minister of foreign affairs, Shelukhyn chaired the government's peace delegation to Soviet Russia, Shulhyn served as ambassador to Bulgaria, and Volodymyr M. Leontovych, Lototsky, Maksym Slavinsky, Stebnytsky, and Andrii Viazlov participated in the government's Council of Ministers of October–November 1918. After the overthrow of the Hetman government in December, under the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic the UPSF members Feshchenko-Chopivsky, Kholodny, Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky, Mykhailo Korchynsky, Dmytro Markovych, Kost Matsiievych, and Ivan Ohiienko held portfolios in the revived Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic, until April 1919. Others served as UNR ambassadors to Greece (Fedir Matushevsky), Bulgaria (Shulhyn), Turkey (Lototsky), Czechoslovakia (Slavinsky), Romania (Matsiievych), Sweden and Norway (Kost Losky), and Holland and Belgium (Yakovliv), and as members of the UNR delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (Shulhyn, Shelukhyn, Makar Kushnir).

Most UPSF members fled from the Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine in 1919–20. In Tarnów, Poland, Viacheslav Prokopovych became prime minister of the new Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic in May 1920, and Petro Kholodny, Ivan Ohiienko, Andrii Nikovsky, and Oleksander Salikovsky received portfolios. Ivan Feshchenko-Chopivsky headed the Council of the Republic in 1921. In 1923 the émigré UPSF was renamed the Ukrainian Radical Democratic party (URDP). Oleksander Lototsky was elected its leader. He and other members, such as Pavlo Chyzhevsky, Kost Matsiievych, Prokopovych, Oleksander Shulhyn, Salikovsky, Maksym Slavinsky, and Andrii Yakovliv, played important roles in the Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic; Prokopovych served as prime minister (1926–39) and head of the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic (1939–40), and Lototsky was deputy prime minister. Other prominent UPSF/URDP members were Vasyl Bidnov, Zinaida Mirna, Ivan Mirny, Illia Shrah, and Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska. The URDP ceased functioning during the Second World War and was not revived.

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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