In May 1945, far from all the inhabitants of the USSR came Peaceful time. On the territory of Western Ukraine, a powerful and extensive network of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army OUN-UPA continued to operate, better known among the people as Bandera. It took almost ten years for them to defeat the Soviet regime. We will talk about how this "war after the war" was fought.
Cossacks from the Abwehr
The first serious clashes between the Red Army and SMERSH detachments with the OUN-UPA began in the spring and summer of 1944. As Western Ukraine was liberated from the German occupiers, the military formations of the nationalists, who simply teemed with local forests, felt themselves full-fledged masters here. The old power is gone, the new has not yet had time to take root. And Bandera began to make every effort to discourage the "soviets" from any desire to return to "independent Ukraine." It must be admitted that they put up fierce resistance. So what was the UPA?
Its backbone was formed by the legionnaires of the Nachtigal and Roland battalions disbanded in 1942, and the SS Galicia division defeated in 1944. Many fighters were trained in the Abwehr camps in Germany. Geographically, the rebel army was divided into three groups: "North", "West" and "South". Each group consisted of 3-4 kurens. One kuren included three hundred. A hundred, in turn, was formed from 3-4 chots (platoons). And the primary formation was a swarm, including 10-12 people. In general, a bizarre and terrible mixture of the Abwehr with the Cossacks and the partisan movement.
According to various estimates, the number of UPA ranged from 25 to 100 thousand fighters. They were armed with both German and Soviet weapons. The rebel army also had its own security service, which was engaged in intelligence and performed punitive functions.
Airplane in a dugout
So the Soviet troops were not at all faced with disparate gangs, but with a powerful military organization with a rigid structure. The UPA acted boldly and confidently, especially in the forest area. Here is what evidence can be read in the collection of documents " Internal troops in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945":
“Initially, the large bands of the UPA themselves challenged us. Having fortified in advance on advantageous lines, they imposed a battle. In the forests on the Kremenets Upland, the bandits created a system of defensive structures: trenches, dugouts, blockages, etc. As a result of the successful completion of the operation, many weapons were captured , ammunition, including two depots with German shells and mines, even a serviceable U-2 aircraft. A lot of food and clothing depots were found. Together with the UPA bandits, 65 German servicemen were captured."
And yet, at first, the enemy was clearly underestimated. A vivid example of this is the Bandera attack on the convoy accompanying the commander of the 1st Ukrainian front Nicholas Vatutin. As a result of a serious wound, the general died.
Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin.
This egregious incident made the army and special services even more actively fight against the UPA. As a result, by the spring of 1945, the state security agencies, the NKVD troops, defeated all large gangs of 300 people or more. According to the Department for Combating Banditry of the NKVD of Ukraine, in 1944 57,405 members of gangs were killed and 50,387 were detained.
Waiting for the "Plague"
However, this was not the final victory. The second and, perhaps, the most difficult phase of the fight against the UPA was coming. Bandera changed tactics, from open confrontation they switched to terror and sabotage. Those who survived the destruction of the kuren and hundreds were reorganized into more maneuverable armed groups of 8-12 people. The leadership, located abroad, gave the underground an instruction to play for time and conserve strength until the onset of the "Plague". Under this name, the beginning of the armed conflict between the countries of the West and the USSR was encrypted in the documents of the OUN. The secret services of the United States and Britain, according to some reports, were fueling hopes for an early war with the "soviets". From time to time they dropped their emissaries, ammunition, money, special equipment into the forests of Western Ukraine from the air.
With parts of the Red Army OUN-UPA now preferred not to get involved. The blow was transferred to the administration and those who sympathized with the Soviet regime. And their number, as a rule, included teachers, doctors, engineers, agronomists, machine operators. The "loyal" Ukrainians were dealt with very cruelly - they were killed by their families, often tortured. On the chest of some of the dead, a note was left "For complicity with the NKVD."
However, a large part rural population supported the "lads from the forest". Some really perceived them as heroes, fighters for an independent Ukraine, others were simply afraid. They supplied Bandera with food, allowed them to stay. The militants paid for food with "karbovans" from the combat fund (BF). State security officials called them "bifons". As Georgy Sannikov, a veteran of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security and the KGB, recalls in his book "The Great Hunt. The Defeat of the UPA", this money was printed in a typographical way. The banknotes depicted a rebel with a machine gun in his hand, calling for the overthrow of the Soviet regime. Bandera promised the villagers that as soon as they came to power, they would exchange them for real money.
It is clear that many civilians and OUN members were connected by family relations. In order to deprive the OUN-UPA of the material base, the authorities were forced to take tough measures. Part of the relatives of Bandera were resettled in other regions of the country, and active accomplices were sent to a special settlement in Siberia.
However, there were quite a few people, with weapons in their hands, ready to resist Bandera. Fighter detachments were formed from them, the locals called the fighters of these units "hawks". They provided serious assistance to the authorities in the fight against the underground.
Bandera "invisible"
Conspiracy played the most important role for the OUN-UPA. In their activities, Bandera used the experience of the Irish Republican Army and even the Bolshevik revolutionaries they hated. All members of the combat units had pseudonyms that changed frequently. Communication between bandit formations was carried out through verified messengers. As a rule, brothers in arms from different cells did not know each other by sight. Orders and reports were transmitted through "grips" - miniature notes made in pencil on tissue paper. They were rolled up, stitched with thread and sealed with candle paraffin. They left them in a designated place. This whole ingenious system, of course, made it difficult to search for gangs, but it came out "sideways" to the underground workers themselves. In the event of the defeat of a swarm or chot and the death of the "seer" (leader), the survivors could not contact their comrades-in-arms. Therefore, hundreds of Bandera singles wandered in the forests.
But the main know-how of the OUN UPA was underground caches ("kryivki"). As one of the Bandera instructions said: "... every underground worker must know the rules of conspiracy, like a soldier - the charter of field service. An underground worker must live underground." The system of secret shelters began to be created back in 1944 in anticipation of the arrival Soviet troops, and by the 1950s it "entangled" the entire Western Ukraine. There were different types of caches: warehouses, radio communication points, printing houses and barracks. They were built on the principle of dugouts with the difference that the entrance was disguised. As a rule, a stump or a box with earth served as a "door" to the caches, into which a young tree was planted. Ventilation was taken out through the trees. To create an underground bunker on the territory of a village or village, the militants had to be more resourceful. They disguised the entrance to the shelter as piles of garbage, haystacks, dog kennels and even graves. There were times when the path to the shelter ran through an active well. Here is how one of the veterans of the MGB and KGB describes the sophisticated shelter in the book "SMERSH against Bandera. The war after the war": a camouflaged door was made in the shaft from the crowns of the well.Behind it was a corridor with two camouflaged bunker rooms.One was intended for the radio operator, members of the detachment and the dining room.The other was for management and meetings. door. A trusted fellow villager lowered the Bandera people."
