Biography. Who is Stepan Bandera Bendery biography
To prepare a rebellion on the territory of the USSR, Stepan Bandera received two and a half million marks from Nazi Germany.
So, who is Stepan Bandera?
He was born in the village of Ugryniv, Old Kalush district in Stanislavschina (Galicia), which was part of Austria-Hungary (now Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), in the family of the Greek Catholic parish priest Andrei Bandera, who received a theological education at Lviv University. As a boy, he joined the Ukrainian scout organization "PLAST", and a little later in the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO).
At the age of 20, Bandera headed the most radical "youth" group in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Even then, his hands were stained with the blood of Ukrainians: 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 destroyed.
At that time, the OUN established close contacts with Germany, moreover, its headquarters was located in Berlin, at 11 Hauptstrasse under the name of the "Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany". Bandera himself was trained in Danzig, in an intelligence school.
In 1934, by order of Stepan Bandera, an employee of the Soviet consulate, Aleksey Maylov, was killed in Lvov. Shortly before this murder was committed, the resident of German intelligence in Poland, Major Knauer, who was actually S. Bandera's instructor, appeared in the OUN.
A very important fact - when Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1934, the Berlin headquarters of the OUN, as a special department, was enrolled in the headquarters of the Gestapo. On the outskirts of Berlin - Wilhelmsdorf - with funds from German intelligence, barracks were also built, where OUN militants and their officers were trained. Meanwhile, the Polish Minister of the Interior, General Bronislaw Peratsky, harshly condemned Germany's plans to seize Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was declared a “free city” under the rule of the League of Nations. Hitler himself instructed Richard Jarom, the 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 they were not lucky and the nationalists were captured and convicted. For the murder of Bronislav Peratsky, Stepan Bandera, Nikolai Lebed and Yaroslav Karpinets were sentenced to death by the Warsaw District Court. The rest, including Roman Shukhevych, were sentenced to significant prison terms.
In the summer of 1936, Stepan Bandera, along with other members of the Regional Executive of the OUN, was brought to trial in Lvov on charges of leading terrorist activities. The court considered, among other things, the circumstances of the murder of Ivan Babiy and Yakov Bachinsky by members of the OUN. In total, at the Warsaw and Lvov trials, Stepan Bandera was also sentenced to life imprisonment seven times.
In September 1939, when Germany occupied Poland, Stepan Bandera was released and began to actively cooperate with the Abwehr, German military intelligence.
An irrefutable proof of Stepan Bandera's service to the Nazis is the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolz (May 29, 1945).
“... after the end of the war with Poland, Germany was strenuously preparing for a war against the Soviet Union, and therefore, along the line of the Abwehr, measures are being taken to intensify subversive activities. For this purpose, the prominent Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera was recruited, who was released from prison during the war, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. The last one was in touch with me. "
In February 1940, Bandera convened a conference of the OUN in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created, which passed death sentences to the same OUN members for deviating from the line of the organization - Nikolai Stsiborsky, Emelyan Senik, as well as Evgeny Shulga, which were executed.
As follows from the memoirs of Yaroslav Stetsk, Stepan Bandera, through the mediation of Richard Yary, not long before the war, secretly met with Admiral Canaris, the leader of the Abwehr. During the meeting, Bandera, according to Stetsko, "very clearly and clearly presented the Ukrainian position, finding a certain understanding ... from the admiral, who promised support for the Ukrainian political concept."
Three months before the attack on the USSR, Stepan Bandera created a Ukrainian legion from the members of the OUN, which would later become part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment and would be called “Nachtigall”, in Ukrainian “nightingale”. The regiment carried out special assignments for conducting sabotage operations in the rear of the USSR troops.
However, not only Stepan Bandera communicated with the Nazis, but also the persons authorized by them. For example, in the archives of the special services, documents have been preserved that the Bandera themselves offered their services to the Nazis. In the protocol of interrogation of the Abwehr employee Lazarek Yu.D. it is said that he was a witness and participant in negotiations between Abwehr's representative Aikern and Bandera's assistant Nikolai Lebed.
"Lebed said that Bandera will provide the necessary personnel for the schools of saboteurs, they will also be able to agree with the use of the entire underground in Galicia and Volhynia for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes on the territory of the USSR."
To prepare a rebellion on the territory of the USSR, as well as to conduct intelligence activities, Stepan Bandera received two and a half million marks from Nazi Germany.
According to the Soviet counterintelligence, the mutiny was planned for the spring of 1941. Why in the spring? After all, the OUN leadership should have understood that an open speech would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes naturally if you remember that the initial date of the Nazi German attack on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer part of his troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. Interestingly, at the same time, the OUN ordered all OUN members who served in the army or police of Yugoslavia to go over to the side of the Croatian Nazis.
In April 1941, the OUN convened a Great Gathering of Ukrainian Nationalists in Krakow, where Stepan Bandera was elected head of the OUN, and Yaroslav Stetsko as his deputy. In connection with the receipt of new instructions for the underground, the actions of the OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine intensified even more. In April alone, 38 Soviet party workers were killed at their hands, dozens of sabotages were carried out in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans pinned great hopes on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, but Stepan Bandera allowed himself liberties. He could not wait to feel like the head of an independent Ukrainian state and, abusing the trust of his masters from Nazi Germany, proclaimed the "independence" of the Ukrainian state. But Hitler had his own plans, he was interested in free living space, i.e. territories and cheap labor of Ukraine.
The trick with the assertion of statehood was needed in order to show the population its importance. On June 30, 1941, Stepan Bandera in Lvov announced the "revival" of the Ukrainian state.
Residents of the city reacted sluggishly to this message. According to the Lviv priest, doctor of theology, Father G. Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and clergy were herded to this solemn gathering. The residents of the city themselves did not dare to take to the streets and support the proclamation of the Ukrainian state.
The Germans, as mentioned above, had their own selfish interest in Ukraine, and there could be no question of any revival and granting it the status of a state, even under the patronage of Nazi Germany. It would be ridiculous on the part of Germany to give power in the territory that regular German military formations seized to Ukrainian nationalists only because they also took part in hostilities, but basically did the dirty work of punitive civilians and policemen. Although Bandera meekly served the Nazis. This is evidenced by the main text of the Act "Revival of the Ukrainian State" of June 30, 1941:
“The newly reborn Ukrainian State will closely cooperate with the National Socialist Great Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, creates a new order in Europe and the world and helps the Ukrainian people to free themselves from the Moscow occupation.
