Stepan Bandera: what was his nationality? Who was Stepan Bandera by nationality (1 photo) History and life of Stepan Bandera
The name of Stepan Bandera is now identical to the concept of fascism for many, along with Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini. But for many, Stepan Bandera is a symbol of the struggle for independence, sovereignty and unity of Ukraine, whose cult of personality is sacredly revered, and whose nationalist ideas still excite minds and are a cause of concern for the whole world. Stepan Bandera, a native of the kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in Austria-Hungary, is the theorist and ideologist of all Ukrainian nationalism. He was born into the family of a Greek Catholic priest and was distinguished by religious fanaticism and, at the same time, obedience. He is the organizer of a number of terrorist acts, involved in the massacres of the Polish civilian population during, since 1927 - a member of the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), since 1933 - a member of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). He was also the regional guide of the OUN in Western Ukrainian lands.
Life of Stepan Bandera (01/1/1909-10/15/1959)
Stepan Bandera is the son of a priest, brought up in the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism, back in 1917 - 1920. commanded various combat units that fought against communism. He joined the Nationalist Youth Union in 1922. And in 1928 he became a student at the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, enrolling in the Faculty of Agronomy. A year later, in 1929, he underwent training at an Italian school for saboteurs. In the same year he became a member of the OUN and soon led the radical group of this organization. He organized the murders of his political opponents, and also led robberies of post offices and postal trains. He also personally organized the murders of Tadeusz Gołówko (deputy of the Polish Sejm), Yemelyan Chekhovsky (Lviv police commissioner), Andrei Mailov (secretary of the Soviet consulate in Lviv). In 1939, Bandera, like many other nationalists, fled to Poland. This was due to the annexation of Western Ukraine to the Soviet Union. In occupied Poland, the Nazis released all members of the OUN, as they saw them as allies in the upcoming war with the Soviet Union. In the same year, having received freedom from the Germans, Bandera rebelled against Melnik, the leader of the OUN, whom he considered an unsuitable leader due to his lack of initiative.
During the war
On June 30, 1941, on behalf of Bandera, Y. Stetsko proclaimed the creation of Ukraine as a power. At the same time, Stepan’s supporters in Lviv staged pogroms, in which more than three thousand people died, after which Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo, where he signed an agreement to cooperate, and then called on all true Ukrainian people to help the Germans in everything and defeat Moscow. However, despite agreeing to cooperate, he was arrested again in September. He was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp where he was kept in quite decent conditions. Bandera was one of the initiators of the creation of the UPA (10/14/42), at the head of which he put, who replaced D. Klyachkivsky in this post. The goal of the UPA was, in general, the same - the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. But still, the OUN leaders did not recommend fighting the Germans, seeing them as allies. In 1943, the OUN decided at a meeting with the German authorities to jointly fight against partisanship. So it was decided that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army would protect the railways from partisans and support any initiatives of the German authorities in the already occupied territories. Germany, in return, supplied Bandera's army with weapons. In 1944, with a new round of cooperation proposed by Himmler, Bandera was released and began training sabotage troops in Krakow as part of the 202nd Abwehr team. In February 1945, Stepan Bandera took over as leader of the OUN. By the way, he did not leave this post until his death.
After the war
After the end of the war, during 1946 and 1947, Bandera had to hide from the authorities, as he fell into the zone of American occupation of Germany. Stepan had to live illegally until the early 1950s, when he settled in Munich, where he could live almost legally. Four years later, in 1954, his wife and children joined him in Munich. By this time, the Americans were no longer pursuing Bandera, leaving him alone, but the intelligence agents of the Soviet Union still continued the hunt and did not give up hope of eliminating the leader of the OUN UPA. The OUN allocated powerful security to Bandera, who, collaborating with the German criminal police, saved their leader’s life several times by preventing attempts on his life. But in 1959, the Security Council of the OUN (b) nevertheless found out that the murder of Bandera had already been planned and this plan could be carried out at any time. He was offered, for the sake of safety, to leave Munich. At first he refused, but then he nevertheless entrusted the preparations for his departure to Stepan “Mechnik,” the head of intelligence of the OUN ZCH.
Murder of Stepan Bandera
On October 15, 1959, OUN leader Stepan got ready to go home for lunch. Together with his secretary, he went to the market, where he made a few purchases, then he left the secretary and went home alone. As always, security was waiting for him near the house. Leaving his car in the garage, Bandera opened the entrance door to the house where he lived with his family and went inside alone. The killer, who had been watching him for several months, was already waiting for him at the entrance. The killer, KGB agent - Bogdan Stashinsky - held in his hand the murder weapon - a pistol-syringe filled with potassium cyanide hidden in a newspaper tube wrapped. When Bandera went up to the third floor, he ran into Stashinsky and recognized him as the man he had seen in church that morning. "What are you doing here?" - he asked a logical question. Without answering, Stashinsky raised his hand with the newspaper forward and fired a shot in the face. The pop from the shot was almost inaudible, but the neighbors reacted to Bandera’s scream. Under the influence of potassium cyanide, the OUN leader slowly sank onto the steps, but Stashinsky was no longer nearby... Stepan Bandera died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness.
Monument to Stepan Bandera
At the moment, there are several monuments to the OUN leader Stepan Bandera, and all of them are concentrated in Western Ukraine, or more precisely, in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil regions. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the monument was erected for the centenary of Stepan Bandera in 2009, on January 1st. In Kolomyia the monument was erected in 1991, on August 18, in Gorodenka - in 2008, on November 30. It is interesting that the monument to Bandera in his small homeland, in Stary Ugrinov, was blown up by unknown people twice. Monuments to the OUN leader were also erected in Sambir, Stary Sambir, Lviv, Buchach, Terebovlya, Kremenets, Truskavets, Zalishchiki and many other settlements.
Performance evaluation
Now it is quite difficult to fully assess the activities and personality of the OUN leader Stepan Bandera, because there is still no complete biography of him. It is even more difficult to evaluate books about Ukrainian nationalism because they were written exclusively by Ukrainian nationalists. People who were not drawn into the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism were never involved in researching his activities. Some historians accuse Bandera’s biographers of sparingly listing facts from his life, saying that he was an obedient son, a fanatically pious person, that he was a good friend, and talking rather dryly about his “heroism.” , fearing to make a cult of personality out of this controversial figure. Only one thing is clear: for some, Stepan Bandera is a ruthless killer of thousands and thousands of people, and for others, he is a fighter for the independence of his own country. And for such a lofty goal, they say, one cannot disdain any means, including cooperation with the fascists and the extermination of civilians, clearing a place on Polish soil in order to then create an independent state of Ukraine there and settle only Ukrainians. For some, Bandera is a romantic utopian, for others a dictator and tyrant, who from childhood prepared himself for a great mission. In a word, and you can’t argue with this – he is a very controversial figure.
Dmitry Galkovsky
It so happened that Stepan Bandera became a key figure in the political history of Ukraine. This is the most mentioned figure in modern Ukrainian history. In the split Ukrainian society there are two versions of his biography.
For the East (as well as for the Russian Federation) Bandera is the head Ukrainian nationalists, a terrorist and murderer who supported the occupation regime in the fascist Reichskommissariat of Ukraine, who took refuge in the West after the war, and tried to conduct American espionage and terrorist-sabotage activities on the territory of the USSR. For which he was eliminated in 1959.
For the Lvov West, Bandera is again the head of Ukrainian nationalists, a fiery fighter for independence - first against the Polish oppressors, then against the German invaders and finally against the Soviet (or, let's call a spade a spade, Russian) occupiers. For which he was vilely killed by these occupiers.
In my opinion, both versions are far from the truth. Although both myths themselves have a right to exist, just as the peoples themselves who gave birth to them have a similar right to exist.
Let's start with the fact that Bandera was never the head of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists. The head of the OUN (and before its establishment - the UVO: Ukrainian Military Organization) was Yevgeny Konovalets, an ensign in the Austro-Hungarian army who served in the World War. After his assassination in 1938, the OUN was headed by Andrei Melnik, also an Austrian with experience of the First World War and then civil war. These people were almost 20 years older than Bandera; compared to them, Bandera himself looked like a Komsomol activist. He really was such an activist.
Andrey Melnik
Bandera’s maximum position in the OUN is the head of the Krakow organization, that is, entering not even the second, but the third echelon of management. And he did not stay in this position for long.
There is no Bandera among the bodies of independent Ukraine during the Nazi occupation.
On October 5, 1941, the Ukrainian National Council was created in Kyiv on the initiative of Melnik and under the leadership of Kyiv professor Nikolai Velichkovsky. There was no place for Bandera in this Ukrainian proto-government.
A similar body was created in the district of Galicia - the Ukrainian part of the Polish General Government. It was headed by Vladimir Kubiyovych, associate professor at the University of Krakow. Bandera was not there either.
Bandera was not a party ideologist, like the Bolshevik Bukharin, or even a “golden pen”, like the Bolshevik and Bandera’s fellow countryman Karl Radek.
On the contrary, Bandera's cultural level is quite low. He went to school only at the age of 10, then he tried to study to become an agronomist, but something didn’t work out.
Polish pioneers, that is, scouts. Far right - Bandera.
Maybe this is some kind of fiery Chegevara who left behind many revolutionary “deeds”? Also no. While studying at school, he really liked Komsomol secretarial work - meetings, lightning, reading scout literature. As a student, he was arrested several times, mainly for smuggling nationalist literature.
On the right is Bandera with scout badges. A well-recognized type of school “excellent” student. It is always said that in childhood, for the sake of authority, Stepan Andreevich strangled cats in front of his enthusiastic classmates. Oh, the brave stranglers don’t remember this. The story is told by tired nerds who suffered slaps on the head from school bullies.
