Who is Stepan Bandera? Touches to the portrait
Due to the increased Lately With an interest in the history of Ukrainian nationalism, many Russians first learned who Stepan Bandera was. I don’t know if they were carried out sociological research, but I’ll assume that o former Hero Few knew Ukraine before the events on Independence Square. And at the same time, this knowledge is superficial: they know, as a rule, about the Banderaites hiding in caches in the forests, about their alliance with Nazi Germany, about their modern followers. The personality of Stepan Andreevich himself in the minds of the majority is blurred in the general outline tragic events 30s - 50s.
And today many people, incl. Those who are in opposition to the current government consider Bandera to be a kind of principled revolutionary romantic without fear or reproach. A lot of myths arise - from his rejection of anti-Semitism to the fight against Germany during the war.
I do not pursue the goal of telling the biography of Stepan Bandera; this is hardly possible to do in a short note. An interested reader may well find books about him on the Internet or in the library.
I want to try to tell you about the most interesting facts of Bandera’s biography and the most persistent myths about Bandera and give my brief comment.
1) Stepan Bandera has never been to Central, much less Eastern, Ukraine during his life. Stepan Andreevich was born on New Year's Day 1909 in the village of Stary Ugrinov, which was part of Austria-Hungary. He spent most of his youth and studies in the cities of Stryi and Lviv, which, together with other Western Ukrainian territories, became part of Poland after the Civil War. In 1932 - 1935 he lived on the territory of modern Poland (including while studying in the then German city of Danzig, where he learned the basics of intelligence). From 1936 to 1939 he was imprisoned in Warsaw. In 1939, he briefly came illegally to Lviv, when it had already become part of the USSR. However, he stayed there for no more than two months, having become convinced that it was impossible to ensure his own safety there. Since then, Bandera has not been to Ukraine. 1939 - 1941 He spent most of his time traveling (Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Italy), and from 1941 to 1944 he was in a special cell in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After 1944 and until his death in 1959, Bandera lived in Germany (mainly in Munich). Thus, the main Ukrainian nationalist lived on Western Ukraine less than half of his life, he had never been to the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, or the Donbass.
2) From childhood, Bandera showed a clear tendency towards sadism. Stepan Andreevich was small in stature - 157 cm. Perhaps it was his modest physical characteristics that prevented him from killing at least one person personally during his life. According to V. Belyaev, who was familiar with the Bander family, one of the main hobbies young hero there was... strangulation of cats. He did this in the presence of his peers with one hand. So Stepan Andreevich asserted himself in the company and began his glorious path.
Short Bandera with classmates
3) The greeting slogan is “Glory to Ukraine - glory to the heroes.” I am sure that most people do not know what “heroes” we are talking about. He first made such a comment in 1932 (precisely thanks to Bandera) at a rally in memory of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. These were the guys who fought for Austria-Hungary against Russian Empire to the First World War. The fact that Russian Ukrainians were exterminated first of all is usually not said. It was they who ardently supported the regime that created the notorious Terezin and Talerhof camps, where they exterminated people just for calling themselves Russian. Moreover, Russians in Western Ukraine. If you utter this slogan, remember that it directly praises the genocide of the Slavic population in Austria-Hungary.
4) Bandera worked for Germany all his life. In 1932, Stepan completed courses at the Danzig intelligence school, then actively collaborated with the Abwehr. It is often remembered that Bandera was in a concentration camp. Was. This was due to the fact that Hitler did not support the unauthorized proclamation of the Ukrainian state. However, during his “imprisonment” Bandera was in separate apartments with special food, and had the opportunity to travel outside the camp for the leadership of the OUNb. It was such a golden cage. In 1944, the Germans, in the face of inevitable defeat, preferred to give the “fighter against the Germans” the opportunity for complete freedom of action. Much is known about the actions of the OUN and UPA against the Red Army and the NKVD. There is much less about the mythical struggle against the fascists. Try to find at least how many Germans the OUN destroyed.
5) Bandera was a "respectable family man." It is known that Bandera kicked his pregnant wife, suffered from Plyushkin syndrome (he dragged all sorts of rubbish into the house) and did not feel any regrets about the death of his father and brothers.
In general, Bandera quite by accident became a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. It was not for nothing that his contemporaries and even comrades gave him the nicknames “Grey” and “Baba”. The accident associated with the death of Yevgen Konovalets elevated this man to the title and Order of Hero of Ukraine. Order, executed in the form of a Soviet five-pointed star...
Well? Glory to heroes?
Stepan Andreevich Bandera is an ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1942, whose goal was the declared struggle for the independence of Ukraine. He was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugryniv, Kalush district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a Greek Catholic priest. After graduation civil war this part of Ukraine became part of Poland.
In 1922, Stepan Bandera joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he entered the agronomy department of the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, which he never graduated from.
In the summer of 1941, after the arrival of the Nazis, Bandera called on “the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.”
On the same day, Stepan Bandera, without any coordination with the German command, solemnly proclaimed the restoration of the great Ukrainian power. The “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” was read out, an order on the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the creation of a national government.
