Actions in Eastern Ukraine

Part of these narratives focuses on the so-called “marching groups” that moved into Eastern Ukraine (which is defined as the territories that belonged to Soviet Ukraine at the time of the outbreak of war).

Perhaps a more fanciful account is that of Bohdan Chervak, who describes the activities of Petro Voinovs'kyi, commander of the Bukovynian “Kurin'” of the Ukrainian nationalists. Voinovs'kyi was a native of Chernivtsi (born in 1913) who joined the OUN and was eventually arrested by the Romanian au­thorities and forced to serve in the Romanian army.

In 1992, one writer interviewed Evhen Stakhiv, the man responsible for the OUN organization in the Donbas region. Stakhiv dispelled the notion that the OUN underground existed only in Western Ukraine and claimed that it em­braced all of the Donbas-Kryvyi Rih Basin. By contrast, the Communist un­derground was negligible. However, Stakhiv acknowledges, the local popula­tion did not support the nationalist ideas of Dontsov, which it equated with Fascism. This attitude led the OUN to modify the doctrine—integral national­ism was abandoned, and the organization introduced calls for social justice, the equality of nations, and humanism.

One month later, in the same newspaper, A. Nykytenko, director of the museum “Young Guard,” offered a response to Stakhiv's version of events. Referring to Stakhiv's remarks, Nykytenko comments that not for the first time when speaking to the press, Stakhiv refers to himself as the prototype for Evhen Stakhovich from Fadeyev's novel. Nykytenko maintains that by this means he is trying to convince the public that the “Young Guard” could actu­ally be a link in the chain of the nationalist underground in the Donbas re­gion. By making such comments about the Young Guard, Stakhiv attempts to draw attention to himself and events in which he allegedly participated, ac­cording to Nykytenko. However, he continues, neither during a meeting with students at Donets'k University nor in the interview with the newspaper did Stakhiv provide any documents or facts to back up his claims. Where, he wonders, are the leaflets with inscriptions like “Death to Hitler!” and “Death to Stalin!”? If the underground really had such an extensive network, Nyky- tenko continues, then why are there no people left who can support the words of Stakhiv? He believes that the town of Krasnodar has been deliberately omitted from Stakhiv's narrative because there are Ukrainian patriots from the war years who are still living there, but who have no recollection of the organization cited by Stakhiv.

Despite the dispute concerning the authenticity of Stakhiv's account, re­ports about the effectiveness of the scouting missions continued to appear in the media of the early 1990s. Volodymyr Mazur from Poltava thus recollected that in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, his community re-

ceived a visit from mobile groups of OUN-UPA (an error of fact since the UPA had not been formed at that time). They brought a gleam of hope and the notion of national liberation. At this time Mazur joined the OUN, and eventually moved through the ranks until he was in a position of leadership. The interviewer asks whether it was difficult for a 17-year-old nurtured in the tenets of Communism to undergo such a transformation. Mazur responds that his progress was assisted by the atmosphere at his home. His mother was very religious and his family could still remember the Ukrainian National Republic of 1918. Males from his family had fought with Petlyura. Thus his family rather than his school was the defining influence on his career choice.⁵² How typical Mazur was as a resident of his city is not known. Two other authors discussed the situation of OUN networks in the Dnipropetrovs'k region. They comment that it was not unusual for people to begin the war in the ranks of the Red Army but end up in the UPA or vice-versa. An OUN underground reportedly existed in Dnipropetrovs'k from 1944. Its members tried to join the UPA in order to avoid relocation for forced labor in Germany. Usually, he writes, they moved in groups through the forests of Kyiv and Kyrovohrad re­gions, carrying literature, weapons, and food. Sometimes such groups were dispersed by the Germans or Soviet Partisans.

