For some - also what a hero! No, we are not talking about hysterical Ukrainian nationalists, not about organizations of veteran collaborators who fought on the side of Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. Everything is much cooler and more absurd!
Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Roman Shukhevych, commander of the so-called. Ukrainian Insurgent Army. On June 30, this “celebration” should take place in Ukraine at the national level. Moreover, everything is heading towards the fact that Yushchenko will award Shukhevych the title of Hero of Ukraine... And if he has not yet declared Hitler’s birthday a public holiday, it is probably only because it looks very glamorous.
Who is Roman Shukhevych, whose “reputation” the leader of the “orange” opposition, Yushchenko, is now so concerned about? What landmarks of “heroism” and role models did the Ukrainian president see in this criminal?
Rejoice and be glad...
To the 100th anniversary of the birth of Roman Shukhevych
Oh, Roman Shukhevych was a glorious “warrior” and a “great patriot.” It is not for nothing that our no less patriotic President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Viktor Andreevich Yushchenko, during the recent celebration of Victory Day, “among the bright examples of the unity and courage of our people” named his name. Along with the names of Nikolai Vatutin, Nikifor Sholudenko, Alexander Saburov, Ivan Kozhedub... And the tongue did not become a stake!
After all, Shukhevych is among the murderers of Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin! He “feared the glorious army of heroes” who carried out this and hundreds of thousands of other vile, vile and terrible atrocities on our land.
The above-mentioned “warrior” distinguished himself at all stages of his “heroic” path. The most “bright” were his “exploits” when he strove, as was defined in the OUN, to provide the “firer-leader” of the “new retinue order” with “payment for additional assistance in whatever manner Nimechchin would require.” Such “vidal payment”, for example, from the “Nachtigall” battalion, whose deputy commander was R. Shukhevych, only in the first days of the occupation of Lvov amounted to three thousand lives of citizens, in particular children, women, and the elderly. Of course, in the name of the “luxury” future of Ukraine. How else?
It’s not for nothing that this fascist officer later received two Hitler crosses and a medal!
However, the entire bloody “odyssey” of SS Hauptsturmführer R. Shukhevych is expressively and strictly documented in the extensive chapter of the book by V.I. Vereshchak “You can’t overcome the truth” (Ukraine Publishing House, K., 2003. Circulation 1 thousand copies) “Commander of the “army of immortals.” Truth and fiction." We bring to the attention of our readers one of the sections of this chapter.
Atrocities against civilians
“There is a demand for blood up to the knees, so that Ukraine can come to freedom”
Another page in the history of the UPA and its commander Roman Shukhevych is the participation of the “rebels” in the genocide of the civilian population of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Russia.
When considering this issue, it is necessary to take into account the social composition of the “army of immortals”, the fact that its most combat-ready and fanatical core consisted of former police officers who served the German occupiers, involved in the extermination of the Jewish population, as well as former activists of the SS division “Galicia”.
If we take as a basis the data of a domestic scientist, Professor V. Maslovsky, who calculated that in Galicia there were 12 thousand traitors to their people in the “auxiliary” police units, and in Volyn, respectively, 8 thousand, then we can rightfully say that The Schutzmanns made up the main, most brutal, part of the UPA warriors.
Thus, one of the leaders of the Torchinsky district police, V. Krevsky, in the UPA was appointed deputy chief of the Security Service of the OUN “Moscow”. Non-commissioned officer of the 103rd Matsievsky “Schutzmanschaft battalion” D. Koreychuk became the chief of the military reference office of the Kolkovo super-district line of the OUN, receiving the nicknames Tkach and Yarosh. The commandant of the Ostrozhetsk district police, A. Shpak, subsequently emerged as one of the leaders of the UPA under the nicknames Osyka and Sailor. Non-commissioned officer of the 105th Ternopil “Schutzmanschaft battalion” F. Yanyuk headed the Gorokhovsky district OUN line under the nickname Zakharenko.
A policeman from the village of Ratno, Volyn region, A. Koshelyuk, during his service with the Germans, personally shot about a hundred civilians. He took part in the destruction of the population of the village of Kortelis, which was popularly called “Ukrainian Lidice”. Later he left for the UPA. In the police and UPA he was known under the nickname Dorosh (see: Yavorivsky V. Vichni Kortelisi. K., 1981. P. 79). A policeman from the Kovel district police, D. Stepanyuk, became the chief of the Security Service of the regional OUN branch... The list of these fascist henchmen can take many pages.
During the cleansing of the UPA from “unreliable” elements, carried out at the request of Chuprinka (from the editor: there was such a moment in the history of the UPA - terror within the organization - almost 20% of their accomplices were destroyed), upovists from the category of former police officers, employees of the German occupation administrative authorities not only were not harmed, but even took higher places in the OUN hierarchy, vacated after the liquidation of the “enemies of Ukraine.” Is it worth reminding the reader that the hands of such “worthy men” who joined the UPA were stained with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and Ukrainians killed during the establishment of the “new world order” in Ukraine.
But it was not only former policemen who killed. Murder for political, ethnic and purely criminal reasons was commonplace for the Upovites. At least that's what many researchers think.
As already noted, in the summer of 1943, ethnic cleansing of the Polish and remnant Jewish population intensified in northwestern Ukraine. The basis for their implementation by the UPA was the decisions of the 3rd OUN conference, held in February 1943. Anti-Russianism, anti-Polonism, anti-Semitism and anti-Sovietism formed the basis for a number of resolutions of the conference that regulated relations with “foreigners”.
The conference approved the intention of the OUN leaders to intensify the fight to eliminate “outsiders” from Ukrainian ethnic territories, which served as a justification for many years of bloody atrocities of the UPA in the territory of post-war Poland and Belarus. At the direction of Chuprinka, many documents approved at the conference, as well as at the 3rd large meeting of the OUN, will be destroyed, since they compromised Ukrainian nationalists too much in front of the world community. In pursuance of these decisions, the leaders of the OUN-UPA issued and sent instructions to their subordinates that did not bode well for representatives of national minorities.
The main organizer of the genocide of Poles and Jews during this period was Czuprinka, who issued a special order that read:
“Treat the Jews the same way as the Poles and Gypsies: destroy mercilessly, spare no one... Take care of doctors, pharmacists, chemists, nurses; keep them under guard... The Jews used for digging bunkers and building fortifications are to be quietly liquidated upon completion of the work...”
(Prus E. Holokost po banderowsku. Wroclaw, 1995).
A similar order from Chuprinka, aimed at the destruction of the Poles, provided:
“In connection with the successes of the Bolsheviks, we should hasten with the liquidation of the Poles, cut out purely Polish villages, burn mixed villages, and only destroy the Polish population. Burn Polish buildings only if they are at least 15 meters away from Ukrainian buildings... For the murder of one Ukrainian by Poles or Germans, shoot 100 Poles... Conduct reconnaissance among the Poles, find out the strength of resistance and the level of weapons. Use cripples and children for reconnaissance... If a Ukrainian is mistakenly killed during the murder of Poles, the culprit will be punished by death... Password: “Our night, our forest.”
(Plus E. Armia powstancsza csy kurenie rizunow? Wroclaw, 1997. S. 99).
For the practical implementation of such orders, the Bandera leadership developed special instructions. Here is an excerpt from it:
“Purge all elements that will pose a threat in sub-Soviet reality. Use front-line chaos for the purpose of mass liquidation of hostile elements, and they are primarily:
a) organized members of the Bolshevik underground,
b) partisan detachments,
c) active sympathizers of the Bolsheviks,
d) Muscovites-prisoners who become politically active,
e) a Polish leadership element capable of fighting, who will help the Soviet occupation..."
(State Archives of the Rivne Region (hereinafter GARO). F. R-30. Op. 2. D. 16. L. 112-114).
The “heroes of the national liberation movement” subjected ordinary people who, in accordance with fascist ideology, to the category of “enemies of the nation,” were subjected to terrible torture. Let us turn to specific facts cited by researchers and eyewitnesses of the OUN-UPA mass crimes.
On February 9, 1943, Bandera members from the gang of Pyotr Netovich, under the guise of Soviet partisans, entered the Polish village of Parosle near Vladimirets, Rivne region. The peasants, who had previously provided assistance to the partisans, warmly welcomed the guests. Having eaten their fill, the bandits began to rape women and girls. Before being killed, their chests, noses and ears were cut off. Then they began to torture the rest of the village residents. Men were deprived of their genitals before death. They finished off with ax blows to the head.
Two teenagers, the Gorshkevich brothers, who tried to call real partisans for help, had their bellies cut open, their legs and arms cut off, their wounds generously covered with salt, leaving them half-dead to die in the field. In total, 173 people were brutally tortured in this village, including 43 children.
When the partisans entered the village on the second day, they saw piles of mutilated bodies lying in pools of blood in the villagers’ houses. In one of the houses, on the table, among scraps and unfinished bottles of moonshine, lay a dead one-year-old child, whose naked body was nailed to the boards of the table with a bayonet. The monsters stuffed a half-eaten pickled cucumber into his mouth.
In the fall of 1943, soldiers of the “army of immortals” killed dozens of Polish children in the village of Lozovaya, Ternopil district. In the alley, they “decorated” the trunk of each tree with the corpse of a child killed before. According to Western researcher Alexander Korman, corpses were nailed to trees in such a way as to create the appearance of a “wreath.” Local residents remembered this alley for a long time. Witness T.R. from Poland: “On the village of Osmigovichi on July 11, 1943, during the service of God, Bandera’s followers attacked and killed the believers. A week later, our village was attacked... Small children were thrown into the well, and large children were locked in the basement and filled up. One Bandera member, holding the baby by the legs, hit his head against the wall. The mother of that baby screamed until she was bayoneted.”
C.B. from the USA: “In Podlesye, as the village was called, Bandera’s men muzzled four from the family of miller Petrushevsky, while 17-year-old Adolfina was dragged along a rocky rural road until she died.”
F.B. from Canada: “Bandera’s men came to our yard, grabbed our father and cut off his head with an ax, and pierced our sister with a stake. Mom, seeing this, died of a broken heart.”
Yu.V. from the UK: “My brother’s wife was Ukrainian. Because she married a Pole, 18 Bandera members raped her. She never came out of this shock... she drowned herself in the Dniester.”
Yu.H. from Poland: “In March 1944, our village of Guta Shklyana, commune Lopatin, was attacked by Bandera, among them was one named Didukh from the village of Oglyadov. They killed five people and cut them in half. A minor was raped."
(Polishchuk V. Girka pravda. Malignity of the OUN-UPA. P. 308-309).
And here is data from the book of Polish researchers Yu. Turovsky and V. Semashko entitled “Crimes of Ukrainian nationalists committed against the Polish population of Volyn 1939-1945,” published in Warsaw in 1990:
“March 1943. In the outskirts of Huta Stepanska, Stepan commune, Kostopol district, Ukrainian nationalists deceived 18 Polish girls, who were killed after rape. The bodies of the girls were laid next to each other, and a ribbon was placed on them with the inscription: “This is how the frogs should die” (P. 32).
“July 11, 1943. Biskupichi village, Mikulichi commune, Vladimir-Volynsky district. Ukrainian nationalists committed mass murder by driving residents into a school building. At the same time, the family of Vladislav Yaskula was brutally murdered. The executioners burst into the house while everyone was sleeping. They killed the parents and five children with axes, put them all together, covered them with straw from mattresses and set them on fire. Only Vladislav was saved by a miracle” (p. 81).
“July 12, 1943 Colony Maria Volya, commune Mikulichi, Vladimir-Volynsky district. At about 15.00, Ukrainian nationalists surrounded her and began to muzzle the Poles, using firearms, axes, knives, pitchforks and sticks. About 200 people (45 families) died. Some of the people, about 30 people, were thrown alive into a well and there they were killed with stones. Those who ran were caught up and finished off. During this massacre, the Ukrainian Didukh was ordered to kill a Polish woman and two children. When he did not comply with the order, they killed him, his wife and two children. Eighteen children aged from 3 to 12 years old, who were hiding in the grain fields, were caught by the criminals, put on a row cart, taken to the village of Chestny Krest and there they were killed, pierced with pitchforks, chopped with axes. The action was led by Kvasnitsky” (p. 91).
We will cite several examples of this nature from the already mentioned book of the Polish scientist Edward Prus, “The Rebel Army or the Rezun Smoking House?”
In the Terazha district (Lutsk district), Bandera’s men on March 7, 1943 captured several Polish children in a pasture, who were killed in the nearby forest. In Lipniki (Kostopol district), on May 5, 1943, the Upovites smashed the head of three-year-old Stasik Pavlyuk against the wall, holding him by the legs. On June 8, 1943, in the village of Chertozh-Vodnik (Rovno district), the Upovites, in the absence of their parents’ home, muzzled three Bronevsky children: Vladislav, 14 years old, Elena, 10 years old, and Henry, 12 years old. On July 11, in Kalusovo (Vladimir district), during a massacre, the Upovites muzzled a two-month-old child, Joseph Fili, tore him by the legs, and put parts of his body on the table.
A few more archival documents:
“From the minutes of the meeting of Metropolitan Polycarp (Sikorsky) of the UAOC with General Commissioner Shenet on May 28, 1943. Commissioner Shenet says:
“National bandits also manifest their activities by attacking and mucking unarmed Poles. According to our calculations, 15 thousand Poles have been muzzled so far! The Yanova Dolina colony does not exist.”
