On November 6, 1943, the Red Army entered Kyiv, thus ending up on the right-bank Ukraine. But the soldiers who fought Nazism for two and a half years were greeted by the inhabitants of this region not only with flowers, but also with machine-gun bursts from the Volyn and Galician forests.
The issue of the size of the UPA-OUN is extremely controversial. Many Ukrainian emigration sources claim that in 1944 its number reached about 100,000, maybe even 150,000. Orest Subtelniy writes that "more reasonable" estimates put the figure at 30-40 thousand fighters /9, 411/. Vladimir Kosik believes that “the average number of really UPA warriors was probably 40-50 thousand. /10, No. 6-7, p. II /. Modern Ukrainian historians estimate its number as of September 1943 at 35 thousand /7, book І, p.129/.
The head of the OUN(b) in Ukraine Ya. Stetsko (left) brings bread and salt to the Nazis.
Based on the data of supporters and historians of the OUN, you come to a startling conclusion. Having a number comparable to the Soviet partisans, the nationalists killed fewer Nazis than the partisans derailed the echelons. Throughout the territory of the OUN-UPA the army of nationalists in the amount of 35-150 thousand people killed no more than one Nazi per day.
By the way, Army General Nikolai Vatutin, who led the operation to liberate Kyiv, was mortally wounded by Ukrainian nationalists in February 1944. The last Commander-in-Chief of the UPA, Colonel Vasily Kuk, who during the war acted under the pseudonyms Vasily Koval and Lemish, tells about the war of Ukrainian nationalists against the Soviet army that was persecuting the Germans.
Vasily Kuk was born on January 11, 1911 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire - in the village of Krasnoe, Zolochaevsky district, Ternopil Voivodeship (now Bussky District, Lviv Region) into a peasant family. In addition to Vasily, the family had seven children, two of whom died in childhood, all the rest were members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Two brothers were executed by the Polish authorities for their activities in the OUN in the 1930s. Vasily himself began working in nationalist organizations back in the late 1920s, and was later repeatedly arrested by the Polish police for revolutionary activities.
They will become the leaders of the UPA.
In the photo, Wehrmacht Major Evgen Pobeguschii, commander of the Roland battalion (
at a demonstration organized by the Nazis in Lvov (1943) (German chronicle)).
In 1941, the hand of "Roland" was about "done with the battalion" Nakhtigal "at the 201st Schutzmannschaft Battalion, commanded by Major Pobeguschiy, for ideological work, deputy Hauptman Roman Shukhevych was awarded for ideological work.
From 1937 to 1954 (exactly 17 years old) Cook was in hiding. In 1940, when the OUN split, he joined the faction of Stepan Bandera and became one of the leading figures in the national Ukrainian resistance and organizers of the insurgent struggle. Since the spring of 1942, he headed the Wire (Guide) of the OUN in the South-Eastern Ukrainian lands. At the end of 1943, Vasily Kuk led the "army group" UPA-South, which operated on the territory of Soviet Ukraine. Since 1945, he directly supervised the activities of the OUN in the Eastern Ukrainian lands, and since February 1945 - also in the North-Western Ukrainian lands.
Since 1950, after the death of the head of the UPA, General Taras Chuprynka (Roman Shukhevych), he headed the UPA. In 1950-54, Vasily Koval was the Head of the OUN in Ukraine, the Main Command of the UPA and the General Secretariat of the underground Ukrainian pre-parliament - the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council (UGOS - Ukrainian abbreviation - UGVR). . In April 1954, he was suddenly captured by a special group of the MGB, in 1954-60 he was imprisoned (only 6 years with such a record. That's really a cruel Soviet regime).
In 1960, an appeal was published with his signature to foreign members of the OUN. The letter condemned manifestations of Ukrainian collaborationism during the Second World War and called for an end to underground activities on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. In his own words, Vasily Kuk did not abandon the content of this letter even in the 1990s.
In 1961-68 worked as a senior researcher at the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv, in 1968-72 - at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (another proof of the atrocities of the Bolsheviks). ATTENTION! Under the cut, in addition to interviews and documents, there are very hard photos.
From 1972 to 1980, he was a commodity manager at Ukrbytreklamy. Currently retired, he heads the research department of the Brotherhood of former UPA fighters, so he knows the history of the Ukrainian national liberation struggle not only from rich personal experience, but also thanks to the studied documents and works of historians.
Legionnaires from the notorious Nachtigal battalion are the future commanders of the UPA.
With undisguised joy, they overtook the helpless old Jew in order to immediately take his life (Lvov, 1941) (from the tome W. Poliszczuk. Dowody zbrodni OUN i UPA, Toronto, 2000)
- Since when did the OUN start anti-Soviet insurgent activity?
The combat departments of the OUN were created back in 1939-40. under the Soviets in Western Ukraine occupied by them. The NKVD arrested Ukrainians en masse and deported them to Siberia. Part of the OUN fled to German-occupied Poland. The armed detachments of the OUN were created even then - the population had a lot of weapons left over from the Polish army, which was defeated in September 1939. In almost every village then and later, in 1941, an underground self-defense was created: you have to defend yourself if they want to arrest you and take you out ...
- And when was the UPA itself created, which met the Red Army fully armed?
In 1941, under the Germans of the OUN, armed detachments were also created, they were used to smuggle literature, and in general it is difficult to imagine an underground without armed forces. Their number in 1941-42 amounted to about forty thousand people, plus self-defense.
- And how could this be, if the number of OUN at the end of the 1930s was 15-20 thousand?
It was already a mass movement, the people en masse entered into these semi-legal formations - fighting and self-defense. If some people were threatened by the German authorities, then they went to these armed groups, and the underground already taught them military affairs.
From the very beginning, since 1929, there was a military headquarters under the OUN, and under the Provod (Central Committee) of the OUN there was a military assistant - the head of military affairs. The headquarters supervised military training and planned military actions.
Then, when the UPA began to unfold at the end of 1942, the Military Headquarters became an independent structure. Three, so to speak, army headquarters were subordinate to him. UPA-West (Carpathians) in 1943 was headed by Vasily Sidor, UPA-North (Volyn, Polesye) - Dmitry Klyachkovsky (Klim Savur) and UPA-South (Kamenets-Podolsk, Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr, Kyiv regions), which was headed by me. These three headquarters organized the UPA in different places, in accordance with local conditions ...
It is difficult to say how many fighters were in the UPA at the end of 1942 - it was already a mass movement. According to German and Soviet data, in 1943 the UPA numbered 100-150 thousand people. In addition, the UPA was helped by the network, the OUN underground. There were hospitals, and communications, and printing houses, and intelligence, and civilian departments. It is difficult to separate the UPA and the underground - this is one structure.
... The number of UPA in 1943-44 can be estimated at almost 200 thousand, plus the underground. And if we take the entire period of activity of the Ukrainian national liberation movement - from 1939 to 1955 - this is an army of about half a million people. Some were arrested, others came ... (that is, 20 times less than fought in the Soviet Army and partisans. And this is if you believe in the numbers mentioned).
- The struggle of the UPA-Germans - from 1942 to 1944, what forms did it take?
It continued all the time in different places in different ways. They broke prisons, freed people. With those Germans who robbed the Ukrainians, we fought with them (that is, we did not fight with the Germans. We only fought off food). What the Germans took from the population, we returned to the population. There were skirmishes and fights. We beat off the population that the Germans wanted to send for forced labor in Germany. In May 1943, the head of the militia of the assault detachments, Ober-Gruppenführer of the SA, Hitler's friend Viktor Lutze, was blown up on a UPA mine (a fairy tale, but many believe).
- It is well known about the Soviet partisan areas during the years of German occupation, but were there such nationalist areas in Western Ukraine?
There was, for example, the Kovelsky district, a kind of rebel republic was created there: laws were issued regarding land and schools. The lands were distributed so that citizens could use them, there was cultural and educational work, school policy, and its own administration.
