informnapalm--2020-09-23--History of Ukraine: The genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin

Some trivia about Ukraine by George V.Pinchuk .
History of Ukraine : The genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin .
Part 10 .
For the part of Ukraine now taken by the Soviets , the 1930s and 40s were , overall , a dark time .
In his polemics with Trotsky in the 1920s , Stalin won the public ear by dismissing the idea of the “ world revolution ” and campaigning , instead , for the idea of “ building Socialism in one separate country.
” However , in his heart of hearts , the Kremlin dictator saw himself as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whole world .
He has always thought about expanding his realm by invading other countries , and , therefore , about expanding and strengthening the Red Army at any and all cost .
So , with Trotsky disgraced and gone to exile in 1928 , Stalin took some of the ideas of his arch-rival and , through relentless propaganda , made them sound like his own .
Particularly , the main objective of the Soviet state was now declared to be an accelerated industrialization accompanied by a total “ collectivization ” of agriculture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right of an agricultural worker to own the agricultural produce .
Individual farms were joined into enormous “ collective farms ” where the local people worked , essentially , like slaves .
Formally , the produce of the collective farm was its collective property , but actually it was the property of the state , because the collective farms had to sell the produce to the state for ridiculously low prices established by the state organs reporting to the Soviet government and the Communist high-positioned functionaries .
The food “ bought ” ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) by the state was distributed among the Red Army soldiers and industrial workers in the cities , and also sold abroad , with the proceeds going to the ever-increasing militarization of the USSR .
The “ collective farmers ” were left with very little .
In most cases , the monetary revenue after “ selling ” their produce to the state was so tiny that a farmer ’ s family could afford to buy something like a pair of boots and a set of rough garb-looking clothes per year or two , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were paid for their back-breaking work in kind , like with some grain or potatoes .
They were allowed to keep tiny plots of land around their dwellings , and used them for growing vegetables ; also , they were allowed to keep lifestock , like one cow and one pig etc .
; however , they often had too little time and energy left to take good care of their plots because the work at their collective farm was not legally limited by any hours , and they had to pay taxes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thus , the life of peasants was turned into one endless nightmare , with hunger , cold , and disease becoming everyday realities .
In many parts of Russia , this “ collectivization ” of agriculture went relatively smoothly because the peasants were already accustomed to collectivized forms of land ownership .
In a harsh climate and having poor soil , like in central and northern parts of Russia , villagers had merged their land plots into large pool of land ( “ община , ” “ мир ” ) since the days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with its milder climate and exquisitely rich soils , that was unheard of .
Not only wealthy , but middle-income level Ukrainian peasants became extremely hostile to the idea of communal land and agricultural produce ownership .
In 1929-1930 , hundreds of peasant uprisings were documented in Ukraine and brutally suppressed by the Red Army and special police force units .
At one point , the government backed up and announced that the collective farming should be voluntary .
Immediately , the number of Ukrainian peasants who had joined the collective farms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resume repressions and harassment of individual landowners .
By the end of 1930 , a campaign of mass deportation of wealthy individual landowners ( “ kulaks ” in Russian or “ kurkuli ” in Ukraine ) resulted in forceful re-settlement of hundreds of thousands of rural families from Ukraine to remote areas of Siberia and Middle Asia .
Over there , those who managed to survive the most brutal conditions of transportation were organized into “ special settlements ” not actually differing from concentration camps .
The events began to unroll leading to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire history of the humankind .
As Professor Roman Serbyn writes in his brilliant series of works on this subject , Stalin and the narrow inner circle of his henchmen embarked on a task to completely remove Ukraine out of their way , to eliminate it as a nation , a culture , and a political subject .
The task consisted of four parts : ( 1 ) to destroy the intellectual core of Ukraine , its “ brain ” – the writers , artists , scientists , engineers , managers , doctors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rip off Ukraine ’ s “ heart ” – the clergy , the spiritual , religious leaders who remained outside of the control from Moscow ; ( 3 ) to wipe out the Ukrainian peasantry with its traditions of individual ownership and responsibility , with its resilience against the dictatorship of the state ; and ( 4 ) to kill off all the islets of the Ukrainian language and culture outside the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic , i.e .
in Russia , including the Kuban , the North Caucasus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Stalin wanted to see Ukraine merely as a territory with rich farmland that could be exploited for his main pragmatic plan : to strengthen the army that , eventually , the sooner the better , will subjugate the whole world , molding it into his personal empire .
Any other kind of Ukraine did not suit him .
Between 1930 and 1934 , the GPU ( secret police ) of the Ukrainian SSR , under the leadership of S. Redens and then V. Balitsky , forged the stories of several fictional “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ existed in Ukraine and worked to bring Ukraine under the control of Capitalist countries , particularly Poland .
One of them , the so-called SVU ( from Ukrainian Спілка визволення України , “ The Ukrainian Liberation Union ” ) , allegedly included the former leaders of the Ukrainian People ’ s Republic , including such luminaries as Serhiy Efremov , V. Chekhivsky ( see Parts 6 and 7 of this series ) , L. Starytska-Chernyakhivska , Y. Hermaize and others .
Almost 500 people were indicted and 45 were tried in Kharkiv in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not even confirm the existence of any SVU ; others did testify that the organization had existed , but their testimony was extremely conflicting and obviously given under duress .
All of the tried were found guilty and 15 of them were sentenced to death by firing squad ; others were sent to concentration camps .
But that was only the tip of the iceberg .
All over Ukraine , local Stalinist henchmen arrested , tortured , executed , or deported thousands and thousands of intellectuals .
Many of the victims , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kidnapped from their homes or on the street and executed within weeks without any trial .
In January 1930 , the so-called Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church allegedly issued a statement calling for the Extraordinary Convention of the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy .
In fact , this document was a sham composed by the secret police .
The “ Convention , ” which was subsequently staged , declared that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was a schismatic group founded by agents of Petlyura to harm the Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine .
Following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox parishes were forcefully closed and the head of the UOAC , Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky , was arrested ( he was shot in 1937 and later canonized as a martyr ) .
The remaining Orthodox parishes in Ukraine were strictly forbidden to use the Ukrainian language in their services .
By the late 1930s , almost all clergy that had any connection with the UOAC were physically eliminated – executed or worked to death in GULAG camps .
But the most horrific genocide was committed in rural areas .
In June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head of the government of the Ukrainian SSR , wrote to Stalin that after the forced collectivization and the numerous requisitions of grain , Ukraine urgently needs help or , otherwise , there will be mass starvation .
In response , the quotas of grain that the Ukraine farmers “ owed ” to the government were only increased .
By June 30 , 1932 , the entire stock of seed grain was taken away from Ukraine .
On August 7 , 1932 , Stalin ’ s government issued a decree that made it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home even a tiny amount of grain from the collective farm fields .
Those who were caught gleaning grain were ordered to be executed on the spot .
Only if the weight of the “ stolen ” grain was equal to , or less than , the weight of approximately 5 kernels of wheat , the execution could be replaced by at least 10 years of hard labor with confiscation of all belongings .
Children were not exempt from this barbaric law .
In that same month of August , employees of all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let peasants board the trains going from the rural areas to big cities , unless they had a special permit from their collective farm and local Communist Party authorities .
All highways and country roads were patroled by armed special police units .