(GARO. F. R-30. Op. 2. D. 16. L. 198-201).
The result of the exhumation of victims of the massacre of Poles located in the villages of Ostrowki and Wola Ostrowiecka, carried out on August 17 - 22, 1992, committed by OUN-UPA terrorists. Ukrainian sources from Kyiv since 1988 report the total number of victims in the two listed villages as 2,000 Poles.
Photo: Dziennik Lubelski, Magazyn, nr. 169, Wyd. A., 28 – 30 VIII 1992, s. 9, za: VHS – Produkcja OTV Lublin, 1992.
From the chronicle of the Kolodinsky detachment (1943-1945):
“On the day of 11.11, by order of commander Laidaki, one hundred (company. Author) led by Nedotypolsky goes to liquidate the Polish colony of Khvashchevat. At about 22.30 a couple (platoon. Author), together with 30 peasants, surrounded the Khvashchevat colony. The Poles from the colony are armed only with rifles and then in small quantities. When the Cossacks began to surround the colony, the Poles opened fire, however, hearing bursts from a machine gun, they began to run away. On the side towards which the Poles ran was a swarm (squad - author) of Orlenko. They spoke Polish there. The Poles thought that they were “their own”. Orlenko said: “Who is shooting?” A strong Lyakh, about 45 years old, approached him and said: “Unknown, probably Bulbashi.” When I came closer and figured out who I was approaching at 6 steps, it was already too late to shoot. He fell, hit by a bullet from Bear's machine gun. But he was only wounded and began to desperately beg, saying: “Pan’s Sokyrniki, don’t shoot.” The entire colony was burned, 10 Poles were killed... 45 horses were taken..."
(GARO. F. R-30. Op. 23. D. 88. L. 1-48).
As a result of the atrocities of Bandera, by the end of 1943, almost all Polish settlements in Volyn and Rivne region, together with their inhabitants, were wiped off the face of the earth. Poles living in Galicia suffered a similar fate around June 1944, when the UPA-Zahid was finally formed and armed by the occupiers.
Examples of such atrocities by the OUN can be given endlessly. It was not only Poles who became their victims.
In the summer of 1944, a hundred “Igors” came across a camp of gypsies in the Paridub forest who had fled persecution by the Nazis. The bandits robbed them and brutally killed them. They cut them with saws, strangled them with nooses, and chopped them into pieces with axes. In total, 140 Roma were killed, including 67 children.
Thousands of Ukrainians died a terrible, martyr’s death:
“Report of the police-executive detachment of the SBVR (security service of the military district) “Ozero” for the period from January 13 to May 4, 1944 ...11. 307 persons arrested:
a) for communism 111 persons,
b) sexism 59 persons,
c) NKVD 67 persons,
d) families of 70 persons.
Together there are 307 persons.
306 persons were put to death. 1 person was released from arrest. All belongings of those liquidated were handed over to the owner against receipt, some were given to the detachment.
Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!
Headquarters, 05.05.1944 Black"
(GARO. F. R-30. Op. 2. D. 31. L. 51).
R. Shukhevych’s henchmen from the Security Service waged a merciless fight against Soviet partisans and underground fighters. In confirmation, we present another document from the Rivne archive:
“October 21, 1943 ... 7 Bolshevik intelligence officers were captured who were going from Kamenets-Podolsk to Polesie. After an investigation, evidence was received that these were Bolshevik intelligence officers, and they were destroyed... On October 28, 1943, in the village of Bogdanovka, Koretsky district, an informer teacher was killed... In the village of Trostyanets, 1 house was burned and a family was thrown into the fire alive... Headquarters . 10/31/43 Chief R. 1 V. Winter.”
Every Ukrainian who treated the Soviet liberation soldiers without malice and hostility could suffer the terrible revenge of the OUN members. District guide I. Revanyuk (“Proud”) told the following incident:
“At night, from the village of Khmyzovo, a village girl of seventeen years old, or even younger, was brought into the forest. Her fault was that she, along with other village girls, went to dances when a military unit of the Red Army was stationed in the village. Kubik saw the girl and asked Varnak for permission to personally interrogate her. He demanded that she admit that she “walked” with the soldiers. The girl swore that this did not happen. “I’ll check it now,” Kubik grinned, sharpening a pine stick with a knife. A moment later, he jumped up to the prisoner and began poking her between her legs with the sharp end of a stick until he drove a pine stake into the girl’s genitals.”
Bandera’s men tortured the same young girl Motrya Panasyuk for a long time, and then tore her heart out of her chest.
One night, Bandera’s men brought a whole family from the village of Volkovya to the forest. They mocked unfortunate people for a long time. Then, seeing that the wife of the head of the family was pregnant, they cut her stomach, tore out the fetus from it, and instead stuffed a live rabbit into it.
One night, bandits broke into the Ukrainian village of Lozovaya. Over 100 peaceful peasants were killed within 1.5 hours. A bandit with an ax in his hands burst into Nastya Dyagun’s hut and hacked to death her three sons. The youngest, four-year-old Vladik, had his arms and legs cut off. In Makukha’s hut, the killers found two children, three-year-old Ivasik and ten-month-old Joseph. The ten-month-old child, seeing the man, was delighted and laughingly stretched out her arms to him, showing her four teeth. But the ruthless bandit slashed the baby’s head with a knife, and cut off the head of his brother Ivasik with an ax.
After the soldiers of the “army of immortals” left the village, dead bodies were found on the bed, on the floor and on the stove in the hut of the peasant Kuzi. Splashes of human brain and blood froze on the walls and ceiling. The Bandera ax ended the lives of six innocent children: the eldest of them was 9 years old, and the youngest was 3 years old.
(see: V. Zamlinsky. The Black Way. P. 144).
Thousands of similar examples can be given. This is what one of the organizers of the genocide on the lands of Western Ukraine, already mentioned by us, the commander of the UPA group Fyodor Vorobets, said after his detention by law enforcement agencies:
“...I do not deny that under my leadership a large number of atrocities were committed against... the civilian population, not to mention the mass extermination of OUN-UPA members suspected of collaborating with Soviet authorities... Suffice it to say that in one Sarnensky superdistrict, in the areas: Sarnensky, Bereznovsky, Klesovsky, Rokitnyansky, Dubrovetsky, Vysotsky and other districts of the Rivne region and in two districts of the Pinsk region of the Belarusian SSR, gangs and SB militants subordinate to me, according to the reports I received, in 1945 alone six thousand Soviet citizens..."
(Criminal case of F. Vorobets. Stored in the SBU Directorate for the Volyn region).
The OUN members, as some domestic researchers note, did things that even the Stalinist regime could not think of. For example, they introduced the practice of physical elimination of patients with sexually transmitted diseases. The historian V. Sergiychuk in one of his books cites excerpts from the instructions of the OUN district commander on preparations for the winter of 1946-1947, which sets the task:
“People infected with the disease must be deciphered in front of the entire population of a given village. Prohibit infected people from having intimate meetings with others who are healthy. Failure to comply with this order is punishable by death as one who is consciously trying to destroy a living and healthy national organism...
The following apply to members and rebels:
1. Conduct a medical examination.
2. Decipher patients in a given area between frames and, under threat of death, prohibit them from meeting others.
3. Whenever possible, provide medical assistance. If the disease is advanced, give him a pistol and a grenade, and let him go and kill the Bolshevik leaders. He’s already lost to the nation.”
(Sergiychik V. Ten buremnykh lit. K., 1998. P. 545).
The prevailing practice was to destroy one's own wounded if there was a threat of falling into the hands of the enemy. Many UPA soldiers wounded in battle, knowing that they would face imminent death at the hands of their own leaders or esbists, shot themselves.
In the post-war years, OUN members used every opportunity to continue ethnic cleansing. For these purposes, they literally hunted for the remnants of the Jewish and Polish population. When there were almost no ethnic Poles left in the western regions of Ukraine, they switched to “Muscovites,” representatives of the Russian ethnic group. Numerous archival documents confirm this. One of them is the “Instruction”, seized from the cache of the district guide of the Alexandria region “Sagaidachny”. The “Instructions” demanded from the bandits:
“...a) Rural administration from Russians (from the east), as chairmen of village councils, secretaries, etc. and collective farm chairmen, shoot.
b) Expel the village administration from Ukrainians (from the east) after a warning, so that they leave within two days, if they do not listen, they will be shot.
2. Organize retaliatory actions regarding the issue of families deported to Siberia.
a) Shoot the Russians of the district administration. Party members, Komsomol members, regardless of their nationality.
b) Expel teachers and doctors of all kinds from the villages... from the east. Send after warning, so that they get out within 48 hours. If they don't listen, they'll shoot.
c) Do not allow Muscovites to settle in the places where the families were taken to Siberia; if they do, burn the huts and shoot the Muscovites.
d) Blow up courier trains.
During the action, strike at civilian agents, eliminate at least 3 active seksots in each village...
These promotions, points 1 and 2, start on August 5 and end as quickly as possible. July 1948" (The instructions are stored in the SBU).
Bandera's men, who perfected the skills of executioners in the German police units and SS troops, literally refined their art of tormenting defenseless people. An example for them was Chuprinka, who encouraged such activities in every possible way.
When the whole world was healing the wounds inflicted on humanity by the most terrible of all previous wars, Shukhevych’s thugs in Western Ukrainian lands took the lives of more than 80 thousand people. The overwhelming majority of those killed were peaceful people of civilian professions, far from politics. A significant percentage of those killed at the hands of nationalist murderers were innocent children and old people.
According to V. Maslovsky’s calculations, the activities of the fascist occupiers and their accomplices from the OUN camp during the Great Patriotic War in Western Ukraine alone cost two million human lives. At the hands of punitive forces in this region, the scientist believes, 800 thousand Jews, 200-220 thousand Poles, over 400 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, over 500 thousand local Ukrainians died (see: Maslovsky V. The tragedy of the Galician invasion. Lviv, 1997 55). And this is far from complete data. Considering that before the war, only in the Volyn Voivodeship, out of 2 million 85 thousand 600 inhabitants, 9.9% of Jews and 16.6% of Poles lived (see: Turowski J. Pozoga. Walki 27 Wolynskiej Dywizji AK. Warszawa, 1990. S 7), who mostly died as a result of ethnic cleansing carried out by the OUN, the number of victims was significantly greater.
P.S. It should be noted the special role that the fascists assigned to the Ukrainian auxiliary police. Its regional administrations, city and district villages and rural pasterunkas created by the occupiers (the word “pasterunok” in translation from Polish means a police station - navigator’s note) took an active part in creating the ghetto, transporting Jews to these reservations, escorting columns of those doomed to the place executions and their direct execution.
This role of the police is widely known from German documents, as well as from the testimony of former police officers during their trials in the post-war period. V. Lapchuk and P. Belogrud, former police officers of the Kovel Schutzmanschaftbattalion, told how they guarded the ghetto of this city, escorted Jews to the place of execution in a sand quarry near the village of Bakhov, appropriated the property of those executed, went to participate in the execution of Jews in Ratno, the village of Ozeryany and Sushibabu of the Turiisky district, Povorsk of the Kovel district.
Arrested and brought to trial, former policemen N. Zaichuk, I. Leskovsky, S. Maksimuk and T. Sokhatsky testified during the investigation in March 1948 how several police units were brought together into the 103rd SS punitive battalion, which was stationed in Matseev (Lukov) Turiisky district. Beginning in July 1942, this battalion was primarily engaged in the destruction of Jewish ghettos in populated areas of the region. N. Zaychuk said that he “walked around Matseev, in houses, basements and hidden places, he caught Jews hiding from execution and delivered them to the collection point in the ghetto.” And T. Sokhatsky reported that in addition he participated in the execution of Jews in the ghetto of the village of Matseev (Lukov), “in July - August 1942 he went to executions in the cities of Vladimir-Volynsky, Gorokhov, Berestechko, Lokachi, Turiisk.” For example, 5 Germans and 97 heavily armed policemen took part in the extermination of Jews in the village of Melnitsa, Kovel region, on September 3, 1942.
Curriculum Vitae
Roman Shukhevych
He was born in 1905 in the town of Krakovets into the family of a lawyer. He studied at the Lviv Ukrainian Gymnasium, where Roman’s grandfather was a professor. At this time, seventeen-year-old Shukhevych entered the Higher Military District (1923). He heard about the role and goals of this organization directly from Ataman Konovalets.
After graduating from high school, Roman entered the Gdansk Technical School, then transferred to the Lviv Polytechnic Institute.
In Lvov he began to engage in terrorist activities. In October 1926, with Bogdan Pidchayn, Roman killed the school curator Jan Sobinsky. The perpetrators of the terrorist attack managed to avoid punishment, and instead they were convicted of two innocent people.
Impunity “inspired” Shukhevych, and at the end of the 20s he became an active participant in a number of “expropriations” (robberies of government institutions). They say that Shukhevych’s excessive zeal forced the immediate head of the reference department of the UVO Knysh to warn the overly active nationalist about possible “undesirable consequences.”
