Volodymyr Zatonsky

Volodymyr Petrovych Zatonsky (; ; July 27, 1888 – July 29, 1938) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician, academic and Communist Party activist, full member of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences (from 1929) and Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (from 1936). He was one of the founders of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine.

Political career

Zatonsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) party as a Menshevik in 1905. In March 1917 he joined the Bolsheviks as the member of the Kyiv Committee, later joining the Kyiv revkom as well. He was one of few who initiated the organization of the Congress of the Workers-Peasants and Soldiers deputies as well as the military coup in Kyiv. Zatonsky participated in the fight against the Central Rada.

When the Red Army took over Kyiv in 1918 after the January Uprising, Zatonsky recalled that he only narrowly escaped execution as a counterrevolutionary when only Vladimir Lenin's mandate saved his life.

At the beginning of 1918 he was the Head of the Ukrainian delegation from the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets for the Brest-Litovsk Peace Conference. From March 19 to April 18, 1918, he was Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee. In July 1918 he was a commissar of a strike force against the Left Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion in Moscow. He also represented the Ukrainian Soviet government in Russian Sovnarkom and was a member of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He personally was offered a position by Lenin as a representative of the Soviet Ukrainian People's Republic in the Russian SFSR.

On November 17–30, 1918, Zatonsky, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko and Joseph Stalin became members of the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) of the Special Group of Kursk Troops. The RMC developed a military-strategic plan for the liberation of Ukraine, and began to staff the front with troops. The headquarters of the formation was located in Kursk. From November 30, 1918, Zatonsky was a member of the RMC of the Ukrainian Soviet Army. In 1920 Zatonsky was chairman of Galrevkom. In 1921 he received the Order of the Red Banner for the suppression of the Kronshtadt mutiny.

Between 1921 and 1923 Zatonsky headed the Ukoopspilka. serving from the academy’s founding in 1932 until the members of the Ukrainian government and their families moved to Kyiv in 1934. From 1934 to 1937, she headed the Ukrainian Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics. She was arrested in 1937.

The family had two children, a son and a daughter.

Son: Dmitry Vladimirovich Zatonsky (1922–2009), a well-known Ukrainian literary scholar and academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.