The true biography of Stepan Bandera. Stepan Bandera - biography, photo, personal life of a Ukrainian nationalist
Photo vfl.ru: "SS Captain" (SS Hauptsturmführer)
Stepan Bendera (middle) in Nazi-occupied Poland before the attack on the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1943, the 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 the Ukrainian nationalists, who acted under the leadership of Stepan Bender (Bander and other nicknames).
Gauleiter of Ukraine Erich Koch after the Second World War, the death penalty on the initiative of Stalin was commuted to life imprisonment (He died at 90 years old (1986). information."
In fact, the order to Kuznetsov to liquidate Koch at the height of the war was also canceled by Stalin. Information about the recruitment of Koch by the counterintelligence of the USSR was declassified recently. Stalin guaranteed Koch's life and kept his promise...
After Stalin's death, Koch admitted that “I saved Stalin by warning him of 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 follow the orders of the Nazi elite. I did not share the ideology of the NSDLP…”.
Further there are inserts (translated from English) from Koch's memoirs concerning Bender.
In the spring of 1943, the Germans began the formation of the 14th SS division from Ukrainian volunteers from the Galicia district and the "Ukrainian Liberation Army" - (UVV) from "Eastern Ukrainians", mostly prisoners of war.
In 1944, the OUN and the 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 autumn of 1944, the Germans released S. Bendera and Ya. Stetsko with a group of previously detained OUN leaders. The German press published numerous articles about the successes of the UPA in the fight against the Bolsheviks, calling the members of the UPA "Ukrainian freedom fighters."
In the postwar period, members of the OUN(b) tried to deny their involvement in the massacres and cooperation with the Germans, some documents were even falsified.
By its cruelty, Bender / Bandera can be put on a par with the most bloodthirsty tyrants. If, by an evil 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 the Bandera gangs, the purpose of which was to spread their influence deep into the Soviet territories, would have been successful - conducting anti-Soviet propaganda and mobilization into their ranks of the 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 Soviet Union, then the rivers of blood would have flooded 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 Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), in a Greek Catholic family parish priest Andrei Bandera, who received a theological education at Lviv University. His mother, Miroslava, was also 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 vibrant national-cultural, political and public interests. Was at home a big library, active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often gathered "...
Stepan Bandera began his "revolutionary" path in 1922, joining the Ukrainian scout organization "Plast", and in 1928 - in the revolutionary Ukrainian military organization (UVO). In 1929, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by Yevgeny Konovalts 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 destroyed.
At this time, the OUN established close contacts with German foreign intelligence, the headquarters of the organization was located in Berlin, at 11 Hauptstrasse, under the sign "Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany." BANDERA HAS BEEN TRAINED AT THE INTELLIGENCE SCHOOL IN DANZIG.
From 1932 to 1933, Bandera was deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN, organized the robberies of mail 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 Alexei Maylov was killed in Lvov. Interestingly, not long before this, a former resident of German intelligence in Poland, Major Knauer, showed up in the OUN. According to Polish intelligence, on the eve of the murder, the OUN received from the Abwehr (a body of military intelligence and counterintelligence Nazi Germany) 40 thousand Reichsmarks.
With the coming to power of Hitler 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 - barracks were built at the expense of German intelligence, where OUN militants were trained. In the same year, the Polish Minister of the Interior, General Bronislaw Peracki, strongly condemned Germany's plans to capture Danzig, which, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, was declared a "free city" under the control of the League of Nations. Hitler himself instructed Richard Jarom, the German intelligence agent who oversaw 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, 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 before a court in Lvov on charges of directing the terrorist activities of the OUN-UVO. In particular, the court considered the circumstances of the murder by members of the OUN of the director of the gymnasium Ivan Babiy and the student Yakov Bachinsky, who were accused by the nationalists in connection with the Polish police. In this process, Bandera has already openly acted as a regional conductor of the OUN. In total, Stepan Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment seven times at the Warsaw and Lvov trials.
In September 1939, when Germany occupied Poland, Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Abwehr, was released. Irrefutable evidence 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 are being taken through the Abwehr to intensify subversive activities, since those measures that were carried out through MELNIK and other agents seemed insufficient. For these purposes, a prominent Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera was recruited, who during the war was released from prison, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. The last one in touch was with me.”
After the murder in 1938 by the NKVD of Yevgeny Konovalets in Italy, OUN meetings took place, at which Yevgeny Konovalets' successor Andriy Melnyk was proclaimed (his supporters declared him the head of the PUN - Seeing off Ukrainian nationalists). Stepan Bandera did not agree with this decision. After the release of Stepan Bandera from prison by the Nazis, a split in the OUN became inevitable. Having read in a Polish prison the works of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Dmitry Dontsov, Stepan Bandera believed that the OUN was not “revolutionary” enough in its essence, and only he, Stepan Bandera, was able to rectify the situation.
In February 1940, Stepan Bandera convened an OUN conference in Krakow, at which a tribunal was established that sentenced Melnik's supporters to death. The confrontation with the Melnikovists took the form of an armed struggle: the Bandera killed several members of the "Melnikov's" Provod of the OUN: Nikolai Stsiborsky and Emelyan Senik, as well as a prominent "Melnikovist" Yevgeny Shulga.
As follows from the memoirs of Yaroslav Stetsko, Stepan Bandera, through the mediation of Richard Yaroy 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 Ukrainian positions, having found a certain understanding from the admiral, who promised support for the Ukrainian political concept, believing that only with its implementation is the victory of the Germans over Russia possible." Stepan Bandera himself pointed out 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 the 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 a 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) there are documents confirming that Bandera themselves offered their services to the Nazis. In the protocol of interrogation of an Abwehr officer, Yu.D. Lazarek says that he was a witness and participant in the negotiations between Abwehr representative Aikern and Bandera’s assistant Nikolai Lebed: “Lebed said that Bandera would provide the necessary personnel for schools of saboteurs, they would also be able to agree to the use of the entire underground of Galicia and Volhynia for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes on 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, the headquarters of the Bandera OUN decided to transfer the leading personnel to Volhynia and Galicia to organize a rebellion. According to the Soviet counterintelligence, the rebellion was planned for the spring of 1941. Why in the spring? The leadership of the OUN should have understood that open action would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes by itself if we remember that the original date of the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer part of the troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. At the same time, the leadership of the OUN issued 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 the Great Assembly 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 activities of the OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine became even more active. In April alone, they killed 38 Soviet party workers, carried out dozens of sabotage in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.