These were small areas in the Carpathians and Volhynia - moreover, there are more in Volhynia: there are forests and territories where the Germans could not reach. There were signs everywhere: “Attention, partisans,” and the Germans did not meddle in the forest (very plausible).
- In the documents of the UPA and the Soviet documents there is a big difference in the estimates of losses. In Soviet documents, the losses of the UPA are almost always many times higher than the losses of the NKVD-MVD-MGB. And in the documents of the UPA, the gap is not so great, and often the losses of the Reds are greater than the losses of the rebels. How to explain such a difference?
They exaggerated our losses and downplayed their own. In addition, they killed the civilian population that came to hand, and recorded in the column "killed rebels." It is clear that, in general, more rebels were killed than Chekist troops (further on, he will argue the exact opposite), since the communists were better armed, trained and had more opportunities, equipment. In general, it must be said that the losses depended on operations and battles. In those cases when the UPA took up defensive positions in the forest, and broke through from the encirclement, and the Reds advanced, the Chekists suffered more losses than we did (and when and where were there other battles? Maybe the UPA captured Kyiv?).
I remember the battle near Gurbami in Volyn: it was in April 1944 - one of the biggest battles of the UPA with the Reds, I led the operation. From the side of the Bolsheviks fought about thirty thousand people, tanks, planes, with ours - about ten thousand (usually everyone calls the number 5 thousand). They wanted to surround us. They surrounded, fought for about a week, but then we found a weaker place, broke through and left. They were advancing, we were sitting in the forest, and they had heavy losses, but we lost one percent of the fighters in that battle - about a hundred people (while the losses of the Soviet troops are called several thousand). And in their reports, our losses amounted to two thousand killed - these were all civilians. Often, most of the “UPA losses” are civilians killed (civilians in the forest in the swamp. Yes, 2 thousand are all the surrounding villages).
As long as they are with the police. Then they will be transferred to the UPA.
Calculations of German losses in the fight against the UPA-OUN according to Petr Mirchuk / Petr Mirchuk. Ukrainian Insurgent Army. 1942-1952. Documents and materials. -Munich, publishing house im. Khvilovogo, 1953., pp. 29-44/ represented more than 1 (one) thousand killed, and according to the French historian Vladimir Kosik - about 6 thousand/Vladimir Kosik. UPA / Brief historical review. 1941-1944 / // Lviv. - Chronicle of Red Kalina. - 1992. - No. 4-5, 6-7, 8-9 /. / Calculations made by the author from the indicated sources. / (
6
).
So, as we see, there is a tragic contradiction. 300-400 thousand Bandera in just two years, having lost more than half of ALL those ever in their ranks killed and captured, managed to destroy from 1 to 6 thousand Nazis and 25 thousand Soviet military. And this is according to their own research and based only on Bandera's sources. The loss ratio is exactly the opposite of the claims. The losses of the Nazis are simply lost against the background of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed (Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians). So with whom and against whom did the OUN (b) and its militants from the UPA fight a long time ago, the nationalists themselves answered.
- What was the organizational structure of the UPA?
There was a main military headquarters, to which the headquarters of three regions were subordinate - UPA-West, UPA-North and UPA-South. And the OUN had exactly the same division: OUN-Galicia, OUN-Volyn and OUN-South. There were different living conditions, different working conditions. Then came the regions, districts, districts, sub-districts, villages - and the entire Western Ukraine was covered by the OUN grid. And in the regional groups of the UPA there were already tactical departments of the front-line plan, depending on where they would fight. Then came kurens (battalions) and hundreds (companies), hundreds were divided into chots (platoons) and swarms (squads).
Yes, the end of the war meant nothing to us - the struggle for state independence continued (ridiculous. Several thousand people in three regions of Ukraine - 10% of the territory, the independence of all Ukraine was won back). Only the Red Army detachments the Soviets wanted to throw against the UPA, as they marched back from Germany (if they wanted to, they threw it. Only these are not army functions, to fight with bandits). But they walked through the forest with noise, whistling, and in fact, the army did not fight with us. NKVD and fighter detachments - yes (not fighter detachments - there were none. There was SMERSH, there were units for protecting the rear of the front, there were commandant companies and garrisons in settlements). The extermination detachments were mainly from local Poles, the authorities did not trust the Ukrainians, so the “hawks” were a danger to us (of course, having massacred several hundred thousand peaceful Poles before, during and after the Volyn massacre, it is foolish to expect love from the surviving Poles).
- With whom was it more difficult to fight - with the Germans or with the Soviets?
The Soviets had to fight longer. With the Germans one and a half to two years: from 1942-44 (that is, he himself admits that, despite the presence of combat detachments since 1939, they did not encounter the Germans at all until 1942, and then only took away the loot), and with the Soviets - ten years - with 44th to 54th.
- And whose methods of combating the UPA were more effective?
- Soviet methods are terribly vile.The Germans fought directly. The Soviets, unlike the Germans, used provocations. They dressed up as UPA units, killed civilians in order to turn them against us. And agents, and sending internal agents. The Germans and the Bolsheviks did not differ in the level of terror - both one and the other fired. But the Bolsheviks wanted to give the murders some legal form: "He committed some kind of crime, violated something, and therefore he must sign." And the Germans, without unnecessary ceremonies, killed all the Jews and Slavs (Apparently the UPA fought differently - without agents, without changing into Soviet uniforms, without provocations).
- Did any part of the population support the Bolsheviks?
Yes no one supported them (probably that is why the Bandera people had to forcibly mobilize the local population into their ranks. And this is recognized by all historians
UPA). Agents - those were intimidated by repression. The most successful methods of fighting the UPA were provocations. Disguised as rebels, the Bolsheviks enter the village, talk to the population, people tell them something. And then they repress the population and use the information received against the UPA.
- What about the expulsions of the population?
Yes, they were constantly, every year. And the blockades of the forests were also constant - they did not last long. They will carry out the operation, report on its implementation, after which we will attack them again, they will again conduct a blockade. And so in every village there were garrisons, for every 10 huts they had one secret informer. This system of terror and denunciations was so widespread that the NKVD themselves were afraid to talk to each other.
They were released and returned home - they began to kill. Certificate from departments of the Central Committee of the CPSU on the situation with former members of the OUN nationalist movement in Ukraine at the end of 1955, dated September 1956.
RGANI. F.3. Op.12. D.113. L.178-179
- The traditional accusation of the UPA is that its fighters killed civilians.
What can I say? If the civilian population is an agent, and betrays other people, it is clear that you will shoot him. If the “civilian population” wages war against the UPA, then you will kill him too. And we killed the chairmen of village councils or collective farms in rare cases, if he drives people to collective farms by force, takes away land from the peasants, and mocks the population. And most of it was not touched. There was no point in fighting against the population, since it helped us, supported us - we simply could not do it. Rumors that we are killing civilians just appeared because of the activities of the "false Bandera" - departments of the NKVD.
KATARZYNÓWKA, Lutsk county, Lutsk voivodship. May 7/8, 1943.
There are three children on the plan: two sons of Piotr Mekal and Aneli from Gvyazdovsky - Janusz (3 years old) with broken limbs and Marek (2 years old), stabbed with bayonets, and in the middle lies the daughter of Stanislav Stefanyak and Maria from Boyarchuk - Stasya (5 years old) with cut and open tummy and insides out, as well as broken limbs. The crimes were committed by the OUN - UPA (OUN - UPA).
The photographer is unknown. Photocopy from the original A - 6816 published thanks to the archive.
SARNY, region, Sarny county, Lutsk voivodeship. August 1943.
Karol Imach, a Pole, a resident of Sarny, caught by UPA terrorists while picking mushrooms in the forest near Sarny, and killed. There are 20 stab wounds on his body from blows inflicted with a knife or bayonet.
