Simon Petlura, whlo was murdered in Paris yesterday afternoon, was a man of modest origin who becamo identified at first vaguely, and in the end definitely and aggressively, witlh a speculative cause. In bis later years he was one of the most prominent representatives of Ukramian nationalism in the general confusion of Russia. In the year of his birth, 1879, the Ukrainian movement in Russia was hardly perceptible. T'he peasants around Poltava, his birthplace, spoke a dialect sharply distinguished from tliat of Northern Russia, but nearer to the Russian literary language than is Provenqal to the French of Paris. T'he writer wulo brought fame to Poltava ald thle neighbouring region was Ciogol, who wvrote his novels and stories in Russian. One South Russian poet of distinction, Shev- chenko, had written in the present tongue, Little Russian, or, as it is now called, Ukrainian. Petlura grew up in a distinctively Russlau atmosphere, but he was attracted by the dim memories of a separate South Russian tradition preserved in the local dialect and reinforced by new aspirations stimulated from Galicia. Ho was educated in a theological seminary in w-hich a ferment of conflsed revolutionar y ideas obscured the priestly vocation. By the time he had come to maturity, mn t.he early nineties, Russia was in the throes of the first revolution, and Petlura became at once a Socialist and a Ukrainian nationalist. For a short time he was editor in 1906 of a Ukrainian Social D)emocratic paper called the Slvro, and contributed to thie Rada, which during the period of the first Duma was the organ of the Ukrainian Nationallsts. With his turbulent youthful enthusiasms, he .was typical of the awakiening provincial iattelligentse'a in Russia. lnevitably he had some experience of the police, as a semi-revolu- tionary. By 1911, when things were quieter, he had become editor in Moscow of a review in Russian called Urjainuskaji Zhizn (The Life of the Ukraine), devoted to a very moderate and cautious propaganda of the idea of language rights for the Ukrainian peasantry. During the war Petlura found employment in the All-Russian Zemstvo organization, which supplemented the work of the Red Cross. When the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, he found greater scope for his restless energy. The Arny was breaking up under the influence of German and Bolshevist propaganda. Russia, too, began to break up. Kerensky, as War Minister, accepted the idea that the various nationalities of Russia should form regiments of their own at the front. Petlura took the lead in forming Ukrainian regiments. When the Bolshevists seized power in Petrograd and Moscow in November an independent Ukrainian Government was proclaimed at Kieff, with Knitchenko as Prime Minister and Petlura as Minister of War. The Allies assumed that the Ukrainian Army under Petlura might hold the front for a little while. The BoLshevists declared war on the 'Ukraine in December, 1917. The Ukrainian Army broke up. Kieff was taken, and the Ukrainians were represented at the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Petlura made three more unisuccessful attempts to secure ascendancy in the Ukraine ; the first after the retirement of the Germans at the end of 1918 ; the second, in 1919, while the Russian Volunteer Army under Denikin was advancing against the Bolshevists; and the third in connexion with the Polish offensive against Moscow. Ile never quite succeeded. Uis miscellaneous troops were ill- disciplined, and he himself, though an ardent Ukrainian nationalist, was certainly not a professional soldier, while as a political leader he showed mediocre capacity. After the final triumph of the Bolshevists in Kieff he retired from Poland to Czecho- slovakia, and of late years has resided in Paris, where he tried to keep alive, through the publication of a Ukrainian weekly, Tryzub, or "The Trident," the idea of a democratic Ukraine opposed to Bolshevism. PETLURA. 'APOSTLE OF UKRAINIAN I NATIONALISM
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