The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being created on Ukrainian soil, will continue to fight together with the UNION GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for the Sovereign Sovereign Ukrainian Power and a new order in the world. "
Among Ukrainian nationalists and many officials who are at the head of modern Ukraine, the Act of June 30, 1941 is considered the day of independence of Ukraine, and Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko are Heroes of Ukraine. But what kind of heroes are these and how are their methods better than Hitler's? Nothing.
For example, after the proclamation of the Independence Act, Stepan Bandera's supporters staged pogroms in Lviv. Even before the war, Ukrainian Nazis drew up "black lists", as a result, 7 thousand people were killed in the city in 6 days.
This is what Saul Fridman wrote about the massacre organized by Bandera in Lvov in his book Pogromist, published in New York. “During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigall battalion destroyed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lviv. Jews - professors, lawyers, doctors - were forced to lick all the stairs of four-story buildings before execution and carry garbage in their mouths from one building to another. Then, forced to pass through the formation of soldiers with yellow-blakite armbands, they were stabbed to death with bayonets.
In early July 1941, Stepan Bandera, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his associates, were sent to Berlin at the disposal of Abwehr - 2 to Colonel Erwin Stolze. There, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded to abandon the "Revival of the Ukrainian State" Act of June 30, 1941, to which Bandera agreed and called on "the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism."
During their stay in Berlin, numerous meetings began with representatives of various departments, at which the Banderaites persistently assured that without their help the German army could not defeat Muscovy. A numerous stream of messages, explanations, dispatches, "declarations" and "memorandums" went to Hitler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and other Fuhrer of Nazi Germany, in which they either justified themselves or asked for help and support.
Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942; he also succeeded in replacing its commander Dmitry Klyachivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych.
Yes, we must admit that S. Bandera and a number of OUN members spent some time in fact under conditional arrest in the Sachsenhausen camp, and before that he lived at the Abwehr intelligence service dacha. The Germans did this with far-reaching goals, intending to continue using S. Bandera in illegal work in Ukraine. Therefore, they tried to create an image of the enemy of Germany. But most of all they feared that they would simply destroy him for the massacre in Lviv.
Ukrainian nationalists are now trying to pass off the fact that S. Bandera was kept in the German camp as the massacre of the Nazis over him, as a fighter against the invaders of Ukraine. But this is not the case. Bandera's people moved freely around the camp, left it, received food and money. S. Bandera himself attended the school of OUN agents and sabotage cadres, located not far from the camp. The instructor at this school was a recent officer of the special battalion "Nachtigel" Yuri Lopatinsky, through whom S. Bandera communicated with the OUN - UPA, which operated on the territory of Ukraine.
In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of the Nazis. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops, besides, the hatred of local residents towards the OUN-UPA in Volyn and Galicia was so high that they themselves betrayed them or killed them. 
Stepan Bandera, being released from the camp, joined the work as part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow and began to train the OUN-UPA sabotage detachments.
The testimony of a former employee of the Gestapo, Lieutenant Siegfried Müller, given by him during the investigation on September 19, 1945, is irrefutable proof of this.
“On December 27, 1944, I prepared a group of saboteurs for transferring it to the rear of the Red Army with special assignments. In my presence, Stepan Bandera personally instructed these agents and transmitted through them to the UPA headquarters an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and to establish regular radio communications with Abwehrkommando-202 ”.
When the war came to Berlin, Bandera was instructed to form units from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis and to defend Berlin. Bandera created detachments, but escaped himself.
After the end of the war, he lived in Munich, collaborated with the British secret services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected chief of the wire of the entire OUN organization.
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was killed at the entrance of his house. Just retribution took place.
During the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of thousands of people of different nationalities were tortured and killed by the hands of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
The world knows and remembers the monstrous execution by the Germans of several thousand Jews in Khatyn. The fact itself is undeniable, but I would like to clarify one very important point. Who was the direct executor of it? There is a version that the same Ukrainian nationalists, associates of Stepan Bandera. The Nazis did not like to do dirty work themselves; they often shifted it to their lackeys.
Then we did not have time to clarify and double-check all the circumstances of the execution - the Soviet Union was gone.
This is who in Ukraine V. Yushchenko and his associates are erecting on the podium. Then who are they? This is not a rhetorical question, especially in the light of the arming of the Georgian army, the assignment of Ukrainian specialists to it, who participated in the barbaric destruction of South Ossetia, the extermination of hundreds of civilians.
The name of Stepan Bandera is now for many an identical concept of fascism, along with Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini. But for many, Stepan Bandera is a symbol of the struggle for independence, sovereignty and conciliarity of Ukraine, whose personality cult is sacredly revered, and whose nationalist ideas still excite the minds and cause anxiety throughout the world. Stepan Bandera is a native of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which in Austria-Hungary is the theorist and ideologist of all Ukrainian nationalism. Born into the family of a Greek Catholic priest, he was distinguished by religious fanaticism and, at the same time, obedience. He is the organizer of a number of terrorist acts, involved in the massacres of the civilian Polish population during, since 1927 - a member of the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), since 1933 - a member of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). He was also the regional guide of the OUN in the Western Ukrainian lands.
Life of Stepan Bandera (1.01.1909-15.10.1959)
Stepan Bandera - the son of a priest, brought up in the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism, back in 1917 - 1920. commanded various military units that fought against communism. He joined the Union of Nationalist Youth in 1922. And in 1928 he became a student at the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School, entering the agronomic faculty. A year later, in 1929, he completed a training course at the Italian saboteur school. In the same year he became a member of the OUN and soon headed the radical group of this organization. He organized the assassinations of his political opponents, and also led the robberies of post offices and mail trains. He also personally organized the murders of Tadeusz Goluvko (deputy of the Polish Sejm), Yemelyan Chekhovsky (Police Commissioner of Lviv), Andrey Maylov (Secretary of the Soviet Consulate in Lvov). In 1939, Bandera, like many other nationalists, fled to Poland. This was due to the annexation of Western Ukraine to the Soviet Union. In occupied Poland, the Nazis released all members of the OUN, as they saw them as allies in the upcoming war with the Soviet Union. In the same year, having received freedom from the Germans, Bandera raised an uprising against Melnik, the leader of the OUN, whom he considered an unsuitable leader, in view of his lack of initiative.
