The delegation of the Ukrainian National Committee in the White Crimea (September – October 1920)

In the autumn of 1920, a delegation of the Ukrainian National Committee in Paris (UNC) visited visited Crimea, which was controlled by General Wrangel. The delegation consisted of the committee's chairman, Sergey K. Markotun, secretary general, Boris V. Tsytovich, and professor Nikolay M. Mogilyansky. The UNC had been established in December 1919 following a split within the Ukrainian delegation in France into Petliurist and Galician factions. Initially, the UNC, which advocated for an alliance with the White movement and the creation of a Russian-Ukrainian federation, was composed mainly of Galicians (such as Vasily L. Paneiko) alongside a group of former Hetmanists and Petliurists led by Markotun. Following White defeats in early 1920, the Galicians left the committee, and leadership passed to Markotun, a prominent figure in Ukrainian Freemasonry and a former secretary to the Hetman. In the late summer of 1920, at the initiative of Pyotr B. Struve, head of the Foreign Relations Department of South Russia, UNC members were invited to Crimea for negotiations with General Wrangel. The UNC members apparently hoped that Wrangel would formalize an agreement with them and recognize the committee as the official Ukrainian representative body, but this did not occur. The arrival of a Petliura delegation several weeks earlier had led Wrangel to limit his commitments to expressing solidarity with the UNC's position, promising to appoint a commissioner for Ukrainian affairs, and permitting the formation of Ukrainian units within the Russian army. Based on materials from Russian and foreign archives, the Crimean and emigre press, and contemporaries' memoirs, this article examines the formation and composition of the UNC, the course of its negotiations with WrangeL's government and representatives of the Crimean public, and assesses the impact of the committee's visit on WrangeL's Ukrainian policy.

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