Skoropadskii, Pavel

Born May 3 (15), 1873, in Wiesbaden; died Apr. 26, 1945, in Metten, Bavaria. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian bourgeois-landlord counterrevolution of 1917–18. Lieutenant general (1916).

Descended from the Ukrainian gentry, Skoropadskii was a wealthy landlord in Chernigov and Poltava provinces. After graduating from the Corps of Pages in 1893, he served in the mounted guards and was in the tsar’s retinue. During World War I (1914–18) he commanded the First Guards Cavalry Division and Army Corps (called the First Ukrainian Corps from August to December 1917). In October 1917, at the congress of “free cossacks” in Chigirin, he was named head of the newly formed military units of the Ukrainian Central Rada.

During the Austro-German occupation of the Ukraine, at the “congress of grain growers” rigged by the interventionists on Apr. 29, 1918, in Kiev, Skoropadskii was chosen hetman of the Ukraine and proclaimed the establishment of a “Ukrainian power.” As a henchman of the German occupiers, he helped in the plunder of the Ukrainian people. On Dec. 14, 1918, he was deposed by insurgents. He fled to Germany and settled in Berlin, where he conducted anti-Soviet activities, cooperating with the Hitlerites. [23–1543–]