BANDERA, STEPAN ANDREEVICH(1909–1959) – leader of the Ukrainian national liberation movement in the first half and mid-20th century.
Born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary in Galicia (modern Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father received a theological education at Lviv University and served as a priest in the Greek Catholic Church. According to the recollections of Stepan Bandera himself, an atmosphere of national patriotism and the revival of Ukrainian culture reigned in their house. Representatives of the intelligentsia, Ukrainian business circles, and public figures often gathered at my father’s place. In 1918–1920, Andrei Bandera was a deputy of the Rada of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic.
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 1921, Stepan’s mother, Miroslava Bandera, died of tuberculosis.
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.
Stepan Bandera was never able to defend his thesis at Lvov University - in 1934, for the organization, preparation, assassination attempt and liquidation of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Bronislaw Peratsky, he, along with other organizers of the terrorist attack, was sentenced to capital punishment at the Warsaw trial in 1936. However, the death penalty is subsequently replaced by life imprisonment.
In 1938, the head of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, died at the hands of a Soviet intelligence officer, future Minister of State Security Pavel Sudoplatov. At a congress in Rome in August 1939, one of the leaders of the national movement of Ukraine, Colonel Andrei Melnik, was elected his successor in the OUN.
Meanwhile, 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 went to Lvov, which by that time it 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.
At the same time, widespread arrests of supporters of Stepan Bender were taking place in Volyn and Galicia. Suspicions of betrayal fall on Melnik and his people. Bandera returned to Krakow, and in February 1940 his supporters at a conference accused Melnik and his faction of aiding Nazi Germany, which, in fact, was in no way going to recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine. The decisions of the Rome conference of 1939 are annulled, and Stepan Bandera is proclaimed the leader of the OUN. Thus, there was a split into Bandera and Melnik. Soon the factional confrontation escalated into a fierce armed struggle between the two factions.
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.
After the expulsion of the German invaders from the territory of Ukraine by Soviet troops in 1944, the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists entered a new phase - the war against the Soviet Army, which lasted until the mid-50s. The years 1946–1948 were especially fierce, when, according to information from various sources, in total over these years there were more than four thousand bloody battles between Ukrainian rebels and the Soviet Army on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
All this time, from the autumn of 1941 to the middle of the second half of 1944, Stepan Bandera was in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen. At the end of 1944, the fascist leadership changed its policy towards Ukrainian nationalists and released Bandera and some OUN members from prison. In 1945 and until the end of the war, Bandera collaborated with the Abwehr intelligence department in training OUN sabotage groups.
Stepan Bandera continued his activities in the OUN, whose centralized administration after the end of the Great Patriotic War was located in West Germany. In 1947, at the next meeting of the OUN, Bandera was appointed head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and was re-elected to this position twice in 1953 and 1955.
In the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, who had been taken from Soviet-occupied East Germany. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.
After the collapse of the USSR, for modern Ukrainian nationalists the name of Stepan Bandera became a symbol of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine against Polish oppression, fascist Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism. In 2005, the Ukrainian government declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv. In 2005, the Ukrainian government declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv, but in January 2011 the court invalidated the decree of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of January 20, 2010 conferring the title “Hero of Ukraine” on S. Bandera.
Poisonous jet
Munich, warm October day 1959. Local time 12.50. A young man with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand approached the entrance of a gray five-story building at 7 Kreutmeierstrasse, opened the front door with a key and disappeared into the entrance doorway. A few minutes later, an elderly man with the remains of sparse hair on his almost bare skull appeared at the same entrance and, holding shopping bags in his right hand, opened the same door with his left key. Entering the entrance, he saw a young man with an impassive face coming down the stairs, who, passing by him and already holding the door bracket, sharply raised his hand with the newspaper. The elderly gentleman did not have time to get scared before he had time to raise his left hand (he was left-handed) to snatch the Walther pistol, which he always had under his right armpit.