Then he was arrested on someone else’s case and given a life sentence. In June 1934, Ukrainian nationalist Grigory Matseiko assassinates Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Poretsky. The killer manages to escape abroad, and the enraged Polish government blames the OUN activists for organizing the murder. 12 people are appointed responsible, including Bandera, who was arrested the day before the murder (on another trivial case - smuggling of Ukrainian literature across the Czechoslovak border). In the end, Terpila “confesses” to everything, and two more murders are immediately pinned on him - a professor and a student at Lvov University, which occurred A YEAR AND A HALF AFTER HIS ARREST. Terpila agrees with this charge and receives life imprisonment.
That’s all of Bandera’s “terrorist activities” until 1939 - he transported books, wrote articles in the regional press, organized terrible boycotts: do not buy Polish vodka and cigarettes in local shops. And he signed up for three murders that he did not commit, and COULD NOT commit.
Where did Bandera come from, and why did his name become so popular?
At the time of the Stalin-Hitler partition of Poland, Bandera is in prison Brest Fortress and therefore falls into the Soviet zone of occupation. It is believed that he left the prison during the shift change, a few days before his arrival Soviet troops. It is quite possible. But further... further it is stated that Bandera manages to hide for some time, move to Soviet Lvov, hold meetings with party comrades, and then safely cross the German-Soviet border. Along which there are combat divisions along the entire front, and special groups of the NKVD operate in the rear. Moreover, his brother, who was previously held in the Polish concentration camp in Bereza-Kartuzskaya, succeeds. Although it is believed that this camp did not have a shift change at all, and it was occupied by Soviet troops.
It is not difficult to notice that the miraculous liberation and crossing of the border of the Bandera brothers closely repeats the equally miraculous escape from the camp and crossing of the border of the Solonevich brothers. True, his wife later joined Solonevich while in exile. You will laugh, but in a few months the single Stepan Bandera will marry a girl who was also imprisoned in Lvov in 1939 and who also miraculously escaped. It should also be noted that both Solonevich and Bandera were imprisoned precisely for unsuccessful border crossing. They were unable to cross the border from home. And it worked out from prison. It turned out that it was much easier.
On a blue eye.
In April 1940, Bandera, for some reason, like Lenin in 1917, not in need of money, went to Italy, where he met with the head of the OUN, Melnik. Again, like Lenin, Bandera stuns the venerable head of Ukrainian nationalists with his “April theses”: there is no point in focusing on Germany, it is necessary to create an armed underground in the territory occupied by the Wehrmacht and wait for the X hour to raise an all-Ukrainian uprising. Let me remind you that this was said in a situation where there was no Ukrainian population at all in the German occupation zone. Only individual emigrants numbering several thousand people. The situation was so crazy that Melnik ordered the head of the OUN counterintelligence Yaroslav Baranovsky to study the biography of the talented agronomist. To which Bandera stated that Baranovsky was a proven Polish spy and should be killed (and indeed, in 1943 he was killed by Bandera’s followers). Baranovsky (by the way, a doctor of law from the University of Prague) could well have worked for Polish intelligence. Why not? The question is how Bandera could have known about this and where did he get the evidence for such an accusation.
In the official history of the OUN, it is generally accepted that from that time on, the organization, like the RSDLP, split into OUN(m) and OUN(b) (Menshevik-Melnikovites and Bolsheviks-Bandera). But this analogy is wrong. The OUN was before and remained after that under the leadership of Melnyk. And Bandera created a noisy and unclearly who-funded organization, which appropriated someone else’s name and included exclusively people from one region of Ukraine.
Until June 22, 1941, Bandera waged schismatic agitation against the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and, despite Melnik’s warnings, sent underground groups to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. Naturally, groups were immediately identified and thrown into NKVD prisons, but (lo and behold!) after June 22, some of Bandera’s comrades “escaped” from Stalin’s prisons and crossed the front line. A striking example is Dmitry Klyachkivsky. In September 1940 he was arrested by the NKVD as German spy, but in July 1941 he “escaped” from Stalin’s prison and then (attention!) headed the security service of the military organization OUN (b) - the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”.
Now what happened after June 22. From the beginning of 1941, the Germans formed the Nachtigal special battalion from Ukrainians who had experience serving in the Polish army. It was not a political, but a purely military (military sabotage) unit, designed to solve tactical problems (mining behind enemy lines, destroying communications, etc.). The recruitment of “Nachtigall” by Bandera’s men took place in person; they simply signed up as Ukrainian volunteers. The Melnikites had real support at the German top at that time; they formed several combat units on the Slovak border.
On June 29-30, “Nachtigal” ended up in Lvov, at the same time Bandera emissaries arrived there. They began to exterminate Jews (deliberately senselessly, in order to completely discredit the Germans in front of the United States - for example, mathematics professors from the Lvov University) and proclaimed the creation of an independent Ukrainian republic, as well as the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian armed forces(to seize the initiative from the Germans and present them with a fait accompli). The Germans were stunned by such impudence, Nachtigal was taken out of Lvov (it’s not entirely clear how it ended up there) and was soon disbanded. Already in early July, the Germans arrested Bandera and his self-proclaimed government. The Ukrainian state, as agreed with the venerable Melnik, was proclaimed in Kyiv three months later.
The problem was that in other populated areas Bandera’s followers acted with the same agility and, in the wake of the anti-Stalinist enthusiasm of the population, they managed to form activist cells. The Germans took this into account and soon Bandera was released. But Bandera had no mention of positive work (as understood by the Germans). Relying on armed groups of activists, he began the physical destruction of the Melnikites.
Ukraine is great, but there is nowhere to retreat - on Bandera’s back.
On August 30, two members of the leadership of the Melnikov OUN were shot dead in Zhitomir, then several dozen more people were killed in different cities, and in total Bandera’s members handed down about 600 death sentences to the Melnikovites. Massive oppression of the Polish population also began. Already at this stage, the creation of an independent Ukraine under the auspices of Germany was hopelessly frustrated. Soon the Germans imprisoned Bandera again and sent him to a concentration camp, where his two brothers ended up (later killed by the camp administration from Poles).
At the same time, it cannot be said that Bandera was guided by... well, for example, Stalin, and Melnik by Hitler. In principle, Melnik had no disagreements with Bandera; it was a matter of tactics and common sense. Melnik wanted to strengthen himself with the help of the Germans, and if they lost, jump to the crossroads and recreate an independent Ukrainian state. Therefore, in 1944, the Germans put him in prison.
Here I will allow myself a small digression.
As I already had the honor of explaining in the Belarusian series, the history of partisan wars is the most deceitful area of historiography (after church history). You can safely forget what they have been telling you for 70 years about Kovpak and Ponomarenko. The real church history and the real history of the partisan movement (if there is one) from the point of view. ordinary people should be an absolute fantasy.
It is believed that the partisan movement during the war was carried out by a certain “Central Partisan Headquarters at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command” under the leadership of the party bureaucrat and electrical engineer Ponomarenko. This was partly true, but the scheme did not work. Because in order to wage a guerrilla war you need to have appropriate personnel and specialist leaders. There weren’t any in the USSR, and you can’t master such a thing by trial and error. It's too far to try and make mistakes, and Feedback is delayed by months or is not there at all.
Apparently, the active sector of sabotage and guerrilla work (and there was one, of course) was supervised by a group of foreign specialists, and the partisan movement itself unfolded against the background complex shapes cooperation with local oppositionists. Thus, the backbone of Dmitry Medvedev’s partisan group consisted of Spanish saboteurs trained by the British, dressed in the uniform of Melnik’s men. In turn, Melnik’s people used clothes from the Soviet army, etc.
Moreover, all this splendor was covered up by the German leadership of Ukraine.
I think everyone has heard about the fascist fanatic Gauleiter of Ukraine Koch, it seems that partisans killed him there or hanged him in Nuremberg. So no.
Rosenberg in Kyiv. Far right - Erich Koch.
After the war, Erich Koch safely moved to the British zone of occupation and lived there until the summer of 1949. Although it seems that the chelas had to search long and hard, and it was quite easy to do this - due to their pathologically short stature. Most likely, the British were well informed about his whereabouts, but after advertising they were forced to arrest him. However, they themselves did not try him, but handed him over to the chief executioner of the USSR. What about the USSR? But nothing - he handed over the Gauleiter... to Poland. It’s very strange, but the People’s Republic probably had a blast. No, first his death sentence was postponed for 10 years, and then completely canceled. There was no fanfare; during the trial, Koch for some reason said that he loved the USSR, and did a lot of useful things. He lived in Poland until he was 90 years old, died in 1986, and was essentially kept under house arrest. This, I repeat, is one of the main fanatics even after the mass executions of the leaders of the Third Reich.
By the way, what was the name of the Soviet agitators of the Ukrainian collaborators during the war? It turns out, for the most part, nothing. "Policemen." After the war, three names appeared: “Melnikovites”, “Bandera” and “Bulbovtsy”. Bulbovitsy - named “Taras Bulba”, in the world - Taras Borovets, the head of the third group of Ukrainian nationalists united in the “Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army”. (Borovets was also eventually put in a German camp, and Bandera’s men captured his wife and killed him after monstrous torture.)
"Taras Bulba" in the image of a civilized officer.
"Taras Bulba" in the image of the commander of a Russian partisan detachment (note the plywood birch trees).
And this is a homely look, “in slippers.” As far as I understand, the “Bulbovites” were the real field commanders of occupied Ukraine.
Gradually, in the 60-70s, the “Melnikovites” and “Bulbovites” were forgotten; in Soviet propaganda literature, the name Banderaites was firmly established for all independentists. Meanwhile, Bandera himself was in a concentration camp from September 1941 to September 1944 and could not direct operations or generally take part in the course of affairs. (For comparison, Melnik was imprisoned from February to September 1944, Bulba - from December 1943 to September 1944). In the absence of Bandera, the OUN(b) was led by Nikolai Lebed, who, unlike Melnik or Bulba, was IN AN ILLEGAL POSITION, and the Germans placed a reward on his head. The main activity of the OUN(b), quite insignificant, was the extermination of the people of Melnik and Bulba, as well as terror against the Polish population (Volyn massacre of 1943).
