UPA battalion History of the creation of the UPA

(UPA) was created on October 14, 1942 by decision of the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN(b) - Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera).

Many historians consider the official date of the creation of the UPA (on the holiday of the Intercession on October 14) to be arbitrary and propaganda and postpone the founding period approximately six months ahead.

The creation of the UPA was preceded by the activities in 1920-1940 of its underground predecessors, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera (OUN).

UPA-OUN detachments operated in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, and Kuban, but achieved some results only in the territories that now make up Western Ukraine. Particular activity was shown in Galicia, Kholmshchyna, Volyn, and Northern Bukovina.

The army was divided into four general military districts: UPA-North (Volyn and Polesie), UPA-West (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia and areas beyond the former Curzon line), UPA-South (Kamenets-Podolsk, Zhitomir, Vinnitsa, southern part of the Kyiv regions ), and UPA-Vostok, which practically did not exist.

In addition to Ukrainians, who were the overwhelming majority, Jews, Russians and other national minorities fought in the UPA. The attitude towards them was extremely cautious, therefore, at the slightest suspicion, they were liquidated by the OUN Security Council.

The number of UPA-OUN is estimated differently by different sources. According to estimates by the commission of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the number of UPA ranged from 20 to 100 thousand people.

The Institute of National Memory of Ukraine, in response to the call of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to move the celebration of Defender of the Fatherland Day from February 23 to another, “more suitable” day, proposed celebrating this holiday on October 14 - the day of the founding of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

The question is raised about the official recognition of the UPA as a belligerent in World War II and the related issue of providing UPA veterans with benefits at the state level.

Requests from the Union of Soviet Officers (in particular from Crimea and Kharkov) were repeatedly made to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to refute statements that the OUN-UPA fought against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War.

Thus, the chairman of the Union of Soviet Officers of Crimea, Sergei Nikulin, turned directly to the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany with a request to help find data on the losses of the Nazis from the actions of the OUN-UPA. In turn, Merkel sent requests to several of Germany's largest research institutes. The first response came from the Research Institute for Military History in Potsdam. “We looked for information in the literature at our disposal, but unfortunately, we did not find any reports of Wehrmacht losses due to the national-Ukrainian organizations of Bandera and the OUN-UPA,” it said.

Subsequently, Nikulin received a letter from the Military Historical Research Institute of Munich. He testified that the institute did not have materials about the losses of the Wehrmacht inflicted on it by underground UPA groups.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

And they continue a series of special projects dedicated to Ukrainians who went through Nazi concentration camps. The publications are based on materials from the exhibition “The Triumph of Man,” which opened on May 8, 2018, on the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, near the Main Post Office in Kyiv and ran until August 23. Researchers at the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement, in collaboration with partners, collected unique materials about people who went through the most difficult trials, but did not lose their human dignity. Previous publications presented information about camp life and customs, a story about women prisoners, about priests who found themselves behind barbed wire, as well as what trials they faced Ukrainian nationalists who ended up in concentration camps. This part of the series contains stories about the fate of prisoners of war.

“WE ARE IN CAMPS AND PRISONS”: UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS IN GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

UKRAINIAN PRIESTS IN NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS

August 22nd, 2012

HAVING left the territory of the USSR in 1944, the Second World War left numerous pockets of nationalist underground on the western outskirts of the country. The most fierce and long-lasting resistance to the restoration of Soviet power took place in Ukraine. This became possible due to the presence of political and military organizations of local nationalist forces there - the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). They managed to bring into their ranks the largest number of active and secret fighters among all similar movements in the USSR (in total during the period of struggle from 400 to 700 thousand). Statistics show that in the period from February 1944 to the end of 1945, Ukrainian nationalist underground fighters carried out about 7,000 armed attacks and sabotage against Soviet troops and administrative structures, which amounted to almost 50% of all similar actions (about 14,500 in total) in the rear of the Red Army during this time. At the same time, to suppress the Ukrainian underground, an unprecedented mobilization of security and ideological bodies was undertaken, among which the leading role belonged to the structures of the NKVD-NKGB (later the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MGB). Regardless of the efforts and sacrifices expended by the USSR, the Ukrainian insurgency was ultimately crushed.
The first combat groups of the UPA appeared in the fall of 1942, and in April 1943, on the eve of the large-scale offensive of the Red Army in Ukraine, supporters of Stepan Bendera managed to create a partisan army of up to 50 thousand active fighters. The UPA was subordinate to the OUN, and the latter exercised political and strategic control of its armed forces on a regional basis. Since 1944, in each regional branch (regional branch) of the OUN there was a post of military assistant who led the headquarters and detachments of the UPA in the territory under his jurisdiction. Almost all commanders, as well as a significant part of the UPA fighters, were members of the OUN, which turned the Ukrainian nationalist partisans into an ideologically homogeneous force.

To begin with, a short educational program based on materials from Wikipedia and slovari.yandex.ru:

Stepan Andreevich Bandera(Ukrainian Stepan Andriyovych Bandera) (January 1, 1909 - October 15, 1959) - one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in Eastern Poland (Galicia), Hero of Ukraine (2010), in 1941-1959 the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN (b)) .

Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)- a nationalist terrorist organization that operated in the western regions of Ukraine in the 20-50s. XX century It emerged in 1929 as the “Ukrainian Military Organization” (UVO), then changed its name. The founder and first leader of the OUN was Yevgen Konovalets, a former colonel of the Austro-Hungarian army. During the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War, he actively participated in the nationalist movement in Ukraine together with S. Petliura. At one time he served as military commandant of Kyiv. The ideological platform of the OUN was the concept of radical Ukrainian nationalism, characterized by chauvinism and xenophobia, which had a pronounced anti-Russian orientation and focused on the use of extremist means to achieve the goal - the creation of an “independent”, “independent” Ukraine.

After the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus in September 1939, the OUN, in cooperation with German intelligence agencies, began the fight against Soviet power. The preservation of the influence of nationalists was greatly facilitated by the methods by which the communist regime was imposed on Western Ukrainian lands. Ukrainian nationalists warmly welcomed the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR and from the first days of the war provided support to German troops and occupation authorities. Members of the OUN helped the German fascists in the “final solution to the Jewish question,” i.e., the extermination and deportation of Jews in the occupied territories, and served in the occupation administration and police. Even when it became completely clear that Hitler would not provide Ukraine with any semblance of “independence,” the nationalists did not stop collaborating with the Nazis. With their active support, the SS division "Galicia" was formed.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is an armed formation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

It operated from the spring of 1943 in the territories that were part of the General Government (Galicia - from the end of 1943, Kholmshchyna - from the autumn of 1943), the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine (Volyn - from the end of March 1943), and Romanian Transnistria (Transnistria) (Northern Bukovina - from summer 1944), which until 1939-1940 were part of Poland and Romania.

In 1943-44. UPA detachments carried out ethnic cleansing of the Polish population in Western Volyn, Kholm region and Eastern Galicia.

In 1943-1944, UPA units acted against Soviet partisans and units of the Polish underground (both communist and subordinate to the London government, i.e. the Home Army).

But about the crimes of the UPA.

The UPA was created on October 14, 1942 by decision of the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). It was headed by Roman Shukhevych, a holder of two knightly orders of Nazi Germany. President Yushchenko declared him a hero of Ukraine, and he is trying to present the UPA itself as a belligerent during the Second World War.

Meanwhile, there is not a single document indicating that UPA detachments fought with large Wehrmacht forces. But there are more than enough documents about the joint actions of Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis. And even more documents tell about the fanaticism committed by the “national hero” Roman Shukhevych and his brothers in arms.

It is known for sure that the published newspaper “Surma”, bulletins and other nationalist literature were printed in Germany. Some nationalist literature was published illegally in Lviv and other cities of Western Ukraine. Recently, the Russian Foreign Ministry published documents. Here are some of them:

The head of the 4th Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR, Pavel Sudoplatov, in a message dated December 5, 1942, testifies: “Ukrainian nationalists, who had previously been underground, met the Germans with bread and salt and provided them with all kinds of assistance. The German occupiers widely used nationalists to organize the so-called “new order” in the occupied regions of the Ukrainian SSR.

From the Protocol of interrogation of Ivan Tikhonovich Kutkovets, an active Bandera member. February 1, 1944:
“Despite the fact that, at the behest of the Germans, Bandera proclaimed an “independent” Ukraine, the Germans delayed the issue of creating a national Ukrainian government... It was not profitable for the Germans to create a Ukrainian national government, they “conquered” Ukraine and considered it an eastern colony of the “Third Empire” and power over They did not want to share Ukraine with Bandera and they removed this rival. In addition, at this time, the Ukrainian police, created by the OUN members, carried out active security service in the rear of the German army to fight partisans, detain Soviet paratroopers and look for Soviet party activists.”

The circular “On the treatment of members of the UPA”, issued on 12.2.44, by the so-called Prützmann combat group, also deserves attention. It makes it clear how the UPA “fought” the Germans a year and a half after its creation:

“Negotiations with the leaders of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army that began in the Derazhnya area are now also continuing in the Verba area. We agreed: members of the UPA will not attack German military units. The UPA currently sends scouts, mostly girls, into enemy-occupied territory and reports the results to a representative of the battle group's intelligence department. Captured Red Army soldiers, as well as captured persons belonging to Soviet gangs, will be delivered to a representative of the intelligence department for interrogation, and the newly arrived element will be transferred to the combat group for assignment to various works. In order not to interfere with this necessary cooperation for us, it is ordered:

1. UPA agents who have certificates signed by a certain “Captain Felix”, or who pose as members of the UPA, should be allowed through without hindrance, and weapons should be left with them. Upon request, agents are to be immediately brought to the 1st (Intelligence Branch Representative) Battle Group.