There was a barely audible bang - and a stream of instantly evaporated liquid hit the bald gentleman in the face. The young man, who already had one foot on the street, walked out of the entrance and slammed the door behind him. He did not hear the sound of a falling body, did not see the blood-red tomatoes scattering from the bag on the floor. The young man walked towards the city park, where he threw something metal into the stream.
This is how the death sentence of the Supreme Court of the USSR was carried out on the executioner of thousands of Soviet citizens, OUN leader Stepan Bandera.
The young man who carried out the sentence was Soviet agent Bogdan Stashinsky, who had the agent aliases “Oleg” and “Moroz”. He was not new to this business. In October 1957, there, in Munich, Stashinsky liquidated the famous theorist and ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, Bandera member Lev Rebeta. The method of carrying out the sentence was the same, only this time Bogdan had a more advanced weapon: a syringe pistol, it was made by a special KGB laboratory. It contained ampoules of hydrocyanic acid, broken and pushed out by a piston under the influence of a micropowder charge. The coronary vessels of the heart instantly compressed, leading to cardiac arrest. Then the vessels were returned to their original state, and forensic experts could not find any signs of violent death.
OUN noose
Stepan Bandera was guilty of the mass extermination of Soviet citizens - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and therefore the death penalty was a fair punishment for him. He was a terrorist by vocation. A few years after graduating from the Higher Polytechnic School, Bandera was arrested. For what? For the murder of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Peracki. He was sentenced to death “for atrocities and bullying of the Ukrainian people.” Bandera faced the death penalty. But later it was changed to life imprisonment.
Bandera was released after five years in prison by the Germans who captured Poland. He immediately organizes a fight against Soviet power in Western Ukraine. Then he moves to Germany, where he proclaims himself the leader of the new revolutionary OUN. From now on, every member of the OUN must live by the principle: either you will “get a free and independent Ukraine,” or you will die in the fight for it.
But the Germans did not need “independent Ukraine”. When the Ukrainian legion “Nachtigal” (“Nightingale”), created by Bandera with the help of the Abwehr, burst into Lviv and Bandera proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state, he was immediately arrested. And he was imprisoned. And, even while sitting in a concentration camp, Bandera created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) of thousands. It was then that Hitler drew attention to him. Bandera was released for sabotage in the rear of the Red Army.
Everyone who opposed “independent Ukraine” and for an alliance with Russia was subject to destruction. The so-called security service of the OUN - SB - was especially zealous. Its militants killed thousands of people. This was usually done using a noose rope. To intimidate the population, sophisticated torture and executions were used - people sawed off their heads, hung them by their feet, and impaled them.
In 1945, in the village of Kravniki, Kalushsky district, Stanislavskaya (Ivano-Frankivsk region), members of the SB gang brutally raped an 18-year-old daughter in front of her mother, and then burned her alive, putting her head in a burning stove, just because she had returned from forced labor. working in Germany, the girl did not give her suitcase with things to the bandits. In 1947, in one of the villages of the Lviv region, in front of a six-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister, militants from the Security Service strangled the parents with a noose, and then announced: “Live and tell your children about us”... These elderly people live today in Kyiv.
After 1945, Bandera quickly found a new owner - American intelligence. The Americans completely took over the maintenance of the ZCH (Overseas Units) of the OUN who settled in Munich. They dropped paratroopers-emissaries of the OUN, radio operators, spies and saboteurs into the territory of Western Ukraine, and supplied the underground with weapons. The OUN leaders were ready to take any steps just to take Ukraine away from the “Bolshevik occupiers-Muscovites.”
The security officer turned out to be a traitor
For the liquidation of the OUN ideologist Rebeta, agent Stashinsky received from the KGB a monetary reward and a valuable gift - a Zenit camera, and for Bandera - the Order of the Red Banner. According to all the rules of the intelligence services, this should have been the end of the agent’s career. He should have settled in Moscow with a good pension and an apartment, but... Stashinsky was allowed to go to his German wife in Berlin.