After the last Gathering, the OUN finally split into OUN-(M) (supporters of Melnik) and OUN-(B) (supporters of Bandera), 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 significant differences between the two:
“If Melnik is a calm, intelligent person, then Bandera is a careerist, a fanatic and a bandit.”
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans had high hopes for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Bandera OUN-(B) than for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Melnyk OUM-(M) and Bulba Borovets’ Polessky Sich, who also sought to gain power in Ukraine under the 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 with the establishment of Ukraine as an independent state was needed in order to show the population its importance, here there were personal ambitions. On June 30, 1941, Bandera's ally Yaroslav Stetsko from the city hall in Lvov announced the decision of the leadership of the OUN (B) Wire to "revive the Ukrainian state."
Residents of Lviv reacted sluggishly to information about the revival of Ukrainian statehood. According to the words of the Lvov priest, doctor of theology father Gavril Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and the clergy were rounded up. The inhabitants of the city 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 forcibly driven to participate in this event.
“The newly resurgent 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 ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for the Sovereign Collective Ukrainian State and a new order throughout the world.
Let the Ukrainian Sovereign Collective 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 among a number of officials 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 Heroes of Ukraine.
Simultaneously with the proclamation of the Act, supporters of Stepan Bandera staged a pogrom in Lvov. Ukrainian nationalists acted on 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 organized by Bandera in Lvov in the book “Pogromist”, published in New York: “During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigal battalion killed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lvov. 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 line of warriors with yellow-black armbands, they were stabbed with bayonets.
However, Germany had its own plans for Ukraine, it was interested in free living space: territory and cheap work force. Give power on the territory, which was seized by regular German military formations, to Ukrainian nationalists only because, although they took part in the hostilities, they basically carried out dirty work punishers and policemen, it would be reckless on the part of Germany. Therefore, from the point of view of the German leadership, there could be no question of any revival and granting Ukraine the status of a state, even under the patronage of Nazi Germany.
Bypassed by a younger competitor, Andrei Melnik wrote a letter to Hitler and Governor-General Frank stating that "Bandera's behavior is unworthy and created their own government without the knowledge of the Fuhrer." After that, Hitler ordered the arrest of Stepan Bandera and his "government". In early July 1941, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow and, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his associates, was sent to Berlin at the disposal of the Abwehr - to Colonel Erwin Stolze. After the arrival of Stepan Bandera in Berlin, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded that he abandon the Act of "Revival of the Ukrainian State". Stepan Bandera agreed and called on "the Ukrainian people to help everywhere german army smash 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 "honorary arrest." Yes, it’s really honorable: “From the wilderness to the court”, to the “proposed 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, the Banderaites repeatedly met with representatives of various departments, assuring them that without their help the German army would not be able to defeat Moscow. Messages, explanations, dispatches, "declarations" and "memorandums" were sent to Hitler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and other leaders of Nazi Germany with justifications and requests for assistance and support. In his letters, Stepan Bandera proved his loyalty to the Fuhrer and the German army and tried to convince of the urgent need for the OUN-B for Germany.
The efforts of Stepan Bandera were not in vain, and the German leadership took the next step: Andriy Melnik was allowed to continue to openly curry favor with Berlin, and Stepan Bandera was ordered to portray the enemy of the Germans so that he could, hiding behind anti-Nazi slogans, restrain the Ukrainian masses from a real, irreconcilable struggle against 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 in June 1941 in Lvov, Stepan Bandera could have been killed by his own people, but Nazi Germany still needed him. This gave rise to a legend that Bandera did not cooperate with the Germans and even entered into a fight with them, but the documents say otherwise.
In the concentration camp, Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko and another 300 Bandera were kept separately in the Zellenbau bunker, where they were kept in good conditions. Bandera was allowed to meet, they received food and money from relatives and the OUN-B. Often they left the camp in order to contact the "secret" fighters of the OUN-UPA, and also visited the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the Zellenbau bunker), which housed the school of OUN agents and sabotage personnel. The instructor at this school was a former officer of the Nachtigall 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, he also succeeded in replacing its chief commander Dmitry Klyachkivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych.
In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of the Nazis. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops. The hatred of the inhabitants of Volhynia and Galicia for the OUN-UPA was so great that they betrayed them to the Soviet troops or killed them themselves. In order to activate the OUN 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 went to work as part of the 202nd "Schutzmannschaft" of the Abwehr team in Krakow and began training OUN-UPA sabotage detachments. Irrefutable proof of this is the testimony of a former Gestapo and Abwehr officer, 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 transmitted through them to the headquarters of the UPA an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and establish regular radio communications with the Abwehrkommando-202.
Stepan Bandera himself practical work he did not participate in the rear of the Red Army, his task was to organize activities. However, ABVER was repeatedly thrown "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 the Nazi punitive machine, even if later the Nazis were convinced of his innocence, did not return to freedom. This was the usual Nazi practice. The unprecedented attitude of the Nazis towards Bandera is proved by their most direct mutual cooperation.
When Soviet troops approached Berlin, Bandera was instructed to form detachments from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis to defend it. Bandera created detachments, but he escaped. After the end of the war, he lived in Munich, collaborated with the British intelligence services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the Wire 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 the performers.