2. When UPA units meet German units for identification, they raise their left outstretched hand to their faces, in this case they will not be attacked, but this can happen if fire is opened from the opposite side...

Signed: Brenner, Major General and SS-Brigadefuehrer."

Another “heroic” stage in the history of Ukrainian nationalists and personally the UPA commander Roman Shukhevych was the fight against Belarusian partisans. Historian S.I. Drobyazko in his book “Under the Enemy’s Banners. Anti-Soviet formations within the German armed forces” writes that in 1941, on the territory of Belarus, the first Ukrainian police battalions were already formed from Red Army prisoners of war.
“Most of the Ukrainian auxiliary police battalions carried out security service on the territory of the Reichskommissariats, others were used in anti-partisan operations - mainly in Belarus, where, in addition to the battalions already created here, a number of units were sent from Ukraine, including 101, 102, 109, 115, 118 , 136th, 137th and 201st battalions.

Their actions, like the actions of other similar units involved in punitive actions, were associated with numerous war crimes against the civilian population. The most famous of which was the participation of a company of the 118th battalion under the command of the cornet V. Meleshko in the destruction of the village of Khatyn on March 22, 1943, when 149 civilians died, half of whom were children,” he writes.

And now - a word for the Banderaites themselves. This is what was published in 1991 in No. 8 of the Vizvolny Shlyakh edition, which was published in London:
“In Belarus, the 201st Ukrainian battalion was not concentrated in one place. His soldiers, in numbers and hundreds, were scattered across different strongholds... After arriving in Belarus, the kuren received the task of guarding bridges on the Berezina and Western Dvina rivers. Departments stationed in populated areas were charged with protecting the German administration. In addition, they had to constantly comb forest areas, identify and destroy partisan bases and camps,” writes Bandera member M. Kalba in this publication.

“Each hundred guarded the square assigned to it. The 3rd hundred of Lieutenant Sidor were in the south of the zone of responsibility of the Ukrainian battalion, the 1st hundred of ROMAN SHUKHEVICH were in the center... Chasing the partisans in unfamiliar territory, the soldiers fell into an enemy ambush and were blown up by mines... The battalion spent nine months in the “partisan front" and gained invaluable combat experience in this struggle. According to approximate data, the legionnaires destroyed more than two thousand Soviet partisans,” he notes.

As they say, no comments. Even the Banderaites themselves directly indicate what the “national hero” Shukhevych was doing in Belarus. One can only guess what kind of Ukraine he fought for against the fraternal Belarusian people.

Finally, in 1943-1944. UPA detachments in Volyn and Galicia exterminated over 100 thousand Poles. The Polish publication “Na Rubieїy” (Nr 35, 1999), published by the Volyn Foundation, describes 135 methods of torture and atrocities that UPA soldiers applied to the Polish civilian population, including children.

Here are just a few of these extravagances:
001. Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
002. Ripping off hair and skin from the head (scalping).
003. Hitting the skull of the head with the butt of an ax...
005. Carving on the forehead “eagle” (Polish coat of arms)…
006. Driving a bayonet into the temple of the head. ..
012. Piercing children through with stakes.
016. Throat cutting….
022. Closing mouths with tow while transporting still living victims...
023. Cutting the neck with a knife or sickle… .
024. Hitting the neck with an ax...
039. Cutting off women's breasts with a sickle.
040. Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling salt on the wounds.
041. Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
042. Sawing the body in half with a carpenter's saw.
043. Causing puncture wounds to the abdomen with a knife or bayonet.
044. Piercing a pregnant woman's stomach with a bayonet.
045. Cutting open the abdomen and pulling out the intestines of adults...
069. Sawing the body, lined with boards on both sides, in half with a carpenter's saw...
070. Sawing the body in half with a special saw.
079. Nailing the tongue of a small child, who later hung on it, to the table with a knife….
080. Cutting a child into pieces with a knife and throwing them around...
090. Hanging a monk by his feet near the pulpit in a church.
091. Placing a child on a stake.
092. Hanging a woman upside down from a tree and mocking her - cutting off her breasts and tongue, cutting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and also cutting off pieces of her body with knives...
109. Tearing the torso with chains...
126. Cutting off the skin from the face with blades...
133. Nailing hands to the threshold of a home...
135. Dragging a body along the ground by legs tied with a rope.
Let us only add that the list of UPA crimes is by no means limited to this. Their victims were Russians, Czechs, Jews, but most of all... the Ukrainians themselves, who did not actively cooperate with them.

OUN - Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - an illegal organization that tried to implement the idea of ​​​​creating an independent Ukrainian state.

The predecessor of the OUN was the illegal patriotic Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), whose members were mainly former soldiers of the Ukrainian armed forces. They did not reconcile themselves with the defeat of the liberation movement of 1917-1920. and decided to continue the struggle for the independence of all occupied Ukrainian lands. The UVO was headed by E. Konovalets.

The OUN created the First Congress, later called the Great Gathering of the OUN, held in Vienna on January 28 - February 3, 1929. The OUN included 3 main structures that existed separately until then:

1. Ukrainian military organization (UVO), more precisely, officers and soldiers of the Ukrainian armies of the recent liberation period, whose activities until that time were mainly political and terrorist;
2. Nationalist groups abroad, primarily in Prague, Berlin and Vienna such as the “Group of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth”, “League of Ukrainian Nationalists”, “Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Organizations”;
3.Nationalist groups in Western Ukrainian lands such as the “Group of Ukrainian Statist Youth” and the “Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth”.

The Conduct (Leadership) of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN) was approved in the following composition: Chairman (Conductor of the OUN) - E. Konovalets, members - D. Andrievsky, Yu. Vasyan, D. Demchuk, M. Kapustyansky, P. Kozhevnikiv, L. Kostariv , V. Martinets, M. Sciborsky; the chief judge of the OUN is Y. Dub, the chief controller is Y. Moralevich. The Great Gathering became the main body of the OUN.

The idea of ​​the struggle for a conciliar sovereign Ukraine permeated all speeches, discussions, and resolutions of the Congress. The means to achieve the goal was proclaimed to be a revolutionary, forceful struggle against all enslavers of the Ukrainian people.

The OUN set itself the task of creating normal living conditions for the people, awakening national consciousness in them, putting it at the service of the development of statehood, so that the Ukrainian nation would take its proper place among other state nations of the world.

In a number of countries in post-war Europe, a form of political government with a single leader-chief gained popularity. The OUN leadership believed that it was this form that was most effective in the struggle for the restoration of a sovereign Ukrainian state.

In contrast to Ukrainian politicians, who saw national liberation in the context of universal political and diplomatic paths, nationalist ideologues leaned towards armed methods. Their liberation concept was based on the principle of “permanent revolution”. An uninterrupted chain of sabotage, sabotage and terrorist acts, active and passive resistance of the entire people was supposed to lead to a powerful explosion of the national revolution, which would certainly end with the revival of Ukrainian statehood.

The OUN adopted violence as a political weapon against external and internal enemies. The main part of the organization's activities was directed against the Polish regime. Under the leadership of the Regional Executive (executive body) in Western Ukrainian lands, the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volyn with arson of the estates of Polish landowners (which provoked “Pacification” in 1930), boycotts of public schools and the Polish tobacco and vodka monopoly, dozens of expropriations attacks on government agencies in order to obtain capital for their activities, as well as about 60 murders. The most prominent victims of the organization were the Polish high-ranking official B. Peratsky, the official of the Soviet consulate A. Mailov (killed in retaliation for the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine) and I. Babiy, director of the Ukrainian Academic Gymnasium in Lvov (a Ukrainian accused of collaborating with Polish police).

Members of the OUN were mainly students and youth. There is no reliable data on the size of the organization, but according to some estimates, in 1939 it reached 20 thousand people.

The main publications of the OUN were the legal magazine "Development of the Nation" and the illegal "Bulletin of the Regional Executive of the OUN at ZUZ", "Gorn", "Youth", "Nationalist" and "Ukrainian Nationalist". A certain number of legal newspapers in Western Ukraine were under strong nationalist influence.

An ally was needed in the struggle for independence. The OUN leaders saw Germany as such an ally. It is clear that the ally state was not interested in the emergence of a new independent state, however, the governments of many countries supported anti-Soviet movements to weaken the USSR. During 1934 - 1937 a number of leading members of the OUN were seconded to England, Japan and Italy.

To achieve the set goals, it was decided to use any tactics, methods and means of struggle, including terror. Tactics of action, in particular combat and sabotage-terrorist acts against the occupiers, were discussed at the OUN conference in Berlin in June 1934.

A supporter of the need for military and terrorist actions was the regional conductor of the OUN (regional conductor - leader in a specific territory) in the Western Ukrainian lands of S. Bandera.

E. Konovalets also believed that military and terrorist actions are necessary, but are allowed only as self-defense against the terror of the occupiers. The defensive nature of military operations gives members of the organization the moral right to open political struggle, gaining authority among the population and in the international arena. The sabotage and terrorist actions of the OUN members were the result of brutal resistance to the no less brutal colonial policy of the Polish authorities. And during the reign of Marshal Pilsudski and his successors, nothing was done to change or even soften this policy.

E. Konovalets was killed on May 23, 1938 in Rotterdam. The death of E. Konovalets led to the question of who should become his successor. Fundamental differences emerged between OUN members in Western Ukraine and abroad. The regional cadres, who bore the main burden of the underground struggle, consisted of young people who aspired to leadership. They unconditionally adopted authoritarian ideas and methods. D. Dontsov, who promoted the cult of will and strength, had a strong influence on their worldview. Senior OUN leaders showed a tendency towards greater conservatism. Onatski and Sciborski, for example, emphasized the positive features of Italian fascism, but condemned Nazism.