A more detailed account of alleged extensive OUN underground networks in Dnipropetrovs'k, reportedly the OUN capital in Eastern Ukraine, came from a conversation with local historian Dmytro Kudelya, published in the summer of 1995. According to this account, OUN members appeared in the city as members of expeditionary groups that followed the German army deep into Soviet Ukraine. They were mainly followers of Bandera and engaged in propaganda that in the early period of the occupation was “not anti-German.” However, relations with the Germans were deteriorating after the Akt of 30 June 1941 and the German reprisals that followed. From 1942, says Kudelya, the struggle against the occupiers became overt. Subsequently, the author compares the OUN and the Communist underground in the city, and claims that the latter did not exist outside the materials of Soviet propaganda organs. By contrast, the Nationalists had a well-developed network and had connec­tions to many prominent citizens, including Mayor Panas Oliinychenko. Kudelya maintains that the OUN underground in Dnipropetrovs'k had 2,000 members, several of which were prominent in later years. In order to reach accurate conclusions about the state of the OUN in this city, the author re­ports that he and his colleagues compared the memoirs of Evhen Stakhiv with the detailed NKVD examinations, and drew conclusions only when they were completely convinced of the correctness of their interpretation.⁵⁴ They appear to have concluded that the network was considerable and owed allegiance to Bandera.

Writing three years later, Vakhtang Kipiani elucidates the situation in Mykolaiv region in Southern Ukraine in the years 1941-1943. He outlines his personal perspectives quite openly: whereas the OUN-M was pro-German in orientation, in his view the OUN-B relied on its own strength to combat both “the Bolsheviks” and the Germans.

A more academic and balanced account of the expeditionary groups ap­pears in the 1999 textbook on Ukraine in the Second World War by Mykhailo Koval', cited above. He maintains that the OUN-B operated initially as the “servants” of the German army, with which its members traveled, and even wore the same uniforms when they entered the various cities. They provided assistance to the Gestapo, the police, and the organs of the occupation. How­ever, after October 1941, the OUN-B began to carry out anti-German actions, which they expanded to areas of Ukraine beyond their native one. In 1941­42, both wings of the OUN—which he claims could work together in Eastern Ukraine—strengthened and intensified their work to recruit new followers. In addition to underground organizations, they issued flyers and caused the oc­cupiers great anxiety. German intelligence and Special Forces were thus or­dered to regard the OUN as an organization that was harming German interests in Ukraine (obviously, one can deduce from this statement that this was not the case hitherto). Gestapo documents point to anxiety among the Germans con­cerning the activities of illegal OUN units in various cities, including Kyiv, Dni- propetrovs'k, Kharkiv, and Stalino. On the other hand, Koval' indicates, prior to the German occupation, the OUN propaganda network was invisible. The Germans began to lose trust in the Ukrainian auxiliary police, which it believed had been infiltrated by the OUN. Henceforth, the occupiers began to shoot all proponents of Ukrainian independence, including, according to historians from the “Ukrainian Diaspora,” 621 OUN members in Kyiv alone.⁵⁶

How can one summarize these accounts in terms of new narratives? Clearly the Soviet version of events in the early war years—particularly of the early war years in Eastern Ukraine—has been discredited. The new interpretation undermines in particular the early activities of the Soviet Partisans or former Communist officials working with them or in the rear of the German army. What is more difficult to ascertain is the degree to which it has been sup­planted by the Nationalist one with respect to the expeditionary groups and indeed OUN influence in Eastern Ukraine generally. A Ukrainian administra­tion was established in Kyiv by the OUN-M, which tried to open, or reopen, Ukrainian universities, organized a Union of Writers, and convened a form of the Ukrainian Parliament. On the other hand, the figures released in the vari­ous newspaper accounts of the OUN networks in East Ukrainian cities seem unrealistic, if not outright fantasy. The accounts also corroborate the two clearly demarcated events of the early war years: OUN-German collaboration in the summer and early autumn of 1941, followed by a period of OUN- German hostility. The narratives hardly alter the fundamental issue: that without the first event, the second could not have occurred. The German oc­cupation thus facilitated the expeditionary groups, whereas German anger and repression of the OUN served to distinguish them from the regular occupiers in the minds of the East Ukrainians.