All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies

All-Ukrainian Congress of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies (Vseukrainskyi Zizd Rad Robitnychykh, Soldatskykh i Selianskykh Deputativ). Congress convened in Kyiv on 17–19 December 1917 by the Bolsheviks and other left-wing parties as the supreme organ of the local soviets. However, the overwhelming majority of elected delegates did not endorse the Bolshevik line, which aimed at creating out of the congress a government opposed to the Central Rada. Of the 2,500 delegates less than 100 sympathized with the Bolsheviks. The latter then left Kyiv and met in Kharkiv on 24–25 December with the Congress of Soviets from the Donets Basin and Kryvyi Rih Basin as the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, which proclaimed Soviet rule in Ukraine. The Kyiv congress proceeded with its work and expressed its support for the Central Rada. The chairman of the Kyiv congress was a Socialist Revolutionary, Arkadii Stepanenko.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]