The origin of Stepan Bandera. Stepan Bandera - biography, photo, personal life of the Ukrainian nationalist

Stepan Andreevich Bandera, the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, is an extraordinary personality. There is no end to the debate as to who should consider him - a defender of the independence of Ukraine or an accomplice of fascism.

Bandera Stepan biography

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Uhriniv, Kalush district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a Greek Catholic priest. After the civil war, this part of Ukraine became part of Poland. From a young age, Stepan Bandera was attracted to political activities. In 1922 he joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928, he became a student at the agronomy department of the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School (however, he failed to graduate).

After a fairly short time, having joined the organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN), Bandera led the most radical youth group. The goal of the OUN was to create an independent Ukrainian state in the eastern lands of Poland.

Then Bandera's career went on an upward trajectory. In 1933, he, having become the plenipotentiary representative of the OUN in Galicia and Bukovina, actively joined the fight against the Polish authorities. Bandera took an active part in acts of retaliation and murders of opponents. For example, he was one of the organizers of the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peracki.

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.

After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bandera left the prison walls and soon began actively collaborating with the German military intelligence Abwehr. And in April forty-one, Stepan Bandera 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 members of the OUN. A little later, this legion, called Nachtigal, became part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment. 2.5 million marks received by Bandera from the Nazis were intended for 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 forty-one, Nachtigal, together with the Nazis, entered Lviv. On the same day, the restoration of the great Ukrainian power 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 immediately took action in response to this “arbitrariness.” Bandera was arrested, and 15 leaders of Ukrainian nationalists were shot. The Nachtigal Legion (in the ranks of which ferment began after the repressions) was recalled from the front. Then he was engaged in performing police functions in the occupied territories. Bandera looked at the world through prison bars for a year and a half, and then another punishment followed - he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, he, along with other Ukrainian nationalists, was kept here in privileged conditions. Bandera’s members could not only meet 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 “secret” OUN. The nationalists also visited the Friedenthal castle, where the OUN agent and sabotage school was located.

One of the main initiators

It was Bandera who was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (October 14, 1942), the purpose of which was proclaimed to be 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.

What was promised to the Banderaites in return? Supply of ammunition and weapons to UPA units and even the opportunity to create a Ukrainian state in the event of a Nazi victory over the USSR, however, under German protectorate. Soldiers of the rebel army took part in punitive operations of the Nazis. Until the end of hostilities, Bandera collaborated with the Abwehr in terms of training sabotage groups.

The war is over, but...

Bandera continued his activities in the OUN (its centralized administration was in West Germany). In 1947 he became its director. In 1953 and 1955 he was re-elected to this position. Stepan Bandera led the terrorist activities of the OUN and UPA on the territory of the Soviet Union. Later, Ukrainian nationalists were actively used by the intelligence services of Western countries in the fight against the USSR.

IN last years Bandera lived in Munich with his family, taken from East Germany. October 15, 1959 Stepan Bandera was shot at the entrance own home KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

Time will put everything in its place

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, in general, the OUN was relieved of responsibility for cooperation with Nazi Germany and the recognition of the UPA as a national liberation movement that defended the “true” independence of Ukraine.

In January 2010, Stepan Bandera was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine (posthumously). A decree on this was signed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, and his second decree recognized members of the UPA as fighters for the independence of Ukraine. Monuments to Stepan Bandera were erected in the Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. 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's supporters of collaborating with the fascists. However, part of Ukrainian society (living mainly in the west of the country) considers Bandera a national hero. Well, time, as they say, will put everything in its place.