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 recent transactions KGB of the USSR of this kind.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 3 million civilians were brutally tortured and killed by members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
Materials of open sources.
Bendera/Bandera has never been a citizen of Ukraine.
His dream was to become the Gauleiter of Ukraine like Erich Koch or any other Nazi-occupied country...
Bandera or Banderists are people who share the ideas of killing people of other nationalities than Ukrainians. The group got its name in honor of the founder of the movement, Stepan Bandera.
As often happens, the name has become a household name, and today everyone who shares such views to one degree or another is called Bandera.
The movement originated back in 1927, when Stepan was finishing high school. The main idea of organizing a resistance group was based on the opinion that only pure Ukrainians can live in Ukraine.
Other nationalities, people of mixed blood must be expelled. Unfortunately, Bandera recognized death as the only possible way of exile.
Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the family of a priest, was a scout and wanted to become an agronomist. After graduating from high school, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Konovalets.
And this is where the fun begins. According to historical notes, Stepan Bandera did not share the views of the OUN leader, and was guided by more radical views.
At that point in time, the territory of present-day Ukraine was under the rule of Poland. Ideas for liberation home country from the invaders found support among the students of the gymnasium even after the release of Bandera. Many residents were against the Poles' invasion and the impending German threat.
One of the leaders of the OUN, Melnik, held similar views, but planned to conclude a peace agreement with Hitler. Actually, on the basis of these contradictions, Bandera managed to gather a large army of followers.
Murder and prison
Bandera is considered responsible for the murder of a number of prominent politicians. His associates organized the assassination of the Polish school curator Gadomsky, the secretary of the Soviet consulate Maylov and the Minister of the Interior of Poland Peratsky.
In parallel, there were murders of Polish and Ukrainian citizens. Anyone who was suspected of having links with a foreign government was doomed to a brutal death.
In 1934, Bandera was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, thanks to a lucky coincidence (the invasion of German and Soviet troops), after five years the prison holidays ended.
Full of strength and desire to act, Bandera again gathered like-minded people around him. Now the USSR has been declared the main threat to the well-being of the country.
Against all
Bandera assumed that the alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union would not last long. Therefore, a strategy was developed to assert the independence of the Ukrainian state.
It was supposed to offer the German government to conclude an alliance with the Bandera army and legitimize the rights and freedoms of the inhabitants of their native country. Hitler did not consider it necessary to cooperate with Bandera and, under the guise of supposedly peaceful negotiations, took Stepan into custody.
So an ardent supporter of the struggle for the purity of the Ukrainian nation was sent to a concentration camp. Then hard times came for Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union launched an offensive. Hitler decided to release some of the imprisoned nationalists, tried to woo Bandera.
And again, the main condition for support was the desire of the main Banderite to recognize the existence of a separate state of Ukraine. The Germans refused a second time. Bandera stayed in Germany, began life in exile.
At the back of history
After the liberation of the Ukrainian lands, the activities of the OUN began to revive. But Bandera remained out of work, active German propaganda recent years war made a once heroic nationalist a Soviet spy.
Stepan created a foreign branch of the Organization and tried to control the situation in a subtle way. For several years, until the early 1950s, little was known about Bandera's life. Rumor has it that he collaborated with British intelligence, helped to send spies to the Soviet Union.
The last years Bandera lived in Munich and tried to lead a normal life. Periodic assassination attempts forced members of the overseas OUN to provide their leader with bodyguards. But the guards could not prevent the murder of a nationalist - on October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was killed with a pistol with potassium cyanide m.
Summing up
Many atrocities and brutal murders are attributed to the Bandera movement. Almost all the ongoing looting, torture and torment are considered guilty of Bandera's followers.
Thousands of innocent civilians and hundreds of invaders. How much truth in these accusations can be decided, perhaps, only by the descendants of the participants in those distant events. Really calculated figures of losses among the Soviet people:
- Soviet military - 8350;
- Ordinary employees and chairmen of committees - 3190;
- Peasants and collective farmers - 16345;
- Workers of other professions, children, housewives, old people - 2791 .
It is difficult to calculate how many civilians from other countries died. Someone claims that entire villages were cut out, someone focuses on the troops of the invaders.
As in that famous proverb - good intentions the road to hell is paved” — so Bandera went through the country like a hurricane. Apparently, the ideas of the total cleansing of the Motherland from foreigners have firmly settled in the hearts of people. Will we repeat the mistakes of the past now?
What I will talk about is so scary, monstrous and disgusting that people with a not very healthy heart, I recommend skipping this article. And those who rally on the squares of Ukrainian cities, demanding to restore " good name Bandera”, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the documents that shed light on the activities of these “faithful sons of independent Ukraine”.
The current leaders, who were born from the very grains that the miner suffering from bursitis spoke about, certainly did not publish and did not announce at rallies those certificates, memorandums, ciphers, eyewitness accounts and special reports that I found in the archives and about which today's youth, of course he doesn't know anything.
Listen to these voices - voices from beyond. These people could live, study, work, they would have wives, husbands and children, but they are not. Their lineage was interrupted - it was interrupted because these men and women, boys and girls, and even children were not just killed, but brutally tortured by the fosterlings of Stepan Bandera.
“They knocked on us for a long time at night. Dad didn't let go. Something heavy was pounding on the door. She crackled and fell off her hinges. Strangers broke into the house. They tied the father's hands and feet and threw him to the floor. They gouged out his eyes and poked with bayonets in his chest and stomach. Dad stopped moving. They did the same with my mother and sister Olya. This is evidence of the miraculously surviving 11-year-old Vera Selezneva. She survived only because she lost consciousness from the first blow with a rifle butt on the head, and the fighters for an independent Ukraine considered her dead.
And here is the story of an eyewitness who survived only because he climbed into the haystack in time.
