The extrajudicial execution of the Ukrainian Nazi Demyan Ganul yesterday bears a certain resemblance to the extrajudicial execution of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and mass-murderer, Simon Petlyura, 99 years ago. Demyan Ganul was, among other, one of the people behind the Odessa massacre of May 2, 2014, for which a few days ago, the European Court of Human Rights has found Ukraine to be responsible.
Read on and compare. The article is from “Argumenty i Fakty”, published on October 26, 2014.
A posthumous sentence. How the French legalised Petliura’s murder
A bust of Simon Petlyura in Rovno, Ukraine.
Three shots fired at a Paris shop window
On May 25, 1926, a stranger approached a man who was looking at a street window at the corner of Paris Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Racine. After asking the man a question in Ukrainian and receiving an answer that satisfied him, the stranger took out a revolver and shot the man three times.
The shooter did not try to escape, but remained at the scene until the police arrived. After handing over the weapon to the police, he stated that he had shot a murderer.
The victim of the attack was taken to a nearby hospital on Jacob Street, where the man died fifteen minutes later.
The killer’s name was Samuel Yakovlevich Schwarzburd. His victim was Simon Petlyura, the former head of the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, one of the most well-known figures of the time of the Civil War.
Both the killer and his victim were, as they say, “products of the era”.
Two revolutionaries
Samuel Yakovlevich, aka Shulam-Shmil Schwarzburd, was born in Bessarabia, in Izmail, in 1886. The oppression of Jews in the Russian Empire during the reign of Alexander III and Nicholas II affected him as a child (translator note: here, read the article Myths and Truth about Pogroms in the Russian Empire – the pogroms happened mostly in the Western-most borderlands of the Empire, which are now Poland, Romania, etc.), so it is not surprising that he joined the revolutionaries very early. Samuel was attracted by the ideas of anarchism, and under its black banners he took part in the revolution of 1905, after which he was forced to emigrate from Russia.
Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura was born in Poltava in 1879. At first, Simon did not think about revolution, but wanted to become a priest. However, the son of a charioteer was expelled from the theological seminary, and he became interested in the ideas of socialism with a nationalistic tinge, joining the left-nationalist Revolutionary Ukrainian Party in 1900.
In 1902, the revolutionary moved from the persecution of the authorities to the Kuban, where he studied the archives of the Kuban Cossack Army, publishing several scientific works on its history. Petlyura earned his living by giving private lessons.
Unlike Schwarzburd, after the 1905 revolution, Petlyura, who actively participated in it, remained in Russia, becoming a very prominent and influential figure among Ukrainian social nationalists.
A hero and a supplier
Since 1911, Petlyura lived and worked in Moscow, being the editor of the magazine “Ukrainian Life”. In 1914, this magazine published materials in support of the war, urging Ukrainians to stand firmly on the side of Russia. This will subsequently give rise to some Ukrainian nationalists to accuse Petliura of pro-Russian sentiments.
During the First World War, Petlyura served in the “All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and Cities”, established in 1914 to help the government of the Russian Empire in organising the supply of the army.
The revolutionary Schwarzburd, unlike Petliura, fought on the front line. After wandering around Europe, he settled in Paris, where he opened a watch workshop, and with the outbreak of World War I, he and his brother joined the French Foreign Legion. He spent three years at the front, fought bravely, and earned the Military Cross, the highest award for the legion’s fighters. In 1917, Samuel was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Somme, after which he was demobilised. After learning about the February Revolution in Russia, the war hero hurried to his homeland.
The events of February 1917 also changed the life of Simon Petliura. Understanding that it was a great time to realise his political ideas, he moved to Kiev, took part in the First All-Ukrainian Military Congress, where he became a member of the Presidium of the Socialists.
Caliph for an hour
Petlyura’s oratorical abilities allowed him to gain popularity among the soldiers. His weight in Ukrainian politics grew rapidly. He becomes chairman of the Ukrainian General Military Committee, which was responsible for the formation of the national army.
