How the UPA was formed

The creation of the UPA has been dealt with in detail by the American political scientist, John A. Armstrong, who perceives its formation as a direct response to Soviet Partisan raids into Volhynia led by Sydir Kovpak, starting in the late summer of 1942.

By the winter of this year, the Germans had begun a counterattack, accompanied by ruthless measures against Communist supporters and the local peasantry. By early 1943, Armstrong notes, the OUN-B decided on a full-scale insurgency, with two main bases in Volhynia. Close to the town of Rovno (Rivne), there were two main OUN groups: one under Kruk, backing the OUN-B, and close by, and working with it, another group under an OUN-M commander called “Khrin.” Several other small groups operated in this area, and the concept of a single command emanated from Taras Bul'ba-Borovets', leader of the original UPA. By the spring of 1943, the situation became exacerbated with new Partisan raids from Kovpak, following orders from Moscow.¹² Armstrong notes that the negotiations between the OUN-B, OUN-M, and Borovets' were unsuccessful, and the former began to seize control of the resistance movement. The OUN-B commander, Dmytro Klyachkivs'kyi, expropriated the original name UPA, which was already well known to the local population. The key military leader from Nachtigal, Roman Shukhevych, also arrived in L'viv in the spring of 1943 and was appointed commander of the OUN-B insurgents. In July and August, to ensure its supremacy, the OUN-B had begun to attack units of the OUN-M and those following Borovets', with the latter fleeing to Warsaw. Armstrong believes that the suddenness of the defeat of these forces and the triumph of the OUN-B was a result of the former groups not wishing to fight their compatriots and cause the outbreak of a civil war. He also attributes the results to the stronger organization of the OUN-B.

By the autumn of 1943, it basically occupied the rural regions of Volhynia and southwest Polissya.¹³ Quite clearly then, the UPA emerged from an organization of the same name in the spring and summer of 1943, clearing the area not only of rival Ukrainian groups, but also—as noted below, though curiously not by Armstrong—of the local Polish population.

Yet the formation of the UPA, according to its participants and supporters, dates from October 1942. Historian Viktor Koval' outlined the official version of its formation in Ukrainian academic circles in 1996. Koval' maintains that in April 1942, the Bandera wing of the OUN organized the Second Conference of OUN Independent Statehood Supporters, at which it appraised the Soviet-German war as essentially a struggle of two imperialist powers based in Moscow and Berlin for dominion over Ukraine. At that time, the OUN believed that the Germans would win this war, and therefore adopted the policy of opposition to Hitler. Such a policy was predetermined in part by the Germans' refusal to countenance an independent state in L'viv in June 1941. A regional war would be fought, after which the OUN might extend its influence to the rest of Ukraine. The first two “hundreds” (cavalry units of 130-200 troops) were created in the Volyn' region in October 1942, reportedly to protect local residents from terrorist bands from the Polish underground—the Armia Krajowa (AK)—as well as Soviet partisans. The first sustained activities began in March and April 1943. Discipline was said to be exceptionally rigorous, with punishment administered by the security service (Sluzhba bez- peky) on behalf of both the OUN and the UPA. The UPA was divided into three territorial-operative groups: UPA-North, UPA-West, and UPA-South; and its first commander was Klyachkivs'kyi (“Klym Savur”).¹⁴

Writing a few years earlier, V. P. Troshchyns'kyi suggests that if the UPA formed as a response to Germany's non-recognition of the “Akt” of 30 June 1941, then it would logically have been established in that same year.

In fact, he declares, the first armed units were founded only in the spring of 1943, and they were created to fight the Bolsheviks rather than as a response to localized terror in Volyn' and Polissya. He believes that initial orders were given to Borovets', who ran the so-called Polis'ka Sich, to put together a nationalist army in the spring of 1943 and direct it against Soviet Partisans concentrated in the Polissyan forests. After November 1943, Borovets' was isolated as the Germans made a separate agreement with the OUN-B to incorporate his (Borovets') band into a new unit run by the OUN, under the general umbrella name of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).¹⁵ Another, more recent source (echoing Armstrong for the most part), explains that a negotiated agreement between Borovets' and the OUN-B was later violated by the latter, which disarmed units affiliated with both Borovets' and Mel'nyk, murdering some of the commanders of these units.¹⁶ According to an overtly hostile source, the historian Wiktor Poliszczuk, the decisive event in the formation of the UPA was the German defeat at Stalingrad, after which the OUN-B recognized that Germany would eventually lose the war. In the hope that the Western allies would create a second front in the Balkans, the OUN-B thus resolved to establish its own force in an effort to control Western Ukraine.¹⁷

In his 1999 book, Mykhailo Koval' comments that the basis of the national armed formations of the OUN were the rebel formations established in the forests of Volhynia and Polissya by Borovets' and called UPA. Many officers who had been part of the Ukrainian battalions Nachtigal and Roland, which accompanied the German army into Western Ukraine in the summer of 1941, took part in its creation. Subsequently it attracted a large number of volunteers who were trained by the OUN, and in October 1942, a united rebel army under Klyachkivs'kyi (Klym Savur) was established along with the SB military intelligence unit.

However, he maintains, the initial operations were on a limited scale, and the UPA leaders were careful to avoid German garrisons, dedicating most of their activities to the single cause of preventing a new “Bolshevik occupation.” Local divisions and individuals did conduct spontaneous attacks on German forces. After the end of June 1943, when Germany removed the Waffen SS and police forces from Ukraine, the UPA activities began to expand.¹⁸ The overall picture then suggests first of all that the main body of the OUN-B-UPA forces was formed in the spring of 1943, and that it was an anti-Soviet formation that occasionally resisted the Germans as well, but avoided a sustained conflict with the Wehrmacht, perhaps in the knowledge that the principal contest would inevitably be with the incoming Soviet forces.

There is similar controversy over the size of the insurgent army. The detailed 1991 article by Maslovs'kyi cites figures of 40,000 men in 1943-44 (from the Encyclopedia of Ukraine published in Paris in 1980) and 80,000 with 20,000 sympathizers in early 1944, and support from 100,000 in the OUN underground (from emigre UPA historian Petro Mirchuk). He adds that careful analysis leads to the conclusion that in early 1944 the UPA comprised about 90,000 fighters.¹⁹ Writing in 1997, Kul'chyts'kyi cites German estimates from 1944 that the UPA numbered between 100,000 and 200,000, but notes that Soviet figures were lower at 90-100,000. Ukrainian nationalist sources, in turn, he observes, have mentioned a figure of 30,000 troops. The numbers are difficult to determine, in his view, because of UPA's peasant composition and the combination of armed resistance with daily life in the villages. However, according to NKVD documents from February 1944 to December 1945, the

Soviet organs had killed 103,000 insurgents, and captured 127,000, while 50,000 had surrendered voluntarily—a total of 230,000.²⁰ The same author, writing two years later, states that the UPA was formed from late 1942 and within a year had 40,000 members.²¹ Thus there would logically have to have been a massive rise in numbers over the next two years to reach the figure of a quarter of a million men. Further, an army of such size would hardly constitute a partisan or guerrilla force, since it would be impossible to conceal such numbers of troops, even in the forests. What seems to be the case is that the population of entire villages has been included in the overall totals of OUN- UPA membership.

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Source: Marples David R.. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. udapest—New York: Central European University Press,2007. — 363 p.. 2007

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