During the war
On June 30, 1941, on behalf of Bandera, Y. Stetsko proclaimed the creation of Ukraine as a power. At the same time, Stepan's supporters in Lvov staged pogroms in which more than three thousand people died, after which Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo, where he signed an agreement to cooperation, and then called on the entire true Ukrainian people to help the Germans in everything and defeat Moscow. However, despite his agreement to cooperate, he was arrested again in September. He was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp, in which he was kept in quite decent conditions. Bandera was one of the initiators of the creation of the UPA (10/14/42), at the head of which he put, who replaced Klyachkivsky D. The goal of the UPA was, in general, the same - the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. Still, the leaders of the OUN did not recommend fighting the Germans, seeing them as allies. In 1943, the OUN decides, at a meeting with the German authorities, to jointly fight against partisanship. So it was decided that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army would protect the railways from partisans and support any initiatives of the German authorities in the already occupied territories. Germany, in return, supplied Bandera's army with weapons. In 1944, with a new round of cooperation proposed by Himmler, Bandera was released and began training sabotage troops in Krakow, consisting of 202 Abwehr teams. In February 1945, Stepan Bandera took over as the OUN conductor. By the way, he did not leave this post until his death.
After the war
After the end of the war, during 1946 and 1947, Bandera had to hide from the authorities, as he fell into the zone of the American occupation of Germany. Stepan had to live illegally until the early 1950s, when he settled in Munich, where he could live almost legally. Four years later, in 1954, his wife and children joined him in Munich. By this time, the Americans no longer pursued Bandera, leaving him alone, but the agents of the special services of the Soviet Union still continued to hunt and did not give up hope of eliminating the leader of the OUN UPA. The OUN provided Bandera with powerful guards, which, in cooperation with the German criminal police, saved their leader's life several times, preventing attempts on his life. But in 1959, the Security Council of the OUN (b) nevertheless found out that the assassination of Bandera had already been planned and this plan could be carried out at any time. For the sake of safety, he was offered to leave Munich. At first he refused, but then he nevertheless entrusted the preparations for his departure to Stepan "Mechnik", the chief of intelligence of the OUN ZCh.
The murder of Stepan Bandera
On October 15, 1959, OUN leader Stepan was going to go home for lunch. Together with his secretary, he drove to the market, where he made several purchases, then he left the secretary and went home alone. As always, security was waiting for him outside the house. Leaving his car in the garage, Bandera opened the entrance door to the house where he lived with his family and went inside alone. At the entrance, a killer was already waiting for him, who had been following him for several months. The killer, a KGB agent - Bogdan Stashinsky - held in his hand the murder weapon - a syringe pistol hidden in a newspaper wrapped in a tube, filled with cyanide. When Bandera went up to the third floor, when he ran into Stashinsky, he recognized him as the person whom he had seen in the church in the morning. "What are you doing here?" - he asked a logical question. Without answering, Stashinsky raised his hand with the newspaper forward and fired a shot in the face. There was almost no clap from the shot, but the neighbors reacted to Bandera's cry. Under the influence of potassium cyanide, the OUN leader slowly sank to the steps, but Stashinsky was no longer there ... Stepan Bandera died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness.
Monument to Stepan Bandera
At the moment, there are several monuments to the leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera, and all of them are concentrated on the territory of Western Ukraine, more precisely, in Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil regions. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the monument was erected to the centenary of Stepan Bandera in 2009, on the first of January. In Kolomyia, the monument was erected in 1991, on August 18, in Gorodenka - in 2008, on November 30. It is interesting that the monument to Bandera in his small homeland, in Stary Ugrinovo, was blown up by unknown persons twice. Monuments to the OUN leader are also installed in Sambir, Stary Sambir, Lviv, Buchach, Terebovlya, Kremenets, Truskavets, Zalishchyky and many other settlements.
Performance evaluation
Now it is quite difficult to fully assess the activities and personality of the leader of the OUN - Stepan Bandera, because his complete biography still does not exist. It is even more difficult to evaluate books on Ukrainian nationalism because they are written exclusively by Ukrainian nationalists. People who were not involved in the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism have never been involved in researching its activities. Some of the historians accuse Bandera's biographers of sparingly listing facts from his life, saying that he was an obedient son, a devout man to the point of fanaticism, that he was a good friend, and they talk rather dryly about his "heroism" fearing to turn this contradictory figure into a cult of personality. Only one thing is clear, for someone Stepan Bandera is a ruthless killer of thousands and thousands of people, and for someone - a fighter for the independence of his own country. And for such a lofty goal, they say, one cannot disdain by any means, including cooperation with the Nazis and the extermination of civilians, clearing a place on Polish soil in order to then create an independent state of Ukraine there and settle some Ukrainians. For some, Bandera is a romantic utopian, for some, a dictator and tyrant, who from childhood prepared himself for a great mission. In a word, you can't argue with that - he is a very controversial figure.
Igor Nabytovich
Stepan Bandera. Life and work.
On October 12, 1957, on the steps of a house on Karl Street, 8, in Munich, Dr. Lev Rebet, editor of the Ukrainian Samostyynik, one of the leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Abroad (OUN (3)), a longtime political opponent of Bandera, was found dead and OUN (revolutionary).
A medical examination, carried out 48 hours after death, established that death was due to cardiac arrest. On Thursday, October 15, 1959, on the landing of the first floor at Kreitmair Street, 7, in Munich at 13.05, Stepan Bandera, the guide (leader) of the OUN, was found still alive, covered in blood. He lived in this house with his family. He was immediately taken to the hospital. The doctor, when examining the already dead Bandera, found a tied holster with a revolver, and therefore the incident was immediately reported to the criminal police. The examination found that "death was due to violence by poisoning with cyanide potassium."
The German criminal police immediately took a fake trail and were unable to establish anything throughout the investigation. The Wire (Leadership) of the OUN Foreign Units (ZCh OUN) immediately on the day of the death of its leader made a statement that this murder was political and that it was a continuation of a series of assassination attempts begun by Moscow in 1926 by the murder of Simon Petliura in Paris, and in 1938 - Evgeny Konovalets in Rotterdam.
In parallel with the investigation, which was led by the West German police, the OUN ZC Provod created its own commission to investigate the murder of the conductor, which consisted of five OUN members from England, Austria, Holland, Canada and West Germany.
... The last dots over the "i" in the death of Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera were put only at the end of 1961 at the world famous trial in Karlsruhe.
The day before the construction of the Berlin Wall began, on August 12, 1961, a young couple of fugitives from the eastern zone contacted the American police in West Berlin: a citizen of the USSR Bogdan Stashinsky and his wife, a German woman, Inge Pohl. Stashinsky said that he was a KGB officer and, on the orders of this organization, became the killer of exiled politicians Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera ...