Story character

COLORS OF STEPAN BANDERA BANNER

A new look at the leader of Ukrainian nationalists

Stepan Andreevich Bandera ( "Bandera" - translated into modern language means "banner") was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary Kalushsky district of Galicia (now Ivano-Frankivsk region), which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at that time, in the family of a priest of the Greek Catholic rite. He was the second child in the family. In addition to him, three brothers and three sisters grew up in the family.
My father had a university education - he graduated from the theological faculty of Lviv University. My father had a big library, frequent guests in the house were business people, public figures, and intellectuals. Among them, for example, is the member of the Austro-Hungarian parliament J. Veselovsky, the sculptor M. Gavrilko, and the businessman P. Glodzinsky.
S. Bandera wrote in his autobiography that he grew up in a house in which an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests reigned. Stepan's father took an active part in the revival of the Ukrainian State in 1918-1920, he was elected as a deputy of the Western Ukrainian Parliament People's Republic. In the fall of 1919, Stepan passed the entrance exams to the Ukrainian classical gymnasium in the city of Stry.
In 1920, Western Ukraine was occupied by Poland. In the spring of 1921, Miroslav Bander's mother died of tuberculosis. Stepan himself suffered from rheumatism of the joints since childhood and long time was in the hospital. Starting from the fourth grade, Bandera gave lessons, earning money for his own expenses. Education at the gymnasium took place under the supervision of the Polish authorities. But some teachers were able to incorporate Ukrainian national content into the compulsory curriculum.
However, gymnasium students received their main national-patriotic education in school youth organizations. Along with legal organizations, there were illegal circles involved in raising funds to support Ukrainian periodicals and boycotting events of the Polish authorities. Starting from the fourth grade, Bandera was part of an illegal organization at the gymnasium.
In 1927, Bandera successfully passed the matriculation and next year entered the Lviv Polytechnic School in the agronomic department. By 1934, he completed a full course as an agronomist engineer. However, he did not have time to defend his diploma because he was arrested.
At different times, various legal, semi-legal and illegal organizations operated on the territory of Galicia, whose goal was to protect Ukrainian national interests. In 1920, in Prague, a group of officers founded the “Ukrainian Military Organization” (UVO), which set the goal of fighting the Polish occupation. Soon, the former commander of the Sich Riflemen, an experienced organizer and authoritative politician, Evgen Konovalets, became the head of the UVO. The most famous action of the UVO is the failed attempt on the life of the head of the Polish state, Józef Pilsudski, in 1921.
Patriotic youth organizations were under the patronage of the UVO. Stepan Bandera became a member of the UVO in 1928. In 1929, in Vienna, Ukrainian youth organizations, with the participation of the Ukrainian Military District, held a unification congress, at which the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was established, which included Bandera. Later in 1932, the OUN and UVO merged.
Although Poland occupied Galicia, the legitimacy of its rule over Western Ukrainian lands remained problematic from the point of view of the Entente countries. This issue was the subject of complaints against Poland from the Western powers, especially England and France.
The Ukrainian majority of Eastern Galicia refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Polish authorities over them. The 1921 census and elections to the Polish Sejm in 1922 were boycotted. By 1930 the situation had worsened. In response to acts of disobedience by the Ukrainian population, the Polish government launched large-scale operations to “pacify” the population, in today’s terminology – “cleaning up” the territory of Eastern Galicia. In 1934, in Bereza Kartuzskaya was formed concentration camp, which housed about 2 thousand political prisoners, mostly Ukrainians. A year later, Poland abandoned its commitment to the League of Nations to respect the rights of national minorities. Mutual attempts were made from time to time to find a compromise, but they did not lead to tangible results.
In 1934, members of the OUN made an attempt on the life of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky, as a result of which he died. S. Bandera took part in the terrorist attack. For his participation in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Peracki, he was arrested and at the beginning of 1936, along with eleven other defendants, he was convicted by the Warsaw District Court. S. Bandera was sentenced to death. According to the amnesty announced earlier by the Polish Sejm, the death penalty was replaced by life imprisonment.
Stepan was kept in prison in conditions of strict isolation. After the German attack on Poland, the town in which the prison was located was bombed. On September 13, 1939, when the situation of the Polish troops became critical, the prison guards fled. S. Bandera was released from solitary confinement by released Ukrainian prisoners.
The OUN, with about 20 thousand members, had a great influence on the Ukrainian population. There were internal conflicts in the organization: between young, impatient and more experienced and sensible people who had gone through war and revolution, between the leadership of the OUN, living in comfortable conditions of emigration, and the bulk of OUN members, who worked under conditions of underground and police persecution.
OUN leader Yevgen Konovalets, using his diplomatic and organizational talent, knew how to extinguish contradictions, uniting the organization. The death of Konovalets at the hands of Soviet agent Pavel Sudoplatov in 1938 in Rotterdam was a heavy loss for the Ukrainian nationalist movement. His successor was his closest ally, Colonel Andrei Melnik, a well-educated man, reserved and tolerant. The faction of his supporters, taking advantage of the fact that most of their opponents were in prison, in August 1939, at a conference in Rome, announced Colonel Melnik as the head of the OUN. Subsequent events took a dramatic turn for the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
Once free, Stepan Bandera arrived in Lviv. A few days before, Lvov was occupied by the Red Army. At first it was relatively safe to be there. Soon, through a courier, he received an invitation to come to Krakow to coordinate the further plans of the OUN. Urgent treatment was also required for a joint disease that had worsened in prison. I had to illegally cross the Soviet-German demarcation line.
After meetings in Krakow and Vienna, Bandera was delegated to Rome for negotiations with Melnik. Events were developing rapidly, and the central leadership was slow. The list of disagreements - organizational and political - that needed to be resolved in negotiations with Melnik was quite long. The dissatisfaction of underground OUN members with the OUN leadership was approaching a critical point. In addition, there was suspicion of betrayal by Melnik’s inner circle, since mass arrests in Galicia and Volyn affected mainly Bandera supporters.
The main difference was in the strategy of conducting the national liberation struggle. Bandera and his like-minded people considered it necessary to maintain OUN contacts both with the countries of the German coalition and with the Western allied countries, without getting closer to any group. It is necessary to rely on one’s own strength, since no one was interested in the independence of Ukraine. The Melnik faction believed that relying on one’s own forces was untenable. Western countries are not interested in Ukrainian independence. This was already demonstrated by them back in the 20s. Germany then recognized the independence of Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to bet on Germany. The Melnikovites believed that it was impossible to create an armed underground, since this would irritate the German authorities and cause repression on their part, which would not bring either political or military dividends.
Unable to reach a compromise as a result of negotiations, both groups proclaimed themselves the only legitimate leadership of the OUN.
In February 1940, in Krakow, the Bandera faction, which included mainly youth and constituted the numerical majority of the OUN, held a conference at which it rejected the decisions of the Rome conference and chose Stepan Bandera as its leader. Thus, the split of the OUN took shape into the Banderaites - OUN-B or OUN-R (revolutionary) and into the Melnikites - OUN-M. Subsequently, the antagonism between the factions reached such intensity that they often fought against each other with the same ferocity with which they fought against the enemies of independent Ukraine.
The attitude of the German leadership towards the OUN was contradictory: the Canaris service (Abwehr - military intelligence) considered it necessary to cooperate with Ukrainian nationalists, the Nazi party leadership led by Bormann did not consider the OUN a serious political factor, and therefore rejected any cooperation with it. Taking advantage of these contradictions, the OUN managed to form a Ukrainian military unit, the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists, numbering about 600 people, consisting of two battalions - Nachtigal and Roland, staffed by Ukrainians of predominantly pro-Banderist orientation. The Germans planned to use them for subversive purposes, and Bandera hoped that they would become the core of the future Ukrainian army.
At the same time, mass repressions unfolded on the territory of Western Ukraine, which was ceded to the Soviet Union under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Leaders and activists of political parties and public organizations, many of them were executed. Four mass deportations of the Ukrainian population from occupied territories were carried out. New prisons were opened, housing tens of thousands of prisoners.
