Ukrainian Radical party (Kyiv)

Ukrainian Radical party (Kyiv) (Ukrainska radykalna partiia, or URP). A numerically small clandestine organization formed in Kyiv in the spring of 1905 by a younger left-liberal group that had quit the Ukrainian Democratic party (UDP). Most of its members were writers (eg, Borys Hrinchenko, Modest Levytsky, Fedir Matushevsky, Serhii Yefremov). The URP concentrated on publishing antitsarist and socialist propaganda, and in 1905 it issued its platform and 15 other brochures by authors such as Borys and Maria Hrinchenko, Matushevsky, Yefremov, Mykhailo Drahomanov, A. Munko, and Volodymyr Durdukivsky, which were printed in Austrian-ruled Lviv and smuggled into Russian-ruled Ukraine. In its literature the URP advocated Ukrainian autonomy (and independence as a maximum goal), democratic rights, the abolition of private land ownership, the nationalization of industries, and the creation of industrial and agricultural co-operatives. Because it failed to recruit new members, the URP merged with the UDP in December 1905 to form the Ukrainian Democratic Radical party.

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