And then what the Ukrainian security officers feared so much happened. On August 12, 1961, a day before the sectoral borders were closed in Berlin, Stashinsky... fled to the West! They were looking for him... The author of these lines, together with Stashinsky’s curator, was sent to West Berlin to search for the traitorous agent.
As soon as we crossed the sector border, the curator said: “George, if we find Bogdan, leave. I will kill Stashinsky. And myself. I consider myself guilty of not recognizing the traitor.” Bogdan was never found...
In the memory of his supporters and followers, Bandera remains as a national hero and fighter for the liberation of Ukraine from the “Moscow occupiers”, for the creation of a free and “independent Ukraine”. In a number of cities in Ukraine there are his busts, the streets bear his name, and this cannot be ignored. The “leader’s” grandson, also Stepan Bandera, who lives today in Canada, is going to settle in Western Ukraine, where he plans to continue “Banderaism.”
...I don’t know where 70-year-old Stashinsky is now and whether he is alive, under what name he is hiding in the West from Ukrainian nationalists, who also sentenced him to death. But, I think, until the end of his days he will not forget the trusting eyes of the dog - on it, in front of me, he tested the effect of the weapon with which he killed Stepan Bandera...
Stepan Andreevich Bandera is an ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1942, whose goal was the declared struggle for the independence of Ukraine. He was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugryniv, Kalush district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a Greek Catholic priest. After the end of the civil war, this part of Ukraine became part of Poland.
In 1922, Stepan Bandera joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he entered the agronomy department of the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, which he never graduated from.
In the summer of 1941, after the arrival of the Nazis, Bandera called on “the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to defeat Moscow and Bolshevism.”
On the same day, Stepan Bandera, without any coordination with the German command, solemnly proclaimed the restoration of the great Ukrainian power. The “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” was read out, an order on the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the creation of a national government.
The declaration of independence of Ukraine was not part of Germany's plans, so Bandera was arrested, and fifteen leaders of Ukrainian nationalists were shot.
The Ukrainian Legion, in whose ranks there was unrest after the arrest of political leaders, was soon recalled from the front and subsequently performed police functions in the occupied territories.
Stepan Bandera spent a year and a half in prison, after which he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept together with other Ukrainian nationalists in privileged conditions. Bandera's members were allowed to meet with each other, and they also received food and money from relatives and the OUN. They often left the camp in order to contact the “conspiracy” OUN, as well as the Friedenthal castle (200 meters from the Zelenbau bunker), which housed a school for OUN agent and sabotage personnel.
Stepan Bandera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942. The goal of the UPA was declared to be the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. In 1943, an agreement was reached between representatives of the German authorities and the OUN that the UPA would protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans and support the activities of the German occupation authorities. In return, Germany promised to supply UPA units with weapons and ammunition, and in the event of a Nazi victory over the USSR, to allow the creation of a Ukrainian state under German protectorate. UPA fighters actively participated in the punitive operations of Hitler’s troops, including destroying civilians who sympathized with the Soviet army.
In September 1944, Bandera was released. Until the end of the war, he collaborated with the Abwehr intelligence department in preparing OUN sabotage groups.
After the war, Bandera continued his activities in the OUN, whose centralized control was located in West Germany. In 1947, at the next meeting of the OUN, Bandera was appointed its leader and was re-elected to this position twice in 1953 and 1955. He led the terrorist activities of the OUN and UPA on the territory of the USSR. During the Cold War, Ukrainian nationalists were actively used by the intelligence services of Western countries in the fight against the Soviet Union.
It is alleged that Bandera was poisoned by an agent of the USSR KGB on October 15, 1959 in Munich. He was buried on October 20, 1959 at the Munich Waldfriedhof cemetery.