Emigrant affairs.
After the war, Bandera’s emigrant activities naturally again boiled down to the surrender of the agents sent by the Americans to the MGB; in addition, the OUN(b) itself split into two parts. The breakaway part was led by Lev Rebet, who was soon killed by the Star Banderaites. The answer came two years later. Despite the fact that Bandera was heavily encrypted (even his children did not know that he was Bandera, and thought that their dad was an ordinary Bandera member named Poppel), Rebet’s men tracked him down and killed him.
As is customary in such cases among Ukrainians, two years later another independent nationalist, Stashinsky, appeared on the horizon and declared that he personally killed both Rebet and Bandera... on instructions from the KGB. Further with all stops up to mysterious disappearances, plastic surgeries, polonium poisoning, etc. Recently, we all saw a Ukrainian performance using the example of Litvinenko-Lugovoy - also with miraculous discoveries of lost parents, articles in the tabloid press and a Polish zilch at the end.
On holiday in Switzerland. The scout net is seriously lacking.
As for the OUN(M), led by Melnik, it finally merged with, so to speak, the indigenous Ukrainian national movement - the Petliura government in exile, like the Poles who lived to see the collapse of socialism and performed a symbolic act of transferring power to the legitimate government of Ukraine in the early 90s.
Shukhevych is a junior officer of the German auxiliary troops, who then went into hiding and removed Lebed from the military leadership of the OUN(b). Now the nationalists are fastening their attention on Bender, because he did not take part in any action at all.
Why, after all, did the “Banderaites” become the symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, and not the respectable (and, in the end, more or less legitimate) “Melnikovites”, and not the brave “Bulbovites”? From the point of view of Soviet propaganda, no matter how funny it may seem, it’s a matter of a significant surname. “Bandera” from “gang”, “Bandera” = “bandits”.
There is Lenin, there is no Lenin. Happiness.
Well... As a teenager, I discovered a brochure from a foreign literature publishing house, “Korean Proverbs and Sayings.” It was always lying on the shelf, but now I take it and open it. The first thing I saw was the saying: “When the air is spoiled, the loudest indignation is the one who spoiled it.” The next day the whole “sixth bee” laughed, the brochure was read to the gills. And the state is the teenager.
Every year on January 1, on the territory of now independent Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalists organize a Sabbath, in the form of a torchlight procession along the central streets of Kiev, dedicated to the birthday of Stepan Bandera. Ukrainian nationalists conduct a torchlight procession in the same way as once in Nazi Germany the Nazis held torchlight processions along the central streets of Berlin.
In 2005, on December 25, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a decree according to which the centenary of the birth of Stepan Bandera will be celebrated on January 1. A number of events were dedicated to the solemn date in Ukraine, in particular the release of a coin with his image, as well as the construction of a memorial complex in Ivano-Frankivsk. Deputies of the legislative council of Ternopil (western Ukraine), in turn, proposed to the country's leadership to award the OUN leader the title of Hero of Ukraine...
But who is Stepan Bandera?
In terms of his cruelty, he can be placed on a par with the most bloodthirsty tyrants. If, by the ill will of fate or an absurd accident, Stepan Bandera came to power in Ukraine, or God forbid, after the Great Patriotic War, the subversive activities of Bandera gangs would have been successful, the purpose of which was to spread their influence deep into Soviet territories - conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and mobilizing into their own the ranks of a population dissatisfied or agitated against the Soviet regime by order of the Western masters and, as a result, the creation of a real military force capable of crushing the Soviet Union, then rivers of blood would flood the entire Eurasian continent.Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary, Kalush district in the Stanislav region (Galicia), part of Austria-Hungary (now the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), in the family of the Greek Catholic parish priest Andrei Bandera, who received theological education at Lviv University . His mother, Miroslava, also came from the family of a Greek Catholic priest. As he later wrote in his autobiography, “I spent my childhood ... in the house of my parents and grandfathers, grew up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. There was a large library at home, and active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often came together”...
Stepan Bandera began his revolutionary path in 1922 by joining the Ukrainian scout organization “PLAST”, and in 1928 the revolutionary Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO).
In 1929, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by Yevgeny Konovalets and soon headed the most radical “youth” group. On his instructions, the village blacksmith Mikhail Beletsky, professor of philology at the Lviv Ukrainian Gymnasium Ivan Babiy, university student Yakov Bachinsky and many others were killed.
At that time, the OUN established close contacts with Germany; its headquarters were located in Berlin, at Hauptstrasse 11, under the guise of the “Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany.” Bandera himself was trained in Danzig, at an intelligence school.
From 1932 to 1933 - deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN. He organized robberies of postal trains and post offices, as well as the murder of opponents.
In 1934, on the orders of Stepan Bandera, an employee of the Soviet consulate, Alexei Mailov, was killed in Lvov. The facts become interesting that shortly before this murder was committed, the former resident of German intelligence in Poland, Major Knauer, appeared in the OUN and, according to Polish intelligence, on the eve of the murder the OUN received 40 (forty) thousand marks from the Abwehr.
With Hitler coming to power in Germany in January 1934, the Berlin headquarters of the OUN, as a special department, was included in the Gestapo headquarters. In the suburbs of Berlin - Wilhelmsdorf - barracks were also built with funds from German intelligence, where OUN militants and their officers were trained. Meanwhile, the Polish Minister of the Interior - General Bronislaw Peracki - sharply condemned Germany's plans to capture Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was declared a "free city" under the administration of the League of Nations. Hitler himself instructed Richard Yarom, a German intelligence agent who oversaw the OUN, to eliminate Peratsky. On June 15, 1934, Peratsky was killed by the people of Stepan Bandera, but this time luck did not smile on them and the nationalists were captured and convicted. For the murder of Bronislav Peratsky, Stepan Bandera, Nikolai Lebed and Yaroslav Karpinets were sentenced to death by the Warsaw District Court, the rest, including Roman Shukhevych, were sentenced to 7-15 years in prison, but under pressure from Germany this penalty was replaced by life imprisonment .
In the summer of 1936, Stepan Bandera, along with other members of the Regional Executive of the OUN, appeared in court in Lvov on charges of leading the terrorist activities of the OUN-UVO - in particular, the court considered the circumstances of the murder by members of the OUN of the gymnasium director Ivan Babii and student Yakov Bachinsky, accused by nationalists in connection with Polish police. At this trial, Bandera already openly acted as a regional leader of the OUN. In total, at the Warsaw and Lvov trials, Stepan Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment seven times.
After the murder of Yevgeny Konovalets in 1938 by NKVD officers, OUN meetings took place in Italy, at which Yevgeny Konovalets’ successor Andrei Melnik was proclaimed (his supporters declared him the head of PUN - Seeing Off Ukrainian Nationalists), with which Stepan Bandera did not agree.
When Germany occupied Poland in September 1939 and Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Abwehr, was released.
Irrefutable evidence of Stepan Bandera's collaboration with the Nazis is the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945).
"... after the end of the war with Poland, Germany was intensively preparing for a war against the Soviet Union and therefore measures were being taken through the Abwehr to intensify subversive activities, since those activities that were carried out through MELNIK and other agents seemed insufficient. For these purposes, a prominent Ukrainian nationalist Bandera Stepan, who during the war was released from prison, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. The last one was in touch with me". .
After the Nazis released Stepan Bandera from prison, a split in the OUN became inevitable. Having read the works of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Dmitry Dontsov in a Polish prison, Stepan Bandera believed that the OUN was not “revolutionary” enough in its essence, and only he, Stepan Bandera, was able to correct the situation.
In February 1940, Stepan Bandera convened an OUN conference in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created that handed down death sentences to Melnik’s supporters; the confrontation with Melnik’s supporters took the form of an armed struggle. Bandera’s members kill members of the “Melnikovsky” line of the OUN - Nikolai Stsiborsky and Yemelyan Senik, as well as a prominent “Melnikovsky” member Yevgeny Shulga.
As follows from the memoirs of Yaroslav Stetsk, Stepan Bandera, through the mediation of Richard Yary, shortly before the war, secretly met with Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. During the meeting, Stepan Bandera, according to Yaroslav Stetsko, “very clearly and clearly presented the Ukrainian positions, finding a certain understanding... with the admiral, who promised support for the Ukrainian political concept, believing that only with its implementation is a German victory over Russia possible.” Stepan Bandera himself indicated that at the meeting with Canaris, the conditions for training Ukrainian volunteer units under the Wehrmacht were mainly discussed.
Three months before the attack on the USSR, Stepan Bandera created the Ukrainian Legion named after Konovalets from members of the OUN, a little later the legion will become part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment and will be called “Nachtigal”, in Ukrainian “nightingale”. The Brandenburg-800 regiment was created as part of the Wehrmacht - it was special forces, the regiment was intended to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines.
Not only Stepan Bandera negotiated with the Nazis, but also persons authorized by him, for example, in the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine documents were preserved that Bandera themselves offered their services to the Nazis, in the interrogation report of Abwehr employee Lazarek Yu.D. it is said that he was a witness and participant in negotiations between Abwehr representative Eichern and Bandera's assistant Nikolai Lebed.
“Lebed said that Bandera’s followers would provide the necessary personnel for saboteur schools and would also be able to agree to the use of the entire underground of Galicia and Volyn for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes on the territory of the USSR.”
To carry out subversive activities on the territory of the USSR, as well as conduct intelligence activities, Stepan Bandera received two and a half million marks from Nazi Germany.