“They came to the village at night. They broke into the hut where the teacher, who had come from Poltava, lived. They took her mother by the hair and dragged her across the street to the garden. They killed the old woman in front of their daughter, and then set about the girl. First they cut off her breasts. Then they brought an ax and chopped off the heels. Having seen enough of the torment of the bleeding girl, Bandera hacked her to death.
The next night the bandits came again. Many were in Red Army uniforms. They surrounded the village so that no one could get out. Then they seized the chairman of the village council and crucified him on the gates, driving huge nails into his hands. Admiring the suffering of the chairman, they fired two bursts of machine guns at him crosswise. Then they took care of the family. His father, mother, wife and three-year-old daughter were hacked to pieces with axes. And with the severed hand of a child, a vile inscription was drawn on the wall.
But even this was not enough for the Bandera people. They hung a teacher on the gate, and cut his wife and five children to pieces.”
No less terrible are the reports of the commanders of partisan detachments transmitted to the mainland:
“In March 1943, Bandera burned four Polish settlements. Before that, in Galinovsk, they hacked to death 18 Poles, in the village of Pindiki they shot 150 Polish peasants, and they took the children by the legs and smashed their heads against the trees. In the town of Chertorisk, Ukrainian priests personally executed 17 people, and in neighboring farms Bandera killed about 700 Poles.
Then they caught the partisan Anton Pinchuk. They chopped off his legs and hung him with a pinned note: “So it will be with everyone who will interfere with the construction of a free Ukraine.” And the scout of the same detachment, Mikhail Marushkin, was cut off his tongue, gouged out his eyes and pricked his chest with a bayonet until they hit his heart.
It is hard to believe that all this was done by people, and not just people, but sincerely believing Christians, and these terrible atrocities were committed by praying and asking for a blessing from the local priest. We already know that the Ukrainian priests took a personal part in the executions, but what they did with those priests who condemned them and did not give blessings for the murder of innocent victims.
“Bishop Feofan, who served in the ancient Mukachevo monastery, in his sermons condemned the bloody antics of Bandera,” one of the special reports says. - Once he received a letter with a picture of a trident: this was the last warning of the bandit underground. But Theophan continued his holy work. Soon he was found dead, and not just anywhere, but in a cell. In other words, the murder was committed on the territory of the monastery, which is considered an inexcusable sin.
In addition, the bishop was not just killed, but killed in a brutal way borrowed from the Middle Ages. They wrapped a piece of wire around his head, tucked a stick under it, and began to slowly rotate it. And so on until the skull cracked.
Among the current singers of Bandera there are people who claim that Ukrainian nationalists fought under the slogan: "Kill the Jew, Pole, Katsap and German." As for the Jews, Poles and Russians, that was the way it was, but the Germans… No, the Bandera people had touchingly friendly relations with the Germans. Evidence of this is the secret order of SS Brigadeführer Major General Brenner dated February 12, 1944.
“Secret negotiations with the leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which have now begun in the Derazhyno region, are successfully continuing. The following agreement has been reached.
Members of the UPA will not attack German military units. The UPA systematically sends its scouts, mostly girls, to the areas occupied by the Red Army and reports the results. Captured prisoners of the Red Army, as well as members of Soviet gangs, the so-called partisans, are handed over to us for interrogation.
In order to prevent interference in this activity, which is necessary for us, I order:
1. UPA agents who have certificates signed by Captain Felix, or posing as UPA members, are allowed to pass freely, weapons are not taken away.
2. When German military units meet with UPA units, the latter allow themselves to be identified symbol - left hand in front of face. Such units are not attacked even in the event of opening fire on their part.
And in October of the same year, Bandera was honored with a conversation with Reichsführer Himmler himself, who said:
A new stage of our cooperation begins - more responsible than before. Gather your people, go and act. Remember that our victory will secure your future.
The first thing the inspired Bandera did was to proclaim a new slogan.
"Our government must be terrible!" - he declared and ordered to start mass terror. If rivers of blood used to flow, now the seas have become it.
The Red Army has already entered the territory of Western Ukraine, ordinary people met it with bread and salt - this is during the day, and at night these people were killed, chopped with axes, strangled with strangleholds and burned alive by zealous executors of Bandera's order.
LOST MOSES
Now, I think, it's time to tell about what kind of person he was - the new Moses of the Ukrainian people. Why Moses? Yes, because that is what the bishop of the Greek Catholic Church called it when the monument to Stepan Bandera was opened in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Since few have read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, I will first talk about Moses. In those distant times, Jews fell into slavery and lived in Egypt, there were many of them and every year it became more and more. The young pharaoh who ascended the throne not only did not like the Jews, he was afraid of them. “The people of the children of Israel are numerous and stronger than us,” he said. - When there is a war, he will unite with our enemies and come out against us. We must make sure that these people stop multiplying!”
And they did: the pharaoh ordered that newborn boys be taken away from their mothers - after all, with time they could become warriors - and throw them into the Nile. It must have happened that just at that time a boy was born in one of the families. He was doomed, but his mother figured out how to save him. She knew where and when the pharaoh's daughter bathed - according to rumors, a kind girl - and put the child in a basket and hid it in the reeds. Left alone, the boy wept inconsolably, his crying was heard by Pharaoh's daughter and ordered to bring the child. He was so good that the girl decided to take him to the palace. But she needed a nurse. She was immediately found: she was the mother of the found boy.
When the boy grew up, the pharaoh's daughter adopted him and named him Moses. For many years he lived in luxury, contentment, received the title of an Egyptian priest, but then, defending an Israeli, he killed an Egyptian overseer and was forced to flee. In one of the tribes he was accepted as one of his own, Moses started a family and lived like everyone else until the age of eighty. But then he suddenly decided to lead his brothers out of Egyptian slavery. The god Yahweh liked this idea, he promised his help, made a magician and sorcerer out of Moses, and then sent him to Egypt.