The photographer is unknown. The photograph is shown thanks to the son of K. Imach, as well as Professor Edward Prus.
PODYARKOV (PODJARKÓW), Bobrka County, Lviv Voivodeship. August 16, 1943.
The results of torture inflicted by the OUN - UPA Kleshchinskaya, from a Polish family of four in Podiarkovo.
The photographer is unknown. Photo published thanks to the archive.
WILL OSTROVETSK (WOLA OSTROWIECKA), district. August 1992.
On August 17 - 22, 1992, several hundred victims were exhumed - Poles from the villages of Ostrowki and Volya Ostrovetska, who were killed by the UPA on August 30, 1945. In the photo - part of the long bones taken out of the mass grave in the territory of Volya Ostrovetskaya. Nearby stands Leon Popek.
Photographer Pavel Vira. Publication: Leon Popek and others. Volyn Testament, Lublin 1997. Society of Friends of Kremenets and Volyn-Podolsk Land, photo 141.
BŁOŻEW GÓRNA, Dobromil County, Lviv Voivodeship. November 10, 1943.
On the eve of November 11 - the People's Independence Day - the UPA attacked 14 Poles, in particular, the Sukhaya family, using various cruelties. On the plan, the murdered Maria Grabowska (maiden name Suhai), 25 years old, with her daughter Kristina, 3 years old. The mother was stabbed with a bayonet, and the daughter's jaw was broken and her tummy was torn open.
The photographer is unknown. The photo was published thanks to the victim's sister, Helena Kobierzicka.
LATACH (LATACZ), Zalishchyky county, Tarnopol voivodeship. December 14, 1943.
One of the Polish families - Stanislav Karpyak in the village of Latach, was killed by a UPA gang of twelve people. Six people died: Maria Karpyak - wife, 42 years old; Josef Karpyak - son, 23 years old; Vladislav Karpyak - son, 18 years old; Zygmunt or Zbigniew Karpyak - son, 6 years old; Sofia Karpyak - daughter, 8 years old and Genovef Chernitska (nee Karpyak) - 20 years old. Zbigniew Czernicki, a one and a half year old wounded child, was hospitalized in Zalishchyky. Visible in the picture is Stanislav Karpyak, who escaped because he was absent.
Photographer from Chernelitsy - unknown.
POLOVETS (POŁOWCE), region, Chortkiv county, Ternopil voivodeship. January 16 - 17, 1944.
A forest near Yagelnitsa, called Rosokhach. The process of identifying 26 corpses of Polish residents of the village of Polovtse, killed by the UPA. The names and surnames of the victims are known. The occupying German authorities officially established that the victims were stripped naked and brutally tortured and tortured. The faces were bloody as a result of cutting off noses, ears, cutting the neck, gouging out the eyes and strangulation with ropes, the so-called lasso.
Photographer unknown - Kripo employee. The photograph, as well as the following, concerning Polovtsy, were published thanks to the secret head of the District Representative Office of the Government of the country in Chortkiv, Józef Opacki (pseudonym “Mogort”), as well as his son, Professor Ireneusz Opacki.
- In some works there is information about the elements of the chemical and bacteriological warfare of the Chekists against the UPA.
Yes, poisoned things were planted on us, springs were poisoned. Sometimes the Chekists "thrown out" medicines infected with typhus on the black market (and where is the typhus epidemic?). I had to have my own antibiotics. But these were isolated cases, and it cannot be said that such methods were effective.
Well, for example, we sent mail through girls in tubes of toothpaste, it was more convenient from the point of view of conspiracy. And so, they intercept such mail and send it to me through an agent. They don't know where I am, but they know it will reach me. And I get a tube filled with gas. I open it and immediately we start going blind. So we threw everything and ran out of the room into the air. For a week, there was some kind of grid before our eyes, we almost went blind, and then everything went away. If this happened indoors, then we would all get poisoned.
It's the same - you buy a battery for a radio and they know it's for the underground. And a mine will be slipped into this battery. Once, people were killed in an explosion. And then we checked these batteries already in the forest and there were cases when they exploded.
Food poisoning is normal.
Often we were afraid to take even milk from the population, because it was sometimes poisoned. Then what did we do - let the owner drink this milk himself, then I will drink too (that's just the population - NKVD agents. I would say it straight - many hated you. People wanted a peaceful life after liberation from the Germans, and you robbed and killed them After all, the food was taken away, there was nothing to pay with). But sometimes the Chekists gave an antidote to these agents, and then only one of us drank milk, while the others waited. He feels bad, but the owner is silent. Why are you silent? You poison people and keep quiet! What were we supposed to do with those gentlemen who knew that the milk was poisoned, and they gave it to us? The gentleman was shot dead (that's almost civilians for you), and they tried to cure the poisoned soldier.
- There is information that in the summer of 1946 a partial demobilization took place.
This was not a demobilization. In 1944, we could operate in large formations, while the enemy did not have such an opportunity. When the enemy has even larger detachments against your formations, then you must reduce your formations. They become more mobile and maneuverable, and less accessible to enemy reconnaissance. And if necessary, they could be brought together again into larger compounds. In 1944, in Volhynia, we had a unit of up to ten thousand people - several kurens. But from next year it was necessary to disband such a unit for kurens. And later, when the issue of providing our detachments with provisions became acute, in 1945-46 the kurens were disbanded into hundreds. In particular, our kurens had to be disbanded for the winter: how can we provide for many hundreds of people in the forest in winter? And in 1946, the Bolsheviks already had the opportunity to oppose us with very large forces, so there was a need, especially in cases of encirclement, to disband hundreds into chots. All this remained one structure, but hundreds and chots acted independently (And so they were reduced to zero).
- Under your leadership - in 1950-54 - how many people acted, and what were the main directions of the struggle?
At that time I didn’t have data on how many people were under my command - there was no need (very funny. The commander doesn’t know how many subordinates he has and doesn’t see the need for it. Based on how many people he plans operations, it’s not clear. Although it’s just clear nothing was planned, just survived). In addition, the UPA detachments often changed their places of deployment, carried out raids in the Kiev region, Zhytomyr region, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania (it is not clear what kind of independence they won in other countries). Only according to the reports of the Soviet authorities, which are in the archives, can one make a rough estimate of the size of the underground in the early 1950s.
The UPA had two fronts. One is a military one, on it we could not win the war either with the Bolsheviks or with the Germans, since the ratio of armed forces and equipment cannot be compared. The second front was the ideological front. And on it we conducted strong propaganda about the national liberation struggle and the struggle for the Ukrainian state. The 50s, 60s, 70s passed, the tactics changed. In Soviet times, I met with dissidents, for example, with Vasily Stus, and with others. Often former UPA fighters participated in the dissident movement. The ideas that were proclaimed earlier continued to operate. And as a result, an independent Ukraine appeared.
And I, a fool, thought that the decision to create independent Slavic states was made by the leaders of the Communist Party in the republics. In Belovezhskaya Pushcha. And it turns out to be agents of the UPA.
Interviewed by Alexander Gogun
The interview was conducted on April 4, 2003 in Kyiv at the address: 22-B, Supreme Council Boulevard, apt. 31. On April 12, the translation of the interview into Russian was certified by Vasily Kuk.
Summary data on the losses of Bandera:"In total, during the period 1944-1955, in the process of interaction between law enforcement agencies with units of the Soviet army and local subdivisions of public order protection of measures to combat terrorism and other anti-state manifestations by nationalists, 153,262 were killed and 103,828 members of the OUN-UPA and their assistants were arrested , including more than 7800 members of the Central, regional, regional, district supra-district and district wires, heads of districts and groups of the OUN, "security services", as well as "kurens" and "hundreds" of the UPA.