So , millions of impoverished , exhausted , hungry , sick , barely moving people were herded to the collective farm fields for back-breaking labor every day , without being even minimally compensated and without any chance to escape .
To make things even deadlier , a number of regions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ east and southeast where the soil was the richest ) were demanded to pay absolutely fantastic fines for not reaching the grain quotas ; for example , an area could receive orders to pay its “ debt ” in grain , and then , as punishment , also 15 times this weight paid with meat of the livestock ( which was not there because it had been slaughtered due to hunger and the lack of fodder ) .
In the many areas that were announced to be “ malicious debtors , ” all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ markets were outlawed .
Meanwhile , special armed bands of the military and civilian “ activists ” continued to raid villages , taking away all food .
Beginning from fall 1932 , they received orders not to leave anything edible to the peasants ; if they could not carry more food after loading their trucks or carriages , they had to physically destroy any food they would find in the villagers ’ dwellings .
So , they poured soup or stew on the ground , stomped potatoes to mesh with their boots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and pottery .
Their activities became openly genocidal .
Over the fall 1932 and winter 1932-33 , the rural dwellers in several major grain-producing areas of Ukraine were dying by thousands over thousands .
However , the peak of the genocide was in spring and early summer of 1933 , when the villagers had already eaten all dogs , cats , rats , crows , tree bark etc .
When the new grass appeared , many people avidly ate it until they died of bowel obstruction .
Cannibalism became rampant , people hunting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , and then , eventually , eating their own children .
Because of an extremely low amount of albumin in their blood , people looked swollen and lost the capacity to use their muscles .
The dead were everywhere : in the houses , in the yards , on the road from villages to the collective farm fields , and on the fields .
Some desperate men and women who still could move traveled illegally to cities with the hope to get food there by begging .
Most of them , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after arrival to a city .
The urban dwellers who had small rations of food were told that these new arrivals from villages are the enemies of the people who refuse to work .
The police did not help the dying people and did not allow the city dwellers to help them .
To this day , it remains unknown how many people were executed by the lethal hunger ( the Holodomor ) in Ukraine in 1932-1933 .
In the decision made by the Supreme Court of Ukraine on January 13 , 2010 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by starvation during the 1932-33 Holodomor was announced to be 3,941,000 .
Of course , this is merely the tip of an iceberg because millions of deaths were not documented and millions of deaths were not directly caused by starvation but , rather , by the diseases that accompanied it .
Also , any number must be supplemented by the number of unborn human beings that could have been born and lived if not for the Holodomor .
Based on demographic studies , most investigators agree that in Ukraine , the man-made hunger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7 million people .
About 3 million people were murdered at the same time outside of Ukraine , most of them in the Kuban region of Russia ( ethnically , predominantly Ukrainian ) , and in Kazakhstan .
Beginning from July 1933 , the Soviet government finally began to take measures against this unprecedented loss of people .
However , in most cases it was too late for those who had lived there .
Huge areas in the Kyiv , Kharkiv , Donetsk , Poltava and other regions of Ukraine died off completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed by hunger stretched over thousands of kilometers .
Millions of corpses remained unburied and rot inside houses , causing an unbearable stench .
In fall 1933 , the Soviet government began the program of mass migration of the demobilized Red Army soldiers and peasants from Russia and Belarus to the areas of Ukraine depopulated by the Holodomor .
Many of the migrants were so shocked by what they saw ( and smelled ) that they immediately moved back to where they had come from .
However , many others stayed , being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the state granaries .
This , of course , had terrible cultural consequences that are felt in eastern Ukraine even today .
The migration was followed by a complete or almost complete de-Ukrainization of large parts of the country .
The children and the grandchildren of the migrants often never learned to identify themselves with Ukraine and things Ukrainian .
This sad fact was used by Russia during the invasion of the Donbas in spring 2014 .
The Holodomor also wiped out some good genes .
Most of its victims were from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ land-owning stock .
Many witnesses agree that generally in Ukraine and especially in the areas struck by the Holodomor such qualities as industriousness , entrepreneurship , and dignity of a private owner became conspicuously rare after the genocide .
Over vast agricultural areas , what used to be the character of a “ farmer ” all but disappeared and became replaced by the character of a lazy , thievish , furtive ill-paid daysman , a peon servant of the state .
This and some other features of a post-genocidal nation are hurting Ukraine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no way of knowing how many more generations these features will affect .
2.History of Ukraine : The Princes and the Kozaks 5 .
History of Ukraine : The rise of nationalism in 19th century or two Ukrainian nationalisms 6 .
History of Ukraine : The first modern Ukrainian state .
7.History of Ukraine : From Skoropadsky to Petlyura .
8.Ukraine struggles for survival : The victories and the losses .
9 .
History of Ukraine : From the communist occupation to a national renaissance and back .
Distribution and reprint with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 ) InformNapalm social media pages : Facebook / Twitter / Telegram

Some trivia about Ukraine by George V.Pinchuk. History of Ukraine: The genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin. Part 10. For the part of Ukraine now taken by the Soviets, the 1930s and 40s were, overall, a dark time.
In his polemics with Trotsky in the 1920s, Stalin won the public ear by dismissing the idea of the “world revolution” and campaigning, instead, for the idea of “building Socialism in one separate country.” However, in his heart of hearts, the Kremlin dictator saw himself as something of an emperor who rules the whole world. He has always thought about expanding his realm by invading other countries, and, therefore, about expanding and strengthening the Red Army at any and all cost. So, with Trotsky disgraced and gone to exile in 1928, Stalin took some of the ideas of his arch-rival and, through relentless propaganda, made them sound like his own. Particularly, the main objective of the Soviet state was now declared to be an accelerated industrialization accompanied by a total “collectivization” of agriculture. The latter meant elimination of any right of an agricultural worker to own the agricultural produce. Individual farms were joined into enormous “collective farms” where the local people worked, essentially, like slaves. Formally, the produce of the collective farm was its collective property, but actually it was the property of the state, because the collective farms had to sell the produce to the state for ridiculously low prices established by the state organs reporting to the Soviet government and the Communist high-positioned functionaries. The food “bought” (or, in reality, simply taken) by the state was distributed among the Red Army soldiers and industrial workers in the cities, and also sold abroad, with the proceeds going to the ever-increasing militarization of the USSR.
The “collective farmers” were left with very little. In most cases, the monetary revenue after “selling” their produce to the state was so tiny that a farmer’s family could afford to buy something like a pair of boots and a set of rough garb-looking clothes per year or two, and little else. The collective farmers were paid for their back-breaking work in kind, like with some grain or potatoes. They were allowed to keep tiny plots of land around their dwellings, and used them for growing vegetables; also, they were allowed to keep lifestock, like one cow and one pig etc.; however, they often had too little time and energy left to take good care of their plots because the work at their collective farm was not legally limited by any hours, and they had to pay taxes for the right to keep lifestock. Thus, the life of peasants was turned into one endless nightmare, with hunger, cold, and disease becoming everyday realities.
