Mykola Riabovil

Mykola Stepanovych Riabovil (Ukrainian: Мико́ла Степа́нович Рябові́л; Russian: Никола́й Степа́нович Рябово́л (romanized: Nikolai Stepanovich Ryabovol); 17 December 1883, in the village of Dinsk, the Kuban Region of the Russian Empire - 13 June 1919, at Rostov-on-Don) was a Ukrainian political figure in the Kuban. During the Russian Civil War he was the chairman of the Kuban Legislative Council and the chairman of the Kuban Military Council.

Early years
Riabovil's Family is originally from the village of Dinska in the Kuban. Mykola Riabovil's grandfather was the foreman of the town for a long time, and his father worked as a town clerk for more than 35 years.

After graduating from the one-class school, Mykola entered the Katerynodar military school. At the end of the year, he taught in his native village. He organized the first folk performances in it.

Already in those years, Mykola came under the influence of the prominent public and political figure Stepan Erastov, the initiator of the creation of Ukrainian public, cooperative, educational and economic societies in the Kuban and the Ukrainian poet Mykola Voronyi, who moved to the Kuban, which made Mykola became a conscious Ukrainian. From 1902, he got close to Poltava seminarians Simon Petliura, Prokop Poniatenko and others, who launched a wide anti-government work in the Kuban.

Public career
In 1905-1907 he, studied at the  Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, but due to participation in student performances, he stopped studying in the third year. This did not prevent him from making a quick career.

Since his father founded a credit cooperative in 1907, Mykola had to help him.

In 1909, the young Riabovil was elected to the organizing committee for the construction of the Kuban-Black Sea Railway. In 1912, the railroad charter was approved, and Riabovil was elected one of its directors.

In the autumn of 1912, together with another railway director, Colonel Orekhov, he visited London to organize a bond loan. According to the canons of English business, they were charged a commission of 160,000 rubles for their work — a huge amount at that time. Both refused the fee and gave the money to the railroad.

In 1912, he organized the Kuban Union of Small Credit Institutions, which soon became a powerful organization, was elected chairman of the Union Council. At the same time, he headed the Kuban Cooperative Union.

Head of the Kuban Rada

 * Read more: Kuban People's Republic

In 1915, he was mobilized into the Russian army and sent to study at a military engineering school, which he successfully graduated with the rank of ensign. He continued his service in the sapper unit in Finland, where he experienced the February Revolution. He was also a popular figure in the army, he was elected to the "Council of Soldiers' and Officers' Deputies."

After returning home, he took an active part in politics (in the Military Council) and public and political life (in the Regional Food Committee). He was elected the head of the Military Council. The Military Council, led by Riabovil, renamed itself the Kuban Regional Council, proclaimed Kuban a republic under the name "Kuban Region" in September 1917. The first Kuban constitution was also adopted at this session ("Temporary Provisions on the Highest Authorities in the Kuban Territory"). According to it, the Legislative Council became the highest legislative body, and the Kuban regional government and the military chieftain, who had presidential powers and the right to veto the adopted laws, became the executive power. Riabovil was elected as the head of the Kuban Legislative Council. He pursued a policy of the unity of the Kuban lands, the complete independence of the Kuban in the close relations to Ukraine. He was a supporter of the idea of the unity of Ukraine and the union of Ukrainian lands, he became one of the most popular Cossack politicians in the Kuban during the period of national liberation struggles 1917-1921. The idea of Kuban independence and the union of Kuban with Ukraine had two external opponents: the Bolsheviks, who stood for the world socialist revolution and considered Kuban to be a part of the RSFSR, and the forces that advocated the restoration of the Russian Empire (in particular, the Volunteer Army led by General Anton Denikin). In addition, there was an internal struggle in the Kuban - the idea of the independence of the Cossack nation and the state self-determination of all Cossack lands, not marked by a persistent Ukrainian color, had a significant impact. Riabovil actively supported the latter idea, when Ukrainian-Kuban ties were impossible, because it had general democratic features of development and unlike Denikin's pro-anarchic ideas.

In the first periods of activity in the Council, Mykola Riabovil had close relations with Kuban Ukrainophiles Kindrat Bardizh, Fedor Shcherbina, Luka Bych and Stepan Manzhula. In May 1918, he led a delegation of the Legislative Council to Kyiv for negotiations with Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi on the establishment of interstate relations and cooperation in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The delegation in Kyiv was received kindly. Some of the representatives of the Ukrainian government spoke about the autonomy of the Kuban as part of Ukraine, others saw it in a federation with Ukraine. The Kuban representatives insisted on a federal connection.

