Refugees of the First World War: the Ukrainian dimension (1914-1918). - Kh.: Verovets A. P. "Apostrophe", 2012. - 568 p.*

The Great War of 1914-1918 was a great test for human civilization, radically changing the geopolitical and ethno-social face of the European continent. It brought not only catastrophic destruction, numerous victims on the battlefields, but also transformed the system of moral guidelines, leveled the very value of human life. In society, the system of social roles was changed and new groups entered the arena-refugees, deportees, prisoners of war, united by modern Western historiography by the generalizing concept of "displaced persons".

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, scientists working on this issue are summing up some of the results of their work. The history of this armed conflict will undoubtedly be significantly updated with new developments, and its little-explored problems will receive a new impetus. The relatively new aspects of the study include the topic of refugees, which, as an integral part of the social history of this period, has been out of the field of view of historians for quite a long time. The third monographic work of L. M. Zhvanko, a Ukrainian researcher and member of the Russian Association of Historians of the First World War, "Refugees of the First World War: the Ukrainian dimension (1914-1918)", published in 2009, is a landmark in the study of this problem. For the first time in post-Soviet historiography, she published a collection of documents " refugees of the First World War in Ukraine: documents and materials (^1914-1918) "(Kharkiv, 2009, 360 p.), dedicated to one of the key humanitarian problems of the Great War1. In fact, we can talk about a successful author's project consisting of complementary scientific works. The new book focuses on refugee status as a complex problem faced by all participants in the military conflict, but most importantly by the Romanov Empire. At the same time, the researcher, considering this problem on the example of the Ukrainian provinces, often projects some of her conclusions on similar processes at the level of the entire tsarist Russia. First of all, we should note the importance and relevance of the topic that L. M. Zhvanko chose for her research. When the question of the origin of the First World War, the peculiarities of the economy of that time, the development of international relations in the period 1914-1918, and the purely military aspects of this war were covered in Soviet historiography, such an important research problem as "man at war" - that is, the history of prisoners of war, refugees, etc. - was generally ignored by Soviet historians.

In our opinion, the epigraph intended to become the leitmotif of the work offered to the reader is also interesting. As an epigraph to this book, L. M. Zhvanko took a quote from the article "torn apart by the storm", which was published in one of the Odessa newspapers in 1916: "for us it is so simple, so familiar. Refugees-and that says it all. And our descendants will talk a lot about this terrible phenomenon of our days. History will record on

* Translation of the review from Russian by Elena Kravchenko (Kharkiv).

¹ in the first book of L. M. Zhvanko " Social dimensions of the Ukrainian State (April-December 1918) "(Kharkiv, 2007, 224 p.) there is a paragraph devoted to the problems of refugees in the last year of the First World War.

on their tablets: "the migration of nations." Indeed, already modern Western historians and, in particular, the British researcher of this problem P. Gatrell pointed out that in 1915, the Soviet Union was able to find a solution to this problem. The whole of Russia was in motion, so powerful in its scale was the evacuation of the civilian population of the western outskirts of the empire.

The study covers the period of the First World War, reflecting the activities of the authorities and society of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian Central Council (hereinafter - UCR), the Ukrainian People's Republic (hereinafter - UPR) and the Ukrainian state of Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky in this area. It is clear that after November 11, 1918, the suffering of the refugees was not yet over, just as it did not happen with the fall of the Hetmanate on December 14 of the same year and the coming to power of the Directory in Ukraine. Nevertheless, according to L. M. Zhvanko, the logical end date is December 14, 1918, since it was the government structures of the Ukrainian state that managed to start a full-scale process of returning refugees home, and almost complete it in terms of evacuating foreigners. At the end of 1918, completely different political processes began on the Ukrainian lands, which means that other priorities of internal and external development appeared before its authorities (p. 22). Such time frames, covering the entire war, are used for the first time in the study of the refugee problem, and this allows us to trace the dynamics of processes, draw certain conclusions and deduce some patterns. In the territorial aspect, the "eastern vector of refugee migration" is covered, that is, the Ukrainian lands that were part of the Russian Empire, and after its fall became the basis for the creation of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Ukrainian state. At the same time, it should be noted that the author considers the Tauride province during the Russian Empire only within the three uyezds of steppe Ukraine - Berdyansk, Dnipro and Melitopol, on the lands of which the Tauride Province was created during the UCR, and under the Hetmanate - the Tauride district.

