Introduction

Vladimir Lenin who made the decision to grant the new Ukraine a certain level of independence in its foreign policy in order to gain international recognition for the Ukrainian government. Lenin appointed Khristian Rakovsky as the Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Ukraine a post which he occupied from January 1919 to August 1923, simultaneously with that of Chairman of the Soviet of Peoples Commissars of the Ukraine and member of the Politburo of the Ukrainian Central Committee. Throughout the Civil War, Rakovskys main task was to fortify Soviet authority in the Ukraine, and to impose his own government and administration. He created the Ukrainian Army as a vanguard and conscience of the proletariat in the struggle for freedom on revolutionary fronts both domestic and foreign. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was represented by Lenin and the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Georgii Chicherin, and the Ukraine by Rakovsky.