The second large congress of the OUN, which was held in Rome on August 27, 1939, elected A. Melnik as chairman of the organization and gave him the title of “leader,” declaring him responsible only “before God, the nation and his own conscience.” At the Second Congress of the OUN, an attempt was made to develop a holistic ideological and political program.

In accordance with this program, the future state should be built on the principle of “nationocracy,” that is, “the power of the nation in the state.” It was proclaimed that the head of the state, at the will of the nation, will be the chairman of the state - the Leader of the Nation, who must symbolize the sovereignty and unity of the nation, lead the armed forces, lead the state through the responsible executive authorities subordinate to him and before him

The OUN program did not claim to be original and did not represent a turning point in the development of Ukrainian political thought. It was a compilation of nationalist programs that took into account Ukrainian reality.

During the meetings of the Roman Congress, its participants received news of the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Despite this, the leadership of the movement did not change its attitude towards the German ally.

The German-Polish war ended unexpectedly for Ukrainians, because... in September 1939, Western Ukrainian lands were occupied by the Bolsheviks, who formally did not participate in the war.

Assessing the situation as favorable for the development of a large-scale anti-Soviet struggle, foreign OUN centers at the turn of 1939-1940. began accelerated preparations for an armed uprising in Ukraine.

With the beginning of this activity in the OUN, a clear tendency emerged towards a division of views on the success of the future action between the old emigration members of the OUN and the revolutionary-minded youth. The emigrants, led by PUN, did not see the possibility of carrying out an effective armed uprising, considering it a waste of human energy and lives. A. Melnyk and his inner circle were inclined to think about the need to withdraw the majority of OUN members from Ukraine to the General Governorate (the territory of Poland occupied by the Germans), and the rest to carry out, first of all, agitation and propaganda work and prepare for sabotage and local armed uprisings only in in the event of the outbreak of war between the USSR and neighboring states. The main forces of the OUN were planned to be trained with the help of German military instructors in the General Governorate and, during the Wehrmacht campaign against the USSR, to be used in the fight against Bolshevism as a separate allied Ukrainian army. For this purpose, the Ukrainian-German military bureau, headed by Colonel R. Sushko, was active in Krakow.

In contrast to the old emigrants, young and radical OUN members considered the position of PUN to be amorphous, non-revolutionary, and harmful. They demanded that the leadership of the Organization immediately develop and send detailed instructions to Ukraine for organizing an uprising. The OUN youth, overly optimistic, believed that an uprising in Ukraine could really shake the foundations of Soviet power (at least in the Western Ukrainian region), prove to the world community the people’s desire for independence, and, most importantly, create an unstable situation on the eastern borders of the Third Reich, forcing Berlin to intervene in these events and start a war against the USSR even if the German government has no such plans. Young radicals saw the need to develop organizational work in four directions - preparing and carrying out an uprising in the Ukrainian SSR, creating nationalist military units abroad, general military training of OUN members in the General Governorate and providing the rebels in Ukraine with personnel, plans, instructions, maps, manuals, etc. .

Back in early January 1940, S. Bandera, together with his like-minded people, decided to significantly strengthen the OUN underground in the Ukrainian SSR. For this purpose, shock groups of 5 to 20 people were formed from people trained in illegal work, who were sent to the Ukrainian SSR and were supposed to lead the underground, create rebel and sabotage detachments.

These groups consisted of two parts: the first had an organizational task, and the second, smaller one, provided security when crossing the border and immediately returned back. The groups' weapons consisted of one light machine gun, rifles, pistols and hand grenades (two for each militant). They always crossed the border at night, usually in wooded areas. They took few things, they tried to memorize the instructions and orders of the management, all members of the group had with them false documents, real Soviet money and foreign currency (the latter was sewn into shoes or clothes). Such a detachment began its movement to the east after intelligence officers from the OUN Security Service (SB) reported the passage of a German border patrol on a pre-selected section of the border.

The final split occurred at the Krakow OUN congress in February 1940, where the Revolutionary Faction of the OUN was created, called OUN-B, after Bandera, in contrast to the OUN-M, which remained headed by Melnik. Bandera's supporters postulated a transition to military action, the organization of a partisan movement in the territories of Ukraine that belonged to or were recently included in the USSR, and dissociation from movements that were blindly oriented toward Nazi Germany. The Melnikovites, who were oriented toward Germany, considered partisan actions on the territory of the USSR an adventure and drew attention to the need to preserve forces for decisive actions, the time for which had not yet come. During the war, the OUN-B adopted the name Revolutionary OUN (OUN-R).

In preparation for the war against the USSR, certain circles in Germany, in particular the military intelligence (Abwehr) of the Wehrmacht, headed by Canaris, wanted to use the Ukrainians’ desire for independence in their own interests. The Abwehr planned to use various groups of Ukrainians, and in particular OUN members, as saboteurs in front-line communications, translators at military units, in various positions in the lower and middle administration in the occupied territory, to collect intelligence information.

There were also politicians in Germany who completely rejected cooperation with Ukrainian nationalists, considering them possible rivals. The relevant services of the National Socialist Party controlled the activities of Ukrainian nationalists. In a memo dated September 17, 1940, A. Schickendants, an employee of the "East" department of the Nazi Party's foreign policy department, warned of the danger from the OUN, pointing out its hostile attitude towards the Reich. He emphasized that this organization has the support of intelligence chief Canaris, and this could have political consequences in the future. Kanaris noted that the OUN could not lay claim to a political role. Canaris responded that he did not consider it appropriate to ban an organization that had influence on the Ukrainian emigration and contributed to its unification. S. Bandera met with Canaris, to whom he clearly and clearly presented the Ukrainian positions and received his full support for the Ukrainian political concept.

There were other thoughts in the Nazi leadership. In a letter dated September 18, 1940, addressed to the head of the Gestapo and SD, Heydrich Schickendanz, noted that after the Soviet occupation of Galicia, the OUN lost its political significance, therefore one should not support its activities, which threaten the security of the German state. Fearing that Western states would not use Ukrainians against Germany, the Nazi Party's foreign policy bureau invited the relevant services to spread rumors about a future solution to the Ukrainian issue, imagining that after defeating England and France, Germany would be able to fight the Bolsheviks, drive them out of Poland and thus will create an independent Ukraine. Such statements were aimed at reassuring Ukrainians and creating the illusion of attention to the Ukrainian issue.

In the prepared memo on the future occupation of the USSR dated April 2, 1941, it is noted: “Ukraine (outlying region)... The political task in this area will be the establishment of its own national life for the possible creation of a political formation, the goal of which would be to independently or as part of the Don and Caucasus regions in the form of the Black Sea Confederation, constantly opposed Moscow and protected German living space in the East."

One of Rosenberg’s instructions to the Reich Commissioner of Ukraine dated May 7, 1941 envisaged the future creation of a free Ukrainian state, closely connected with Germany. Rosenberg emphasized that in Ukraine it is necessary to develop certain aspirations for independence, historical consciousness, culture, allow the opening of a university in Kyiv, etc.

On the Ukrainian lands that were part of the General Governorate created on the territory of Poland, the Germans allowed the opening of Ukrainian schools, cultural societies, and religious life revived. Help and support committees emerged for refugees who arrived from the USSR. To coordinate their activities, in June 1940, with the consent of the Germans, the Ukrainian Central Committee was created.

The plans of the OUN-B leaders were based on the hope of a long war that would destroy both sides. As they are exhausted, Ukrainian state authorities and troops will be formed, which over time will become the dominant force in the occupied Ukrainian territory. Then it will be possible to dictate your own terms and launch extensive activities to create your own state. The organization's primary task was to prevent Ukraine from becoming an object of foreign ownership. States that will be at war with totalitarian Russia, and that will not pose a threat to Ukraine, will be considered its allies. Relations between Ukraine and such countries will depend on whether the latter recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Concerned about the activation of the OUN-B and reports from their foreign agents about the nationalists preparing a general uprising for April-May 1940, the Soviet special services carried out mass arrests of all those suspected of involvement in the underground. The strongest blows were inflicted on Lviv, Ternopil, Rivne and Volyn regions. More than six hundred members of the organization were sent to prison, among whom were senior cadres.

Such impressive successes of the NKVD were explained, first of all, by the widespread arrests among socially active youth, and especially among the population, which, according to the order of the command of the NKVD of the USSR of October 11, 1939, “On the introduction of a unified system for recording anti-Soviet elements identified by an undercover search,” was subject to special registration . These “enemies of the Soviet order” included all former members of legal parties operating in Poland, national, religious and youth organizations, previously convicted by the Soviet government and family members of “counter-revolutionaries” shot by the Bolsheviks, citizens who had relatives abroad, etc.

Most of the young people were arrested on the standard charge of organizing a “gang.” It was not difficult to prove such “guilt”. The “humane” Soviet legislation (Article 56, paragraph 17 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR) gave a surprisingly convenient definition for the investigation of the concept of “gang”. Thus, an “armed gang” was considered a group of people that had three characteristics: a) two or more members; b) at least one of the “bandits” had to be armed with any weapon (an axe, a bayonet, a pitchfork, and a scythe also fell into the “weapon” category); c) gang members have the intention to commit a crime. Thanks to this formulation, the NKVD investigative teams could detain any two rural guys with pitchforks and declare them a “gang”, accusing them of intending (!) to commit some kind of “crime”.

In order to intimidate the underground and the entire population of the region, the NKVD investigative authorities selected eleven leaders of the Organization from among those arrested for a public trial. The nationalists were tried on October 29, 1940 in an open court in Lvov and all but one were sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on February 20, 1941. For the same purpose, in 1941, a number of show trials were held in the case of arrested OUN members.

