Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

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Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN (Ukrainian: Організація Українських Націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins’kykh Natsionalistiv or ОУН) was a Ukrainian political movement originally created in the interwar Poland. OUN's stated immediate goal was to protect the Ukrainian population from repression and exploitation by governing authorities; its ultimate goal was an independent and unified Ukrainian state. It was created in the 1920s by merger of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) and several nationalist student associations: the Group of Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. The OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. A later created (1942) military wing of OUN, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), was a major Ukrainian armed resistance movement.

1 Ideology
2 History and Actions
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Ideology

The OUN grew out of the failure of the Ukrainian people to achieve an independent state during the period of 1917–1921. According to its initial declaration, the OUN's goal was to establish an independent, united national state on ethnic Ukrainian territory. This goal was to be achieved by a national revolution, led by a dictatorship, that would drive out the occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and Ukrainian social groups. The OUN's leadership felt that past attempts at securing independence failed due to democracy, poor discipline and a soft approach towards Ukraine's traditional enemies. Accordingly, its ideology rejected the socialist ideas supported by Petliura and the compromises of Galicia's traditional elite. Instead, the OUN adopted the ideology of Dmytro Dontsov, an émigré from Eastern Ukraine.

Dmytro Dontsov wrote the nation was the Absolute and that all classes, regional groups, and individuals should be subordinated into an all-encompassing national movement. Dontsov claimed that the 20th century would witness the "twilight of the gods to whom the nineteenth century prayed" and that a new man must be created, with the "fire of fanatical commitment" and the "iron force of enthusiasm", and that the only way forward was through "the organization of a new violence." This new doctrine was the chynnyi natsionalizm – the "nationalism of the deed."^[1] In many respects its creed was similar to that of other eastern European, agrarian fascist movements, such as Romania's Legion of the Archangel Michael and Croatia's Ustashe. Unlike the latter organizations, the OUN did not emphasize antisemitism in its ideology although it was willing to condone Nazi policies if doing so would result in an independent Ukrainian state. For example, a resolution of the Second General Congress of OUN-B (April, 1941, Krakow) called the "Jews of the USSR the most faithful supporters of the Bolshevik regime and the vanguard of the Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine." A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in the July 16, 1941 Einsatzgruppen report stated: "Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows". Once the OUN was at war with Germany, such instances lessened. There were many cases of Jews having been sheltered from the Nazis by the OUN's military wing UPA ^[2] Indeed, there were several Jewish members of the OUN's armed wing UPA, including the head of UPA- West's medical service Dr. Margosh as well as Dr. Abraham Kum, the director of an underground hospital in the Carpathians who died defending his hospital in February 1946 and who was posthumously awarded UPA's Golden Cross of Merit, its highest award.^[3] Although its ideology advocated achieving national independence, power and unity by any means necessary (thus setting the stage for the mass killing of Polish population in the territory OUN deemed Ukrainian as a means of preventing the Poles from taking control over those Ukrainian lands after the war), it did not advocate the killing of people as a goal in itself.

At a party congress in 1943, the OUN rejected most of this fascistic ideology in favor of a social democratic model, while maintaining its hierarchical structure. This was done in light of the impending defeat of fascism in Europe and in order to gain support from Soviet deserters and the western Allies. It also formed, in 1943, an organization called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The jettisoning of its fascist ideology broadened its membership somewhat. In exile, the OUN's ideology was focused on opposition to communism. The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations it created and headed would include at various times emigre organizations from almost every eastern European country with the exception of Poland: Croatia, the Baltic countries, anti-communist emigre Cossacks, Hungary, Georgia, Czechia, and Slovakia. In the 1970's the ABN was joined by anti-communist Vietnamese and Cuban organizations.[1]

[edit] History and Actions

The OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. Most of its activity was directed against Poland. Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established February 1929), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and some sixty assassinations. Some of the OUN's victims included Tadeusz Hołówko, a Polish promoter of Ukrainian/Polish compromise, Emilian Czechowski, Lviv's Polish police commissioner, Alexei Mailov, a Soviet consular official killed in retaliation for the Ukrainian Famine, and most notably Bronisław Pieracki, the Polish interior minister. The OUN also killed moderate Ukrainian figures such as the respected teacher (and former officer of the military of the West Ukrainian People's Republic) Ivan Babii. Such acts were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, who was particularly critical of the OUN's leadership in exile who inspired the acts of youthful violence, writing that they were "using our children to kill their parents" and that "whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of the people."

