Zinaida Mirna, Women in Central Council of Ukraine, 1928

Zinaida Mirna

Women in the Ukrainian Central Council

I am not sure about other women who were members of the first Ukrainian Parliament of the Central Council in Kyiv like me, but my stay in this high institution made a colossal impression on me. To witness the revival of my homeland, a revival whose proximity only romantic minds dreamed of, to see with my own eyes how a great nation, lulled into sleep for centuries, was awakening, how the national idea, so far close and understandable only to small circles of mostly intellectuals, was permeating the masses, to see how a new life was being created and to enter the highest body that governed this life, the Central Council was an unattainable dream for me. And all of this came true with such speed, in such delight, in such a violent impulse that it was impossible to come to my senses, to think about reality, just to stop and think about it.

Since the formation of the Central Council in March 1917 and until its dissolution in April 1918, there were 11 women in the Parliament. These are the surnames (in alphabetical order) of those I can recall: Mariia Hrushevska, Olha Hrushevska, Liubynska, Z. Mirna, Nechaivska, V. O’Connor, Vilinska, S. Rusova, and L. Staritska-Cherniakhivska. I do not recall the rest of the names, they were mostly unknown women from the province who joined the Council one by one and came only to general meetings.

It is impossible to separate the work of women in the Central Council from other workers, and there is no need to do so. But I consider it necessary and expedient to say something about what women did in the Central Council, and whether they did anything at all, because if women generally demand rights equal to men, then they should not shirk their work on an equal footing with men. Women also worked in the Central Rada, and although their work may have been different, it was needed there, and they performed it conscientiously and expediently.

As an example of such work, I would like to point out here the participation in the organizational work of the Central Council that I and several other women close to me had to take, without addressing the work of women in the Council in general, as members of the Council who participated in its meetings, in its commissions, in discussions and solutions to all those complex and important issues that life had set up for the first Ukrainian Parliament.

In the very first days of the revolution, in early March 1917, the forces of the Ukrainian liberation movement, which during the dark times of the tsarist regime in Ukraine concentrated this movement in themselves, led it; members of the secret Society of Ukrainian Progressives, the so-called TUP (Tovarystvo ukrainskykh postupovtsiv), founded the Ukrainian Central Council in Kyiv, which was to become the center of Ukrainian life, which would take on the task of the political revival of the Ukrainian people. Although the Central Council was supposed to become the all-Ukrainian center of the liberation movement, it initially consisted only of members of local Kyiv public, political, cultural, and educational institutions and organizations, and those all-Ukrainian organizations located in Kyiv: cooperatives, political parties, students, clergy, teachers, the army, etc. These delegates joined the Central Council step by step, day by day, replenishing the small cell of several people with Professor M. Hrushevskyi at the head, which was formed at the founding of the Central Council.

One day in the second half of March 1917, I was also delegated to the Council as a representative of one of the Ukrainian public organizations in Kyiv. The first meeting of the Central Council, which I attended, took place in one of the smaller rooms of the huge building of the Pedagogical Museum on Volodymyrska Street, which was built as if specially for the early Ukrainian parliament and later, with the transfer of full power of the state legislature to the Council, was completely at its disposal.

From the day I joined the Central Council, I began to attend all its meetings, which took place almost every day, and sometimes twice a day. Representatives from various organizations not only in Ukraine but also in other Russian lands where Ukrainians lived and were united, from the Caucasus, Siberia, Moscow, and even America, began to join the Council as members. The popularity of the Council grew day by day, both among the intelligentsia and especially among the peasant and soldier masses, who, considering the Council to be a defender of their interests, sent numerous delegations to it from all over Ukraine on a wide variety of matters.

At this time, since the beginning of the revolution, good relations between Ukrainians and Russians had prevailed in Kyiv. The cause of liberation was considered a common one, and Russians did not yet think or imagine the inevitable logical development of the Ukrainian cause. At the All-Ukrainian Congress and at the first congresses, of which there were many in Kyiv at the time, Russians spoke with greetings, emphasizing the commonality of the front with all the enslaved peoples of Russia in the liberation struggle. But when these congresses began to pass resolutions with a distinct national and political character, expressing the belief that only “a democratic federalist republic in Russia with national and territorial autonomy of Ukraine will ensure the rights of the Ukrainian people,” the attitude of the Russians towards the Ukrainian movement began to change, and it was clear that the Ukrainian movement would be met with strong opposition from the Russians.