Father Andrei Bandera and his two daughters Marta and Oksana were arrested at three in the morning on May 23, 1941. In the interrogation protocols, when asked by the investigator about his political views, Father Andrei answered: “In my convictions, I am a Ukrainian nationalist, but not a chauvinist. The only correct thing is state structure for Ukrainians I consider a united conciliar and independent Ukraine." On the evening of July 8 in Kiev, at a closed meeting of the military tribunal of the Kiev Military District, A. Bandera was sentenced to death. The verdict stated that it could be appealed within five days from the moment a copy was handed over verdict, but Andrei Bandera was shot on July 10th.
Marta and Oksana were sent without trial to the Krasnoyarsk Territory for eternal settlement, where they were moved from place to place every 2 - 3 months until 1953. The third sister, Vladimir, did not escape the bitter cup either. She, a mother of five children, was arrested along with her husband Teodor Davidyuk in 1946. She was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. Worked in the camps Krasnoyarsk Territory, Kazakhstan, including in the Spassky death camp. She survived, having served her full sentence, they added a settlement in Karaganda, and then she was allowed to return to her children in Ukraine.
The hasty retreat of the Red Army after the outbreak of war had tragic consequences for tens of thousands of those arrested. Unable to take everyone to the east, the NKVD decided to urgently liquidate the prisoners, regardless of the sentences. Often, basements filled with prisoners were simply bombarded with grenades. In Galicia, 10 thousand people were killed, in Volyn - 5 thousand. Relatives of the prisoners, looking for their loved ones, witnessed this hasty, senseless and inhumane reprisal. The Germans then demonstrated all this to the International Red Cross.
Using the support of the Nachtigal battalion, on June 30, 1941 in Lvov, at a rally of thousands in the presence of several German generals, Bandera’s supporters proclaimed the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State.” A Ukrainian government was also formed, consisting of 15 ministers, headed by Yaroslav Stetsko, S. Bandera’s closest ally. In addition, following the front, which was quickly moving to the east, OUN detachments of 7-12 people were sent, about 2,000 people in total, who, seizing the initiative from the German occupation authorities, formed Ukrainian local governments.
The reaction of the German authorities to the action of Bandera’s supporters in Lvov followed quickly: on July 5, S. Bandera was arrested in Krakow. and on the 9th - in Lvov, Y. Stetsko. In Berlin, where they were taken for trial, S. Bandera was explained that the Germans came to Ukraine not as liberators, but as conquerors, and demanded the public repeal of the Act of Revival. Without obtaining consent, Bandera was thrown into prison, and a year and a half later - into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept until August 27 (according to other sources - until December) 1944. Brothers Stepan Andrei and Vasily were beaten to death in Auschwitz in 1942.
In the fall of 1941, Melnikites in Kyiv also tried to form a Ukrainian government. But this attempt was also brutally suppressed. Over 40 leading figures of the OUN-M were arrested and shot at Babi Yar at the beginning of 1942, including the famous Ukrainian poetess 35-year-old Elena Teliga, who headed the Writers' Union of Ukraine.
By the fall of 1941, the scattered Ukrainian armed detachments of Polesie united into the Polesie Sich partisan unit. As mass Nazi terror unfolded in Ukraine, partisan detachments grew. In the fall of 1942, on the initiative of the OUN-B, the partisan detachments of Bandera, Melnik and the Polesie Sich were united into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) led by one of the organizers of the OUN, the highest officer of the recently disbanded Nachtigall battalion, Roman Shukhevych (General Taras Chuprinka) . In 1943-44, the number of UPA reached 100 thousand fighters and it controlled Volyn, Polesie and Galicia. It included detachments of other nationalities - Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kazakhs and other nations, a total of 15 such detachments.
The UPA waged an armed struggle not only with Nazi and Soviet troops, there was a constant war with the Red partisans, and in the territory of Volyn, Polesie and the Kholm region, exceptionally brutal battles took place with the Polish Home Army. This armed conflict had a long history and was accompanied by ethnic cleansing in the most savage form on both sides.
At the end of 1942, the OUN-UPA approached the Soviet partisans with a proposal to coordinate military operations against the Germans, but no agreement was reached. Hostile relations turned into armed clashes. And already in October and November 1943, for example, the UPA fought 47 battles with German troops and 54 with Soviet partisans.
Until the spring of 1944, the command of the Soviet Army and the NKVD tried to feign sympathy towards the Ukrainian nationalist movement. However, after the expulsion German troops From the territory of Ukraine, Soviet propaganda began to identify the OUN members with the Nazis. From this time on, the second stage of the struggle began for the OUN-UPA - the struggle against the Soviet Army. This war lasted almost 10 years - until the mid-50s.
They fought against the UPA fighting regular troops of the Soviet Army. So, in 1946 there were about 2 thousand battles and armed skirmishes, in 1948 - about 1.5 thousand. Several training bases were organized near Moscow to combat partisan movement in Western Ukraine. During these years, every second of the Gulag prisoners was Ukrainian. And only after the death of UPA commander Roman Shukhevych on March 5, 1950, organized resistance in Western Ukraine began to decline, although individual detachments and remnants of the underground operated until the mid-50s.
After leaving the Nazi concentration camp, Stepan Bandera was no longer able to get into Ukraine. He took up the affairs of the OUN. After the end of the war, the central organs of the organization were located in West Germany. At a meeting of the OUN leadership council, Bandera was elected to the leadership bureau, in which he oversaw the foreign parts of the OUN.
At a conference in 1947, Stepan Bandera was elected head of the entire Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. By this time, opposition to Bandera had arisen in the foreign units, reproaching him for dictatorial ambitions, and the OUN for turning into a neo-communist organization. After lengthy discussions, Bandera decides to resign and go to Ukraine. However, the resignation was not accepted. OUN conferences in 1953 and 1955, with the participation of delegates from Ukraine, again elected Bandera as head of the leadership.
After the war, S. Bandera’s family ended up in the zone Soviet occupation. Under fictitious names, the relatives of the OUN leader were forced to hide from the Soviet occupation authorities and KGB agents. For some time, the family lived in the forest in a secluded house, in a small room without electricity, in cramped conditions. Six-year-old Natalya had to walk six kilometers through the forest to school. The family was malnourished, the children grew sickly.
In 1948-1950, they lived in a refugee camp under an assumed name. Meetings with their father were so rare that the children even forgot him. Since the early 50s, the mother and children settled in the small village of Breitbrunn. Stepan could be here more often, almost every day. Despite his busy schedule, the father spent time working with the children. Ukrainian language. Brother and sister at the age of 4-5 already knew how to read and write in Ukrainian. With Natalka Bandera he studied history, geography and literature. In 1954, the family moved to Munich, where Stepan already lived.
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera released the guards and entered the entrance of the house in which he lived with his family. On the stairs he was met by a man whom Bandera had already seen earlier in the church. From a special pistol, he shot Stepan Bandera in the face with a stream of potassium cyanide solution. Bandera fell, shopping bags rolled down the stairs.
The killer turned out to be a KGB agent, 30-year-old Ukrainian Bogdan Stashinsky. Soon, KGB Chairman Shelepin personally presented him with the Order of the Red Banner of Battle in Moscow. In addition, Stashinsky received permission to marry a German woman from East Berlin. A month after the wedding, which took place in Berlin, Stashinsky was sent with his wife to Moscow to continue his studies. Listening to conversations at home with his wife gave his superiors reason to suspect Stashinsky of insufficient loyalty to the Soviet regime. He was expelled from school and forbidden to leave Moscow.
In connection with the upcoming birth, Stashinsky’s wife was allowed to travel to East Berlin in the spring of 1961. At the beginning of 1962, news arrived of the unexpected death of a child. For the funeral of his son, Stashinsky was allowed a short trip to East Berlin. Intensified measures were taken to monitor him. However, the day before the funeral (just before the day of construction Berlin Wall) Stashinsky and his wife managed to break away from the escort, which was traveling in three cars, and escape to West Berlin. There he turned to the American mission, where he confessed to the murder of Stepan Bandera, as well as to the murder of OUN activist Professor L. Rebet two years earlier. An international scandal erupted, since at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, the USSR officially proclaimed its renunciation of the policy of international terrorism.
At the trial, Stashinsky testified that he acted on the instructions of the USSR leadership. On October 19, 1962, the court of the city of Karlsruhe pronounced a sentence: 8 years of maximum security prison.
Stepan’s daughter Natalya Bandera ended her speech at the trial with the words:
“My unforgettable father raised us in love for God and Ukraine. He was a deeply religious Christian and died for God and an independent, free Ukraine.” .

