The Galician Soviet Socialist Republic was a short-lived, self-declared Bolshevik political entity that existed from 15 July to formally 21 September 1920 with the capital in the city of Tarnopol (Ternopil). The communist state was established during a successful counter-offensive of the Red Army in the summer of 1920 as part of the Polish-Soviet War and in the course of which the Polish-Ukrainian joint military force (Polish Ukrainian Front) was forced to retreat from its positions along the Dnieper that it secured earlier in 1920 all the way to the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains.
History
The republic became a buffer zone of the ongoing conflict within the area of the South-Western front of the Red Army. Due to the successful offensive in July 1920, the Soviet government also created the Polrevkom and had intentions of creating the Polish Socialist Soviet Republic. A similar, but less elaborate activity, of the communist Polrevkom, was related to the North-Western front of the Red Army (the "government" was seated in Białystok).
The Galician SSR was established on 15 July 1920 when the Galician Revolutionary Committee (Halrevkom), a revkom (provisional government) headed by Volodymyr Zatonsky (Vladimir Zatonsky) and created on 8 July in Kyiv under the auspices of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks of Ukraine (CP(b)U), issued its declaration.
The communist government moved to Tarnopol in Eastern Galicia on 1 August 1920 upon occupation of the region by the Red Army. The same day the Halrevkom adopted a decree "About establishing of Soviet power in Galicia". The national languages (of equal status) were declared to be Polish, Ukrainian and Yiddish. With its decrees, the communist government abolished private ownership of the means of production, established an eight-hour workday, separated church from state and nationalised church estates, established a single labour school with seven-year education, and nationalised the land. By the end of August, the Halrevkom tried to conduct elections to establish a permanent Soviet government and convene the All-Galician Congress of Soviets.
The Galician Socialist Soviet Republic was severely understaffed, and while released Ukrainian memoirs leave the fate of the erstwhile ZUNR officials unknown, many do mention that local educated Ukrainians worked for the Soviet administration, being afraid of what letting Poles and Jews dominating every administrative ministry would entail. Exemptions from confiscations such as from the Prodrazvyorstka, were also attractive for educated Ukrainians. Bolshevik reports claim that the Western Ukrainian population supported them out of their hatred for Petliura, whose alliance with Poland was seen as betrayal of the Galician state. However, Stephen Velychenko reports that it is yet to be determined just how many Ukrainians worked for the Soviet government, given that the prevalent opinion amongst the Ukrainian population at the time was that Polish rule would be the lesser evil.