With such a system of shelters, the OUN UPA fighters became practically "invisible". It would seem that he surrounded the enemy in the forest or in the village - and suddenly he disappeared, evaporated.
Get it out of the ground
At first, it was not easy for Soviet intelligence officers to identify caches. But over time, they learned to literally get the enemy out of the ground.
During large-scale raids, soldiers searched for them with the help of two-meter probes and service dogs. In winter, at sunrise or sunset, you could find an underground lair by a barely noticeable trickle of air, fluctuating in the cold.
It was extremely difficult to take Bandera alive in the bunker. They either entered into a deliberately fatal shootout for themselves, or committed suicide. The decision on self-liquidation was made only by the head of the group. The militants stood facing the wall, and the commander killed them in turn with a shot in the back of the head. After that, he shot himself.
To avoid such an outcome, caches were thrown with gas grenades. Later, when storming the bunkers, they began to use a special drug "Typhoon" - an instant sleeping pill, without side effects. It was developed specifically for such operations in Moscow. Introduced through the vent from small hand-held cylinders with a thin flexible hose.
Borscht with "Neptune"
However, despite the importance of such operations, the search and assault on bunkers was not a priority task for the special services. The main direction remained the introduction of their people into the nationalist underground, the recruitment of agents and the ideological influence on the enemy. It was not the kind of war that was fought, where everything is decided by the force of arms and numerical superiority. The enemy was secretive, insidious and resourceful. And this required non-standard methods of struggle from the special services. And time worked for them. People are tired of lingering civil war, constant fear for yourself and loved ones. It was no longer possible to cover the "boys from the forest" forever. Yes, and many militants, physically and psychologically exhausted, wanted to return from the forest to their native villages, but they feared reprisals from the OUN-UPA security service. Under such conditions, the MGB en masse begins recruiting agents from among ordinary civilians and accomplices of the OUN-UPA.
The goal was this - to turn every hut, where the Bandera people until recently boldly looked at the wait, into a trap. But as masters of the house, and in postwar period were they usually elderly people or single women, could they cope with a group of seasoned militants? Firstly, a portable "Alarm" device, powered by rechargeable batteries, was installed in their homes. As soon as the "guests" from the forest appeared on the threshold, the owner imperceptibly pressed the button and sent a radio signal to the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And then it was the turn of the chemical preparation "Neptune-47", created in the special laboratories of the KGB. This psychotropic substance could be added to different types liquids: vodka, water, milk, borscht. By the way, the agents had "cunning" German-style flasks made in the operational and technical department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. They had two buttons built into them. One acted as a safety device against entering the contents of the Neputna-47 flask. That is, he could, in company with the "lads", sip vodka from one container without harm to himself. People who took this "potion" began to "swim" after 7-8 minutes: their minds became foggy, their movements became slow, they could not even pull the shutter or pull the trigger. And five minutes later, they were sound asleep. Heavy, exhausting sleep with hallucinations lasted 1.5-3 hours.
After the Bandera people fell asleep, police officers and special services entered the hut. "Neptune-47" had one more unpleasant side effect for the "OUN". After waking up for some time, a person is not able to control his actions and willingly answers any questions.
As Georgiy Sannikov, the author of the book "The Great Hunt. The Defeat of the UPA", remarks with irony: "The use of this drug was the strictest secret of state security. However, the entire population of Western Ukraine, including children, knew about it." The people called him "otruta" - translated from Ukrainian language"poison".
The recruited agents were armed with another drug - Neptune-80. They wetted the rug on the threshold of the house. If a militant who has been in the hut wipes his feet on him, then the dogs within a few days will easily find him on the trail in the forest, which means they will find a cache with the whole gang.
hunted animals
Legendary bandit formations played an important role in identifying Bandera. These are groups of the most experienced employees of the MGB, who were fluent in the Galician dialect of the Ukrainian language, who imitated the OUN-UPA detachments. Often they also included former militants who had gone over to the side of the Soviet authorities. They went to the forest, lived in the same underground bunkers and tried to make contact with real underground workers.
For this, "grips" skillfully "rewritten" by craftsmen of the MGB were also used. The author's handwriting was copied, the essence of the letter was preserved, but the time and place of the meeting were changed. And there were cases when "grips" were stuffed with explosives - such messages were called "surprises". It is clear that the addressee who opened the package died.
As the intelligence network grew, the secret services began to get closer to the leadership of the underground. After all, only by beheading the OUN-UPA, it was possible to finally put an end to Bandera. In 1950, the elusive Roman Shukhevych, aka "Taras Chuprinka", a cornet general, commander of the UPA, was killed in his safe house. The death of the closest associate of Stepan Bandera dealt a serious blow to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Then began the slow agony of the rebel army. After the death of Shukhevych, the leadership of the UPA was taken over by Vasily Kuk, pseudonym Lemesh. Also a very experienced, dangerous and cautious enemy. He had a truly bestial instinct for danger, practically did not leave the bunkers, where he seriously undermined his health. Living conditions there were more than harsh. It took the MGB four years to catch him. Ironically, the last underground shelter of Vasily Cook was a cache created especially for him by state security officers. The general-cornet was lured into a trap together with his wife by a converted "OUN" Mykola named Chumak, whom he completely trusted. They persuaded the hardened Bandera to cooperate in a rather original way. He, who had not climbed out of the forests for a decade, was given something like an excursion throughout Ukraine. Mykola visited Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa and was amazed by the flourishing, and by no means oppressed by Soviet power, homeland.
Unlike Chumak, it was not possible to recruit Vasyl Kuk, who was fanatically devoted to the idea of Ukrainian nationalism. Nevertheless, he agreed to call on the UPA fighters to lay down their arms, because he understood that their cause was doomed. The last leader of the underground was on the verge of being shot, but the authorities nevertheless spared his life and released him after a six-year sentence. Firstly, they did not want to make him another martyr for the nationalists, and secondly, they emphasized the strength and generosity Soviet state, which he can afford to leave alive a serious enemy. Vasily Kuk lived in Kyiv to a ripe old age and died in 2007.
P.S.
During the 10 years of fighting the OUN underground from 1945 to 1955, 25,000 military personnel, employees of state security agencies, police and border guards, 32,000 people from among the Soviet party activists were killed.