So, on January 15-19, 1941, the “Trial of 59” took place in Lvov. On May 7, 1941, a new, this time even larger trial began in Drohobych - 62 OUN members were tried, on May 12-13 in the same Drohobych they were already tried 39 Ukrainian nationalists. Their result: executions and long camp sentences.

However, the result of total intimidation turned out to be the opposite - the underground members became more active, once again, convinced that from the “workers’ and peasants’ power” there was only one sentence for them - death, and in the eyes of the population the authority of the OUN only grew.

The entire Ukrainian ethnic territory in the zone of German occupation of Poland was covered with a dense network of various military courses and training. Separate elements of military and ideological training were studied: drill training, weapons design, protection against gas attacks, first aid, terrain orientation, topography, composition and organization of the army, the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. Those who were capable were selected for special courses in Krakow. There, training was carried out for three months and fourteen teachers worked with eighteen cadets. Listeners were given thorough knowledge of all military disciplines, the ideology of nationalism, geopolitics, underground organizational activities, propaganda, intelligence and counterintelligence, the system of government in the USSR, the structure of the Soviet security agencies and the Red Army, criminology, interrogation, police service, photography, Japanese wrestling (karate). The lecture courses were developed in quite detail; in their preparation, materials from the military and police academies of Germany and Poland were used, as well as OUN intelligence data on the system of military exercises in the USSR. Classes on the courses were daily, they lasted for eight hours. The exams were carried out in a creative form - the cadet was tasked with writing a call for an uprising, developing a plan for an armed uprising in a specific area (based on the existing location of enemy forces, terrain features, underground capabilities, etc.), describing a scheme for organizing government life and the police in a particular territory areas, etc. The examiners at the Krakow courses were R. Shukhevych and J. Stetsko. Separate staff courses operated in Krakow for OUN members who had military ranks. The program of such military training was modeled on the training programs for officers in foreign armies known to nationalists.

The situation in the General Government was such that the nationalists could carry out theoretical military exercises relatively freely, but practice related to live firing, maneuvers, construction of field fortifications, etc., without the consent of the Germans was impossible. The only real way to obtain permission from the Germans to conduct combat training for OUN-B members was to strengthen contacts with the Wehrmacht intelligence agency Abwehr. The nationalists, in exchange for intelligence information about the USSR, received the opportunity to train their fighters and commanders in paramilitary work teams, police schools in Kholm and Przemysl, etc. Several hundred Bandera members underwent special training in sabotage work in Abwehr camps in Zakopane, Krinitsa, and Comanche. The OUN used the opportunity to fill military units with its members on conditions that did not entail political or military obligations, but which made it possible to conduct full-fledged military training.

In each district of western Soviet Ukraine, there were from 5 to 20 OUN intelligence officers who collected and transmitted information to the district leadership about units of the Red Army, internal troops of the NKVD, their weapons, deployment, command and rank and file, locations of commanders’ families, military facilities, the possibility of sabotage on them, etc. This data was used both in developing plans for the uprising and for transfer to the Germans (as payment for the provided logistical and monetary assistance).

The efforts of the OUN members to penetrate all sorts of military or paramilitary formations in order to receive military training created the illusion of Germany assisting the Ukrainians in solving the “Ukrainian problem” in the near future. The spring months of 1941 also saw the intensification of the counterintelligence activities of the OUN Security Service (SB), which exposed the NKVD agents and also carried out purges in the ranks of the organization. The Security Service took the entire underground into the steel grip of discipline - Security Service officers acted under the regional, district, and district leadership of the OUN-B. In each lower cell of the organization there worked a secret informant for the Esbists.

At this time, with the permission and help of the Germans, two military formations numbering about 600 people were created. "Nachtigall" and "Roland". The Germans hoped that these units would assist the offensive of the troops. The OUN wanted to make them the basis of the national army.

On June 15, 1941, the leadership of the OUN-B developed a “Memorandum” to the German government, which expressed the conviction that a solution to the Ukrainian question, which meets the “historical and popular interests of Ukraine, will also benefit Germany. German troops upon entering Ukraine will be greeted as liberators, but This attitude may change if Germany comes “to Ukraine without the intention of restoring the Ukrainian state...”.

The “Memorandum” emphasized that Ukraine must create its own economic zone in the European economic space in order to be independent economically. Therefore, there was a demand for the formation of Ukrainian armed forces to protect the Ukrainian state and a newly organized eastern space.

The “Memorandum” was handed over to the German government only on June 23, 1941, that is, the day after the start of the war.

On June 22, 1941, a meeting of representatives of various political parties in exile with the participation of S. Bandera was held in Krakow, at which the Ukrainian National Committee (UNC) was created. His task is to lead and develop activities to improve state life in Ukraine. During the meeting, those present learned about the beginning of the war.

Deciding to build an independent state, both factions of the OUN sent secret derivative groups to Ukraine with the goal of establishing local government bodies from conscious Ukrainians. Their number was about 2000 people. (mainly members of the OUN-B. These groups were active in big cities. The OUN-M group, which reached Kiev in September 1941, published the newspaper “Ukrainian Word” and formed the Ukrainian National Council (led by Velichkovsky), which consisted mainly of eastern Ukrainians. Its members were arrested in December 1941, and over 40 of them, in particular E. Teliga and their leader O. Olzhych, were arrested and shot immediately, some died in A. Melnik at Babi Yar. He was kept under house arrest in Berlin until January 1944, when, together with other arrested leading OUN-M figures, he was sent to the Saxenghausen concentration camp.

The management launched activities to train government bodies, other government agencies, and newspaper editorial offices.

The special group, having reached Lvov on June 28, 1941, initiated the holding of a national Assembly, which on June 30 declared the independence of Ukraine. A provisional government was called in, led by OUN-B member Yaroslav Stetsko. The Declaration of an Independent Ukraine, not agreed upon with the Germans, was a conscious and risky attempt to confront them with a fait accompli. Stetsko's government received support from the leaders of many political groups. However, the blessing of Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky, who was considered a symbol of Ukrainian patriotism, was decisive. July 1 at the Cathedral of St. Yura, a thanksgiving service was held in honor of the liberation of Lvov from Soviet occupation. During the service, Sheptytsky’s proclamation was read, in which it was noted that, by the will of God, a new era had begun in the life of a state, conciliar, independent Ukraine and that the national Assembly, which took place yesterday in Lvov, proclaimed and confirmed this historical event. In the first ten days of July, the Ukrainian National Council was created - a kind of parliament - headed by K. Levitsky. The declaration of an independent Ukraine was received with enthusiasm by the majority of Ukrainian society, and was accompanied by numerous rallies and thanksgiving services. This was - as it later turned out - the peak of success of the concept of “nationalist revolution” carried out by the OUN-B.

The call of the Stetsko government was strongly opposed by Melnyk’s group, which spoke out in favor of short-term cooperation with the Germans and tried to create a regular Ukrainian army under the Wehrmacht. The UCC in Krakow, led by Kubijovic, also treated the declared independence with restraint.

The Germans did not expect such a development of events and on July 11 they arrested Stetsko and four of his employees. Bandera was also detained. In Berlin, where they were transported, they demanded the revocation of the act on June 30, 1941. Bandera and his comrades did not agree to this and in September they were imprisoned in a camp in Saxenhausen. In the Ukrainian politics of the Third Reich, Himmler’s concept, the direct executor of which was E. Koch, was victorious. It assumed the transformation of Ukraine into a German colony, in contrast to Rosenberg’s concept, which envisaged the creation of a German satellite - the Ukrainian state. A blow to the groups that were oriented towards an alliance with the Germans, first of all, was the proclamation (August 1, 1941) of the decision to annex the eastern part of Poland and the southern part of Volyn to the General Governorate, and then the cession of the Odessa district to Romania. Ukraine became the object of merciless German exploitation. Only to preserve apparent decency, the General Volyn-Podolsk Commissariat was established with leadership in Brest and a puppet Ukrainian Council, and a Ukrainian university was created in Rivne. Ukrainian elements were supported in territories where they were in the minority and when it suited German interests. Despite the collapse of hopes to quickly achieve freedom for Ukraine, most organizations that were still favorable to Germany sought to further cooperate with the Germans.

The liquidation of the Stetsko government and the imprisonment of OUN-B activists caused the remaining at large to go underground. The leadership of the OUN-B was taken over by one of Bandera's closest associates, Nikolai Lebed; The Germans offered a high reward for his capture. Many figures and supporters of the OUN-B were repressed. The German authorities expressly noted that they would not tolerate any manifestations of Ukrainian independence.

Thus, neither the declarations of nationalists of loyalty to the Germans, nor the search for ways to cooperate with them were successful. The Nazis did not need political partners who sought their own independent state. The collapse of hopes of obtaining a Ukrainian state in cooperation with Germany forced the OUN-B to take an anti-German position. The German repressive policy regarding members of the organization also pushed for this decision. In September 1941, on the eve of the capture of Kyiv, the Gestapo arrested and executed many OUN members. Both Ukrainian formations were removed from the front and disbanded. A police battalion was created from them and sent to Belarus to protect the Wehrmacht's rear communications. The battalion commander was E. Pobigushchiy, and his deputy was R. Shukhevych.

The OUN went underground and began intensive preparations for armed struggle. This decision of the OUN was the first response of the warring Ukraine to the aggressive Germany. In September 1941, N. Lebed held the OUN (First) conference, at which it was decided to continue the activities begun by the Ukrainian government, to launch widespread propaganda of the ideas and slogans of the liberation struggle, it was prescribed to collect and store weapons, and to train new personnel for the liberation struggle.

The occupation authorities were concerned that the resistance of Ukrainian nationalists had intensified. Numerous reports noted that OUN members penetrated the administration, police and other structures to develop activities in favor of Ukrainian statehood and armed resistance. Hitler’s intelligence services came to the conclusion: “Among different ethnic groups, Ukrainian nationalism should be considered the strongest political movement. S. Bandera’s movement has become an illegal and mainly anti-German organization.