In many parts of Russia, this “collectivization” of agriculture went relatively smoothly because the peasants were already accustomed to collectivized forms of land ownership. In a harsh climate and having poor soil, like in central and northern parts of Russia, villagers had merged their land plots into large pool of land (“община,” “мир”) since the days of old. In Ukraine, however, with its milder climate and exquisitely rich soils, that was unheard of. Not only wealthy, but middle-income level Ukrainian peasants became extremely hostile to the idea of communal land and agricultural produce ownership. In 1929-1930, hundreds of peasant uprisings were documented in Ukraine and brutally suppressed by the Red Army and special police force units. At one point, the government backed up and announced that the collective farming should be voluntary. Immediately, the number of Ukrainian peasants who had joined the collective farms plummeted, so the government had to resume repressions and harassment of individual landowners. By the end of 1930, a campaign of mass deportation of wealthy individual landowners (“kulaks” in Russian or “kurkuli” in Ukraine) resulted in forceful re-settlement of hundreds of thousands of rural families from Ukraine to remote areas of Siberia and Middle Asia. Over there, those who managed to survive the most brutal conditions of transportation were organized into “special settlements” not actually differing from concentration camps.
The events began to unroll leading to one of the worst genocides in the entire history of the humankind. As Professor Roman Serbyn writes in his brilliant series of works on this subject, Stalin and the narrow inner circle of his henchmen embarked on a task to completely remove Ukraine out of their way, to eliminate it as a nation, a culture, and a political subject. The task consisted of four parts: (1) to destroy the intellectual core of Ukraine, its “brain” – the writers, artists, scientists, engineers, managers, doctors, teachers; (2) to rip off Ukraine’s “heart” – the clergy, the spiritual, religious leaders who remained outside of the control from Moscow; (3) to wipe out the Ukrainian peasantry with its traditions of individual ownership and responsibility, with its resilience against the dictatorship of the state; and (4) to kill off all the islets of the Ukrainian language and culture outside the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, i.e. in Russia, including the Kuban, the North Caucasus, certain areas in the Far East etc. Stalin wanted to see Ukraine merely as a territory with rich farmland that could be exploited for his main pragmatic plan: to strengthen the army that, eventually, the sooner the better, will subjugate the whole world, molding it into his personal empire. Any other kind of Ukraine did not suit him.
Between 1930 and 1934, the GPU (secret police) of the Ukrainian SSR, under the leadership of S. Redens and then V. Balitsky, forged the stories of several fictional “counter-revolutionary organizations” that, allegedly, existed in Ukraine and worked to bring Ukraine under the control of Capitalist countries, particularly Poland. One of them, the so-called SVU (from Ukrainian Спілка визволення України, “The Ukrainian Liberation Union”), allegedly included the former leaders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, including such luminaries as Serhiy Efremov, V. Chekhivsky (see Parts 6 and 7 of this series), L. Starytska-Chernyakhivska, Y. Hermaize and others. Almost 500 people were indicted and 45 were tried in Kharkiv in March-April 1930. Many of the tried did not even confirm the existence of any SVU; others did testify that the organization had existed, but their testimony was extremely conflicting and obviously given under duress. All of the tried were found guilty and 15 of them were sentenced to death by firing squad; others were sent to concentration camps. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. All over Ukraine, local Stalinist henchmen arrested, tortured, executed, or deported thousands and thousands of intellectuals. Many of the victims, like the writer Hryhoriy Kosynka, were kidnapped from their homes or on the street and executed within weeks without any trial.
Hryhoriy Kosynka
In January 1930, the so-called Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church allegedly issued a statement calling for the Extraordinary Convention of the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy. In fact, this document was a sham composed by the secret police. The “Convention,” which was subsequently staged, declared that the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was a schismatic group founded by agents of Petlyura to harm the Russian Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Following this pseudo- “convention,” all Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox parishes were forcefully closed and the head of the UOAC, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky, was arrested (he was shot in 1937 and later canonized as a martyr). The remaining Orthodox parishes in Ukraine were strictly forbidden to use the Ukrainian language in their services. By the late 1930s, almost all clergy that had any connection with the UOAC were physically eliminated – executed or worked to death in GULAG camps.
Vasyl Lypkivsky
But the most horrific genocide was committed in rural areas. In June 1932, Ulas Chubar, then the head of the government of the Ukrainian SSR, wrote to Stalin that after the forced collectivization and the numerous requisitions of grain, Ukraine urgently needs help or, otherwise, there will be mass starvation. In response, the quotas of grain that the Ukraine farmers “owed” to the government were only increased. By June 30, 1932, the entire stock of seed grain was taken away from Ukraine. On August 7, 1932, Stalin’s government issued a decree that made it a crime for a farmer to take home even a tiny amount of grain from the collective farm fields. Those who were caught gleaning grain were ordered to be executed on the spot. Only if the weight of the “stolen” grain was equal to, or less than, the weight of approximately 5 kernels of wheat, the execution could be replaced by at least 10 years of hard labor with confiscation of all belongings. Children were not exempt from this barbaric law. In that same month of August, employees of all railroads in Ukraine were ordered not to let peasants board the trains going from the rural areas to big cities, unless they had a special permit from their collective farm and local Communist Party authorities. All highways and country roads were patroled by armed special police units. So, millions of impoverished, exhausted, hungry, sick, barely moving people were herded to the collective farm fields for back-breaking labor every day, without being even minimally compensated and without any chance to escape. To make things even deadlier, a number of regions in Ukraine (especially areas in the east and southeast where the soil was the richest) were demanded to pay absolutely fantastic fines for not reaching the grain quotas; for example, an area could receive orders to pay its “debt” in grain, and then, as punishment, also 15 times this weight paid with meat of the livestock (which was not there because it had been slaughtered due to hunger and the lack of fodder). In the many areas that were announced to be “malicious debtors,” all food stores were closed down and farmers’ markets were outlawed. Meanwhile, special armed bands of the military and civilian “activists” continued to raid villages, taking away all food. Beginning from fall 1932, they received orders not to leave anything edible to the peasants; if they could not carry more food after loading their trucks or carriages, they had to physically destroy any food they would find in the villagers’ dwellings. So, they poured soup or stew on the ground, stomped potatoes to mesh with their boots etc. They also took away clothes and pottery. Their activities became openly genocidal.
Over the fall 1932 and winter 1932-33, the rural dwellers in several major grain-producing areas of Ukraine were dying by thousands over thousands. However, the peak of the genocide was in spring and early summer of 1933, when the villagers had already eaten all dogs, cats, rats, crows, tree bark etc. When the new grass appeared, many people avidly ate it until they died of bowel obstruction. Cannibalism became rampant, people hunting and eating other people (especially children), and then, eventually, eating their own children. Because of an extremely low amount of albumin in their blood, people looked swollen and lost the capacity to use their muscles. The dead were everywhere: in the houses, in the yards, on the road from villages to the collective farm fields, and on the fields. Some desperate men and women who still could move traveled illegally to cities with the hope to get food there by begging. Most of them, however, died during the travel or soon after arrival to a city. The urban dwellers who had small rations of food were told that these new arrivals from villages are the enemies of the people who refuse to work. The police did not help the dying people and did not allow the city dwellers to help them.
To this day, it remains unknown how many people were executed by the lethal hunger (the Holodomor) in Ukraine in 1932-1933. In the decision made by the Supreme Court of Ukraine on January 13, 2010, the number of documented direct deaths by starvation during the 1932-33 Holodomor was announced to be 3,941,000. Of course, this is merely the tip of an iceberg because millions of deaths were not documented and millions of deaths were not directly caused by starvation but, rather, by the diseases that accompanied it. Also, any number must be supplemented by the number of unborn human beings that could have been born and lived if not for the Holodomor. Based on demographic studies, most investigators agree that in Ukraine, the man-made hunger and its consequences took lives of approximately 7 million people. About 3 million people were murdered at the same time outside of Ukraine, most of them in the Kuban region of Russia (ethnically, predominantly Ukrainian), and in Kazakhstan.