At the same time, one aircraft, two armored vehicles, 61 artillery guns, 595 mortars, 77 flamethrowers, 358 anti-tank rifles, 844 easel and 8327 light machine guns, about 26 thousand machine guns, more than 72 thousand rifles and 22 thousand pistols, more than 100 thousand grenades were seized, 80 thousand mines and shells, more than 12 million rounds. More than 100 printing houses with printing equipment, more than 300 radio transmitters, 18 cars and motorcycles were found and seized, a significant number of trains with food and storages of nationalist literature were found. (Arch. case. 372, vol. 74, sheets. 159-160; vol. 100, sheets. 73-75).
(Certificate of the Security Service of Ukraine on the activities of the OUN-UPA dated July 30, 1993 No. 113 “In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine dated February 1, 1993 No. 2964-XII “On checking the activities of the OUN-UPA”).
Note that this is not Soviet data, but a study by the SBU of independent Ukraine.
I would like to draw your attention to two key points.
First- none of the numerous organizations of Ukrainian nationalists represented the interests of the Ukrainian people simply because they did not belong to it (I'm talking about the organization, leadership, politics, and not about ordinary performers). Formed in different years outside of Ukraine itself, they were formed mainly from Catholic Ukrainians abroad, brought up in the realities of completely different states and financed by special services (Germany in the first place). Accordingly, regardless of the proclaimed goals, they existed exactly as long as they satisfied the requirements of the structures that contained them. Accordingly, none of the organizations has ever been considered by the authorities of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania (any other state) as some kind of state power of Ukraine or a government in exile, or in any similar capacity. They have never had any negotiations, not only at the highest, even at the middle level. As a rule, intelligence officers with the rank of colonels and military commanders, in whose area of responsibility the nationalists acted, were engaged in interaction and leadership.
Second- the number of those who died at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists (according to their own historians) obviously determines the priorities of the main enemies. First of all, these are the Poles, among whom the losses are the largest (although in terms of time - 90% were destroyed in one 1943 year). Next come conditionally I will call them - Soviet Ukrainians who served with the Soviet Army (formerly the Red Army), members of their families, aimed at restoring Western Ukraine, local asset et cetera. Of course, among them were Russians and Buryats, but the bulk of them are still Ukrainians by nationality. Then there were the Jews, who were exterminated mainly during pogroms (like Lvov in honor of the proclamation of the "Act of Visibility of Greatness" on June 30-July 7, 1941).
The losses of the Nazis fit into the statistical error and a simple "effect of the performer." When the rank and file of the same OUN-UPA independently makes decisions on the spot, contrary to the real policy of the organization.
On April 11, 1944, we are the signatories below: Deputy commander of the 1st d-at the 2nd political unit of the guards. l-nt Seribkaev E, paramedic guards. l-nt m / s Prisevok P.A, Komsomol organizer of the doctor of the guards st. s-t. Papushkin N.F and residents of the village of Nova Prykulya, Strusovsky district, Tarnopol region, vols. Grechin Ganka - 45 years old, Grechin Maryna - 77 years old, Vadoviz Esafat - 70 years old, Boychuk Milya - 32 years old, Boychuk Petro - 33 years old, have drawn up this act on the following:
March 23, 1944, at about 7:00 am in the village of Nova-Brikulya, Strusovsky district, Tarnopol region, Bandera men dressed in Red Army uniforms came, surrounded the village and began to gather people for work.
Among those shot were: t.t. Grechin Ivan - 55 years old, Homulek Maksym, Dudo Andrey - 65 years old.
Conclusion: Ukrainian-German nationalists-Bandera committed this criminal act, the execution of civilians, with the aim of provoking and opposing the civilians of the Red Army.
This document was signed by:
Deputy Commander of 1/206 Guards Lt Seribkaev
Paramedic 1/206 guards l-nt Prisevok
Komsomol organizer 1/206 guards l-nt Papushkin
+
Residents of the village of Grechin
Vodoviz
Boychuk"
(from the protocol of interrogation of Kutkovets Ivan Tikhonovich. February 1, 1944)
".... At the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, during the preparation and transfer of the OUN organizations to the underground and the creation of the UPA, the nationalists "illegally" published the information bulletin "Informator" and the magazine "Do Zbroi".
On the covers of these magazines it was indicated that they were printed at the illegal headquarters of the OUN, and on specially issued anniversary bulletins dedicated to the memory of the deceased "Bandera" "LEGENDA" and others, the place of printing was indicated in the organizational printing house in Odessa.
In fact, all this literature was printed in the mountains. Lutsk, in the regional printing house at the General Commissariat with the direct participation of the Germans .... "
In the history of Ukrainian nationalist organizations, the struggle for Ukraine has always been much less than the struggle among themselves. The destruction of their own kind among Ukrainian nationalists in its scope was not inferior to bloody actions against the “enemies of the nation”, which at various times included Poles, Jews, Russians, communists and many others.
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) by the beginning of World War II existed in the form of two warring groups Andrey Melnyk and Stepan Bandera. The latter headed for the physical extermination of competitors, and in the territories of Ukraine occupied by the Nazis, he acted in this direction on such a scale that the German command had to stop the bloody feuds between its minions by force.
With another fetish of Ukrainian nationalists - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) - the same story. In fact, in the 1940s, there were two UPAs at once, and the members of these organizations hated each other no less than the “enemies of the nation.”
The army of "Ataman Bulba"
In June 1941, during the offensive of the Nazis, the nationalist underground sharply intensified in the occupied and front-line territories. Ukrainian nationalist Taras Borovets "Bulba" proclaimed the creation of the armed formation "Polessky Sich" - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on the territory of Volhynia and Polissya. Initially, Borovets, acting under the pseudonym "ataman Taras Bulba", planned to engage in sabotage in the rear of the Soviet troops. But the rapid retreat of the Red Army forced the "ataman" to somewhat reconsider the "line of activity" - basically the "Sich" were engaged in capturing prisons and releasing prisoners, as well as robbing warehouses and attacking individual NKVD and police officers who did not have time to evacuate.
With the arrival of the Germans, Borovets-Bulba offered them assistance in the destruction of groups of Soviet soldiers remaining in the occupied territory, as well as in the fight against Soviet partisan detachments.
In addition, the "Sich" were attracted by the Germans to participate in actions to exterminate Jews, communists and persons sympathetic to the Soviet regime.
The cooperation of the UPA of Borovets-Bulba, who distanced himself from Bandera and his associates, with the Nazis continued until November 1941. At this time, the leader of the UPA offered to maintain some independence of the "Polessky Sich", promising in return to clear the entire Chernihiv region of Soviet partisans. The Germans, however, were not interested in this, and Borovets-Bulba had to curtail his legal activities, officially disbanding the detachments subordinate to him.
A subdivision of the "Polessky Sich" in the city of Olevsk, autumn 1941. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Masters of "economic shares"
Offended by the "ungratefulness" of the Germans, the "ataman" went into the forest and from there began to actively campaign for joining the Ukrainian Insurgent Army - a force fighting for "a free Ukraine without German invaders and Bolsheviks."
At the same time, the units of Borovets-Bulba did not conduct any active operations either against their neighbors in the forests, Soviet partisans, or against the Germans. The only operations of the UPA of Borovets-Bulba in 1942 were "economic actions" - the seizure of convoys with food, weapons and ammunition.
The leader explained to his subordinates that at the present time they needed to accumulate strength for the upcoming battles. At the same time, Borovets-Bulba managed to negotiate cooperation with both the Soviet partisans and the Germans. He willingly promised neutrality to everyone, and when it came to active actions, he answered evasively.
Borovets vs. Bandera
This continued until the spring of 1943, until representatives of Stepan Bandera reached the UPA of Borovets-Bulba. The head of the UPA was offered the terms of the merger, more like a takeover.