On the first day of each new year, torchlight processions take place in the cities and towns of Western Ukraine. People take to the streets to honor the memory of Stepan Bandera, the most controversial figure in modern Ukrainian history. Many consider him a real hero who gave his life for the independence of the country, others consider him a criminal and traitor, because of whom thousands of people died. He himself did not have to kill people, but his supporters, blindly obeying orders, carried out genuine terror in the western regions of Ukraine in the post-war years.

Stepan Bandera was born in Stary Ugrinov in 1909. In the documents about the place of his birth there is a record of a no longer existing state ─ the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was then integral part Austro-Hungarian Empire. Stepan Bandera is destined to absorb the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism from childhood. His father, Greek Catholic priest Andrei Bandera, firmly believed in the realization of the then unrealizable dream of Ukraine gaining independence.

During the First World War, Galicia became a gigantic battlefield. My father, having been submitted to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, went to fight at the front. After the defeat of the Austrians in the war, he became a member of the parliament of the independent Western Ukrainian People's Republic and joined the Ukrainian militia ─ the Galician Army, the predecessor of future armed formations of Ukrainian nationalists. Stepan Bandera met the end of the war with relatives in the city of Stryi near Lvov. Western Ukraine came under Polish rule and my father, who served as a chaplain in the Galician army that fought against the Poles, had to hide from the occupation authorities for some time.

