Galician Revolutionary Committee

Galician Revolutionary Committee (Галицький революційний комітет; Halytskyi revoliutsiinyi komitet or Галревком; Halrevkom). Provisional Soviet government that briefly governed Galicia during its occupation by the Red Army in the summer of 1920. The committee was set up on 8 July 1920 in Kharkiv on Vladimir Lenin’s orders. When the Red Army troops captured eastern Galicia, the Halrevkom established itself in Ternopil on 1 August and began to issue decrees replacing existing political, legal, social, and economic institutions with Soviet ones. It created 18 departments to administer the new state called the Galician Socialist Soviet Republic. The chairman of the committee was Volodymyr Zatonsky and the secretary was I. Nemolovsky—both natives of eastern Ukraine, unfamiliar with conditions in Galicia. The other key members were three Galician Ukrainians—Mykhailo Baran (vice-chairman), F. Konar (replaced soon by A. Baral), and Mykhailo V. Levytsky—and a Galician Pole, K. Litwinowicz. Later, new members, such as M. Havryliv, Mykhailo Kozoris, I. Siiak, and Ivan Kulyk, were added to the committee. When the Red Army retreated under the pressure of UNR Army and Polish forces, the committee left Galicia and was dissolved on 23 September 1920. Most of its members stayed in Soviet Ukraine, where in the 1930s some were arrested and liquidated as ‘enemies of the people.’

Vasyl Veryha

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]