On March 10, 1940, Bandera's OUN headquarters decided to transfer leading personnel to Volyn and Galicia to organize a rebellion.
According to Soviet counterintelligence, the mutiny was planned for the spring of 1941. Why spring? After all, the leadership of the OUN had to understand that open action would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes naturally if we remember that the original date of Nazi Germany’s attack on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer some troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. Interestingly, at the same time, the OUN gave the order to all OUN members who served in the army or police of Yugoslavia to go over to the side of the Croatian Nazis.
In April 1941, the Revolutionary Conduct of the OUN convened a Great Gathering of Ukrainian nationalists in Krakow, where Stepan Bandera was elected head of the OUN, and Yaroslav Stetsko was elected his deputy. In connection with the receipt of new instructions for the underground, the actions of OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine intensified even more. In April alone, 38 Soviet party workers died at their hands, and dozens of sabotage were carried out in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.
After a meeting in April 1941 organized by Stepan Bandera, the OUN finally split into OUN-(m) (Melnik’s supporters) and OUN-(b) (Bandera’s supporters), which was also called OUN-(r) (OUN-revolutionaries).
Here's what the Nazis thought about this: from the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945)
“Despite the fact that during my meeting with Melnik and Bandera, both of them promised to take all measures for reconciliation. I have personally come to the conclusion that this reconciliation will not take place due to the significant differences between them.
If Melnik is a calm, intelligent person, then Bandera is a careerist, a fanatic and a bandit.” (Central state archive public associations of Ukraine f.57. Op.4. D.338. L.280-288)
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans pinned their greatest hopes on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Bandera OUN-(b) in comparison with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Melnik OUM-(m) and the "Polesskaya Sich" of Bulba Borovets, also striving for power under a German protectorate. Ukraine. Stepan Bandera was impatient to feel like the head of an independent Ukrainian state, and he, abusing the trust of his masters from Nazi Germany, without asking them much, decided to proclaim the “independence” of the Ukrainian state from the Moscow occupation, independently creating a government and appointing Yaroslav Stetsk as prime minister. But Germany had its own plans regarding Ukraine; it was interested in free living space, i.e. territories and cheap labor.
The trick of establishing Ukraine as a state was necessary in order to show the population its importance; personal ambitions came into play here. On June 30, 1941, Stepan Bandera publicly decided to announce the “revival of the Ukrainian state,” assigning the role of proclaimer to his comrade-in-arms Yaroslav Stetsk. On this day, Yaroslav Stetsko voiced the will of Stepan Bandera and the entire OUN line from the city hall in Lviv.
Residents of Lvov reacted sluggishly to information about the upcoming event regarding the revival of Ukrainian statehood. According to the words of the Lvov priest, doctor of theology Father Gavril Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and clergy were brought to this gathering as extras. The city residents themselves did not dare to take to the streets and support the proclamation of the revival of the Ukrainian state. The statement about the revival of the Ukrainian state was accepted by the group of forcibly rounded up listeners who gathered that day.
The Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” of June 30, 1941, paradoxically, went down in history. The Germans, as mentioned above regarding Ukraine, had their own selfish interest and there could be no revival and granting of state status to Ukraine even under the patronage of Nazi Germany out of the question.
It would be reckless for Germany to give power in the territory that was captured by regular German military formations to Ukrainian nationalists just because they, too, in small numbers, took part in the hostilities, but mostly did the dirty work of punishing civilians and policemen. Which of the Ukrainian nationalists asked the population of Ukraine whether the people want their power? Moreover, as it turns out, it is not an independent government, but under the patronage of Nazi Germany. This is evidenced by the main text of the Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” dated June 30, 1941:
“The newly reborn Ukrainian State will closely interact with the National Socialist Greater Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, is creating a new order in Europe and the world and helping the Ukrainian people to free themselves from Moscow occupation.
The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being created on Ukrainian soil, will continue to fight together with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for a Sovereign Conciliar Ukrainian State and a new order throughout the world.
Let the Ukrainian Sovereign Conciliar Power live! Let the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists live! May the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian People STEPAN BANDERA live! GLORY TO UKRAINE!
Thus, the OUN members, not authorized by anyone, themselves proclaimed their own state.
Having carefully analyzed the actions of the OUN members during the Second World War and the text of the Act, we can confidently say that the so-called independent state of Ukraine, proclaimed on June 30, 1941, by Bandera, Shukhevych and Stetsko, was an ally of Hitler in the Second World War.
An interesting fact is that among Ukrainian nationalists and many officials at the head of the state of modern Ukraine, the Act of June 30, 1941 is considered the Act of Independence of Ukraine, and Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko are considered Heroes of Ukraine.
Simultaneously with the proclamation of the Act, supporters of Stepan Bandera staged a pogrom in Lvov. Ukrainian Nazis acted according to blacklists compiled before the war. As a result, 7 thousand people were killed in the city in 6 days.
Here is what Saul Friedman wrote about the massacre carried out by Bandera’s followers in Lvov in his book “Pogromist”, published in New York: “During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigal battalion destroyed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lvov. Before execution, Jews - professors, lawyers, doctors - were forced to lick all the staircases of four-story buildings and carry garbage in their mouths from one building to another. Then, forced to walk through a line of soldiers with yellow-blakite armbands, they were bayoneted."
Bypassed by a younger competitor, Andrei Melnik was offended and immediately wrote a letter to Hitler and Governor General Frank saying that “Bandera’s people are behaving unworthily and have created their own government without the Fuhrer’s knowledge.” After which Hitler ordered the arrest of Stepan Bandera and his “government.”
At the beginning of July 1941, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow and, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his comrades, was sent to Berlin at the disposal of Abwehr 2 to Colonel Erwin Stolze.
After Stepan Bandera’s arrival in Berlin, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded that he abandon the Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State” of June 30, 1941. Stepan Bandera agreed and called on “the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.” After which, on July 15, 1941, in Berlin, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsk were released from arrest. Yaroslav Stetsko in his memoirs described what was happening as an “honorable arrest.” Yes, it’s truly an honor: “From the wilderness to the court,” to “the supposed capital of the world.”
It is also an amazing fact that after his release from arrest in Berlin, Stepan Bandera lives at the Abwehr dacha.
During their stay in Berlin, numerous meetings began with representatives of various departments, at which Bandera’s supporters insistently assured that without their help the German army would not be able to defeat Muscovy. There was a numerous stream of messages, explanations, dispatches, “declarations” and “memoranda” addressed to Hitler, Riebentrop, Rosenberg and other Fuhrers of Nazi Germany, constantly making excuses and asking for assistance and support. In his letters, Stepan Bandera proved his loyalty to the Fuhrer and the German army and tried to convince of the urgent need for the OUN-b for Germany.
Stepan Bandera’s labors were not in vain, thanks to him, the Germans took the next step: Andrei Melnik was allowed to continue to openly curry favor with Berlin, and Stepan Bandera was ordered to portray an enemy of the Germans so that he could, hiding behind anti-German phrases, restrain the Ukrainian masses from a real, irreconcilable struggle with the Nazi invaders, from the struggle for the freedom of Ukraine.
With the emergence of new plans of the Nazis, Stepan Bandera is transported from the Abwehr dacha to the privileged block of Sachsenhausen, out of harm's way. After the massacre that Bandera’s followers carried out in June 1941 in Lvov, Stepan Bandera could have been killed by his own people, but Nazi Germany still needed him. This gave rise to the legend that Bandera did not cooperate with the Germans and even fought with them, but documents say otherwise.
In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and another 300 Banderaites were kept separately in the Cellenbau bunker, where they were kept in good conditions. Bandera's members were allowed to meet with each other, and they also received food and money from relatives and the OUN-b. Not infrequently, they left the camp for the purpose of contacts with the “conspiracy” OUN-UPA, as well as with the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the Tselenbau bunker), which housed a school for OUN agent and sabotage personnel.
The instructor at this school was a recent officer of the Nachtigal special battalion, Yuri Lopatinsky, through whom Stepan Bandera made contact with the OUN-UPA.
Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942; he also achieved the replacement of its main commander Dmitry Klyachkivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych.
In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of fascists. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops, plus the hatred of local residents for the OUN-UPA in Volyn and Galicia was so high that they themselves handed them over and killed them. In order to activate the OUN members and support their spirit, the Nazis decide to release Stepan Bandera and 300 of his supporters from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This happened on September 25, 1944, after leaving the camp, Stepan Bandera immediately went to work as part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow and began training OUN-UPA sabotage detachments.
Irrefutable proof of this is the testimony of former Gestapo and Abwehr officer Lieutenant Siegfried Müller, given during the investigation on September 19, 1945.
“On December 27, 1944, I prepared a group of saboteurs to transfer them to the rear of the Red Army on special missions. Stepan Bandera, in my presence, personally instructed these agents and through them conveyed to the UPA headquarters an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and establish regular radio communications with Abwehrkommando-202. (Central State Archive of Public Associations of Ukraine f.57. Op.4. D.338. L.268-279)
Stepan Bandera himself did not participate in practical work in the rear of the Red Army, his task was to organize, he was generally a good organizer.
An interesting fact is that those who fell into the clutches of Hitler’s punitive machine, even if the Nazis later became convinced of the person’s innocence, did not return to freedom. This was common Nazi practice. The unprecedented behavior of the Nazis against Bandera indicates their most direct mutual cooperation.
When the war approached Berlin, Bandera was tasked with forming detachments from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis and defending Berlin. Bandera created the detachments, but he himself escaped.
After the end of the war, he lived in Munich and collaborated with British intelligence services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the conduct of the entire OUN (which actually meant the unification of the OUN-(b) and OUN-(m)).
As we see, there is a completely happy ending for the former “prisoner” of Sachsenhausen.
Being in absolute safety and leading the OUN and UPA organizations, Stepan Bandera shed a lot of human blood with the hands of his executors.
