Statesmen
Pavlo Skoropadsky
May 15, 1873 — April 26, 1945
- Hetman of the Ukrainian State
Proclaimed hetman in Kyiv on 29 April 1918, in seven and a half months he founded the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, the National Library and the State Ukrainian University in the capital.
Biography
Pavlo Skoropadsky, a descendant of an 18th-century hetman’s family and a general in the Russian army, Ukrainianised the army corps he commanded in 1917 and recognised the Central Rada. On 29 April 1918 the All-Ukrainian Congress of Farmers, meeting in a Kyiv circus building, proclaimed him hetman; celebrations followed on St Sophia Square, where Bishop Nikodym anointed him. The Rada gave way to the Ukrainian State.
Short as it was, his rule left Kyiv a lasting institutional legacy. In summer 1918 the National Library of the Ukrainian State was founded (today’s Vernadsky National Library), on 6 October the Kyiv State Ukrainian University opened, and on 14 November the hetman signed the law creating the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, with Volodymyr Vernadsky as its first president. Ukrainian-language gymnasiums and archives opened, and millions of Ukrainian textbooks were printed.
After the Directorate’s uprising he abdicated on 14 December 1918 and left Kyiv with the German troops. In German exile he led the monarchist hetman movement; in April 1945 he was fatally wounded in an air raid on Plattling station and was buried in Oberstdorf. In 2023 central Kyiv’s Lva Tolstoho Street was renamed Hetmana Pavla Skoropadskoho Street, and the Museum of Hetmanship on Podil keeps part of his archive.
Kyiv in their life
- St Sophia Square — celebrations of his proclamation as hetman, 29 April 1918.
- National Academy of Sciences and Vernadsky National Library — both founded in 1918 under the Hetmanate.
- Hetmana Pavla Skoropadskoho Street — formerly Lva Tolstoho Street (renamed in 2023).
- Museum of Hetmanship (16-b Spaska Street) — the exhibition “Pavlo Skoropadsky and the Ukrainian State of 1918” and his private papers.
