Symon Petliura - Assassination

Assassination

On May 25, 1926, while walking on rue Racine, near Boulevard Saint-Michel, Petliura was approached by Sholom Schwartzbard. Schwartzbard asked him in Ukrainian, "Are you Mr. Petliura?" Petliura did not answer but raised his walking cane. Then, as Schwartzbard claimed in court, he pulled out a gun and shot him five times. Some state two more shots were fired after Petliura was lying on the ground. That is how Schwartzbard described the incident:

"When I saw him fall I knew he had received five bullets. Then I emptied my revolver. The crowd had scattered. A policeman came up quietly and said: 'Is that enough?' I answered: 'Yes.' He said: 'Then give me your revolver.' I gave him the revolver, saying: 'I have killed a great assassin.' "When the policeman told me Petliura was dead I could not hide my Joy. I leaped forward and threw my arms about his neck."

Schwartzbard was claiming that he was walking around Paris with Petliura's photo in one pocket and his handgun in another, peering in the faces of the Paris residents just to find his victim.

Schwartzbard was a Russian anarchist of Jewish descent born in on the territory of Little Russia (today Ukraine). He participated in the Jewish self-defense of Balta, for which the Russian Tsarist government sentenced him to 3 months in prison for "provoking" the Balta pogrom, and was twice convicted for taking part in anarchist "expropriation" (burglary) and bank robbery in Austro-Hungary. He later joined the French Foreign Legion (1914–1917) and was wounded in the Battle of the Somme. It is reported that Schwartzbard told famous fellow anarchist leader Nestor Makhno in Paris that he was terminally ill and expected to die, and that he would take Petliura with him; Makhno forbade Schwartzbard to do so.

The French Secret service had been keeping an eye out on Schwartzbard from the time he had surfaced in the French capital and had noted his meetings with known Bolsheviks. During the trial the German special services also informed their French counterparts that Schwartzbard had assassinated Petliura on the orders of Galip, an emissary of the Union of Ukrainian Citizens. He had received orders from a former chairman of the Soviet Ukrainian government and current Soviet Ambassador to France, Christian Rakovsky, an ethnic Bulgarian and a revolutionary leader from Romania. The act was consolidated by Mikhail Volodin, who arrived in France August 8, 1925 and who had been in close contact with Schwartzbard.

Schwartzbard's parents were among fifteen members of his family murdered in the pogroms in Odessa. The core defense at the Schwartzbard trial was — as presented by the noted jurist Henri Torres — that he was avenging the deaths of more than 50,000 Jewish victims of the pogroms, whereas the prosecution (both criminal and civil) tried to show that:

• (i) Petliura was not responsible for the pogroms and
• (ii) Schwartzbard was a Soviet agent.

Both sides brought on many witnesses, including several historians. A notable witness for the defense was Khaye Greenberg (aged 29), a local nurse who survived the Proskurov pogroms and testified about the carnage. She never said that Petliura personally participated in the event, but rather some other soldiers who did said that they were directed by Petliura. The pogrom in Proskurov was really taken place and was led by Otaman Semesenko on his own initiative on February 15, 1919 (soon after the fall of Hetmanate). Two weeks later Petliura orders denouncing the event were published in newspapers. Because of a difficult situation the execution of Semesenko was postponed until November 1920. Several former Ukrainian officers testified for the prosecution.

After a trial lasting eight days the jury acquitted Schwarzbard.

Petliura is buried alongside his wife and daughter in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.

Petliura's two sisters, Orthodox nuns who had remained in Poltava, were arrested and shot in 1928 by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). It is claimed that in March 1926 Vlas Chubar (the Russian Commissar to Ukraine), in a speech given in Kharkiv and repeated in Moscow, warned of the danger Petliura represented to Soviet power. It is after this speech that the command was allegedly given to assassinate Petliura.