A few months before his tragic death, Stepan Bandera wrote "My biographical data", in which he told some facts from his childhood and youth.
Born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary near Kalush during the Austro-Hungarian rule in Galicia (now - Ivano-Frankivsk region).
His father, Andrei Bandera ("Bandera" - translated into modern language means "banner"), was a Greek Catholic priest in the same village and came from Stryi, where he was born into a bourgeois family of Mikhail and Rosalia (maiden name - Beletskaya) Bander ... Mother, Miroslava, was the daughter of a priest from Ugryniv Stary - Vladimir Glodzinsky and Catherine (before marriage - Kushlyk). Stepan was the second child after the older sister Martha. In addition to him, three brothers and three sisters grew up in the family.
Childhood years in his native village passed in the atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism. My father had a large library. The house was often visited by active participants in the national and political life of Galicia. The mother's brothers were well-known political figures in Galicia. Pavlo
Glodzinsky was one of the founders of the Ukrainian organizations "Maslosoyuz" and "Silsky Gospodar", and Yaroslav Veselovsky was a member of the Vienna Parliament.
In October-November 1918, Stepan, as he himself writes, "experienced the exciting events of the revival and construction of the Ukrainian state."
During the Ukrainian-Polish war, his father, Andriy Bandera, volunteered for the Ukrainian Galician Army, becoming a military chaplain. As part of the UGA, he was in the Dnieper region, fought with the Bolsheviks and White Guards. He returned to Galicia in the summer of 1920. In the fall of 1919, Stepan Bandera entered the Ukrainian gymnasium in Stryi, from which he graduated in 1927.
Polish teachers tried to inculcate the "Polish spirit" into the gymnasium environment, and these intentions provoked serious resistance from the gymnasium students.
The defeat of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen led to the self-dissolution of the Streletskaya Rada (July 1920, Prague), and in September of the same year the Ukrainian Military Organization headed by Yevhen Konovalets was created in Vienna. Under the leadership of the UVO, student resistance groups were created in the polonized Ukrainian gymnasiums. Although students of the seventh and eighth grades usually became members of these groups, Stepan Bandera took an active part in them already in the fifth grade. In addition, he was a member of the 5th Kuren of Ukrainian Plastuns (scouts), and after graduating from the gymnasium he moved to Kuren of the Senior Plastuns "Chervona Kalina".
In 1927, Bandera intended to go to study at the Ukrainian Academy of Economics in Podebrady (Czechoslovakia), but could not get a passport to travel abroad. Therefore, he stayed at home, “doing housework and cultural and educational activities in his native village (he worked in the reading room“ Prosvita ”, directed the theater and amateur circle and choir, founded the sports partnership“ Lug ”, participated in organizing a cooperative). At the same time, he carried out organizational and educational work along the line of an underground educational institution in neighboring villages "(" My biographical data ").
In September 1928, Bandera moved to Lvov and entered the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School. He continued his studies until 1934 (from autumn 1928 to mid-1930 he lived in Dublyany, where there was a department of the Lviv Polytechnic). He spent his holidays in the village with his father (his mother died in the spring of 1922).
He never received a diploma in agronomical engineering: political activity and arrest prevented him.
In 1929, the process of uniting all nationalist organizations, which operated separately, into a single Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was completed. Evgeny Konovalets was elected as the OUN conductor, who at the same time continued to lead the UVO. The leadership of the two organizations made it possible to gradually and painlessly transform the UHO into one of the OUN referents, although due to the fact that the UHO was very popular among the people, its nominal independence was retained.
Bandera became a member of the OUN from the beginning of its existence. Having already had experience of revolutionary activity, he began to lead the distribution of underground literature, which was printed outside Poland, in particular, the press organs "Rozbudova Natsiї", "Surma", "Nationalist", banned by the Polish authorities, as well as published clandestinely in Galicia “Buleten Krayovoi Exectivi OUN "," Yunatstvo "," Yunak ". In 1931, after the tragic death of the centurion Julian Golovinsky, who
Konovalets was sent to Western Ukraine to complete the difficult process of uniting the OUN and the UVO, Stepan Okhrimovich became the regional guide of the OUN in the Ukrainian lands occupied by Poland. Okhrimovich knew Bandera from his time at the gymnasium. He introduced him to the Regional Executive (executive body) of the OUN, entrusting him with the leadership of the entire referent of the OUN propaganda in Western Ukraine.
Okhrimovich believed that Bandera, despite his youth, would cope with this task. Stepan Bandera really raised the OUN propaganda work to a high level. He laid the foundation for the propaganda of the OUN on the need to spread the ideas of the OUN not only among the Ukrainian intelligentsia, student youth, but also among the broadest masses of the Ukrainian people.
Mass actions began, which pursued the goal of awakening the national and political activity of the people. Memorial services, festive demonstrations during the construction of symbolic graves for the freedom fighters of Ukraine, honoring fallen heroes on national holidays, antimonopoly and school actions intensified the national liberation struggle in Western Ukraine. The antimonopoly action represented the refusal of Ukrainians to buy vodka and tobacco, the production of which was monopoly on the state. The OUN called: "Get out of the Ukrainian villages and cities vodka and tobacco, because every penny spent on them increases the funds of the Polish invaders, who use them against the Ukrainian people." The school action, which was prepared by Bandera as a referent of the OUN CE, was held in 1933, when he was already the OUN Regional conductor. The action consisted in the fact that schoolchildren threw out the Polish state emblems from school premises, mocked the Polish flag, refused to answer teachers in Polish, and demanded that Polish teachers leave for Poland. On November 30, 1932, a post office was attacked in the Jagiellonian Township. At the same time, Vasyl Bilas and Dmytro Danylyshin were arrested and then hanged in the courtyard of the Lviv prison. Under the leadership of Bandera, a massive publication of the OUN literature about this process was organized. During the execution of Bilas and Danylyshin, bells were ringing in mourning in all the villages of Western Ukraine, saluting the heroes. In 1932, Bandera became the deputy regional guide, and in January 1933 he began to act as the regional guide of the OUN. The Conference of the OUN Wire in Prague in early June of the same 1933 formally approved Stepan Bandera at the age of 24 as the regional guide.
Serious work began to eliminate the long-standing conflict that arose in the process of uniting the OUN and the UVO, expanding the organizational structure of the OUN, organizing the underground training of personnel.