This change in attitude became particularly noticeable after the Ukrainian demonstration, which took place in a grand and solemn manner on 19 March of this year. This demonstration was one of the first external manifestations of the Central Council’s efforts to show its strength and demonstrate the national aspirations of the Ukrainian people. The manifestation was held in the best possible way and, as even the Russian local press wrote, was attended by at least 100,000 people. That day was beautiful, it was a spring day, which can only be in Ukraine, a wonderful day, with a deep blue sky, golden sunshine, with a quiet, transparent, gentle air. I was in an elevated mood, still believing in the bloodlessness of the revolution, in the brotherhood of the liberated peoples, in the sincerity of the liberation struggle.

But on the same day, in the evening, words of indignation were already heard in Kyiv, even in democratic Russian circles, against the Ukrainians’ breaking up of the same liberation front, against the absurdity of their national claims. I remember that on the second day after the demonstration, a meeting of the Women’s Public Assembly was held, where we, Ukrainian women, worked to carry out our national idea in an atmosphere that was entirely friendly to us. But from that day on, a divide of serious misunderstandings rose between us and the Russians, and most importantly, the Jewish Russians, and discussions over them only led to even greater differences. These differences ended with the withdrawal of us Ukrainians, who were in the society in small numbers (L. Yanovska, S. Rusova, L. Staritska-Cherniakhivska, M. Kostetska, Z. Mirna) from the membership of Society.

After the Ukrainian manifestation, the Central Council organized a congress of Ukrainian Progressives on 25-26 March, the broadest and, at the time, strongest Ukrainian national organization, which I have already mentioned when I spoke about the establishment of the Central Council. The congress was attended not only by representatives of all departments of the Society from large and small cities of Ukraine but also from the same departments in Moscow and Petrograd. The resolutions of this congress included demands for Ukraine’s autonomy. But the significance of the congress was very great: it was the first step in the development of all-Ukrainian citizenship and a preparatory step for the second most important Ukrainian congress, the All-Ukrainian National Congress.

The purpose of the Central Council was to convene a Congress of actual, locally elected representatives of the Ukrainian people who would elect a new Central Council, a true representative of the Ukrainian nation. (Representatives of Ukraine’s national minorities—Russians, Jews, and Poles—later joined the Central Council in the amount of 25% of the total number of members of the Central Council.)

The All-Ukrainian National Congress, which was scheduled for 4-8 April, was to bring together the de facto representatives of the entire Ukrainian nation and, above all, peasants, soldiers, and workers who had been selected from the volosts (gminas). The Central Rada faced the task of accommodating all these people, who were traveling as delegates from the poorer strata of the population to Kyiv, for several days of the Congress. I was entrusted with this task. I was simply told: “More than 1,000 Delegates, mostly peasants, will arrive in Kyiv, and they will not go to hotels, so they must be accommodated in free accommodation. This matter is entrusted to you so that at each meeting of the Council you will provide information on how the organization of the matter entrusted to you is progressing.” This was, I think, on the third day of my joining the Central Council. I left that Council meeting very preoccupied. I had these 1,000 delegates in front of me, and I had to place them somewhere, find beds for them, and generally organize the case.

As in my previous social activities, I turned for help to the young people who worked at the Central Council, and together we began to look for accommodation. We were lucky enough to place the largest number of people in the Treasury Chamber, which at that time had just built a new, magnificent building on Sinna Square (Lvivska Square now), with large, bright corridors. Thanks to the help of Mr. Ivan Mirnyi, then the head of the department of this chamber, and a member of the Central Council, we had a part of these beautiful rooms at our disposal, where we put beds, and thus one room was ready to receive several hundred Delegates. We were lucky enough to get similar, though not as nice, accommodations at various schools, and even the gymnasium of Mrs. Zhekulina (at that time the Ukrainian cause was already being listened to attentively) gave us part of its premises. On the eve of the Congress, we wrote admission cards for delegates, which were distributed to delegates arriving in Kyiv right there in Central Council’s apartment in the Museum. At the Kyiv railway station and at the steamship docks, we posted guards, also mostly Ukrainian youth, who met the delegates and escorted them to the accommodations prepared for them. The congress was held in the large sala of the Merchants’ Assembly. We set up our office in front of the sala and did not allow any Delegate to enter the sala without checking his credentials and issuing him an entry card. The guests of the Congress were assigned separate seats in the aisles, and we let them in, also writing their names on a separate sheet.