Beginning from July 1933, the Soviet government finally began to take measures against this unprecedented loss of people. However, in most cases it was too late for those who had lived there. Huge areas in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Poltava and other regions of Ukraine died off completely. The villages where all inhabitants were killed by hunger stretched over thousands of kilometers. Millions of corpses remained unburied and rot inside houses, causing an unbearable stench. In fall 1933, the Soviet government began the program of mass migration of the demobilized Red Army soldiers and peasants from Russia and Belarus to the areas of Ukraine depopulated by the Holodomor. Many of the migrants were so shocked by what they saw (and smelled) that they immediately moved back to where they had come from. However, many others stayed, being bribed by special treats of free grain from the state granaries. This, of course, had terrible cultural consequences that are felt in eastern Ukraine even today. The migration was followed by a complete or almost complete de-Ukrainization of large parts of the country. The children and the grandchildren of the migrants often never learned to identify themselves with Ukraine and things Ukrainian. This sad fact was used by Russia during the invasion of the Donbas in spring 2014.
The Holodomor also wiped out some good genes. Most of its victims were from healthy, industrious, enterprising land-working and land-owning stock. Many witnesses agree that generally in Ukraine and especially in the areas struck by the Holodomor such qualities as industriousness, entrepreneurship, and dignity of a private owner became conspicuously rare after the genocide. Over vast agricultural areas, what used to be the character of a “farmer” all but disappeared and became replaced by the character of a lazy, thievish, furtive ill-paid daysman, a peon servant of the state. This and some other features of a post-genocidal nation are hurting Ukraine to this very day, and there is no way of knowing how many more generations these features will affect.
The Holodomor memorial in Kyiv
Read also:
1.History of Ukraine: The Beginnings
2.History of Ukraine: The Princes and the Kozaks
3.History of Ukraine: The Russian Captivity
4.History of Ukraine: Taras Shevchenko
5. History of Ukraine: The rise of nationalism in 19th century or two Ukrainian nationalisms
6. History of Ukraine: The first modern Ukrainian state.
7.History of Ukraine: From Skoropadsky to Petlyura.
8.Ukraine struggles for survival: The victories and the losses.
9. History of Ukraine: From the communist occupation to a national renaissance and back.
By George V. Pinchuk
Distribution and reprint with reference to the source is welcome! (Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0) InformNapalm social media pages: Facebook / Twitter / Telegram


informnapalm--2020-10-02--History of Ukraine: The birth of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

Some trivia about Ukraine by George V.Pinchuk .
History of Ukraine : The birth of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists ( OUN ) .
Part 11 .
The Ukrainian people living west of the river Zbruch , i.e .
in the lands governed by Poland , were spared from the horrors of Stalinist totalitarianism .
However , their life was not exactly what they aspired after .
Ukrainian farmers were allowed to buy , sell , and own land .
They were not driven to “ collective farms , ” and were not subject to harassment or persecution unless they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Some of them , like my wife ’ s grandfather Arsen Hahalovsky , became quite well-of and owned their own “ khutirs ” ( hamlets ) with large square footage of fertile land , livestock , ponds teaming with fish etc .
However , to be educated , a Ukrainian peasant had to speak fluent Polish and to belong to the Catholic Church , while most families in the “ Polish ” part of Ukraine were Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Rite ( “ Greek ” ) Catholics .
Because of this problem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teachers , doctors , scientists , engineers , laywers etc .
They tended to concentrate in agricultural areas and work the land , while urban intelligentsia was overwhelmingly Polish .
That was not the healthiest of situations , causing mutual distrust and sometimes hostilities .
In 1918-1922 , General Józef-Clemens Piłsudski , the hero of the war of 1918-1920 with Bolsheviks , one time an ally of Petlyura ’ s who helped the Ukrainian army to take Kyiv , served as the head of the Polish state .
However , he refused to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Polish government in 1926 only as a secretary of defense under the President Ignacy Moscicki .
The new Polish government was much more authoritarian and hostile to Ukrainians .
All schoolteachers , even those who taught at village schools where all students were ethnic Ukrainians , were forbidden to use the terms “ Ukraine ” and “ Ukrainian.
” Instead , the part of Ukraine that was under Soviets was referred to as Russia , and the part of Ukraine under the Polish rule was called Kresy Wschodnie , i.e .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead of saying or writing , “ the Ukrainian language , ” all teachers were instructed to say and write , “ język rusinski , ” i.e .
the language of Rusyns , even though the Carpatho-Rusyn dialect of the Ukrainian language was never spoken in such parts of the “ Polish ” Ukraine as Volyn , Kholmshchyna , Pidlyashshya and most of the Halychyna .
If a student referred to him- or herself as Ukrainian , the student could be expelled , and the teacher fired .
Police were ordered to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether there is any “ separatism ” there .
Needless to say , quite often these raids were accompanied by wild revelry on the Ukrainian farmers ’ expense , and even open money extortion .
The Ukrainians began to form their self-defense units and to meet the Polish raiders with gunfire .
In 1930 , the Polish Minister of Interior B. Pieracki ordered the series of infamous “ pacifications ” of the rural areas populated largely by ethnic Ukrainians .
In September and October 1930 , about 750 villages and hamlets were stormed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 250 were completely or almost completely demolished .
The soldiers went from house to house and arrested every family that had books in Ukrainian , portraits of Taras Shevchenko , the yellow-and-blue flag of the former Ukrainian People ’ s Republic etc .
These “ separatists ” were escorted to a barn or a warehouse and savagely beaten with clubs or whips .
As the victims and the witnesses recalled , striking a person with a heavy stick or a buggy whip between 100 and 200 times was a “ norm.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not to beat people to death and not to use lethal weapons , because fatalities could create an impression of some “ serious ” conflict , which was not desired . )
As one part of the raiding troops was busy beating people , another went from house to house and systematically destroyed furniture , fireplaces , chimneys , windows , and even bedroom linen .
All food found in a house would be taken out , thrown on the ground and sprayed with gasoline .
Public libraries and Ukrainian cooperative stores were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parallel , people were subjected to moral humiliation .
For example , the soldiers made the Ukrainian peasants kiss the soil 100 times , each time shouting , “ I kiss you , my Polish land !
” – or spit on a yellow-and-blue Petlurite flag , shouting , “ I spit on you , Ukraine , the mother of dogs !
” Women , teenagers , the elderly , and the clergy were not exempt from this brutal physical and moral abuse .
The Ukrainian activists in the Polish Sejm ( parliament @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were dead as a result of these “ pacifications.
” Reluctantly , the Poles confirmed the violent death of four Ukrainians , including one urban high school student who had the misfortune to be in one of the villages subjected to “ pacification , ” and the rape of one 16-year old girl .
Yet , the overall response of the Polish authorities was far from adequate .
Of the ~7,000 soldiers and police officers who were involved in the “ pacifications , ” only 40 were found guilty in excessive brutality and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remained in prison for 3-4 months and 37 were released in exactly one week .
As yet another insult , the members of the Polish government refused to meet with one of the most revered clerics of the Ukrainian Eastern Rite Catholic Church , Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky .
Instead of listening to the Metropolitan ’ s plan of peaceful coexistence between ethnic Poles and ethnic Ukrainians , the Moscicki government ordered to just close down all legal Ukrainian civic and cultural organizations .
Of course , the Ukrainian underground continued to work .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ due to a titanic work of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets , a powerful Ukrainian Military Organization ( UVO ) was chartered in Prague , Czechoslovakia .
It consisted of several thousand Ukrainian military officers , including the Sichovi Striltsi under the command of Colonel Konovalets , and the officers of the UGA ( see pt .
8 of these series ) .
Their task was to train patriotically-minded youth for their future fight against Polish and Russian authorities for the liberation of the Ukrainian people .
In February 1929 , the UVO representatives secretly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ukrainian youth organizations and merged into the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists ( OUN ) .
The OUN was a movement , not a political party .
It did not aim at seizing political power or forming a government .
Its goal from the very beginning was to fight for the hearts and minds of Ukrainians living in what was , back then , Poland , the USSR , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Romania , or any other country for that matter , filling these hearts and minds with the ideas of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dontsov ( see pt .
5 of these series ) .
In this regard , the OUN considered all legal political parties as enemies of Ukraine , even if representatives of those parties struggled for the Ukrainian cause in their countries ’ parliaments .
The “ integral Nationalists ” dismissed the mere idea of ethnic Ukrainians collaborating with foreign states , foreign political forces .
Their ideal was a state where Ukrainians would live and be responsible for their own destiny with the help of only their own Ukrainian government .
When this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will consider its mission accomplished .
However , unless , and until , it is met , the OUN will struggle for it , using methods characteristic of armed resistance in a hostile environment .
The history of OUN is best understood through the biographies of its three principal leaders , Konovalets , Melnyk , and Bandera .
Yevhen Mykhaylovych Konovalets was born in 1891 ( same year as Makhno ) in the village of Zashkiv , in Halychyna ( back then , part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ) .
He was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandson of a well-respected village Greek Catholic priest .
His mother , Maria Vengrynovska-Konovalets , was also from a priestly line .
Young Yevhen finished four classes of local parochial schools and then went on to study in a Lviv “ gymnasia , ” a private school for boys .
In 1909 , he became a student of law at the Lviv University .
There , he joined the “ Prosvita ” movement , a civic organization that worked legally , campaigning for a better education of ethnic Ukrainians in their own language @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great Ukrainian literature beginning from Kotlyarevsky and Shevchenko .
As a “ Prosvita ” activist , in 1910 Konovalets took part in a street rally , when the Austrian police clashed with the the rallying crowd and killed one of his friends ( A. Kotsko ) .
This tragedy , as well as personal friendship with Dmytro Dontsov , profoundly influenced on Konovalets , making him disappointed in legal means of struggle for his nation and prompting him that only an underground military organization can bring freedom and independence to Ukraine .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drafted into the Austrian army .
In June 1915 , he was captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp near the city of Tsaritsyn on the Volga river .
There , Konovalets met his future brothers-in-arms A. Melnyk , R. Sushko and other captives from Ukraine .
In February 1917 , when the Romanov dynasty fell and the POW camp inmates were released , this group of Ukrainian soldiers traveled to Kyiv with the idea to form an independent Ukrainian military unit .
They now called themselves Sichovi Striltsi ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks , see pt .
2 , and “ strilets ” – a man who shoots a rifle ) .
In Kyiv , Konovalets and his close friend Roman Dashkevych became the commander and the deputy commander of what they called the Halychyna-Bukovyna Kurin ( Regiment ) of the Sichovi Striltsi .
The regiment became a part of the Legion of the Sichovi Striltsi , which had been formed in 1914 in Austria from soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian ethnicity who fought in the ranks of the army of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Central Rada , armed , equipped , put on food rations and given accommodations in Kyiv , Boyarka , and Bila Tserkva .
In January 1918 , they became instrumental in putting down the attempt of the Bolsheviks to seize power by inciting a riot of the Arsenal plant workers .
Later in the year , the Striltsi together with Petlyura ’ s Haydamaky cavalry fought , quite successfully , with the Bolshevik army of Muravyov and with the troops loyal to Hetman Skoropadsky .
In 1919 , they bravely and often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s White army on the Ukrainian People ’ s Republic .
In spring 1920 , however , Konovalets and Petlyura parted company .
It was impossible for a Dontsovite “ integral Nationalist ” Konovalets to accept Petlyura ’ s idea about the military alliance with the Poles .
Konovalets settled in Prague , where he took the most active part in organizing the UVO ( see above ) .
In 1927 , living in Austria , Konovalets came up with the idea to organize a broader union of both military and civilian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ integral Nationalism , ” and offered the name for this union , the OUN .
From the time of its conception , the OUN had to separate itself from both leftist and rightist ideologues .
The latter , represented by the Ukrainian Fascists ( L. Kostariv , P. Kozhevnykiv ) , thought about future Ukrainian state as one operating under the “ Corporatist ” formula of Mussolini , “ everything for the state , nothing outside the state , nothing against the state.
” Konovalets , however , was against this rough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was also against the leftist ideas of the “ class struggle.
” In the 1930s , both Kostariv and Kozhevnykiv were expelled from the OUN for their extremist views and , importantly , for their connection with the Soviet secret police .
Konovalets now obtained the opportunity to concentrate on what he knew the best : organizing circles of young people of the Ukrainian ethnicity living in all parts of the world .
He spent his time traveling and meeting with young enthusiasts , urging them to live for the Ukrainian cause .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and his closest associates ( A. Melnyk , M. Stsiborsky , D. Dymchuk , Ryko Yaryy , A. Fedyna et al . )
had to remember their Ukrainianness and value it more than everything else in the world .
They took an oath , which began with the words , “ I will make independent Ukrainian nation-state exist , or I will die fighting for it.
” Each OUN member had to live by a “ Decalogue , ” a set of rules that included reading the Ukrainian classic and modern writers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basics of the military practice ( sharp-shooting , camping , hand-to-had combat etc. )
.
The young Nationalists were taught loyalty , honor , military discipline , and tolerance to physical pain .
They also vowed to abstain from alcohol and smoking , and to be sexually pure ( celibate or monogamous ) .
The results of this huge work of Konovalets and his associates were very impressive .
The OUN grew in numbers and in strength .
This was a serious problem for the Soviets , and Stalin ordered his special operations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the OUN leader moved to the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands .
There , he met with a young Ukrainian who called himself Pavlus Valyukh .
Actually , this man , who pretended to be a Ukrainian Nationalist representing the Soviet underground , was an agent of the Bolshevik secret intelligence service .
His real name was Pavel Sudoplatov .
Konovalets and “ Valyukh ” -Sudoplatov met in a café at the Atlanta hotel in Rotterdam .
The agent told Konovalets exciting stories about the growth of the Ukrainian Nationalist underground @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters and meeting protocols .
The OUN leader became interested and asked for another meeting at the same place .
“ Valyukh ” did not come to this next meeting but sent Konovalets a “ souvenir , ” a box of chocolates wrapped in a sheet with beautiful Ukrainian ornament on it .
It was a booby trap .
When Konovalets took it from the waiter and made it lie horizontally , it went off and killed him instantly .