At the end of 1929, the future leader of the UPA was trained at the Italian intelligence school. The leader of the “young” OUN members, Stepan Bandera, also mastered the complex sciences of sabotage work there.
The skills acquired in Italy came in handy for both intelligence school graduates in the 1930s, when a series of terrorist attacks swept across Galicia. Bandera and Shukhevych were known as the inspirers and organizers of the “high-profile cases.” The leaders of the “young” OUN members were “burned” by the murder of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Peratsky. At the Lvov trial of 23 nationalists, Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Roman “received” only four years. However, Shukhevych did not serve this term either - two years later he was released under an amnesty.
Upon his release in 1937, the future general decided not to tempt fate and hastily left Poland. He moved to Germany and entered special courses at the military academy in Munich. Upon completion, Shukhevych received the rank of Hauptsturmführer (captain) of the SS and became an officer in the Wehrmacht.
In 1939, the Nazis occupied Poland, releasing the leaders of the “young generation of the OUN.” As you remember, these ambitious “youth” tried to seize power in the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, which led to a split and the formation of a new regional executive from Bandera’s followers. The “government” of the OUN-B also included Roman Shukhevych, who at that time headed the regional line in the western Ukrainian lands occupied by the fascists.
At the same time, intensive preparations of the OUN began for the invasion of the USSR. The Nachtigal division was created in Poland. The Nazis appointed Oberleutnant Herzner as its commander, and Bandera appointed Shukhevych from the OUN. Roman's rating among the Banderaites was very high - the commander of “Nachtigall” became a member of the main line in April 1941 and headed the headquarters of the military reference office. On June 18, 1941, the “specialist in the East” Oberlander and Shukhevych led the “Nachtigallites” to the oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer, and soon the soldiers of the “legion” of Ukrainian nationalists began their dirty “work”.
“Nachtigal” under the command of Shukhevych reached Vinnitsa, and then the Nazis found a new use for them. The “legionnaires” were trained in Frankfurt-on-Oder, and then, united with “colleagues” from “Roland” in the “Schutzmannschaftbattalion-201”, they were sent to fight the Belarusian partisans. For his diligence in “military labor,” Shukhevych was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler.
At the end of 1942 - beginning of 1943, under the leadership of Dmitry Klyachkovsky (Klim Savur), the UPA was formed. Soon Roman Shukhevych also moved here, heading the main military headquarters of the “rebels”. In December 1943, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the UPA - a cornet general under the nickname Taras Chuprinka.
Read above about the activities of the UPA under his command.
When the flight of the Nazis from Western Ukrainian lands became a reality, the leaders of the UPA became worried about their fate. Some were planning to flee with their masters, others were preparing to launch a “great action” in the rear of the Red Army (fortunately, the Nazis generously supplied the OUN members with weapons). Their leader was Roman Shukhevych, who decided, on the advice of Metropolitan Sheptytsky, to stand to the end.
Meanwhile, Chuprinka received Bandera’s order, marked “secret” three times. According to him, anyone suspected of wanting to go over to the side of the Soviets had to be “liquidated.” These people, on the orders of Shukhevych, were dealt with by the SB (special service of nationalist thugs).
At the end of 1944, when all of Ukraine was liberated from the Nazis, Shukhevych met guests. Together with Bandera's envoys Lopatinsky, Chizhevsky and Skorobogatov, the UPA general was visited by Hauptmann Kirn. The fascist captain gave Shukhevych five million rubles, weapons, explosives, a walkie-talkie, and medicines.
Meanwhile, the government of Soviet Ukraine appealed to the OUN members to lay down their arms, and then proposed to negotiate an end to the fight. At the beginning of 1945, Shukhevych was forced to agree to negotiations, since not only ordinary members of the OUN, but also many leaders of UPA detachments made it clear to their leaders that they were ready to make contact with the authorities without their consent.
The negotiations lasted five hours, but at the end, Shukhevych’s representatives (Maevsky and Busol) stated that they were not authorized to sign any documents, saying that the conversation was of a preliminary, informational nature, and the final answer would come later...
Soon Mayevsky and Busol were removed from the “leadership posts” of the UPA. Mayevsky, assessing the situation, committed suicide, and Busola was soon “removed” by the Security Service, staging an attack by militants.
At the beginning of 1948, the UPA practically ceased to exist as an organized military unit - some of its fighters tried to get through Poland and Czechoslovakia to West Germany, and some surrendered to the authorities. But Shukhevych had nowhere to run. He and a group of subordinates continued to terrorize the population of the Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Apparently, sensing that the end was near, Shukhevych and his comrades tried to “have a great time.” Former OUN conductor in the Stryischyna P. Uher recalled: “The elders behaved especially immorally. Not a day passed without revelry, drunkenness, wild orgies, and murders. Venereal diseases began to spread. It is known that the commander-in-chief of the UPA Chuprinka himself was treated for an illness that was popularly called “filthy.”
Nevertheless, Tur (under this nickname Shukhevych headed the OUN push on Ukrainian lands) understood that this could not continue for long. Fearing for his life, he constantly walked with guards. And so, in the morning of March 5, 1950, he “relaxed.” Feeling completely safe in the house of his mistress Anna Didyk, Shukhevych released his “escort”. After some time, NKVD officers knocked on the door...
Six months later, Bandera was informed that the head commander of the UPA, General Coroner Taras Chuprinka,
aka the head of the secretariat of the UGOR (Ukrainian Head Liberation Rada) Roman Lozovsky, aka the head of the OUN line in the Ukrainian lands Tur, aka
the son of a Lviv lawyer, Roman Shukhevych, was killed while trying to escape on March 5, 1950.
(Krakivtsy) Yavorovsky district (Galicia, Austria-Hungary, now the Lviv region in Ukraine) in the family of a district judge. Since childhood, he was brought up in the spirit of radical Ukrainian nationalism. In the year he became an underground member created by Evgen Konovalets Ukrainian military organization(UVO). In his youth he was also a member of Plast (Ukrainian scouting organization) (–).
During his underground activities he changed many nicknames: Monk (Chernets), Tucha, Stepan, Bell (Dzvin) (1930–1933), Shchuka (1938–1939), Tur (1941–1943), Taras Chuprynka (1943–1950), Roman Lozovsky (1944).
V was arrested by the Polish authorities after an attempt on the life of the Minister of Internal Affairs Bronislaw Peracki, but, due to insufficient evidence, was placed in the Bereza-Kartuzskaya political concentration camp, where he led a group of members of Ukrainian nationalist organizations held in the camp.
During the Lvov trial of Stepan Bandera and a group of his supporters () he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. - Spent years in prison. In 1937 he was released as part of a general amnesty. After liberation, for some time he led the self-defense of some Ukrainian villages from attacks by the Poles.
Before the war
After the division of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich Agreement (), Shukhevych illegally moved to Transcarpathian Ukraine occupied by Hungarian troops, where he took part in the creation of the “Carpathian Sich”, taking the position of chief of staff (nickname Pike).
He fought out of encirclement, crossing Romania and Yugoslavia to Austria (which by that time had already been annexed to Germany). The OUN leadership, which had long been financed and controlled by German intelligence services, sent Shukhevych to Danzig to organize communications with OUN forces in Polish territories and undermine the supposed enemy from within. With the outbreak of World War II and after the surrender of Poland, German patrons transferred Shukhevych and his subordinates to Krakow. As a result of the split of the OUN into two factions - OUN(M) and OUN(B) - Shukhevych supported Bandera and joined the leadership of his organization ( Revolutionary Wire of the OUN), turning his attention to organizing an underground network and preparing armed struggle in Western Ukrainian lands annexed to the USSR in September 1939. For this purpose, in 1941, with the consent of the German authorities and with their funding, a battalion of eight hundred people (mostly prisoners of war of Ukrainian nationality who served in the former Polish army) was created, armed and trained for reconnaissance and sabotage activities - the so-called Ukrainian Legion “Nachtigall” (“ Nightingale"), in which Shukhevych was responsible for political and ideological work with personnel and combat training. At the same time, Shukhevych led the actions of the OUN on the border ( outlying) lands of the General Government with a mixed Polish-Ukrainian population.
The OUN leadership hoped that after the “liberation” of Ukraine by German troops from the “Bolshevik tyranny” they would be allowed to create their own Ukrainian state, like the puppet Slovakia and Croatia. “Nachtigal”, according to the plan of the OUN leadership, was to become the embryo and prototype of the army of an independent Ukrainian state.
War
In the very first days of the Great Patriotic War, following the German troops, “Nachtigal” entered Lvov, where legionnaires on the night of June 30, according to pre-compiled lists, carried out a massive punitive action - the destruction of the Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian intelligentsia (see, in particular, The massacre of Lvov professors), Soviet and party workers, ordinary people who sympathized with the Soviet regime, and members of their families.
Having believed in the feasibility of their political ambitions and having received the blessing of the head of the UGCC Andrei Sheptytsky, Bandera’s followers tried on July 6, 1941 to proclaim the creation of an independent Ukrainian state - the “Act of Reconstruction of the Ukrainian State” ( Act of Renewal of the Ukrainian State). It was planned that Roman Shukhevych would take the position of Deputy Minister of War of the Ukrainian State Administration ( Ukrainian sovereign government) - the government of independent Ukraine led by Yaroslav Stetsko. However, Bandera’s followers overestimated their importance for Hitler’s Reich, which had completely different views on the fate of the Slavic space. The initiators of this political act were captured and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they spent time until the end of the war in relatively normal conditions.
Nachtigal was merged with another Ukrainian unit created by the Nazis, the Roland detachment, into the 201st Security Battalion, which was used to fight partisans in Ukraine and Belarus (for more details, see the article Ukrainian collaborators). Shukhevych, the commander of the first hundred and deputy battalion commander, who in the year received the rank of captain in the German army, according to historians of nationalist orientation, soon decided to turn his arms against his former allies and patrons and began corresponding work among his subordinates. At the end of 1942, the entire battalion personnel refused to renew their contract for service in the German army, and therefore the battalion was disarmed, disbanded and interned. According to anti-nationalist historians, the battalion was transferred to the northern regions of Volyn to fight Soviet partisans, then, with the knowledge of the German authorities, together with the Ukrainian auxiliary police and the troops of Ataman Bulba-Borovets, they took part in the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Shukhevych himself, at the beginning of the year, according to historians sympathetic to Ukrainian nationalism, switched to an illegal position and returned to the OUN Provod as a referent on military issues. According to anti-nationalist historians, Shukhevych continued to engage in collaboration activities, in particular, he took part in the formation of the Ukrainian SS division “Galicia”.
In his new role, Shukhevych took an active part in the preparation of the Third Extraordinary Assembly of the OUN, which in August 1943 adopted a new political platform for the OUN’s struggle against the “German-Bolshevik occupier.” Shukhevych at the Gathering was elected chairman of the OUN Wire Bureau, and from November of the same year under the name of Lieutenant Colonel Taras Chuprynki headed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, replacing M. Lebed in this position. He retained the post of commander-in-chief of the UPA until his death. Thus, the main leadership positions in both the OUN and the UPA were in his hands, while about 50 thousand people in all Western Ukrainian territories were subordinate to him (according to historians of nationalist orientation). UPA units mainly fought against Soviet partisans and carried out ethnic cleansing in areas with a mixed Ukrainian-Polish population. According to some reports, from July 10 to July 15, 1943 alone, UPA units in Volyn killed more than 12 thousand ethnic Poles.
In November-December 1943, on behalf of the UPA and OUN, he took an active part in the preparation and holding in the forests of the Zhitomir region of the so-called First Conference of the Captive Peoples of Eastern Europe and Asia, at which the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Peoples was founded. During 1943-1944, the UPA command established contacts with units of the Hungarian and Romanian armies stationed in Ukraine, as well as with representatives of the Polish Home Army, about the non-use of weapons against each other. Since 1944, after the restoration of Soviet power in Western Ukraine, the main opponent of the UPA finally became the Soviet Army.
In July 1944, on the initiative of the OUN and UPA, the united “Ukrainian Main Liberation Council” (UGVR - Ukrainian Head of Parliament). At the 1st Great Meeting of the UGVR, held underground, Shukhevych - Chuprynka - Roman Lozovsky elected Chairman of the General Secretariat of the UGVR and Chief Secretary for Military Affairs.
From this moment until his death, Shukhevych was the leader of the entire united anti-communist, anti-Soviet underground in Western Ukraine.
Roman Shukhevych fiercely hated not only the Polish state, but also the Soviet regime and the communists. The Soviet government responded in kind. After the annexation of Western Ukraine to the USSR in 1939, his mother Evgenia Shukhevych, wife Natalya Berezinskaya and sister Natalya were sent into exile, and his son and daughter were sent to a special orphanage. In 1941, at the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Roman’s brother Yuri was shot during a “cleansing” of the Lviv prison.
With the gradual completion of hostilities against Nazi Germany, the Soviet leadership was able to concentrate a significant number of army units and state security forces in Western Ukraine to fight the underground, which was actively opposing attempts to strengthen Soviet power. At first, the UPA enjoyed mass support among the local population. According to Soviet historians, in 1944–1946 alone, more than 56 thousand Bandera members were killed and 108 thousand people were taken prisoner. Some historians believe that this is completely untrue, since even according to the most “optimistic” estimates, the number of UPA soldiers did not exceed 50 thousand. Template:Fact It is obvious that a significantly larger number of civilians were subjected to repression (in particular, deportation to Siberia), who helping the rebels. The social support base for the rebels was shrinking. This was facilitated by the brutal methods of reprisal of “fighters for the independence of Ukraine” against Soviet, party and collective farm activists, “apostates and traitors” from their own ranks.