At the age of twelve, Stepan Bandera joined an underground organization of Ukrainian schoolchildren. Thus began his journey into politics and the struggle for independence, which lasted almost 40 years, most of which he would have to spend in captivity or in an illegal position. He can safely be called a fanatic or obsessed with an idea. Even as a child, he began to prepare himself for future difficult trials.

Stepan Bandera often went with scouts on long forest hikes, played sports, and in winter he hardened himself in the cold by dousing himself with water. He overdid it a little. From hypothermia he will develop rheumatism in his legs, from which he will suffer greatly throughout his life. In the post-war years, Poland began to pursue a policy of forced assimilation in Ukrainian territories, supporting the resettlement of Poles in Western Ukraine. So the Polish authorities became the main enemy for Ukrainian nationalists.

In 1927, Stepan Bandera joined the Ukrainian Military Organization, and 2 years later he found himself in the newly organized Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). While studying at the Lviv Polytechnic to become an agronomist, he devoted all his free time to underground activities. Throughout his life, Bandera had many nicknames ─ Fox, Gray, Kruk, Baba, Rykh. In those years, he wrote a lot for illegal newspapers, signing the pseudonym Matvey Gordon.

The life of an underground worker is the same in all countries and at any time. Secret meetings, posting leaflets, distributing illegal newspapers, propaganda among the masses, organizing strikes and boycotts of elections - he had to do all this. The active young nationalist was quickly noticed. In 1933, he was appointed “regional guide” ─ head of the regional organization of the OUN.

Stepan Bandera nationality

The political struggle gradually became radicalized. Ukrainians began to take up arms. In 1932, Stepan Bandera was trained in sabotage methods at a German intelligence school in Danzig. Thus began his collaboration with the German authorities, who in those years were trying to cultivate an internal enemy for neighboring unfriendly Poland. In 1933, the OUN decided to eliminate the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland, Bronislaw Peracki.

The organization of the operation was personally led by Stepan Bandera. In mid-June 1934, in Warsaw, the Polish minister was shot by OUN member Grigory Matseiko. He managed to successfully leave both the crime scene and Poland, but the organizer of the action was unlucky. They were all arrested, including Stepan Bandera. A court in Warsaw found him guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging. During the trial, Bandera was removed from the courtroom several times for shouting “Long live Ukraine.” The death penalty was replaced with life imprisonment. In prison, Stepan Bandera showed himself to be a very restless prisoner, constantly participating in protest hunger strikes. From there, he continued to lead the activities of the OUN in Western Ukraine.

In addition to Poland, the gaze of Ukrainian nationalists often turned to the east. In the early 30s in the territory Soviet Ukraine famine broke out due to crop failures. Ukrainians often call those events the “Holodomor,” still considering it artificially inspired by Stalin’s entourage. Stepan Bandera shared the same views. He decided to take revenge on the Soviet authorities for the “mockery” of the Ukrainian people.

In the fall of 1933, the secretary of the USSR Consulate in Lvov, Alexey Mailov, died at the hands of a sent one. With this event, the war of Bandera and the OUN against the USSR began. The release of the prisoner was helped by the outbreak of the Second World War. He met her at the Brest Fortress. The Poles housed a maximum security prison within its walls. As Soviet troops approached, moving to the West according to the Molotov-Ribbentropp plan, the prison guards fled. Stepan Bandera immediately headed home to Lviv. These were several months that he lived under Soviet rule, naturally, in an illegal situation. If the NKVD had arrested him then, he would have rotted in Kolyma or even been immediately shot in the basement, but Bandera managed to secretly cross the border and get out into the territory occupied by Germany.

Bandera movement

Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. Western Ukraine was divided between Germany and the USSR. The enemy for Bandera has changed. Germany took Poland's place. While he was in prison, big changes took place in the OUN. The former leader, Evgen Konovalets, was blown up by a bomb in Rotterdam. Andrey Melnik laid claim to unconditional leadership. Their meeting took place in Italy. Stepan Bandera demanded that Melnik stop all contacts with Germany. He refused. The OUN split into two parts. Bandera headed the OUN (Bandera movement).

Actually, after a quarrel between the two OUN leaders, the definition of “Bandera” came into play. He still had to begin cooperation with Nazi Germany. He met the German attack on the USSR in Krakow, while under vigilant police surveillance. He was strongly discouraged from visiting his native places. The German troops that entered Lvov at the end of June 1941 included 2 battalions staffed by his supporters. On the same day, one of the leaders of the OUN (b) Yaroslav Stetsko read out the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” in Lviv. The Germans had absolutely no need for an independent Ukraine. They had plans that were not their own. They did not recognize any “independence”, and all its guardians were quickly arrested.

Stepan Bandera with his wife and daughters were placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he soon met Andrei Melnik, who always relied on Germany. In the concentration camp, Stepan Bandera had some privileges compared to other prisoners. He was fed a little better and was sometimes allowed to meet his family. The Germans have always been very calculating.

Andrey Melnik in old age

Bandera was remembered in 1944, when the Soviet Army approached the lands of Western Ukraine. According to the calculations of the German command, Ukrainian nationalists were supposed to start a partisan war in the liberated areas. Bandera made Germany’s recognition of the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” a mandatory condition for further cooperation. He never managed to achieve this.

Back in 1942, in Galicia, without the participation of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of the UPA began to form, which became the core of the resistance and received assistance from the Germans in the form of weapons. Stepan Bandera from Germany tried to lead the “abroad” nationalist formations.

