EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT DURING THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION (1917–1920)

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the legal framework and the practical implementation of social functions by local self-government bodies (zemstvos, city dumas, and surrogate institutions) during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1920. The relevance of the topic is driven by the challenges of Ukraine's contemporary decentralization reform, which faces a similar problem of balancing the expansion of community rights with the need for state governability under martial law. The scientific problem lies in the fundamental gap between state-building theories and the practical realities of societal survival in extreme conditions. The study investigates why three successive Ukrainian governments failed to build an effective model of local authority, struggling to reconcile democratic legitimacy (electivity) with administrative efficiency (a rigid executive vertical). The methodology is based on an analysis of legal and regulatory acts and a historiographical approach that charts the shift from broad political narratives to regional administrative and economic case studies. Three distinct governance models are analyzed. The Central Rada pursued democratic idealism, which led to institutional dualism (appointed commissars versus elected zemstvos) and culminated in a collapse of governability, tragically enshrined in the UPR Constitution. The Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadsky emerged as a conservative reaction: it suspended the activities of elected bodies, replacing them with an appointed vertical of elders (starostas) backed by the military force of the occupying powers. The priority shifted from democracy to the efficiency of food procurement. The Directory of the UPR, while declaring the restoration of democracy, resorted to even more authoritarian methods amid total war, establishing a militarized vertical of commissars. This led to complete institutional chaos, a multiplicity of authorities (polyarchy), and legal nihilism. Particular attention is paid to the social functions of local self-government. It is established that the zemstvos bore the burden of ensuring community subsistence. They successfully implemented the policy of Ukrainization in education and attempted to preserve the principles of zemstvo medicine. However, their fatal vulnerability became the imposed function of the «food dictatorship». Forced grain requisitions transformed local self-government from a community representative into an agent of coercion, thereby destroying its social support base. The conclusion is that the failure of the local self-government institution was predetermined by the strategic conflict between the ideological demands of the central government (loyalty, mobilization, Ukrainization) and the pragmatic, basic needs of the population (peace, land, and bread). Unable to satisfy the latter, local self-government bodies lost their legitimacy and were swept away along with Ukrainian statehood itself.