V. I. Lenin

Manifesto To The Ukrainian People

With An Ultimatum To The Ukrainian Rada [1]

Proceeding from the interests of the unity and fraternal
alliance of factory workers and the working and exploited masses
in the struggle for socialism, and also from the recognition of
these principles by numerous decisions of the organs of
revolutionary democracy, the Soviets, and especially the Second
All-Russia Congress of Soviets, the Council of People’s
Commissars—the Socialist government of
Russia—reaffirms that the right to self-determination belongs to all nations oppressed by tsarism and the Great
Russian bourgeoisie, up to and including the right of these
nations to secede from Russia.

Accordingly we, the Council of People’s Commissars, recognise the People’s Ukrainian Republic, and its right to
secede from Russia or enter into a treaty with the Russian
Republic on federal or similar relations between them.

We, the Council of People’s Commissars, recognise at once,
unconditionally and without reservations everything that
pertains to the Ukrainian people’s national rights and national independence.

We have not taken a single step, in the sense of restricting the
Finnish people’s national rights or national independence,
against the bourgeois Finnish Republic, which still remains
bourgeois, nor shall we take any steps restricting the national
independence of any nation which had been—or desires to
be—a part of the Russian Republic.

We accuse the Rada of conducting, behind a screen of national
phrases, a double-dealing bourgeois policy, which has long been
expressed in the Bada’s non-recognition of the Soviets and
of Soviet power in the Ukraine (incidentally, the Rada has
refused to convoke a territorial congress of the Ukrainian
Soviets immediately, as the Soviets of the Ukraine had demanded). This ambiguous policy, which has made it impossible
for us to recognise the Rada as a plenipotentiary representative
of the working and exploited masses of the Ukrainian Republic,
has lately led the Rada to steps which preclude all possibility
of agreement.

These, firstly, were steps to disorganise the front.

The Rada has issued unilateral orders moving Ukrainian units and withdrawing them from the front, thereby breaking up
the common united front before any demarcation, which can be carried out only through a formal agreement between the
governments of the two republics.

Secondly, the Rada has started to disarm the Soviet troops
stationed in the Ukraine.

Thirdly, the Rada has been extending support to the
Cadet-Kaledin plot and revolt against Soviet power. On the
patently false plea of “the Don and the Kuban” having autonomous rights, a plea that serves to cover up Kaledin’s
counter-revolutionary moves, which clash with the interests and
demands of the vast majority of the working Cossacks, the Rada
has allowed its territory to be crossed by troops on their way
to Kaledin, but has refused transit to any anti-Kaledin troops.

Even if the Rada had received full formal recognition as the
uncontested organ of supreme state power of an independent
bourgeois Ukrainian republic, we would have been forced to
declare war on it without any hesitation, because of its
attitude of unexampled betrayal of the revolution and support of
the Cadets and the Kaledinites—the bitterest enemies of the
national independence of the peoples of Russia, the enemies of
Soviet power and of the working and exploited masses.

At the present time, in view of the circumstances set forth
above, the Council of People’s Commissars, with the full
cognisance of the peoples of the Ukrainian and Russian
Republics, asks the Rada’ [2] to answer the following questions:

1. Will the Rada undertake to give up its attempts to
disorganise the common front?

2.	Will the Rada undertake to refuse transit to any army
units on their way to the Don, the Urals or elsewhere, unless it
has the sanction of the Commander-in-Chief?

3.	Will the Rada undertake to assist the revolutionary
troops in their struggle against the counter-revolutionary
Cadet-Kaledin revolt?

4.	Will the Rada undertake to stop attempts to disarm the
Soviet regiments and the workers’ Red Guard in the Ukraine
and immediately return arms to those who had been deprived of
them?

In the event no satisfactory answer is received to these
questions within 48 hours, the Council of People’s
Commissars will deem the Rada to be in a state of open war with
Soviet power in Russia and the Ukraine.

---
Notes:
[1]
The Ukranian Central Rada was a counter-revolutionary bourgeois-nationalist organisation set up at the All-Ukraine
National Congress in Kiev in April 1917 by a bloc of Ukrainian
bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist parties arid groups. The ideologist of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie,
M. S. Grushovksy. was its chairman, and V. K. Vinnichenko, his
deputy. The Rada had a social base of urban and rural bourgeoisie, and petty-bourgeois nationalist-minded
intellectuals. It tried to build up the power of the Ukrainian
business class and landowners and set up a Ukrainian capitalist
state with the aid of the national liberation movement in the
Ukraine. It waved the banner of national independence in an
effort to lead the Ukrainian masses away from the all-Russia
revolutionary movement, subordinate them to the Ukrainian
bourgeoisie and prevent the socialist revolution from winning
out in the Ukraine. It supported the Provisional Government in
spite of contradictionis over the issue of Ukrainian autonomy.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Rada proclaimed itself the supreme organ of the. I. Ikrainian
People’s Republic and launched an open struggle against
Soviet power. It was one of tbe centres of the counter-revolution.

The First All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets, held in Kharkov in
December 4917, proclaimed the l~kraine a Soviet republic. The
Congress declared the Central Rada overthrown. The Council of
People’s Commissars of the R.S.F.S.R. recognised the
Ukrainian Soviet Government as the sole legitimate government of
the Ukraine and decided to give it immediate help in fighting
tire counter-revolutionary Rada. Armed uprisings against the
Central Rada for the re-establishment of Soviet power took place
all over the country in December 1917 and January 4918. In
January 1918, Soviet troops in the Ukraine launched an offensive
and on January 26 (February 8) occupied Kiev. The Rada was
overthrown.

Defeated and ousted from the territory of the Soviet Ukraine,
deprived of any support among the working people, the Central
Rada joined the German imperialists in an alliance to overthrow
Soviet power and restore the rule of the bourgeoisie in the
Ukraine. It sent a delegation to Brest-Litovsk and secretly
concluded a separate peace giving Germany the Ukraine’s
corn, coal, raw materials in return for military aid in the
fight against Soviet power. In March 1918, the Rada returned to
Kiev as the puppet of the Austro-German armies who dispersed it
in late April when they realised that it was absolutely
incapable of suppressing the revolutionary movement in the
Ukraine and delivering the goods.

[2] The
rest of the text was written by L. D. Trotsky and edited by
Lenin and Stalin.