At this moment the Ukrainian National Republic was struggling to its feet and the demand was growing for a declaration of complete independence which was finally adopted on January 9/22, 1918, as we have seen. It might have been assumed that this coincided with the decrees adopted by the Bolsheviks and that the way was now cleared for the development of an independent Ukraine. Yet this explanation was too simple, for the Bolsheviks had another string to their bow and they had already commenced to play it. The Ukrainian Council was an organization working along democratic lines. The Bolsheviks therefore declared that it did not represent the workers and peasants. After their discomfiture in Kiev in December, 1917 they retired to Kharkiv and there, on December 13, proclaimed the existence of a Ukrainian Soviet Republic which would satisfy the conditions for a real workers’ and peasants’ government. It made no difference to them that the leaders of this movement were not primarily Ukrainian, that its organization had been pushed by various Russian bands which had penetrated into Ukraine, and that its first military support was furnished by Russian Communists. This group appointed a Committee which became the executive body under the name of the All-Ukrainian Revolutionary Committee on January 3, 1918. This consisted of Manuilsky, a Ukrainian who had long lived in Russia, Rakovsky, a Bulgarian or Romanian Jew, Hrynko, and two Ukrainian politicians, Zatonsky and Skrypnyk. They proceeded to carry out the regular Soviet plan of organization and on February 14, announced a federation with the Russian Soviet Republic. The Soviets introduced members of this group at the Conference in Brest Litovsk with the Germans and insisted that it was the true representative government of Ukraine, but they were compelled to recognize the regularly constituted Ukrainian government. The question was more or less academic during the years of civil war, when the Ukrainian government was struggling against overwhelming odds to maintain its new-won independence. Yet in theory it was fighting against the adherents of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, although it was generally recognized that this was but a puppet of the Russian Soviets and that the vast majority of the troops at its command were Russian. However, when the Ukrainian government was finally overwhelmed, the Ukrainian Soviet Government was definitely installed at Kharkiv as the capital of Ukraine and for a short time went through the motions of being an independent state. It sent its own representatives to foreign governments, there was a Ukrainian Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, and on paper all seemed well. At the same time, when there came too open evidence of interference from Moscow with the sovereign Ukrainian Soviet Republic, steps were taken to end such interference.