The Second Winter Campaign of the Army of Ukrainian People Republic: Modern Domestic Historiography

Abstract

The article focuses on a comprehensive analysis of the historiographical work of modern Ukrainian historians on the history of the Second Winter Campaign of the Army of the Ukrainian People Republic in 1921. The methodological basis of the study covers the principles of historicism, objectivity and systematics. General scientific and special research methods were used in solving the set tasks: historiographical analysis and synthesis of knowledge development, generalization, quantitative, historical-comparative, chronological, retrospective, etc. The scientific novelty of the work lies in a comprehensive analysis of the state of study in current national historiography of the history of the Second Winter Campaign of the UPR Army in 1921, clarifies the conceptual approaches and techniques used by modern national experts. Conclusions. The analysis of the historiographical achievements of current Ukrainian historians has shown that they have done a lot to study the research topic. Having brought into scientific circulation previously closed archival materials, both national and foreign, in close cooperation with foreign colleagues, scholars of independent Ukraine rejected the unscientific, politically biased conclusions of Soviet historiography about the Second Winter Campaign directed by the foreign imperialist to overthrow the workers 'and peasants' power in Ukraine, to return it to the hands of the bourgeoisie and the landlords. Certain shortcomings of Ukrainian foreign historiography on this issue have been eliminated, including inaccuracies, a weak source base, and a noticeable memoir in covering many episodes of this  campaign. National experts have clearly proved that the Second Winter Campaign was a heroic attempt of the UPR Army interned in Polish and Romanian camps together with the insurgent Ukrainian people to restore independent Ukrainian statehood. It is shown that the Civil Administration of the Partisan-Insurgent Headquarters carried out serious organizational work aimed at preparing for the restoration of UPR power, but a number of objective and subjective factors led to the defeat of the raid, which negatively affected the further national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people. At the same time, the historiographical analysis showed that despite the considerable achievements of national historians in studying this topic, not all its aspects were comprehensively covered. A number of them require further scientific analysis and interpretation, which requires significant expansion and updating of the source base.