Vasyl' Shakhrai

Vasyl Shakhrai Василь Матвійович Шахрай
People's Secretary of Military Affairs
In office December 24, 1917 – January 12, 1918
Prime Minister	Yevgenia Bosch
Preceded by	position created
Succeeded by	Yuriy Kotsiubynsky
Personal details
Born	(1888-02-11)February 11, 1888 near Pyriatyn, Poltava Governorate
Died	1919 (aged 30–31) ?Kuban, Russian Republic
Citizenship	Russia, Soviet
Nationality	Ukrainian
Political party	RSDLP(b) (1913)

Vasyl' Shakhrai (February 11, 1888 – 1919) was a Ukrainian political activist and Soviet revolutionary during the Russian Revolution. He was noted as an advocate of National Communism and did not support the October Revolution.

Biography

Shakhrai joined the Bolsheviks after completing his training at the Military Academy in Poltava in 1917, while some sources claim that he was already Bolshevik since 1913. He was one of the few Ukrainians amongst the Poltava Bolsheviks. At the time the Bolsheviks were in a unified organisation with the local Mensheviks, but Shakhrai supported Serhii Mazlakh, a Jewish Poltava Bolshevik who successfully ousted the Mensheviks by August 1917.

Shakhrai and Mazlakh were then elected editors of the weekly newspaper. By this time Shakhrai was advocating Ukrainian nationalism. Although this caused concern amongst the predominantly Jewish local Mensheviks, he gained support amongst the local Bolsheviks, who felt that it helped gain support amongst the largely anti-Russian Ukrainians of the region. Shakhrai was elected as a delegate to both the First All-Ukrainian Consultative Conference of the CP(b)U and the First All Ukrainian Congress of Soviets. He was also appointed the People's Commissar for Military Affairs in the Soviet Ukrainian government. In this capacity he accompanied Trotsky to Brest Litovsk for the treaty negotiations there in March 1918.

He was concerned about the suppression of Ukrainian cultural organizations by Russian Bolshevik troops who were sent to Ukraine in January and February 1918. Lenin consented to the dismemberment of Ukraine through the founding of Donets-Kryvyi Rog as a ruse to place it outside the terms of the Brest Litovsk Treaty. Although this stratagem failed, it further raised concerns for Shakrai as regards to how the Bolsheviks were treating Ukraine. This concern was increased when Lenin gave a speech in November 1918, which called upon party functionaries to consider themselves Russian patriots. By December 1918 his alienation form the Bolsheviks was more or less complete.

His pamphlet The Revolution in Ukraine was published in November 1918, followed by On the Current Situation in Ukraine in January 1919. It led to Shakhrai expulsion from the CP(b)U in June 1919.

Shakhrai then went to Saratov, then occupied by Anton Denikin's White Volunteer Army. Here he worked on a number of underground newspapers, before being arrested and shot by Denikin's administration in autumn 1919.

References

• On The Current Situation in the Ukraine, by Vasyl' Shakhrai and Serhii Mazlakh, edited by P. Potichnyj, University of Michigan Press, 1970