Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada
universal of the Ukrainian Central Council
The Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada (Council) (Ukrainian: Другий Універсал Української Центральної Ради, romanized: Druhyi Universal Ukrainskoi Tsentralnoi Rady) is a state-political act, universal of the Central Rada (Council) of Ukraine, which fixed the agreements between the Ukrainian Central Rada and the Provisional Government of Russian Republic. Proclaimed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko 16 July [O.S. 3 July] 1917 in Kyiv, at a solemn meeting at the Pedagogical Museum in response to a telegram from the Provisional Government to the Central Rada.
Description
According to the Universal, the Provisional Government recognized Ukraine's right to autonomy, and the UCR and the General Secretariat recognized public authorities in Ukraine. Instead, the UCR was forced to agree that the question of the form of autonomy would be finally resolved by the All-Russian Constituent Assembly and to recognize that Ukraine did not claim full state independence. The Central Council accepted the conditions of the Provisional Government to expand its membership at the expense of representatives of national minorities of Ukraine. It undertook to draft laws on Ukrainian autonomy for consideration by the Constituent Assembly of Russia. In fact, the territory of the autonomous Ukrainian People's Republic included the territories of Kyiv, Podil, Volyn, Chernihiv, and Poltava Governorates. As for the army, the Universal states:
As for the manning of military units, the Central Council will have its representatives in the Cabinet of the Minister of War, the General Staff and the Supreme Commander, who will participate in the manning of individual units exclusively by Ukrainians, as such manning, according to the Minister of War, will be technically possible without violating the combat effectiveness of the army.
II Universal is ambiguously perceived by Ukrainians. Many of them regarded him as a betrayal, calling him "the second Pereyaslav." Mykola Mikhnovskyi, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, sharply, partly fair, criticized him.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada” is universal of the Ukrainian Central Council. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Second, Universal and Ukrainian, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12102511. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Second Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.