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was killed in the entrance of his house. He was met on the stairs by a man who shot him in the face from a special pistol with a stream of soluble poison.
During the Great Patriotic War, at the hands of members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), about 1.5 million Jews, 1 million Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, 500 thousand Poles, 100 thousand people of other nationalities.
Prepared by Igor Cherkashchenko, member of the Supreme Council of the “SELF-DEFENSE” movement, assistant to the deputy of the Kharkov Regional Council of Natalia Vitrenko’s Bloc “People’s Opposition”
For comprehensive coverage of the issue
Dr Alexander Korman.135 tortur i okrucieństw stosowanych przez terrorystów OUN - UPA na ludności polskiej Kresów Wschodnich.
(Translation from Polish - navigator).
135 tortures and atrocities applied by OUN-UPA terrorists to the Polish population of the Eastern outskirts.
The methods of torture and atrocities listed below are only examples and do not cover the full collection of methods of death in agony applied by OUN-UPA terrorists to Polish children, women and men. The ingenuity of torture was rewarded.
Crimes against humanity committed by Ukrainian terrorists can be the subject of study not only by historians, lawyers, sociologists, economists, but also by psychiatrists.
Even today, 60 years after those tragic events, some people whose lives were saved are worried when they talk about it, their hands and jaws begin to tremble, and their voice breaks in the larynx.
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 with the butt of an ax.
004. Hitting the forehead with the butt of an ax.
005. “Eagle” carving on the forehead.
006. Driving a bayonet into the temple of the head.
007. Knocking out one eye.
008. Knocking out two eyes.
009. Nose cutting.
010. Circumcision of one ear.
011. Cropping both ears.
012. Piercing children through with stakes.
013. Punching through with a sharpened thick wire from ear to ear.
014. Lip cutting.
015. Tongue cutting.
016. Throat cutting.
017. Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the hole.
018. Cutting the throat and inserting a piece into the hole.
019. Knocking out teeth.
020. Broken jaw.
021. Tearing the mouth from ear to ear.
022. Gagging of mouths with oakum when transporting still living victims.
023. Cutting the neck with a knife or sickle.
024. Hitting the neck with an ax.
025. Vertical chopping of a head with an axe.
026. Rolling the head back.
027. Crush the head by placing it in a vice and tightening the screw.
028. Cutting off the head with a sickle.
029. Cutting off the head with a scythe.
030. Chopping off a head with an axe.
031. Hitting the neck with an ax.
032. Infliction of stab wounds to the head.
033. Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back.
034. Infliction of other chopped wounds on the back.
035. Bayonet strikes in the back.
036. Broken bones of the ribs of the chest.
037. Stabbing with a knife or bayonet in the heart or near the heart.
038. Causing puncture wounds to the chest with a knife or bayonet.
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.
046. Cutting the abdomen of a woman with an advanced pregnancy and inserting, for example, a live cat instead of the removed fetus, and suturing the abdomen.
047. Cutting open the belly and pouring boiling water inside.
048. Cutting open the belly and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
049. Cutting open the belly of pregnant women and pouring broken glass inside.
050. Pulling out veins from groin to feet.
051. Placing a hot iron into the groin – vagina.
052. Inserting pine cones into the vagina with the top side facing forward.
053. Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it all the way to the throat, right through.
054. Cutting the front of a woman's torso with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
055. Hanging victims by their entrails.
056. Putting a glass bottle into the vagina and breaking it.
057. Inserting a glass bottle into the anus and breaking it.
058. Cutting open the belly and pouring food inside, the so-called feed flour, for hungry pigs, who tore out this food along with intestines and other entrails.
059. Chopping off one hand with an ax.
060. Chopping off both hands with an ax.
061. Piercing the palm with a knife.
062. Cutting off fingers with a knife.
063. Cutting off the palm.
064. Cauterization of the inside of the palm on a hot stove in a coal kitchen.
065. Chopping off the heel.
066. Chopping off the foot above the heel bone.
067. Breaking of arm bones in several places with a blunt instrument.
068. Breaking leg bones with a blunt instrument in several places.
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.
071. Sawing off both legs with a saw.
072. Sprinkling hot coal on bound feet.
073. Nailing hands to the table and feet to the floor.
074. Nailing hands and feet to a cross in a church.
075. Hitting the back of the head with an ax to victims who had previously been laid on the floor.
076. Hitting the entire body with an ax.
077. Chopping a whole body into pieces with an ax.
078. Breaking alive legs and arms in the so-called strap.
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.
081. Ripping the belly of children.
082. Nailing a small child to the table with a bayonet.
083. Hanging a male child by the genitals from a doorknob.
084. Knocking out the joints of a child’s legs.
085. Knocking out the joints of a child’s hands.
086. Suffocation of a child by throwing various rags over him.
087. Throwing small children alive into a deep well.
088. Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
089. Breaking a baby's head by taking him by the legs and hitting him against a wall or stove.
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 cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
093. Nailing a small child to the door.
094. Hanging on a tree with your head up.
095. Hanging from a tree upside down.
096. Hanging from a tree with your feet up and scorching your head from below with the fire of a fire lit under your head.
097. Throwing down from a cliff.
098. Drowning in the river.
099. Drowning by throwing into a deep well.
100. Drowning in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
101. Piercing with a pitchfork, and then frying pieces of the body over a fire.
102. Throwing an adult into the flames of a fire in a forest clearing, around which Ukrainian girls sang and danced to the sounds of an accordion.
103. Driving a stake through the stomach and strengthening it in the ground.
104. Tying a person to a tree and shooting at him as if at a target.
105. Taking one out into the cold naked or in underwear.
106. Strangulation with a twisted, soapy rope tied around the neck - a lasso.
107. Dragging a body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
108. Tying a woman’s legs to two trees, as well as her arms above her head, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
109. Tearing the torso with chains.
110. Dragging along the ground tied to a cart.
111. Dragging along the ground a mother with three children, tied to a cart drawn by a horse, in such a way that one leg of the mother is tied with a chain to the cart, and to the other leg of the mother is one leg of the eldest child, and to the other leg of the eldest child is tied youngest child, and the leg of the youngest child is tied to the other leg of the youngest child.
112. Punching through the body with the barrel of a carbine.
113. Constricting the victim with barbed wire.
114. Two victims being pulled together with barbed wire at the same time.
115. Pulling together several victims with barbed wire.
116. Periodically tightening the torso with barbed wire and pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to regain consciousness and feel pain and suffering.
117. Burying a victim in a standing position in the ground up to his neck and leaving him in this position.
118. Burying someone alive up to the neck in the ground and later cutting off the head with a scythe.
119. Tearing the body in half with the help of horses.
120. Tearing the torso in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then freeing them.
121. Throwing adults into the flames of a burning building.
122. Setting fire to a victim previously doused with kerosene.
123. Laying sheaves of straw around the victim and setting them on fire, thus making the torch of Nero.
124. Sticking a knife into the back and leaving it in the victim's body.
125. Impaling a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
126. Cutting off the skin from the face with blades.
127. Driving oak stakes between the ribs.
128. Hanging on barbed wire.
129. Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink, as well as dousing it with boiling water.
130. Attaching the body to a support and throwing knives at it.
131. Binding - shackling hands with barbed wire.
132. Inflicting fatal blows with a shovel.
133. Nailing hands to the threshold of a home.
134. Dragging a body along the ground by legs tied with a rope.
Stepan Bandera– one of the most controversial figures in Ukrainian history. Hero of Ukraine or pathetic traitor? Patriot or fascist? An ideologist of Ukrainian freedom or a ruthless killer and dictator? Even 55 years after his death, it was his name that for some became synonymous with freedom, and for others – the embodiment of the modern fascist movement. What did Bandera do to deserve such recognition?
It is absolutely pointless to deny the colossal significance of the figure of Stepan Bandera in modern Ukrainian history and for the formation of the national self-identification of the younger generation of “free” Ukrainians. It is not for nothing that this extremely controversial person was included in the top three “Great Ukrainians” in 2008, together with Yaroslav the Mudry and Nikolai Amosov. This is what our fellow citizens themselves decided, at least that part of them that took part in the national interactive project of one of the domestic TV channels.
However, despite this, “Bandera” discussions in Ukraine, and recently beyond its borders, still do not subside. The symbol of Ukrainian freedom for some and the real embodiment of fascism for others - Bandera - is today wisely used, including by anti-Ukrainian forces, as a factor of discord between Ukrainians from different regions of the country. All this only confirms the assumption that his influence on the course of Ukrainian history, even half a century after his death, still retains its original power.
How to relate to the activities of Stepan Bandera and, in general, to the entire Ukrainian national liberation movement in Western Ukraine during the Second World War, today, given the situation, every Ukrainian must decide for himself. However, for this it is necessary, at a minimum, to know what kind of person he was, and how it happened that he became a symbol of the Ukrainian struggle for national independence.
Life and death of a nationalist
The future leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugriv (now Kalushsky district, Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a priest. Greek Catholic Church Andrey Bandera.
Stepan’s childhood passed under the accompaniment of the horrors of the First World War: the territory of Western Ukraine of those times continually passed from one occupier to another, and in 1917, the Austrian-Russian front line passed through Stary Ugriv, which is why there were repeated long battles in the village.
Against the backdrop of the war, the national movement of Western Ukrainians unfolded, in which Andrei Bandera took an active part. It was he who was one of those who organized the Ukrainian coup in the Kalush povet, and in 1918-1919 he was the latter’s envoy to the Ukrainian National Council - the parliament of the newly created Western Ukrainian People's Republic. Also during the Ukrainian-Polish War, Andrei Bandera served as a chaplain in the Ukrainian Galician Army, with which he fought in Naddnepryansk Ukraine.