The declaration of independence of Ukraine was not part of Germany's plans, so Bandera was arrested, and fifteen leaders of Ukrainian nationalists were shot.
Ukrainian Legion, in whose ranks after the arrest political leaders fermentation began, he was soon recalled from the front and subsequently performed police functions in the occupied territories.
Stepan Bandera spent a year and a half in prison, after which he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept together with other Ukrainian nationalists in privileged conditions. Bandera's members were allowed to meet with each other, and they also received food and money from relatives and the OUN. They often left the camp in order to contact the “conspiracy” OUN, as well as the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the Zelenbau bunker), which housed a school for OUN agent and sabotage personnel.
Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942. The goal of the UPA was declared to be the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. In 1943, an agreement was reached between representatives of the German authorities and the OUN that the UPA would protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans, to support the activities of the German occupation authorities. In return, Germany promised to supply UPA units with weapons and ammunition, and in the event of a Nazi victory over the USSR, to allow the creation of a Ukrainian state under German protectorate. UPA fighters actively participated in the punitive operations of Hitler’s troops, including destroying civilians who sympathized with the Soviet army.
In September 1944, Bandera was released. Until the end of the war, he collaborated with the Abwehr intelligence department in preparing OUN sabotage groups.
After the war, Bandera continued his activities in the OUN, whose centralized control was located in West Germany. In 1947, at the next meeting of the OUN, Bandera was appointed its leader and was re-elected to this position twice in 1953 and 1955. He led the terrorist activities of the OUN and UPA on the territory of the USSR. During cold war Ukrainian nationalists were actively used by the intelligence services Western countries in the fight against Soviet Union.
It is alleged that Bandera was poisoned by an agent of the USSR KGB on October 15, 1959 in Munich. He was buried on October 20, 1959 at the Munich Waldfriedhof cemetery.
In 1992, Ukraine celebrated the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) for the first time, and attempts began to give its participants the status of war veterans. And in 1997-2000, a special government commission (with a permanent working group) was created with the aim of developing an official position regarding the OUN-UPA. The result of her work was the removal from the OUN of responsibility for cooperation with Hitler's Germany and recognition of the UPA as a “third force” and a national liberation movement that fought for the “true” independence of Ukraine.
On January 22, 2010, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko announced the posthumous award to Stepan Bandera.
On January 29, 2010, Yushchenko, by his decree, recognized members of the UPA as fighters for the independence of Ukraine.
Monuments to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera were erected in the Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Streets in cities and villages of Western Ukraine are named in his honor.
The glorification of UPA leader Stepan Bandera draws criticism from many veterans of the Great Patriotic War Patriotic War and politicians accusing the Banderaites of collaborating with the Nazis. At the same time, part of Ukrainian society, living mainly in the west of the country, considers Bandera and Shukhevych national heroes.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
Photo vfl.ru: “SS Captain” (SS-Hauptsturmführer)
Stepan Bendera (middle) in Nazi-occupied Poland before the attack on the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1943, events called the Volyn tragedy began. According to Polish official sources, in 1943-44 more than sixty thousand Poles and twenty thousand Ukrainians died in Volyn; the main blame for this lies with Ukrainian nationalists operating under the leadership of Stepan Bendera (Bandera and other nicknames).
After the Second World War, Gauleiter of Ukraine Erich Koch, the death penalty was replaced by life imprisonment on Stalin’s initiative (Died at 90 years old (1986). Mokotow prison (Polish: Wizienie mokotowskie) is an active prison located in Warsaw, Poland.) as “a carrier of valuable information."
In fact, the order to Kuznetsov to liquidate Koch at the height of the war was also canceled by Stalin. Information about Koch’s recruitment by USSR counterintelligence was recently declassified. Stalin guaranteed Koch’s life and fulfilled his promise...
After Stalin’s death, Koch admitted that “I saved Stalin by warning him about assassination attempts, and he saved me... By informing the leader of the USSR about Hitler’s plans, I saved millions of lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the front... I was forced to carry out orders from the Nazi elite. I did not share the ideology of the NSDLP...”
Next there are inserts (translated from English) from Koch’s memoirs regarding Bendery.
In the spring of 1943, the Germans began forming the 14th SS Division from Ukrainian volunteers from the Galicia district and the “Ukrainian Liberation Army” - (Ukrainian UVV) from “eastern Ukrainians”, mostly prisoners of war.
In 1944, the OUN and UPA created the Ukrainian Main Liberation Council (Ukrainian Golovna Vizvolna Rada, UGVR), which, according to the creators, was supposed to become a supra-party superstructure and the basis of the power institutions of “independent Ukraine” under the leadership of Stepan Bendera.
By the fall of 1944, the Germans released S. Bendera and Y. Stetsko with a group of previously detained OUN figures. The German press published numerous articles about the UPA's successes in the fight against the Bolsheviks, calling UPA members "Ukrainian freedom fighters."
In the post-war period, OUN(b) members tried to deny their involvement in the massacres and collaboration with the Germans; some documents were even falsified.
