The Death of Soviet Heroes

YAROSLAV HALAN

Yaroslav Halan (1902-1949) was a Socialist Realist, writer, and play­wright, born in Galicia, who served as a propagandist for the Soviet regime, particularly against the Ukrainian Catholic (Uniate) Church and nationalist underground, both of which he accused of collaboration with the German occupiers.

In 1990, the official Ukrainian Communist Party newspaper issued an arti­cle in response to a Ukrainian radio broadcast that Halan had been murdered by the KGB in October 1949. It observed that the “nationalist” version of his death made several arguments. First, two to three weeks prior to his death, Halan was expelled from his newspaper and forced to hand over his gun to the authorities.

Andrusiv provides a detailed account of the life of Halan, who was born into a Muscophile family in the Peremyszl region. During the First World War, the Austrian government imprisoned Halan's father for his pro-Russian activities, and the family was sent to Rostov-on-Don, where Yaroslav at­tended a gymnasium. Later he studied at the University of Vienna and the University of Krakow, from which he either graduated (the Soviet version) or failed to graduate (Tereshchuk's account). In 1924 he joined the Com­munist Party of Western Ukraine, later moving to the parent organization, the Communist Party of Poland.

Andrusiv remarks that Halan was original in attacking the Pope while issu­ing the usual smear campaign against traditional enemies. His failing was that he did not recognize that the Communist system could destroy its own advo­cates. There was a need for a ritual victim in order to introduce Soviet terror into Western Ukraine, and it was relatively easy for the authorities to blame Halan's murder on the Banderites. By the late 1940s, some of Halan's writings were not being accepted in Moscow and Kyiv. His book The Faces was banned, reportedly because it exaggerated the impression of the strength of OUN-B forces.

Evidence of the Soviet disillusionment with—and possible implication in—the murder of Halan, is provided in an article by Mykola Oleksyuk, an historian at the State Musical Institute. Initially, Oleksyuk had a conversa­tion with the notorious Pavel Sudoplatov, the ex-KGB general linked to the assassination of Trotsky, as well as Evhen Konovalets'. In an earlier article, Oleksyuk had not managed to prove Soviet complicity in Halan's death. In a series of articles published in 1993, he turns to the testimony of OUN mem­ber Petro Duzhyi. Duzhyi recalls that during his interrogation by the secret police, Tymofii Strokach, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian NKVD, asked whether Roman Shukhevych knew Halan personally and then added: “We will try Halan.

These articles demonstrate the difficulty sometimes encountered in uncov­ering the details of the assassination of a prominent figure, in this case of one intricately linked with the various parties in the protracted struggle between Ukrainian insurgents and the Soviet regime. Halan, however, was clearly de­spised at the time of his death by both sides. Three years later, Oleksyuk re­turned to the same theme. By this time, he seems to have reconciled himself to the likelihood that Stakhiv and Lukashevych operated on the instructions of the district OUN leader, Roman Shchepans'kyi. In the first half of the newer article, he tries to present Halan's murder as an MGB/NKVD provoca­tion and hints strongly—albeit without much evidence—that Shchepans'kyi (pseudonym Bui-Tur) was an NKVD agent. However, in the latter part of the article, which is reliant on testimony from various OUN members, he ac­knowledges that Stakhiv could have been functioning on the orders of the OUN. He concludes by stating that however one interprets this tragedy of the past, the cause of all the suffering of Ukrainians was Stalin's regime, which was resented by all. It nurtured freedom fighters, among whom were some prepared to carry out murder.⁷⁶ Such a conclusion appears to be offered to account for the relative ruthlessness of OUN actions, and there is no question that the removal of Halan is an example of how far ideological enemies were prepared to go.

