Lecture 34: The Directory, Civil War, and the Bolsheviks

Professor Paul Robert Magocsi — Ukraine: A History Course.

The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter is pleased to present a lecture series by Paul Robert Magocsi titled Ukraine: A History Course. Magocsi recorded 45 lectures in 2023 at the University of Toronto, where he holds the professorial Chair of Ukrainian Studies and is a history and political science professor. He is also a Board Member of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.

Magocsi, one of the world’s leading experts on Ukraine, explores this fascinating country in all its complexity, from its history, culture, geography, politics, and multi-ethnic composition. The lectures are an important counterweight to Russian propaganda and explain Ukraine’s importance to global security today.

Time stamps are available for each lecture. Auto-translate is available in Ukrainian, major European, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish.

Recordings of the lecture series were made possible with the support of the Temerty Foundation.

All the lectures are available on YouTube here.

0:52 Ukrainian Revolutionary Era
4:46 Seven phases: Directory, Bolsheviks, Peasant movement, Whites, West Ukrainian National Republic, Poland
6:25 Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Symon Petliura
9:43 Ukraine, 1919 map
11:10 Celebrating the unification of the Ukrainian National Republic and Western Ukrainian National Republic on Sofia Square in Kyiv, 22 January 1919
22:43 Participants of the First Ukrainian peasant congress in Kyiv, 1917
26:44 Nykyfor Hryhoriv, Nestor Makhno
30:15 Reciting prayers over the victims of a pogrom in Proskuriv (today Khmelnytskyi), February 1919
30:33 Members of the Demiyivka synagogue, Kyiv salvaging the remains of Torah scrolls after a pogrom. Photo, 1919.
31:08 White Russiani troops of General Anton Denikin entering Kyiv, August 1919
33:20 Volunteers register for the White Guard, 1919
35:06 Anton Denikin
36:53 English tanks sent to General Denikin, 1919
38:08 Symon Peliura meets supporters in Fastiv, Ukraine, 1919
40:51 Ukraine, 1919-1920 map
42:38 Ievhen Petrushevych
45:31 Józef Piłsudski

For further information, you may wish to consult: A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (University of Toronto Press, 2010)

Robert Paul Magocsi
Chair of Ukrainian Studies University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada, September 2023.