Pavel (Pavlo) Skoropadsky was a nobleman, large landowner of Poltava and Chernigov governorates. He graduated from the Page Corps (1893). A participant of the Russo-Japanese War. In 1912, he was promoted to Major General, appointed Commander of the Life-Guards Cavalry Regiment, and enlisted in the Retinue of His Imperial Majesty. He was a participant of World War I, awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree (1914).  Lieutenant General (1916). Since January 1917, he was Commander of the 34th Army Corps.

In August 1917, Skoropadsky began to “ukrainize” his corps, renamed to 1st Ukrainian corps. On October 6, the All-Ukrainian Congress of the Free Cossacks in Chigirin elected him General Ataman – Commander-in-Chief of the troops of the Ukrainian Central Rada.

After the October coup of 1917, he announced the transfer of his corps under the Central Rada control. He seized railway stations, blocking the path of movement of pro-Bolshevik units to Kyiv, which actually saved the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR). After Symon Petliura was dismissed from the post of General Secretary for Military Affairs, Skoropadsky entered into conflict with the leaders of the Rada, and late December 1917 saw him resign from all posts. Upon his departure, the Ukrainian army effectively collapsed, Kyiv was occupied by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.

In March 1918, after the restoration of the Central Rada in Kyiv, achieved with the help of the German occupation forces Skoropadsky left the underground and headed the right-wing political organization Ukrainian People’s Hromada (Community).

On April 29, the day after the dispersal of the Central Rada by the German troops, the All-Ukrainian Congress of grain growers (large landowners) held in Kyiv proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian State and elected Skoropadsky its Head, the Hetman of All Ukraine.

As the supreme ruler of the state and the army, he liquidated the institutions of the Central Rada, canceled all revolutionary reforms (large landownership was restored, strikes and congresses of socialist parties were prohibited). He relied on the old bureaucracy and officers, large landowners, and the bourgeoisie. His foreign policy was guided by Germany, he maintained friendly ties with the White movement. Since May 1918, Ukraine was engulfed in a full-scale peasant war.

After the start of the withdrawal of German troops from Ukraine in November 1918, he made unsuccessful attempts to form a coalitional government with socialist parties. On November 14, he proclaimed a federation of the Ukrainian State with the would-be non-Bolshevik Russia, which brought about an uprising of the UPR supporters led by Symon Petliura.

On December 14, he signed a renunciation of power and secretly left for Germany under the guise of a wounded German officer. In exile, he settled with his family in Berlin, the German government gave him a pension. During World War II, Skoropadsky rejected the Nazis’ offers of collaboration. In April 1945, he was shell-shocked during the bombing of Berlin by allied aviation and died in a hospital after a few days.