Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Independentists

Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Independentists (Ukrainska partiia sotsiialistiv-samostiinykiv, or UPSS). A numerically small nationalist party founded in Kyiv on 30 December 1917 by members of the former Ukrainian People's party and by senior officers of the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic. In its weekly organ Samostiinyk (Kyiv 1918), the UPSS demanded the immediate proclamation of Ukrainian independence. Although it advocated a social program based on the peasants' ownership of the land and the workers' ownership of industrial enterprises, it was in fact antisocialist and therefore opposed the General Secretariat of the Central Rada and criticized its land-socialization policies and its liberal position with respect to the ethnic minorities. It also opposed the succeeding 1918 Hetman government and took part in the creation of the Ukrainian National-State Union and Ukrainian National Union. Opanas Andriievsky represented the UPSS in the Directory of the Ukrainian National Republic, and under its rule the UPSS members Mykhailo Bilynsky, Mykhailo Kryvetsky, Ivan Lypa, Oleksander Osetsky, Oleksander Shapoval, and Dmytro Symoniv held portfolios in the Council of National Ministers of the Ukrainian National Republic until April 1919. Other prominent UPSS members were Petro Bolbochan, Ivan Lutsenko, O. and P. Makarenko, and Oleksander Stepanenko. Dissatisfied with the policies of the Ukrainian National Republic government headed by Borys Martos and supporting the idea of creating a military dictatorship to fight Soviet Russia, Andriievsky and the UPSS supported Otaman Volodymyr Oskilko’s failed coup in Rivne in April 1919. Thereafter the UPSS had negligible influence. Its émigré members joined a short-lived coalition of Ukrainian antisocialist opponents of Symon Petliura in Vienna in 1921. In 1923 the émigré Ukrainian People’s Party of Socialists-Independentists was founded by Oskilko in Polish-ruled Volhynia. In its government-funded organ, Dzvin (Rivne, 1923–8), it advocated co-operation with the Polish regime and therefore had little support. The party fell apart after Oskilko's death in 1926.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tymoshevs’kyi, V. Istoriia ukraïns’koï vlady 1917–1919 (Vienna–Kyiv 1920)
Ukraïns’ka partiia samostiinykiv-sotsiialistiv (Vienna 1920)

Roman Senkus

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