In terms of their cruelty, Bender/Bander can be placed on a par with the most bloodthirsty tyrants. If, by the ill will of fate or an absurd accident, Stepan Bandera came to power in Ukraine instead of Koch, or God forbid, after the Great Patriotic War, the subversive terrorist activities of Bandera gangs would have been successful, the purpose of which was to spread their influence deep into Soviet territories - conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and mobilization into its ranks of a population dissatisfied or agitated against the Soviet regime by order of the Western masters and, as a result, the creation of a real military force capable of crushing the Soviet Union, then rivers of blood would flood the entire Eurasian continent. Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary Kalush district in the Stanislav region (Galicia), which was part of Austria-Hungary (now the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), in the family of the Greek Catholic parish priest Andrei Bandera, who received a theological education at Lviv University. His mother, Miroslava, also came from the family of a Greek Catholic priest. As he later wrote in his autobiography, “I spent my childhood ... in the house of my parents and grandfathers, grew up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. Was at home a big library, active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often came together”...
Stepan Bandera began his “revolutionary” path in 1922, joining the Ukrainian scout organization “Plast”, and in 1928 – the revolutionary Ukrainian military organization(UVO). In 1929, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by Yevgeny Konovalets and soon headed the most radical “youth” group. On his instructions, the village blacksmith Mikhail Beletsky, professor of philology at the Lviv Ukrainian Gymnasium Ivan Babiy, university student Yakov Bachinsky and many others were killed.
At this time, the OUN established close contacts with German foreign intelligence; the organization’s headquarters were located in Berlin, at Hauptstrasse 11, under the guise of the “Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany.” BANDERA HIMSELF WAS TRAINED AT AN INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL IN DANZIG.
From 1932 to 1933, Bandera was the deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN, and was involved in organizing robberies of postal trains and post offices, as well as the murders of political opponents. In 1934, on the orders of Stepan Bandera, an employee of the Soviet consulate, Alexey Mailov, was killed in Lvov. It is interesting that shortly before this, the former resident of German intelligence in Poland, Major Knauer, showed up at the OUN. According to Polish intelligence, on the eve of the murder, the OUN received 40 thousand Reichsmarks from the Abwehr (the military intelligence and counterintelligence body of Nazi Germany).
With Hitler coming to power in Germany in January 1934, the Berlin headquarters of the OUN, as a special department, was included in the Gestapo headquarters. In the suburbs of Berlin - Wilhelmsdorf - barracks were built with funds from German intelligence, where OUN militants were trained. That same year, the Polish Minister of the Interior, General Bronislaw Peracki, strongly condemned German plans to seize Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, had been declared a “free city” under the administration of the League of Nations. Hitler himself instructed Richard Yarom, a German intelligence agent in charge of the OUN, to eliminate Peratsky. On June 15, 1934, Peratsky was killed by the people of Stepan Bandera, but this time luck did not smile on them and the nationalists were captured and convicted. For the murder of Bronislaw Peratsky, Stepan Bandera, Nikolai Lebed and Yaroslav Karpinets were sentenced by the Warsaw District Court to death penalty, the rest, including Roman Shukhevych, received from 7 to 15 years in prison. However, under pressure from the German leadership, the death penalty was replaced with life imprisonment.
In the summer of 1936, Stepan Bandera, along with other members of the Regional Executive of the OUN, appeared in court in Lvov on charges of leading the terrorist activities of the OUN-UVO. In particular, the court considered the circumstances of the murder by members of the OUN of the gymnasium director Ivan Babii and student Yakov Bachinsky, accused by nationalists of having connections with the Polish police. At this trial, Bandera already openly acted as a regional leader of the OUN. In total, at the Warsaw and Lvov trials, Stepan Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment seven times.
In September 1939, when Germany occupied Poland, Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Abwehr, was released. Irrefutable proof of Stepan Bandera's collaboration with the Nazis is the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945):
“... after the end of the war with Poland, Germany was intensively preparing for a war against the Soviet Union and therefore measures were being taken through the Abwehr to intensify subversive activities, since those activities that were carried out through MELNIK and other agents seemed insufficient. For these purposes, the prominent Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera was recruited, who during the war was released from prison, where he had been imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. The last one in touch was with me.”
After the murder of Yevgeny Konovalets in Italy in 1938 by NKVD officers, OUN meetings took place, at which Yevgeny Konovalets’ successor Andrei Melnik was proclaimed (his supporters declared him the head of PUN - Seeing Ukrainian Nationalists). Stepan Bandera did not agree with this decision. After the Nazis released Stepan Bandera from prison, a split in the OUN became inevitable. Having read the works of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Dmitry Dontsov in a Polish prison, Stepan Bandera believed that the OUN was not “revolutionary” enough in its essence and only he, Stepan Bandera, was able to correct the situation.
In February 1940, Stepan Bandera convened an OUN conference in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created that handed down death sentences to Melnik's supporters. The confrontation with the Melnikovites took the form of an armed struggle: Bandera killed several members of the “Melnikovsky” OUN Provod: Nikolai Stsiborsky and Yemelyan Senik, as well as a prominent “Melnikovsky” member, Yevgeny Shulga.