NIKOLAI KUZNETSOV

A more authentic Soviet hero was Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov (1911­1944), a Soviet intelligence agent and Partisan who operated in Ukraine dur­ing the war years, and who led various operations against German officials in Rivne and L'viv. A native of Yekaterinburg region, Kuznetsov moved to Mos­cow and joined the NKVD in 1938. After the German occupation of Ukraine, he fought in a guerrilla group in Central and Western Ukraine called “Vic­tors,” led by Dmitrii N. Medvedev. On 9 March 1944, he was killed during a skirmish with Ukrainian insurgents near L'viv, and subsequently he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously.⁷⁷ A fairly typical Soviet account of the career of Kuznetsov comments that he was a civilian with an outstanding knowledge of German and a good athlete. This article cites his official biography, which notes that he was parachuted into the Med­vedev [Partisan] unit on 25 August 1942 under the pseudonym Nikolai Va- sil'yevich Grachev. The article's author believes that he was responsible for procuring intelligence information about German plans for the offensive the following summer at the Kursk Salient. The later section of the article dis­cusses Kuznetsov's time in L'viv during which he had no contact with the Par­tisans. He and his group arrived there on 18 January 1944, and little is known about Kuznetsov over the following month. German documents report that he organized the assassination of the Vice-Governor of Galicia, Bauer, as well as several German generals.⁷⁸ For years, tourists visiting Western Ukraine during the Soviet era were taken to the “Hill of Glory” and other locations in L'viv known to have been frequented by Kuznetsov. The Sverdlovsk film studio also produced a movie about Kuznetsov's exploits called “Strong in Spirit.” But like Halan, Kuznetsov did not fit easily into the modern era of independent Ukraine and before long his exploits came under close scrutiny.

Writing in 1992, Bohdan Dem'yanchuk observes that in the recent past the general attitude toward Kuznetsov has been that of veneration for a legendary hero. However, some organizations began to question his status in the pan­theon of heroes, and even alleged that he was a provocateur, who was respon­sible for the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian patriots through German reprisals against his actions. As a result, youths from the militant nationalist organiza­tion UNSO⁷⁹ had thrown Molotov cocktails at Kuznetsov's memorial and the Kuznetsov museum in L'viv had been closed. Dem'yanchuk relies on the memoirs of D. Medvedev, the commander of Kuznetsov's Partisan detach­ment. Here, Medvedev recalls that Kuznetsov dropped a wallet that had been taken from one of Bandera's emissaries and added to it a fake directive calling for a struggle against the Germans, following the attempted assassination of General Dargel (deputy of Reichskommissar Erich Koch) in September 1943. In response, the Germans executed 38 Ukrainian hostages, all of whom were Ukrainian nationalists. In summing up this event, Dem'yanchuk recommends that readers focus on the memoirs of Vlas Samchuk, who in 1943 was a jour­nalist and editor of the newspaper Volyn'. According to Samchuk, shortly after the assassination of the head of finances in Koch's office, Zehl (the attempt had been on the life of Dargel), there were rumors that the murder had been carried out by someone in the uniform of a German officer, but who was in fact a Partisan or a Ukrainian nationalist. Some Ukrainians even welcomed the action. However, Samchuk believes that the assassination was a provoca­tion directed by Moscow. Altogether, about 500 people lost their lives in re­prisals for this murder. Dem'yanchuk concludes by asking whether this mem­oir-literature is enough to incriminate Kuznetsov for the deaths of Ukrainian citizens.⁸⁰

The following year, Roman Pastukh explored the circumstances around the death of Kuznetsov. According to the Soviet version, Kuznetsov died in Feb­ruary 1944 in Brody region during a battle with Ukrainian nationalists. The author discovered witnesses to his death among UPA fighters of the Chorno- hora (Karpii) unit. According to one of these witnesses, Myron Pavlyuk, the unit was quartered in the village of Boratyn, near Brody. It was learned that two German officers had been detained and were confined at the house of Holubovych. Pavlyuk and a companion arrived at the house to discover the two Germans guarded by two UPA men. Chornohora arrived, at that point dressed in Gestapo uniform and followed by guards, and demanded that the two Germans surrender their weapons. Evidently he greeted one of the Ger­mans as Herr Siebert, which was one of Kuznetsov's pseudonyms. “Siebert” gave up his pistol, but his fellow officer exploded a hand grenade. In the con­fusion that followed, Siebert jumped out of the window, but was killed by ma­chine gun fire. Pavlyuk did not discover what happened to the bodies. Pas- tukh, however, puts together the following narrative: in 1944 Kuznetsov was fleeing L'viv and entered the hut to keep warm, and was apprehended by Chornohora's unit. Therefore the remains of a body found in Boratyn and later identified by a Soviet anthropologist indeed belonged to Kuznetsov. However, documents about the discovery were never made public. Pastukh thinks that the files might contain materials about the Medvedev brigade, in­cluding details of countless deaths of hostages killed by the Germans in repri­sal. Possibly also, there would be cases of the NKVD committing crimes while dressed as UPA fighters.⁸¹