The structure of the publication is quite reasonable and consists of an introduction, three sections, conclusions, appendices, a list of sources and literature. On the positive side, we should mention the availability of annotations in English, German,and Russian. It should be noted that each section consists of several paragraphs that make it easier to read and indicate the author's ability to structure the work.

In the introduction, L. M. Zhvanko briefly draws attention to the evolution of this phenomenon in the 20-40s. It shows that the growing number of refugees has led to the creation of international structures under the auspices of the United Nations and the development of a legal framework for solving this problem. The following is a brief historiographical overview of Ukrainian, Russian and European literature, which the researcher found in ten libraries in three countries. Among them, it is worth highlighting the following leading ones: the V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (Kiev), the library of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw), the Jagiellonian University Library (Krakow), the State Public Historical Library (Moscow). L. M. Zhvanko, having worked through a significant layer of literature, came to the conclusion that "... there is no holistic study that reveals the evolution of refugees during the Russian Empire, the UCR and the Ukrainian state" (p.13). At the same time, one should also take into account the fact that the study of refugee status was tabooed for many years, this topic was considered irrelevant, secondary and now requires studying virtually from scratch by Ukrainian and Russian students.

historians and scientists from other countries. Therefore, L. M. Zhvanko, studying the Ukrainian aspect of the refugee movement of this period, used a significant spring base of a number of Ukrainian archives.

In the first chapter, "Refugee status in the Ukrainian lands during the Russian Empire", the author examines the problems of refugee status in the Russian Empire, and in particular, its appearance, statistics, creating a socio-ethnic and gender-age portrait. Further, it analyzes the nature of evacuation and the concepts of "refugee", "evictee", "evacuation", "deportation". Important points in the work were determining the number of refugees. So, in the spring of 1916, according to the estimates of the Tatiana Committee, 3,306,051 refugees settled in the Russian Empire. As of November 1, 1916, 3,573,471 of them were registered, of which 761,245 lived in Ukraine. In other words, almost every fourth refugee lived in Ukraine. Thus, it can be argued that with the increase in the number of refugees at the general imperial level, this trend was also observed in relation to Ukrainian lands. In Ukraine, according to the author's calculations, during the war, representatives of more than 20 nationalities found temporary asylum - Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Germans, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Moldovans, Romanians, Serbs, etc. A separate story is dedicated to a refugee woman who was forced to take responsibility for her family at a time when the man was fighting, was in captivity, or had already been killed. She changed her social role, turning from a passive "keeper of the hearth" to the breadwinner of the family, forced to go to work. At the same time, L. M. Zhvanko enters into an absentee discussion with his British colleague P. Gatrell about the feeling of freedom that some of the refugee women had.

The researcher analyzes the legislative framework and the state system of bodies providing assistance to this category of population. At the same time, she makes a rather bold conclusion, calling the Tatiana Committee a state structure for providing assistance to refugees. It is quite interesting to consider the issue of creating various public organizations dealing with refugees: ethnic, "ladies ' committees", diocesan committees, etc. The last paragraph of this section covers the areas of assistance to refugees-providing support on the routes, opening a network of food and medical points, providing food , clothing and shoes already at the place of arrival, finding work for them, organizing treatment of patients, etc.