Under the leadership of Bandera, the OUN withdraws from expropriation actions and begins a series of punitive actions against representatives of the Polish occupation authorities.
Three of the most famous political assassinations of that time received wide publicity around the world, once again made it possible to put the Ukrainian problem in the center of attention of the world community. On October 21 of the same year, an 18-year-old student of Lviv University, Mykola Lemyk, entered the USSR consulate, killed a KGB officer A. Maylov, claiming that he had come to avenge the artificial famine staged by the Russian Bolsheviks in Ukraine.
This political assassination was personally directed by Stepan Bandera. OUN combat assistant Roman Shukhevych ("Dzvin") drew a plan for the embassy and developed a plan for the assassination attempt.
Lemyk voluntarily surrendered to the police, and the trial over him made it possible to declare to the whole world that the famine in Ukraine is a real fact, which the Soviet and Polish press and official authorities are silent about.
Another political murder was committed by Grigory Matseiko ("Gonta") on June 16, 1934. His victim was the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Peratsky. The resolution on the murder of Peratsky was adopted at a special conference of the OUN in April 1933 in Berlin, in which Andriy Melnyk and others took part from the Wire of Ukrainian Nationalists, and Stepan Bandera, acting regional guide, from the OUN CE. This murder was an act of revenge for "pacification" in Galicia in 1930. Then the Polish authorities pacified the Galicians with mass beatings, destroying and burning Ukrainian reading rooms and economic institutions. On October 30, centurion Yulian Golovinsky, the chairman of the OUN CE and the regional commandant of the UVO, who was betrayed by the provocateur Roman Baranovsky, was brutally tortured. The head of the "pacification" was Vice Minister of Internal Affairs Peratsky. He also directed similar "pacification" operations in Polesie and Volhynia in 1932, was the author of the plan for the "destruction of Russia" 4.
The plan of the assassination attempt was developed by Roman Shukhevych, it was put into action by Mykola Lebed (“Marko”), the general leadership was carried out by Stepan Bandera (“Baba”, “Fox”).
The Polish magazine "Revolt Mlodykh" on December 20, 1933 in its article "Five to twelve" wrote: "... The mysterious OUN - the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - is stronger than all the legal Ukrainian parties put together. It dominates the youth, it shapes public opinion, it acts at a terrible pace to draw the masses into the cycle of revolution ... Today it is already clear that time is working against us. Every headman in Lesser Poland and even Volyn can name several villages that until recently were completely passive, but today they strive to fight, are ready for anti-state actions. This means that the strength of the enemy has increased, and the Polish state has lost a lot. " This powerful and mysterious OUN was led by a little-known young intelligent student Stepan Bandera.
On June 14, the day before the assassination of General Peratsky, the Polish police arrested Bandera, along with his comrade, engineer Bogdan Pidgain ("Bull"), the second (together with Shukhevych) combat assistant of the OUN CE, when they tried to cross the Czech-Polish border. After the death of Peratsky, the arrest of Yaroslav Karpinets, a chemistry student at the Jagiellonian University, and a search at his apartment in Krakow, when a number of items were found that confirmed his involvement in the manufacture of the bomb left by Matseiko at the scene of the assassination, an investigation began: the police recorded Bandera's contacts and Pidgainy with Karpinets in Krakow. Several other members of the organization who were involved in the murder of the minister were arrested, including Lebed and his fiancee, future wife, Dariya Gnatkivskaya.
The investigation dragged on for a long time, and, perhaps, the suspects could not have been put on trial, but about two thousand documents of the OUN - the so-called "Senyk archive", which was located in Czecho-Slovakia, fell into the hands of the police. These documents enabled the Polish police to identify a large number of members and leaders of the OUN. Two years of interrogation, physical and mental torture. Bandera was kept in a solitary confinement cell, shackled. But even in these conditions, he looked for opportunities to contact friends, support them, tried to find out the reasons for the failure. During the meal, his hands were loosened, and during this time he managed to write notes to friends on the bottom of the plate.
From November 18, 1935 to January 13, 1936, the trial of twelve members of the OUN, accused of complicity in the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky, took place in Warsaw. Together with Bandera, Daria Gnatkivskaya, Yaroslav Karpintsa, Yakov Chorniy, Yevgeny Kachmarsky, Roman Mygal, Ekaterina Zaritskaya, Yaroslav Rak, Mykola Lebed were tried. The indictment consisted of 102 typewritten pages. The accused refused to speak Polish, greeted with a greeting: "Glory to Ukraine!" On January 13, 1936, the verdict was announced: Bandera, Lebed, Karpinets were sentenced to death, the rest - from 7 to 15 years in prison.
The trial caused a worldwide resonance, the Polish government did not dare to carry out the sentence and began negotiations with legal Ukrainian political parties on the "normalization" of Ukrainian-Polish relations. Bandera and his friends had the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment.
This made it possible to organize another trial over Bandera and members of the OUN Regional Executive, this time in Lviv, in the case of several terrorist acts committed by the OUN. At the Lviv trial, which began on May 25, 1936, there were already 21 accused in the dock. Here Bandera openly acted as the regional conductor of the OUN.
At the Warsaw and Lviv trials, Stepan Bandera was sentenced together to seven life sentences. Several attempts to prepare his jailbreak were unsuccessful. Bandera remained behind bars until 1939 - until the occupation of Poland by the Germans.
Already at this time, the NKVD was interested in the OUN, in particular Bandera. On June 26, 1936, when Bandera testified at the Lvov trial, the Moscow diplomat Svetnyala listened attentively to his words in the hall. Bandera, explaining the purpose and methods of the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists against Russian Bolshevism, said: “The OUN opposes Bolshevism because Bolshevism is the system by which Moscow enslaved the Ukrainian nation, destroying the Ukrainian statehood ...
Bolshevism by methods of physical destruction is fighting the Ukrainian people in the Eastern Ukrainian lands, namely by mass shootings in the GPU dungeons, the destruction of millions of people by hunger and constant exile to Siberia, to Solovki ... The Bolsheviks use physical methods, therefore we use physical methods in the fight against them ... "
After the capture of Poland by the Germans, new invaders came to Western Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainian political prisoners were released from Polish prisons, including Stepan Bandera.
At the end of September 1939, he secretly arrived in Lvov, where for several weeks he was developing a strategy for the future struggle.
The main thing is the creation of a dense network of OUN throughout Ukraine, the establishment of its large-scale activities. A plan of action was thought out in case of mass repressions and deportations by the Soviet occupiers of the population of Western Ukraine.
