On a hot spring day in 1926, a well-dressed Monsieur stood on the Paris sidewalk, and looked through the glass at the books on display. Another gentleman came up to him, and quietly called out to him, giving his name and surname. The literature lover turned around, and shots rang out right away, they thundered until the revolver's drum made a complete revolution. The gendarmes came running, they cautiously approached the killer, and he calmly gave them weapons and surrendered.
So in May 1926, on May 26, the biography of Petliura Simon Vasilievich, one of the most famous fighters for Ukrainian independence, a forced emigrant and a staunch anti-Semite, ended. He was only forty-seven years old, but he managed to become famous and become an object of hunting for the Soviet security officers. The first suspicions fell on them. A thoroughly conducted investigation confirmed the truthfulness of the words of Samuel Schwarzbad (that was the name of the shooter), who claimed that he had committed his revenge for the family of fifteen people killed by the Petliurites in Ukraine, and he himself was not a Bolshevik agent, but a simple Jew.
The jury fully justified Schwarzbad, recognizing that Petlyura Simon Vasilievich was guilty of the death of his relatives. The biography presented to the court rejected all doubts that the murdered man had initiated numerous ethnic cleansings against both the Jewish and Russian populations.
On May 17, 1879, a boy was born in the Poltava large family of a poor family, who was christened Simon. His father was a cabman, a young man could get an education only in a seminary, in which he entered. Representations of what should be the future of Ukraine were formed by a young man within the walls of this educational institution, where in 1900 he became a member of the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party, a nationalist political organization. Hobbies of the young man were diverse, he loved music and read Marx. In those years, there were many Jews among his friends, from which it can be concluded that he became an anti-Semite for political reasons.
Simon was expelled from seminary for protests and insolence (1901), and two years later he was arrested. Not long the freedom fighter of Ukraine languished in prison, a year later he was released on bail, after which he got a job as an accountant of the Rossiya insurance company, not forgetting about the party's underground work. In 1914, seditioner did not get to the forefront, his service was not burdensome, he held the position of deputy authorized Zemstvo Union.
Petlyura's active political biography began after the February Revolution. He immediately became the head of the General Military Committee at the Central Council. The political situation made it possible to declare the state sovereignty of Ukraine, which was immediately done. After the October coup, the armed forces of the independent republic were reorganized. Military ranks sounded a song for any nationalist patriot: "smoking ataman", "cat's ataman", "corral" ...
The Ukrainian army should speak Ukrainian, and the Russian - to leave "nenko", these were the first orders. Independence, however, turned out to be rather fake than real, after the conclusion of the Brest Peace, the Minister of War entered into submission to the German General Staff along with the divisions of the “blue-eyed” subordinate to him. The Germans soon preferred to deal with the hetman Skoropadsky. Petliura's biography during this period consists of continuous twisting maneuvers. He promises factories to workers, land to peasants, Ukraine to Ukrainians, and it is not clear that the Germans and the French.
Of all these tempting offers, the most real was the opportunity to rob with impunity. Of course, requisitioning the property of Ukrainians was forbidden, but in such a mess, can you figure out who is Jewish and who is Moskal ...
By 1919, the situation in Ukraine was completely confused. The Reds fought with the Whites, the Entente brought in troops, the Poles were not at a loss either, Nestor Makhno controlled considerable territories, and the Petliurites joined all those who agreed to form a temporary alliance with them. The Reds and Denikin refused such help, and the Germans and French demanded too high a price for their intercession.
The political biography of Petliura ended in 1921. If someone needed him, then the Bolsheviks, in order to shoot him. From Poland, whose leadership was increasingly inclined to the decision on extradition, they had to flee to Hungary, then to Austria, and finally to Paris. Here Stepan Mogila (aka Simon Vasilyevich Petlyura) is editing the Trizub magazine, the press organ of Ukrainian nationalists, in which articles are full of the word "Jew" and all its derivatives.
This went on for a couple more years. In 1926, it was all over. The funeral took place at the Paris cemetery de Montparnasse.
Today in independent Ukraine Petlyura is remembered much less often than Mazepu or Bandera. It is not clear why this is so, because the methods of all three are so similar ...