As follows from the memoirs of Yaroslav Stetsko, Stepan Bandera, through the mediation of Richard Yary, shortly before the war secretly met with Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr. During the meeting, Stepan Bandera, according to Yaroslav Stetsko, “very clearly and clearly presented the Ukrainian positions, finding a certain understanding from the admiral, who promised support for the Ukrainian political concept, believing that only with its implementation is a German victory over Russia possible.” Stepan Bandera himself indicated that at the meeting with Canaris, the conditions for training Ukrainian volunteer units under the Wehrmacht were mainly discussed.
Three months before the attack on the USSR, Stepan Bandera created the Ukrainian Legion named after Konovalets from members of the OUN; a little later the legion became part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment and became known as “Nachtigal”. The Brandenburg-800 regiment was created as part of the Wehrmacht - it was special forces designed to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines.
Negotiations with the Nazis were conducted not only by Stepan Bandera himself, but also by persons authorized by him. For example, in the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) documents have been preserved confirming that Bandera’s supporters themselves offered their services to the Nazis. In the interrogation protocol of Abwehr officer Yu.D. Lazarek says that he was a witness and participant in negotiations between Abwehr representative Eichern and Bandera’s assistant Nikolai Lebed: “Lebed said that Bandera’s followers would provide the necessary personnel for schools of saboteurs, and would also be able to agree to the use of the entire underground of Galicia and Volyn for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes in territory of the USSR."
To carry out subversive activities and intelligence activities on the territory of the USSR, Stepan Bandera received two and a half million Reichsmarks from Nazi Germany.
On March 10, 1940, Bandera’s OUN headquarters decided to transfer leading personnel to Volyn and Galicia to organize a rebellion. According to Soviet counterintelligence, the rebellion was planned for the spring of 1941. Why spring? The leadership of the OUN had to understand that open action would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes naturally if we remember that the original date of Nazi Germany’s attack on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer some troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. At the same time, the OUN leadership gave an order: all OUN members who served in the army or police of Yugoslavia should go over to the side of the Croatian Nazis.
In April 1941, the revolutionary Wire of the OUN convened a Great Gathering of Ukrainian nationalists in Krakow, where Stepan Bandera was elected head of the OUN, and Yaroslav Stetsko was elected his deputy. In connection with the receipt of new instructions for the underground, the actions of OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine intensified even more. In April alone, they killed 38 Soviet party workers and carried out dozens of acts of sabotage in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.
After the last Gathering, the OUN finally split into OUN-(M) (Melnik’s supporters) and OUN-(B) (Bandera’s supporters), which was also called OUN-(R) (OUN-revolutionaries). Here is what the Nazis thought about this (from the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolze (May 29, 1945)): “Despite the fact that during my meeting with Melnik and Bandera, both of them promised to take all measures to reconciliation. I have personally come to the conclusion that this reconciliation will not take place due to the significant differences between them:
“If Melnik is a calm, intelligent person, then Bandera is a careerist, a fanatic and a bandit.”
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans pinned greater hopes on the Organization of Ukrainian nationalists of Bandera OUN-(B) than on the Organization of Ukrainian nationalists Melnik OUM-(M) and the Polesie Sich of Bulba Borovets, who also sought to gain power in Ukraine under a German protectorate. Stepan Bandera sought to become the head of the Ukrainian state as soon as possible and, having abused the trust of his masters from Nazi Germany, decided to proclaim the “independence” of the Ukrainian state from the Moscow occupation, independently creating a government and appointing Yaroslav Stetsko as prime minister.
The Volyn massacre is the bestial essence of the OUN-UPA.
Bandera’s trick of establishing Ukraine as an independent state was necessary in order to show the population his importance; there were personal ambitions here. On June 30, 1941, Bandera’s ally Yaroslav Stetsko from the city hall in Lviv announced the decision of the leadership of the OUN (B) Provod on the “revival of the Ukrainian state.”
Residents of Lvov reacted sluggishly to information about the revival of Ukrainian statehood. According to the Lvov priest, Doctor of Theology Father Gavril Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and clergy were rounded up. The city residents themselves did not dare to take to the streets and support the proclamation of the revival of the Ukrainian state. The decision to revive the Ukrainian state was approved by a group of people who were forcibly rounded up to participate in this event.
“The newly reborn Ukrainian State will closely interact with the National Socialist Great Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, is creating new order in Europe and the world and helps the Ukrainian people free themselves from Moscow occupation.
The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being created on Ukrainian soil, will continue to fight together with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for a Sovereign Council Ukrainian State and a new order throughout the world.
Let the Ukrainian Sovereign Conciliar Power live! Let the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists live! May the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian People STEPAN BANDERA live! GLORY TO UKRAINE!
Among Ukrainian nationalists and a number of officials, standing at the head of modern Ukraine, this document is considered the Act of Independence of Ukraine, and Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko are considered Heroes of Ukraine.
