Symon Petliura, continued ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Assassination
On May 25, 1926, at 14:12, by the Gibert bookstore, Petliura was walking on Rue Racine near Boulevard Saint-Michel of the Latin Quarter in Paris and was approached by Sholom Schwartzbard.
Schwartzbard asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?"
Petliura did not answer but raised his walking cane.
Schwartzbard pulled out a gun, proclaimed "dirty dog, killer of my people, defend yourself!" and shot him five times.
Evading a lynch-mob attempting to avenge Petliura, Schwartzbard gave himself into the police with a note reading: "I have killed Petliura to avenge the death of the thousands of pogrom victims in the Ukraine who were massacred by Petliura's forces without his taking any steps to prevent these massacres."
The Jewish Daily Bulletin reported that Petliura was responsible for killing over 30,000 Jews.
Schwartzbard was an anarchist of Jewish descent, born in Ukraine.
He participated in the Jewish self-defense of Balta in 1905.
The Russian Tsarist government sentenced him to 3 months in prison for "provoking" the Balta pogrom.
He was twice convicted of taking part in anarchist "expropriation" (burglary) and bank robbery in Austria-Hungary.
He later joined the French Foreign Legion (1914–1917) and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme.
It is reported that Schwartzbard told famous fellow anarchist leader Nestor Makhno in Paris that he was terminally ill and expected to die and that he would take Petliura with him; Makhno forbade Schwartzbard to do so.
Schwartzbard's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms in Odessa.
The core defense at the Schwartzbard trial was — as presented by the noted jurist Henri Torres — that he was avenging the deaths of more than 50,000 Jewish victims of the pogroms, whereas the prosecution (both criminal and civil) tried to show that Petliura was not responsible for the pogroms and that Schwartzbard was a Soviet agent.
After a trial lasting eight days the jury acquitted Schwartzbard.
According to a defected KGB operative Peter Deriabin, Schwartzbard was a Soviet (NKVD) agent and acted on the order from a former chairman of the Soviet Ukrainian government and current Soviet Ambassador to France, Christian Rakovsky.
The special operation of the GPU was consolidated by GPU agent Mikhail Volodin, who arrived in France August 8, 1925 and who had been in close contact with Schwartzbard.
Petliura was buried alongside his wife and daughter in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.
Petliura's two sisters, Orthodox nuns who had remained in Poltava, were arrested and shot in 1928 by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police).
It is claimed that in March 1926, Vlas Chubar (Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine), in a speech given in Kharkiv and repeated in Moscow, warned of the danger Petliura represented to Soviet power.
It was after this speech that the command had allegedly been given to assassinate Petliura.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
UKRAINE - SYMON PETLIURA
Re: UKRAINE - SYMON PETLIURA
Symon Petliura, concluded ...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Legacy
Ukraine
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, previously restricted Soviet archives have allowed numerous politicians and historians to review Petliura's role in Ukrainian history.
Some consider him a national hero who strove for the independence of Ukraine.
Several cities, including Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital and Poltava, the city of his birth, have erected monuments to Petliura, with a museum complex also being planned in Poltava.
Petliura's statue, unveiled in Vinnytsia in October 2017, was denounced as disgraceful and deplorable by the World Jewish Congress.
To mark the 80th anniversary of his assassination, a twelve-volume edition of his writings, including articles, letters and historic documents, has been published in Kyiv by the Taras Shevchenko University and the State Archive of Ukraine.
In 1992 in Poltava, a series of readings known as "Petlurivski chytannia" have become an annual event, and since 1993, they take place annually at Kyiv University.
In June 2009, the Kyiv City Council renamed Comintern Street (located in the Shevchenkivskyi District) into Symon Petliura Street to commemorate the occasion of his 130th birthday anniversary.
In current Ukraine Petliura has not been as lionized as Mykhailo Hrushevsky (who played a much smaller role in the Ukrainian People's Republic) since Petliura was too closely associated with violence to make a good symbolic figure.
In a 2008 poll of "Famous Ukrainians of all times" (in which respondents did not receive any lists or tips) Petliura was not mentioned (Hrushevsky came in sixth place in this poll).
In the 2008 TV project Velyki Ukraïntsi ("Greatest Ukrainians") he placed 26th.
A nephew of Symon Petliura, Stepan Skrypnyk became the Patriarch Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 6 June 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symon_Petliura
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Legacy
Ukraine
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, previously restricted Soviet archives have allowed numerous politicians and historians to review Petliura's role in Ukrainian history.
Some consider him a national hero who strove for the independence of Ukraine.
Several cities, including Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital and Poltava, the city of his birth, have erected monuments to Petliura, with a museum complex also being planned in Poltava.
Petliura's statue, unveiled in Vinnytsia in October 2017, was denounced as disgraceful and deplorable by the World Jewish Congress.
To mark the 80th anniversary of his assassination, a twelve-volume edition of his writings, including articles, letters and historic documents, has been published in Kyiv by the Taras Shevchenko University and the State Archive of Ukraine.
In 1992 in Poltava, a series of readings known as "Petlurivski chytannia" have become an annual event, and since 1993, they take place annually at Kyiv University.
In June 2009, the Kyiv City Council renamed Comintern Street (located in the Shevchenkivskyi District) into Symon Petliura Street to commemorate the occasion of his 130th birthday anniversary.
In current Ukraine Petliura has not been as lionized as Mykhailo Hrushevsky (who played a much smaller role in the Ukrainian People's Republic) since Petliura was too closely associated with violence to make a good symbolic figure.
In a 2008 poll of "Famous Ukrainians of all times" (in which respondents did not receive any lists or tips) Petliura was not mentioned (Hrushevsky came in sixth place in this poll).
In the 2008 TV project Velyki Ukraïntsi ("Greatest Ukrainians") he placed 26th.
A nephew of Symon Petliura, Stepan Skrypnyk became the Patriarch Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 6 June 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symon_Petliura