By order of the OUN Provod, Bandera went abroad, to Krakow. Here he married Yaroslav Oparivskaya. The “revolutionaries” in the OUN, whose leader was Stepan Bandera, believed that Ukraine should, on its own, not relying on anyone's mercy, not being an obedient instrument in the wrong hands, to win independence in the struggle.
The events that took place in the summer of 1941, before and after the Act of the Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood, showed that Bandera was completely correct in that Ukraine should not expect mercy from Hitler.
Preparing for the fight against the Moscow-Bolshevik invaders, the OUN-revolutionary decided to use the internal disagreements between some military circles of the Wehrmacht and the Nazi party to organize Ukrainian training groups for the German army. The northern Ukrainian legion "Nachtigall" ("Nightingale") was created under the leadership of Roman Shukhevych and the southern legion "Roland". The preconditions for their creation were that these formations were intended only for the fight against the Bolsheviks and were not considered part of the German army; on their uniforms, the soldiers of these legions were supposed to wear a trident and go into battle under blue-yellow banners.
The leadership of the OUN (r) planned that with the arrival in Ukraine, these legions should become the embryo of an independent national army. On June 30, 1941, immediately after the flight of the Bolsheviks, the National Assembly in Lvov proclaimed the Act of the Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood. The Chairman of the National Assembly Yaroslav Stetsko was authorized to create a Provisional Government to organize the Ukrainian power structures.
Hitler instructed Himmler to urgently liquidate the "Bandera sabotage", the creation of an independent Ukrainian state was by no means included in the plans of the Nazis.
An SD team and a special group of the Gestapo immediately arrived in Lviv to "liquidate the conspiracy of the Ukrainian self-styled". An ultimatum was presented to Prime Minister Stetsko: to invalidate the Act of the Renewal of the Ukrainian State. After a decisive refusal, Stetsko and several other members of the government were arrested. OUN conductor Bandera was arrested in Krakow.
Hundreds of Ukrainian patriots were thrown into concentration camps and prisons by the Nazis. Mass terror began. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Stepan Bandera's brothers, Oleksa and Vasyl, were brutally tortured.
When the arrests began, both Ukrainian legions, Nachtigall and Roland, refused to obey the German military command and were disbanded, their commanders arrested.
Bandera stayed in a concentration camp until the end of 1944.
Feeling the strength of the UPA on their own skin, the Germans began to look for an ally against Moscow in the OUN-UPA. In December 1944, Bandera and several other members of the OUN-Revolutionary were released. They were offered negotiations on possible cooperation. The very first condition of the negotiations, Bandera put forward the recognition of the Act of the Renewal of Ukrainian Statehood and the creation of the Ukrainian army as separate, independent from the German armed forces of an independent state. The Nazis did not agree to recognize the independence of Ukraine and sought to create a pro-German puppet government and Ukrainian military formations as part of the German army.
Bandera resolutely rejected these proposals.
All subsequent years of S. Bandera's life, up to the tragic death, were a time of struggle and hard work outside Ukraine for its good in semi-legal conditions of a foreign environment.
After August 1943, from the III Extraordinary Great Gathering of the OUN, at which the leadership passed to the Bureau of the OUN Wire, and until the February 1945 conference, Roman Shukhevych ("Tour") was the chairman of the Organization. The February conference elected a new composition of the Wire Bureau (Bandera, Shukhevych, Stetsko). Stepan Bandera again became the head of the OUN (r), and Roman Shukhevych became his deputy and chairman of the Provod in Ukraine. The OUN wire decided that in connection with the Moscow-Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine and the unfavorable international situation, the OUN conductor must constantly stay abroad. Bandera, after whom the national liberation movement against the occupation of Ukraine was named, was dangerous for Moscow. A powerful ideological and punitive machine was set in motion. In February 1946, speaking on behalf of the Ukrainian SSR at a session of the UN General Assembly in London, the poet Mykola Bazhan demanded that Western states extradite a large number of Ukrainian politicians in exile, first of all Stepan Bandera.
During 1946-1947, the American military police hunted for Bandera in the American occupation zone of Germany. In the last 15 years of his life, Stepan Bandera (Veslyar) published a large number of theoretical works that analyzed the political situation in the world, in the USSR, in Ukraine, and identified ways of further struggle. These articles have not lost their significance in our time. As a warning to the current builders of "independent" Ukraine in the close embrace of its northern neighbor, S. Bandera's words from the article "A Word to Ukrainian Nationalist Revolutionaries Abroad" : “The main goal and the main principle of all Ukrainian politics is and should be the restoration of the Ukrainian Independent Cathedral State through the elimination of the Bolshevik occupation and the dismemberment of the Russian Empire into independent national states. Only then can the unification of these independent national states take place into blocs or alliances on the basis of geopolitical, economic, defense and cultural interests on the grounds presented above. The concepts of evolutionary restructuring or the transformation of the USSR into a union of free states, but also united, in the same composition, with a predominant or central position of Russia - such concepts contradict the idea of the liberation of Ukraine, they must be completely eliminated from Ukrainian politics.
The Ukrainian people will be able to achieve an independent state only through struggle and labor. The favorable development of the international situation can greatly help the expansion and success of our liberation struggle, but it can play only an auxiliary, albeit very useful, role. Without an active struggle of the Ukrainian people, the most favorable situations will never give us state independence, but only the replacement of one enslavement by another. Russia, with its deeply rooted, and in the modern era, the most incandescent conquering imperialism, in every situation, in every state, with all its might, with all its ferocity, will rush to Ukraine in order to keep it within its empire or to enslave it anew. Both the liberation and the defense of Ukraine's independence can basically rely only on its own Ukrainian forces, on its own struggle and constant readiness for self-defense.
The murder of S. Bandera was the final link in a 15-year chain of permanent hunt for the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists.
In 1965, in Munich, a 700-page book was published - "The Moscow murderers of Bandera before the court", which contains a large number of facts and documents about the political murder of Bandera, the responses of the world community about the trial of Stashinsky in Karlsruhe, a detailed description of the process itself. The book describes a number of attempts to assassinate Bandera. And how many remain unknown?
In 1947, an attempt on Bandera was prepared on the orders of the MGB by Yaroslav Moroz, who was tasked with committing the murder so that it looked like an emigrant settling of scores. The assassination attempt was discovered by the OUN Security Service.