Simultaneously with the proclamation of the Act, supporters of Stepan Bandera staged a pogrom in Lvov. Ukrainian nationalists acted according to blacklists compiled before the war. As a result, 7 thousand people were killed in the city in 6 days. Saul Friedman wrote about the massacre carried out by Bandera’s followers in Lvov in his book “The Pogromist,” published in New York: “During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigal battalion destroyed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lvov. Before execution, Jews - professors, lawyers, doctors - were forced to lick all the staircases of four-story buildings and carry garbage in their mouths from one building to another. Then, forced to walk through a line of warriors with yellow-blakite armbands, they were bayoneted.”
However, Germany had its own plans for Ukraine; it was interested in free living space: territory and cheap work force. It would be reckless for Germany to give power in the territory that was captured by regular German military formations to Ukrainian nationalists just because, although they took part in hostilities, they mainly did the dirty work of punitive forces and policemen. Therefore, from the point of view of the German leadership, there could be no talk of any revival and granting Ukraine state status, even under the patronage of Nazi Germany.
Having been bypassed by a younger competitor, Andrei Melnik wrote a letter to Hitler and Governor-General Frank that “Bandera’s people are behaving unworthily and have created their own government without the knowledge of the Fuhrer.” After which Hitler ordered the arrest of Stepan Bandera and his “government”. At the beginning of July 1941, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow and, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his comrades, was sent to Berlin at the disposal of the Abwehr - to Colonel Erwin Stolze. After Stepan Bandera arrived in Berlin, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded that he renounce the Act of “Revival of the Ukrainian State.” Stepan Bandera agreed and called on “the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.” On July 15, 1941, Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were released from arrest. Yaroslav Stetsko in his memoirs described what was happening as an “honorable arrest.” Yes, it’s really an honor: “From the wilderness to the court,” to the “supposed capital of the world.” After his release from arrest in Berlin, Stepan Bandera lived in a dacha owned by the Abwehr.
During their stay in Berlin, Bandera’s followers repeatedly met with representatives of various departments, assuring that without their help the German army could not defeat Moscow. An endless stream of messages, explanations, dispatches, “declarations” and “memoranda” with justifications and requests for assistance and support were sent to Hitler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and other leaders of Nazi Germany. In his letters, Stepan Bandera proved his loyalty to the Fuhrer and the German army and tried to convince him of the urgent need for the OUN-B for Germany.
Stepan Bandera’s labors were not in vain, and the German leadership took the next step: Andrei Melnik was allowed to continue to openly curry favor with Berlin, and Stepan Bandera was ordered to portray an enemy of the Germans so that he could, hiding behind anti-Nazi slogans, restrain the Ukrainian masses from a real, irreconcilable fight against by the Nazi invaders, from the struggle for the freedom of Ukraine.
With the emergence of new plans, Stepan Bandera is transported from the Abwehr dacha to a privileged block of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the massacre carried out by Bandera’s supporters in June 1941 in Lvov, Stepan Bandera could have been killed by his own people, and Nazi Germany still needed him. This gave rise to the legend that Bandera did not collaborate with the Germans and even fought with them, but documents say otherwise.
In the concentration camp, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and another 300 Banderaites were kept separately in the Cellenbau bunker, where they were kept in good conditions. Bandera's members were allowed to meet, they received food and money from relatives and the OUN-B. They often left the camp in order to contact “conspiratorial” OUN-UPA fighters, and also visited Friedenthal Castle (200 meters from the Cellenbau bunker), which housed a school for OUN intelligence and sabotage personnel. The instructor at this school was a former officer of the Nachtigal special battalion, Yuri Lopatinsky, through whom Stepan Bandera communicated with the OUN-UPA. Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942, and he also achieved the replacement of its main commander Dmitry Klyachkivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych.
In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of fascists. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops. The hatred of the residents of Volyn and Galicia for the OUN-UPA was so great that they handed them over to Soviet troops or killed them themselves. In order to activate the OUN members and support their spirit, the Nazis decided to release Stepan Bandera and his supporters from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This happened on September 25, 1944. After leaving the camp, Stepan Bandera immediately joined the 202nd “Schutzmannschaft” Abwehr team in Krakow and began training OUN-UPA sabotage detachments. Irrefutable proof of this is the testimony former employee Gestapo and Abwehr Lieutenant Siegfried Müller, given during the investigation on September 19, 1945: “On December 27, 1944, I prepared a group of saboteurs to transfer it to the rear of the Red Army with special assignments. Stepan Bandera, in my presence, personally instructed these agents and through them conveyed to the UPA headquarters an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and establish regular radio communications with Abwehrkommando-202.
Stepan Bandera himself did not participate in practical work in the rear of the Red Army; his task was to organize activities. However, the ABWER was repeatedly deployed “to control reconnaissance and sabotage groups and coordinate their actions on the spot.”
The following fact is interesting. Anyone who fell into the clutches of Hitler's punitive machine, even if the Nazis later became convinced of his innocence, never returned to freedom. This was common Nazi practice. The unprecedented attitude of the Nazis towards Bandera is proven by their direct mutual cooperation.