L. M. Zhvanko points out that the problem of refugees for the Russian Empire, and, consequently, the Ukrainian lands that were part of it, has become an extremely difficult page in its internal life. For the official authorities, this new social group proved to be a heavy burden and an unforeseen reality. The State has not always adequately and effectively responded to the social challenges generated by the war. And as a result, as the researcher writes, she could not cope with organizing effective assistance to refugees on her own resources and resources, partially shifting the care of refugees to public organizations and self-government, while trying to maintain control over the distribution of funds. The leadership of the social protection of refugees in the Russian Empire evolved from a public charity to a special meeting on the arrangement of refugees, which became an expression of state policy.

policies in this aspect. In addition, an appropriate system of bodies was created and a legislative framework was developed. The "Provision on Ensuring the Needs of Refugees" became the starting document in the implementation of internal refugee policy. It can rightly be considered one of the first normative acts in international law of the XX century, which defined the very concept of "refugee". Ukrainian lands in the general Ukrainian dimension have played a significant role in the formation of the system of refugee assistance agencies. Through the joint efforts of employees of leading public organizations-the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and the All-Russian Union of Cities, Local self-government at various levels, and ethnic unions, it was possible to establish a certain pattern of spontaneous movement of refugees and organize the provision of diverse assistance to them. The most active part of society was involved in the work in these committees. Ukrainian women declared their readiness to engage in charity work. Ukrainian society, in extremely difficult wartime conditions, has taken on the difficult task of creating proper living conditions for hundreds of thousands of evacuees. In a relatively short period of time, these people received temporary shelter, they were provided with food, clothing and shoes, medical care, education for children was organized, and attempts were made to meet the spiritual needs of ethnic refugees.

In addition, the researcher noted that refugees, as a new social phenomenon, should be considered in the context of the moral and psychological destruction that the war brought to civilization. It broke the fate of millions of people, deprived them of a roof over their heads and families, and radically changed their attitude to life, religion, cultural and spiritual values. However, refugees cannot be unequivocally and categorically perceived as an amorphous mass, deprived of the opportunity to adequately assess the situation and take care of their lives.

The second chapter, "The Ukrainian Central Council and the problems of refugees of the First World War", examines the evolution of the new Ukrainian government's attitude to this phenomenon, the development of its own regulatory framework, the organization of assistance to these people and the preparation for their re-evacuation. The period of the Ukrainian Central Rada in the recent history of Ukraine, as L. M. Zhvanko notes, was quite short. Of course, it is marked by a number of fatal mistakes, the political shortsightedness of its leaders, but the fact remains that the fate of the refugees of the First World War was not indifferent to it. The Ukrainian authorities considered the refugee primarily as a victim of a military conflict, regardless of class, ethnicity, religion, or social affiliation. The transition of the UCR to opposition to the Provisional Government after the promulgation of the Universal Law in June 1917 and the creation of the General Secretariat made it necessary to develop its own policy on refugee problems. Gradually, Ukrainian government structures were created-the Refugee Department and the regional meeting on Refugee affairs. It should be noted that during the activity of the Department, it was headed by Yu. M. Staritsky is the son of the famous Ukrainian playwright and public figure M. P. Staritsky. The local link of the relevant authorities remained almost unchanged from the time of the empire's existence. Experienced public figures were also retained in their posts. This indicates continuity, and not the thoughtless destruction of the established mechanism for providing assistance to refugees.,

that the new Ukrainian government collaborated with ethnic refugee committees, involving their leadership in the development of policy documents in this area.

Among the novelties of the book is undoubtedly the study of the Ukrainian side's formulation of the refugee problem during the negotiations in Brest in the winter of 1918 (p. 334). Further, L. M. Zhvanko draws the reader's attention to the steps taken by the Ukrainian authorities to independently decide the fate of more than 800 thousand refugees who settled in Ukraine at that time. The key legal document was the "annex to the re-evacuation plan", which provided for extensive preparatory work for the organized return of these people to their homes. It was planned to start a full-scale repatriation of refugees as early as the end of March 1918, as the researcher found out. During March-April 1918, despite the passive opposition of the Austro-German authorities present on the territory of Ukraine, serious economic ruin, extensive preparatory work was launched to implement the plan for the return of refugees to their homes. Unfortunately, history has made its own adjustments to these plans, and only in the summer of 1918 was it possible to implement them.