When, in the summer of 1917, the Central Rada of Ukraine announced the creation of a supreme executive body, the General Secretariat, Petlyura assumed the post of Secretary General for Military Affairs.
After the proclamation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, UPR (translator note: a proxy-state of Germany, see our Telegram post The repeat of Ukrainian-German incursion into Kursk), chaos reigned on the territory of Ukraine, in which those who had more armed groups took over. Petlyura, the Secretary General of military Affairs of the UPR, fought with the Reds, then opposed Hetman Skoropadsky, and after the restoration of the UPR in December 1918, he became the second person in its state hierarchy after Vladimir Vinnichenko.
In February 1919, Simon Petliura reached the peak of his political career — he became Chairman of the UPR Directory, concentrating both military and civil power in Ukraine in his hands.
In this position, he reorganises the army from disparate detachments, trying to create a force capable of resisting the Red Army. Petlyura tried to negotiate with the Entente on joint actions against the Bolsheviks in exchange for the establishment of a protectorate over Ukraine.
Having failed in this, Petlyura tried to negotiate with Poland, although it was a desperate step for a Ukrainian nationalist, since the Poles intended to take control of vast Ukrainian territories. Petlyura actually recognised Galicia and Volhynia as part of Poland, but even this did not help — the defeat of the Polish-Petlyura troops by the Red Army put an end to both the history of the UPR and Petlyura’s political career. Petlyura emigrated to Poland, and when the Soviet authorities demanded his extradition, he moved on, reaching France in 1924.
Red Army soldier, watchmaker, poet
Unlike Petlyura, Samuel Schwarzburd did not succeed in revolutionary Russia. At first, he led a peaceful life as a watchmaker, but the Civil War dragged him out, and in 1919 he joined the Red Army and fought in the Kotovsky brigade in Ukraine against various opponents, including the Petlyurists.
However, in 1920, Schwarzburd became disillusioned with the Bolsheviks and went back to Paris, where he reopened a watch workshop.
In his new emigration, his literary talent was fully revealed. He published a book of poetry, became involved in journalism, and communicated a lot with anarchists in exile, including Nestor Mahno.
But what made Schwarzburd take up arms in 1926? Yes, two experienced revolutionaries turned out to be opponents during the Russian Civil War, but there were more than enough of those in Paris in the 1920s, but not everyone was eager to settle scores.
The question of Schwarzburd’s motive was central to his trial, which began in Paris in the fall of 1927.
The Petliurists’ trace in the Soviet classics
Schwarzburd, who called Petlyura a “murderer,” did not hide it — he was taking revenge for relatives and tribesmen.
During the Jewish pogroms in Ukraine in 1918-1920, 15 members of the Schwarzburd family were killed. And they died at the hands of the Petlyurists.
The anti—Semitism of the members of Petlyura’s military formations was so savage that disgust at their actions united almost all other participants in the civil conflict – both Whites, Reds, and Mahnovists…
It is not known exactly how many Jews were exterminated by Petlyura. According to the most conservative estimates, about 50,000 people became victims of the Jewish pogroms in Ukraine in 1918-1920, and about 300,000 children were orphaned.
The abominations committed by the Petlyurists left a mark even in such a Soviet novel as The Golden Calf, written by Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov in 1931. Ostap Bender, posing as a journalist, told a new story of the Wandering (Eternal) Jew on a train in response to a metaphorical story about “Komsomol members Adam and Eve” by a foreign reporter:
“Exactly in 1919, a Eternal Jew in his knight’s trousers illegally crossed the Romanian border. Needless to say, he had eight pairs of silk stockings and a bottle of Parisian perfume on his stomach, which a Kishinev (Chisinau) lady asked to give to her Kiev relatives. In those turbulent times, carrying contraband on your stomach was called “wearing a poultice”. The old man was vividly trained in this business in Chisinau. When the Wandering Jew, having completed his assignment, stood on the bank of the Dnieper River, hanging an unkempt green beard, a man with yellow-blue stripes and Petlyura shoulder straps approached him and sternly asked:
— A Jew?
