Tabouis, Georges

Tabouis, Georges, b 17 January 1867 in Paris, d 7 November 1958 in Bayeux, Calvados department, France. French general. In February 1917 he was assigned to the Russian general staff at the southwestern front (headed by Gen A. Brusilov) in Kamianets-Podilskyi. In December 1917 he moved to Kyiv to work as a liaison officer for Gen Henri Mathias Berthelot, the head of the French mission in Romania. On 19 December France initiated diplomatic ties with the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), and on 28 December Tabouis became commissioner of the French Republic to the UNR government. On 3 January 1918 France officially recognized the UNR, and the next day Tabouis had an audience with the head of the General Secretariat of the Central Rada, Volodymyr Vynnychenko. He remained in Ukraine until 23 February 1918. His memoirs, ‘Comment je devins Commissaire de la République Française en Ukraine,’ were published in the Pratsi of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Warsaw (vol 8 [1932]).

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