In 1992, Ukraine celebrated the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) for the first time, and attempts began to give its participants the status of war veterans. And in 1997-2000, a special government commission (with a permanent working group) was created with the aim of developing an official position regarding the OUN-UPA. The result of her work was the removal from the OUN of responsibility for cooperation with Nazi Germany and the recognition of the UPA as a “third force” and a national liberation movement that fought for the “true” independence of Ukraine.
On January 22, 2010, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko announced the posthumous award to Stepan Bandera.
On January 29, 2010, Yushchenko, by his decree, recognized members of the UPA as fighters for the independence of Ukraine.
Monuments to the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera were erected in the Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Streets in cities and villages of Western Ukraine are named in his honor.
The glorification of UPA leader Stepan Bandera causes criticism from many Great Patriotic War veterans and politicians who accuse Bandera’s supporters of collaborating with the Nazis. At the same time, part of Ukrainian society, living mainly in the west of the country, considers Bandera and Shukhevych national heroes.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
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Biography, life story of Stepan Andreevich Bandera
Stepan Andreevich Bandera is a Ukrainian politician, ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism.Family, early childhood
Stepan was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugrinov (Ukraine). My father's name was Andrei Mikhailovich, he was a Greek Catholic clergyman. Mother's name is Miroslava Vladimirovna (maiden name is Glodzinskaya, daughter of the Greek Catholic priest from Stary Uringov Vladimir Glodzinsky). In the family, in addition to Stepan, there were six more children - daughters Marta-Maria (1907-1982), Vladimir (1913-2001), Oksana (1917-2008) and sons Alexander (1911-1942), Vasily (1915-1942), Bogdan (1921-1943). In 1922, Andrei and Miroslava had another night, who was named after their mother, but the baby died in infancy.
The large family did not have their own home. They lived in a service house, which was provided for their use by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Andrei Mikhailovich was a staunch Ukrainian nationalist. He raised his many offspring in the same spirit, trying to instill in them his values from early childhood.
Stepan grew up as a completely obedient child - he loved and respected his dear parents very much, blindly believed in God, and prayed daily. When the time came to send little Stepan to school, there was a war going on. Andrei Mikhailovich had to teach his own at home.
Already from the age of five, Stepan saw things that could cause psychological deviations in any, even the healthiest person. Stepan observed military operations more than once, saw pain, death, despair and hopelessness.
Education, upbringing
In 1919, Stepan left his family and moved to the city of Stryi to live with his paternal grandparents. In the same year, Stepan entered the Ukrainian classical gymnasium, where he studied until 1927.
At the gymnasium, Stepan Bandera showed himself to be a strong-willed person. Already knowing that he would have a difficult struggle for his ideals, for the ideals of his father, the young man often doused himself with ice water and stood in the cold for long hours. True, in the end this led to Stepan getting rheumatism of the joints. This disease did not leave him until the end of his life.
CONTINUED BELOW
According to the records of Vadim Pavlovich Belyaev, a Soviet journalist and publicist, Stepan, at a young age, could strangle a cat with one hand on a dare in front of his shocked peers. Thus, according to historians, Bandera tested whether he could, without feeling any remorse, take the life of a living creature.
At one time, together with other high school students, whose minds were entirely occupied with the promotion of nationalist ideas, he joined various thematic organizations. Thus, Stepan was a member of the Group of Ukrainian State Youth and a member of the Organization of High Schools of Ukrainian Gymnasiums. A little later, these two organizations merged into one - the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth.
After high school
Having successfully passed his final exams, in 1927 Stepan Bandera decided to enter the Ukrainian Economic Academy in Poděbrady (Czechoslovakia). However, his dream was not destined to come true - the authorities refused to issue him a foreign passport and Stepan had to return to Stary Ugrinov. In his hometown, Stepan began to actively engage in housekeeping, devoted a sufficient amount of time to cultural and educational work, organized a local choir, created an amateur theater group and a sports society. Stepan Bandera somehow amazingly managed to combine all these activities with underground work through the Ukrainian Military Organization, which the young man joined while studying in high school. In 1928, Bandera officially became a member of this organization, first becoming an employee of the intelligence department, and a little later - of the propaganda department.