When Soviet troops approached Berlin, Bandera was instructed to form detachments from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis for its defense. Bandera created the detachments, but he himself escaped. After the end of the war, he lived in Munich and collaborated with the British intelligence services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the Provod of the entire OUN, which actually meant the unification of the OUN-(B) and OUN-(M). Quite a happy ending for the former “prisoner” of Sachsenhausen. Being in absolute safety and leading the OUN and UPA organizations, Stepan Bandera shed a lot of human blood with the hands of his perpetrators.
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bendera was killed in the entrance of his house. He was met on the stairs by a man who shot him in the face from a special pistol with a stream of soluble poison (potassium cyanide). It was only in this century that the details of the liquidation were made public. This was one of the last operations of the USSR KGB of this kind.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 3 million civilians were brutally tortured and killed by the hands of members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Open source materials.
Bender/Bandera was never a citizen of Ukraine.
His dream was to become the Gauleiter of Ukraine like Erich Koch or any other country occupied by the Nazis...
For a long time, the name of the movement was distorted - “Bendera” instead of “Bandera”; in the 50s. NKVD were created punitive squads, dressed in the uniform of “Bandera”, who destroyed in order to arouse hatred among the lower classes for the OUN-UPA, etc.
4. During the Patriotic War, which began in 2014, separatists and Russians called all defenders of Ukraine nothing more than “Bandera” or “Bandera’s punitive forces.”
5. What are the main services of Stepan Bandera to the people of Ukraine? He
Became one of the organizers in 1929 of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the main instrument of the national liberation movement of Ukrainians in subsequent decades. Since 1933, Bandera became the regional guide of the OUN in Western and the regional commandant of the combat department of the OUN-UVO, since 1940 - the head of the OUN-UPA (b);
On July 5, 1941, members of the OUN-UPA (b) in Lvov announced the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State,” which announced the creation of a “new Ukrainian state on the mother Ukrainian lands,” for which Stepan Bandera was arrested on the same day and subsequently sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp until September 1944;
His followers, led by Roman Shukhevych, created the Ukrainian army OUN-UPA, which fought both the fascist (1942-1944) and communist regimes in the USSR from 1944 to 1956.
2010 - Hero of Ukraine "for the invincibility of the spirit in upholding the national idea, heroism and self-sacrifice in the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state."
The then President of Ukraine, during the ceremonial events in honor of Unity Day, noted that millions of Ukrainians had been waiting for Stepan Bandera to be awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine” for many years.
The post-war years were the most difficult for Stepan Bandera. So, for example, only in 1948 he changed his place of residence six times (Berlin, Innsbruck, Seefeld, Munich, Hildesheim, Starnberg). Ultimately, Bandera and his family moved to Munich in order to give his daughter a good education. The fact is that Stepan and his wife tried to protect her from everything that was happening around her father, and never told her that the famous Stepan Bandera was actually her blood father. "At the age of 13, I started reading Ukrainian newspapers, which wrote a lot about Stepan Bandera. Over time, based on my own observations, as well as constant changes of surname, and also due to the fact that around my father there was always great amount Man, I have some suspicions. And when one of my acquaintances let it slip, I was sure that Stepan Bandera was my own father,” said Natalia, Bandera’s daughter.
Stepan Bandera's mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 33, and he himself had poor health since childhood. He was mainly worried about his joints, often in his legs. In this regard, all his efforts to get into Plast were unsuccessful. He managed to join this organization only in the third grade. “He was short, brown-haired, very poorly dressed,” his comrade Yaroslav Rak recalled to Bandera.
Once a group of students gathered in the Academic House in Lvov, one of whom immediately declared that he had nothing to do with politics and was outside it. Stepan Bandera was also present. When the “non-political” student tried to shake his hand, Bandera turned away. Then Stepan was reprimanded, to which he replied: “If you don’t like it, you can sue me.” A few decades later, the same student, whose last name turned out to be Stashinsky, became the killer of Stepan Bandera.
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The social network "" also has enough a large number of groups dedicated to Bandera. The largest of them is group called "Stepan Bandera".
Biography of Stepan Bandera.
1927 - Bandera entered the Ukrainian Economic Academy in the village of Podebrady (Czechoslovakia). However, the Polish refused to provide him with a foreign passport, and therefore he continued to live in his native village, where he was engaged in cultural, educational and economic activities;
1928 - moved to live in, where he enrolled in the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School, where he studied until 1933, and before the final exams he was arrested because of his political activities;
1932-1933 - deputy regional conductor;
1933 - appointed regional guide of the OUN in Western Ukraine;
1934 - arrested by Polish police. He was under investigation in prisons in Lvov, Warsaw and Krakow;
From November 18, 1935 to January 13, 1936, the Warsaw trial took place, in which Stepan Bandera, along with 11 other defendants, was convicted of involvement in the OUN, as well as for organizing the murder of Bronislaw Penatsky, internal affairs of Poland. Bandera was initially sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to life imprisonment;
On September 19, 1939, when the situation of the Polish troops became almost critical, Bandera was released;
On July 5, 1941, shortly after the adoption of the act of proclamation of the restoration of the Ukrainian state, the Germans arrested Bandera;
December 1944 - Bandera is released along with several other OUN guides;
1950 - resigned from the post of head of the OUN conductors;
August 22, 1952 - resigned from the post of head of the conductors of the entire OUN-B. However, his decision was not officially accepted, and therefore he remained in this position until his death;
Bandera lived the last years of his life in Munich under the name Stefan Popel.
