Zemstvo self-government under Ukrainian State of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky (April–December 1918)

Abstract

The article analyzes activity of zemstvo self-government under the Ukrainian State of Hetman P. Skoropadsky. In the spring of 1918, zemstvos were in the state of financial, organizational and economic decline. Based on the zemstvo administration audit results, the government of Hetman P. Skoropadsky came to the conclusion that there was a need for radical reform of zemstvo self-government in order to steer it out from the systemic crisis. However, in the course of the reform, the government of the Hetman abolished such democratic principles of local self-government as electivity, autonomy and equality of state authorities and local self-government. The government of P.P. Skoropadsky resumed the main antidemocratic principles of the zemstvo electoral system implied by the Provision on Provincial and District Zemstvo Institutions of 1890. According to the Law “On Re-election of Provincial and County Zemstvo Councillors” of 1918, zemstvo elections were neither universal, not equal; they were based on division of voters into curias according to property qualifications. The policy of the government of P.P. Skoropadsky deepened the general crisis of zemstvo self-government.

Antidemocratic government transformations caused an active opposition to zemstvo self-government. However, activities of zemstvo leaders, aimed at forcing the Hetman to abandon elimination of democratic principles of local self-government and political persecution, did not succeed. The resistance of zemstvos to antidemocratic government reform proves the democratic nature of local self-government, its negative attitude to attempts to centralize power