Dmytro Doroshenko - Political Career

Political Career

Doroshenko was born into an old Ukrainian Cossack noble family which had given Ukraine two prominent Hetmans during the seventeenth century. He studied history at the universities of Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, and Kiev and was active in the Ukrainian national movement during the early years of the twentieth century; he contributed articles on history and literature to Ukrainian periodicals and edited the political journal Ukrainskii vestnik (The Ukrainian Messenger) which reflected the views of the Ukrainian Club in the Russian State Duma (1906). Thereafter, he became active in the Ukrainian Scientific Society in Kiev and the Prosvita educational society in Yekaterinoslav. During the war which broke out in 1914 he was active in the Union of Cities and did relief work in Russian held Galicia and Bukovina.

During the revolution of 1917–1918, Doroshenko held several responsible positions under the radical and socialist Ukrainian Central Rada, which quickly emerged as a kind of Ukrainian national parliament, and he helped to build the autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic. However, distressed by the continuous shift to the left of the Central Rada, Doroshenko supported the conservative coup staged by General Pavlo Skoropadsky and his German military supporters and was named Foreign Minister in the new Hetmanate, or monarchy, that was then established. He was a firm supporter of the Ukrainian national element in this regime to which many "White" Russian elements were attracted, but he also had the difficult task of reconciling various pro-Russian, pro-German, and pro-Ukrainian influences on the foreign policy of the Hetmanate. The task proved impossible and Doroshenko eventually resigned shortly before the collapse of this conservative regime.