In Shukhevych, he was awarded the rank of UPA general-horuner.
In 1948, he tried to enter into contacts with the Soviet authorities and begin peace negotiations, but for some reason he stopped contacts.Template:Fact In 1948, the remnants of the UPA under the leadership of Shukhevych continued partisan actions in the Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.
By decision of the UGVR of August 29, the UPA combat units suspended their activities and went deep underground. Template:Fact Shukhevych and his contacts constantly changed shelters. State security agencies still managed to discover the place where Shukhevych was hiding.
5.3.1950, the village of Belogorscha, near Lvov), one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, general-coronet of the UPA (1943). Son of a lawyer. He received his education at the Lvov Polytechnic Institute (1934). In 1923 he met E. Konovalets and joined the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). In Oct. 1926, together with B. Pidchain, he killed the school curator Ya. Sobinsky (Sh. managed to avoid punishment). Active participant in expropriation. In 1928-29 he served in the Polish army. In 1929 he completed a training course at an Italian intelligence school. Since 1930, referent for military affairs of the regional executive of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). In 1931 he organized the murder of the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Golufka. A supporter of S. Bandera, one of his closest collaborators. Participant in the organization of the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland B. Peracki (1934). At the trial in Lvov in 1935 he was sentenced to 4 years in prison. In 1937 he was released and went to Germany. Completed training at a military school. In 1938 he created the General Staff of the National Defense of Carpathian Ukraine. In 1940 he became a member of the “edge wire” - the leadership group of the OUN-B of 4 people. In June 1941 he joined the government of the Ukrainian state headed by Y. Stetsko. In 1941, as part of the Ukrainian special detachment of the Abwehr “Nachtigal” (“Nightingale”), he participated in punitive operations in the occupied territory of Ukraine, and was the commander of a detachment from the OUN (the operational leadership was carried out by a German officer). On the night of June 30, 1941, he organized an unprecedented massacre in Lviv. In 1942, “Nachtigall” was united with the “Roland” detachment into the 201st security battalion, which was sent to fight the partisans. He had the rank of captain in the German army. At the beginning of 1942 he began underground anti-German activities in Volyn, and in October. 1942 the entire battalion personnel refused to renew their contract for service in the German army. At the beginning of 1943 he was appointed chief of the Main Military Staff of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The UPA officially declared war on both the Bolsheviks and the Germans, however, it was the Germans who supplied the UPA with weapons: from Aug. 1943 to Sept. 1944 The UPA received 700 guns and mortars from the command of Army Group South, approx. 10 thousand machine guns, 26 thousand machine guns, 72 thousand rifles, 22 thousand pistols, 100 thousand grenades, over 12 million rounds of ammunition, etc. He supervised punitive operations; from July 10 to July 15, 1943 alone, UPA units in Volyn killed more than 12 thousand Poles. On Dec. 1943, at the 3rd Extraordinary Congress of the OUN, he was elected chief commander of the UPA, which waged a guerrilla war against Soviet troops in Ukraine. After the liberation of Ukraine, he led the anti-Soviet partisan movement. In July 1944, under the name of Roman Lozovsky, he was elected head of the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Main Liberation Rada, as well as secretary for military affairs and commander-in-chief of the UPA. At the beginning of 1945, Sh. was forced to agree to negotiations, since not only ordinary members of the OUN, but also many leaders of UPA detachments made it clear to their leaders that they were ready to make contact with the authorities without their consent, but then disavowed his representatives Mayevsky and Busola. At the beginning of 1948, the UPA practically ceased to exist, and its remnants, under the leadership of Sh., continued partisan actions in the Lvov, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. 5.3.1950 captured by agents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the house of his mistress Anna Didyk. Killed while trying to escape. In the 1990s. One of the streets in Lviv (former Pushkin Street) is named after him.
Book material used: Zalessky K.A. Who was who in the Second World War. Allies of Germany. Moscow, 2003
Shukhevich Roman Iosifovich (1905-1950). Born in 1905 in the town of Krakovets in the family of a lawyer. He studied at the Lviv Ukrainian Gymnasium, where Roman’s grandfather was a professor. At this time, seventeen-year-old Shukhevych entered the Higher Military District (1923). He heard about the role and goals of this organization directly from the ataman Konovalets. After graduating from high school, Roman entered the Gdansk Technical School, then transferred to the Lviv Polytechnic Institute. In Lvov he began to engage in terrorist activities. In October 1926, with Bogdan Pidchayn, Roman killed the school curator Jan Sobinsky.
The perpetrators of the terrorist attack managed to avoid punishment, and instead they were convicted of two innocent people. Impunity “inspired” Shukhevych, and at the end of the 20s he became an active participant in a number of “expropriations” (robberies of government institutions). They say that Shukhevych’s excessive zeal forced the immediate head of the reference department of the UVO Knysh to warn the overly active nationalist about possible “undesirable consequences.” At the end of 1929, the future leader of the UPA was trained at the Italian intelligence school. The leader of the “young” OUN members, Stepan Bandera, also mastered the complex sciences of sabotage work there. The skills acquired in Italy were useful to both graduates of the intelligence school in the 30s, when a series of terrorist attacks swept across Galicia. Bandera and Shukhevych were known as the inspirers and organizers of the “high-profile cases.” The leaders of the “young” OUN members were “burned” by the murder of the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Peratsky. At the Lvov trial of 23 nationalists, Bandera was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Roman “received” only four years. However, Shukhevych did not serve this term either - two years later he was released under an amnesty. Upon his release in 1937, the future general decided not to tempt fate and hastily left Poland. He moved to Germany and entered special courses at the military academy in Munich. Upon completion, Shukhevych received the rank of Hauptsturmführer (captain) of the SS and became an officer in the Wehrmacht. In 1939, the Nazis occupied Poland, releasing the leaders of the “young generation of the OUN”. These ambitious “youth” tried to seize power in the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, which led to a split and the formation of a new regional executive from Bandera’s followers. The “government” of the OUN-B also included Roman Shukhevych, who at that time headed the regional conduct in the western Ukrainian lands occupied by the fascists. At the same time, intensive preparations of the OUN began for the invasion of the USSR.
The Nachtigall division was created in Poland. The Nazis appointed Oberleutnant Herzner as its commander, and Bandera appointed Shukhevych from the OUN. Roman's rating among the Banderaites was very high - the commander of "Nachtigall" became a member of the main line in April 1941 and headed the headquarters of the military reference office. On June 18, 1941, the “specialist in the East” Oberlander and Shukhevych led the “Nachtigallites” to the oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer, and soon the warriors of the “legion” of Ukrainian nationalists began their dirty “work”. "Nachtigall" under the command of Shukhevych reached Vinnitsa, and then the Nazis found a new use for them. The “legionnaires” were trained in Frankfurt-on-Oder, and then, united with their “colleagues” from “Roland” in the “Schutzmannschaftbattalion-201”, they were sent to fight the Belarusian partisans. For his diligence in “military labor,” Shukhevych was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler.
At the end of 1942 - beginning of 1943, under the leadership of Dmitry Klyachkovsky (Klim Savur), the UPA was formed. Soon Roman Shukhevych also moved here, heading the main military headquarters of the “rebels”. In December 1943, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the UPA - a cornet general under the nickname Taras Chuprinka. When the flight of the Nazis from Western Ukrainian lands became a reality, the leaders of the UPA became worried about their fate. Some were planning to flee with their masters, others were preparing to launch a “great action” in the rear of the Red Army (fortunately, the Nazis generously supplied the OUN members with weapons). Their leader was Roman Shukhevych, who decided, on the advice of the Metropolitan, to stand to the end. Meanwhile, Chuprinka received Bandera's order classified three times as "secret". According to him, anyone suspected of wanting to go over to the side of the Soviets had to be “liquidated.” These people, on Shukhevych's orders, were dealt with by the Security Service. At the end of 1944, when all of Ukraine was liberated from the Nazis, Shukhevych met guests. Together with Bandera's envoys Lopatinsky, Chizhevsky and Skorobogatov, the UPA general was visited by Hauptmann Kirn. The fascist captain gave Shukhevych five million rubles, weapons, explosives, a walkie-talkie, and medicines. Meanwhile, the government of Soviet Ukraine appealed to the OUN members to lay down their arms, and then proposed to negotiate an end to the fight. At the beginning of 1945, Shukhevych was forced to agree to negotiations, since not only ordinary members of the OUN, but also many leaders of UPA detachments made it clear to their leaders that they were ready to make contact with the authorities without their consent. The negotiations lasted five hours, but at the end, Shukhevych’s representatives (Maevsky and Busol) stated that they were not authorized to sign any documents, saying that the conversation was preliminary, informational in nature, and the final answer would come later... Soon Maevsky and Busol were removed from “leading positions” of the UPA. Mayevsky, having assessed the situation, committed suicide, and Busola was soon “removed” by the Security Service, staging an attack by militants.
At the beginning of 1948, the UPA practically ceased to exist - some of its fighters tried to get through Poland and Czechoslovakia to West Germany, and some surrendered to the authorities. But Shukhevych had nowhere to run. He and a group of subordinates continued to terrorize the population of the Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. Apparently, sensing that the end was near, Shukhevych and his comrades tried to “have a great time.” Former OUN conductor in the Stryischyna P. Uger recalled: “The elders behaved especially immorally. Not a day passed without revelry, drunkenness, wild orgies, murders. Venereal diseases began to spread. It is known that the commander-in-chief of the UPA Chuprinka himself was treated for a disease that was popular among the people called "filthy". Nevertheless, Tur (under this nickname Shukhevych headed the OUN push on Ukrainian lands) understood that this could not continue for long. Fearing for his life, he constantly walked with guards. And so, on the morning of March 5, 1950, he "relaxed". Feeling completely safe in the house of his mistress Anna Didyk, Shukhevych let his "escort" go. After some time, NKVD officers knocked on the door... Six months later, Bandera was informed that the head commander of the UPA, General Coronet Taras Chuprinka , aka the head of the secretariat of the UGOR (Ukrainian Head Liberation Rada) Roman Lozovsky, aka the head of the OUN in the Ukrainian lands Tur, aka the son of a Lviv lawyer Roman Shukhevych was killed while trying to escape on March 5, 1950.
Roman Shukhevych – executioner of Belarusians
“We do not seek the truth, but the effect” (Goebbels)
Hero of Ukraine
Not long ago, a wave of destruction of monuments and memorial plaques to the leaders of the OUN-UPA swept across Western Ukraine. And among others, Roman Shukhevych, the founder and leader of the UPA.
On October 12, 2007, President of Ukraine V. Yushchenko awarded R. Shukhevych the title “Hero of Ukraine”. Monuments and memorial plaques are erected to him, books, stamps, etc. are published in his honor. The decree conferring the rank states that Shukhevych had commanded the Ukrainian Insurgent Army since 1942. In fact, he began commanding the UPA in 1943. And in 1942 he fought in Belarus on the side of the Germans.
There are not many countries in the world where war criminals are declared national heroes. For example, there is nothing like this in Germany.
Much has been written about Roman Shukhevych. Too much.
But the absolute majority, both his supporters and his opponents, do not know the whole truth about him. And many because they don’t want to know it on principle. And the truth, I must say, is shocking. Fanatical fans may argue that it is easy to hang all dogs on a person when he is in the next world. But all these facts, like the truth about Khatyn, as it turned out, were known already in the 50-60s, but were hushed up for well-known reasons.
We will not retell Shukhevych’s biography, since this is a well-known fact, stated on dozens of sites. Therefore, we will touch only on his military career. This will help avoid some confusion.
He started killing at the age of 19. First, representatives of the Polish administration. For this he was imprisoned in Polish prisons and in a camp near Brest in Kartuz-Bereza. He left there under an amnesty. In 1926, he was already an Abwehr agent under the nickname “Tur”. As a member of the OUN, he was a member of the international fascist organization with headquarters in Stuttgart. Attended the First Conference of Ukrainian Nationalists in Berlin in November 1927. In the 20s-30s, at the behest of the Germans, he organized underground sabotage work in Western Ukraine. Together with S. Bandera, E. Konovalets, E. Melnyk and others, he was directly subordinate to Erwin Stolze, on the instructions of Admiral Canaris, who managed the Abwehr’s relations with Ukrainian nationalists. They received money and weapons from the Germans. Graduated from the German Military Academy in Munich. Like every German officer, he swore allegiance to Hitler. After that, he participated in terrorist attacks against the Polish authorities.
In 1939–40 he trained cadets from among Ukrainian nationalists for the special battalion “Nachtigal” at the German police school in Zakopane.
In June 1941, at the head of this battalion, together with the German army, he participated in the capture of Lvov, where, on his orders, a massacre of Jews and Poles was carried out on June 30. Then, according to various sources, from 3 to 4 thousand people died. The German historian Bruckdorff describes the Lviv pogrom this way: - “Shukhevych’s soldiers, holding daggers in their teeth, rushed through the streets as if possessed by a demoniac, with machine guns in their hands, killing everyone who got in their way...”. Was personally awarded by Kaltenbrunner.