There the old man appeared before Pharaoh and, now convincing, now intimidating, now sending diseases, pestilence, hail and locusts, persuaded him to release the Israelites from slavery. Well, then there was the crossing of the Red Sea “in wet as in dry land”, many years of wandering through the desert, the grumbling of fellow tribesmen dissatisfied with the lack of water and food: in Egypt, they say, although we were in slavery, we ate our fill. Rescued, as always, Yahweh: either he would send a flock of exhausted quails, then he would scatter manna from heaven, then he would release a fountain of water from a rock - and so for forty years.
For forty years Moses led his fellow tribesmen through the desert, until on Mount Sinai he met Yahweh himself, who declared that he intended Israeli people to take under the patronage and enter into an eternal alliance with him. Such an alliance was concluded: the Israelites pledged to meekly worship Yahweh, and he promised them all kinds of support. It was with his help that Moses led his tribe to the Promised Land. And when he was one hundred and twenty years old, he went to the top of Mount Nebo and, in accordance with the agreement concluded with Yahweh, died alone.
I cannot help but note that this whole story may not be a fairy tale or a myth: many bible scholars believe that Moses was genuine historical figure and that it was he who led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. Be that as it may, but Moses became a symbol of an incomparable feat: a symbol of deliverance from slavish obedience, a symbol of striving for freedom, a symbol of readiness for any sacrifice for the sake of this freedom.
But back to Moses by the name of Bandera. He did not need to be hidden in a basket, since Stepan was born in the family of a respected Greek Catholic priest in the village of Stary Ugrinov, which in those years was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The most striking childhood impression was the fierce battles between the Russians and the Austrians, because during the First World War the front passed through their village. Then there was a revolution, again fighting and, in the end, the Polish occupation.
Stepan had to study in a Polish gymnasium. Under the influence of his father, who was an ardent nationalist, Stepan joined an underground organization of schoolchildren, closely associated with the Ukrainian military organization. The UVO was created by Colonel Konovalts and set as its goal nothing less than the preparation of a general uprising to create a great and indivisible Ukrainian state. Somewhat later, the UVO, as a military combat unit, became part of the OUN, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, created in 1929.
Bandera, who in those years studied at the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School in Lviv, in three years turned from an ordinary member of the OUN into its leader in Western Ukraine. He did not become an agronomist, but he turned out to be an excellent terrorist. Even then, the first contacts of Ukrainian nationalists with German Nazis were recorded. The Nazis began with the creation of the so-called paramilitary sports schools, and ended with the formation shock troops Ukrainian stormtroopers.
Since terror was considered one of the main ways to fight for independence, Bandera was instructed to carry out several terrorist attacks. The goal is to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and Poland, to prevent finding mutual language Stalin and Pilsudski. For several months he searches for Bandera, and when he finds it, he instructs the militant. It turned out to be a Lviv high school student Nikolai Lemek. The main argument in his favor was that Nikolai was only 19 years old, therefore, when he was captured and then judged - no one doubted this - he would not be sentenced to death, since in Poland the death sentence was passed only to those who turned 21 years old.
Either Lemek's eyesight was not good enough, or he panicked, but when he entered the Soviet consulate in Lvov, he began to shoot not at the consul, but at the first person he came across. It turned out to be a third-rate official, the secretary of the consulate Milov. The killer, of course, was caught and sentenced to life in prison.
(At the beginning of the war, he will be released, but, apparently, because he knew too much and so as not to talk too much, he will be liquidated by Bandera themselves.)
But this was only the first stage of the planned action. Since the Soviet diplomat was killed on the territory of Poland, then, according to the plan of the organizers of the terrorist attack, the Russians should take revenge on the Poles by killing some high-ranking Polish official. The choice fell on the Minister of the Interior Bronisław Peracki. On July 15, 1934, at the entrance to one of the Warsaw cafes, 20-year-old OUN member Grigory Matseiko shot dead Bronislav Peratsky.
The most surprising thing was that they failed to detain Matseyko, and he safely left the cordon. But the police arrested twelve participants in the organization of the assassination, including Stepan Bandera. There was a court that sentenced Bandera to life imprisonment. And in May 1936, another trial took place, which gave Bandera a second life sentence.
By by and large, on this Bandera's bloody career was supposed to end, but ... it was September 1, 1939: on this day Germany attacked Poland and the Second World War began. The Fuhrer did not forget his friends and ordered Bandera to be released at any cost, because in the secret card index of the Abwehr he was listed under the pseudonym Gray. Fulfilling Hitler's order, the SS paratroopers dropped into the area of the Holy Cross prison. No matter how bravely the paratroopers fought, they could not fulfill the order: they all died as one during the assault.
But this order was brilliantly carried out by the guards of the prison. After the assault attempt, it was decided to transfer all the prisoners to the left bank of the Vistula, which already belonged to ... the Germans. So Bandera found himself in the arms of his masters-liberators. The first thing he did was to ask for a meeting with his mentor and direct commander, head of the OUN Yevgeny Konovalets.
Alas, they told him, it is impossible. Colonel Konovalets is already there, in heaven. Some Bolshevik killed him.
For many years this action was one of the greatest secrets of the NKVD, and then the KGB. Moreover, no one knew the name of this Bolshevik. Now this name is known: Yevgeny Konovalets, following Stalin's order, liquidated
Pavel Sudoplatov. Here is how he talks about it in his memoirs.
“The idea was to give Konovalets a valuable gift with a built-in explosive device: if the clock works, I will have time to leave.
Timashkov, an employee of the department of operational and technical means, was given the task of making an explosive device that looked like a box. chocolates painted in traditional Ukrainian style.
Using my cover - I was enrolled as a radio operator on the cargo ship "Shilka" - I met with Konovalets in Antwerp, Rotterdam and Le Havre, where he came with a fake Lithuanian passport. The game had been running for over two years and was about to end. It was the spring of 1938, and war seemed imminent. We knew that during the war Konovalets would be on the side of Germany.