The further program of activity of the OUN-B was outlined at the Second Conference in April 1942. Its resolutions emphasized that the organization in its struggle for the statehood of Ukraine is guided by the principles proclaimed by the Act of June 30, 1941, since it declared the desire of the Ukrainian people to live their own political life. Nationalists need to take into account the possibility of armed struggle and choose the moment for it when both opponents have exhausted themselves. Therefore, now we need to direct all our energy to preparing a nationwide uprising that will ensure victory. To do this, it is necessary to create our own armed forces.

On the issue of the future political structure of independent Ukraine, contrary to the Bolshevik concept of internationalism and the German concept of the so-called “New Europe,” the OUN-B put forward its own concept of a fair national-political-economic restructuring of Europe on the basis of free national states under the slogan “Freedom for peoples and people!”

At this time, i.e. from the spring of 1942, military cadres of the OUN-B began to form Ukrainian National Self-Defense units in Volyn under the command of S. Kachinsky and I. Peregiynyak. By the summer, there were already over 600 fighters who became the core of the future rebel army.

One of the German documents indicated that in the propaganda of nationalists, statements about the fight against Bolshevism, which was now directed against the Nazi occupiers, were disappearing.

The first OUN armed formations in Volyn finally took shape in October 1942. First, they fought against Soviet partisans and detachments of the Polish underground Home Army (AK), who terrorized the rural population. Soon they came out against the Germans, who were en masse catching young people to transport them to the Reich and plundering the population.

In February 1943, the leadership of the OUN-B convened the Third Conference, at which an analysis of previous activities was made and tasks for the future were outlined. The resolutions of the conference stated that Ukraine was between the rock and the hard place of two enemy forces - German and Soviet imperialism, therefore the Ukrainian people must fight relying on their own strength. The struggle of Ukrainians must be based on the principle of recognition by other peoples and states of the right of the Ukrainian people to independence. It was emphasized that the OUN-B opposes cooperation with the Germans, since their support is actually support for German imperialism against Ukraine. Ukrainians who joined armed groups created by the Germans were condemned. They should not serve as cannon fodder for foreign troops whose goal is to further enslave the Ukrainian people.

The anti-Hitler Resistance movement began with the formation of the Polesie Sich, led by Taras Borovets (Bulba), who collaborated with the OUN-M. In the fall of 1942, both factions formed armed detachments in Volhynia and Polesie to fight the Germans and Soviet partisans.

Bandera's armed formations were replenished by young people who were hiding from being deported to Germany, as well as by the local Ukrainian police, who joined their ranks. In the first half of April 1943, Bandera controlled the territory of Volyn and a significant part of Polesie. Some territories were controlled by Soviet partisans and the formations of T. Borovets, who operated under the name of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Bulba and most of his followers, former officers of the UPR army, had military experience and prepared for war in advance, hoping to maintain contact with the OUN, which A. Melnik began to lead in August 1939. When, over the course of a year, the OUN split into two groups, Borovets decided to stay separate, considering himself superior and more organized. Hostility began, especially when he sent invitations to enter his system and formed a new Ukrainian government.

In the summer of 1943, negotiations were held between the Bandera, Melnik and Bulbovites about joint actions, but did not produce positive results.

After some time, T. Borovets’ troops were disarmed. The OUN-B detachments received the name into which many Melnikovsky detachments joined.

To destroy the UPA detachments, the German special services equipped punitive expeditions, sent security troops, and sometimes regular troops. There were also battles between the UPA and Soviet partisans, whom the OUN members also considered enemies who supported Moscow’s desire to establish its power on Ukrainian soil. Among the Soviet partisans, in whose units there were many Ukrainians, the Soviet leadership carried out propaganda against the UPA soldiers. They were called “bourgeois nationalists”, “traitors” who sold the Ukrainian people to the bourgeois West and sought to establish the power of landowners and capitalists in Ukraine and many believed this propaganda.

The Germans took advantage of national hostility, pitting the Poles against the Ukrainians, and vice versa. Against the OUN rebels, as well as against the Soviet partisans, formations from the Soviet military created by the Germans, which included representatives of different nationalities, were used. The tragedy was that in the duel two powerful totalitarian systems were intertwined - Stalinism and Hitlerism, and the people of many countries perished. Fate was especially unkind to the unprotected, stateless Ukrainians who found themselves on both sides of the front, dressed in different uniforms and considering each other enemies.

In August 1943, under the protection of the UPA behind German lines, the Third Extraordinary Meeting of the OUN-B took place, at which the ideological, political and theoretical provisions of the program adopted at the previous Krakow meeting were revised. The resolutions emphasized that the OUN was fighting against internationalist and fascist National Socialist programs and political concepts, against communo-Bolshevism.

The right of national minorities to cultivate their own national culture in form and content was recognized. The OUN-B undertakes to take care of political cooperation with other enslaved peoples, subject to their equal rights and the absence of encroachments on foreign territories for the purpose of enslavement.

The decision of the Third Assembly proclaimed the principle of collegiality in the management of the organization. Instead of a single conductor, the OUN Leadership Bureau was introduced, formed from three persons: R. Shukhevych - chairman, D. Mashsky, R. Voloshin - members. The political program of the OUN, adopted by the Assembly, also extended to the UPA. In connection with the territorial spread of actions and the quantitative increase of the UPA, the Main Military Headquarters of the UPA (GVSh) was created. In the fall of 1943, the post of Chief Commander was taken by Lieutenant Colonel R. Shukhevych (Taras Chuprinka).

As a result of propaganda work, already in the summer of 1943, national armed detachments of Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Tatars and others were formed in the ranks of the UPA. In November, on the initiative of R. Shukhevych, under the protection of the UPA, the first conference of the enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia took place. It was attended by 39 delegates representing 13 peoples of the USSR. At the conference, the issue of the international political situation was discussed, it was determined that the modern war between German National Socialism and Soviet Bolshevism is a war of conquest for world domination, for a new redistribution of material wealth, for the enslavement of peoples and their exploitation. Both warring states do not accept the right of peoples to free political and cultural development in independent national states. In the war, both sides are exhausted, which creates conditions for the development of a revolutionary liberation struggle.

The resolution of the conference defined the political tasks of the enslaved peoples: for a quick and complete victory of the national revolution, one common front of all enslaved peoples is needed. Therefore, it was decided to create a general committee of the peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia, which will be able to coordinate all the national revolutionary forces of these peoples, develop a unified line and tactics of fighting the common enemy, and at a crucial moment will give the command for the simultaneous uprising of all enslaved peoples.

In connection with the intensification of the UPA struggle, the OUN leadership in Ukrainian lands came to the conclusion that it was necessary to create a unified political leadership for the entire liberation struggle in Ukraine - a Ukrainian underground revolutionary government. This body, according to R. Shukhevych, was supposed to become a continuation of the Ukrainian state government, created in Lviv on June 30, 1941 by the leadership of the OUN-B, but liquidated by the Germans. An initiative committee was created, which held negotiations with representatives of Ukrainian political parties and organizations. Members of the future supreme body, which eventually received the name Ukrainian Main Liberation (Ukrainian - Vyzvolna) Rada (UGVR), should be actively active Ukrainian revolutionaries, regardless of their ideological or party affiliation, who recognized the only correct platform of the liberation struggle against the Bolshevik and German occupiers. The first large gathering of the UGVR took place on July 11-15, 1944 near the village of Nedilna on Samborshyn under the protection of UPA units. It was chaired by R. Voloshin and secretary M. Duzhoy. 20 people took part in it, the remaining 10 did not arrive for various reasons.

Among the founders of the UGVR there were 10 members of the OUN, the rest represented other political groups. At the meeting, the main legislative documents of the UGVR were adopted - “Device”, “Platform” and “Universal”. The Presidium of the UGVR was elected, consisting of: K. Osmak - president, V. Mudryi, I. Grinyoh and I. Vovchuk - first, second and third vice-presidents, Y. Bilenky - general judge, chief commander of the UPA Roman Shukhevych - chairman of the General Secretariat, and General Secretary of Military Affairs, N. Lebed - General Secretary of Foreign Affairs, R. Voloshin - General Secretary of Internal Affairs.

The UGVR considered the main task of its activities to be organizing the fight against the Germans and Soviet power, which was returning to Ukraine. The UPA command, following the instructions of the UGVR, gradually organized life in the territories it controlled. Each village had instructions for creating self-defense to protect the population, organizing reconnaissance for German units, Soviet and Polish partisans, who often robbed and killed local residents. In some places, schools were even opened, medical services for residents were established, and the production of basic necessities was established.

The German administration noted the increased activity of Soviet partisans and the Polish and OUN resistance movements. These formations divided the territory into spheres of influence, so German power was concentrated mainly in cities. Disagreements between Soviet partisans and the UPA intensified. On orders from Moscow, the commanders of the partisan formations launched an armed struggle against the “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists.” Soviet partisans carried out punitive measures against the population of those villages that supported the Upovites. The Upovites persecuted residents who provided assistance to the partisans. This confrontation had all the signs of a civil war. People died, evil begat evil. The UPA command addressed the Soviet partisans with a leaflet in October 1943, which approved their fight against the Germans. However, the need to fight is not to replace one occupier of Ukraine with another. The goal of the UPA is an independent, independent Ukraine. And there were cases when detachment commanders established contacts with UPA formations and agreed not to conduct armed struggle with each other. The Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine condemned this practice and demanded a decisive struggle against “the enemies of the Ukrainian people, Hitler’s agents.” As the front approached, the confrontation intensified, and the struggle turned to destruction.