Murder of Bandera.
On October 15, 1959, in Munich, in the entrance of house number 7, located on Kreitmayr Street, at 13:05 local time, a bloodied but still alive Stepan Bandera was found. However, he soon died.
The results of the medical examination showed that the cause of Bandera’s death was poison. As it turned out, later, his killer, who was Bogdan Stashinsky, shot Bandera in the face with a special pistol loaded with potassium cyanide.
Two years after Bandera's death, the judiciary announced that Stashinsky acted on the orders of Khrushchev and Shelepin. The killer was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Later German Supreme Court proclaimed that the USSR in Moscow was to blame for the death of Stepan Bandera.
Bandera's funeral took place in 1959 in Munich.
Perpetuating the memory of Stepan Bandera.
1995 - Ukrainian director Oleg Yanchuk shot “Atentat - Autumn Murder in Munich,” which is dedicated to the post-war fate of Bandera;
2005 - “Unconquered”, in general about the fate of Bandera;
Rohir van Aarde, a writer from the Netherlands, wrote a novel "Assassination", dedicated to political murder Stepan Bandera;
January 1, 2009 - in honor of the centenary of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian state enterprise Ukrposhta issued a commemorative envelope and postage stamp with his image.
2009 and 2014 in the Ternopil region of Ukraine were declared the years of Stepan Bandera;
2012 - Lviv Regional Council initiated the founding of the award named after Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera;
Streets in the following cities were named in honor of Bandera: Lviv, Lutsk, Dubovitsy, Rivne, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chervonograd, Drohobych, Stryi, Dolina, Kalush, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Horodenka, Izyaslav, Skole, Shepetivka and some others populated areas, including villages and towns;
There are 6 Stepan Bandera museums in the world:
Museum of Stepan Bandera in Dublyany;
Museum-Estate of Stepan Bandera (Vola-Zaderevacka);
Historical and Memorial Museum of Stepan Bandera (Stary Ugryniv village);
Museum of Stepan Bandera (Yagolnitsa);
Museum of the Liberation Struggle named after Stepan Bandera (London);
Bandera Estate Museum (Stry).
Monuments to Bandera.
Most of the monuments to Stepan Bandera were erected in the period 1990-2000, since until that moment the personality of Bandera was prohibited by the communist ideology of the Soviet Union.
The following monuments to Stepan Bandera are currently known:
1991, Kolomyia - monument;
2007, Lvov. Monument;
1998 - Borislav;
2001 - Drohobych;
Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera. In 1919-1927 he studied at the Ukrainian gymnasium in the city of Stryi. In 1922-1930 - a member of the Ukrainian scout organization "Plast". Since 1927, he worked in the reading room of the Ukrainian cultural and educational organization “Prosvita”. In 1928 he entered the Lvov Polytechnic School and studied to become an agronomist. He joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. Did not complete his studies due to arrest. Since 1928, member of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). In 1929 he joined the newly formed Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). He was engaged in publishing underground literature. He was delayed several times. In 1931, he headed the propaganda department (department) of the Regional Executive Office of the OUN in Western Ukraine. Since 1933 - regional leader (leader) of the OUN in Galicia. Initiator of the merger of the OUN and UVO in 1933. Supporter of terrorist methods of struggle. One of the organizers of the murders of the Secretary of the USSR Consulate in Lviv A. Mailov and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland B. Peratsky on June 15, 1934, the explosion in the editorial office of the left-wing newspaper “Pracia” on May 12, 1934, and other terrorist attacks. Bandera was arrested for involvement in the murder of Peratsky and on January 13, 1936 he was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment under an amnesty in connection with death. On May 25 - June 26, 1936, Bandera again appeared in court in Lvov in the case of the terrorist activities of the OUN. In particular, he was charged with organizing the murder of student Y. Bachinsky, whom the OUN accused of working for the Polish police, and professor of philology at Lvov University I. Babii, who opposed Ukrainian nationalism. The murder of Babii caused a great resonance and was publicly condemned by the Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church A. Sheptytsky. During the trial, Bandera expressed his nationalist and anti-communist views, and received another life sentence. He served his sentence near Kielce, in Poznan and Brest.