On September 12, 1939, at a meeting on Hitler’s train, the head of military intelligence and counterintelligence, Canaris, was given the task: “... to prepare Ukrainian organizations working with you and having the same goals, namely, the destruction of Poles and Jews.” Under the "Ukrainian organizations" meant the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). No sooner said than done. Two months later, 400 Ukrainian nationalists began training in the Abwehr camps in Zakopane, Komarna, Kirchendorf and Gakeshtein. In 1941, these thugs will become the core of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which, according to the Act of the Proclamation of Ukrainian Statehood of June 30, 1941, “will enter the war on the side of Germany and will wage it together with the German army for as long as it is on all fronts of the modern war won't win."
On the day of the adoption of the Act of Proclamation, the Ukrainian battalion “Nachtigal”, which broke into Lviv together with the German advanced units, under the command of Roman Shukhevych, shot more than three thousand Poles from Lviv, including 70 world-famous scientists. And during the week he brutally killed about seven thousand more Jews, Russians and Ukrainians.
- Banderlogs chose as their idol the sadistic dwarf Stepan BANDERA, who, due to rickets suffered in childhood, grew by only 1 m 57 cm. His classmates recalled how he caught and strangled cats to temper his character. Photo by Oscar Jansons/Komsomolskaya Pravda
While Lviv was being cleared of corpses, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky held a divine service in the courtyard of the Svyatoyursky Cathedral in honor of the “invincible german army and its chief leader, Adolf Hitler." With the blessing of the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the mass extermination of civilians in Ukraine by Bandera, Nakhtigalev, Upovtsy and warriors of the SS division "Galicia" began. The nationalists got down to business so vehemently that already on July 5, 1941, Hitler, shocked by the report of their atrocities, ordered Himmler to "put things in order with this gang." In the end, the Germans simply dispersed the leaders of the OUN, and Stepan Bandera was sent to rest for a couple of years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, however, in a cozy block for privileged prisoners. They released him only in the middle of the war, when the Red Army went on the offensive. And then the UPA, left without German control, showed itself in full force. Thousands of Ukrainians died a terrible, martyr's death every day. The nationalists seem to have broken the chain. Each murder they turned into a sophisticated torture, as if competing with each other in their brutality. Later, when the investigative teams of the NKVD investigated the crimes of Bandera, they compiled a list of the 135 most frequently used OUN-UPA fighters to torture the civilian population: nail into the skull.* Punching with a sharpened thick wire through and through from ear to ear.* Crushing of the head, putting it in a vise and tightening the screw.
- Having occupied Lvov in the summer of 1941, Bandera massacred Poles and Jews. Women were raped before being shot and led naked through the streets
* Sawing the torso in half with a carpenter's saw. * Cutting the belly of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of the removed fetus, for example, a live cat and sewing up the belly. * Cutting the belly and pouring boiling water inside. * Tearing out the veins from the groin to the feet. entrails. * Inserting a glass bottle into the anus and breaking it. * Cutting the abdomen and pouring food inside, the so-called fodder flour, for hungry pigs, who vomited this food along with the intestines and other entrails. * Nailing the tongue of a small child to the table with a knife, which later hung on it. * Hanging on a tree with legs up and singeing the head from below with the fire of a fire lit under the head. * Driving oak stakes between the ribs. * Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling. And then even worse ...
For some reason, they forgot in Russia ...
Chopped to pieces with axes
The testimonies about the atrocities of the militants of the Ukrainian rebel army were published in full, but for some reason not in Russia and Ukraine, but in Poland. They believe that their crimes have no statute of limitations and are surprised that the “bloody Stalinist regime” allowed thousands of former policemen to live quietly until retirement and receive benefits from the current government of Ukraine on an equal basis with the participants in the war, the liberators of their land from the Nazis.
* Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call for help from the partisans, had their bellies cut, their legs and arms cut off, the wounds were abundantly covered with salt, leaving them to die in the field. which was nailed to the boards of the table with a bayonet. The monsters put a half-eaten sauerkraut in his mouth. * Upovtsy muzzled the two-month-old baby Joseph Fili, tore him by the legs, and put the parts of the calf on the table. The bandits robbed them and brutally killed them. They cut them with saws, strangled them with strangleholds, chopped them into pieces with axes. In total, 140 gypsies were killed, including 67 children.
* From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, pulled the fetus out of it, and instead pushed in a live rabbit.
- ... and in Poland the victims of Ukrainian nationalists are remembered very well
At night, from the village of Khmyzovo, a village girl of seventeen years old, or even younger, was brought to the forest. Her fault was that she, along with other rural girls, went to dances when she stood in the village military unit Red Army. "Kubik" saw the girl and asked "Varnak" for permission to personally interrogate her. He demanded that she confess that she was "walking" with the soldiers. The girl swore that it was not. “And I’ll check it out now,” “Cube” grinned, sharpening a pine stick with a knife. In a moment, he jumped up to the prisoner and with the sharp end of the stick began to poke her between her legs until he drove a pine stake into the girl’s genitals. * Bandera came to our yard, grabbed our father and cut off his head with an ax, our sister was pierced with a stake. Mom, seeing this, died of a heart attack.* My brother's wife was Ukrainian. Because she married a Pole, 18 Bandera raped her. Waking up, she went and drowned herself in the Dniester.* Before the execution, the nationalists accused the teacher Raisa Borzilo of promoting the Soviet system at school. The Bandera people gouged out her eyes alive, cut off her tongue, then put a noose of wire around her neck and dragged her into the field. In the alley, they "decorated" the trunk of each tree with the corpse of a child who had been killed before. The corpses were nailed to the trees in such a way that the appearance of a “wreath” was created. * We witnessed how the OUN people completely slaughtered entire hospitals of the Red Army, which at first they left in the rear without guards. They carved stars on the body of the wounded, cut off their ears, tongues, genitals.