In the end, an explosive device in the form of a box of chocolates was made. The explosion was supposed to occur exactly half an hour after the change in the position of the box from vertical to horizontal.
And then came May 23, 1938. The time is ten minutes to twelve. Walking along the alley near the Atlanta restaurant, I saw Konovalets sitting at a table by the window, waiting for my arrival. I entered the restaurant, sat down to it, and after a short conversation we agreed to meet again in the center of Rotterdam at 17.00. I gave him a gift, a box of chocolates, which he loved very much, and said that I could not be away for so long, I should immediately return to the ship.
As I left, I placed the box on the table next to him. We shook hands and I left, barely able to control my instinctive urge to run. I remember that, leaving the restaurant, I turned right into a side street, on both sides of which there were numerous shops. In the first of them I bought a hat and a light raincoat. As I was leaving the store, I heard a sound like a blown tire. People ran towards the restaurant, and I hurried to the train that went to Paris, and from there to Barcelona.
The newspapers have already written about the explosion in Rotterdam. Three versions of the death of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Konovalets were put forward: either he was killed by the Bolsheviks, or by a rival group of Ukrainians, or he was removed by the Poles in retaliation for the assassination attempt on General Peratsky.
I, after a three-week stay in Spain, returned home safely.”
By and large, the liquidation of Konovalets Bandera was on hand, because Andrei Melnik, a figure much less significant than the former colonel, became his official successor. Bandera did not want to obey Melnik, and a serious struggle for power broke out between them in the OUN movement. It ended with the fact that the OUN split into two directions: Melnikov and Bandera.
Hitler patronized Bandera, as he preferred not to speak, but to act, and considered the gun to be the most important argument in any dispute. On June 30, 1941, following the advanced German units, Bandera arrived in Lviv and proclaimed the creation of a Ukrainian independent state with its capital in Lviv.
This did not suit Berlin in any way, because the Germans renamed Lviv into Lemberg, and the territory of the solemnly proclaimed Ukrainian independent state was declared the original German territory of Ostland. Moreover, at one of the meetings in the city of Rivne, Gauleiter Erich Koch, expressing Hitler's opinion, said: “There is no free Ukraine. The goal of our work should be that the Ukrainians should work for Germany, and not that we make this people happy.”
Even more outspoken was the Governor-General of Poland, Hans Frank. “If we win the war,” he confided, “then, in my opinion, the Poles, Ukrainians and everything that hangs around can be turned into a chopped cutlet.”
So, and Bandera was talking about some kind of free, independent and independent Ukraine, stretching to the snow-capped peaks of the Caucasus.
Berlin did not like these rantings, and Bandera fell into disgrace. And soon something unimaginable happened: Bandera was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen. No, no, not to the infamous concentration camp, but to a very nice town with the same name, where Stepan Bandera lived in one of the state dachas.
The current defenders of Bandera assure that this is not so, that he was in a concentration camp and was on the verge of death for three whole years. And here is what Abwehr Colonel Erwin Stolz, who was detained back in 1945, said about this:
“The reason for the arrest of Stepan Bandera was the fact that he, having received from the Abwehr in 1940 a large amount money to finance the OUN underground and organize intelligence activities against the Soviet Union, tried to appropriate them and transferred them to one of the Swiss banks. The money was returned, and he himself was kept by us in one of the mansions of Sachsenhausen.
Such are not very noble deeds ... So, no matter how hard you try, you can’t blind the image of the great martyr from Stepan Bandera.
And here is another interesting fact. In the winter of 1945, Bandera ended up in the rear of the Red Army, or rather, in Krakow. The city was about to fall, and Bandera could end up in the hands of Smersh, and this organization does not like to joke. The fact that Hitler cherished him is evidenced by the fact that the Fuhrer instructed one of the most valuable intelligence officers and saboteurs, Otto Skorzeny, to save Bandera and bring him within the Reich.
“It was a difficult flight,” Skorzeny later said. - I led Bandera along the radio beacons left in Czechoslovakia and Austria in the rear of the Soviet troops. We needed Bandera. We believed him. Hitler ordered me to rescue him by taking him to the Reich to continue his work. I completed this task."
How Bandera thanked his saviors, we already know: until 1954, shots rang out in the cities and villages of Western Ukraine and rivers of blood flowed. Bandera himself, under the name of Stefan Poppel, lived all this time in Munich and from there directed the actions of the militants.
But terror alone was not enough for him, he dreamed of something bigger. That is why Bandera established close ties with British and American intelligence, and even, offering the services of Ukrainian nationalists in the fight against the Soviet Union, corresponded with US Secretary of State Marshall. And in one of public speaking he bluntly stated: “I regret that the West has not yet used atomic bomb against the Soviets.
Who knows what this cooperation of the Ukrainian Moses with the initiators would have led to? cold war", if on October 15, 1959, Stefan Poppel had not crashed on the steps of the stairs in the entrance of his own house along Kreitmayrstrasse, 7. He died on the way to the hospital.
The first conclusion of doctors about the cause of death was a fracture of the base of the skull as a result of a fall. But what does it have to do with scratches near the lips and some white dots on clothes? Then more qualified experts got down to business, who discovered potassium cyanide in Bandera's body. How he got there remained a mystery for another two years.
And on August 12, 1961, Bogdan Stashinsky and Inga Pol turned to the West Berlin police, stating that they had not fled the GDR and were asking for political asylum. When asked what forced them to flee to the West, they answered that it was the fear of being arrested and shot at the Lubyanka.
It was then that it turned out that Bogdan Stashinsky, a native of the Lviv region, was a longtime KGB agent who specialized in activities against Ukrainian nationalists. At first he was a liaison, and then he became an executor of death sentences. In 1957, he killed a prominent figure with a pistol shot that fired ampoules of potassium cyanide.