In early 1948, MGB agent Vladimir Stelmashchuk ("Zhabski", "Kovalchuk"), a captain of the underground Polish Regional Army, arrived from Poland to West Germany. Stelmashuk managed to reach Bandera's place of residence, but realizing that the OUN became aware of his agent activities, he disappeared from the FRG.
In 1950, the OUN Security Council learned about the preparation of an assassination attempt on Bandera by the KGB base in the capital of Czecho-Slovakia, Prague.
The following year, the MGB agent, a German from Volyn Stepan Libgolts, began to collect data on Bandera. Later, the KGB used it in a provocation associated with the escape of Bandera's killer, Stashinsky, to the West. In March 1959, in Munich, a certain Vintsik was arrested by the German criminal police, allegedly an employee of some Czech company, who was strenuously searching for the address of the school where Stepan Bandera's son Andrei studied. ZC OUN had information that in the same year the KGB, using the experience of destroying Petliura, was preparing for an attempt on the life of a young Pole, whose relatives were allegedly destroyed by Bandera in Galicia. And finally, Bogdan Stashinsky, a native of the village of Borschovychi near Lviv. Even before the murder of Rebet, Stashinsky met a German woman Inge Paul, whom he married in early 1960. Inge Pohl obviously played a big role in opening Stashinsky's eyes to the communist Soviet reality. Realizing that the KGB, covering their tracks, would destroy him, Stashinsky fled with his wife to the American zone of West Berlin the day before the funeral of his little son.
After the engagement to Inge Pol in April 1959, Stashinsky was summoned to Moscow and ordered to kill Bandera at the "higher authority". But then, in May, having left for Munich and tracked down the OUN guide, at the last minute Stashinsky did not control himself and fled.
On October 2, 1959, 13 days before Bandera's death, the OUN Security Council abroad became aware of Moscow's decision to kill the conductor. But they did not save him ... When on October 15 Bandera was returning home at one o'clock in the afternoon, Stashinsky approached him on the steps of the stairs and from a two-channel "pistol" wrapped in a newspaper shot him in the face with hydrocyanic acid ...
Once upon a time, the hands of Ukrainian lads captured by the Tatars, turned into janissaries, were exterminated by their brothers. Now the Ukrainian Stashinsky, the lackey of the Moscow-Bolshevik invaders, has destroyed the Ukrainian guide with his own hands ...
The news of Stashinsky's escape to the West became a bomb explosion of a large political force. The trial of him in Karlsruhe showed that the orders for political assassinations were issued by the first leaders of the USSR, members of the CPSU Central Committee.
... On the quiet fashionable street Liverpool Road, 200, almost in the center of London, the Stepan Bandera Museum stores the personal belongings of the OUN conductor, clothes with traces of his blood, a death mask. The museum is designed in such a way that you can only enter it from inside the premises. The time will come - and the exhibits of this museum will be transferred to Ukraine, for which her great son fought all his life and for which her great son died.
The son of a Uniate priest, who in 1917-20 commanded various anti-communist military units (later he was shot, and Bandera's two sisters were exiled to Siberia). After the end of the civil war, this part of Ukraine became part of Poland. In 1922 he joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he entered the agronomic faculty of the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School. In 1929 he took a course at an Italian intelligence school. In 1929 he entered the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by E. Konovalets and soon headed the most radical "youth" group. From the beginning of 1929 a member, from 1932-33 - deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN. Organized robberies of mail trains and post offices, as well as the murder of opponents. At the beginning of 1933, he headed the OUN regional wire in Galicia, where he organized a struggle against the policies of the Polish authorities. Organizer of the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky (1934). At the trial in Warsaw in early 1936 he was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment. In the summer of 1936, another trial took place - in Lvov - over the leadership of the OUN, where Bandera was sentenced to a similar one. After the occupation by German troops, Poland was liberated, collaborated with the Abwehr. After the murder by agents of the NKVD Konovalets (1938) came into conflict with A. Melnik, who was claiming leadership in the OUN. In Feb. 1940 convened a conference of the OUN in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created, which passed death sentences to Melnik's supporters. In 1940, the confrontation with the Melnikovites took the form of an armed struggle. In apr. 1941 OUN split into OUN-M (supporters of Melnik) and OUN-B (supporters of Bandera), which was also called OUN-R (OUN-revolutionaries), and Bandera was elected chief of the main line. Before the start of World War II, 3 marching groups (about 40 thousand people) were formed, which were supposed to form the Ukrainian administration in the occupied territories. Bandera tried with the help of these groups to proclaim the independence of Ukraine, presenting Germany with a fact. 6/30/1941 on his behalf J. Stetsko proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian state. At the same time, Bandera's supporters staged a pogrom in Lviv, during which approx. 3 thousand people On July 5, he was arrested in Krakow by the Gestapo. Bandera was demanded to abandon the Act of 6/30/1941, B. agreed and called on "the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism." On Sept. arrested again and placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept in good conditions. One of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on 10/14/1942, succeeded in replacing its chief commander D. Klyachkivsky with his protege R. Shukhevych. The goal of the UPA was proclaimed the struggle for the independence of Ukraine against both the Bolsheviks and the Germans. Nevertheless, the OUN leadership did not recommend "resorting to battles with large German forces." In early August 1943 in Sarny, Rivne region, a meeting of representatives of the German authorities and the OUN took place to agree on joint actions against the partisans, then the negotiations were transferred to Berlin. An agreement was reached that the UPA will protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans, and support the activities of the German occupation authorities. In return, Germany promised to supply units of the UPA with weapons and ammunition, and in the event of the victory of the Nazis over the USSR, to allow the creation of a Ukrainian state under the protectorate of Germany. On Sept. 1944 the position of the German authorities changed (according to G. Himmler, "a new stage of cooperation began") and Bandera was released. As part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow, he trained the OUN sabotage units. From Feb. 1945 and until his death he served as the head (conductor) of the OUN. In the summer of 1945, he issued a secret decree, which, in particular, spoke of the need “immediately and most secretly ... to eliminate the aforementioned elements of the OUN and UPA (those who may surrender to the authorities) in two ways: a) send large and insignificant units of the UPA to battle with the Bolsheviks and create situations so that they would be destroyed by the Soviets in their posts and an ambush
Portrait of Stepan Bandera at the "Bandera March" in Kiev. Photo by Yaroslav Debely for "Lenta.Ru"
dakh ". After the end of the war, he lived in Munich, collaborated with the British special services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected chief of the wire of the entire OUN (which actually meant the unification of the OUN-B and OUN-M). Killed (poisoned) by an agent of the KGB of the USSR - a recruited member of the OUN Bandera Strashinsky. Later, Strashinsky surrendered to the authorities and showed that the order to eliminate Bandera was personally given by the chairman of the KGB of the USSR A.N. Shelepin. After the collapse of the USSR and the proclamation of Ukraine's independence, Byelorussia became a symbol of independence for all radical Ukrainian nationalists. In 2000, the right-wing parties of Ivano-Frankivsk oblast called for the transfer of B.'s ashes to their homeland and the opening of a historical and memorial complex.