- With the criminal connivance of Russian diplomacy, the official authorities in Ukraine in recent years, starting with the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, have sung the exploits of the Nazis, so is it any wonder their coming to power
Got a living heart
“We had five parents, we were all inveterate Bandera. During the day we slept in the huts, and at night we walked and drove around the villages. We were given tasks to strangle those who sheltered Russian prisoners and the prisoners themselves. Men were engaged in this, and we, women, sorted out clothes, took away cows and pigs from dead people, slaughtered cattle, processed everything, stewed it and put it in barrels. Once, in one night, 84 people were strangled in the village of Romanov. They strangled older people and old people, and small children by the legs - once, hit their heads against the door, and that's it. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but during the day they would sleep off and the next night they would go to another village .... In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motria. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand, and a heart in the other, to check how much longer the heart would beat in his hand .... A Jewish woman was walking with a child, ran away from the ghetto, they stopped her, beat her up and buried her in the forest. We were given an order: Jews, Poles, Russian prisoners and those who hide them, to strangle everyone without mercy. The Severin family was strangled, and the daughter was married in another village. She arrived, but there were no parents, she began to cry and let's dig things out. Bandera came, took away the clothes, and closed the daughter alive in the same box and buried it. And her two small children remained at home. And if the children came with their mother, then they would be in that box ... "From the diary of Nadezhda VDOVICHENKO Bandera
Heroes of Babi Yar Like today, once the Bandera people were already the masters of Kyiv. They entered the city on September 23, 1941, and on September 28 they shot 350,000 Kyivans in Babi Yar, including 50,000 children! Among the 1,500 punishers at Babi Yar, there were 1,200 policemen from the OUN and only 300 Germans! In general, 5 million 300 thousand civilians died at the hands of the Nazis in Ukraine. But out of this number, Bandera brutally tortured: 850 thousand Jews, 220 thousand Poles, 500 thousand Ukrainians, 450 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and about five thousand of their own “insufficiently active and nationally conscious” members of the UPA.
The Savior of the Nation It is a paradox, but it was Stalin who turned out to be the man who civilly resolved the national question in Western Ukraine. Without cutting off heads and disemboweling children, by exchanging populations. The new communist government, established in liberated Poland, did not allow full-scale actions of revenge on the Ukrainians. On July 6, 1945, an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. 1 million Poles left the USSR for Poland, 600 thousand Ukrainians went to reverse direction, plus 140 thousand Polish Jews went to Palestine.
Just a fact On March 17, 1951, the UPA appealed to the US government to provide assistance to the Ukrainian rebels in the fight against the USSR.
- bullying victims
Today, on television and on the Internet, a lot of news is devoted to Ukraine. In the news stories, the word "Bandera" is heard every now and then.
Who are they and what are they doing in Ukraine? If you look for the answer on your own, without help knowledgeable people, then you can stumble upon completely incorrect descriptions of these people. To answer this question, you have to go back in time.
Where did Bandera come from?
The collective name "Bandera" was formed from the name of one of the leaders who actively promoted Ukrainian nationalism. Stepan Bandera so wanted to liberate his nation from "non-Ukrainians" that he brutally cracked down on anyone who had other roots. The main justification for him was that he was striving to gain complete freedom and independence of the country from the influence of other states and peoples as soon as possible.
Accordingly, today those who share Bandera's ideology and want to cleanse Ukraine of ethnically "unclean" are called Bandera people. Bandera appeared back in the days of the Great Patriotic War, but now it is experiencing a second revival.
The life of Stepan Bandera
Bandera himself was not a full-blooded Ukrainian. He was born in the family of a priest who had Greek roots. The father taught the children a lot, tried to convey his worldview to them. Perhaps then Stepan absorbed the first portion of nationalism from his father, which later grew into hatred. In addition, the First World War also left an indelible mark on the psyche of a still very young man.
While still a high school student, Bandera began to show nationalist inclinations. He led the youth movement in Western Ukraine, trying by any means to achieve its independence. It is worth noting that Bandera was not afraid to use even the most dangerous means For example, terrorism.
As a senior student, Bandera joined the Ukrainian military organization, whose activities he continued after his release from educational institution. In some cities, especially in Lviv, Stepan was considered an idol. It was there that the OUN, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, was created. A special Bandera uniform was even developed.
In those days, the nationalists devoted a lot of effort to the fight against their political opponents, so Bandera already had several political victims. For one of these crimes, the killer was sentenced to death penalty, but then the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment - however, he did not even manage to serve this term. During the German occupation of Poland, all nationalists were released, including Bandera. It happened in 1939, just at the time of the outbreak of World War II.
Bandera considered the Soviet Union the main enemy of the people of Ukraine. But at the same time, he believed that Germany would not help Ukrainian nationalists achieve independence. In fact, this is what happened: in 1941, Stepan was taken into custody in Germany, because the Nazis had completely different plans for Ukraine. He spent 3 years in prison.
After his release, Bandera remained to live in Nazi Germany and created a foreign branch of the OUN. His activities were very inconspicuous, he tried not to attract attention and went around with guards until the end of his life. However, he still failed to avoid the assassination attempt: in 1959 he was killed by a KGB agent B. Stashinsky.
After his death, Bandera left a family. His followers retained faith in their leader and loyalty to their ideology, adding to it their cruel innovations. They committed many more murders on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, hiding behind the ideas of Bandera.
Activities during World War II and after
While the Bandera leader was in Germany, his followers were active on the territory of Ukraine and fought first against the Polish occupation, and then switched to the Red Army and Soviet power. It was then that the UPA was created - the "Ukrainian rebel army", whose enemies were everyone who was not a Ukrainian. All "superfluous" had to be eliminated by any means.
One of the ardent fans of this doctrine was Roman Shukhevych. Under his leadership, many families of Polish origin were killed. These times are remembered as the bloodiest in the history of the region. The Belarusian village of Khatyn was simply wiped off the face of the earth. People of all ages were not just killed, but tortured before being dealt a fatal blow.
Confrontation
Undoubtedly, the nationalist movement also had its enemies. After all, Bandera did not just kill people of other nationalities. It came to a terrible absurdity: entire families were slaughtered if they were loyal to the Russians and did not support the ideology of the radicals. People lived in fear, and it was impossible to defend themselves. At that time, the Soviet Union sent NKGB and NKVD workers to Ukraine. Work was carried out with the population, "destruction squads" were created. Everyone who wanted to help in the elimination of bandit formations took part in the battles. In the end, the good turned white: the last underground groups of the OUN-UPA were mercilessly defeated in the mid-fifties. Only then did the attacks on civilians stop.
Who are Bandera in Ukraine today
In modern Ukraine, the Bandera movement began to revive again. Young people are most exposed to this radical ideology. However, not everyone is well acquainted with history and does not know how much trouble this too ardent nationalism brought to the country where today's Bandera people live. The older generation does not particularly support them and regrets that they did not once exterminate all the followers of Bandera to the last.
Today in Ukraine, the leader's birthday is celebrated brightly: parades are gathered, participants carry portraits of the leaders of the movement and light torches. The holiday rolls around the city, but not all residents like fanaticism towards Stepan Bandera and the red and black flag of Bandera.
Today's Bandera people are the most active fighters for the freedom of Ukraine and ardent opponents of the Russians. If you enter the query “Bandera photo” on the Internet, you can see that in appearance they are mostly unremarkable young people, except that they wear national symbols. Red and black banners, national flags are unfurled at parades, banners with slogans are carried. Stepan Bandera is their main idol, monuments are erected to him, songs are dedicated to him.