OUN Lev Rebet. As Stashinsky explained, when fired, the ampoules burst and the poison turned into steam. One breath of this steam was enough for the blood vessels to shrink sharply, and the person died of a heart attack.
And two years later, the turn came to the main nationalist: with a shot from the same pistol, moreover, in the mouth and eyes, Stashinsky killed Stepan Bandera, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and ... permission to marry a German Inge Paul. This was a big mistake, since it was Inga who persuaded her husband to flee to the West.
Bohdan Stashinsky, of course, was tried and sentenced to 8 years in prison. Where did he go then, covered in darkness. It is possible that he changed his surname and fled to some islands: after all, the OUN oath to avenge the murder of their leader remains in force. And another option is also possible: in exchange for information about the KGB school in which he studied, and for the names of agents sent into their ranks, the Bandera people forgave him.
Be that as it may, the grave of the Ukrainian Moses, buried in Munich, has become a shrine, monuments are erected to him in his homeland, schoolchildren study his biography, the leaders of the country declare him a hero, and flowers are laid at his busts...
Everything would be fine, only the road on which he brought Ukraine is pitted with grave hills and oozing blood. It would be nice if everything was limited only to monuments and flowers, otherwise no one canceled the main slogan of Ukrainian nationalists: “We should not be afraid that people will curse us for cruelty. Let half of the 40 million people remain - there is nothing wrong with that!
In connection with the recent increased interest in the history of Ukrainian nationalism, many Russians first learned who Stepan Bandera was. I do not know if sociological studies have been carried out, but I will assume that about former Hero Few people knew Ukraine before the events on Independence Square. And at the same time, this knowledge is superficial: they, as a rule, know about the Bandera people who were hiding in the forests in caches, 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 of the tragic events of the 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. There are a lot of myths - from his rejection of anti-Semitism to the fight against Germany during the war years.
I do not pursue the goal of telling the biography of Stepan Bandera, it is hardly possible to do this 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 curious facts of Bandera's biography and the most enduring myths about Bandera and give my brief commentary.
1) Stepan Bandera has never been in Central, much less in Eastern Ukraine during his life. Stepan Andreevich was born on the first day of the new year 1909 in the village of Stary Ugrinov, which was part of Austria-Hungary. He mostly spent the years of his youth and studies in the cities of Stryi and Lvov, which, together with other Western Ukrainian territories, after civil war became part of Poland. In 1932 - 1935. he lived on the territory of modern Poland (including studying in the then German city of Danzig, where he learned the basics of intelligence). In 1936 - 1939 - he was in prison in Warsaw. In 1939, he briefly illegally came to Lviv, when he had already become part of the USSR. However, he stayed there for no more than two months, convinced of the impossibility of ensuring his own safety there. Since then, Bandera has not been to Ukraine. 1939 - 1941 he spent mainly traveling (Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Italy), in 1941 - 1944 he was in a special cell at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After 1944 and until his death in 1959, Bandera lived in Germany (mainly in Munich). Thus, the main Ukrainian nationalist has lived in Western Ukraine for less than half of his life, and has never been to the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, or the Donbass.
2) Bandera from childhood showed a clear penchant for sadism. Stepan Andreevich was short stature- 157 cm. Perhaps it was his modest physical data that did not allow him to kill 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.
Low Bandera with classmates
3) Greeting slogan "Glory to Ukraine - glory to the heroes". I am sure that most do not know what kind of "heroes" we are talking about. It was first heard with such a response 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. As a rule, they do not say that Russian Ukrainians were exterminated in the first place. It was they who ardently supported the regime that created the infamous Terezin and Talerhof camps, where people were exterminated just because they called themselves Russians. Moreover, Russians in Western Ukraine. If you use 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 meals, 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 Nazis. Try to find at least how many Germans destroyed the OUN.
5) Bandera was a "respectable family man." It is known that Bandera kicked his pregnant wife, suffered from Plyushkin's 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 accidentally became a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. It was not for nothing that his contemporaries and even associates gave him the nickname "Grey" and "Baba". An accident connected with the death of Yevhen Konovalets elevated this man to the rank and order of the Hero of Ukraine. Order, executed in the form of a Soviet five-pointed star...
Well? Glory to heroes?
On January 1, 1909, Stepan Andreyevich Bandera, an ideologist and one of the founders of the nationalist movement in Ukraine, was born in the village of Stary Ugryniv on the territory of Galicia. His activities still cause fierce controversy, although more than 56 years have passed since the assassination of the politician. To help understand what is the secret of the attractiveness of his ideology for some, the biography of Stepan Bandera can.
Family
His parents were sincere believers and closely associated with the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church. Stepan's father, Andrei Mikhailovich, served as a village priest and actively promoted the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism. In 1919, he was even elected to the National Rada of the ZUNR, and then he fought in the troops of Denikin. After the end of the Civil War, Andrei Mikhailovich returned to his native village and continued his service as a village priest.
Stepan's mother, Miroslava Vladimirovna, also came from the family of a clergyman. That is why the children, and there were six of them, were brought up in the spirit of values that are significant for their parents and devotion to the ideas of Ukrainian nationalism.
Biography of Stepan Bandera: childhood
The family lived in small house provided by the leadership of the church. According to contemporaries who are well acquainted with the biography of Stepan Bandera, he grew up as an obedient and pious boy. At the same time, already in the gymnasium, he tried to form strong-willed qualities in himself, for example, pouring himself in winter cold water than earned himself a disease of the joints for the rest of his life.
In order to enter the gymnasium, Stepan left his parents' house quite early and moved to the city of Stryi to his grandparents. It was there that he gained the first experience of political activity and showed himself as a person with excellent organizational skills. So, Bandera participated in the activities of various political organizations, including the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth.
After graduating from the gymnasium, Stepan returned to Uhryniv, started organizing young nationalists and even created a local choir.
