The establishment of the first security and intelligence organs of the Ukrainian People’s Republic: Historical experience and lessons (1917-1918)

The importance of this study is due to the need for reconstruction of the process of establishment of national security and intelligence bodies in the course of formation of Ukrainian statehood in 1917-1918. The work was aimed at determining the historical prerequisites, organisational structure, functions and effectiveness of the first special security and intelligence bodies of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. The source base comprised published scholarly works, normative acts of the period, and the memoir legacy of participants in the events, processed using historical-genetic, historical-systemic, retrospective, and biographical methods, with the application of critical analysis and cross-referencing of sources. It has been established that the initial attempts to institutionalise the security sector were situational in nature and were implemented through temporary structures – the Special Committee for the Protection of the Revolution and the Regional Committee for the Protection of the Revolution in Ukraine, which were engaged in countering political crises, armed insurrections, and external intervention. The formation of intelligence structures under the General Staff is traced, specifically the establishment of an intelligence sub-unit in March 1918 and its reorganisation into a department of the First Quartermaster General’s Office under the leadership of V.V. Kolosovskyi. An analysis of the interaction between Ukrainian services and the intelligence agencies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, which did not acquire a character of parity, has been conducted. The determining factors behind the incapacity of the security organs have been identified. These factors are defined as a lack of professional cadres, insufficient funding, internal political contradictions, and the leadership’s distrust of the special services. The dominance of socialist orientations and delays in building security institutions, along with the involvement of the special services in the internal political struggle, particularly in the case of banker A. Dobryi, preceded the armed dissolution of the government in the spring of 1918. It is substantiated that the absence of capable intelligence and counter-intelligence was one of the factors in the fall of the Central Rada. The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that the systematised factual material and the established chronology of the security sector’s formation during the period of the Ukrainian People’s Republic’s establishment can be used for the preparation of synthetic works on the history of national special services