With the liberation of the Kuban from the Bolsheviks, Denikin sought to establish his dictatorship there. Having failed to agree with the Council and the government on the changes he needed to the Kuban Constitution, he decided to become a dictator by convening the Extraordinary Kuban Council, at which he planned to get his protégé elected to the post of Council chairman. Therefore, Cossacks of Russian origin and "volunteers"  campaigned against Riabovil, whom Denikin considered a dangerous enemy of Russia.

The council headed by Riabovil defended the sovereign rights of its republic. On December 4, 1918, at an extraordinary session of the Regional Council, a new Constitution was adopted, which changed the name of the Kuban People's Republic to "Kuban region".

The murder of Lukin
The struggle for the independence of the Kuban was not always conducted by legal methods.

On October 1, 1919, the head of the Kuban Military District Court, Lukin, a veteran and supporter of the Volunteer Army was killed in Katerynodar. The murder took place a day after Lukin's return from Rostov, where he came with a report on the growth of the Ukrainian separatist movement in the Kuban and the arrival of a secret delegation from Petliura in Katerynodar. Kuban investigative bodies did not find the perpetrators.

The murder of Mykola Riabovil
The head of the Kuban Rada Mykola Riabovil was killed by a White Guard agent during the federalist conference in 1919.

In June 1919, the head of the Kuban Legislative Council, Mykola Riabovil, led the Kuban delegation to the conference in Rostov-on-Don on the creation of the South Russian Union (Don, Kuban, Terek and Volunteer Army).

On June 13, 1919, at the conference, Riabovil spoke about the need to unify the state entities of Ukraine, Kuban, Don, Terek, Georgia on a democratic basis to fight against the Bolsheviks. He sharply criticized the ideology and politics of the Volunteer Army.

On the same day (June 13, 1919), he was killed by agents of the Volunteer Army.

General Viktor Leonidovych Pokrovsky describes this murder: "Near the Palace Hotel, where Riabovil lived, there was a car with the engine running. Inside the hotel, under the room of M.S. Riabovil, three figures in military uniforms were milling about in the semi-darkness, caps were pulled over their eyes and collars were raised. When Mykola Riabovil entered the hotel, a fatal shot rang out - three military men, having committed a criminal act, ran out into the street, jumped into a car with headlights off and disappeared. The counter-intelligence agent Kovryzhkin from Captain Baranov's special assignment unit was put on the dock in the case of Riabovil's murder, and the murderous officers disappeared and were not traced."The murder of Riabovil had a great political resonance, various political organizations and parties protested, Kuban was engulfed in mourning, and Kuban Cossacks increased desertion from the Denikin army. This was the beginning of the breakdown of this army and its subsequent defeat by the Bolsheviks.

Memory of Mykola Riabovil
Although the name Ryabovol was banned in the Kuban under Soviet rule, the Kuban Cossacks preserved a song about him in the people's memory:

On the death of Mykola Riabovil


 * (recorded by Dmytro Petrenko)
 * Mourn, Kuban, our dear homeland, Your poor son lies dead.
 * There are no words to say it all, Our beloved, our dear mother.
 * Why does fate punish and reprimand, Our beloved land, so grand?
 * Why does our fierce enemy, Turn our paradise into a hell,
 * A place where we cannot dwell, Where the hangman threatens daily?
 * Why, dear land of ours, Do you lead us to despair?
 * Could you, gentle Kuban, Deserve such pain and strife?
 * Even in this hour of dread, When we defended Ukraine?
 * Sorrow traveled through the valleys, Tears flow like rivers tally.
 * The land weeps and wails, For Mykola, who now trails.
 * Rest, beloved Mykola, do sleep, We will forever your memory keep.
 * For what you did for our people's sake, For freedom's cause, your life you gave.
 * Over your resting place, we vow, Promising to cherish our native land, somehow.
 * We'll learn from you how to defend, To live for freedom till the end,
 * To strive for freedom's lofty goal, To obtain it and make it whole.
 * For the cause of freedom, to sacrifice, To be ready to pay the highest price.
 * Let the earth now turn to pen, So people won't forget again.
 * They will remember and commemorate, In every Kuban home, your fate.
 * Sleep, dear brother, beloved friend, Throughout the land, your loss does send.
 * Thick tears fall, the heart does sway, And to your grave, we bow and pray.

In 1990, at the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the formation of Zaporizhzhya Sich, a delegation of Kuban Cossacks brought a portrait of Riabovil with the inscription "Mykola Riabovil is a national hero of Ukraine. " since 2017 there is a Mykola Riabovil Street in Kyiv.