This crime caused a huge resonance in Ukraine. Realizing that their charges had overdone it, the Nazis disbanded the battalion. But, despite this, some of his fighters participated in the pogroms of Jews in Kiev’s Babi Yar. Shukhevych himself at this time was undergoing regular training in a Nazi special school. Here is an excerpt from his letter in the spring of 1942 to Lvov Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky.
“Your Excellence! I graduated from months-long courses in Frankfurt... we are leaving for the Eastern Front to fight the Bolsheviks... this is a joyful moment in our lives... we ask for your fatherly blessing for us and our relatives...”
And this is where the fun begins. Instead of the Eastern Front, the Ukrainian henchmen of the Nazis end up in the rear, or rather in Belarus captured by the Germans to fight the Belarusian partisans. This is what they have been preparing for all this time. They will now be called the 201st “Schutzmanschaft” (special battalion) as part of the 201st division, subordinate to SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski.
The activities of this battalion during nine months of 1942 in Belarus are a blank spot in Shukhevych’s biography. Modern Ukrainian historians most of all do not like to touch it. And there is a reason. What is this? Strange aberration of memory or immense hypocrisy?
But first, let's finish with the biography of Shukhevych. After Belarus, awarded personally by Himmler with the Iron Cross and the title of Hauptmann, Shukhevych, on instructions from the Abwehr, began to form the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) at the end of 1942. It was with his direct participation that the “Volyn Massacre” of 1943 was developed and carried out. Then 100 thousand Polish peasants, priests, Jews, gypsies, etc. were killed. It then continued for several more years. Shukhevych fought a lot then. The main episode of this activity was the assault by his division (10 thousand people, not yet the SS "Galicia") of the Polish village of Przebrazhe on August 31, 1943, where he was ... defeated by joint defense units of the AK and Soviet partisans.
As a military strategist, Shukhevych was always weak, this was noted by his comrades in the struggle. Its distinctive feature has always been the tactics of a hidden night attack, as a rule, against a weak and unprepared enemy. In general, this is the tactics of the entire OUN-UPA, let's call all this Banderaism, the essence does not change. The only major military operation was the battle of the SS division "Galicia" with the Soviet army near Brody in July 1944, which ended in the complete defeat of the Galicians. But we digress. Let's return again to Shukhevych.
After the Volyn Massacre, he is the permanent leader of the UPA. This was not the Ukrainian army. It was a German army unit. The terrorist methods of the UPA were condemned even by their fellow fighters - Melnykists, Bulbashs, Hetmans, Levitsky’s people, etc. Retreating in 1944, the Nazis, on Himmler’s personal instructions, left him 700 mortars, 10 thousand machine guns, tens of thousands of rifles and machine guns, millions of cartridges, etc. to fight the Soviet army. Until May 1945, the leadership of the UPA was carried out from Berlin. Then the fight goes underground. It only stopped with the death of Roman Shukhevych in a battle in the village of Bogorsha near Lvov in 1950.
What was the ideological platform, on what were the views of the ideological inspirer and leader of the UPA based?
They have always rested on the basis of the concept developed by D. Dontsov in his work “Nationalism - Deception and Self-Deception”: “Be aggressors and invaders before you can become rulers and possessors... members of the Order of Crusader Knights must be capable of any crime in order to gain power in Ukraine".
“The Ukrainian state will cooperate closely with Nazi Germany (S. Bandera, decree of July 1, 1941).
“The villages should be completely destroyed so that nothing reminds us that people lived here” (N. Lebed, chief of the OUN security service).
“Don’t be afraid to admit that you are fascists. After all, that’s who we are!” (OUN ideologist S. Lenkavsky).
Here is a statement from R. Shukhevych himself:
“There is no need to be afraid that people will curse us for our cruelty... even if half of the 40 million Ukrainians remain, it doesn’t matter.”
“To destroy the Poles at their roots, to treat the Jews and Gypsies the same way.”
In the program documents of the UPA it is written everywhere: “... Muscovites, Poles and Jews are at the root of znishchuvaty.” This won’t surprise anyone today; it has set everyone’s teeth on edge.
But I will write about something else.
Roman Shukhevych destroyed Belarusians
The 201st Schutzmanschaft battalion was formed by Shukhevych on the basis of volunteers from the punitive units “Nachtigal” and “Rolland”. In Belarus, the Nazis collected 35 thousand Ukrainian “warriors”, creating from them 101,102... 118 (Khatyn) and other battalions, but the 201st stood out. It is he who will be called the best of all by the chief punisher of Belarus, SS General Bach-Zalewski. In the 201st, the entire core of the future UPA gathered: Shukhevych (Chuprynka), Shelest, Savur, Linda, etc.
This battalion differed from other “NOISE” in that the latter were either simply guarding something or carrying out punitive actions against civilians. The 201st was originally intended for active combat operations in forests.
The battalion commander was E. Pobeguschey, the former commander of “Rolland”.
Shukhevych was only a company commander. Of course, this was a defeat in rights after Lvov. The 201st was a battalion of contract soldiers. The contract was signed with the Germans for one year. Officers received 5 marks a day, privates much less. This is not 30 pieces of silver, but it is also money. The Galician soldiers had German police uniforms. Plus a black cap for the SS troops, which had a special emblem in the form of a swastika in a laurel wreath. On the sleeve, the swastika was framed by the motto “Treu, Tapfer, Gehorsam” (faithful, brave, obedient).
At first, things went well for the newly minted punishers. Here is another excerpt from Shukhevych’s letter to Metropolitan Sheptytsky (these letters are posted online):
“Your most holy excellence! Things are going well for us, the Germans are happy with our work...
What kind of work was this?
The 201st operated in the triangle Mogilev - Vitebsk - Lepel. The battalion was divided into 7 detachments, which stood at different checkpoints.
The forest was divided into squares of 12 x 12 km, in which combing took place. Military clashes often took place, sometimes successful for the punitive forces. This is not surprising, because at first the partisans had no combat experience...
In the final report, the battalion leaders reported that over the entire period they had killed 2 thousand partisans. Not a word about civilians. But it is known that in November 1942 in Lvov, at a meeting with his Abwehr colleague Bizanets, Shukhevych claimed that in Belarus he destroyed not only the partisans, but also the local population supporting them. All researchers agree that there were several times more killed peasants. This was a tactic of “dead zones” around partisan units. Common Nazi tactics!
There are still people alive today who talk about the atrocities of the Westerners in the villages near Lepel. They say that they did not part with Hutsul battle axes. With these axes and shouts of “Goida!” performed a dance called "Arkan". The same axes were used to chop off the fingers and heads of women, children and the elderly on logs. They robbed, killed and raped. Already in our time, corpses of babies with nipples in their mouths were found in mass graves of innocent victims...
“The partisans whipped the 26 best boys to the roots”...
But you have to pay for everything. By the fall of 1942, the partisans were no longer the same as at the beginning. They accepted the brutal laws of the war of extermination imposed by the Nazis. Their motto was “Blood for blood, death for death!” On September 29, 1942, “Bati” partisans surrounded one of Bandera’s checkpoints. None of the “axe dancers” escaped retribution.
This is what the detachment chaplain, Shukhevych’s confessor, Father Vsevolod, writes:
“On September 30, 26 of the best lads were buried... a whole platoon led by R. Kotsyubinsky was flogged by the partisans... and the officers and privates of the battalion are in severe depression... we are wandering in the Belarusian swamps and have lost hope of seeing the golden-domed Kyiv. Will we really have to lay down someone else's soil with young bodies for someone else's cause? I can’t come to my senses, pull myself together after that funeral... The other day I’m going on a business trip to Berlin...
Pay attention to “for someone else’s business... on someone else’s land” (has my conscience really kicked in?) and “I’m going to Berlin” (so-so, an ordinary trip).
Much has been written about Bandera’s followers in robes, living in caches and blessing their flock to kill. During the Volyn massacre, scythes, axes and pitchforks were illuminated in the church in Svoichev to kill people. And they absolved sins for murder. One of the groups of UPA thugs was generally led by a priest of the autocephalous church.
Who were these people? Why did they ignore the biblical “Thou shalt not kill... Whoever takes the sword will die by the sword... You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of the devil...”, etc.
To come to a foreign country with weapons in hand with the aim of killing the inhabitants of this country... A peculiar, it must be said, vision of Christianity... There is something akin to the Sicilian mafia, whose leaders, having received communion, immediately in front of the altar made a hole in the head of a companion...
Also, the attitude today in Ukraine towards Metropolitan A. Sheptytsky is very ambiguous. He is known primarily as the author of an ode to Hitler in honor of the capture of Kyiv by the Nazis, and also as the main confessor of the entire Bandera brethren. We sin and repent, we sin and repent! Kill everyone, and the good “padre” Sheptytsky will forgive all sins...
Today, among the supporters of the Svoboda party and Banderaites, who justify any of their actions, there are many parishioners and priests of the autocephalous and Protestant Ukrainian churches. Do they really consider themselves Christians?
But let's return to Shukhevych. Around the same time when Kotsyubinsky’s detachment was defeated, the partisans destroyed a German convoy near Lepel along with soldiers of the 201st. Eighty killed along with General Jacobi. The battalion's losses were growing. Panic began among Bandera's followers. They abandoned their checkpoints and fled to Lepel under the protection of their Nazi masters. Of the survivors, no one began to renew the contract...
This ended the “Belarusian” period of Roman Shukhevych. He went to Lviv at the call of his superiors to train UPA personnel. For the operation in Belarus, he was personally awarded the Iron Cross by Himmler.
What goal did the Nazis pursue when they killed rebellious Belarusians at the hands of Ukrainians? The same as when they pitted the Ukrainian UPA against the Polish Home Army. It was an ancient, proven tactic - “Divide and conquer!”
Ukrainian historians deny everything that I have written about the Belarusian period of Roman Shukhevych’s activity. Still would! This burden of accusations is very heavy and destroys the myth about Shukhevych’s angelic nature. They write that he played the piano and wrote poetry and addressed women as “you,” and was a caring father and husband. Yes, he addressed some as “You,” and ordered others to be killed simply because they were not Ukrainians. Hitler, by the way, was also an artist and writer, a vegetarian, and loved children and dogs...
But he also ordered the killing of Ukrainians. Those who did not support the ideas of the OUN-UPA. Every third victim of Bandera was Ukrainian.
Where does such cruelty come from? Devoted to Hitler, he carried out his 1941 directive: “You have no heart and nerves, destroy pity and compassion in yourself, they are not needed in war.”
Newly-minted historians
In Ukraine today, a whole army of newly minted historians, politicians and political strategists, such as P. Mirchuk, S. Grabovsky, P. Posokhov, S. Kulzhitsky, A. Gogun and others, are being pulled out of oblivion, reanimated, painted and powdered like mummies pharaohs, political corpses of OUN-UPA figures, etc. And first of all, Bandera and Shukhevych.
They write, for example, that in Belarus Shukhevych defended peasants from partisans and Germans, kept in touch with Linkov’s detachment, saved Jews, fed hungry children from a children’s sanatorium near Lepel. Others write that Ukrainians were forced into the 201st. Was the letter that the trip to the Eastern Front would be “a joyful moment in our lives” also forcibly written?
“For Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, fighting in the SS troops was the only chance for independence” (P. Mirchuk).
“The 201st and Shukhevych personally came to an agreement with the partisans on neutrality, the fighters were not eager to fight. Belarusians said about them: “Ukrainians are kind people” (S. Grabovsky).
“The 201st did not fight in Belarus at all, here he was preparing to create the UPA at his base. The Abwehr prepared him for this because the wooded area around Lepel resembles Volyn” (P. Posokhov).
“The combat areas of the 201st battalion became that part of Belarus in which the Moscow-KGB partisans were rampaging, whose main task both there and on the adjacent Ukrainian lands was to mercilessly destroy the population” (?!) (P. Duzhiy).
“They were there guarding bridges from partisans, then the Germans put them in prisons and camps. (S. Kulchitsky).
Well, the authors want Bandera’s followers to turn into pure angels, well, at least crack! The name of Shukhevych is covered with three layers of eulogies. Here are their favorite a priori statements:
“Shukhevych did not participate in the Lviv, Volyn, or Belarusian massacres, and even more so, did not kill Ukrainians! All these are fables of the “Muscovites”, the NKVD, etc. Shukhevych naively trusted the Germans, but was deceived by them.”
The paradigm of the new Ukrainian patriotism, an indispensable part of the program, includes burning hatred of the “Muscovites,” the destruction of the memory of the Victory and the whitewashing of the German Nazis.
Their leitmotif: - the Germans brought freedom to their Slavic brothers!
In countless monographs they reassure themselves: they say that the Germans thought that they used Bandera, and it was Bandera who used them.
But someone will have to become a “sickle in the balls” for them, remind them of the Ost master plan, where not only Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians and Poles, but also Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, Hitler did not leave any hope for independence. They were subject to Germanization, or deportation beyond the Urals, or destruction. Gauleiter of Poland G. Frank wrote in 1942: “As soon as we defeat the main enemy in the East, we will turn the Ukrainians into cutlets.”