The OUN was originally a fringe movement in western Ukraine, whose political scene was dominated by the mainstream and moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Party (UNDO), which promoted constitutional democracy and sought to achieve independence through peaceful means. UNDO was supported by the Ukrainian clergy, intelligentsia, and the traditional establishment. As Polish persecution of Ukrainians during the interwar period increased, however, many Ukrainians (particularly the youth, many of whom felt they had no future) lost faith in traditional legal approaches and in the western democracies who were seen as turning their backs on Ukraine. This period of disillusionment coincided with the increase in support for the OUN. By the beginning of the Second World War, the OUN was estimated to have 20,000 active members and several times that number in sympathizers. Many bright students, such as the talented young poets Bohdan Kravtsiv and Olena Teliha (executed by the Nazis at Babi Yar) were attracted to the OUN's revolutionary message.

As a means to gain independence from Polish and Soviet oppression, before World War II the OUN accepted material and moral support from Nazi Germany. After invasion of Poland in September 1939, some cadres of the OUN collaborated with Germany both against the Poles and, later, against the Soviet Union. In August 1940 the organisation divided into two competing fractions: OUN-M headed by Andrii Melnyk and OUN-B (or OUN-R for "revolutionary") headed by Stepan Bandera. The OUN-B fraction was more numerous while OUN-m, with its historic ties to the German military, attempted to re-establish those contacts, supposedly unaware of the true nature of the Nazi regime. Both OUN fractions created their own special forces units, named "Rolland" and "Nachtigall", respectively. Eight days after Germany's invasion of the USSR, on June 30, 1941, the OUN-B proclaimed Ukraine's independence in Lviv, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier. A couple of days later both Bandera and Stetsko were imprisoned and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until September 1944. Both of Bandera's brothers were murdered at Auschwitz.

The Germans, needed Ukrainian assistance against the Soviet Union, were expected by OUN to further the goal of Ukrainian independence. Although some elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they were later overruled by Hitler and his political organization, whose racial prejudice against the Ukrainians precluded cooperation. Many OUN leaders and associates were soon arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo. Many OUN members were killed outright, or perished in jails and concentration camps. During the Second World War Ukraine lost more of its civilian population than any other country in Nazi occupied Europe, a fact often obfuscated by the tendency to describe these losses as "Soviet," or "Russian." Ukrainian nationalist forces and their supporters would fight against both the Nazi and later the Soviet invaders of their lands until the mid-late 1950s.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Inline

^ Wilson, A. (2000). The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. New Haven: Yale University Press.
^ Friedman, P.. "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation, YIVO Annual of Jewish SOcial Science v. 12, pp. 259-296, 1958-1959".
^ Heiman, L.. "We Fought For Ukraine - the Story of Jews Within the UPA, in Ukrainian Quarterly, Spring 1964, pp. 33-44".

General

Andrew Wilson, The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-300-08355-6.
Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8020-5808-6.
Paul Robert Magoscy, Morality and Reality: the Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytskyi, Edmonton Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1989, ISBN 0-920862-68-3.
(Polish) Grzegorz Motyka, Służby bezpieczeństwa Polski i Czechosłowacji wobec Ukraińców (1945-1989), Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa 2005, ISBN 83-89078-86-4
(Polish) Władysław Siemaszko, Ewa Siemaszko "Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939-1945, by Kancelaria Prezydenta Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej, Warszawa 2000, tom I i II, 1433 pages, photos, queles, ISBN 83-87689-34-3