The leadership of the OUN went to Konovalets ’ s successor , A.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1890 in the village of Volya Yakubova near the city of Drohobych , in Halychyna , then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire .
In 1914 , he went as a volunteer to fight in the Austro-Hungarian Army , where he joined the Legion of Sichovi Striltsi .
In 1916 , he was captured by the Russians and was sent to the same POW camp as Konovalets before him .
From that time and till the death of Colonel Konovalets , Melnyk was his closest friend and associate .
He distinguished himself fighting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and was promoted to the rank of Otaman and given the position of the Inspector of the UPR ’ s Military Mission in Prague .
In 1922 , Melnyk returned to Halychyna , went underground , and worked as an active member of the UVO .
Two years later , he was arrested by the Polish police and imprisoned for 4 years .
After the release , Melnyk decided to try to live as a civilian .
He was admitted to the University of Vienna and graduated with a degree in forestry .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ranger-forester .
He also became a leader of the Ukrainian Eastern Rite Catholic youth group called “ The Young Eagles , ” and was noticed by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky .
The highly revered cleric made Melnyk a forester in his estates .
However , in 1934 Melnyk , under the influence of Konovalets , became a member of the OUN and soon was elected member of the organization ’ s Senate .
After the assassination of Konovalets in 1938 , Andriy Melnyk took his responsibilities of the OUN head .
Next year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a unanimous vote at a Second Global Congress of the OUN held in Rome , Italy .
In February 1940 the OUN experienced a serious crisis .
A number of younger members living in German-occupied part of Poland , with their leader Stepan Bandera , sharply criticized Melnyk , Stsiborsky , Fedyna and other older OUN activists in Rome for being too slow and inadequately adapted to the changing realities .
Unlike this “ old guard , ” the Banderites were not professional military men ; they were skeptical about creating large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forming small , dynamic , mobile groups who would do acts of terror against the anti-Ukrainian authorities “ right then and there.
” Many Banderites , including their leader , had bitter , traumatic personal experiences of being inmates in Polish prisons and concentration camps .
They were aggressive and wanted to act fast .
Unfortunately , the understanding between the “ canonical ” OUN of Melnyk ( OUN-m ) and the “ revolutionary ” OUN of Bandera ( OUN-b ) was not reached .
The two organizations became completely separate and hostile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and 1944 , several hundred members of OUN-m were killed by members of OUN-b , and vice versa .
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was born January 1 , 1909 , in the village of Staryy Uhryniv near the city of Stanislaviv ( today Ivano-Frankivsk ) .
His father Andriy was his village ’ s parish Greek Catholic priest , and his mother , Myroslava Glodzinska-Bandera , was a daughter of a Greek Catholic priest who had served at the Staryy Uhryniv before Fr .
Andriy Bandera .
Young Stepan had three sisters and three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patriotic tradition .
Fr .
Andriy Bandera became a delegate to the convention of the Western Ukrainian People ’ s Republic in 1918 , and a chaplain of the UGA in 1919 .
To his children , including Stepan and his two brothers , Fr .
Andriy was a hero and a role model .
Stepan got his education at a “ gymnasium ” for boys in the nearby city of Stryy .
There , he also became an active member of the Ukrainian Scouts ( “ Plast ” ) .
In 1928 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University with a plan to become an agronomist .
He studied diligently , but also became heavily involved in civic and political activities .
He worked with Prosvita , like Konovalets before him , and also , not being athletically built , decided to strengthen himself physically by running , swimming , skiing , and hiking .
Bandera also became a leader of a Plast paramilitary training battalion called Chervona Kalyna ( “ The Red Viburnum ” ) .
His enthusiasm about youth leadership and his connection with two Ukrainian sports clubs became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Polytechnical University , and Bandera was not allowed to take his final exams and graduate .
Instead , in 1933 he was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of terrorism .
Indeed , as it turned out , in 1932 Bandera had joined the OUN , and the Polish police got some materials implicating him in the planning of assassination of Bronislaw Pieracki , the Minister of Interior directly responsible for the above-described “ pacifications.
” Bandera was sentenced to death , but the sentence was commuted to life in prison .
He was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the impossibility to guard the prisoners as the German armies rolled over Poland from the west , and the Soviet armies from the east .
The OUN continued to play a very significant role in the events that followed after the beginning of WW2 in September 1939 .
We will describe its activities and the biographies of its two main leaders and their associates in the next part of this series .
2.History of Ukraine : The Princes and the Kozaks 5 .
History of Ukraine : The rise of nationalism in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
History of Ukraine : The first modern Ukrainian state .
7.History of Ukraine : From Skoropadsky to Petlyura .
8.Ukraine struggles for survival : The victories and the losses .
9 .
History of Ukraine : From the communist occupation to a national renaissance and back .
10.History of Ukraine : The genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin Distribution and reprint with reference to the source is welcome !
( Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 ) InformNapalm social media pages : Facebook / Twitter / Telegram

Some trivia about Ukraine by George V.Pinchuk. History of Ukraine: The birth of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Part 11.
The Ukrainian people living west of the river Zbruch, i.e. in the lands governed by Poland, were spared from the horrors of Stalinist totalitarianism. However, their life was not exactly what they aspired after. Ukrainian farmers were allowed to buy, sell, and own land. They were not driven to “collective farms,” and were not subject to harassment or persecution unless they openly incited riots against the Polish administration. Some of them, like my wife’s grandfather Arsen Hahalovsky, became quite well-of and owned their own “khutirs” (hamlets) with large square footage of fertile land, livestock, ponds teaming with fish etc. However, to be educated, a Ukrainian peasant had to speak fluent Polish and to belong to the Catholic Church, while most families in the “Polish” part of Ukraine were Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Rite (“Greek”) Catholics. Because of this problem, relatively few Ukrainians could work as teachers, doctors, scientists, engineers, laywers etc. They tended to concentrate in agricultural areas and work the land, while urban intelligentsia was overwhelmingly Polish. That was not the healthiest of situations, causing mutual distrust and sometimes hostilities.
In 1918-1922, General Józef-Clemens Piłsudski, the hero of the war of 1918-1920 with Bolsheviks, one time an ally of Petlyura’s who helped the Ukrainian army to take Kyiv, served as the head of the Polish state. However, he refused to run for President in 1923 and returned to the Polish government in 1926 only as a secretary of defense under the President Ignacy Moscicki. The new Polish government was much more authoritarian and hostile to Ukrainians. All schoolteachers, even those who taught at village schools where all students were ethnic Ukrainians, were forbidden to use the terms “Ukraine” and “Ukrainian.” Instead, the part of Ukraine that was under Soviets was referred to as Russia, and the part of Ukraine under the Polish rule was called Kresy Wschodnie, i.e. the Eastern Borderlands (of Poland). Instead of saying or writing, “the Ukrainian language,” all teachers were instructed to say and write, “język rusinski,” i.e. the language of Rusyns, even though the Carpatho-Rusyn dialect of the Ukrainian language was never spoken in such parts of the “Polish” Ukraine as Volyn, Kholmshchyna, Pidlyashshya and most of the Halychyna. If a student referred to him- or herself as Ukrainian, the student could be expelled, and the teacher fired. Police were ordered to raid Ukrainian villages and hamlets and check whether there is any “separatism” there. Needless to say, quite often these raids were accompanied by wild revelry on the Ukrainian farmers’ expense, and even open money extortion. The Ukrainians began to form their self-defense units and to meet the Polish raiders with gunfire.