Before the eyes of young Stepan Bandera, Ukrainian statehood perished under the ruins of post-war Europe, he witnessed the failed offensive of the Galician army on the positions of the Polish Home Army armed by the Entente countries (the so-called Chertkovskaya offensive), and his father, after the final surrender of the Ukrainian army, was forced to hide from persecution for some time Polish authorities.
It is likely that the foundation for Stepan’s nationalist worldview was laid precisely at that tragic time for the Ukrainian people.
In 1919, he began his studies at the Ukrainian gymnasium in the city of Stryi, where he subsequently successfully completed all eight classes.
In 1922, 12-year-old Stepan became a member of the Plast scout organization - at that time one of the main strongholds of the patriotic education of Ukrainian youth. Bandera tried to join the organization since the 1st grade, but a significant obstacle was rheumatism of the joints, because of which he sometimes could not even walk, and at the age of 11 he was in the hospital for two months with an aqueous tumor of the knee.
However, in the end, this did not prevent young Stepan from becoming a Plastun, and subsequently also a member of semi-legal patriotic circles, the purpose of which was to counter the Polish authorities and support the Ukrainian Military Organization (hereinafter referred to as the UVO) banned by Warsaw. In high school, Bandera already had serious connections with representatives of the higher education institution and even carried out some assignments for them, and immediately after graduation he became a full member of the organization.
After graduating from high school in 1927, Stepan Bandera decided to enter the Ukrainian Economic Academy, which was located in Podebrady, Czechoslovakia, but the Polish authorities refused to issue him a passport to travel abroad. He was forced to stay in his native Stary Ugriva, which only strengthened his connection with the UVO, in which he was involved in organizing student circles with elements of military training in the villages of the Kalush region.
In 1928, Bandera moved to Lviv, where he entered the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School at the Lviv Secret Ukrainian University (which was created by the Ukrainian public in response to the closure of Ukrainian departments at Lviv universities). From that moment on, the activities of the future leader of Ukrainian nationalists intensified significantly: he continued to participate in UVO projects, where he dealt with issues of intelligence and propaganda. Also at this time, Bandera became a member of the student cultural-national organization “Osnova”, while being a member of the 2nd kuren of senior plastuns “Zagin Chervona Kalina”.
In 1929, when, as a result of the unification of the Ukrainian Military District and youth nationalist organizations of Western Ukraine (“Group of Ukrainian National Youth”, “League of Ukrainian Nationalists” and “Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth”), the national liberation movement of Ukrainians was led by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Bandera immediately became a member, which allowed him to participate in its first congresses.
From that moment on, the young nationalist’s career rapidly took off. Bandera begins to deal with the printing and delivery of illegal materials (newspapers, leaflets, magazines), the organization of ideological and military training structures for young members of the movement, as well as the development of sabotage, sabotage and even terrorist actions directed against the Polish authorities or Ukrainian collaborators.
Already in 1931, the hyperactive and enterprising Bandera was assigned to oversee the entire propaganda department of the OUN. While in this position, he is among the organizers of several mass actions of disobedience of the Ukrainian population to the Polish authorities, the most famous of which is the civil boycott of tobacco and alcohol products of Polish monopolies.
In 1933, Stepan Bandera became the regional leader of the OUN and it was under his leadership that a number of sabotage and terrorist actions were carried out against the Polish occupiers. The most famous of them, of course, is the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Bronislaw Peracki, who was personally responsible for mass repression against Ukrainians within the framework of the so-called pacifications in relation to national minorities of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
OUN members killed Peratsky on June 16, 1934, and the day before, Bandera was arrested by Polish police. Only a year and a half later, in January 1936, after a lengthy legal battle, Bandera and several of his associates were sentenced to death by a Polish court. Later, as part of a broad amnesty, the death penalty for OUN members was replaced by life imprisonment.
He was in the Polish Bandera prison until the German invasion of Poland in 1939. During his imprisonment, together with other “political” prisoners, he repeatedly carried out acts of disobedience, in particular hunger strikes. As a “particularly dangerous” criminal, Bandera was kept in isolation from other prisoners, which, however, did not prevent the nationalists from releasing him from prison during the German bombing. Then, under the onslaught of the Nazis, most Polish prisons were left without guards, who chose to flee, so most Ukrainian political prisoners managed to be released.
After his release, Bandera immediately went to Lvov. In 1939, the implementation of the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, which implied, in particular, the division of Poland between Germany and the USSR, was in full swing. It became obvious that Western Ukraine would be occupied by the Soviet Union, so it was the Bolsheviks who were considered by Bandera and his associates to be the main enemies of Ukrainian independence.
At this time, most of the OUN leaders moved to Krakow, where at that time almost the entire elite of the national liberation movement of Western Ukraine was located. In 1938, in Rotterdam, the leader of the OUN of that time, Yevgeny Konovalets, was killed by USSR agents, which had a significant impact on the further activities of the OUN. The organization no longer had the same cohesion; there was no trust between its members.
In the conditions of the beginning of the war, many nationalists were unable to come to a common understanding of the further strategy of the OUN to achieve the ultimate goal of the organization - the independence of Ukraine.
At the beginning of 1940, Bandera went to Italy to negotiate with another OUN leader, Andrei Melnik. Melnyk was a representative of the old, more moderate guard of Ukrainian nationalists, but his strategy was based on an alliance of Ukrainian nationalists with Germany, which did not suit Bandera and his like-minded people. As a result, Bandera and Melnik never came to a common decision, and the OUN split into Bandera and Melnik.
In 1941, literally a few days after the proclamation of the “Act of the Revival of the Ukrainian State,” Stepan Bandera fell into the hands of the German police, who explained to him that there could be no talk of any Ukrainian statehood during the Nazi occupation. Bandera decided not to publicly renounce the Act, for which he was sent to the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen, where he remained until December 1944.
Oddly enough, after his release from the concentration camp, the OUN(b) leader did not return to Ukraine and instead settled in Munich. From there he oversaw the activities of the foreign “legion” of Ukrainian nationalists, however, not having the former influence on the organization, Bandera could no longer ignore the opinion of the emerging opposition, which accused him of authoritarianism and attempts to usurp power.
After the war, OUN activity in Western Ukrainian lands began to decline. The death of Shukhevych, mass purges of OUN members by Soviet troops, political persecution of Ukrainian nationalists. Western Ukraine was flooded with Soviet intelligence services, which launched an extremely broad campaign to exterminate even the slightest hint of a revival of the Ukrainian national idea.
Of course, most of the representatives of the top leadership of the OUN (both the Bandera and Melnikov wings), after the massive flight of the Nazi army from the territory of Ukraine, also immediately left their native land. The rest were either killed or arrested and sent to Soviet concentration camps. Therefore, the OUN in the post-war period continued active work, but already in exile. All this still posed a threat to the dominance of the USSR in Western Ukraine, so at the end of the 50s a decisive blow was dealt to the OUN: after a series of murders of other OUN leaders, in 1959, he was shot in the face with a solution of potassium cyanide in the entrance of his house. Stepan Bandera himself. His killer was KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.
Controversial issues about Bandera
It is extremely difficult to clearly understand what happened during the Second World War in Western Ukraine. In fact, five independent armies operated on this section of the front at different times, each of which pursued its own goals. German Wehrmacht formations, the Soviet Red Army, the Ukrainian UPA, the Polish Home Army, as well as detachments of Soviet and Ukrainian partisans - all of them turned the territory of Western Ukraine into a real bloody meat grinder, in which civilians also suffered.
Of course, it is also impossible to idealize the figure of Bandera. His political position was far from liberal ideas, and the basis of the revolutionary struggle was the method of terror against the enemies of the Ukrainian nation, collaborators and simply political opponents. Such a worldview can only be accepted by radicals (or hypocrites who hate Hitler and revere Stalin), but not at all by adherents of the peaceful and civilized development of national states.
There are definitely more questions regarding the activities of Stepan Bandera and his comrades in the OUN than answers. All this is an excellent reason for speculation of various scales, because there is simply no consensus on this matter and it is unlikely that such a thing will ever appear. The history of Bandera and the UPA is precisely the case when historical truth is doomed to struggle for survival with numerous falsifications and even outright lies. Therefore, in the current situation in Ukraine, we will at least try to shed light on several of the most controversial issues relating to the OUN-UPA and its leader.
Question #1 . Bandera and the Nazis
Perhaps the main and most powerful argument of Bandera’s haters is his collaboration with Hitler’s Germany during the Great Patriotic War. Indeed, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists pinned very serious hopes on the assistance of the German army in the fight against the Bolshevik occupation. At the same time, the role of the Wehrmacht in the Ukrainian liberation movement was perceived differently by individual nationalists.
In particular, the leader of the OUN at the outbreak of World War II, Andrei Melnik, insisted that Ukrainian nationalists needed to take advantage of Germany's help by joining forces with it in the war against the Bolsheviks. One of Melnyk’s arguments was his own experience during the failure of the UPR and WUNR, when, of all Western states, only Germany supported Ukrainian statehood, not in word but in deed, which could have strengthened had the Germans not lost in the First World War.
Bandera was against this, because he believed that in the national liberation war Ukraine should rely only on its own forces. At the same time, Bandera’s like-minded people perceived the German army only as temporary occupiers, especially since in 1939 the territory of Western Ukraine, according to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, came under the protectorate of the USSR.
In 1941, Bandera was captured by German police and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. Three years later, in 1944, when the war was coming to an end, the Germans, realizing the inevitability of their defeat, feverishly tried to find at least some way to delay the advance of Soviet troops on the eastern front of the battles.
Such an opportunity was cooperation with the hundred-thousand-strong UPA, which already fought desperately on three fronts throughout the war. However, Bandera clearly rejected the proposal for cooperation between the OUN and the collapsing Nazi regime.
