COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL SECURITY MEASURES OF UKRAINIAN URBAN RESIDENTS IN 1917–1920

Abstract

The article examines the social phenomenon of self-defense as a societal response to the decline in the effectiveness of official law-enforcement institutions. Under the conditions of the Civil War of 1917–1920, self-defense was a forced and sometimes the only means of achieving relative order within one’s neighborhood. To ensure security, residents of apartment buildings and entire city blocks pooled their efforts. House committees and trade unions organized patrol duties and mutual assistance in case of danger. As a rule, townspeople treated patrol duties formally and at times preferred to pay their way out of this tedious and dangerous obligation. Overall, attempts at self-defense tended to have more of a moral than a practical effect. The purpose of the study is to examine the independent efforts of civilian urban residents to secure their everyday lives under conditions of a permanent socio-political crisis. Methodology. The article places particular emphasis on documents of private origin preserved in state archives. Bringing private sources into scholarly circulation made it possible to examine specific manifestations of everyday practices. The study draws on analyses of personal correspondence, autobiographies, memoirs, media publications, letters and leaflets, with subsequent generalization of their substantive content. Scientific novelty. The authors seek to analyze the nature of spontaneous armed formations in Ukrainian cities, to characterize the social composition of urban self-defense units, and to assess the real results of their activities. The study attempts to examine the qualitative composition of self-defense groups, their transformation over time, and the main functions they performed. It is demonstrated that the most effective groups were armed units composed of workers and former military servicemen. Volunteers obtained weapons either from abandoned military arsenals or from disbanded military units. In some cases, hunting rifles kept in private homes were used for their intended purpose. Conclusions. It is noted that the organization of self-defense, despite all its shortcomings, by its very existence reduced the threat of bandit raids, robberies, and illegal confiscations. This practice became a notable phenomenon in the history of the revolution and the Civil War and served as a vivid demonstration of the capacity of certain social groups for self-organization.