More than 1,500 people gathered at the Congress, and yet there was no greedy disorder, no greedy excesses. But it was not only the external organization that was noticeable at the Congress; the internal organization of such a mass of people was carried, one might say, brilliantly, mainly thanks to the chairman of the Congress, M. Hrushevsky. Before the Congress began, the huge sala of the Merchants’ Assembly was filled to the brim with the delegates of the Ukrainian people—intellectuals, military, peasants, sailors, workers—a spontaneous impulse of the Ukrainian people to implement their revival. But it was still an internally unorganized mass that needed to be given a voice and the quintessence of the people to form a new authoritative, properly elected parliament out of these true people’s representatives. And here, the skillful guiding hand of the President of the Congress, M. Hrushevskyi, showed his special skill. After an exchange of views, all the delegates from volosts (gminas), zemstvos, Prosvita, the peasant union, etc. were divided into provinces. Each province gathered in a separate sector of the sala. The remaining delegates from the all-Ukrainian organizations, as well as from the city of Kyiv, moved to an adjacent smaller sala. After the meeting, each group elected the appropriate number of members to the Central Council. Thus, the new Central Council, elected from the true representatives of the Ukrainian people, was already in full force at the end of the Congress and held its first meeting that evening. At this first meeting of the new Central Council, the so-called Small Council, the Executive Committee of the Central Council, was elected, consisting of, it seems, 30 people. The Small Council also included women: L. Staritska-Cherniakhivska and Z. Mirna.

Although all the members of the Central Council worked for free (only those who lived in the provinces received a small per diem during the Council’s sessions), the Central Council needed money to carry out its activities. Organizing congresses, propaganda among the people, maintaining the Council’s office – all this required money, and the Council did not have greedy state funds at first. Therefore, at the very beginning of the Central Council’s existence, it was decided to organize a day of the National Fund, which, in addition to promoting the Ukrainian cause in general, would make it possible, in the form of organizing various fundraisers, to impose a voluntary tax on Ukrainian citizenship to pay for the first steps of its national and political life; it was proposed to collect one day’s earnings. This task of organizing the National Fund Day was entrusted to Volodymyr Koval, now deceased, who worked in the Central Council from the very first hours of its foundation and served as the Central Council’s treasurer. But because of his overwork in cooperative institutions, V. Koval refused to organize the National Fund Day, and then the Central Council entrusted me with this task. It was in mid-April, and the National Fund Day was already fixed for 23 May, so it was impossible to change it. Thus, it was necessary to carry out the colossal work of organizing the collection of money among the entire Ukrainian people not only in Ukraine but also in Moscow, the Caucasus, Siberia, and so on, within a month. It cost me great effort, having organized the Committee to carry out this work, to persuade Mrs. Staritska to take over the voting in the Committee as a person popular among all circles of Ukrainian citizenship. The treasury of the National Fund was left to me. Our work was in full swing. Signature sheets were sent to all the cities and towns of Ukraine, Moscow, Crimea, the Caucasus, Siberia, where there were any Ukrainian institutions, communities, or even individual famous people, to collect donations, and with them an appeal to Ukrainian citizenship, artistically composed by Ms. Staritska-Cherniakhivska, which explained the need for financial support from Ukrainian citizenship at the beginning of the restoration of political life in Ukraine and proposed to organize a similar day of the National Fund in the provinces. It was planned that this collection of money would begin simultaneously among all Ukrainian citizens in Ukraine and outside Ukraine, that is, on 23 May. However some of the signature sheets started coming back to us before the deadline. The collectors, having filled in the letters with the names of donors from both the intelligentsia and the peasantry, returned the letters with money and asked for more to be sent for further collection. It was clear that the moment of the Ukrainian nation’s revival was being solemnly experienced by Ukrainian citizens, and a sense of donation gripped all circles of Ukrainians. The greatest donations were made by the zemstvos, whose material support showed their full recognition of the Central Council. However, individuals also surprised with large amounts of donations, which reached 1000 and more karbovanets.

The National Fund Day itself lasted for three days in Kyiv. Academies, various talks, rallies, and performances were held in theatres throughout the day and in the evenings. The entire city was divided into several districts, each with designated points where annual fundraisers took place. The management of the districts was divided among the members of the Committee for the National Fund Day. After the collections were over, these managers took all the money to the main cash desk, which we set up in the Central Council’s own apartment in the Museum. At the central cash desk, we sat with Mariia Hrushevska and Oksana Steshenko, and Mrs. Liudmyla Staritska-Cherniakhivska, Valeriia O’Connor-Vilinska, and Mariia Starytska worked on organizing performances and readings throughout the city. For three days, we accepted all the money that was brought to us from different parts of the city against receipts. Individual donors, people of all walks of life, also came to the same main cash desk and deposited their donations, which were a day’s wages. Among them, I remember, among others, Mr. Tymeshko, who contributed 100 roubles to the cash register as his daily wage – he is now deceased, and his wife and three children are happy that they can earn in emigration instead of the previous 3,000 roubles per month, which in those roubles was about 50 roubles per month. I also remember that a worker came to the main cash desk, dressed rather casually but looking extremely cheerful and defiant; he came and introduced himself: “A member of the Bolshevik Party”, showed his membership card, put 3 karbovanets into the cash register as a donation of the day’s earnings, and after wishing us luck, kissed the ladies’ hands and left with the same independent look.

