After the overthrow of the Tsar, in Kiev, as in the rest of Russia, a revolutionary authority had established itself. Unlike in Petrograd the revolutionaries in Ukraine had immediately set up a rudimentary parliamentary forum, the Rada. In this assembly the parties inclined to nationalism, led by the local brand of agrarian Social Revolutionaries, had a clear majority. But no significant voices made a claim to independence. The Ukrainian revolutionaries were anxious to play their part in the ‘triumph of justice . . .’ in Russia.