Becoming a nationalist movement
Entering the Polytechnic School of Lvov in 1929, Stepan Bender continues his political activities.
It was a difficult period. As dissatisfaction with the Polish authorities grows in the radical part of society, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is becoming more and more active. She is engaged in terrorist acts, her militants attack mail trains and eliminate political opponents. And as a response to terror and protests begin mass repression authorities.
In the 1930s, Bandera, who had previously been mainly engaged in propaganda, became one of the most active leaders of the OUN. He is repeatedly subjected to brief arrests, mainly for distributing anti-Polish literature. By the way, the biography of Stepan Bandera during this period contains many dark pages. In particular, according to some sources, in 1932, under the guidance of German specialists, he was trained at a special intelligence school in Danzig.
However, Bandera's work in important positions in the OUN turned out to be relatively short-lived. In 1934, he was arrested and then sentenced to hang for plotting the assassination of Bronisław Peracki, the Polish Minister of the Interior. True, capital punishment was later replaced with life imprisonment.
Activities during the German occupation
In 1939, after Poland was invaded by Germany, Bandera Stepan, whose biography continues to be of interest to researchers of the history of Eastern Europe in the 20th century, escapes from prison. He seeks to restore his influence in the leadership of the OUN and continue the struggle for the ideals of Ukrainian nationalism, but he faces a number of problems.
As you know, Galicia and Volhynia, which were originally the centers of the struggle for the creation of a sovereign Ukraine, at that time became part of the USSR, and nationalist activity there became difficult. In addition, there was no unity at the top of the OUN. Supporters of one of its leaders, Andrei Melnik, advocated an alliance with Nazi Germany.
Disagreements lead to open clashes. The confrontation between the OUN factions prompts Bendera to start recruiting armed groups. Based on them, at a rally in Lviv in 1941, he proclaims the creation of an independent state of Ukraine.
In Germany
Reaction occupation authorities did not keep you waiting. Stepan Bandera, short biography which is familiar to every Ukrainian schoolchild, together with his colleague Yaroslav Stetsko was arrested by the Gestapo, and they were sent to Berlin. Employees of the German secret services offered the OUN leader cooperation and support. In exchange for this, he had to abandon the propaganda of Ukrainian independence. He did not accept this offer and ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he stayed until 1944.
However, in fairness it must be said that there he was in enough comfortable conditions and even had the opportunity to meet his wife. Moreover, Bandera, while in Sachsenhausen, wrote and sent articles and documents of political content to his homeland. For example, he is the author of the brochure "Struggle and activities of the OUN(b) during the war", in which he pays attention to the role of acts of violence, including ethnic ones.
According to some historians, the biography of Stepan Bandera in the period from 1939 to 1945 requires more careful study. In particular, according to some sources, he actively cooperated with the Abwehr and was engaged in the preparation of reconnaissance groups, without abandoning, however, his ideological convictions.
After the war
After the defeat of fascism, Bandera, Stepan, whose biography was repeatedly subjected to “rewriting” for the sake of one or another political force, remained in West Germany and settled in Munich, where his wife and children also arrived. He continued active political activity as one of the leaders of the OUN, many of whose members also moved to Germany or were released from the camps. Supporters of Bandera declared the need to elect him as the head of the organization for life. However, those who believed that the activities of nationalist-minded associations should be directed on the territory of Ukraine did not agree with this. As the main argument in favor of their position, they pointed out that only being on the spot, one can soberly assess the situation, which has radically changed during the war years.
In an effort to expand the number of his supporters, Stepan Bandera (the biography is briefly presented above) initiated the organization of the ABN - the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, headed by Yaroslav Stetsko.
In 1947, nationalists who disagreed with his position finally left the OUN, and he was elected its leader.
Doom
It's time to tell about the last page, which ended the biography of Stepan Bandera. According to the most common version, he was killed by an NKVD officer Bogdan Stashinsky. It happened in 1959, on October 15th. The killer was waiting for the politician at the entrance of the house and shot him in the face with a pistol with a syringe in which Bendera died in an ambulance called by neighbors, never regaining consciousness.
Other versions of the murder
But was Stepan Bandera (biography, photo of which presented above) really killed by an agent Soviet secret services? There are many versions. Firstly, on the day of Bandera's murder, for some reason, he let his bodyguards go. Secondly, from the point of view of his importance at that time, Bandera no longer posed a danger as a political figure. At least for the USSR. And the NKVD did not need the martyrdom of a prominent nationalist in the past. Thirdly, Stashinsky was sentenced to a rather lenient sentence - 8 years in prison. By the way, when he was released, he disappeared.
According to a less well-known version, Bandera was killed by one of his former associates or a representative of Western intelligence agencies, which is most likely.
The fate of family members
Stepan Bandera's father was arrested by the NKVD on May 22, 1941 and shot two weeks after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union. His brother Alexander for a long time lived in Italy. At the beginning of the war, he came to Lviv, was arrested by the Gestapo and died in another brother of Stepan Bandera - Vasily - was also an active figure in the Ukrainian nationalist movement. In 1942, he was sent to Auschwitz by the German occupation troops and killed by Polish overseers.
crimes
Today in Ukraine there are many people who revere Stepan Bandera almost like a saint. Striving for the independence of one's homeland is a noble cause, but nationalism never stops at praising its people. He always needs to prove his superiority by humiliating a neighbor or, even worse, destroying him physically. In particular, many European and Russian historians consider the proven facts of Bandera's involvement in the Volyn massacre, when thousands of Poles and Catholic Armenians, whom Bandera considered "second Jews", were killed.
Stepan Bandera, whose biography, crimes and works require serious study, is an ambiguous personality, but undoubtedly an extraordinary one. His name currently continues to be a symbol of the nationalist movement and inspires some hot and, shall we say, not quite smart heads to commit such terrible acts as shelling the residential areas of their own cities.