After the outbreak of World War II
In September 1939, after Germany attacked Poland, he was released. In Western Ukraine, he established contact with the OUN, then arrived in Krakow. Bandera became the leader of the young nationalists who remained in the occupied territory of Poland and Western Ukraine (“kraeviks”). They came into conflict with their senior comrades, led by A. Melnik, and did not recognize him as the leader (leader) of the OUN, as he was elected in August 1939 in Rome at the II Congress of the OUN. While the authoritative head of the OUN E. Konovalets was alive, and B. was in prison, conflicts between the “regional activists” and Melnik’s supporters did not lead to a split. However, in 1938, Konovalets was killed by an NKVD agent. Melnik did not have the same authority among the Galicians as Konovalets. The regional wire advocated more active terrorist activities towards Poland. The Banderaites numerically prevailed over the Melnikovites in all regions of Western Ukraine, except Bukovina. Both organizations spoke from extremely nationalistic and xenophobic positions, in favor of a national-authoritarian structure of the future Ukraine. Bandera's supporters were somewhat more radical, while Melnik's supporters were more consistently oriented towards Germany in their policy. Bandera's supporters, like Melnik's supporters, sought cooperation with Germany, but considered interaction with it temporary. The reason for the split was A. Melnik’s refusal to expel Y. Baranovsky and O. Senik from the OUN, whom B. and his supporters suspected of betrayal in favor of Poland. On February 10, 1940, a meeting of the revolutionary faction of the OUN took place. Bandera was proclaimed the leader of the OUN revolutionaries (OUN-R). It was decided to create the OUN Military Headquarters to prepare an anti-Soviet uprising, led by D. Gritsai, which also included R. Shukhevych. On September 27, 1940, Bandera was expelled from the OUN, that is, in fact, from the OUN-Melnikovites (OUN-M). The struggle between supporters of the OUN-B and OUN-M resulted in armed clashes in which several hundred people died. Bandera became one of the organizers of the OUN Security Service, which launched purges and terror among Ukrainian nationalists in favor of his policies.
In April 1941, the OUN-R held its Second OUN Congress in Krakow. On it, Bandera was chosen as a conductor. At the congress, the Organization's program and the red-black flag were adopted. The OUN-R announced that it was fighting for a “sovereign conciliar Ukrainian state,” which should “ensure the Ukrainian people a free life and the full and comprehensive development of all their forces.” The OUN-R OUN program opposed both communism and capitalism, for the creation of “professional organizations built on the basis of industrial solidarity and equality of all workers” (this showed the influence of the ideas of Italian fascism), the nationalization of heavy industry and transport, the introduction of pensions, free medicine, help for mothers and children, free education, for “the destruction of other people’s corrupting influences,” the gradual abandonment of collective farms, which would not threaten “destruction economic life" “Bandera” insisted that an independent Ukraine should arise immediately on both sides of the Soviet-Polish border.
In 1940, he met the Ukrainian nationalist Yaroslava Vasilyevna Oparovskaya (1907-1977), a member of the OUN since 1936. Married her. In 1941, daughter Natalya was born.
Bandera took part in organizing the formation of the Ukrainian battalions “Nachtigal” and “Roland” as part of the German army.
From the beginning, members of the OUN-R participated in hostilities on the side of Germany; in the rear, armed OUN members killed Jews. Bandera did not personally participate in the campaign, but approved the activities of his subordinates.
After the proclamation of the Act of Resumption of Independence of Ukraine on June 30, Bandera, although he did not participate in these events, was placed by the Nazis on July 7, 1941. House arrest, and at the end of the year he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. During his imprisonment, Bandera could not take Active participation in the activities of the OUN, but influenced it, since he could transmit messages to the will. After Bandera's arrest, acting M. Lebed became the head of the OUN-R Wire (OUN-B), who in September-October held the First Conference of the OUN (B), at which it was decided not to conduct anti-German propaganda, go underground and work in collaborationist structures. At the beginning of 1942, Bandera gave Lebed a letter in which he urged him not to take any action against the Germans.
Bandera maintained connections with the outside world through his wife. In May 1944, his son Andrei (1944-1984) was born.
In August 1943, at the III Extraordinary Congress of the OUN-R, R. Shukhevych became the conductor of the OUN. On September 25, 1944, Bandera was released from the camp. Became a conductor of the Trans-Kordon parts of the OUN (ZCh OUN) (head of a foreign organization). He advocated a return to the 1941 program, revised by the Third Extraordinary Congress in the direction of the values accepted in liberal states.
Post-war biography
After the end of the war, he lived for some time in Berlin, then in Munich under the name Popel. In 1947, Bandera had a daughter, Lesya (1947-2011). Bandera's children were members of the Ukrainian Youth Union and were brought up in a nationalist spirit.
In 1948, due to a conflict with the “kraeviks” (members of the OUN operating in Western Ukraine), Bandera resigned from the board of authorized representatives of the OUN. However, the weakening of Bandera’s positions did not save the OUN from a new split. In 1954, his opponents created a new OUN organization abroad. Due to the danger of assassination, Bandera was preparing to leave Munich, but was killed by Soviet agent B. Stashinsky on the stairs of his house in Munich. Stashinsky shot him with a canister of potassium cyanide.
His wife and children left for Toronto soon after. Andrei Bandera was one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists in Canada; in 1976 he became the editor of the English-language supplement “Ukrainian Echo” to the newspaper “Gomon of Ukraine”.
Essays
Prospects for the Ukrainian revolution. Drogobich, 1998.