However, not all Ukrainians should be attributed to this direction. Most residents of the country are not at all happy with what is happening inside Ukraine. Fortunately, such incidents, which occurred during the lifetime of Stepan Bandera and other leaders of the movement, are not repeated. Although today there are many terrible stories about how Bandera atrocities in Ukraine, you should not believe everything, because you can find out the whole truth about Bandera only after visiting the country.
If you have any questions - leave them in the comments below the article. We or our visitors will be happy to answer them.
Volyn massacre(Polish Rzez wolynska) (Volyn tragedy, Ukrainian Volyn tragedy, Polish Tragedia Wolynia) - genocide against Poles, Jews, Russians. Mass destruction (Bandera) by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army-OUN (b) of the ethnic Polish civilian population and civilians of the above nationalities, including Ukrainians, in the territories of the Volyn-Podolia district (German: Generalbezirk Wolhynien-Podolien), until September 1939, were under the control of Poland, started in March 1943 and peaked in July of that year.
In the spring of 1943, large-scale ethnic cleansing began in Volyn, occupied by German troops. This criminal action was carried out mainly by militants of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who sought to "clear" the territory of Volhynia from the Polish population. Ukrainian nationalists surrounded Polish villages and colonies, and then proceeded to kill their civilians. Within about twelve hours, from the evening of July 11, 1943 to the morning of July 12, the UPA attacked 176 settlements ....
They killed everyone - women, the elderly, children, infants. Victims were shot, beaten with clubs, chopped with axes, sawed with two-handed saws, their eyes were gouged out, their stomachs were ripped open. Then the corpses of the destroyed Poles were buried somewhere in the field, their property was robbed, and finally the houses were set on fire. In place of the Polish villages, only burnt ruins remained.
They also destroyed those Poles who lived in the same villages with the Ukrainians. It was even easier - there was no need to collect large detachments. Groups of OUN members of several people passed through the sleeping village, went into the houses of the Poles and killed everyone. And then the locals buried the killed fellow villagers of the “wrong” nationality.
The photo above was taken almost 70 years ago. The child in the photo is a 2-year-old Cheslava Khzhanovskaya from the village of Kuty ( Kosovo region Ivano-Frankivsk region, Zap. Ukraine). An angelic child looks into the camera lens ...
This is her last photo. In April 1944, Bandera attacked the village of Kuta. sleeping Cheslav at night they were bayoneted in a crib. For what? “For the fact that she was a non-Ukrainian.
2 year old Cheslav Khzhanovskaya pierced with a bayonet. And an 18 year old Galina Khzhanovskaya Bandera took with them, raped and hanged at the edge of the forest. In the picture above - Galina Khzhanovska, a village girl in a national shirt, smiles broadly at the camera. Why was she raped and hanged? - For the same. He was not Ukrainian.
All non-Ukrainians in the village of Kuty were to be exterminated. There were about 200 of them - Poles and Armenians. Yes, yes, Armenians. There was such a small national minority in the Commonwealth, Polish Armenians. They lived in the Carpathians since the Middle Ages. No longer live. All were slaughtered together with the Poles in 1944, when the Volhynia massacre reached the Carpathians.
There were mixed families in the village of Kuty. Pole Francis Berezovsky had a Ukrainian wife. And his wife has a nephew, a Banderite. Francis Berezovsky cut off his head, put it on a plate and presented it to his wife as a "gift". Presented by her nephew. After these bullying, the woman went crazy. The incitement to massacre among the Bandera people was carried out by a local Uniate priest.
All of the above is one of the episodes. This is the ethnic cleansing of Western Ukraine from non-Ukrainians in 1943-44. Mostly they slaughtered the Poles (there were most of them), well, and the rest to the heap. The purge was carried out by militants from the Ukrainian rebel army(UPA). That's what they were called - rezuny. What for? And why does independent Ukraine need residents of non-Ukrainian nationality?
Why does Bandera Ukraine need this Polish family Kleshinsky ( cut out 08/16/1943 in the city of Podyarkov, Lviv region)?
Or this Pole Maria Grabovskaya with her 3-year-old daughter (killed by Bandera on 11/10/1943 in the village of Blozhev Gorna, Lviv region)?
Or this Pole Ignacy Zamoyski with daughter 15 years old. On January 22, 1944, they were strangled with a noose in the village of Bushe, Berezhansky district, Ternopil region.
On the same day, January 22, 1944, in the village of Bushe, Bandera killed and this one woman with 2 children(Polish family Popiel). But, they themselves are to blame. They, all three, were of the wrong nationality.
And here is the Polish the Shier family, mother and two children, cut out at his home in Vladinopol in 1943. Three of the more than 80,000 victims of the massacre.
On August 30, 1943, the UPA gang under the command Ivan Klimchak nicknamed "Bold" carved out the Polish village of Volya Ostrovetskaya.
Rezuny killed 529 people, including 220 children. Pole Heinrich Klok miraculously survived that day, he was wounded and taken for dead. Next to him, over the corpse of a villager Maria Yesinyuk sat her 5 year old son and asked my mother to go home. A 5-year-old child could not understand that his mother was no more. A Bandera man approached the boy and killed with a headshot.
In the photo - the victims of the Bandera massacre in the Polish village of Germanovka, Luts district ka, 11/28/1943:
The logic of genocide is that children cannot be left alive. Ukrainian Nazis from the UPA learned this from the Germans. Same gang leader "Bold", which cut out the village of Volya Ostrovetskaya, before joining the UPA was a policeman. He served with the Germans in the 103rd battalion of the Schutzmannschaft (“security police”, punishers). The “commander-in-chief” of the UPA Roman Shukhevych (201st battalion) was also a policeman.
In the photo, Latach district, Zalishchyky region. Ternopil. Karpiakow family, on which the UPA committed murders on 12/14/1943 Maria Karpiak- 42 years old, mother; Joseph- 23 years old, son; Ivan- 20 years old, son; Vladislav- 18 years old, son; Sofia- 8 years old, daughter; Sigmund- 6 years old, son:
Another vivid episode of the "national liberation" struggle, the village of Katerynivka, May 1943:
The girl in the center Stasya Stefanyak was killed because of a Polish father. Her mother Maria Boyarchuk, Ukrainian, that night killed too. Because of the husband. Mixed families aroused particular hatred of the Rezuns.
In the village of Zalesye Koropetskoye (Ternopil region) on February 7, 1944, there was an even more terrible incident. The UPA gang attacked the village with the aim of massacring the Polish population.