Taras Borovets-Bulba, who, after the first months of his activity under the Nazis, even had his hands stained with blood, nevertheless treated Bandera's activities with undisguised disgust. He was especially disgusted by Bandera's idea of the mass extermination of the civilian Polish population, which just at that time began to be embodied in the Volyn massacre. The “ataman Taras Bulba” also knew about the sad fate of the OUN members Andrei Melnik, who were exterminated.
Therefore, refusing to unite Bandera, he hastened to inform the Germans that he was starting an active fight against the Soviet partisans. It was important for Borovets-Bulba to prove himself useful to the occupiers.
The clashes that began with the Soviet partisans turned into serious losses for the UPA. In addition, those ordinary fighters who joined the UPA in the hope of fighting the Nazis simply deserted from the detachments of the ataman.
Not succeeding in attacks on combat units of partisans, Borovets-Bulba gave the order to brutally crack down on civilians who help them.
The wife of the leader of the first UPA was executed by the “security service”
Such actions led to a drop in the popularity of the UPA among ordinary citizens.
In the spring of 1943, Bandera, together with like-minded people, created his own Ukrainian Insurgent Army, after which two UPAs simultaneously began to operate in Ukraine at once.
In July 1943, Borovets-Bulba abandoned the "brand" by renaming its formation to the Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army. The “ataman” himself claimed that the Volyn massacre was the cause, after which the three letters “UPA” were soiled once and for all.
Taras Bulba-Borovets, September 2, 1941. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
In October 1943, in the face of the offensive of the Soviet troops, the Nazi command launched an operation to clean up the rear from all partisans, Soviet and nationalist. Borovets-Bulba issues a decree on the transition to new forms of struggle for the UNRA - in fact, on the dissolution of its formations.
By this time, Bandera's detachments began large-scale actions against the fighters of Borovets-Bulba. Those who refused to join the ranks of the Bandera UPA were destroyed.
When Borovets-Bulba went to the next negotiations with the German command, hoping to receive offers of cooperation and protection from Bandera, the camp of his detachment was attacked by Bandera formations. Many associates of "ataman Taras Bulba" were killed. An even more terrible fate fell wife of Borovets-Bulba Anna Borovets- she was handed over to the Bandera "security service". The woman was subjected to prolonged torture and then killed.
Borovets-Bulba himself survived both his wife and the war, and for many more years he was engaged in active political activity in the ranks of the Ukrainian emigration. The creator of the first UPA died in New York in 1981.
Slogans and reality
The official date of creation of the second, "Bandera" UPA in Ukraine is October 14, 1942, when field commander Sergei Kachinsky(pseudonym "Ostap") formed the first department of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The main goal of creating the UPA was to unite disparate armed groups of nationalists under the leadership of the OUN Stepan Bandera. Dissenters were disposed of in the harshest way, the ranks of fighters were expanded with the help of forced mobilization.
The growing dissatisfaction of the Ukrainian population with the occupation regime forced the nationalists to at least verbally declare their intention to wage an armed struggle against the Nazis. At the same time, the leaders of the OUN-UPA tried not to mention their participation in punitive actions under the leadership of the Germans, about the Nachtigall and Roland battalions, about the extermination of the civilian population of Belarus by the so-called “Ukrainian Legion”, suspected of sympathizing with the Bolsheviks.
It is clear that the complete absence of operations against the Nazis caused questions among ordinary UPA fighters. In response, they were explained that active actions against the German troops in the current conditions could be a help to Stalin, which could not be allowed.
Propaganda poster of the Ukrainian movement during World War II. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
As a result, the slogan "struggle on two fronts" remained just that. All the same, proposals to start operations against the Germans, put forward by individual nationalist commanders, were rejected by the III Conference of the OUN in February 1943 and the Great Assembly of the OUN in August 1943.
Virtual exploits and real crimes
In fact, the struggle of the UPA with the Germans was reduced to the robbery of warehouses and carts, as well as control over settlements and roads, which the Nazis themselves did not consider strategically significant.
The data of the German archives testify that the Nazi army did not suffer losses in manpower from the actions of the UPA.
This puts modern Ukrainian historians in a difficult position: President Petro Poroshenko broadcasts about the contribution of the UPA to the victory over fascism, and it is impossible to support this with actual material. Therefore, at the expense of the UPA, they are trying to record either operations carried out by Soviet partisans, or those that, in principle, did not exist. So, for example, in May 1943, he died in a car accident near Potsdam. SA Chief of Staff SA Obergruppenführer Viktor Lutze. Information about his death was widely circulated in the German press, the funeral was held at the state level. However, subsequently, the death of Lutze was unexpectedly recorded by Ukrainian nationalists at their own expense, without, however, providing any evidence.
If the UPA was not engaged in the fight against the Germans, then Bandera actively fought against the Soviet partisans. At the same time, the UPA detachments in these cases coordinated their actions with the Nazis, forgetting for a while about their supposedly hostile attitude towards them.
After the liberation of Ukraine by units of the Red Army, the UPA began to actively commit sabotage in the rear of the Soviet units. About 2,000 Soviet soldiers and officers died from the actions of Bandera in 1944 alone.
Parade of Ukrainian nationalists in Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in honor of the visit of the Governor-General of Poland, Reichsleiter Hans Frank, October 1941. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org
"Don't be afraid that people will curse us for cruelty"
But most of all, the UPA succeeded in punitive actions against the civilian population. The Volyn massacre perpetrated by Bandera, which claimed tens of thousands of lives of women, the elderly and children, whose entire fault was in Polish origin, made even some of the representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist movement shudder.
Commander-in-Chief of the UPA Roman Shukhevych he explained the bloody methods of struggle to his subordinates in this way: “There is no need to be afraid that people will curse us for cruelty. Let half of the 40 million Ukrainian population remain - there is nothing terrible in this.
According to data published in 2002 by the Institute of the History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in 1944-1953, as a result of the actions of the UPA, 30,676 Soviet citizens died, including military personnel - 6476, government officials - 2732, party workers - 251, Komsomol workers - 207, collective farmers - 15,669, workers - 676, representatives of the intelligentsia - 1931, children, old people, housewives - 860. This information, which a number of historians consider far from complete, is clear evidence of what the UPA actually did and what "successes" it reached.
Killed as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN (b) residents of the village of Lipniki (now defunct) near the city of Berezno, now the Rivne region, 1943. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
The leaders of the nationalists by actions of intimidation tried to maintain their influence on the Ukrainian population. Tired of the war, people wanted to work peacefully, restore what was destroyed, they were not interested in the plans of Bandera and Shukhevych. Fermentation was also noted among the fighters of the UPA itself. Those who wanted to lay down their arms were handed over to the “security service” - a structure that outdid the Gestapo in its cruelty. They dealt not only with apostates, but also with their families.
Despite everything, the Soviet power structures managed to slowly but surely reduce the activities of the UPA to zero. This was helped by both military actions and amnesties announced several times for ordinary members of the organization. By 1949, the activities of the UPA combat structures were reduced to a minimum. On March 5, 1950, during a special operation, Roman Shukhevych was destroyed. The last one was arrested in 1954 chief commander of the UPA Vasily Kuk, whose activities by that time were tightly controlled by the Soviet special services.
Thus ended the history of the UPA - an organization that did nothing useful in the fight against the Nazi invaders, but shed rivers of innocent blood of Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians.
(UPA) was established on October 14, 1942 by decision of the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN (b) - the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera).
The official date of the creation of the UPA (on the feast of the Intercession on October 14) is considered by many historians to be conditional and propagandistic and they postpone the foundation period for about six months ahead.
The creation of the UPA was preceded by the activities in 1920-1940 of its underground predecessors, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera (OUN).
The UPA-OUN detachments operated in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Romania, Kuban, but achieved some results only in the territories that now make up Western Ukraine. Particular activity was shown in Galicia, Kholmshchyna, Volyn, Northern Bukovina.