In addition to money, people also donated valuable items such as brooches, bracelets, old medals, coins, etc. But there were not many such things at all. Money was also collected for karnavkas (piggy banks), one part of which was distributed to the points of sale and the other to the collectors on the streets. All these karnavkas were numbered, sealed, and distributed to collectors according to lists. The returned karnavkas were unsealed only at the end of the National Fund Day in the presence of a specially appointed commission. Each karnavka had its own number, and when counting in the book where each karnavka was recorded, the amount that was taken out of it was put against it. The money that was collected in Kyiv’s hometowns for tickets was handed over to our main cash desk along with the ticket books. The main cashier also received money from the sale of Ukrainian books at the points of sale, which sold extremely well during the National Fund Day. The writer L. Yanovska took over the sale of Ukrainian books at the stations, and she organized it very well and then calculated it.

At the end of the National Fund’s day, the Committee gathered at a bank, one of whose directors was a well-known public figure, M. Synytskyi, who offered the Committee some of the bank safes to place the collected money in. Here, in the bank, during non-governmental hours, all the collected amounts were counted. The cash was deposited in a state bank on a running account, and all the gold and silver that was no longer in circulation at the time, as well as many copper nickels and other valuable items, were deposited in the bank’s safes, with a detailed inventory of all the money and items with formal signatures of the persons responsible for them. The dual keys to the safes were divided: one copy was given to the accountant of the Central Council, Mr. Liutyi, and the other was ordered to be given to me.

Thus, by transferring the money collected and counted to the bank, the function of the Committee for the National Fund Day was terminated. Although money still continued to be received by the Central Council from various zemstvos and other institutions of Ukraine, this money no longer passed through the Committee but went directly to the Central Council’s accounting department. These sums were, of course, much larger than those that we, the Committee, collected before and during the day of the National Fund because some zemstvos began to transfer significant allocations to the Central Council, but the money was received in the correct order and could easily be handled by the Central Council’s own accounting department.

After all the calculations were completed, I made a report at the end of June at the Small Council meeting. The case was a great success, and the Council decided to express their gratitude to me and to record it in the minutes. Although there was not much money in the running account in the state bank at that time, because in June, in addition to running expenses, very large sums were spent on various special needs of the Central Council (organization of its own printing house, sending delegations to St. Petersburg to the Provisional Government, etc.), but the financial achievements of the National Fund’s day, besides being very significant in themselves, were also of great importance because they came at the very time when the Central Council, having already developed its activities on a large scale, needed them most.

Meanwhile, on 1 July, the General Secretariat of Financial Affairs began to function, and its first secretary, Christopher Baranovskyi, took over the functions of the Treasurer of the Central Council, which had been V. Koval until the 20th of June, and after his resignation, I was appointed. But in fact, the Treasurer of the Central Council, V. Koval did not have time to transfer his files to me, and all his files were directly transferred to Mr. Chr. Baranovskyi. At the same time, I acquainted him with the financial affairs of the National Fund, transferring him to the Council’s accounting department, where several paid officials were already working, with accountant Mr. Liutyi as the head, and all the records of the National Fund.

Soon I went to the countryside to my relatives in the Chernihiv region and rested there for a month after three months of the hardest work I had ever done – work in the Central Council, where I spent every day from early morning until late evening, and sometimes even nights, working on hard organizational work, and then on various calculations and reports.

When I returned to Kyiv in August, the General Secretariat of Financial Affairs was no longer headed by Baranovskyi, but by Professor M. Tuhan-Baranovskyi. I still felt close to the financial situation of the Central Council, so I immediately went to see the new Secretary General. When I talked to him about the affairs of the National Fund and the need, in my opinion, now that there is a true owner of the financial affairs – the General Secretariat – to calculate and organize those funds that had been transferred directly to the cashier of the Central Council, through the accounting department before the establishment of the General Secretariat, the Minister of Finance looked at me with such surprised eyes that it was clear how far his mind was from this, so alien, so petty, as it now obviously seemed to him, matter. He did acknowledge the need to streamline this matter, but… “there are so many matters of national importance” he said to me in parting. The Central Rada was already taking over full power in Ukraine, and the Minister of Finance was planning a budget for tens or even hundreds of millions, not just hundreds of thousands.

That was the end of my active work in the Central Council. I had a new job to do. I was put in charge of the Committee, which was established under the Trust for Aid to the Population of Ukraine Affected by the War, and to which all the aid institutions of Zemhora and the Tatiyaniv Committee were transferred. He had to manage the affairs of 23 children’s shelters, and in such living conditions, when there were no proper, sustainable allocations for the maintenance of shelters, and every penny had to be plucked from the state treasury.