About 60 people, mostly women and children, were herded into a barn, where they were burned alive. One of those who died that day was from a mixed family - half Pole, half Ukrainian. Bandera set him a condition - he must kill your Polish mother, then they will let him live. He refused and was killed along with his mother.
Rezun UPA used simple improvised tools. For example - a two-handed saw:
From the testimony of a witness Tadeusz Kotorsky, a resident of the Polish village of Ruzhin (15 km from Kovel):
“On November 11, 1943, our self-defense group in the colonies of Ruzhin and Truskoty repelled attempts by the UPA group to break into these villages. The next day we left Truskoty. There Stefan Skovron, 18 years old, a complete orphan, who was a good friend of mine, was seriously wounded in the leg. We gave him possible first aid, and he asked us to leave him near the house of our neighbor Gnat Yukhimchuk. The next day, Stakh Shimchak went to pick up Stefan. It turned out that he was no longer alive. He had r asporot belly, all the insides are stretched out, eyes gouged out and the shoes are off. Soon his brother Sigmund identified these shoes on a villager Lublinets Lenka Aksyutich.
The death of Ukrainians was a great tragedy for me. Ivan Aksyutich and his son Sergei autumn 1943. Man in years Aksyutich Ivan lived well with his neighbors, did not enter into any political intrigues, had the courage not to support Ukrainian nationalists. They killed him in the village of Klevetsk with nephew Leonid, which for native uncle chose a terrible death - cut a living body with a saw . His son of Sergei OUN members shot dead«.
Bandera Lenka Aksyutich, which the witness describes, is a typical UPA resonator. He found a wounded Pole, cut open his stomach, took out the insides, took off his shoes. He sawed his native uncle, a Ukrainian who did not support the Banderaites, alive with a saw.
Two-handed saw - long. An ax is faster. On the picture - hacked to death Bandera Polish family in Maciew (Lukov), February 1944. In the far corner, something lies on a pillow. It's hard to see from here:
And lie there - severed human fingers. Before their death, Bandera tortured their victims:
Ukrainian nationalists wanted non-Ukrainian nationalities to die in torment.
To this Polish woman, they burned the body of those with red-hot iron and tried to cut off the right ear:
During the Bandera massacre, sadism towards the victims flourished in the most magnificent color. In the picture below - the victim of the UPA gang attack on the passenger train Belzec - Rava-Ruska on June 16, 1944. The attack was carried out by the gang Dmitry Karpenko nicknamed "Hawk".
Karpenko-Yastrub- Bandera "hero", was awarded the highest award of the UPA - the Golden Cross "For Military Merit", I degree.
On June 16, 1944, his gang stopped a passenger train in the Rava-Ruska area, sorted the passengers according to their nationality (Poles, Ukrainians and Germans were traveling there). After that, the Poles were taken to the forest and killed.
The Polish woman in the photo below also rode this "death train". Her stomach was torn open, her hand was cut off with an ax:
Bandera atrocities. Belzec, region, Rava Ruska county, Lviv voivodeship June 16, 1944:
The Polish village of Lipniki (Kostopolsky district, Rivne region), March 26, 1943. At night, this village was attacked by a gang under the command of a sadist UPA Ivan Litvinchuk nicknamed "Oak". A wild massacre began. These nonhumans killed 179 people, including 51 children. Among the dead - 174 Poles, 4 Jews and one Russian woman. In the photo: victims of the massacre in Lipniki in a mass grave:
That night, the future first cosmonaut of Poland almost died at the hands of nonhuman UPA. Miroslav Germashevsky. He was 2 years old. His family arrived in Lipniki at the very beginning of 1943, hoping to hide from the Bandera terror that was flaring up in Volhynia. There was a full village of such refugees. The Germashevskys were taken in by a local Pole, Yakub Varumzer. Bandera burned the house, Varumzer was beheaded, grandfather Miroslav Germashevsky was killed with 7 blows of the bayonet. The mother grabbed 2-year-old Miroslav and ran across the field towards the forest. They started shooting at her. She fell and fainted from fear. They thought they killed her.
An hour later, she came to her senses and was able to hide in the forest. Then the shock receded a little and she realized that she had lost a child on the field. Dropped it while running. In the morning, father and elder brother rushed to look for little Mirko. The whole field was littered with corpses. Suddenly, the brother saw a black bundle in the snow and in it - a child who showed no signs of life. At first, they thought that Miroslav froze. The bundle was brought to the village, they began to warm it. Suddenly the child stirred and opened his eyes. Miroslav survived and became the first Polish cosmonaut.
In the photo below: Miroslav Germashevsky(left) and a peasant from Lipniki Yakub Varumzer(on the right), to whom the Bandera cutters cut off their heads:
LIPNIKI (LIPNIKI), Kostopil County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. A resident of the Lipniki colony - Yakub Varumzer without a head, the result of a massacre committed under cover of night by OUN-UPA terrorists (OUN-UPA):
Another victim of the massacre in Lipniki - 3-year-old Janusz Belavsky. What degree of military merit did the UPA rezun deserve for this kid?
Now a lot of lies are emerging about how the UPA allegedly fought against the German occupiers.
12 March 1944 a gang of UPA militants and the 4th police regiment of the SS division "Galicia" jointly attacked the Polish village of Palikrovy(former Lviv Voivodeship, now - the territory of Poland).
It was a village with a mixed population, approximately 70% Poles, 30% Ukrainians. Having driven the residents out of their houses, the policemen and Bandera began to sort them according to their nationality. After separation Poles - they were shot from machine guns. It was 365 people were killed, mostly women and children.
Pictured below: The Palikrovs, March 1944, the child next to his mother. The mother was killed during the massacre perpetrated by the UPA and punishers from the Ukrainian SS division "Galicia":
February 9, 1943 Bandera from the gang of Petr Netovich under the guise of Soviet partisans entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. After eating plenty, the bandits began to rape and kill women and girls:
From the village of Volkovya one night, Bandera brought a whole family into the forest. For a long time they mocked the unfortunate people. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut open her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead they pushed in a live rabbit. One night, the bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands broke into the hut of Nastya Dyagun and hacked to death her three sons. To the smallest four-year-old Vladik, chopped off his arms and legs.
One of the two Kleshchinsky families in Podyarkovo was tortured to death by the OUN-UPA on August 16, 1943. The photo shows a family of four - a wife and two children. The victims had their eyes gouged out, they were hit on the head, their palms were burned, they tried to cut off the upper and lower limbs, as well as the hands, stab wounds were inflicted on the whole body, etc.:
TARNOPOL, Tarnopol Voivodeship, 1943. One (!) of the trees of the country road, in front of which the thugs and sadists of the OUN-UPA (OUN-UPA) hung a banner with an inscription translated into Polish:
"The Road to Independent Ukraine".