The army was divided into four general military districts: UPA-North (Volyn and Polissya), UPA-West (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia and regions beyond the former Curzon line), UPA-South (Kamenets-Podolsk, Zhytomyr, Vinnitsa, the southern part of the Kiev regions ), and UPA-Vostok, which practically did not exist.
In addition to the Ukrainians, who were the vast majority, Jews, Russians and other national minorities fought in the UPA. The attitude towards them was extremely cautious, therefore, at the slightest suspicion, they were liquidated by the Security Council of the OUN.
The number of the UPA-OUN is estimated differently by various sources. According to the commission of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the number of UPA was from 20 to 100 thousand people.
The Institute of National Memory of Ukraine, in response to the call of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, to postpone the celebration of Defender of the Fatherland Day from February 23 to another, "more suitable" day, proposed to celebrate this holiday on October 14 - the day the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was founded.
The question is raised about the official recognition of the UPA as a belligerent in World War II and the related provision of benefits to UPA veterans at the state level.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel repeatedly received requests from the Union of Soviet Officers (in particular, from Crimea and Kharkov) to refute statements that the OUN-UPA fought during the Great Patriotic War against the Nazis.
So, the chairman of the Union of Soviet Officers of Crimea, Sergei Nikulin, turned directly to the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany with a request to help find data on the losses of the Nazis from the actions of the OUN-UPA. In turn, Merkel sent inquiries to several of Germany's largest research institutes. The first reply came from the Military History Research Institute in Potsdam. "We looked for information in the literature at our disposal, but unfortunately, we did not find any reports of Wehrmacht losses due to the national Ukrainian organizations of Bandera and from the OUN-UPA," it said.
Subsequently, Nikulin received a letter from the Military Historical Research Institute of Munich. He testified that the institute did not have materials on the losses of the Wehrmacht inflicted on him by underground groups of the UPA.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
The study of the history of the struggle of the power organs of the USSR to eliminate the Bandera movement in the western regions of Ukraine in the middle of the last century is a very double-edged and painful problem. The nationalist governments of Ukraine throughout the 24 years of its "independent" existence diligently supported the propaganda efforts of many biased "historians" such as S. Kulchytsky, Y. Shapoval, V. Sergiychuk, V. Idzio, I. Bilas and others to whitewash the executioner and collaborationist activities of the armed underground OUN-UPA. And one of the main dogmas of this process, canonizedohin the infamous opus "Fahovy visnovokworking group of historians at the Uryadoviy komіsії z vyvchennya diyalnosti OUN and UPA»
(2005)
was the "Myth of the disguised NKVD", thoroughly exposed only in 2007 in the article of the same name by the Dnepropetrovsk researcher Oleg Rosov (later this work was repeatedly republished). As he rightly noted: “The lack of an evidence base forces Ukrainian historians to stoop to a banal forgery of archival materials” .
On such falsifications, in particular, the head of the Branch Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine under the Yushchenko administration and one of the main apologists for Banderaism Vladimir Vyatrovich was noticed .
The subject of our research is one debatable episode from the history of the fight against the nationalist underground in Volhynia. Namely: the destruction of the NVRO and subsequent events related to the activities of the "intelligence-combat groups" and the Dubnovsky legendary wire. These events were partly covered in the essays of the former Bandera member Y. Omelchuk, published in the early 1960s and experienced a new surge of interest in the early 1990s after the publication of S. Chisnok's articles. Already inXXI century, the problem was studied by the Volyn local historian N. Rutsky and the historian Y. Antonyuk, however, their attempts should be recognized as very unsatisfactory, due to the frank tendentiousness characteristic of almost all modern Ukrainian historiography, and the uncritical perception of the previous opus by S. Chisnok. A detailed analysis of the work is given below.
So, in the context of the beginning of the liberation of the territory of Ukraine from the Nazi invaders and the expansion of the ranks of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), too tainted by cooperation with the Germans (the former commander of the 201st battalion of the German Schutzmannschaft police, Roman Shukhevych, who had the rank of Hauptmann of the Abwehr, was declared the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ) among the leaders of the nationalist movement in Volhynia, the idea of creating a new military-political force was born: the "People's Liberation Revolutionary Organization". As it was stated in the "Statute of the NVRO": "People's voluntary revolutionary organization works together with the main imperialist organizations of other peoples in order to condense the struggle".
This initiative was led by members of the OUN Central Wire Mikhailo Stepanyak (pseudo “Sergei”), Rostislav Voloshin (“Pavlenko”), Yakov Busel (“Zaslavsky”), they were supported by a number of middle-level commanders. However, such "revisionism" was extremely hostile to the leadership of the Bandera faction of the OUN, which, acting on the models of the Nazi party, did not tolerate any opposition. There followed a denunciation from the “regional conductor of the OUN to the PZUZ” Galician P. Oleinik (“Eney”) to the commander-in-chief R. Shukhevych: created by the Belarusian NVRO. The first good man of that crochet is a bіlshovitsky agent (bo vіn in 41 p. buv pіd pіd okupatsієyu bіlshovіvіv), unfortunately, it's a member of the central wire of the OUN - "Pavlenko" that yoga right hand in the UPA, like a temple - clap "Bosota", now appointments in my place as the commander of the pivnіchno-zahіdnoї group of the UPA. Raise the political situation in a negligent way, for the health rozlem threatens the fallen Ukrainian independent state under the wire of the OUN" .
A quick and brutal reaction followed, described in detail in an essay by one of the former OUN members, Yustin Omelchuk ("Zhurba"). Voloshin was isolated in a bunker and forced to sign a text condemning the idea of creating a NVRO: “Inthe light of new tributes, which are used by the OUN guards and the leader of Bandera, it became clear that the so-called. NVRO been viewed umіlo zatіyana bіlshovitskoyu agents, dwellers rozklasti vnutrі revolyutsіyno-natsіonalіstichny front OUN ... Nakae negayno pripiniti sorts of robot sіttsі NVRO ... members OUN provokatsіyno vtyagnutі in NVRO, SSMSC not vikonayut tsogo behest, nadalі vvazhatimutsya bіlshovitskimi agents i pіdlyagatimut sudovі OUN ".
Busel soon died under unclear circumstances, and Stepanyak was arrested by security officers near the village of Derman, possibly saving his life in this way.
All the commanders and archers who were involved in the NVRO began to brutally exterminate the Bandera "Security Service". Matvey Tokar (“Bosota”) was beheaded with an ax, the political referee of his headquarters Sochi (“Kozub”) and the staff officer “Taras” were hanged from trees and burned alive, the district guide of the Dubenshchina “Gamalia” died on a torture machine, the entire “chota” (company) the guards of the headquarters, led by the "Falcon", were strangled with strangleholds. To these victims were added 72 cadets of the local sub-officer school of the UPA. Another 150 activists were exterminated by esbists A. Prisyazhnyuk (“Broom”) and D. Kazvan (“Chernik”) near the village of Gorbakovka, Goshchansky district, but their work was not completed, because one of the militants P. Dzhurik (“Chubaty”) fled to the commander Andrey Trachuk (Chumak, pseudo "Lomonos") and informed him about the true purpose of the "vidpravi". "Lomonos" dispersed the punishers at the assembly point 142 and disappeared. “In this regard, in a number of districts - the entire Demidovsky, part of Kozinsky and Mlynovsky - operations remained unfinished,” Metla reported..
After the signing of the "circular appeal" with the renunciation of the NVRO, Voloshin was also liquidated - he was stabbed to death by the agent of "Dubovoy" "Yurko", although it was officially announced that "Colonel Pavlenko" fell in the fight against the Bolsheviks.
And to hunt for the unfinished Lomonos, a punitive detachment was sent under the command of Ivan Litvinchuk (Oak). It was then that Chumak was officially accused of working for the NKVD. RThe officer of the SB "Broom" reported: "One of our foremen Lomonis was transferred to the security officers. Enkavedists from the same guards who surrendered to the Bolsheviks created a special mission under the command of Lomonos from the high-ranking guards of the Chekists. Stink walk around the villages and farms, giving themselves to the UPA warriors.