The same theme is pursued by Petro Yakovchuk, who claims that the body buried in L'viv, and to whom a memorial is erected, does not belong to Niko­lai Kuznetsov. Rather it is the body of a German officer. His story relates that Kuznetsov was a terrorist of the Medvedev Partisan brigade who specialized in attacks on prominent functionaries of the German administration. Yakovchuk maintains that such attacks were deliberate provocations in order to turn the Germans against OUN-UPA. In September 1943, Kuznetsov killed Zehl, and the Germans retaliated by arresting 38 nationalists. They took this action after discovering the wallet of an OUN member that had been deliber­ately dropped by Kuznetsov to divert blame to the nationalists. Subsequently, Kuznetsov threw a hand grenade at General Paul Dargel, and 300 hostages were executed. Following another attack—this time on Deputy Gauleiter Knust—the Germans shot 300 inmates of Rivne prison. In L'viv, Kuznetsov attempted the assassination of deputy governor Bauer, while crying “Glory to Ukraine!” He then tried to flee from L'viv but was abandoned by his Partisan detachment, which was being pressured by UPA forces. Kuznetsov was then apprehended by the nationalists and executed. In the 1950s, Yakovchuk writes, the Soviet authorities organized a search for Kuznetsov, but the body that was found—the author offers no corroboration—was that of a German officer.⁸² Once again, then, the claim is that the Partisan hero had a mission to eliminate members of OUN-UPA through assassinating German officials and leaving behind evidence that incriminated the nationalists. In this way, a So­viet war hero is depicted as being both duplicitous and working against the interests of Ukraine.

NIKOLAI VATUTIN

Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin (1901-1944) had a spectacular military career. He was born near Kursk into a peasant family, and joined the Red Army in 1920. The following year he was accepted as a member of the Communist Party. He attended military schools and academies in Kyiv and Moscow, and subsequently served as the deputy commander and commander of the head­quarters of the Kyiv Military District. From 1940 he was head of the Opera­tive Group and the Deputy Chairman of the General Headquarters of the Red Army. After the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, he was chairman of the headquarters of the North-Western Front, and the deputy chairman of the General Headquarters. From 1942 he commanded the armies in the Vo­ronezh region, the Southwestern region (at the time of the Battle of Stalin­grad) and the First Ukrainian Front (Kursk Salient). Armies led by Vatutin took part in the liberation of various cities, including Belgorod, Kharkiv, and Kyiv, and his armies had forced their way across the Dnipro River. On 29 February 1944, he was wounded during an ambush of his cortege by UPA forces and died on 15 April from gangrene. A statue of Vatutin was erected in Kyiv. His case is an interesting one because of the juxtaposition of two heroic narratives during the war: that of the Soviets and that of the Ukrainian na­tionalists. The hero of the war was regarded as an enemy of Ukrainians ac­cording to the nationalist version of events that slowly took shape after Ukraine became independent. But how did the nationalist version depict Va­tutin and the events surrounding his death?

