Одеська Українська Міська Рада У Суспільних Трансформаціях Епохи Революцій (1918-1919 рр.)
The Odesa Ukrainian City Council in Social Transformations of the Revolutional Period (1918-1919)

Summary/Abstract: It is the first article covering such events as creation and activity of the Odesa Ukrainian City Council (OUMR) which was the representative of the Ukrainian community in Odesa during 1918-1919 with mostly narrative sources used. The author proposes to consider the history of the organization studied in a context of evolution of social and political processes related to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Quadruple Alliance and related to the further change of power in Ukraine caused by the coup d’état on April 29th, 1918. The Odesa Ukrainian City Council has not ever been studied throughout the whole period of historical science development, but relevant sources give an opportunity to reconstruct a significant part of episodes of this institution’s activity. The main source base used is the local periodical press including series of newspapers in Ukrainian and Russian. Their front pages contain material that has helped to partially reconstruct the circumstances in which the OUMR was formed, the functional responsibilities of its commissioners, its staffing, including the leaders’ names, the evolution from administrative structure to the national and cultural one, the statutory documents and the relations with state and public institutions. The heuristic work in the archives has been of no expected effect, although this does not preclude the possibility of the relevant documents being found in the future. The present article analyses the role of the OUMR in the regional management system after the Ukrainian People’s Republic restoring the control over the southern region, when the Council’s functions were rather amorphous. However, the system of commissioners, created by it, existed in general terms in the structure of the Principal Regional Commissariat of the Kherson, Taurida and Katerynoslav Governorates. The article is discussing the OUMR transformation from the administrative organization into the national and cultural one, which mostly dealt with the issues of education, awareness raising, publishing, library services and religion. It has been proven that the Council paid considerable attention to the training of professional teaching staff; for this they arranged the courses of Ukrainian Studies for teachers of elementary and secondary schools in collaboration with the Ukrainian Teachers Association in summer 1918. One of their activity vectors was related to the attempt of founding the Chair of Ukrainian Studies in the Novorossiya (Odesa) University. The article has revealed that the will to spread Ukrainian language in public sphere and in educational institutions influenced highly the priorities of the OUMR. The close attention was paid to the restoration of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: the members of the OUMR aimed for impact on the variety of aspects of religious sphere, including ones of liturgical nature. The author asserts that the activity of the OUMR was not limited by cultural projects. The members of this organization took into consideration the issues of charity, the cooperation movement support and the financial assistance to the WUPR; they negotiated funding of the Ukrainian community vital functions with the city municipalities and with the government of the Hetman P. Skoropadskyi. The article reconstructs the staff capacity of the Council; the last names of its leaders and its relations with the state structures are revealed. It is found that Y. Pshonnyk, L. Kovalchuk and P. Klymovych led the Council. E. Temnytskyi, A. Mykolyuk, A. Klochko, I. Lutsenko, V. Borovyk, A. Stryzhevskyi, M. Slabchenko, M. Hordievskyi, A. Roschahivskyi, K. Sirenko and others should be named among the active members of the OUMR. The circumstances of the OUMR liquidation are beyond the source base for now, including the top chronological border. The author states the fact that the circumstances of the OUMR end have not been established yet, so the top chronological border has been proposed conditionally to some extent. It relates to the last known mention of the OUMR in the narrative sources, dated June 1919. All the said stimulates to continue the search of new sources which could reveal the facts that would be able to form a more extensive image of the structure studied.

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