And on each tree on both sides of the road, the executioners created from Polish children, the so-called "wreaths" - the killed children were tied to a tree with barbed wire:
From the interrogation of Banderovka:
“They strangled the old, and small children up to one year old by the legs - once, hit the head on the door - and it's ready, and on the cart. We felt sorry for our men that they suffered hard during the night, but they would sleep off during the day and the next night they would go to another village. There were people hiding. If a man was hiding, they were mistaken for women ... "
LIPNIKI (LIPNIKI), Kostopil County, Lutsk Voivodeship. March 26, 1943. The corpses of Poles, victims of the massacre committed by the OUN-UPA, brought for identification and burial. Standing behind the fence is Jerzy Skulski, who saved a life thanks to the available firearms:
POLOVETS, region, Chortkiv county, Tarnopol voivodeship, forest called Rosokhach. January 16 - 17, 1944. The place from which 26 victims were pulled out - Polish residents of the village of Polovtse - taken away by the UPA on the night of January 16-17, 1944 and tortured to death in the forest:
From the interrogation of Banderovka:
“..In Novoselki, Rivne region, there was one Komsomol member Motrya. We took her to Verkhovka to the old Zhabsky and let's get a living heart. Old Salivon held a watch in one hand, and a heart in the other, to check how much more the heart would beat in his hand ... ".
Lipniki, Kostopil district, Lutsk voivodeship. March 26, 1943. View before the funeral. Polish victims of the night massacre committed by the OUN - UPA brought to the People's House:
The Volyn massacre began on February 9, 1943. from the attack of the UPA gang on the village of Paroslya, where about 200 Poles were killed. The organizers of the Volyn massacre were the leaders of the UPA - Roman Shukhevych, Mikola Lebed and Roman Klyachkivsky.
However, while slaughtering the Polish minority in Western Ukraine, the Rezun leaders forgot something. On the Ukrainian minority in southeastern Poland. Ukrainians lived there among the Poles for centuries and at that time they were up to 30% of the total population. The atrocities of the Bandera rezuns in Ukraine came back to haunt Poland, local Ukrainians. Although, maybe the leaders of the UPA counted on that?
In the spring of 1944 Polish nationalists held a series of actions of retribution against Ukrainians in southeastern Poland. Suffered as usual innocent civilians. According to various estimates, from 15 to 20 thousand Ukrainians were killed. The number of Poles - victims of the OUN-UPA is about 80 thousand people.
The largest action was the attack of the detachment Home Army to the village of Sagryn (Poland, Lublin Voivodeship) March 10, 1944 AK-sheep about 800 Ukrainians were killed, the village was burned. In the photo: soldiers of the Home Army against the backdrop of the burning village of Sahryn:
Another Sagryn: a Pole from the Home Army at the corpse of a murdered Ukrainian.
The second major episode was the massacre in the village of Verkhovyna (Lublin Voivodeship), on June 6, 1944. The village was attacked by militants of the NSZ (“People's Forces Zbroyny”), an ultra-right underground organization that competed with AK. 194 Ukrainians were killed. In the photo below - the village of Verkhovyna, Soviet officers (Eastern Poland at that moment was occupied by the Red Army) are investigating the massacres of Ukrainians in the village:
The Soviet power, established in liberated Poland by the Red Army and the Polish Army, did not allow the nationalists to arrange full-scale actions of revenge on the Ukrainians for the Bandera atrocities. However, the Bandera rebels achieved their goal: the relations between the two nations were poisoned by the horrors of the Volyn massacre. Their further living together became impossible.
On July 6, 1945, an agreement "On the exchange of population" was concluded between the USSR and Poland. 1 million Poles went from the USSR to Poland, 600 thousand Ukrainians - in the opposite direction (Operation Vistula), plus 140 thousand Polish Jews went to British Palestine.
It's a paradox, but it was Stalin who turned out to be the man who civilizedly resolved the national question in Western Ukraine. Without cutting off heads and disemboweling children, by exchanging populations. Of course, not everyone wanted to leave their homes, often the resettlement was forced, but the ground for the massacre was eliminated.
But with the rezun UPA, the Soviet authorities, as well as the authorities of post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia, launched an irreconcilable war. It has already been said above about the horrors of the Bandera massacre in the village of Volya Ostrovetskaya on August 30, 1943. More than 500 people were killed, including a 5-year-old boy who was sitting by the corpse of his mother and asked his mother to get up and go home. The leader of the UPA gang, Ivan Klimchak, nicknamed "Bald", who arranged all this, hardly thought that one day he would have to answer for what he had done.
In Poland, the Volyn massacre is very well remembered.
This is a scan of the pages of a Polish book:
List of ways in which Ukrainian Nazis dealt with civilians
Driving a large and thick nail into the skull of the head.
Ripping off the hair from the head with the skin (scalping).
Carving on the forehead "eagle" (the eagle is the coat of arms of Poland).
Eye gouging.
Circumcision of the nose, ears, lips, tongue.
Piercing children and adults with stakes through and through.
Punching with a pointed thick wire through and through from ear to ear.
Cutting the throat and pulling the tongue out through the opening.
Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws.
Tearing of the mouth from ear to ear.
Plugging mouths with tow when transporting still living victims.
Rolling the head back.
Crushing of the head by placing in a vise and tightening the screw.
Cutting and pulling narrow strips of skin from the back or face.
Breaking bones (ribs, arms, legs).
Cutting off women's breasts and sprinkling salt on wounds.
Cutting off the genitals of male victims with a sickle.
Punching the belly of a pregnant woman with a bayonet.
Cutting the abdomen and pulling out the intestines in adults and children.
Cutting the abdomen of a woman with a long-term pregnancy and inserting instead of the removed fetus, for example, a live cat, and stitching the abdomen.
Cutting the abdomen and pouring boiling water inside.
Cutting the stomach and putting stones inside it, as well as throwing it into the river.
Cutting the belly of pregnant women and spilling broken glass inside.
Pulling out the veins from the groin to the feet.
Inserting a hot iron into the vagina.
Insertion of pine cones into the vagina with the top side forward.
Inserting a pointed stake into the vagina and pushing it up to the throat, right through.
Cutting the women's front part of the body with a garden knife from the vagina to the neck and leaving the insides outside.
Hanging victims by the insides.
Inserting a glass bottle into the vagina or anus and breaking it.