Western ideologists are playing a game of foolishness that is rare in its cynicism, reminiscent of the story of a bandit who assured the police that he did not put the knife in, but pulled it out...
They claim that Ukrainian nationalists fought against the NKVD, Hitler and Stalin. But when women and children were thrown into the fire in Belarusian and Ukrainian villages, this is a brutal crime that is not subject to either legal or moral forgiveness.
Today, Bandera scientists have given birth to an ideologeme about “Great Ukraine”, based on a pseudoscientific theory about the state of “ancient Ukrainians”, the main axiom of which is “the Zvilnaya type of Muscovite captivity.” This indicates a violation of cause-and-effect relationships in the head and other clinical complexes. The illusory consciousness gives birth to evil demons and delights in contemplating the fruits of its own imagination...
Their current attempt to prove that in the 118th “Noise”, which destroyed the Belarusian Khatyn, there were few Ukrainians, but there were Germans, Russians and even one Armenian seems absurd and cynical...
Today, when supporters of Bandera march through the streets of Lvov and Kyiv with a yellow-blue flag and in gray-blue uniforms, it is worth recalling that on May 1, 1942, under the same flag only in German dark green overcoats with a swastika, they carried portraits of Hitler and Goebbels.
I don’t know about anyone, but to me personally, many Ukrainian defenders of Bandera and Shukhevych resemble a teenager who killed his parents and then demanded leniency in court because he was an orphan.
For some reason, it seems to Western ideologists that, thanks to the Orange Revolution, the brains of an entire section of the nation have been colloidally corrupted, and they will easily lead it with them. Why do they make patriotism a weapon of struggle? Why do they sow seeds of hatred? What is hidden behind the farce of recognizing the executioners who faithfully served the Nazis for almost 20 years as heroes of Ukraine?
The Svoboda party does not hide its bloodthirsty nature. It is known that its ideologists, who are turning Galicia of the 21st century into a hotbed of bestial-misanthropic nationalism, are in the pay of the Ukrainian kleptocratic oligarchy. And not only. Back in 1999, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on the occasion of conferring the title of honorary citizen of Lvov, said: “For us, Ukraine is an outpost of the West. A new world order under US hegemony is being created against Russia, at the expense of Russia and on the ruins of Russia.”
How can we today perceive the slogans of the leaders of “Svoboda”: - “We will water Ukraine with the evil enemy’s blood” (I. Farion), or “You fought like heroes with Muscovites, Germans, Jews and other evil spirits... Glory to the nation is death to the enemies” (Oleg Tsyagnybok , speech at the congress of UPA veterans). “Ukraine above all” --- this mantra never ceases.
But today, not all Ukrainians identify nationalism with patriotism and condemn the persistent attempts of the minority to impose neo-Bandera ideology on the majority. Many vote for Svoboda without knowing much about it, simply to spite the Party of Regions. The Germans also voted for Hitler, knowing little about him.
The people of Ukraine are not associated only with Bandera and Shukhevych, because every nation has its own scumbags. Millions of Ukrainians fought against Hitler. Among the 374 thousand partisans of Belarus, more than 12 thousand were Ukrainians. But generations of Galicians play the same game, structure their lives, constantly stepping on the same rake. There is no way out in this system.
In Ukraine, the unhealed wound of war was opened. Military danger is on the threshold of the common home.
The solution is to move to a new level. First of all, Christian repentance and forgiveness. We do not want to idealize anyone, for example, to justify the actions of the Polish authorities in the occupied territories of Western Ukraine and Belarus, we do not want to have anything to do with the crimes of Stalin and the NKVD against our people, but we do not want to give up our Victory, approve marches of SS veterans and the erection of monuments to people , whose hands are up to the elbows in blood.
“Without overcoming nationalism, the threat of degeneration will hang over the Ukrainian people” (V. Polishchuk, historian).
The words of Andrei Melnik and Ivan Bagryany sounded a clear dissonance in this surprisingly well-coordinated chorus of Ukrainian emigration.
On this occasion, employees of the 1st Department of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR informed the leadership: “... In this regard, there were some poisonous remarks about Bandera Stepan and the OUN-Bandera members from the OUN-Melnikovites and the “Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party” of Ivan Bagryany.
The official URDP newspaper "Ukrainian Wisti" in a feuilleton style ridiculed the "strategy of Generalissimo" Bandera, mentioning that the latter speculated on the name of Shukhevych.
On November 12, 1950, the Central Committee of the URDP refused the invitation of the “Overseas Representation” of the UGVR to take part in the gatherings organized in honor of Shukhevych. The refusal is motivated by the fact that the URDP does not know exactly when and under what circumstances Shukhevych was destroyed, since the Central “Wire” of the OUN-Banderaites always categorically asserted a constant “connection with the region”, until recently it used materials allegedly sent and signed personally by Shukhevych , and now it turns out that Shukhevych was killed seven months ago.”
It is hardly worth explaining that for Stepan Bandera, who in his regular contacts with the British intelligence services assured the latter that he had a constant and reliable channel of communication with the underground in Western Ukraine, such an accusation turned out to be, as they say, a blow below the belt. “Bylykho” (Bandera’s organizational nickname) hastened to assure the curators of his reliability, and at the same time published in the press organs of the OUN (“Surma”, No. 24 and “Ukrainian independence” of November 5, 1950) his own official articles (letters), in which questioned the reliability of the report of Shukhevych’s death. But for Bandera, dependent both on subsidies from British intelligence and striving to maintain control over part of the Ukrainian emigration, these words were just a cover.
The same goals were pursued by another group competing with Bandera, the once united but now split OUN, headed by Mykola (Nikolai) Lebed. Unlike Bandera’s group, it actively collaborated with US intelligence services and acted under the cover of the abbreviation “UGVR” - the Ukrainian Head Vyzvolnaya (Liberation) Rada, in which R. Shukhevych officially held the posts of Chairman of the General Secretariat and Secretary of Military Affairs.
* * *In the evening, May 19, 1951, a US Air Force plane successfully dropped troops in the Carpathians, in the area of Mount Shabela in the Drohobych region of the Ukrainian SSR. The landing was led by the emissary of the ZP (Foreign Representation) of the UGVR Vasyl Okhrimovich (nickname - “Gruzin”). Among other intelligence tasks assigned to him by Nikolai Lebed and his curators from the CIA were to clarify the circumstances of Shukhevych’s death and to take the OUN underground in Western Ukraine under the control of the ZP UGVR.
At the same time, in May of the same year, but already by the British Air Force, a group of representatives of Stepan Bandera was sent to Galicia under the leadership of the chief of the security service of the Bandera OUN, Miron Matvieiko (nickname - “Usmikh”). In fact, Bandera set for him the same tasks as Lebed did for “Gruzin” - to find out the fate of Shukhevych (Byilykh had great suspicions of involvement in the death of his competitors, who kept Shukhevych under his control) and to maintain his influence on the underground in the “Edge”.
Thus, emissaries of two competing OUN groups found themselves on the territory of Ukraine at the same time, and both were eventually safely captured by Soviet intelligence services.
M. Matvieiko, who was detained shortly after his landing, did not have time to find out anything, and soon began to work under the auspices of the security officers against his former boss. V. Okhrimovich, who stayed underground a little longer (until September 1951), managed to prepare a small brochure about Shukhevych, in which he expressed the opinion that “probably, exact data about the circumstances that led to the attack by MGB troops on his apartment in Belogorsch on March 5, 1950.”
Thus, the exact circumstances that led to the liquidation of Shukhevych and the Ukrainian nationalist emigration in the West remained unknown for a long time and, accordingly, gave rise to many absurd, and sometimes fantastic, rumors.
So, for example, in the book of the leading OUN historiographer P. Mirchuk, dedicated to Shukhevych and published in Toronto in 1976, it was indicated that Shukhevych and his guards fought with the MGB troops until the last bullet. Other authors clarify that no less than several divisions of the Internal Troops took part in the battle with Shukhevych.
For some, this turned out to be insufficient, and they had to invent the memoirs of a certain mythical (and naturally anonymous) MGB officer, which allegedly said that back in 1944, agent “Maria” was introduced into Shukhevych’s entourage, who betrayed him to the operatives the hiding place of the “commander-in-chief” of the UPA in Belogorsch. The truth is not clear, let us add on our own, what this “Maria” was doing for six whole years, and why she did not immediately put the security officers on Shukhevych’s trail. (“Nation and Power”, No. 77, 04/27/2005) Some clarify that Shukhevych heroically blew himself up with a grenade, also in an unequal battle, but with an MGB special group.
Unfortunately, the Soviet side also committed similar, to put it mildly, “inaccuracies.” In the limited literature on this issue published in Soviet times, the details of the operation were no less subjective. The most revealing, alas, is the book of memoirs of one of the organizers of the operation, Lieutenant General P.A. Sudoplatov.
Perhaps the fact that Pavel Anatolyevich wrote his memoirs more than forty years after the operation played a role here and the memory could have failed the legendary security officer, since he himself was not personally present at the site of the immediate culmination of the events. But it is more likely that Sudoplatov simply did not want, for some reason, to disclose the real details of the operation.
Let's try to find out this question for ourselves and reconstruct the details of the operation to destroy Roman Shukhevych based on the available archival materials.
* * *Shukhevych first came to the attention of the Soviet intelligence services even before the start of the war. According to intelligence information received by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR from abroad, in the Krakow regional executive of the OUN under the leadership of S. Bandera, there was a Communications Department, which was headed by a certain Shukhevych nicknamed “Pike”. Subsequently, this information was confirmed in the testimony of those arrested by the NKVD members of the OUN. Thus, in his handwritten testimony dated October 23, 1940, a member of the Lvov Karai Executive I. Maksimov wrote that the Krakow OUN Center and the Revolutionary Committee created by Bandera included, among other things, Roman Shukhevych - “Shukh”
In the fall of 1940, Soviet security officers managed to open and liquidate the Lvov regional executive office of the OUN. Among others, Shukhevych’s younger sister Natalya was arrested. She was charged with the fact that, being a liaison officer of the OUN, she was also the owner of a safe house for receiving couriers from the Krakow Center. But in this case, what is of interest to us is not Natalya’s arrest itself, but the fact that the security officers, apparently comparing the sketchy information they had with the arresting information of the arrested person, took a specific interest in her family connections, and directly, brother Roman.
However, N. Shukhevych categorically refused to give evidence, stating only that her brother Roman Shukhevych left for Danzig back in 1938 and after that she did not see him and allegedly does not know where he now lives.
This was all the information about Shukhevych that the Soviet state security agencies managed to collect in the pre-war period.
* * *In August 1944, after the liberation of the Volyn and Rivne regions, Soviet special services arrested a member of the Central Proceedings of the OUN, M. Stepanyak (nicknames - “Sergius”, “Lex”).
During interrogations, he gave more than detailed information about the situation of the Organization and characteristics of its leading “visionaries.” Including Roman Shukhevych. So, the security officers were again reminded of the existence of this man, moreover, it turned out that it was he who stood at the head of the so-called. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which regularly commits sabotage in the Soviet rear and attacks on groups of Red Army soldiers.
The characterization given by M. Stepanyak to R. Shukhevych is so eloquent that we allow ourselves to quote an extensive fragment from it:
“Shukhevich - “Tur” - the person is actually friendly, and at the same time sickly ambitious, intellectual, and vengeful. In terms of its ideological and political directness, it is a typical Uvist-Univets. The enemy of mass political work, the protection of political awareness and the recruitment of member cadres and the broad masses. Standing firmly on the ground that politics is a matter of conduct, bringing political awareness to the membership and popular masses - which, in my opinion, is equivalent to uplifting the foundations of nationalistic, political and organizational discipline They
Clap, as if he were in love, does not dare to politicize, he may hear rumors and recklessly obey the orders of the wire. These days of critical political coverage are the very things that will force him to criticize the conduct, to frown at it, whether the policy is carried out correctly or incorrectly - which cannot be allowed.
The OUN is considered as a military-military regime, there was no further announcement about the role of the political organization. Therefore, having come to power and entrenched, Shukhevych-“Tur” immediately took a sharp reverse course and from “politicization” proceeded sharply to “militarization”, cane discipline and conscription.
Shukhevych is still in the legion (meaning the Nachtigall battalion - author) having become famous for the battles of the Streltsy. As the head of the OUN, and therefore the commander of the entire UPA, he established such a system in the organization and at that point got in touch with Klim Savur, as we talk about the methods of violence, terrorism, ramrods and massacres in the UPA and the entire Ukrainian population.
As a political and military sergeant, he can help with what a Prussian corporal can help with.
His horizons pose Lviv market and private window without leaving. As in the new ideal of the state, it is not others, like the police, whose firm hand must be tired of the dictatorial power of the military leadership. As a terrorist, he believed in the omnipotent terror and in the plain terror, thinking to know the depths of all the problems of domestic and foreign politics. Inarticulate, approachable, vile, immoral and at the same time very godly and morbid.”.