It remains unclear how it happened that, being an associate of Hitler, Bandera thundered in Nazi concentration camp? Why did he refuse to help them in 1944? If Bandera worked for the Wehrmacht, why then did the issue of German patronage become one of the main contradictions between Bandera and Melnik, which ultimately led to the split of the OUN?
Of course, you can find hundreds of statements to the contrary, but unfortunately, there is no actual evidence of collaboration on the part of the UPA and Bandera (except for “witness testimony” obtained in the basements of the NKVD).
Question #2 . OUN and terrorism
Soviet propaganda did not skimp on epithets when describing the character of Stepan Bandera: before the citizens of the USSR he appeared as a bloody killer, tough and unforgiving by nature.
It got to the point that the story of how little Bandera loved to have fun by killing cats in front of his peers became very popular. According to the “anti-fascists”, Bandera’s sadistic inclinations began to fully develop in adulthood, when he achieved leadership in the OUN.
This whole story sounds very interesting, but there is no concrete evidence of its reality. All this is more like the purposeful formation of a negative image of Bandera in the eyes of then Soviet, and now Ukrainian and Russian citizens.
At the same time, in the pre-war years, the OUN was indeed seriously engaged in terrorist and sabotage activities directed against the Polish authorities. However, to say that Bandera personally became the ideologist of such methods would be wrong, since he was just one of the regional leaders of the OUN, who himself carried out the orders of the organization’s top leadership. It is not for nothing that before the murder of Peratsky, not only Bandera, but also several of his associates were put in the dock.
In general, the Polish authorities had plenty of reasons to be angry with the OUN, because Ukrainian nationalists used a whole arsenal of sabotage methods in their revolutionary activities. OUN members robbed banks, set fire to government buildings, blocked traffic on railroads, and even organized the murders of political opponents.
All this seemed to pursue a good (for Ukrainians) goal: by shaking the situation in the region, to announce itself to the whole world and once again return the issue of Ukrainian statehood to the international agenda. But in reality, this only led to a further extremely harsh reaction from the Polish authorities, which resulted in a process of pacification with the goal of “pacifying” the Ukrainian population. In 1934, in the city of Bereza-Kartuzskaya (modern Belarus), a concentration camp for political prisoners was even created, where Ukrainians were also kept.
Be that as it may, the methods that the OUN adopted in the pre-war period do not paint this organization at all. Regardless of the ultimate goal of the movement, killing people, including their own compatriots, robbery and looting cannot be called civilized and honest means of struggle for the national liberation of the people. And any justification for this looks extremely unconvincing.
Question #3 . OUN against the USSR and Poland
Of course, Western Ukrainians had even more reasons to hate Poland: after the fall of the UPR, with the permission of the League of Nations, Western Ukrainian lands were once again occupied by the Poles, who took upon themselves to ensure cultural and political autonomy for the Ukrainian population. However, the Polish authorities did not fulfill their promises and, on the contrary, tried in every possible way to increase pressure on the Ukrainian population of the so-called “Lesser Poland”.
It is not surprising that during the Second World War, the bloodiest and most massive battles of the OUN-UPA took place precisely with the Polish Home Army (AK). The goal of the Poles was to restore the Polish state within its pre-war borders, so significant AK forces were also located on the territory of Western Ukraine, which, naturally, only irritated Ukrainian nationalists.
At the same time, the extremely negative perception of the Soviet Union on the part of the OUN is understandable: Bolshevism among Ukrainians was perceived as another imperialist undertaking by Moscow, and for the OUN, knocking out the support from under the feet of this enemy was much more important than confronting the Germans, who fought against almost the entire world. Moreover, having gained control over the Western Ukrainian lands, the USSR authorities immediately began to confirm their image of a real repressive monster: Western Ukrainians were able to feel what political arrests, deportations, executions, cultural violations carried out by the communist regime were like in their own skin.
The Stalinist repressions of the 30s are not even worth mentioning. It is not for nothing that in Europe the Stalinist regime was perceived as much more bloody and cruel than even the revanchist aggressive policy of Nazi Germany.
On July 30, 1941, a cooperation agreement was signed between the USSR and the Polish government in exile, as a result of which the Home Army forces united with Soviet partisans and often carried out large-scale military operations, including against the UPA. Numerous conflicts between the Polish and Ukrainian armies played into the hands of both the USSR and Germany, which often themselves instigated clashes between Ukrainians and Poles, which was reflected in the so-called Volyn tragedy.
Question #4 . OUN in World War II
The role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, formed on the basis of the OUN in the Great Patriotic War, is still the subject of the most fierce debate and debate not only among historians, but also in ordinary circles. Sources here differ most radically: some claim that the UPA was supported by Nazi Germany, while others deny this connection.
The split of the OUN into Melnikovites and Banderaites brought even greater confusion to the military-political disposition of forces in Western Ukraine at that time. The Melnikovites supported the Germans and fought against Soviet partisans from the first days of the war. At first, the Banderaites also acted on the side of the Wehrmacht - in 1941, with their forces, two Ukrainian legions were formed - “Nachtigal” and “Roland” - with no more than 800 people each, but both did not last long. It was assumed that it was these formations that would become the basis for creating the army of an independent Ukrainian state. The commander of “Nachtigall” was one of the leaders of the OUN revolutionaries, Roman Shukhevych.
Together with the Germans, the Ukrainian rebels entered Lviv, where the “Act on the Revival of the Ukrainian State” was adopted, but the Nazis quickly made it clear that they were not interested in any nationalist games. In general, if the Abwehr leadership (department military intelligence Germany) allowed the possibility of cooperation with the OUN, the party leadership of the NSDAP, led by Bormann, did not consider Ukrainian nationalists worthy of their attention at all. Therefore, the reprisal against the state encroachments of the Ukrainians was instantaneous: just a few days after the proclamation of the “Act,” Stepan Bandera was hidden by the Germans in a concentration camp, both legions were dispersed, and many UPA leaders, like Bandera, were subjected to repression.
By the way, after the proclamation of the “Act”, the government of the Ukrainian state was formed, headed by one of Stepan Bandera’s closest associates, Yaroslav Stetsko, and Lev Rebet was appointed his deputy. The last name and surname of the latter obviously indicate that not only purebred Ukrainians were allowed to lead the OUN, as is commonly thought.
However, it is important to understand that at that time the OUN-UPA did not act as a united front. The consequences of the split were still felt in the organization, so the Melnikites “worked” separately, and sometimes even to spite the Banderaites and vice versa. Thus, in the fall of 1941, the OUN (m) in Kiev attempted to form its own government, but the Germans cut off this initiative in their usual manner, shooting about 40 OUN members in Babin Yar, including the famous Ukrainian poetess Elena Teliga.
In general, the anti-fascist movement in Western Ukraine began with the so-called “Polesskaya Sich” - several underground partisan detachments operating under the leadership of Taras Borovets. Despite the fact that already at that time he was in contact with the OUN in every possible way, there was no talk of uniting into a single army. In parallel with this, on the territory of the western regions of Ukraine, an armed struggle on three fronts was carried out by many separate armed formations, which often engaged in looting, attacking civilians.
For the same reason, in the areas bordering Belarus, there were detachments whose purpose was to counter the raids of Soviet partisans, who also did not miss the opportunity to profit at the expense of the civilian population.
The UPA itself, with a formally single center of command, was formed only at the beginning of 1943, when, not without coercion, the Banderaites, who enjoyed a numerical advantage, also united with them into one force.
In 1943–1944, the number of UPA reached 100 thousand people. Formally, the Ukrainian rebels controlled most of the territory of Volyn, Galicia and Polesie, but in reality the army did not conduct any clear and coordinated activities. All the UPA did was small local skirmishes, raids on cities or stations, sabotage, and very rarely large-scale and bloody military operations. Almost every village had its own armed detachment - they were all considered part of the UPA, but they had practically no connections with the central command led by Roman Shukhevych, so they acted at their own discretion.
Hence the accusations against UPA fighters of cruel treatment of civilians - anyone could have done such things, from a gang of fugitive bandits to Soviet partisans.
At the same time, there is an opinion that the central parts of the UPA - the basis of the Ukrainian army of that time - enjoyed serious support from the Nazis, who allegedly supplied the Ukrainians with weapons and ammunition. However, there is no concrete evidence for this. The UPA had its own uniform, and Ukrainian soldiers used weapons, as a rule, captured ones, that is, both German and Soviet models. At the same time, it is probably not worth completely denying the presence of collaborators in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, since there were definitely such. The only question is how widespread this phenomenon is. However, the assertion that the UPA was completely in the service of the Nazis does not have sufficient grounds.
It is also important to distinguish the UPA from the SS-Galicia division. The existence of this armed group is often mistakenly cited as irrefutable evidence of the collaboration of Ukrainian rebels with the Nazis. Indeed, “SS-Galicia” fought on the side of the Wehrmacht, but this division was initially and deliberately created by the Germans from Ukrainian volunteers as an auxiliary force of the German army on the eastern front. Such divisions were created in all countries occupied by Germany, and they were commanded only by Germans. Ukraine was no exception in this regard, but “SS-Galicia” has practically nothing to do with the UPA.
At the end of the war, clashes between the UPA and the Wehrmacht army almost completely ceased, but the struggle of the Ukrainian rebels against the Soviet occupation flared up with renewed vigor. At least, this is how the further advance of the Red Army to the west was perceived in the ranks of the OUN. Letting the USSR troops through after the retreating Germans meant for the UPA to completely lose their positions, which was tantamount to the loss of any chance of reviving the Ukrainian state.
This was also understood in Moscow, where since 1944 preparations had been underway for a full-scale cleansing of the territory of Western Ukraine. A year later, in 1945, about 300 battalions and over 2 thousand paramilitary groups were operating in Western Ukrainian lands, whose main task was to neutralize the UPA forces in Ukraine.