— A Jew, — the old man replied.
— Well, let’s go, – the man with the lamps invited. And he led him to the local chieftain.
— We’ve caught a Jew, – he reported, nudging the old man with his knee.
— A Jew? — the chieftain asked with amused surprise.
— A Jew, — the wanderer replied.
— So put him against the wall, — The chieftain said kindly.
— But I’m Eternal! — The old man shouted. He had been waiting impatiently for death for two thousand years, and now he suddenly really wanted to live.
— Shut up, you Jewish mug! — The forelocky chieftain shouted joyfully. — Cut him down, good lads!
And the eternal wanderer was gone.
— That’s all, — concluded Ostap.
— I think that you, Mr. Heinrich, as a former lieutenant in the Austrian army, are aware of the habits of your Petlyura friends?”
Was Petlyura an anti-Semite?
The ironic story put into Bender’s mouth by the writers was based on the memory of terrible and disgusting events.
And the evidence of Petlyura’s crimes against the Jewish population of Ukraine at the trial of Schwarburd was presented and sounded in the testimony of witnesses.
Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Maxim Gorky, and physicist Albert Einstein came to Schwarzburd’s defence. For France, which remembered the “Dreyfus affair” well, the topic of anti-Semitism was extremely painful.
Petlyura’s accusers and supporters were unable to refute the Jewish pogroms, so they did their best to prove that yes, Jews were being killed, but the politician himself did not give such orders, but, on the contrary, fought against it as best he could.
The murdered man’s associates presented at the trial about 200 documents testifying to how desperately Petlyura fought against anti-Semites, including even death sentences for rioters. But Schwarzburd’s defence managed to prove that the submitted documents were fake, and the allegedly executed rioters often turned out to be alive and unharmed.
There is still a debate about whether Petlyura himself was an anti-Semite or not. But the most sober position was formulated at the 1927 trial by Henri Torres, Schwarzburd’s defender — as the head of the UPR, Petlyura bears full responsibility for what happened in the territories under his control and for the actions of the formations subordinate to him. Calling a spade a spade, Simon Petlyura exchanged ignoring the Jewish pogroms for loyalty to himself from, as they would now be called, field commanders.
Fully justified
The trial of Samuel Schwarzburd lasted only eight days and ended with a sensational acquittal by the jury. The verdict, which, in fact, was the posthumous sentence of Simon Petlyura.
Of course, there was also a conspiracy theory about the OGPU’s involvement in Petlyura’s murder. Allegedly, Kremlin agents recruited Schwarzburd and instructed him to kill Petlyura in order to get rid of a dangerous opponent.
Indeed, Soviet intelligence agents were actively working against the leading figures of the emigration. It’s just that by 1926, Simon Petlyura, who had lost his influence, posed no danger to the USSR. He was not popular even among Ukrainian nationalists, and Schwarzburd, who killed him, rendered Petlyura a posthumous service, turning him into a “martyr for Ukrainian freedom” in their eyes.
Another interesting fact is that Nestor Mahno himself took part in the trial of Schwarzburd. The anarchist said that Schwarzburd told him about his plans, and Mahno allegedly tried to dissuade the killer, since he did not consider Petlyura an anti-Semite. However, Mahno’s testimony had no effect on the verdict.
Two heroes
After his release, Samuel Schwarzburd lived in Paris, studied literature, and wrote plays. In 1938, while collecting materials for the Jewish Encyclopedia in Cape Town, he died of a heart attack.
In 1967, his ashes were transported to Israel and reburied in the Kfar Avihayil moshav north of Netanya. In Israel, several streets are named after Samuel Schwarzburd, including Hanokem Street (Avenger Street) in the city of Beersheba.
Several streets in Ukraine, including in Kiev, are named after Simon Petlyura. Monuments to Petlyura have been erected in Poltava and Rovno. In May 2009, the National Bank of Ukraine put into circulation a commemorative coin with a face value of 2 hryvnia “Simon Petlyura”.
Every nation has its own heroes who speak about it better than any words…