The changing situation on the war fronts in favor of the USSR made adjustments to the policy of the OUN-UPA leadership regarding the Germans and the USSR. After all, it was clear that Ukraine’s independence would soon have to be achieved in the fight against the new occupier. Therefore, a non-aggression agreement with the Germans was necessary. Such an agreement would enable each party to act in its own interests. The UPA command was looking for contacts with the Wehrmacht. In some areas, individual UPA commanders entered into a neutrality agreement with the command of German units in exchange for weapons and military equipment. The Germans agreed to cooperate, especially in cases where UPA formations operated in the rear of Soviet troops or fought Soviet partisans and collected intelligence. Often these agreements were violated, since the UPA prevented the total robbery of Ukrainian territory and the removal of the population by the retreating Nazis, and the German command, in turn, launched terror against the UPA formations. One of the tragic pages of the war period in Western Ukraine was the creation at the end of 1943 of the SS division "Galicia". It was initially planned to call it the Ukrainian Division of the Sichovyi Riflemen, but Himmler was categorically against the word “Ukrainian,” citing the fact that in 1917–1919 Ukraine did not react well to German expansion. About 11 thousand volunteers were recruited into the division. Why did these people become volunteers?

When Germany began to lose the war, its leaders began to look for additional resources, gradually changing their policies regarding the enslaved peoples, promising some benefits, say, for Ukraine, subject to support from its population. Secondly, the Stalinist version of power was even worse for the Western Ukrainian peasant than the German one. He had somehow already adapted to German back in the days of the Austrians. But the “Muscovite” was worse, he took away property and destroyed people. Third, last. Learn to fight, get weapons, military training.

In the battle of Brody on July 22, 1944, the Galicia division was almost completely defeated by Soviet troops. Its remnants were reorganized, supplemented by German units in Slovakia, then in Yugoslavia and Austria, where they later surrendered to the British. Defeat and the shame of collaboration with the enemy have been a stain on “Galicia” for many decades, as well as on the army of the Russian General Vlasov.

But the "Galicia" division did not fight against "its own". She fought against those who were strangers to her. With some invaders in alliance against others.

Of the 11 thousand, 1500 remained alive; after the reorganization, the division became semi-Ukrainian, as one of its leaders, Chief of Staff, Reichswehr Colonel Gaike, writes, it was staffed by Germans from newly released criminals. These elements did all sorts of things already in Slovakia, and everything was attributed to the Ukrainians.

Gaike served two years in English captivity, returned home and worked safely in business, since he had no war crimes. The “Galicia” division, which he led, was unambiguously interpreted as treasonous in its homeland, since it fought against the Red Army, and never had a single opportunity, either for justification or for a reasoned refutation and removal of the Cain brand.

Having lost the territory of the USSR, in particular Ukraine, the Nazis launched activities to unite all anti-Bolshevik forces against the USSR. In an effort to win over the nationalists, the Nazis released S. Bandera and other OUN figures from the concentration camp in September 1944.

The Germans tried to subordinate the Ukrainians to the “Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia,” which was headed by Vlasov. However, the leaders of Ukrainian political organizations did not agree to this, believing that Vlasov expresses the pro-imperial interests of the future “new” Russia, which will include the republics of the USSR. The OUN-B stood for independence and defended the right to create an independent Ukraine. S. Bandera refused to head the “Ukrainian National Committee”, which was created under the control of the Germans.

In the fall of 1944, the UPA command established contact with the head of Abwehrkommando 202, Kirn, and agreed on cooperation on the following conditions: the Germans must release arrested nationalists from concentration camps; the German army will provide their formation with weapons, materials, communications, and medicines; The military organizes radio communication schools and training in other military specialties for Upovites. For this, the UPA agreed to allocate people to train sabotage groups that would carry out the tasks of the Germans, while remaining subordinate to the rebel command, and would collect intelligence information about the Red Army.

In accordance with the agreement, the Germans landed several groups in Western Ukrainian territory in April 1945 to sabotage the communications of the Soviet troops. After the retreat of German troops beyond the borders of Ukraine, the OUN-B and UPA faced the question of further actions of the rebel formations. There were two options for resolving this issue: either retreat to the west, or stay in Ukraine and continue the fight against Soviet power.

The decisive word belonged to the head of the OUN on Ukrainian lands, the chairman of the General Secretariat of the UGVR, the Chief Commander of the UPA R. Shukhevych. He and his fellow fighters clearly understood that fighting against powerful armed forces, supplemented by a well-established system of mass party political propaganda, was certain death, and refusal to fight was capitulation. The OUN-B decided to continue the fight in Ukraine.

According to R. Shukhevych, the state is a reality for his people as long as the people fight for it. The commanders and ordinary soldiers of the UPA, who remained in Ukraine, in the rear of the Soviet troops, took upon themselves the entire burden of the liberation movement and had to win or die, since in the struggle for the statehood of Ukraine there can be no capitulation, no compromises, there can be no doubts about the feasibility of the chosen path.

The tasks and goals of the OUN-UPA struggle are quite expressively reflected in the German memo, compiled at a time when Soviet power was already restored throughout Ukraine: “UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) is a military organization of currently the strongest political movement, which is called OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). The OUN wants to create a Ukrainian independent state and fights against the “occupiers” on Ukrainian national territory. The main and historical enemies of the Ukrainian people are the Soviet Union or Russia and Poland. conduct an uncompromising armed struggle against the Soviet Union and the Red Army; b) preserve the national substance of the Ukrainian people.

The memo further emphasizes that for the Soviet leadership the Ukrainian insurgent movement poses a serious danger and it is forced to use units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and regular troops to fight it. The strength of the UPA was estimated at approximately 80-100 thousand regular army soldiers, that is, those who had undergone military training.

In February 1945, on the initiative of R. Shukhevych, a conference was convened where the issue of the leadership of the OUN was discussed, since by that time its pre-war leader S. Bandera had been released from prison. He conveyed his decision that at the first opportunity he would arrive in his native lands and lead the organization. However, it was decided that S. Bandera, due to the danger to his life, should be in exile.

Having decided to continue the fight against Soviet power as the occupier of Ukraine, R. Shukhevych, who holds the positions of Chief Commander of the UPA, Chairman of the General Secretariat of the UGVR and leader of the OUN, put a lot of effort into developing and implementing a program for this struggle. The basic principles of the program were set out in the “Declaration of the Progress of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists after the End of the Second World War in Europe”, published in May 1945.

The OUN speech emphasized that the main ideological and political basis of the activities of the OUN and UPA was and remains the idea of ​​a Ukrainian Independent Council State. The most difficult period begins in the liberation struggle. It fell to the fate of their generation to continue working to create an independent Ukraine, regardless of whether they win this struggle.

In relation to the Russian and other peoples that were part of the USSR, it was stated that Stalin and the Communist Party created and support a totalitarian regime, which brought a lot of troubles and suffering to the Russian people themselves, just as the Nazis led the German people to tragedy. Therefore, the task is to fight against the Stalinist totalitarian system, and not against the Russian people. The conditions in which the UPA fought in the post-war period were extremely difficult. Significant forces of the NKVD, NKGB (since 1946, Ministry of Internal Affairs, MGB), regular units, and destroyer battalions were thrown against it. There were many losses in the UPA combat units. However, as noted in the resolutions of the OUN-B conference in June 1946, the revolutionary Ukrainian movement heroically withstood the massive terror of the Bolshevik armed forces, so that the occupier was unable to either destroy the revolutionary movement and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or intimidate the people with repression and force them to refuse participation in the revolutionary struggle.

In order to avoid large casualties in open armed struggle, the conference decided to switch to underground forms of activity. In July 1946, the “Appeal of the Chief Commander to the UPA” was published, in which he gave the order to go underground. Regular kurens and hundreds of UPA, underground sabotage groups that conducted military operations using surprise attacks on special forces units and regular units were disbanded. The fight became more and more intense. In 1947, on the territory of 8 regions, the nationalist underground carried out 906 armed and political actions against Soviet power. These were mostly battles with the special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, which were sent to fight the OUN underground and detachments and who confiscated agricultural products from the peasants and carried out collectivization.

Trying to eliminate the insurgent movement, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) and the government of the Ukrainian SSR issued a number of appeals to the OUN-UPA participants, in which they promised amnesty to those who agreed to surrender to the authorities. The appearance of appeals, as a rule, was accompanied by a wide propaganda campaign. Promises of amnesty had a strong influence on the population. Members of the OUN underground, the UPA, young men and men who avoided mobilization into the army or resisted collectivization came to the Soviet authorities. Party and Soviet bodies examined the cases of each of them, the most authoritative were offered administrative positions, others were resettled to the east and to the industrial regions of Ukraine. The press widely published calls for those who came out of the underground to stop fighting; some became agents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, pointing to the location of rebel units, warehouses with weapons and equipment, and the families of underground fighters.

The most common method of repressive agencies in the fight against insurgents was the creation and use of so-called special forces groups, which operated under the guise of UPA units or fighters of the OUN Security Service. The purpose of such provocative and reconnaissance formations is to carry out intelligence work to identify OUN leaders, UPA commanders, their physical destruction, penetration into the OUN-UPA environment with the aim of disintegrating and disorganizing them, organizing political provocations, killing civilians, compromising the national liberation movement of the Ukrainian people and discrediting the idea of ​​fighting for an independent conciliar Ukrainian state. Such groups were used to pit different segments of the Ukrainian population against each other, pitting Western and Eastern Ukraine against each other.