In the fall of 1928, Stepan Bandera moved to Lviv to enter the Lviv Polytechnic National University. Stepan managed to become a student in the agronomy department. Bandera studied at this educational institution until 1934.
Political activity
In 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was created on the territory of Ukraine. Stepan Andreevich became one of the first members of this community in Western Ukraine. The leadership of the organization immediately entrusted Stepan with a very important task - to discreetly distribute underground nationalist literature among the students of Lvov and residents of the Kalush district. Bandera coped with his task brilliantly. In 1920, he began to independently manage the department of underground publications, a little later he became the head of the technical and publishing department, and in 1931 he began to control the delivery of underground publications from abroad, mainly from Poland. It was thanks to Stepan’s efforts that Ukrainians were able to read such printed publications as “Awakening the Nation”, “Ukrainian Nationalist”, “Surma” and “Yunak”. Polish police caught Bandera more than once for his illegal actions, for transporting literature, but each time he managed to get away with it.
From 1928 to 1930, Stepan was a correspondent for the underground satirical monthly Pride of the Nation. Bandera wrote interesting and poignant articles, which he signed not with his own name, but with the sonorous pseudonym Matvey Gordon.
In 1932, Stepan Andreevich visited (conspiratorially, of course) the city of Danzig (northern Poland), where he took a course at a German intelligence school. In 1933, Bandera became the regional leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Western Ukraine.
In the period 1932-1933, local residents starved en masse on the territory of Ukraine. The organization of Ukrainian nationalists, led by Stepan Bandera, carried out a number of public actions in their support. In parallel, the OUN fought against the influence of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which tried to rebuild the minds of Western Ukrainian citizens.
On June 3, 1933, at the OUN conference, it was decided to commit an assassination attempt on the Soviet consul in Lvov. Bandera volunteered to lead the operation. However, everything did not go as smoothly as we would like: the fact is that when Nikolai Lemik, the perpetrator of the assassination attempt, arrived at the Soviet consulate, the consul himself was not there. Then Nikolai shot Andrei Mailov, the consulate secretary and secret agent of the United State Political Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. As a result, Lemik was sentenced to life in prison.
Stepan Andreevich did a lot to promote the ideas of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Thus, it was during his leadership that the organization increasingly began to use previously unpopular methods of influence - terrorism, mass actions, protests. Quite often, Bandera organized actions against everything Polish, from vodka and cigarettes to the Polish language.
Murders in Poland and prison
On June 15, 1943, on the orders of Stepan Andreevich, Bronislaw Wilhelm Peracki, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland, was killed. The killer himself, Grigory Matseyko, managed to escape. The day before Peratsky’s death, Bandera was arrested while trying to cross the Polish-Czech border.
On November 18, 1935, the trial of Stepan Bandera and eleven other nationalists began in Warsaw. Three of them (including Stepan himself) were sentenced to death by hanging, but during the trial an amnesty was adopted. As a result, they decided to put the nationalists behind bars for life.
While Bandera was being tried, his comrades did not sit idly by. In the city of Lvov, Ivan Babiy, a professor of philology at Lvov University, and Yakov Bachinsky, his student, were shot dead. After the examination, it became clear that Ivan, Yakov and Bronislav were killed from the same revolver. Having indisputable evidence in hand, the Polish authorities held another trial, at which Bandera admitted that all three were killed on his personal orders. As a result, the court sentenced Stepan Andreevich to seven life sentences.
On July 2, 1936, Stepan was taken to the Mokotów prison in Warsaw, and the next day he was transferred to the Święty Krzyz prison. During his imprisonment, Bandera became interested in the works of the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Dmitry Ivanovich Dontsov. Admiring Dontsov’s thoughts, Bandera came to the conclusion that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists lacked a certain revolutionary spirit.