Of course, one could argue that this characterization of M. Stepanyak is overly biased and due to personal antipathy towards Shukhevych and his methods of organizational work. However, it echoes another characteristic given to R. Shukhevych by one of the leading UPA commanders (and in the past, Shukhevych’s comrade-in-arms in the Nachtigall battalion and the 201st Schutzmannschaft battalion) A. Lutsky:
“I must say that recently, among a number of members of the Main “Wire” of the OUN, great dissatisfaction with Shukhevych has arisen. He is considered a great intriguer and lacking initiative, able to successfully capture the right thoughts and advice expressed by other OUN leaders, and then choose the most important from all this and teach it as his own.
He does not have his own opinion, and he will never express it directly. If it weren’t for his deputy in the OUN “TARAS”, it would have been difficult for him to lead the OUN-UPA.
Everyone calls “TARASA” Shukhevych’s prompter. Shukhevych held on because in the difficult conditions of the underground in which we found ourselves in the second half of 1944, members of the Main “Wire” of the OUN did not dare to sharply raise the issue of SHUKHEVICH. Particularly opposed to Shukhevych are Lebed Nikolai, GRITSAY - “PEREBYNIS”, “PETRO” - Regional guide “Galicia”, “LEMISH”, “GALINA” and “SERGEY”.
It seems to me that Shukhevych will not be very pleased with the message that Bandera has been released by the Germans and will not be very willing to meet with Bandera, because he understands that this will end his career as the leader of the OUN. I know that Bandera had a low opinion of SHUKHEVICH.” (GA SBU, f. 5, d. 67418, vol. 1, l. 161–208).
Thus, by the second half of 1944, the Soviet intelligence services had completely reliable information both about Shukhevych himself and about the groups opposing him within the Organization.
On October 2, 1944, the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR opened a centralized intelligence case against members of the Central Branch of the OUN under the code name “Berloga”.
Top secret
"APPROVED"
People's Commissar of State Security Commissar of State Security 3rd rank Savchenko
« RESOLUTION (about establishing an agent business)I, the Head of the 5th Department of the 2nd Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR - Major of State Security Comrade Khaet, having examined the intelligence, investigative and documentary materials of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR and the UNKGB of the western regions of Ukraine, in relation to members of the Bandera Central “Wire” of the OUN, conducting active bandit-terrorist activities on our territory and espionage and sabotage work,
FOUND:
That members of the Bandera Central “Wire” of the OUN, commanders of the UPA gangs - Shukhevych, Klyachkovsky, Kisel, Voloshin, Lutsky and others, are on our territory and direct the activities of the regional and regional “Wires” of the OUN, as well as UPA gangs.
In order to fully reveal the activities of members of the Bandera Central “Wire” of the OUN, the regional and regional “Wires” led by them, as well as UPA gangs and their prompt liquidation
DECIDED:
Create a centralized intelligence file against members of Bandera’s Central “Wire” of the OUN under the nickname “Den”, registering it in the accounting department of the 2nd Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR and in department “A” of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR.
Head of the 5th Department of the 2nd Directorate of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR
State Security Major (Hayet)
We agree:
Head of the investigative unit of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR
State Security Colonel (Pavlovsky)
Temporary substituting beginning 4 Directorates of the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR
Lieutenant Colonel of State Security (Karin)
The case of R. Shukhevych was separated into a separate form, and on October 31, a search case was opened against him within the “Den” under the nickname “Wolf”.
Over the past period, information about the liquidation of Shukhevych was received by the MGB more than once.
So, for example, a special group formed from former members of the OUN-UPA, under the leadership of the NKGB agent of the Ukrainian SSR “Terdy”, reported:
“After “Klim Savur” was killed (February 1945), who held the position of head of the northwestern regional line of the OUN (which includes the Volyn and Rivne regions, as well as Polesie of Belarus) and commander of the UPA, he was appointed in his place "Chuprynka". Before this, “Chuprynka” was the referent of the SB of the regional wire.
December 7 this year The bandit “Cherny” confessed to the Torchinsky district department of the NKVD, who during interrogation reported that he had been in the personal guard of “Chuprynka” for a long time.
“Cherny” also showed that “Chuprynka” is hiding in the village of Romanovo, Teremnovsky district, Volyn region.
“Black” was recruited and joined a special group led by agent “Tverdy”, which consisted of 7 people. The detective officer of the Volyn NKVD Berestnev was also included in this group. The group was tasked with finding the Chuprynki shelter and eliminating it.
According to the instructions of “Cherny”, the group came to the village of Romanovo to the village of Panasyuk, using the legend as representatives of the Lutsk district branch of the OUN. Panasyuk, convinced that she was talking to bandits, agreed to connect our special group with three OUN representatives hiding in a cache at her house.
Panasyuk, having gone down to the cache, was immediately shot there by the hiding bandits, after which the bandits, throwing 6 grenades and opening fire, tried to get through the special group, but were killed by return fire.
Those killed were: “Chuprynka”, a SB assistant from the regional security service “Modest” and an investigator from the regional SB, whose pseudonym has not been established.
However, this information turned out to be erroneous.
In October 1944, the Deputy People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR T.A. Strokach sent out an orientation to the heads of the regional and district NKVD Directorates, which described the appearance of R. Shukhevych:
“At the same time I am sending... copy. photographs of the OUN conductor, who is also the commander-in-chief of the UPA - Shukhevych Roman...
Hiding with a small group (5–7 people) of personal guards, including one or two women, in rural areas, in well-equipped shelters.
INSTALLATION DATA - 42 years old, a native of Lvov, from a family of a lawyer, with a higher education, lives on a passport issued by the Lvov police department in the name of Maxim Stepanovich ORLOVICH, has with him a son aged 13–15.
SIGNS - medium height, thin face, cone-shaped, oblong, blond, light eyes, reddish hair, wavy, short, combed back, long, pointed nose, large, protruding ears, usually dressed in civilian clothes, masquerading as a local resident. Please send out 1 copy. photographs to each district department of the NKVD to take active measures to search and detain Shukhevych as a particularly important state criminal.
If you receive even the slightest information about the whereabouts of Shukhevych, immediately report to the UBB NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR».
Despite the failure with the use of special groups, the search for Roman Shukhevych by the NKVD-NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR continued. Thus, in September 1945, a message was received in Moscow in which Ukrainian security officers informed their superiors in detail about the results of the search operation for R. Shukhevych.
Top secret
35/1/1017 from Z.IX-45
November 5
DEPUTY CHIEF OF GUBB NKVD USSR
MAJOR GENERAL comrade. PROSHIN
mountains Moscow
Regarding the location of the head of the central line of the OUN - ROMAN Shukhevych, who had the OUN nicknames “TUR”, “SHUKH”, “TUCHA”, “CHERNETS”, “TARAS CHUPRINKA”, “STEPAN”, “BELY” and “KARPO” for the period 1944- 45 years we have the following data:
At the end of 1942 and the beginning of 1943, Shukhevych acted as a military referent of the central line of the OUN, as a result of which he was part of the OUN line.
Since April 1943, after the removal of “Maxim Ruban” from the post of head of the Ts.P. OUN and the introduction of the “Bureau of Wire” of the OUN as the governing body, Shukhevych was elected to the Bureau of Wire as its leader.
At the end of 1943, after the reorganization of the UNS ("Ukrainian People's Self-Defense") into the UPA and on the basis of the URS, the creation of the UPA - "West" group, and under Ts.P. the main headquarters of the UPA, which led both groups of the UPA, Shukhevych, as the head of the Ts.P., became the commander-in-chief of the entire UPA (in Galicia - the “West” group and in Volyn - the “Zavikhost” group) under the nickname “Taras Chuprinka”.
As the head of C.P. The OUN and the commander-in-chief of both UPA groups, Shukhevych was and is in Western Ukraine all the time, with the location of the Ternopil, Lviv and Drohobych regions.
Data about his stay on the territory of Western Ukraine, in the above-mentioned regions, are confirmed by the testimony of bandits from his personal guard captured during operations.
For example:
A participant in Shukhevych’s security battle, a bandit nicknamed “CHAD”, captured by us in mid-September 1945 in the Berezhansky district, Ternopil region, testified during interrogation:
“At the end of 1945, “WHITE” lived in a cache located in the forest near the villages of Olkhovets and Lopushno, Bobrksky district, Lviv region.
From January to May 1945 he was in the village. Augustovka, Kozovsky district, Ternopil region.
In May-July. "BELY" lived in the village. Zabolotovka, Yagolnitsky district, and from August 1, 1945 he was in the village. Rai, Berezhansky district, Ternopil region.
The testimony of "CHAD" is confirmed by a bandit nicknamed "ARTEM", the former head of Shukhevych's security force, who was constantly with him for two years, and his personal contact, nicknamed "NATALKA" - RYMYK Maria Markovna, who communicated "WHITE" with the members Ts.P. - “KURGAN”, aka “TARAS” and communications supervisor Ts.P. - “QUICK-VIEW”, aka “BOBRIN”.
In addition to “NATALIE”, “WHITE” had 4 more contacts, nicknamed “Ksenya”, “Anna”, “Revenge” and “Marusya”. However, of these contacts, only two remained at large - “Ksenya” and “Anna”, who left at the beginning of August 1945 on the instructions of “Bely” and did not return by the day the hiding place of “WHITE” was discovered. The contact "Revenge" was killed during the operation, and "Marusya" was arrested.
Being on the territory of the western regions of Ukraine, “WHITE” had with him a personal guard consisting of 10 bandits, who constantly accompanied him during his movements and guarded him at camp sites.
In the month of March. of the participants in his security battle - “MYKOLA” and “YURKO” left on his instructions and did not return, “SLAVKO” and “RYBAK” were killed during the operation, “ARTEM” and “CHAD” were arrested by us, and “BYSTROY” , “BORIS” and “VASYUTA” in May 1945 were sent by “WHITE” to the village. Kleshuvka, Rohatyn district, did not return to “WHITE” to dig a reserve cache and until the day of the operation.
Thus, the operation carried out in September 1945 almost completely eliminated the personal security of “WHITE” and broke the communication channels through which he contacted the members of the Ts.P. who remained on the territory and led the organization.
At the suggestion of “CHAD”, “WHITE”, left without personal security and contacts, should hide at “SHELEST” or “EMA”, which are located near the Berezhansky district, Ternopil region.
“CHAD” bases his assumptions on the fact that “WHITE”, having lost his contacts, security and hiding place, are undoubtedly “GREEN” and “YULKO”, from the “SHELEST” security team, who repeatedly accompanied “SHELEST” to “WHITE” and vice versa , was taken to the location of "SHELEST", where he apparently remained until contact was restored with members of the central line of the OUN, the selection of messengers and personal guards, after which he moved to the Rohatynsky district and hid in caches dug for him by bandits from his personal guards sent by him in May 1945.
Therefore, the data of the NKGB of the USSR, which you presented in the orientation regarding Shukhevych’s stay behind the cordon, does not correspond to reality.
DEPUTY HEAD OF THE NKVD DIRECTORATE OF THE USSRPO BB LIEUTENANT COLONEL ZADOYA
In November 1945, state security authorities arrested Roman Shukhevich's wife, Natalya Berezinskaya.
QUESTION: You are trying in vain to hide your connection with Roman Shukhevych and the receipt of financial assistance from him.
The investigation knows for sure that, starting in June 1944, you, through Maria LEVITSKAYA, directly maintained contact with Roman Shukhevych, received financial assistance from him and met personally.
Do you confirm this?
ANSWER: Fearing responsibility before the Soviet authorities for my connection with Shukhevych, I gave untruthful testimony throughout the entire investigation.
Having become convinced that further concealment of my criminal actions will worsen my situation, I will now tell only the truth.
First of all, I must state that I maintained contact with my husband, Roman Shukhevych, until the day of my arrest, that is, until July 1945 through contacts who came from him to the village of Busoviska, Starosambir district, Drohobych region.
In addition, I personally met with Shukhevych and until the day of my arrest, I systematically received material assistance from him in the form of money and food. I will now tell you in detail about the methods of communication, meeting places and persons who contributed to this.
Until May 1941, I lived with Shukhevych in the city. Krakow, on the street. Green No. 22 existed with his money.
Where Shukhevych worked at that time, and what he did, I don’t know. However, I guess that he continued to work in the OUN, although he always answered my questions so that I would not interfere in his personal affairs. He was at home very rarely, often traveling somewhere in the periphery, apparently on organizational business.
In May 1941, Shukhevych left for Germany to undergo military training and from then until January 1942 I did not meet with him.
After the Germans occupied the mountains. Lviv, I returned from Krakow to Lviv and through the local city government received an apartment on the street. Miakhalsky No. 11-a, apt. 9, where she lived with her children and mother, living on funds received from her husband and proceeds from the sale of household items.
From friends in Lviv, I learned that at the time of the occupation, Shukhevych commanded the Ukrainian legion, was with the rank of captain in the German army, passed through Lviv and is located somewhere in Ukraine.
In the fall of 1941, Shukhevych returned to Lvov with the legion, stayed at home for a short time, and then, by order of the German command, went to Berlin for a 7-month course.
Returning from the course, Shukhevych, at the head of his legion, was sent by the Germans to Belarus to fight Soviet partisans.
In the fall of 1942, Shukhevych came on vacation to the mountains. Lvov, stayed at home for a short time and went to Belarus, and at the beginning of 1943 he returned with the legion to Lvov.