Within the OUN, especially among its members hiding in the forests of Ukraine, opposition grew, accusing it of being out of touch with real life and dogmatism.

Stepan Bandera met the end of the war in the part of Germany occupied by the British. The British intelligence services quickly found him. In turn, the Americans continued to look for Bandera as an accomplice of Nazi Germany and he had to hide from them for a couple of years.

Since then, the only enemy for Ukrainian nationalists has remained Soviet Union. The guerrilla war in Western Ukraine continued until the mid-50s.

Many years after the destruction of the main forces of “Bandera,” former UPA fighters were found in villages hiding in the cellars of relatives. Such tenacity was only demonstrated by Japanese soldiers who did not recognize surrender, and who continued to be captured in the jungles of the Philippines until the 70s.

Murder of Stepan Bandera

The recognized leader of the nationalist movement inevitably became a target for the Soviet intelligence services. In 1947, an assassination attempt was made by Yaroslav Moroz, and a year later by Vladimir Stelmashchuk. In 1952, German citizens Leguda and Lehmann were convicted of preparing a murder. A year later, Stepan Libgolts tried to get to Bandera. The OUN's own security service and the German police were on alert, exposing the agents. The OUN leader lived with his family under the surname Poppel in Munich. He was so reliably hidden that his own children for a long time believed that Poppel was their real name.

In October 1959, KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky found out Stepan Bandera and the address of his house. 2 years earlier, he successfully eliminated another OUN leader, Lev Rebet. For the new murder, Stashinsky used a special syringe pistol loaded with potassium cyanide. He was waiting for Bandera at the entrance of the house with a newspaper bundle in which a weapon was hidden. Poppel-Bandera returned home for lunch. Stashinsky fired a shot in his face and disappeared. The true cause of death was determined only by an autopsy. Initially, doctors suspected a heart attack.

Stepan Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof cemetery in front of a huge crowd of Ukrainian emigrants. Stashinsky would flee to the West in 1961 from the GDR with his German wife. He frankly admits to the murders of Rebet and Bandera. After 6 years, he will be released early from prison and disappear. He will undergo plastic surgery, after which Stashinsky will live in South Africa under an assumed name.

In the summer of 2007, my wife and I took a trip to the city of Lviv. We were returning home from Crimea, and decided to drive through Lvov, and further, to Brest, Minsk...

It’s interesting to see - what kind of Western Ukraine is it?

Beyond Ternopil, on the slopes overgrown with thick grass and large trees, villages are scattered, solid, prosperous. Every village has a mandatory church, or even two. On the slopes there are herds of cows, sheep, very large herds. On one slope we saw a cemetery: a chapel and long neat rows of low white stone crosses. We stopped. I decided that this was a burial place from the First World War, but it turned out that soldiers of the UPA, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, from the Galicia division, who died in the battle near Brody during the Second World War, were buried here...
History... our history, says different things about the participants in these events: traitors, Banderaites, nationalists... Here, among these graves, you understand something else: these people, no matter how you treat them, fought for the freedom of Ukraine. Freedom, as they understood it... My mother’s brother, my uncle Gregory, a tank driver, died near the city of Stanislav, now Ivano-Frankivsk, perhaps in battles with these same “Banderaites,” but I don’t dare to quit there is a stone in them. They fought for Ukraine, and in this war they gave up the most precious thing - their lives. “The fighters are sleeping, they have said their thing, and they are forever right!”

Stepan Bandera... This person has been slandered in history, just like Simon Petlyura - vilely, unfairly and undeservedly. They always talk about Bandera with the prefix “traitor,” although he never betrayed anyone. Opposed Soviet power? Yes, he performed! But he didn’t swear allegiance to her, she was as alien to him as the German fascist was to any Soviet person of those years. Once, the author of these lines argued with a Kyiv editor, and when asked who Bandera betrayed, the opponent, without any embarrassment, said: he betrayed Melnik. (Melnik is one of the leaders of the OUN.) Even such an insignificant episode was taken into account by falsifiers of history!

Some authors put Stepan Bandera on the same level as such an odious personality as General Vlasov. But Vlasov, we note, was treated kindly by the Soviet government, had considerable privileges, and most importantly, he swore allegiance to this power. However, when his life was threatened, he easily broke his oath and went over to the side of the enemy. In the Novgorod forests, when his army was surrounded and starving soldiers ate tree bark and fought for a piece of fallen horse meat, a cow was kept at the headquarters for Vlasov so that his Soviet Excellency could eat milk and eat cutlets. This fact is from a TV show about Vlasov; I didn’t remember the name, didn’t write it down, didn’t take screenshots. If the reader believes it, he will believe it; if he doesn’t, he won’t.

Stepan Bandera was sentenced to death by a Polish court, spent many days on death row, but did not bow to the enemy. What he had to experience “with a noose around his neck”, what psychological and mental torment he went through - only God knows. He did not pretend to be a hero, was not proud of his prison past, did not boast of his suffering, and was meanly killed from around the corner by a Russian executioner from the NKVD, Stashinsky. Bandera was a real, unbending fighter for the independence of Ukraine. It is enough to note that the armed formations of the OUN and UPA he led fought against the Polish oppressors, and against the Nazis, and against the Red Army. The valiant army of General Vlasov, let us note between the lines, never acted against the Wehrmacht. Today, by the way, there are still alive those Ukrainians who experienced first-hand the merciless, truly bestial, inhuman cruelty of the Soviet Army and especially the NKVD troops in the western regions of Ukraine. The Krasnopogonniki used truly savage methods in the fight against the Ukrainian insurgent movement: detachments of thugs from the NKVD dressed in the uniform of UPA fighters and committed atrocities in Western Ukraine. Which Soviet propaganda later attributed to the “Banderaites.” It is not surprising that the fight against the occupiers continued until the mid-fifties. The occupiers were everyone who came to these lands without an invitation: Poles, Germans, and Russians. Alas, this is so! And why were this people and its heroes so defamed? Just because they wanted to live on their land according to their own laws?.. “Your own house has its own truth!” said the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko a hundred years before these events.