The final victory over the real national liberation movement in Ukraine was won by the Soviet special services on March 5, 1950, when Roman Shukhevych was killed. After this, mass resistance from members of the OUN-UPA virtually ceased.
Question No. 5. Volyn massacre
The tragedy in Volyn, which ended in the massacre of civilians, is one of the main and most controversial moments in all the activities of the UPA during the Second World War. What happened in 1943, when the Polish and Ukrainian civilian population of Volyn became a victim of the confrontation between Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, how many people died and what caused such atrocities is still not clearly known.
In 1943–1944, as a result of the actions of individual units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as well as after the response of the Home Army, entire villages with Ukrainian and Polish populations were destroyed, due to which, according to various estimates, from 20 to 100 thousand people died, most of them Poles.
However, these figures cannot be called unambiguous: while Polish historians cite one statistics, blaming the OUN-UPA for everything, their Ukrainian colleagues operate with completely different facts, insisting that the atrocities were mutual.
In any case, regardless of the number of victims or their nationality, this tragedy cannot be justified by any noble motives. Both members of the OUN-UPA and representatives of the Polish army are to blame for this, and there can be no “mitigating” circumstances in this crime against humanity.
Searching for the truth
It is obvious that there are more than enough dark spots and contradictory episodes in the activities of the OUN, as well as in the life of its long-term leader Stepan Bandera. However, given that there are very few reliable, accurate and reliable sources of information about those times, those who like to dream up have an excellent opportunity to supplement the existing data with their own variations on this theme.
Hence hundreds of various myths, legends and interpretations, which for the most part present Stepan Bandera as a real devil in the flesh, whose unprincipledness even Hitler and Stalin could envy. The UPA in this coordinate system looks like a gang of cruel executioners destroying everything in their vicinity
ways.
However, in the current political situation in Ukraine, when the propaganda machine is in full swing, and the country is divided into two camps, it is extremely important for every Ukrainian to separate truth from fiction and try to soberly and balancedly analyze everything we know about Stepan Bandera and the OUN . Without this, it is almost impossible to establish the truth, and therefore to destroy another factor of discord between Ukrainians.
On October 15, 1959, an agent of the State Security Committee (KGB) of the USSR Bohdan Stashinsky eliminated the leader of the Revolutionary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, head of the OUN Provod, ideologist and theorist of Ukrainian nationalism Stepan Bandera. 56 years later, Bandera has become a cult character for modern Ukraine - and all the crimes against humanity that this figure of Ukrainian nationalism committed were forgotten in a territory that also suffered from Nazi atrocities. For some, Bandera is a myth, an ideologically attractive hero of the struggle for independence; for others, he is a bloody executioner, a terrorist and the initiator of massacres on the territory of Ukraine. People's News delved into the thickets of the history of the Great Patriotic War.
Biography of the Devil
Stepan Andreevich Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the family of a Greek Catholic priest, and from an early age he was committed to the church. According to contemporaries, the future leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists began to prepare for the “struggle for the freedom of Ukraine” - secretly from adults, torturing himself and performing rituals of self-flagellation, preparing for torture. These exercises did not bring Bandera anything except rheumatism of the joints, from which the future nationalist had to suffer all his life.
"Careerist. Fanatic. Bandit” - this is how employees of the Abwehr, the military intelligence of the Third Reich, later characterized Bandera. A member of the Ukrainian Military Organization and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the regional leader of the OUN in Western Ukrainian lands and the organizer of a number of terrorist attacks, Bandera always had leadership qualities - and unbearable ambitions. These ambitions did not prevent him from causing a split in the organization of Ukrainian nationalists - in 1940 he created the Revolutionary Wire of the OUN and formally left the subordination of the OUN Wire.
After the German attack on the USSR and the occupation of Lvov, following the Wehrmacht units, fighters of the Nachtigal battalion, consisting of OUN(b) fighters, entered the city. On the same day, the leadership of Bandera’s followers announced the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State,” which announced the creation of “a new Ukrainian state on the motherland Ukrainian lands.” In Lviv and throughout Western Ukraine, persecution of Jews and Poles began, and Bandera himself led the Lviv pogroms while in Krakow. According to the surviving photographic documents, it was clear that the whole of Lviv was covered with posters “Glory to Hitler! Glory to Bandera!
Despite the fact that Bandera collaborated with Germany against Moscow, the German leadership reacted extremely negatively to the initiatives of Ukrainian nationalists: Bandera, along with other OUN figures, was arrested by the German authorities for attempting to proclaim an independent Ukrainian state. In 1942, Bandera was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, from where he was released by the Nazis in September 1944. From there, he continued to lead the OUN(b) until their liberation in early September 1944 by the Germans, who expected to widely use the OUN(b) and UPA 1 in the losing war against the USSR.
Already in post-war emigration, the leader of the Bandera movement became the leader of the OUN Provod and very authoritative in the camp of Ukrainian emigrants. Bandera initiated the organizational formation of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Peoples (ABN) - the coordination center of anti-communist political organizations of emigrants from the USSR and other countries of the socialist camp. Bandera repeatedly rushed to Ukraine to take part in the underground work organized on the territory of Ukraine by Roman Shukhevych. However, the odious plans of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism failed to come true: on October 15, 1959, Bandera was killed by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky. As reported in historical materials, Stashinsky eliminated Bandera using a syringe pistol with potassium cyanide on the stairs in the house where the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism was hiding under an assumed name.
Metamorphosis of Bandera - from traitor to “heroes”
50 years after his liquidation, Bandera remains a “hero for the independence of Ukraine” - at least for that part of Ukrainian society that happily accepted the new vector of development of the state. The day of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) - October 14 - is now celebrated in Ukraine as a public holiday, Defender of the Fatherland Day. This year, a “march of heroes” took place in Kyiv, the basis of which was made up of activists of the Right Sector banned in Russia 1 and members of the All-Ukrainian Association “Svoboda”. And here, the main hero of the action again turned out to be Stepan Bandera: flags of the OUN(b) and UPA filled Kyiv, and at the head of the column demonstrators carried a poster with the inscription: “Bandera is our hero. Intercession is our holiday."
As political scientist and publicist Stanislav Byshok told People's News, such worship of the name, such glorification of the image of Bandera - in life, a far from unambiguous character in Ukrainian history - is somewhat similar to the mythologization of the image of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
“I would draw an analogy here with Lenin: if we take the best monuments to Lenin, which have not yet been demolished, and his real figure as a person, then there will be quite little in common between these two things. The same thing happens with Bandera: in life he was an evil person, with sadistic components of his personality that manifested themselves in childhood, a dominant person, outwardly very ugly, frail, and short in stature. At the same time, by and large, he did not take part in the war, but he gave orders for mass murders, says Stanislav Byshok in an interview with People's News.
“This image, which is now being introduced through educational channels, through the media, is completely different: this is a person who supposedly devoted himself all his life to the cause of the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine from various occupiers: the Poles, the Soviet Union, the Germans. And people, seeing this image - even those who recently began to perceive Bandera as a hero, see only this image, without going into details.”
The historical truth about Stepan Bandera, as Stanislav Byshok notes, is largely kept silent: in order to adjust the image to the ideological vector, Ukrainian nationalists mercilessly and loudly declare either historical falsification or the lack of knowledge of already proven facts.
“As for the details, they are generally accepted - both his sadistic inclinations and his direct collaboration with Nazi Germany. But at the same time, all these facts are often hidden, the political scientist notes. - You can often hear from ideological Ukrainian nationalists that half of these facts were invented by the Soviet Union, and another half were distorted. And in general there is nothing wrong with collaborating with the Nazis, because it was allegedly in any case better than the Soviet Union. It is in this paradigm that Banderaism exists today in the mass consciousness of modern Ukraine.”
Bandera as a myth of modern Ukraine
However, what is “Banderaism” for modern Ukraine, and how does the ideological vector in which the history of the Bandera movement exists develop? According to the Narodnye Novosti expert, Ukraine needed to prove the legitimacy of the creation of a state separate from the USSR. For this purpose, the most dubious personalities of Ukrainian history were taken and ideologicalized to give the proper flair to the fight against Russia.
“Ukraine, in order to feel and prove to others that it is an independent state that has a longer history than 24 years after the Ukrainian SSR and the collapse of the Soviet Union, needed a myth on which its legitimacy is built,” emphasized Stanislav Byshok. - And what kind of myth of Ukraine could be created, if we take into account the dominant idea that “Ukraine is not Russia”? It is necessary to collect any elements from history – including dubious ones, like Bandera, who, one way or another, fought against Russia.”
However, as Stanislav Byshok notes, the figure of Stepan Bandera is by no means the only one in the pantheon of Ukrainian nationalism, which is being nurtured now, in the wake of the intensification of the ideological vector and propaganda. In the light of the struggle with Russia, any historical realities of the Ukrainian state are understood, including those that should be remembered as examples of collaboration and betrayal.
“In the same paradigm, Hetman Mazepa is understood and accepted, who was a traitor from head to toe, who betrayed everyone he could and several times. However, in the pantheon of Ukrainian nationalists, Hetman Mazepa is considered one of the key elements - because he not only betrayed people and robbed, but also fought with Russia at some stage,” the political scientist noted.
“Bandera is the element closest to us in time, which, in the context of its struggle, fought with the Soviet Union militarily and politically,” Stanislav Byshok said in an interview with Narodnye Novosti. - And all the historical characters who fought with Muscovy, with the empire, with the USSR and now, with present-day Russia, are heroes. Take, for example, the same murdered and popularized “Sashko Bily”: what is his heroism? And the heroism of “Sashko Bily” lies not in the fact that he was on the Maidan - but in the fact that he fought in the First Chechen War on the side of the Dudayevites against the Russian military.”
1 Extremist organization whose activities are prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation
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