In this important book, influential historian Mark Bojcun explores the social democratic workers' movement in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire and its impact on the course of the 1917 Revolution. By focusing on the sections of the labour movement built by the Ukrainian, Jewish and Russian parties, Bojcun sheds new light on the way they each confronted national inequality, antisemitic pogroms, and other forms of oppression. The study traces these struggles, and the political solutions to them proposed by revolutionaries, from the inception of the workers' movement through to the First World War, the outbreak of the revolution in 1917, formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the country's descent into civil war and foreign interventions in 1918.
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“This rare combination of active participation in the workers’ movement, and scholarly research, has produced a truly groundbreaking work.”
—Simon Pirani, People and Nature -
“This is a tour de force – the culmination of an intellectual life devoted to the study of the history and political economy of Ukraine.”
—Michael Newman, Critique -
“[A] fascinating account of a lesser-known movement for leftists today, telling the fraught story of the Ukrainian working class movement, its political parties and organisations, and how they faced up to the national question amid the revolutionary tumult of the year 1917.”
—Paul Inglis, Republican Socialists