In 1930, the Polish Minister of Interior B. Pieracki ordered the series of infamous “pacifications” of the rural areas populated largely by ethnic Ukrainians. In September and October 1930, about 750 villages and hamlets were stormed by Polish cavalry troops. Of these, 250 were completely or almost completely demolished. The soldiers went from house to house and arrested every family that had books in Ukrainian, portraits of Taras Shevchenko, the yellow-and-blue flag of the former Ukrainian People’s Republic etc. These “separatists” were escorted to a barn or a warehouse and savagely beaten with clubs or whips. As the victims and the witnesses recalled, striking a person with a heavy stick or a buggy whip between 100 and 200 times was a “norm.” (Yet, the troops were warned not to beat people to death and not to use lethal weapons, because fatalities could create an impression of some “serious” conflict, which was not desired.) As one part of the raiding troops was busy beating people, another went from house to house and systematically destroyed furniture, fireplaces, chimneys, windows, and even bedroom linen. All food found in a house would be taken out, thrown on the ground and sprayed with gasoline. Public libraries and Ukrainian cooperative stores were demolished with a particular cruelty. In parallel, people were subjected to moral humiliation. For example, the soldiers made the Ukrainian peasants kiss the soil 100 times, each time shouting, “I kiss you, my Polish land!” – or spit on a yellow-and-blue Petlurite flag, shouting, “I spit on you, Ukraine, the mother of dogs!” Women, teenagers, the elderly, and the clergy were not exempt from this brutal physical and moral abuse.
The Ukrainian activists in the Polish Sejm (parliament) filed a complaint that 35 people were dead as a result of these “pacifications.” Reluctantly, the Poles confirmed the violent death of four Ukrainians, including one urban high school student who had the misfortune to be in one of the villages subjected to “pacification,” and the rape of one 16-year old girl. Yet, the overall response of the Polish authorities was far from adequate. Of the ~7,000 soldiers and police officers who were involved in the “pacifications,” only 40 were found guilty in excessive brutality and sent to prison. Three of them remained in prison for 3-4 months and 37 were released in exactly one week. As yet another insult, the members of the Polish government refused to meet with one of the most revered clerics of the Ukrainian Eastern Rite Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. Instead of listening to the Metropolitan’s plan of peaceful coexistence between ethnic Poles and ethnic Ukrainians, the Moscicki government ordered to just close down all legal Ukrainian civic and cultural organizations.
Of course, the Ukrainian underground continued to work. In 1920, to a large extent due to a titanic work of Colonel Yevhen Konovalets, a powerful Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was chartered in Prague, Czechoslovakia. It consisted of several thousand Ukrainian military officers, including the Sichovi Striltsi under the command of Colonel Konovalets, and the officers of the UGA (see pt. 8 of these series). Their task was to train patriotically-minded youth for their future fight against Polish and Russian authorities for the liberation of the Ukrainian people. In February 1929, the UVO representatives secretly met in Vienna with representatives of five Ukrainian youth organizations and merged into the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Colonel Konovalets, 1918
The OUN was a movement, not a political party. It did not aim at seizing political power or forming a government. Its goal from the very beginning was to fight for the hearts and minds of Ukrainians living in what was, back then, Poland, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, or any other country for that matter, filling these hearts and minds with the ideas of the “Integral Nationalism” outlined by D. Dontsov (see pt. 5 of these series). In this regard, the OUN considered all legal political parties as enemies of Ukraine, even if representatives of those parties struggled for the Ukrainian cause in their countries’ parliaments. The “integral Nationalists” dismissed the mere idea of ethnic Ukrainians collaborating with foreign states, foreign political forces. Their ideal was a state where Ukrainians would live and be responsible for their own destiny with the help of only their own Ukrainian government. When this basic condition is met, the OUN will consider its mission accomplished. However, unless, and until, it is met, the OUN will struggle for it, using methods characteristic of armed resistance in a hostile environment.
The history of OUN is best understood through the biographies of its three principal leaders, Konovalets, Melnyk, and Bandera.
Yevhen Mykhaylovych Konovalets was born in 1891 (same year as Makhno) in the village of Zashkiv, in Halychyna (back then, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He was a son of a local schoolteacher and a grandson of a well-respected village Greek Catholic priest. His mother, Maria Vengrynovska-Konovalets, was also from a priestly line. Young Yevhen finished four classes of local parochial schools and then went on to study in a Lviv “gymnasia,” a private school for boys. In 1909, he became a student of law at the Lviv University. There, he joined the “Prosvita” movement, a civic organization that worked legally, campaigning for a better education of ethnic Ukrainians in their own language and based on the traditions of the great Ukrainian literature beginning from Kotlyarevsky and Shevchenko. As a “Prosvita” activist, in 1910 Konovalets took part in a street rally, when the Austrian police clashed with the the rallying crowd and killed one of his friends (A. Kotsko). This tragedy, as well as personal friendship with Dmytro Dontsov, profoundly influenced on Konovalets, making him disappointed in legal means of struggle for his nation and prompting him that only an underground military organization can bring freedom and independence to Ukraine.
When WW1 began in 1914, Konovalets was drafted into the Austrian army. In June 1915, he was captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp near the city of Tsaritsyn on the Volga river. There, Konovalets met his future brothers-in-arms A. Melnyk, R. Sushko and other captives from Ukraine. In February 1917, when the Romanov dynasty fell and the POW camp inmates were released, this group of Ukrainian soldiers traveled to Kyiv with the idea to form an independent Ukrainian military unit. They now called themselves Sichovi Striltsi (from Sich – the main fortress of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, see pt. 2, and “strilets” – a man who shoots a rifle). In Kyiv, Konovalets and his close friend Roman Dashkevych became the commander and the deputy commander of what they called the Halychyna-Bukovyna Kurin (Regiment) of the Sichovi Striltsi. The regiment became a part of the Legion of the Sichovi Striltsi, which had been formed in 1914 in Austria from soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian ethnicity who fought in the ranks of the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was recognized by the Central Rada, armed, equipped, put on food rations and given accommodations in Kyiv, Boyarka, and Bila Tserkva. In January 1918, they became instrumental in putting down the attempt of the Bolsheviks to seize power by inciting a riot of the Arsenal plant workers. Later in the year, the Striltsi together with Petlyura’s Haydamaky cavalry fought, quite successfully, with the Bolshevik army of Muravyov and with the troops loyal to Hetman Skoropadsky. In 1919, they bravely and often successfully resisted the advancement of Gen. Denikin’s White army on the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
In spring 1920, however, Konovalets and Petlyura parted company. It was impossible for a Dontsovite “integral Nationalist” Konovalets to accept Petlyura’s idea about the military alliance with the Poles. Konovalets settled in Prague, where he took the most active part in organizing the UVO (see above). In 1927, living in Austria, Konovalets came up with the idea to organize a broader union of both military and civilian people devoted to the ideals of the “integral Nationalism,” and offered the name for this union, the OUN. From the time of its conception, the OUN had to separate itself from both leftist and rightist ideologues. The latter, represented by the Ukrainian Fascists (L. Kostariv, P. Kozhevnykiv), thought about future Ukrainian state as one operating under the “Corporatist” formula of Mussolini, “everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Konovalets, however, was against this rough “etatism,” even though he was also against the leftist ideas of the “class struggle.” In the 1930s, both Kostariv and Kozhevnykiv were expelled from the OUN for their extremist views and, importantly, for their connection with the Soviet secret police. Konovalets now obtained the opportunity to concentrate on what he knew the best: organizing circles of young people of the Ukrainian ethnicity living in all parts of the world. He spent his time traveling and meeting with young enthusiasts, urging them to live for the Ukrainian cause.