Used material of the book: Zalessky K.A. Who was who in the second world war. Allies of Germany. Moscow, 2003
Stepan Andreevich Bandera - the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugriniv, Kalush district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a Greek Catholic priest.
Short plan:
Childhood and family
Father Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera was a village priest. During the service, he actively promoted the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism to fellow villagers. After the Great October Revolution in 1919, his father was elected to the National Council of the West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR), then fought in the ranks of Denikin's army. After returning home, Andrei Mikhailovich continued to serve in the church in his previous position.
Stepan's mother's name was Miroslava Vladimirovna. Like her husband, she also grew up in the family of a minister of the church. The family had six children, all of whom lived in a small house near the church. Brothers and sisters were brought up in love for their homeland, in the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism.
The boy grew up surrounded by sincere believers. Stepan's parents were parishioners of the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church.
Father was arrested on the first day of the war, two weeks later he was shot in the dungeons of the NKVD. Brothers Alexander and Vasily, like Stepan, were also active leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. They were arrested by the German Gestapo in occupied Lvov. They were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they soon died.
The beginning of a political career
In 1922 he joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he became a student of the agronomic faculty of the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School (however, he did not manage to finish it).
After a fairly short time, having entered the organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN), he headed the most radical youth group. The goal of the OUN was to create an independent Ukrainian state in the eastern lands of Poland.
Bandera's career was on the upward trend. In 1933, having become the plenipotentiary representative of the OUN in Galicia and Bukovina, he was actively involved in the struggle against the Polish authorities. The revolutionary took an active part in retaliation and assassinations. For example, he was one of the organizers of the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky.
All the organizers of this crime were arrested by the Polish police in the summer of 1936. The leaders of the conspiracy (including Bandera) were sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Subversive activities
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bandera left the prison walls and began to actively cooperate with the German military intelligence "Abwehr". In April 1941, Stepan was elected head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Cooperation with the Nazis continued.
Shortly before Germany attacked the USSR, Bandera created a Ukrainian legion from the members of the OUN. A little later this legion, which bore the name "Nachtigall", became part of the "Brandenburg-800" regiment. 2.5 million marks, received by Bandera from the Nazis, were intended for conducting subversive activities and intelligence operations on the territory of the Soviet Union.
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." At the end of June 1941 "Nachtigall" entered Lvov together with the Nazis. On the same day, the restoration of the great Ukrainian state was proclaimed.
Bandera ignored the opinion of the German command on this matter. The Act on the revival of the Ukrainian state was read out, and an order was issued on the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the creation of a national government.
The Nazis in response to this "self-righteousness" immediately took action. Bandera was arrested, and 15 leaders of Ukrainian nationalists were shot. Legion "Nachtigall" (in whose ranks after the repressions fermentation began), was withdrawn from the front. Then he was engaged in the implementation of police functions in the occupied territories.
Bandera spent a year and a half in prison, after which he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, he, along with other Ukrainian nationalists, was held here in privileged conditions. Bandera not only could meet with each other, but also receive food and money from their relatives. More than once they left the camp. The purpose of their "walks" was contacts with the "conspiratorial" OUN. The nationalists also visited the Friedenthal castle, where the school of the OUN intelligence and sabotage cadres was located.
Nationalist Stepan Bandera
It was he who was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (October 14, 1942), the purpose of which was to proclaim the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. An agreement was reached between representatives of the German authorities and the OUN that the UPA would protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans, and provide full support to the German occupation forces.
And what was promised to Bandera in return? The supply of ammunition and weapons to units of the UPA and even the possibility of creating a Ukrainian state in the event of a victory of the Nazis over the USSR, however, under the protectorate of Germany. Fighters of the rebel army took part in the punitive operations of the fascists. Until the end of hostilities, Bandera collaborated with the "Abwehr" in terms of training sabotage groups.
Wife and kids
The wife of Yaroslav Vasilievna Bandera was also actively involved in politics. After the death of her husband, she lived in Munich until 1977, where she was buried next to Stepan's grave.
Their children: two daughters Lesya, Natalia, son Andrey. Currently, they are no longer alive either.
Modern Ukraine and Bandera
In 1992, after the 50th anniversary of the UPA was celebrated, attempts were made in Ukraine to give its participants the status of war veterans. And then the responsibility for cooperation with Nazi Germany and the recognition of the UPA as a national liberation movement that defended the "true" independence of Ukraine was removed from the OUN.
In January 2010, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine (posthumously). The decree on this was signed by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, and his second decree recognized the members of the UPA as fighters for the independence of Ukraine.
Main results
Bandera continued his activities in the OUN (its centralized management was in West Germany). In 1947 he became its leader. In 1953 and 1955 he was re-elected to this position. Later, Ukrainian nationalists were actively used by the special services of Western countries in the fight against the USSR.
In the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, exported from the territory of East Germany. October 15, 1959 Stepan Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by a KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.
Causes of death
There is an official version that the murder of Stepan Bandera was committed by one of the NKVD officers. This happened on October 15, 1959. The name of the killer is Bogdan Stashinsky. The offender was hiding in the entrance of the house where the Western politician lived, the pistol was loaded with a bullet with potassium cyanide. Bandera was shot in the face. Ambulance doctors called by neighbors could not save his life. Stepan died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness.
Monuments to Bandera
In Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk regions there are monuments to Stepan Bandera. In many cities and villages of Western Ukraine, streets are named after him.
Many veterans of the Great Patriotic War do not agree with this policy of the Ukrainian authorities. They accuse Bandera of collaborating with the Nazis. However, part of the Ukrainian society (living mainly in the west of the country) considers him a national hero. Well, time will put everything in its place.
Who are Bandera
In modern Ukraine, simultaneously with the military confrontation, no less fierce battles are taking place in the information space. The topic raised by the followers of Stepan Bandera often comes to the fore. Some people consider this politician a real hero, others hold the opposite opinion. Most of today's young people are also fighting for the country's independence.