Writing in 1997, Bohdan Fik illustrates what he perceives as the general's crimes against Ukrainian youth born from 1924 to 1926. He points out that they were mobilized to fight against the Germans, and although they were ill equipped and poorly trained, they were flung forward against the German machine guns. Fik writes that according to official statistics, only 3% of people born in these years survived. Vatutin, who was in charge of the cam­paign to liberate the city of Kyiv, dispatched 250,000 Ukrainian young men who had been mobilized in Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Poltava, and Kyiv regions to certain deaths in the cold waters of the Dnipro River. Some Moscow newspapers reported in the 1980s that those who could not swim were shot so that they did not instinctively drown others when crossing the river at Kyiv. As a result of such measures, the UPA sentenced Vatutin to death for crimes against the Ukrainian people. He ponders why the statue of Vatutin in Kyiv bears an inscription in Ukrainian, whereas the other Soviet heroes all have inscriptions in Russian, and posits that the reason may have been that he was killed by nationalist Ukrainians.⁸³ In a related article, Pantelei­mon Vasylevs'kyi agrees with the reason behind the assassination of Vatutin and describes the attack in more detail. Vatutin's cortege was attacked near the village of Mylyatyn on the border of Rivne and Zhytomyr oblasts. Va­tutin was hit in the legs and evacuated from the skirmish area, but it was some time before medical assistance could reach him. Members of his cor­tege removed his left leg but could not stop infection from spreading. Fif­teen soldiers of the Red Army reportedly died in the ambush, along with three insurgents. In 1947, the sculptor Vuchetich made the monument to Vatutin, with the inscription “To General Vatutin from the Ukrainian peo­ple.” Several days later someone had added the words “three bullets.” The MGB arrested two students from Nizhyn whose fathers had drowned at Kyiv.⁸⁴

Vasylevs'kyi continues with this theme later in the same year with a list of enemy generals and other targets assassinated by the UPA. He states that all were prepared in advance because the UPA had been informed of the move­ments of the targets by the OUN-UPA security force. In addition to Vatutin, they include SA general Viktor Lutze, SS General Funk, NKVD boss of the Ternopil' region, General Morozov, NKVD General, D. Fedorov, and Gen­eral Karol [“Walther”] Swierczewski, the Polish Deputy Minister of Defense.⁸⁵ The source does not elucidate why such assassinations conducted by the UPA differed significantly from those carried out by Communists such as Kuznet­sov. In both cases they led to German reprisals against the local population. However, when Communists murdered Germans they are accused of doing so to provoke a German response. Why would UPA murders not produce the same consequences one wonders? Bondarenko believes that after the defeat of Ukrainian SS Division Halychyna near Brody (see Chapter 5), servicemen from the Division joined the UPA forces near the Brody River. At that time the UPA was considering the question of whether to negotiate a neutrality agreement with Soviet troops. Such an arrangement had already been made with an underground attachment of the Partisan forces of Sydir Kovpak. However, in early 1944 in the Rivne region, UPA paratroopers fired on the car carrying Vatutin and mortally wounded the general. Soviet forces then began a ruthless cleansing operation against the UPA, during which the civil­ian population was brutalized. Those who helped UPA members with food and shelter were proclaimed accomplices and sent to Siberia with their fami­lies. Those who refused to assist in this way were killed by the UPA.⁸⁶

The lengthy efforts to resurrect OUN-UPA and provide accounts of the heroism of its members has as its natural counterpart, attempts to “de­heroize” existing Soviet heroes, who were linked in some way to events in those regions of Ukraine in which OUN-UPA were fighting or hiding. It is difficult to discern how successful these writings were in their mission. Most of the sources cited come from the radical L'viv newspaper, Za vil'nu Ukrainu rather than the mainstream press, though Literaturna Ukraina was also part of this campaign. The Soviet authorities had behind them years of propaganda and lengthy volumes about the glorious campaigns of the “Great Patriotic War.” What was different here was that in the past, the Ukrainian participa­tion in that war, and Ukrainian sacrifices, had been melded into the official version of history. Kyiv, after all was a “city of glory.” The nationalist narra­tive, on the other hand, was dissecting accounts of the Soviet drive to the West to demonstrate that Ukrainians were deliberately sacrificed by generals such as Vatutin. Because of this needless loss of lives, it was necessary for the

UPA (or the OUN) to exact revenge by eliminating the man who had given the order for the crossing of the Dnipro. It need hardly be added that the ac­counts simplify what occurred and that the drowned soldiers were not exclu­sively of Ukrainian origin. On the other hand, perhaps slowly but without doubt, the Soviet version of events has come under closer scrutiny. In turn, the “nationalist” version is becoming more plausible, particularly when the reader of such accounts can have in mind events such as the 1932-33 Fam­ine. What stands in the way of a complete vindication of OUN-UPA, aside from the long-term effects of Soviet propaganda on a large section of the Ukrainian population, are the events of the latter years of the war and early postwar years, which we will turn to in Chapter 5.