Cutting the belly and spilling feed flour inside for hungry pigs, which pulled out this feed along with the intestines and other entrails.
Chopping off / cutting off with a knife / sawing off of hands or feet (or fingers and toes).
Cauterization of the inside of the palm on the hot stove of a charcoal kitchen.
Sawing the body with a saw.
Sprinkling of bound feet with red-hot coal.
Nailing hands to the table, and feet to the floor.
Chopping a whole body into pieces with an ax.
Nailing the tongue of a small child to the table with a knife, which later hung on it.
Cutting a child into pieces with a knife.
Nailing a small child to a table with a bayonet.
Hanging a male child by the genitals on a doorknob.
Knocking out the joints of the legs and arms of the child.
Throwing a child into the flames of a burning building.
Breaking the baby's head, taking it by the legs and hitting it against a wall or stove.
Planting a child on a stake.
Hanging a woman upside down on a tree and mocking her - cutting off her chest and tongue, dissecting her stomach, gouging out her eyes, and cutting off pieces of her body with knives.
Nailing a small child to a door.
Hanging on a tree with feet up and singeing the head from below with the fire of a fire lit under the head.
Drowning children and adults in a well and throwing stones at the victim.
Driving a stake into the stomach.
Tying a man to a tree and shooting him like a target.
Dragging the body along the street with a rope tied around the neck.
Binding the legs and arms of a woman to two trees, and cutting her stomach from the crotch to the chest.
Dragging on the ground mother with three children connected with each other.
Pulling one or more victims with barbed wire, pouring cold water on the victim every few hours in order to come to his senses and feel pain.
Buried in the ground alive up to the neck and later cut off the head with a scythe.
Tearing the body in half with the help of horses.
Tearing the body in half by tying the victim to two bent trees and then releasing them.
Setting fire to a victim doused in kerosene.
Laying around the victim with sheaves of straw and setting them on fire (Nero's torch).
Putting a baby on a pitchfork and throwing him into the flames of a fire.
Hanging on barbed wire.
Ripping off the skin from the body and filling the wound with ink or boiling water.
Nailing hands to the threshold of the dwelling.
Illustrations from a Polish book:
In 1944 the former policeman and the rezun were overtaken by the well-deserved bullet of the NKVD. The corpse of "Bald" was hung up for public viewing in Shatsk (Volyn region). Below is his posthumous photo. As they say, a dog - a dog's death:
In 1950, the “commander-in-chief” of the UPA, Shukhevych, received his bullet:
The territory of Poland was also cleared of ghouls. Pictured: Poland, 1947, Polish officer interrogates the captured Bandera:
Czechoslovakia, 1945 These rezuns were also recaptured. Look at their faces - they are all cut down from one piece of wood:
The destroyed assistant of the OUN security service Ivan Diychuk, nicknamed "Carpathian"in the village of Tataria, Transcarpathian region:
Who are called Bandera?
Bandera is collective name members of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, as well as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The term came from named after Stepan Bandera, the founder and chief leader of these institutions during and after World War II.
The word "Bandera" was really actively spread in a negative light, and the name of the leader himself became a household name.
The Soviet government used the word for anti-nationalist propaganda, but now the followers of Stepan Bandera call themselves that.
In fact, the word often has a sharply negative connotation. This is due to the atrocities committed members of the OUN and UPA during the Great Patriotic War.
Stepan Bandera
Long before the events that swept the whole world, in 1927 Stepan graduated from the gymnasium. And even then, thoughts about the nationalist movement arose in the thoughts of the young guy.
The young man was convinced that Ukraine should not only become independent state, but also be cleared of all other nations, with the exception of native Ukrainians. Yes, there really is sound logic in such an idea, but for some reason Stepan intended to carry out the “cleansing” exclusively by killing innocent people.
Immediately after graduation, the guy became member of the OUN. However, he did not share the policy of the organization, as he believed that it was necessary to act radically. At that time, Ukraine was in the hands of the Polish government.
This is precisely what became the main goal of those who gathered around Bandera - the liberation of their native state from the oppression of Poland. And although the members of the OUN considered it their duty to prevent the invasion of Germany as well, the methods of struggle of the nationalist leaders were not too different from the punitive measures of the Nazis.
Stepan could quickly raise an army. The group immediately began an active struggle, guided only by its own views and principles.
Namely Bandera organized the killings several officials: the Minister of the Interior of Poland, the secretary of the Soviet consul and the Polish school curator. Moreover, the nationalists shot even ordinary civilians.
Everyone who was somehow connected with other states fell under the blow. Moreover, this information was often falsified.
But already in seven years Since the beginning of his violent activities, Stepan Bandera was taken into custody and sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was not destined to be fulfilled. At this time, the first skirmishes began. Soviet Union and Germany.
The head of the nationalists was lucky to be in right time in the right place, and five years later he was at large. During the time spent in prison, Bandera thought out new options for the fight. After his release from prison, the main enemy of Ukraine was declared Soviet Union.
In confronting the newfound enemy, the following decision was made: to negotiate with Adolf Hitler, join forces against the Soviet government and make Ukraine an independent state led by an army of Ukrainian nationalists.
The German government did not consider it necessary to cooperate with Bandera. Moreover, Hitler allegedly invited the leader of the movement to negotiations, but instead, Stepan again ended up behind bars, after which he was sent to concentration camp.
When the Red Army launched an offensive against Nazi Germany, Hitler remembered the nationalists and decided to include them in the course of events. But listening again ultimatum Bandera, the Fuhrer, and for the second time refused to cooperate.
Since then, the path to the Motherland for Stepan Bandera has been closed, he stayed in Germany. In addition to his activities, he was credited with activities as a German spy. After the end of the war, there was an attempt to recreate the OUN.
It was difficult to manage the movement from another country, so he created a foreign branch of his organization, and a close friend and follower of Stepan ruled in Ukraine Roman Shukhevych. After that, the leader disappeared from all radars.
And only in fifties interest in his person revived. Several assassination attempts were made, after which Bandera was assigned bodyguards from the ranks of the OUN branch.
However, it didn't help much. Stepan Bandera was shot pistol filled with cyanide October 1959.
The activities of Bandera in numbers
The idea of an independent state and a pure nation is not bad as such. On the contrary, the original slogans of the Ukrainian nationalists carried very good ideas. But a sharply radical attitude has turned the once sensible patriots into brutal killers.
During the activities of the OUN and UPA, about nine thousand soldiers, three thousand party employees and nineteen thousand ordinary people, collective farmers, women, children! The numbers are truly scary. But this only takes into account the territory of present-day Ukraine ...