It seems quite convincing that the esbists carried out the order of S. Bandera with such accusations, which was first published in the mentioned essay by Y. Omelchuk and is now widely used in anti-Bandera literature: Under the new situations we wake up a new bibli ... Masovіsti Our Ruhop will be unwashed to assign a thieves of Lіkvіdatsіyu ... pіd fitty bіlshvitka ... Пісной месть стійкі Елементі дисності мествій більшокі инушки по польшоківівів ... Вони инойной with bіlshovism: their mass transition to bіk bіlshovikіv undermined the prestige of the OUN-UPA; Tom needlessly NEGAYNO І Yaknayb_lsha Tairno in ІМ "I am a Veliko-ї иціной їн и писисsezgadanі Elelenti OUN-UPA Lіkvіduvati dual way: a) Visilati Bіlshі y Menshі Vіddіli UPA on the bіj zbіlshoviki І Saturavati Situzії, ї і і інисили більшоки наты і terenovі boїvki and іnshih osіb stanitsa and subdistrict scale supradistrict and district SB due to indemnification under the supervision of bolshovitsky agents" .
Therefore, despite the exemplary past of Lomonos as a fanatical fighter against the Bolsheviks (withserved in the German Schutzpolice, then in the UPA, in April 1944 participated in the battle of Gurbami, in August led the "cleansing" of Demidovshchina, during which 60 local residents were killed, for an attempt by several subordinates to read the "Appeal" of the Soviet authorities with a call to surrender, he ordered them to be executed), a strict order was given to find and punish the apostate.
The punitive group of the UPA "Zavihvost" under the command of I. Litvinchuk consisted of 60 militants dressed in Soviet uniforms and white masks. On January 8, 1945, they overtook the Lomonos detachment of 38 people near the village of Sukhovolya, Lutsk region, surrounded and disarmed. In addition to the UPA fighters, a priest from the village of Torgovishche fell into the hands of the punishers, who, according to Y. Antonyuk, led the point of contact of the Volyn regional wire of the OUN and collaborated with the UNKGB. Antonyuk also assures that, in order to comply with the law, “Dubovoy” waited a long time for the investigator from the Regional Wire of the PZUZ, and only because of the lateness of the latter was forced to hang all those arrested on the spot, except for “Lomonos” himself and the priest. Referring to the memoirs of a certain resident of Lutsk, Galina Kokhanskaya, he also claims that these two, after all, after waiting for the investigator, were handed over to him. However, the original document - the report of "Dubovoy", found in his bunker 5 years later, reads: "on a farm with. Sukhovol Lutsk district rose to 38 members of the UPA, ocholyuvana "Lomonos" hundreds, yak worked on the territory of the Demidov district of the Rivne region and for the award of the Security Service stench was suffocated by the path of suffocation for those who encouraged the creation of the OUN in Volyn". By the way, according to Antonyuk, at that time a member of the Blueberry militia Safat Panasyuk (“Batko”) was already in Trachuk’s detachment, but there is no confirmation of this fact on the link he provided.
One of the "rebels" still managed to escape and surrender to the employees of the Lutsk UMGB, who immediately sent an operational-military group to the scene. "Oak" was surrounded near the village of Radomyshl. However, although with difficulty, after a fierce battle, having suffered significant losses, he managed to break through towards the Druzhkopol station, where his detachment finally broke away from the pursuing Chekists.
According to Y. Antonyuk, after the liquidation of the Lomonos group in March 1945, the Security Council began a new “purge” among the leadership of the OUN-UPA in the Rivne region. And in fact, this played into the hands of the regionalUNKGB, which took advantage of the occasion to withdraw from the underground and recruit a number of Bandera activists. Among them were: deputy referent of the Security Service of the Dubnovsky sub-district of the OUN "Grozny" (undercover pseudonym "Mikola"); Andrey Ostapyuk (“Danube”, also known as “Spivak”, undercover alias “Voron”); commandant of the Security Service of the subdistrict, former centurion Pavlo Dzhurik ("Chubaty", agent "Popovich"); commander of the military field gendarmerie kuren UPA "Loboda" (agent "Yura"); former militant of the hundreds of OUN (m) "Khron", centurion of the "Lomonos" kuren Vladimir Zborovsky ("Ozon", "Yagur", agent "Winged") (according to other sources, under the pseudo "Ozon" and "Yagur" Gavrilo Vidny acted) .
From these personnel, the legendary district wire of the OUN was formed, which was initially headed by "Mikola", the district referent of the Security Council and the commandant of the Security Service of the Demidov district was appointed "Maxim", the commandant of the Security Service of the Kozinsky district - "Yura", the commandant of the combatant of the district wire "Winged", and "Popovich ”, “Crow” and “Arrow” - sub-district, with combats of 10 people each. And after the successful recruitment on August 2, 1945 of the political referent of the UPA "Lomonos" unit, Yustin Omelchuk ("Horytsvet", "Zhurba"), under the pseudo "Socrates" he headed the "wire". It should be noted that Yustin Mikhailovich in the pre-war years was a member of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, and later, after the completion of the operational games, he was engaged in literary work, releasing two collections of anti-Bandera essays "Underlyudki" (1963) and "Zmova" (1967).
The activity of the legendary wire was aimed at intercepting communication channels with the Regional Wire of the OUN, maximizing expansion and coverage by the influence of local fighting, and was very successful. Until August, in addition to the above-mentioned, another 42 OUN members were recruited into the network, and then another 59 plus more than 40 were used “in the dark”. Combat activities were also carried out: the security officer of the Dubnovsky subdistrict of the OUN “Shugay”, the militants “Chumak” and “Chernogorets”, who killed the director of the Demidov MTS and the director of the district industrial complex, were liquidated; the commandant of the Security Council of the Demidov district wire of the OUN P. Tarasyuk (“Pugach”) and his bodyguard “Chumak”, who were preparing an attempt on the life of the secretary of the Demidov district committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine and others.
It should be noted that the regional leadership of the OUN was so isolated from the region that for a long time they considered Ozon to be the leader of this group and therefore called its members “Ozonists”. Here are the documents: “In the Dubenshchyna, playing villainous agents under the influence of the old agent of the skhidnyak Yagura-Azot, the huge hundreds of kuren Lomonos, call yourself the regional wire of the OUN and see a leaflet to the Ukrainian people; letters from the PZUZ conductor N. Kozak (“Luka”) to P. Oleinik (“Roman”) dated 12/1/1945). ““Ozonivtsi” basically represented for us that threat that, stinking violently against us, stinks, could inflict losses on people ... The Ministry of Internal Affairs managed to re-recruit and re-recruit from a hundred hundred women. The OUN stinks of their work against the people as a rehabilitation for nationalist sins, which they finished off against the USSR, being in the UPA ”(from the essay by I. Dubovoy “A short sketch of the political crisis that happened in the OUN on the PZUZ in 1944-1946 pp” dated 20.02 .1947) .Perhaps this is due to the fact that it was Ozon that in August 1945, on behalf of the OUN regional wire, published a leaflet criticizing PZK organizer P. Oleinik, which was preserved in the archives of the SBU .