Special teams formed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security committed mass crimes among the population. Quite convincing evidence of this is given in the memorandum of the military prosecutor of the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops of the Ukrainian district, Colonel of Justice Kosharsky, dated February 15, 1949, “On the facts of gross violation of Soviet legality in the activities of the so-called special groups of the Ministry of Internal Affairs” addressed to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) N.S. Khrushchev. From this document we learn that the MGB of Ukraine and its departments in the western regions widely use so-called special groups that acted under the guise of UPA bandits to identify the “enemy Ukrainian-nationalist underground.” Posing as Bandera members, members of the special groups tortured local residents, accusing them of having connections with the MGB, to whom they allegedly handed over members of the OUN and UPA. The document provides a number of examples when people under torture incriminated themselves and suffered morally and physically. As a rule, these crimes were attributed to UPA units. The population was constantly terrorized by attacks and raids by units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of State Security. The recruitment of agents - "sexts" (secret employees - abbr.) was widely practiced. As a rule, there was one agent per 10 houses who monitored and reported on “suspicious” fellow villagers.

Having gone underground, the UPA combat groups also launched a fight against units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, regular troops, and destruction battalions. As P. Mirchuk, a participant in the insurgent movement, wrote, it was the people’s revenge for injustice, for trampling on their rights, for millions of Ukrainian patriots who were tortured, sent to prisons or concentration camps, for the robbery of the Ukrainian population and mockery of it, for trying to nationally disintegrate the Ukrainian people and demoralize his. According to him, UPA units carried out in 1947-1948. 2,328 different armed skirmishes and battles with units and groups of the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB, fighter battalions. The Upovites launched mass terror against those who supported Soviet power and joined collective farms. Administrative and collective farm buildings, premises of party cells, village councils, etc. were destroyed. There were also casualties among civilians.

Difficult times have come for the nationalist underground. There were not enough weapons, food, and ammunition. And most importantly, the hopes of the OUN leaders to start a war between the USSR and Western states did not come true.

It is clear that the expectations of the OUN-UPA-UGVR leadership for external assistance were illusory. Meanwhile, the situation of the rebel movement was increasingly deteriorating. On March 5, 1950, in the village of Belogorscha near Lvov, the Chief Commander of the UPA, General Coroner R. Shukhevych, died, surrounded by special forces of the MGB. His successor, Colonel V. Cook, in the conditions of constant persecution, was unable to launch an active struggle against Soviet power. With his arrest in May 1954, the activities of the nationalist underground began to fade. The last fires of armed resistance were liquidated in 1956.

The consequence of the armed confrontation between the UPA and the Ministry of Internal Affairs-MGB troops, reinforced by regular units, was numerous casualties on both sides. Thousands of nationally conscious families, whose relatives were in the UPA or financially helped the nationalists, were deported without trial to the eastern regions of the USSR, Siberia, and Central Asia, and were deprived of all civil rights. Peaceful people were persecuted, punished, and died from cold, hunger, and disease.

In the spring of 1959, a Soviet agent, Lviv resident Bogdan Stashinsky, living under a false name in Germany, “liquidated” Stepan Bandera in Munich by spitting a toxic substance into his face through a special device. Heart spasm, and the end. But the remains of small glass on the face and a detailed forensic examination showed: murder. This became widely known when Stashinsky, together with his German wife from the GDR, fled to the West, repented, served a seven-year sentence, and wrote a book. Translated into many languages, it brought him a lot of money. After being released from prison, the author probably changed his last name and is living quietly somewhere...

At the end of the war, A. Melnik again headed the OUN-M, S. Bandera and Y. Stetsko were elected to the leadership in Ukraine. In February 1946, the Foreign Part of the OUN (ZCh OUN) was formed in Munich under the leadership of S. Bandera. On the basis of a revision in 1943 of the ideological foundations of the nationalist movement, a conflict developed between a group of representatives of the OUN-B in Ukraine (N. Lebed and others) and the foreign organization of S. Bandera. The latter was accused of opposing the changes and the ensuing consequences - the democratization of the OUN-B, the autonomous status of the UPA and the UGVR, as well as the rejection of dogmatism and elitism. Ukrainian emissaries made their critical views public in the Ukrainian Tribune. S. Bandera and his group in their main organ “Liberation Policy” argued that the ideological revision was bringing the OUN too close to socialism and communism. The culmination of this dispute was the expulsion of the opposition at the OUN ZCh conference in Mittenwald on August 28-31, 1948. In 1953-54. The leadership of the OUN-B in Ukraine again confirmed the revision of the ideological foundations and instructed S. Bandera, Z. Matla and L. Rebet to form a new government of the OUN ZCH. The negotiations turned out to be fruitless, and in 1956, two of the leadership - the triumvirate - Z. Matla and L. Rebet founded a new organization known as OUN-Z (Foreign), or doubles (according to the number of founding leaders). Its leaders founded the research society "Prolog", which published "Ukrainian Independent" and sponsored the magazine "Modernity". After the murder of L. Rebet in 1957, the organization was headed by B. Kordyuk, and later by the widow of L. Rebet D. Rebet.

After the war, the OUN-M developed a conservative corporate ideology. The Third Great Assembly on August 30, 1947 limited the power of the leader, making him responsible to the Assembly, which was to be convened every three years, and introducing into the program the principles of equality before the law, judicial independence, freedom of conscience, speech, press and political opposition. “National Solidarism” by O. Boidunyk (1945), which modernized the ideology of the organization, defended a Ukrainian independent state based on the cooperation of corporate social groups.

The dispute between two factions of the OUN continued in Germany immediately after the war: they competed for dominant influence in the displaced persons camps and in the emigration Ukrainian National Council. The OUN-M and its allies gained control of the Council, and the OUN ZCH was removed. OUN factions had a decisive influence on the emigration Ukrainian community. The community's public image was shaped largely by nationalist devotion to the liberation of Ukraine. Soviet propaganda sought to discredit the OUN as Nazi collaborators and mercenaries of Western intelligence services. Claiming a vanguard role in the struggle against Russian imperialism, the OUN-B tried to become the dominant force in emigrant life. Its organizing platform was the World Ukrainian Liberation Front, formed in 1973, which included the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms of Ukraine (USA), the Canadian League for the Liberation of Ukraine, the Union of Ukrainians (Great Britain), the Association of Ukrainians in France, Prosvita (Argentina), the League liberation of Ukraine in Australia and New Zealand and their branches. The most prominent publications of the front: “Path of Victory” (Munich, Lvov), “Ukrainian Thought” (London), “National Tribune” (New York) and “Gomin of Ukraine” (Toronto). S. Bandera headed the OUN-B until his assassination in 1959. His successors were S. Lenkavsky, Y. Stetsko (1968-86), V. Oleskiv (1987-91) and the widow of Y. Stetsko S. Stetsko (since 1991 .).

Emigration nationalist organizations that were founded in the 1930s, such as the Organization for State Revival of Ukraine (USA), the Ukrainian National Rally (Canada) and the Ukrainian National Unity in France after 1940, sided with the OUN-M. The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain was founded in 1949 as a rival to the Union of Ukrainians in Great Britain. All these organizations belonged to a coordination association known as “Ideologically Related Nationalist Organizations” (chairman of the secretariat P. Dorozhinsky OUN-M). The most prominent publications of the OUN-M were “Ukrainian Word” (Paris-Kyiv-Lvov), “Independent Ukraine” (Chicago, USA), “New Path” (Toronto, Canada), “Our Call” (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and "Farmer" (Curitiba, Brazil). After the death of A. Melnik in 1964, the OUN-M was headed by O. Shtul-Zhdanovich, D. Kvitkovsky (1977-79), Plavyuk (from 1981). In the last two decades, the political group that was in opposition to the OUN-B tended towards closer cooperation and consolidation and formed broader associations, such as the Ukrainian Democratic Movement (1976) and the Conference of Ukrainian Political Parties and Organizations (1979). The rivalry between the OUN factions for a long time divided and exhausted the forces of the emigration organizations that served as their cover. In order to reconcile nationalist groups of different directions, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (MCSU) had to sacrifice the principle of majority voting and an effective decision-making procedure. In 1980, the OUN-B acquired control of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America; thus, the latter ceased to represent the Ukrainian community as a whole. The strength and influence of the OUN factions declined as a result of assimilative pressure and ideological differences with Western liberal democratic values.

OUN-B has been operating in Ukraine since 1990. In 1992, together with other nationalist organizations in Ukraine, it formed the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN), in which it occupies leading positions. The KUN was headed by S. Stetsko, who had been living permanently in Ukraine since 1992, and in 1994 accepted Ukrainian citizenship. She died in 2004. She was buried in Kyiv at the Baikovo cemetery.

OUN-M began to operate in Ukraine in 1990. In May 1993, the 12th Gathering took place in the city of Irpen near Kyiv. PUN was again headed by Plavyuk, the OUN Council was headed by a corresponding member. NAS of Ukraine, prof. K. Tovstyuk, Senior Council - prof. Yu. Boyko. Recognition of the authority of this organization was the fact that Plaviuk was elected President of the UPR in 1989. However, a number of political scientists have stated that the OUN-M has practically turned into a party of the Western type, and only the name remains of nationalism. OUN-M actively cooperates with other political organizations. Its representatives are included in the MCSU, creating there, together with other groups, a faction of Democratic Nationalism. In 1992, OUN was registered in Ukraine. The newspaper "Ukrainian Word", which was previously published in Paris, moved its activities to Lvov in 1992 (edited by I. Los), and in 1993 - to Kyiv (edited by G. Verbovy). In 1992, the magazine “Development of the State” began to be published in Kyiv.

In the 1990s, OUN-Z decided not to transfer its activities to Ukrainian territory, remaining abroad. However, this did not mean a refusal to help Ukrainian democratic movements. The ideology of OUN-Z was transformed into the ideology of the so-called. liberal nationalism, which is very close to the ideology of the Melnikites. Often these organizations act as allies. After the death of D. Rebet in 1992, the management was headed by Prof. A. Kaminsky. The doubles published the magazine "Modernity" (since 1961), which, however, was not their party organ, but contained a number of materials on socio-political topics, literature and art. In 1991, the editorial office of the journal was moved to Kyiv (co-editors: T. Hunchak and I. Dzyuba).