In 1937, it was decided to tighten the regime in Święty Krzyż. The administration prohibited relatives from sending parcels to prisoners. Outraged, Stepan and several of his comrades went on a sixteen-day hunger strike. As a result, the administration had to give in and make concessions. In June of the same year, Bandera was transferred to solitary confinement. Until this moment, he served his sentence in the company of his comrades in the OUN, who were subsequently distributed to different prisons in Poland.
In 1938, Stepan Andreevich was sent to Wronki prison (Poznan). The Polish authorities considered that Wronki was a much more reliable place for such a terrible criminal to serve his sentence. Around the same time, Bandera’s associates, who managed to remain free, began to develop a plan for the release of their leader. This somehow became known to the authorities. To avoid mistakes, Stepan was transferred to another prison, much more strict than the previous ones. Bandera ended up in prison in the Brest Fortress. However, he did not stay there long. On September 13, 1929, when the entire prison administration left Brest due to the German attack on Poland, Stepan Andreevich and other prisoners calmly left the Brest Fortress and were released.
Activities of Stepan Bandera during World War II
After leaving prison and uniting with several supporters of his beliefs, Stepan Andreevich went to Lvov. Along the way, he established contact with the existing network of the Organization of National Ukrainians. Having entered into the essence of the matter, Bandera immediately ordered that all the forces of the organization be directed to fight the Bolsheviks.
Having reached Lvov, Bandera lived in an atmosphere of complete secrecy for two whole weeks, but this did not prevent him from taking an active part in the affairs of the OUN.
In October 1939, Stepan Andreevich left Lviv, fearing that he might be caught, and went to Krakow.
In November 1939, Stepan Bandera went to Slovakia for two weeks, where experienced doctors were supposed to help him restore his health (rheumatism, which had plagued him since early childhood, intensified during his imprisonment). Even during the course of treatment, Bandera did not forget about his mission - he took an active part in OUN meetings, developed new strategies, and made proposals.
After Slovakia, Bandera went to Vienna to a major OUN center, and from there to Rome for a large congress of Ukrainian nationalists. At that very congress, a split in the organization first emerged: like-minded people had to make a very serious decision and choose the leader of the organization. Two candidates were nominated - Stepan Bandera and Andrey Melnik. The congress delegates were divided and it was difficult to make a unanimous decision. Melnik and Bandera had completely different plans for the future - Melnik assured that Nazi Germany would help give the Ukrainian people freedom, and Bandera was sure that they needed to rely only on themselves, on their own strengths. The prudent Bandera, knowing that disagreements would arise at this congress, on February 10, 1940 (two months before the congress), organized the OUN Revolutionary Conduct in Krakow, which included Bandera’s closest comrades and unanimously recognized him as the leader. When it became clear that Melnik and Bandera would not be able to come to an agreement, the OUN split into two camps - Bandera’s and Melnik’s (OUN(b) and OUN(m), respectively). Bandera, of course, became the leader of his organization.
On June 30, 1941 (a week after the start of the Great Patriotic War), the Germans occupied Lvov. At this time, Stepan Bandera was in Krakow. On his behalf, one of his faithful assistants and comrades, Yaroslav Stetsko, spoke to the Ukrainian people. He publicly read out at the Legislative Assembly a document called “The Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State,” the essence of which was the creation of a new independent state on Ukrainian soil. In just a few days, representatives of the OUN(b) created the Ukrainian State Board and the National Assembly. Bandera's supporters even enlisted the support of the Greek Catholic Church.
