Elections to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly (December 1917 - January 1918): campaign progress, lists of candidates, and voting results by districts

Abstract

The paper discusses the elections to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly in December 1917 - January 1918, when 400 - 425 candidates were to be elected in 23 districts. However, the armed conflict between Central Rada and the Council of People's Commissars allowed elections only in 11 districts (Volhynia, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Poltava, Podolia, Kherson, and Chernigov Governorates, Romanian and Southwestern fronts, the Black Sea and Baltic fleets). The elections were won by the Ukrainian Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), with the Bolsheviks being second. For the first time in Russian and foreign historiography, the article provides full voting results for all 11 districts based on the protocols of the Main and District Election Commission from the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine (TsDAVO of Ukraine). In some cases, the materials of uezd and local commissions are also used. Each district has a corresponding table that shows official names of party lists, the number and percentage of votes gained, and the number of mandates. The paper ends with a summary table with the results of voting throughout Ukraine, as well as the distribution of mandates between the lists that passed to the Constituent Assembly. The author examines the electoral geography of Ukraine and suggests why the voters of the Ukrainian Social Revolutionaries, who won the elections by a huge margin, did not support their representatives in January-February 1918 and made no resistance to the Bolshevik troops advancing on Ukraine.