In the third chapter, "Social protection of refugees of the First World War in the Ukrainian State", L. M. Zhvanko analyzes the formation of the state policy of the Government of P. P. Skoropadsky in the field of social protection of refugees, the creation of a corresponding vertical of central and local authorities, the situation of refugees and preparations for the process of their re-evacuation. The author paid special attention to the issue of returning these people home and the factors that prevented it. Considerable attention was paid to the analysis of the return home of foreign refugees, Ukrainian peasants of the Volyn and Podolsk provinces, who were evacuated to the rear areas of Russia. The researcher draws attention to the fact that" simultaneous multi-vector re-evacuation of a significant number of the population under the condition of oncoming traffic of Ukrainian prisoners of war was a very difficult domestic political aspect " (p. 430). In the conclusions to the monograph, L. M. Zhvanko summarizes the results of his research.

The indisputable advantages of the book, of course, include biographical plots and additions. Biographical notes, organically woven into the text, so to speak, humanize the story, showing that people of different occupations, worldview, place in the society of that time, ethnic and religious affiliation directed their strength and energy to help refugees. Many of them in the near future were waiting for the Bolshevik Calvary, emigration or adaptation to new political realities, and then Stalin's camps and executions (p. 23). Among the famous figures who devoted themselves to helping refugees during the war years were Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna (1897-1918), daughter of Emperor Nicholas II; A. B. Neidgart (1863-1918), a well-known politician and statesman; A. M. Derevitsky (1859-1943), a trustee of the Kiev School District; M. P. Urusov (1863-1918 a hereditary nobleman of the Ekaterinoslav province, M. D. Strazhesko (1876-1952)-a world-class medical scientist, organizer of medical science already in the Soviet Union, G. E. Lvov (1861-1925) - a Russian political figure, M. V. Chelnokov (1863-1935) - chairman of the Moscow City Duma, I. V. Kolesnikov (1863-1935) - Chairman of the Moscow City Duma. A. Alchevsky-Ukrainian singer, public figure, son of the famous Kharkiv industrialist A. K. Alchevsky.

Separately, you should pay attention to the 85 appendices prepared by the author, consisting of tables, diagrams, two maps, and drawings. They carry a significant content load, since they concentrate a huge amount of material-statistical (the number of refugees, various institutions, financial materials), structurological data of various types (schemes of the provincial branch of the Tatiana Committee, the All-Russian Zemstvo Union and the All-Russian Union of Cities, bodies providing assistance to refugees in the Ukrainian state, etc.), information( various lists authorized representatives, members of committees, names of organizations). L. M. Zhvanko also made a list of appendices and a list of abbreviations. The author's vision of the problem is presented in a lively language, with appropriately inserted comparisons, figurative turns that make reading easy and interesting. The printing culture of the publication is also at a high level-the original cover (by the way, it was developed by her, as well as the original layout of the entire book), photos on the screensavers to the main parts of the work.

As a suggestion, it should be noted that a book of this size should be equipped with geographical and personal indexes. In addition, it would be interesting to trace the evolution of the self-perception of a person who found himself in the status of a refugee in new conditions, and after the February events of 1917, it would be desirable to at least briefly present a story about the growth (if any) of the ethnic consciousness of Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Jewish, Belarusian, Ukrainian refugees. A comparative analysis of the stay of Ukrainian refugees in the Russian hinterland with their similar stay in the Austro-Hungarian lands is also interesting. Nevertheless, it seems that this aspect is rather a perspective of scientific research.

Thus, the monograph "Refugees of the First World War: the Ukrainian dimension (1914-1918)" by L. M. Zhvanko is a fairly successful attempt at a comprehensive analysis of refugee status as a social phenomenon in Ukraine during the war of 1914-1918. Moreover, the researcher is one of the first in the post-Soviet space to address this problem. I am sure that this work is of great interest not only for Ukrainian historians, but also for foreign researchers of the First World War. It will also be interesting for Russian readers, since a significant part of the material is devoted to the period of the Russian Empire.

V. K. Shatsillo (Moscow, Russian Federation)

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