On July 5, 1941, the German authorities sent Stepan Bandera an invitation to negotiations regarding German non-interference in the sovereign rights of the Ukrainian state. However, this turned out to be just a cunning ploy. As soon as Bandera arrived in Germany, he was arrested. The Germans demanded that Bandera renounce the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State,” but Stepan Andreevich did not agree, firmly believing in his ideals. As a result, Bandera was sent to the Montelupich police prison, and a year and a half later to the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen. In the concentration camp, Bandera was kept in solitary confinement under round-the-clock surveillance by guards, while, as some historians claim, he was well fed and the conditions in the cell were not entirely terrible. Bandera stayed in Sachsenhausen until September 25, 1944. On this day, he and a couple of hundred other Ukrainians were released. After living in the camp, Stepan Andreevich decided to stay and live in Berlin.
last years of life
Having barely begun his free life in Berlin, Bandera, according to some sources, was recruited by the German military intelligence and counterintelligence agency under the nickname Gray.
In February 1945, still remaining on German territory, Stepan Bandera again became the leader of the OUN(b).
In the second half of the 40s, Stepan Andreevich actively collaborated with the British intelligence services, helping them search for and prepare spies to be sent to the territory of the USSR.
In the period 1946-1947, Bandera had to remember the life of an ever-hiding conspirator - at that time a real hunt was announced for him by the military police in the American zone of occupation of Germany.
In the early 50s, Stepan moved to Munich. There he began to lead an almost normal life. He even invited his family - his wife and children. At the same time, the Soviet intelligence services still continued to dream of his death, while the American services had long forgotten about him. To protect himself and his family, Stepan Andreevich acquired security guards. German police also closely monitored the lives of the Bander family, fearing that they might be killed. By the way, they managed to stop several attempts to kill Stepan Andreevich.
Death
On October 15, 1959, Bogdan Nikolaevich Stashinsky, an agent of the USSR State Security Committee, was waiting for Stepan Andreevich in his own house. It is curious that it was on that day that Bandera, for some unknown reason, released his bodyguards at the entrance. Previously, the guards did not leave their object of observation. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, Bandera went up to the third floor, saw Stashinsky and managed to ask him only one question - “What are you doing here?” At that same second, Bogdan Nikolaevich sharply extended his hand forward with a syringe pistol wrapped in newspaper with charged potassium cyanide, and shot Bandera in the face. The shot was barely audible. When the neighbors finally looked out onto the site, sensing something was wrong, Stashinsky had already disappeared, and Bandera himself was still alive. Neighbors took Stepan Popel (and that was the name they knew him by) to the hospital. However, the dying Bandera failed to reach the doctors in time - on the way to the hospital, without regaining consciousness, he died. At first, doctors ruled that death was caused by a crack in the base of the skull due to a fall on the steps. Over time, thanks to the efforts of law enforcement agencies, the real cause of Stepan Andreevich’s death was established - potassium cyanide poisoning.
A little later, Bogdan Stashinsky was arrested. He confessed to the murder of Bandera and in 1962 was sentenced to eight years in maximum security prison. After serving his sentence, Bogdan Nikolaevich disappeared from public view.
Funeral
On October 20, 1959, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was buried in the Waldfirodhov cemetery (Munich). Several thousand people arrived to say goodbye to Bandera. Before being lowered into the grave, the coffin with the body was sprinkled with specially brought earth from Ukraine and sprinkled with water from the Black Sea.
Wife and kids
On June 3, 1940, Stepan Bandera was legally married to Yaroslava Vasilievna Oparovskaya, who later became the head of the women's department and youth affairs department of the OUN(b). The wife gave birth to Stepan two daughters and one son - Natalya (1941-1985), Lesya (1947-2011) and Andrey (1944-1984). Stepan Andreevich loved his offspring very much and tried to ensure that his political activities did not have a negative impact on their lives. So, his children learned their real name only after the death of their father. Until then, they firmly believed that they sang.
Hero of Ukraine
On January 20, 2010, the President of Ukraine
Stepan Andreevich Bandera, the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, is an extraordinary person. 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 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? Supplying UPA units with ammunition and weapons and even the opportunity to create a Ukrainian state in the event of the Nazis’ 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 the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, taken from East Germany. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by 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.