The work of the legendary wire achieved its goal, exacerbating mutual distrust among the OUN underground. In May 1945, P. Oleinik stated that in the Koretsky and Kostopolsky supra-districts, 50% of the OUN-UPA personnel were "in the service of the NKVD", and in the Sarnensky supra-district the figure reached 80%. After that, the esbysts carried out another "cutting", however, according to him, it "appeared in practice inconsistent" . As a result, in December 1945 there was a real split: the SB assistant Stepan Yanishevsky (“Far”), having fled when Fyodor Vorobets (“Vereshchak”), the conductor of the PSUZ, fled during an attempt to arrest him, announced the disconnection from the Regional Wire and, without coordination with the Central Wire of the OUN, organized a new Regional wire "Odessa", the influence of which extended to the territory of Koretsky, partially Kostopol and Goshchansky districts, as well as to certain areas of Zhytomyr, Kamenetz-Podolsky and Kiev regions. His subordination included underground workers who “during various zbіg of the situation broke off ... machines, and tі, yakі maly opinitisya on the machines”, that is, those who barely escaped a terrible death on the torture machines of the SB - the Bandera Gestapo. The highest ranks of the OUN-UPA were forced to react to the split, for example, the last conductor of the OUN to the PZUZ, Vasyl Galasa (“Orlan”) wrote: “All 1946 and 1947 rr. passed importantly in the fight against Dalekivshchyna ... A non-compromising, biased, both-sided propaganda struggle began, slandering, accusing, and often it came to fraternization.
However, the main object of our research is not the top leaders of the OUN-UPA, but one interesting character from the lower echelon - Safat Panasyuk (from the village of Ilpiboki, born around 1904). In 1993, in the newspaper of the diaspora Bandera “Way of Peremogi”, which at that time was moving from Munich to Kyiv, an essay appeared by a certain Rivne local historian Semyon Chisnok (Chasnyk), full of nationalist demagogy and ridiculous inventions, and depicting the activities of S. Panasyuk, who allegedly committed atrocities in as part of the "special detachment of the NKVD" under the guise of a UPA warrior on the territory of the Demidov region. I will give a few pearls: “Five hundred people with their own hands, having driven in all non-humans,” say with tears in the eyes of Sofia Voloshkov. Torturing the wines of my brother Anton Gudzyuk, UPA warrior. At the same time they rolled up Artem Sidoruk, Panas Pashchuk, Vira Pashchuk and Ivan Gutyuk. All the stench were UPA warriors, skering in the battlefield ... Only in one village in Paris, their "special detachment", choked by Safat Panasyuk, having killed thirty chotiri people in the years 1944-1946.
As they say, it's already interesting. The general statement reads: "500 innocent people in one fell swoop and personally." However, as it comes down to specifics, it turns out that the entire “special squad” killed only 34 people in two years, and by no means innocent, but UPA warriors. We add that these data are obviously false, because Panasyuk's combat unit officially surrendered to the Demidov regional department of the NKVD on 11/20/1945, which means that in 1946 it could no longer act. We continue to quote
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Story
The official date of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army is October 14, 1942 - the Cossack holiday of the Intercession, but separate Ukrainian nationalist armed formations have existed since the beginning of the war or earlier. The UPA owes its name to the armed formation "Polesskaya Sich", which operated in Polesie and Volhynia from the beginning of the war against the Bolsheviks, supported by the Germans. But the Germans, after a short cooperation, demanded that Borovets liquidate the group, therefore the UPA began to fight against the Germans.
The UPA operated on the territory of Galicia, Volyn, Northern Bukovina, modern Poland and Belarus, but separate detachments also operated on the territory of eastern Ukraine, the Donbass and even the Kuban. The advance of the rebels led to a partial change in the ideological beliefs of the organization, so - the UPA in the Donbass supported the idea of Soviet power, but without the monopoly of the Communist Party.
In February 1943, the 3rd OUN Conference approved the course for armed struggle against the German occupation regime along with the Bolshevik one. Since the summer of 1943, the UPA was forced to fight on two fronts - against the Red partisans and against the Germans. And in the spring of 1944, the first battles with regular units of the Red Army took place. Special operations of the NKVD against the UPA included dressing up NKVD officers in UPA uniforms and killing civilians in order to discredit the UPA.
In the summer of 1944, the composition of the UPA was replenished at the expense of the Galicia division, defeated near Brody. The creation of this division from the very beginning was actively opposed by the OUN (b), protesting against the mobilization of the most active national elements by the German side, but later the skills of the division's soldiers significantly helped the UPA.
In 1953, exhausted by Soviet purges and a long confrontation, the UPA ceased its active operations, however, separate pockets of resistance arose throughout the 1950s and 60s.
There is a problem of the historiography of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, connected both with the struggle against them by the Soviet authorities, which excluded reliable research during the existence of the USSR and labeled the UPA fighters as fascist collaborators, and with the glorification of the UPA after Ukraine gained independence. In addition, the study of history is also complicated by the attitude of the Polish side, since during the Second World War there were repeated clashes between the UPA units and the Home Army.
Therefore, the issue of official recognition of the UPA as a belligerent in World War II and the related provision of benefits to UPA veterans at the state level (several western regions have already adopted this decision at their level) still remains unresolved. However, since 2005, the anniversary of the creation of the UPA has been officially celebrated in Ukraine (October 14, 1942, the Day of the Intercession).
UPA commanders:
Until 1943, Dmitry Gritsai was the commander of the UPA, from 1943 to 1950 he was replaced as commander-in-chief of the UPA (pseudonym Taras Chuprinka), from 1950 to 1954 he headed the UPA.
Vasily Kuk managed to withdraw unnoticed significant UPA forces from the territory of the USSR through the territory of pro-Soviet Czechoslovakia to the border with Austria, where they surrendered to the Austrian border guards. Thus, a significant part of the UPA fighters got the opportunity to legalize themselves. However, the plan was to return in a few years and defeat the USSR. Unfortunately, many of the participants in the transition to Ukraine's independence did not live to see it.
Filmography:
- "Akce B" (Czechoslovakia, 1951)
- "Ogniomistrz Kaleń" (Poland, 1961)
- "Zerwany most" (Poland, 1962)
- "Annichka" (SRSR, 1968)
- "Biliy bird with a black sign" (SRSR, 1970)
- "Thought about Kovpak" (SRSR, 1973)
- "Anxious month of spring" (SRSR, 1976)
- "Zhorstok_ Svitanki" (Canada, 1980)
- "The failure of the operation" Ursa Major "(SRSR, 1983)
- "State border. Film 6. Beyond the threshold of victory" (SRSR, 1987)
- "Special Forces Detachment" (SRSR, 1987)
- "Stop Bunker" (Ukraine, 1991)
- "Carpathian gold" (Ukraine, 1991)
- "Cherry Nights" (Ukraine, 1992)
- "Stracheni Svitanki" (Ukraine, 1993)
- "Atentat - Osinnє vbivstvo near Munich" (Ukraine, 1995)
- "Neskoreny" (Ukraine, 2000)
- "One - in the field of war" (Ukraine, 2003)
- "Zalіna hundred" (Ukraine, 2004)
- "Distant postril" (Ukraine, 2005)
- "We are from the future 2" (Russia, 2010)
Documentaries
- "Spogad about UPA" (1993)
- "Three loves of Stepan Banderi" (1998)
- "War - Ukrainian rahunok" (2002)
- "War without Permozhtsiv" (2002)
- "Mizh Hitler and Stalin - Ukraine in the Second World War" (2004)
- "Bandera: War without rules" (2004)
- "In memory of Slavya Stetsko" (2005)
- "Museum Bandery near London" (2006)
- "Cathedral on Blood" (2006)
- "OUN-UPA: War on two fronts" (2006)
- "Ukrainian nationalism. Unlearned lessons" (2007)
- "UPA. Fighting Tactics" (double series) (2007)
- "UPA. Third force" (2007)
- "Secrets of the 55th century: Stepan Bandera. Contract suicide" (2007)
- UPA. TV show "Un Certain Regard": "Bandera" (Czech Republic, 2010)
The property of rebel songs is also actively used (the album "Our Partisans" by Taras Chubay and the Skryabin group), author's songs on this topic are created (for example, the song "Do not seem to anyone" by the Tartak group and Andrey Pidluzhny).