Stepan Bandera, like Petlyura, is accused of anti-Semitism - and there is no worse crime in the world. Was Bandera an anti-Semite?

“One of the most serious accusations against Bandera is related to the so-called Lviv massacre. It happened in the same 1941, June 30, when Bandera proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state. Information about this event is conflicting. The number of victims is estimated from 3 to 10 thousand. The absolute majority were Jews, as well as communists. “Exactly the same thing happened there as in the Baltics and in the eastern part of Poland, which the Red Army occupied in September 1939. Now in Poland they often try to forget this, but in the first days of the German occupation, Poles joined the ranks of the police in large quantities. The reason was the impression left by almost two years of Soviet occupation,” says historian Jēkabsons. It is difficult to say to what extent the massacre was the Ukrainians’ own initiative, and to what extent it was an event inspired by the Germans. We must remember that a week before this, security officers killed 4,000 political prisoners, mainly Ukrainian nationalists, in Lvov. When the corpses of the victims were exhumed, the scene was similar to that in the yard of the Riga Central Prison in July days 1941. In addition, the Germans spread rumors that it was the “Jewish Bolsheviks” who committed atrocities against prisoners. This provoked loved ones to thirst for revenge. The consequences were Jewish pogroms. Obviously, the OUN also participated in them. However, anti-Semitism, which is mentioned at times, was not the basis of the ideology of the OUN and UPA. And Bandera himself did not directly take part in the Lvov massacre, and there is no information that he gave any orders there. “If he was somehow guilty of the Lvov events, it was only because he promoted Ukrainian national ideas, to a certain extent inciting people to take revenge,” explains Jēkabsons. There is no consensus among historians in assessing the attitude of Bandera’s followers towards Jews. But the fact is that Jews later fought in the ranks of the UPA both as militants and as commanders, and especially as medical staff. It is noteworthy that in the early 50s, when Israel and the Zionists were declared enemies of the USSR, Soviet propaganda broadcast that the UPA and the Zionists were going hand in hand.”

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary in Galicia (modern Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the family of a priest. In 1919, Stepan Bandera entered a gymnasium in the city of Striy near Lvov. In 1920 Poland occupied Western Ukraine, and training took place under the supervision of Polish authorities. In 1922, Bandera became a member of the Nationalist Youth Union of Ukraine, and in 1928 he entered the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School with a degree in agronomist.

The situation in western Ukraine was aggravated by repression and terror on the part of the Polish authorities, caused by the disobedience of the Ukrainian population of Galicia and other regions. Thousands of Ukrainians were thrown into prisons and a concentration camp in the Kartuz region (the village of Bereza). In the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded by Yevgeny Konovalets back in 1920, they naturally could not help but notice Stepan Bandera, who was deeply outraged by the actions of pan-Poland, and since 1929 he has led the radical wing of the OUN youth organization. In the early 1930s, Bandera became deputy head of the regional leadership of the OUN. His name is associated with attacks on postal trains, expropriations and robberies of post offices and banks, murders of political opponents and enemies of the national movement of Ukraine.

For the organization, preparation, assassination attempt and liquidation of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Bronislaw Peracki, he, along with other organizers of the terrorist attack, was sentenced at the Warsaw trial in 1936 to to the highest degree punishments. However, the death penalty is subsequently replaced by life imprisonment.

Bandera was imprisoned until the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 13, 1939, thanks to the retreat of parts of the Polish army and the escape of prison guards, he was released and first sent to Lviv, which by that time was already occupied by Soviet troops, and then, illegally crossing the Soviet-German border, to Krakow, Vienna and Rome to coordinate further plans of the OUN. But during the negotiations, serious disagreements arose between Bandera and Melnik.

Bandera formed armed groups from his supporters and on June 30, 1941, at a rally of thousands in Lvov, he proclaimed the act of independence of Ukraine. Bandera's closest ally Yaroslav Stetsko becomes the head of government of the newly created national Ukrainian cabinet of ministers.

Following this, at the beginning of July, in the zone of Soviet occupation, the NKVD shot Stepan's father Andrei Bandera. Almost all of Bandera’s close relatives were transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

However, the reaction from the fascist authorities followed immediately - already in early July, Bandera and Stetsko were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Berlin, where they were asked to publicly renounce the ideas of a national Ukrainian state and annul the act of independence of Ukraine of June 30.

In the fall of 1941, the Melnikites also tried to proclaim Ukraine independent, but they suffered the same fate as the Banderaites. Most of their leaders were shot by the Gestapo in early 1942.