The young OUN members taught by Konovalets and his closest associates (A. Melnyk, M. Stsiborsky, D. Dymchuk, Ryko Yaryy, A. Fedyna et al.) had to remember their Ukrainianness and value it more than everything else in the world. They took an oath, which began with the words, “I will make independent Ukrainian nation-state exist, or I will die fighting for it.” Each OUN member had to live by a “Decalogue,” a set of rules that included reading the Ukrainian classic and modern writers, maintaining physical fitness, and learning the basics of the military practice (sharp-shooting, camping, hand-to-had combat etc.). The young Nationalists were taught loyalty, honor, military discipline, and tolerance to physical pain. They also vowed to abstain from alcohol and smoking, and to be sexually pure (celibate or monogamous).
The results of this huge work of Konovalets and his associates were very impressive. The OUN grew in numbers and in strength. This was a serious problem for the Soviets, and Stalin ordered his special operations people to liquidate Konovalets. In 1938, the OUN leader moved to the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. There, he met with a young Ukrainian who called himself Pavlus Valyukh. Actually, this man, who pretended to be a Ukrainian Nationalist representing the Soviet underground, was an agent of the Bolshevik secret intelligence service. His real name was Pavel Sudoplatov. Konovalets and “Valyukh”-Sudoplatov met in a café at the Atlanta hotel in Rotterdam. The agent told Konovalets exciting stories about the growth of the Ukrainian Nationalist underground in the USSR, showing some forged letters and meeting protocols. The OUN leader became interested and asked for another meeting at the same place. “Valyukh” did not come to this next meeting but sent Konovalets a “souvenir,” a box of chocolates wrapped in a sheet with beautiful Ukrainian ornament on it. It was a booby trap. When Konovalets took it from the waiter and made it lie horizontally, it went off and killed him instantly.
The leadership of the OUN went to Konovalets’s successor, A. Melnyk. Andriy Atanasovych Melnyk was born in 1890 in the village of Volya Yakubova near the city of Drohobych, in Halychyna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1914, he went as a volunteer to fight in the Austro-Hungarian Army, where he joined the Legion of Sichovi Striltsi. In 1916, he was captured by the Russians and was sent to the same POW camp as Konovalets before him. From that time and till the death of Colonel Konovalets, Melnyk was his closest friend and associate. He distinguished himself fighting the Bolsheviks and the Whites in 1918-1920 and was promoted to the rank of Otaman and given the position of the Inspector of the UPR’s Military Mission in Prague. In 1922, Melnyk returned to Halychyna, went underground, and worked as an active member of the UVO. Two years later, he was arrested by the Polish police and imprisoned for 4 years. After the release, Melnyk decided to try to live as a civilian. He was admitted to the University of Vienna and graduated with a degree in forestry. His plan was to work as a ranger-forester. He also became a leader of the Ukrainian Eastern Rite Catholic youth group called “The Young Eagles,” and was noticed by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. The highly revered cleric made Melnyk a forester in his estates. However, in 1934 Melnyk, under the influence of Konovalets, became a member of the OUN and soon was elected member of the organization’s Senate. After the assassination of Konovalets in 1938, Andriy Melnyk took his responsibilities of the OUN head. Next year, he was confirmed as the OUN head by a unanimous vote at a Second Global Congress of the OUN held in Rome, Italy.
In February 1940 the OUN experienced a serious crisis. A number of younger members living in German-occupied part of Poland, with their leader Stepan Bandera, sharply criticized Melnyk, Stsiborsky, Fedyna and other older OUN activists in Rome for being too slow and inadequately adapted to the changing realities. Unlike this “old guard,” the Banderites were not professional military men; they were skeptical about creating large military-style regiments of future fighters and advocated forming small, dynamic, mobile groups who would do acts of terror against the anti-Ukrainian authorities “right then and there.” Many Banderites, including their leader, had bitter, traumatic personal experiences of being inmates in Polish prisons and concentration camps. They were aggressive and wanted to act fast. Unfortunately, the understanding between the “canonical” OUN of Melnyk (OUN-m) and the “revolutionary” OUN of Bandera (OUN-b) was not reached. The two organizations became completely separate and hostile to each other. Between early 1940 and 1944, several hundred members of OUN-m were killed by members of OUN-b, and vice versa.
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was born January 1, 1909, in the village of Staryy Uhryniv near the city of Stanislaviv (today Ivano-Frankivsk). His father Andriy was his village’s parish Greek Catholic priest, and his mother, Myroslava Glodzinska-Bandera, was a daughter of a Greek Catholic priest who had served at the Staryy Uhryniv before Fr. Andriy Bandera. Young Stepan had three sisters and three brothers. The family was one of patriotic tradition. Fr. Andriy Bandera became a delegate to the convention of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1918, and a chaplain of the UGA in 1919. To his children, including Stepan and his two brothers, Fr. Andriy was a hero and a role model. Stepan got his education at a “gymnasium” for boys in the nearby city of Stryy. There, he also became an active member of the Ukrainian Scouts (“Plast”).
In 1928, Bandera enrolled in the Lviv Polytechnical University with a plan to become an agronomist. He studied diligently, but also became heavily involved in civic and political activities. He worked with Prosvita, like Konovalets before him, and also, not being athletically built, decided to strengthen himself physically by running, swimming, skiing, and hiking. Bandera also became a leader of a Plast paramilitary training battalion called Chervona Kalyna (“The Red Viburnum”). His enthusiasm about youth leadership and his connection with two Ukrainian sports clubs became suspicious to the Polish administration of the Polytechnical University, and Bandera was not allowed to take his final exams and graduate. Instead, in 1933 he was arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of terrorism. Indeed, as it turned out, in 1932 Bandera had joined the OUN, and the Polish police got some materials implicating him in the planning of assassination of Bronislaw Pieracki, the Minister of Interior directly responsible for the above-described “pacifications.” Bandera was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. He was released from prison in September 1939 because of the impossibility to guard the prisoners as the German armies rolled over Poland from the west, and the Soviet armies from the east.
The OUN continued to play a very significant role in the events that followed after the beginning of WW2 in September 1939. We will describe its activities and the biographies of its two main leaders and their associates in the next part of this series.
Read also:
1.History of Ukraine: The Beginnings
2.History of Ukraine: The Princes and the Kozaks
3.History of Ukraine: The Russian Captivity
4.History of Ukraine: Taras Shevchenko
5. History of Ukraine: The rise of nationalism in 19th century or two Ukrainian nationalisms
6. History of Ukraine: The first modern Ukrainian state.
7.History of Ukraine: From Skoropadsky to Petlyura.
8.Ukraine struggles for survival: The victories and the losses.
9. History of Ukraine: From the communist occupation to a national renaissance and back.
10.History of Ukraine: The genocide of Ukrainians by Stalin
By George V. Pinchuk
Distribution and reprint with reference to the source is welcome! (Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0) InformNapalm social media pages: Facebook / Twitter / Telegram