In 1993, another group was formed, which is called the OUN in Ukraine (OUNvU). This group, led by M. Slivka and I. Kandyba, was formed as a result of the unification of the wing of the political organizations “State Independence of Ukraine” and part of the nationalists who did not agree with the policies of the KUN. At the end of 1993, OUNvU was registered at the state level as a party. OUNVU publishes the newspaper "Unconquered Nation".

Recently, under the conditions of the existence of Ukrainian statehood, contact has emerged and negotiations have begun between various parts of the OUN.

Structure of the OUN.

The highest governing body of the OUN is the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, in the OUN-B - the Great Gathering of the OUN. Between the Meetings, such functions were performed by the Conference. The collection was approved by the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists (in the OUN-B - the Leadership of the OUN) and the Chairman of the PUN (in the OUN-R - the Guide of the OUN). Until 1941, the Chairman of the PUN had the title of Leader and unlimited powers. When the Management was not able to meet in full, its functions were performed by a Narrow Management of three people. Bandera's followers also had similar bodies - the Bureau of the OUN or the Council of Commissioners. In addition, a regional guide was assigned to each territory, who carried out the decision of the Management on his territory. The regional guide stood at the head of the regional leadership. The regional leadership of the OUN was subordinate to him. The lower-level conductor of the OUN had 5 members under his command. A member of the OUN had to submit a report or proposal strictly on command - only to his guide, who conveyed this proposal to the leadership. This system ensured strict secrecy. In the 1940s secrecy was further strengthened - instead of the “fives” system, the “threes” system was introduced. The implementation of the decisions of the Management was carried out by executives (executive bodies), which were divided into a number of references (military, ideological, propaganda, etc.). Organizational misconduct or crimes were considered by the Revolutionary Tribunal (later the Organizational Court), whose decisions could be overturned by the Chairman of the PUN (he was eventually deprived of such rights). A complex hierarchical system has recently appeared in the OUN-M: the secretariat has executive power, and the leadership has leadership functions in the period between Assemblies. However, two more institutions with purely nominal functions have been created - the OUN Council and the Senior Council, which makes the structure of the organization severely overloaded.

OUN symbols.

The attributes of the OUN-M are: a blue flag with a nationalist Trident and the nationalist Trident itself (a stylized image of a Trident with a sword in the middle), which appeared on OUN seals.

Since 1940, OUN-B has used different symbols: a black and red flag and emblem: a sword in a circle with the point down, a trident on the hilt and the letters O.U.N.

OUN-Z abandoned the use of the red and black flag as the flag of the organization. However, all parts of the OUN consider the anthem of the organization “We were born in a great time” (“March of Ukrainian Nationalists”) on the lyrics. O. Babia. They also recognize “Decalogue” by S. Lenkavsky and “Character Signs of a Ukrainian Nationalist” by D. Miron.

Application

WHAT THE UKRAINIAN REBELAR ARMY (UPA) FIGHTS FOR

Brief summary of the idea and program of the UPA. (The document was written in 1944 and published as a brochure).

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army is fighting for each nation to live a free life in its own independent state. The destruction of national oppression and exploitation of nations, the system of free peoples in their own independent states is the only system that ensures a fair resolution of the national and social issue in the whole world.

The UPA is fighting against imperialists and empires, because in them one dominant people oppresses culturally and politically and exploits other peoples economically. Therefore, the UPA is against the USSR and against the German “New Europe”.

The UPA is vigorously fighting against all internationalist and fascist-national-socialist programs and political concepts, because they are an instrument of the imperialists’ aggressive policy. Therefore, the UPA is against communo-Bolshevism and against German National Socialism.

The UPA is against one people “liberating” other peoples, “taking them under protection”, “giving a helping hand”, etc., because behind these crafty words lies a disgusting content - enslavement, violence and arbitrariness. Therefore, the UPA will fight against the Russian-Bolshevik invaders until it clears Ukraine of all foreign “guardians” and “liberators”, until we achieve the Ukrainian Independent Council Power (USSD), where, finally, the worker, peasant and intellectual can to live and develop freely, prosperously and culturally.

In the ranks of the UPA, Ukrainian peasants, workers and intellectuals are fighting against the oppressors, for a new economic order and for a new social system in Ukraine:

For the destruction of Bolshevik collective farms and German large farms, for land for peasants without ransom, for free farming and free use of the results of labor

For large industry to be national-state property, and small industry to be cooperative-public property

For the participation of workers in the management of factories, for a vocational-technical, and not a commissar-party principle in management

For an eight-hour working day, overtime work can only be freely voluntary, like any work in general, and the worker receives a separate increased pay for it

For fair remuneration for labor, for the worker’s participation in the income of the enterprise. With an eight-hour working day, the worker will receive the salary necessary to provide for the material and spiritual needs of his entire family. When calculating the economic condition of the enterprise every year, each worker will receive: in public cooperative enterprises - a dividend (part of the annual profit belonging to him), and in national-state enterprises - a bonus

For free work, free choice of profession, free choice of place of work

For freedom of trade unions. For the destruction of Stakhanovism, socialist competitions, raising standards, etc. ways of exploiting labor

For free craft, for the voluntary association of artisans in artels, for the right to leave the artel and individually perform their work

For the national-state organization of large-scale trade, for social-cooperative medium and small trade, for private small trade, for free bazaars

For complete equality of women and men in all public and state rights and responsibilities, for women’s free access to all schools, to all professions. For a woman to primarily engage in light work, so that she does not seek income in mines, mines and other hard work and, as a result, does not strain her health. For state protection of maternity, for the liberation of women from circumstances forcing them to work. The father of the family will receive, in addition to individual earnings, additional payment for the maintenance of his wife and young children. Only in such conditions will a woman have the opportunity to fulfill her extremely important, honorable, responsible duty as a mother and educator of the younger generation

For the steady increase in the level of education and culture of the broadest masses of the people by expanding the network of schools, publishing houses, libraries, museums, cinemas, theaters, etc.

For increasing professional knowledge, for the tireless growth of highly qualified specialists in all sectors of public life

For free access for young people to all schools, for free education. For state provision of students with scholarships, food, housing and study aids

For the comprehensive development of the younger generation - moral, mental and physical. For free access to all scientific and cultural acquisitions of humanity

For respect for the work of the intelligentsia. For the creation of such material working conditions under which the intellectual would not have to worry about the future and the fate of his family, so that he could calmly devote himself to cultural and creative work, have the necessary conditions for working on himself, constantly enriching his knowledge and increasing his mental and cultural level

For the full provision of all workers in old age and in case of illness or disability

For expanding the protection of public health, for increasing the number of hospitals, sanatoriums, resorts and holiday homes, for increasing the number of medical personnel. For the right of workers to free use of all health care facilities

For special state care of children and youth, for increasing the number of nurseries, kindergartens, orphanages, holiday camps, sanatoriums and sports organizations. For the inclusion of all children and youth in state institutions of care and education

For freedom of the press, speech, thought, belief, faith and worldview. Against the official dissemination of ideological doctrines and dogmas to the public

For the free recognition and performance of cults that are not opposed to civil morality

For cultural relations with other peoples, for the right to travel abroad to study or get acquainted with the way of life, life and cultural acquisitions of other peoples

For the full right of national minorities to cultivate and develop their own national culture in form and content

For the equality of all citizens of Ukraine, regardless of nationality, in state and public rights and responsibilities, for the equal right to work, earnings and rest

For a free culture, Ukrainian in form and content, for heroic spirituality, high morality, for social solidarity, friendship and discipline

To implement their political state program, the Ukrainian people create and expand their own political and military force.

Political force is organized, expanded and consolidated by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The military force of the Ukrainian people is currently the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The UPA will achieve not only victory in the Ukrainian revolution, but, having turned into a regular Ukrainian People's Army, will consolidate the Ukrainian State and stand on its borders, protecting it from external enemies.

Guided by the idea of ​​a new, just order in the world and wishing for complete victory over the imperialists, the OUN leads the Ukrainian people in a common anti-imperialist front with other peoples enslaved or under the threat of German, Russian and other imperialisms.

The Ukrainian Independent Conciliar (United) Power (USSD) will strive for permanent friendship and cooperation with the independent states of free peoples, will strive for permanent peace.

We will win only through the Ukrainian National Revolution, only through a nationwide uprising, only with weapons in hand. Therefore, no one dares to stand aside, look closely and wait.

All to the front of the struggle for liberation! The sooner the broadest circles of the people are in the ranks of the UPA and OUN, the shorter the time of our enslavement will be. Every citizen of Ukraine must take an active part in the political and military preparations for the revolution.

Through the hard work of each and every individual on the preparation of the Ukrainian National Revolution, we will bring closer and accelerate the time of a nationwide uprising, the time of long-awaited liberation and victory.

Our strength lies in our truth, in our progressive idea, in our fair program, and above all, in our freedom-loving great people.

Before us is hard work, brutal struggle, inevitable bloody sacrifices. But there is no war without sacrifices, without struggle there is no victory. Only struggle will return centuries-old losses to our people, only victory is a guarantee of our happy future.

Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to heroes!

Central Committee of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.

Literature

Yu. Pokalchuk. Bandera, Lebed and others. Kyiv, 1991, No. 1
V. Kucher. OUN - UPA in the struggle for independent Ukraine. Kyiv. 1997. language. Ukrainian
M. Bar, A. Zalensky. The war of lost hopes: the Ukrainian independent movement in 1939 - 1945. Ukrainian historical journal. 1992. No. 6.