The atrocities of the fascist invaders on the territory of Ukraine led to more and more people joining partisan detachments to fight the enemy. In the fall of 1942, Bandera’s supporters called for the unification of the scattered armed detachments of Melnik’s followers and other partisan associations of Ukraine under the command of Roman Shukhevych, the former leader of the OUN Nachtigal battalion. On the basis of the OUN, a new paramilitary organization is formed - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The national composition of the UPA was quite heterogeneous (representatives of the Transcaucasian peoples, Kazakhs, Tatars, etc., who found themselves in the German-occupied territories of Ukraine, joined the rebels), and the number of the UPA reached, according to various estimates, up to 100 thousand people. A fierce armed struggle took place between the UPA and the fascist occupiers, red partisans and units of the Polish Home Army in Galicia, Volyn, Kholmshchyna, Polesie

All this time, from the autumn of 1941 to the middle of the second half of 1944, Stepan Bandera was in German concentration camp Sachsenhausen

After the expulsion of the German invaders from the territory of Ukraine by Soviet troops in 1944, the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists entered into new phase- the war against the Soviet Army, which lasted until the mid-50s
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

Our time reveals many secrets, many yesterday's heroes become demons, and vice versa: recent enemies become the pride and conscience of the nation, the heroes of Russia. Like, for example, Emperor Nicholas the Bloody, it is not clear for what merits he became a saint overnight, or General Denikin, whose hands are up to his elbows in the blood of the Russian people, or Kolchak, a traitor, a traitor recruited by the British General Staff. And only Simon Petliura and Stepan Bandera, defamed by “historians” and slandered by history, remained irreconcilable enemies for Russia. Because they are Ukrainians, and for a Russian person there is no more implacable enemy than the Ukrainian, whom they hypocritically call brother.

This is especially visible today, in the light of the aggression unleashed by the Russian “brothers” in the eastern regions of Ukraine.

November 2014

There are monuments to Stepan Bandera in Lviv (see Monument to Stepan Bandera in Lviv), Ternopil (see Monument to Stepan Bandera in Ternopil), Ivano-Frankivsk, Drohobych, Terebovlya, Berezhany, Buchach, Dublyany, Mykytyntsy, Sambir, Stryi, Boryslav, Zalishchyky, Chervonograd, Mostyski, the villages of Kozovka, Verbov, Grabovka and Sredniy Berezov. In the city of Turka in 2009, a pedestal was laid for the monument to Stepan Bandera.
Museums
There are 5 Stepan Bandera museums in the world:
Streets
An avenue in Ternopil and streets in Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chervonograd, Drohobych, Stryi, Dolyna, Kalush, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Horodenka and other settlements are named in honor of Stepan Bandera.
Assignment and deprivation of the title “Hero of Ukraine”
January 20, 2010 “for the invincibility of the spirit in defending the national idea, heroism and self-sacrifice in the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state”, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded S. Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine with the award of the Order of the State (posthumously). On January 22, at the celebrations on the occasion of Unity Day at the National Opera, the head of state noted that “millions of Ukrainians have been waiting for this for many years.” Those present at the celebrations greeted the award while standing. The grandson of the OUN conductor, also named Stepan Bandera, came out to receive the award.
Banner at the Karpaty - Shakhtar match in Lviv with a portrait of the figure and the inscription “Bandera is our hero” (April 2010) This decision caused a mixed reaction both in Ukraine and abroad:
Reaction to Ukraine
International reaction
Cancel
On April 2, 2010, the Donetsk District Administrative Court declared illegal and canceled the Decree of President Viktor Yushchenko awarding Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine. The court declared the said Decree illegal and subject to repeal, since such a title can only be awarded to citizens of the state; acquiring Ukrainian citizenship has been possible since 1991; persons who died before this year cannot be citizens of Ukraine; Stepan Bandera died in 1959, so he is not a citizen of Ukraine, through which he cannot be awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine”.
On April 12, 2010, Viktor Yushchenko filed an appeal against the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court of April 2, 2010, arguing that “the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court in the case does not meet the requirements of the current legislation of Ukraine, and therefore should be canceled.”
Appeals were also filed by other persons.
On June 23, 2010, the Donetsk Administrative Court of Appeal accepted the appeals and dismissed them; The decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court is left unchanged. The decision of the appellate court could have been appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine within one month, but this was not done.
On January 12, 2011, the press service of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych reported that:
On January 13, 2011, the lawyer representing the interests of Stepan Bandera (junior) in Ukraine, Roman Orekhov, said that there is now no legal basis to assert that the historical figures Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych have been finally deprived of the title of Hero of Ukraine, awarded by decree of President Yushchenko.
The lawyer also suggested that the presidential administration's message on January 12, which he called a "provocation," was of a political nature and was intended for interested circles in Russia, as well as Russian reporters who came to Ukraine to cover the progress of the court case.
These decisions caused discussions in society, including regarding the legal consequences of these court decisions.
Other honorary titles
In response to the deprivation of the title “Hero of Ukraine,” a number of cities in western Ukraine awarded Stepan Bandera the title of honorary citizen. So, on March 16, 2010 he received the title “ Honorable Sir of the city of Khust", April 30 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Ternopil", May 6 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Ivano-Frankivsk", May 7 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Lviv", August 21 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Dolyna", December 17 - " Honorary citizen of the city of Lutsk", December 29 - "Honorary citizen of the city of Chervonograd", January 13, 2011 - "Honorary citizen of the city of Terebovlya", January 18 - "Honorary citizen of the city of Truskavets" and "Honorary citizen of Radekhov", January 20 - "Honorary citizen of the city Sokal" and "Honorary Citizen of the City of Stebnik", January 24 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Zhovkva", February 16 - "Honorary Citizen of the Yavoriv District".