For a reason unknown to me, the Germans disbanded the Ukrainian legion, disarmed its members and ordered the officers to be placed at the disposal of the German command...
During all this time, my husband repeatedly gave me money himself, and when I did not meet with him for a long time, then Maria LEVITSKAYA brought me money. I don’t know where she met her husband...
In November 1944 in the village. LEVITSKAYA Maria arrived in Busovisko, brought me 3,000 rubles of money and conveyed greetings and congratulations from her husband...
In December, LEVITSKAYA came to me again and reported that her husband had asked me to pass on warm underwear and winter clothes through her. At the same time, LEVITSKAYA gave me a note from her husband Shukhevych, in which it was written to come for groceries with LEVITSKAYA...
No one lived in the house where Maria brought me. In one of the rooms there was some kind of kitchen, where two girls were preparing food. In the evening, Roman appeared at this apartment, armed with a pistol and a machine gun, accompanied by 5 or 6 people also armed, who were guarding the house during our conversation...
The next day, LEVITSKAYA again arrived to me on a steam-cart loaded with various food products, such as 3 bags of flour. 4–5 kg of honey, a pork carcass and something else, I don’t remember. Together with her we returned to the village. Busovisko, from where LEVITSKAYA headed to the mountains. Lvov, leaving a cart and horses for my use.
In March 1945, LEVITSKAYA came to me in the village of Bilychi, where I had moved to live, together with a friend whom I called Irina. At the same time, LEVITSKAYA brought me 7,000 rubles of money from Roman and one liter of wine.
In the conversation, LEVITSKAYA told Irina in confidence that she would not come to see me anymore, because she was studying and did not have time, and instead of her, I would keep in touch with Roman through Irina, and warned me to recommend myself to Irina - BEREZINSKAYA and never mentioned the name Shukhevych. I don’t know what this precaution was connected with.
Irina asked if I had documents and, having learned that I did not have documents, she promised to bring me a passport addressed to BEREZINSKAYA next time, having received two photographs from me.
After the departure of LEVITSKAYA Maria and Irina, no one else from Roman came to me until the moment of arrest...
QUESTION: During previous interrogations, you testified that, not wanting to continue living with Shukhevych, in 1943 you officially divorced him. From the testimony you presented today, it is clear that you not only did not stop communicating with Shukhevych after the divorce, but continued to meet with him and were dependent on him until the day of his arrest. Explain for what purpose you divorced Shukhevych, and whether this actually happened.
ANSWER: The fact of the divorce from Roman Shukhevych really took place. Having become convinced during the occupation that I would be subject to repression for my husband’s nationalist activities, I decided to get a divorce so as not to bear his last name, but essentially, this did not matter at all, since even before the divorce we lived apart almost all the time. When I told Shukhevych about this, he was indifferent to my message.
QUESTION: What position does your husband, Roman Shukhevych, occupy in the OUN?
ANSWER: I personally don’t know what his position is, because I myself am not a member of the OUN, and Shukhevych never told me about his role in the OUN...”
Once again, information about the liquidation of Roman Shukhevych was received by the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR in 1946 from Major A.M. Sokolov, who again led a special group he formed from recruited OUN-UPA militants:
“At this time, the Berezhansky RO detained the liaison “Natalka”, who during interrogation revealed that she was the liaison officer of the regional OUN conductor “Nester”, she tried to escape from the bullpen - she shot the policeman guarding her with a pistol, and, as can be seen from the information, the figure was interesting.
I, together with Lieutenant Colonel Comrade MATVEEV, went to Berezhany to see it. When we arrived in Berezhany, she was interrogated by Lieutenant Colonel KAGANOVICH of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR. She stated her testimony in such a way that it was impossible to carry out any operational measures based on it. It was clear that she was lying anyway, hiding something big.
I told Comrade MATVEEV my opinion, who agreed with me, and we decided to take her to Chertkov. During the interrogation in Chertkov, she also did not show anything significant, Comrade SARAEV ordered me to take her to the special group and take her with me to Berezhany, to find opportunities to force her to confess and to implement the data that she gives us during interrogation.
I decided to do this with her: upon arrival in Berezhany, make it appear that she had been recruited, give her the task of killing “Nester,” I was sure that she would run, and while she was running from us, detain her under the guise of “SB” ” and interrogate her like a sexo - there was nothing else you could do with her.
On the way to Berezhany, we drove her so that she did not see the whole group, she was treated well, in Berezhany I formalized her recruitment, gave her the task of killing “Nester,” gave her a pistol with a broken firing pin and sent her to carry out the task.
She indicated that she met with “Nester” militants in the village of Byshkakh in one hut, from where the militants took her to “Nester” in the forest, by agreement with the com. 229 OSB, the village was surrounded by a company.
GORODETSKY and his squad were waiting for her in the village, POTASHNIK drove her to Byshki and let her into the village. As I expected, this is how it happened - “Natalka” stayed in the hut for several minutes, went out through the back door, hid in the corn, which was all seen by GORODETSKY, who let her sit in the corn for a while, as if accidentally detained her, and found her pistol and immediately declared her a sexo.
She told him that she was a courier for the central conductor of the OUN - and she needed to see him as soon as possible, since she was arrested by the NKVD, she had overstayed two deadlines to appear and she had one deadline left, and if she overstayed it, it would be very difficult for her contact [with] your guide.
GORODETSKY told her that she was lying, he blindfolded her, brought her to Berezhany, where in the barn she was already interrogated as “SB”, [and] she said that she knew a cache in the village of Avgustovka, in which the guards of the central conductor were sitting “Bely” (another organizational nickname of R. Shukhevych - author), she meets with them and then they take her to “Bely”, just a day later the deadline for her appearance at this cache was approaching. LYULYUK, who interrogated her and wrote down her testimony, said that he would take her to the conductor, but he brought her to me. She confirmed to me that she told LYULYUK. We immediately went with a company of fighters for an operation in the village of Avgustovka, where in the house of KOGUTA Peter - this is the apartment of the keeper of the cache of the central conductor - “Natalka” showed us a well-camouflaged cache in which two militants “Bely”, “Rybak” and “Chad” were sitting "
We dug up “Chad’s” cache [and] managed to pull him out alive, “Rybak” shot himself. In the cache we found a library, a typewriter, 7 meters of weapons and many different things belonging to “Bely” and his guards.
“Chad” told us that near Berezhany, not far from the village of Rai, there should be “Bely” in a double-roof cache, [and] we immediately left in the battalion commander’s car, but “Bely” was not in this cache, his adjutant “Artem” was there "and the district guide LEGETA - "ARTEM" shot LEGETA, set fire to the hut, wanted to run away, but I shot him in the leg with a rifle and he was taken alive.
LEGETA burned down, many documents and a large amount of money were burned in the hut. “Artem” did not give anything significant during the interrogation. According to “Chad,” whom I left in the special group, we opened three more caches of the central line of the OUN - people were not detained in them, but we found a Maxim machine gun, a lot of literature, and correspondence.
Moreover, two caches [were] located on the territory of the Stanislav and Lvov regions.”
It is characteristic that the Soviet special services also “tested” Natalya Shukhevych-Berezinskaya through a special group of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, formed from former members of the UPA. In July, she was allegedly recaptured by the “rebels,” and while the MGB officers were “bleeding” chicken blood hidden under their uniforms near the car in which Natalya was being transported, “the gangster laughed caustically, holding onto the corpses of the dead.” She was led along legendary connections, from bunker to bunker. However, she did not provide any significant information about the whereabouts of her husband Roman Shukhevych. As a result, it was soon “recaptured” from the “rebels”.
The next intelligence information about Shukhevych arrived on August 13, 1946. And again she turned out to be so eloquent that we allow ourselves to quote an extensive fragment from this report of an agent of the Soviet state bodies. security:
"Top secret.
Object - Shukhevych
Accepted - ALEXEEV
August 11th I met with T.V. Shukhevych (Taras Shukhevych, Roman’s uncle - author’s note) and his wife, who told me that a couple of days before they received news that Roman Shukhevych’s mother was sentenced to 3 years of deportation to the East. They consider this sentence light, since they expected her to be sentenced to a more severe and lengthy prison sentence. At the same time, they find that persecuting her is generally unfair, since a mother cannot be responsible for the actions of her son. Others told me that R. Shukhevych’s mother was a deeply unhappy person. She married the syphilitic Shukhevych, suffered all her life as his wife, and is now responsible for her degenerate son Roman, who has shown sadistic tendencies since childhood. STEPANIV and PANKIV told me this”...
HEAD OF DEPARTMENT 2 OF THE UMGB OF THE LVIV REGION.
Since October 1946, Shukhevych was hiding in a house specially prepared for him in the village. Knyaginichi. The cache was encrypted under the code name “Korolenko”.
On September 21, 1947, officers of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR arrested OUN member Zaritskaya Ekaterina Mironovna (organizational nickname “Moneta”, “Manya”), the wife of OUN member Mikhail Soroka and personal contact of R. Shukhevych. During the arrest, she resisted and shot one of the MGB operatives.
And now let’s give a fragment about these events from the memoirs of Lyubomir Polyuga, who, while a student at the medical institute in Lviv, entered into a fictitious marriage with one of Shukhevych’s connections and, living with the latter, Zaritskaya and other connections of “Chuprynka”, and was listed as a paramedic in Knyahinichy , provided cover for Shukhevych during this period.
“The twenty-first day of spring is approaching. No one had experienced the catastrophe, but we wanted to be ready for anything. Every day the conductor and “Manya” would effortlessly practise, and “Mary” and I would read articles, learn English language, and in the Vilnius region, of which there were not many. Nezabar, I will be able to obtain medical literature from Lvov.
Holy Mother of God. Bright autumn morning of the twenty-first spring of 1947. “Manya” quickly became sleepy and said that she would turn around after lunch. She checked the pistol she wore on her belt in front under her back and left.
I don’t know why there was a restlessness in us, but I remember that the guide was different on this day. Here my smile grew as he walked around the room all hour.
After talking to Khodorov, the “Tsoptsia” squad turned around and said that the French had killed a woman at the station and that there were a lot of troops there. “Manya” went to the convoy of the Khodors to Fenik,” said the guide and sat by the chair. Everything is locked up at the house...
Terminovo went into reconnaissance "Mariyka". And in the evening she brought a heavy call. “Manya” left the prison. Two civilians grabbed her by the hands from behind and so led her to the NKVD booth. At the entrance, her hands were released from the gate. tikala, they were chasing her , they shot. They killed them at the station. “Mana” did not have any incriminating documents for the house, so there was no threat of a sudden “fall”. The conductor is still guilty of illegally depriving the house. Not much was lost before night. no speech. Now I one will have to go to his funeral...
Once again, the conductor looked at the house: - Give all the special speeches “Mani” to Lviv. Be careful, follow the rules. Behind us, the leaves of corn began to rustle. We carefully walked to the station and sat deep in the line until it was completely dark...
I will go ahead of the conductor. The health is safe. Around the pistol, at least a grenade....”
Translation:
“The twenty-first day of September was approaching. No one foresaw a disaster, although we were always prepared for anything. Every day the conductor and “Manya” worked hard, and “Mariya” and I read articles, studied English, but this was in our free minutes, which were few. Soon I was to receive medical literature from Lvov.
Feast of the Mother of God. It was a nice autumn morning on the twenty-first of September 1947. “Manya” quickly had breakfast and said that she would be back after lunch. She checked the pistol she wore on the front of her belt under her skirt and left.
I don’t remember if we were worried, I just remember that the guide was somehow different that day. His smile had disappeared somewhere; he was constantly walking around the room.
After lunch, “Tsoptsia”’s wife returned from Khodorov and said that in the morning some woman was killed at the station and that there were a lot of military men there
“Manya went to meet Fenik in Khodorov,” said the conductor and sat down in a chair.
Everyone in the house fell silent...
“Mariika” urgently went on reconnaissance mission. And in the evening she brought hard news. “Manya” was on yf connection. Two people in civilian clothes grabbed her hands from behind and led her to the NKVD house. Upon entering the gate, they released her hands. At that moment, she pulled out a pistol and fired at the guards. She ran away, they chased her, they shot at her. They killed her at the station. “Mani” did not have any incriminating documents at home, so there was no threat of quick “failure” for her. The handler must still leave the house immediately. By nightfall there was little left. He quickly collected the necessary things. Now I alone will have to go as his guard...
At the window, the guide looked at the house again:
Transfer all personal belongings of “Mani” to Lviv. Be careful and follow orders.
The corn leaves rustled behind us. We carefully went down to the pond and sat deep in the reeds until it was completely dark...
I walked ahead of the conductor. We were provided with weapons. In addition to the pistol, I also had a grenade...”
However, a very significant inaccuracy crept into L. Polyuga’s memoirs: Zaritskaya did not die, and, despite the resistance provided, the security officers still managed to detain her alive. And soon L. Polyuga himself was arrested.
Let's look at the documents again.
Top secret
EXTRACT from the report on the results of the fight against the nationalist underground and its armed gangs on the territory of the Ukrainian SSRFor the month of November 1947.
about ongoing activities to search for members of the so-called. Central “Wire” OUN” And the development of their business and family ties.
On the search for "TOUR" - Roman Shukhevych.
During the activities carried out in the reporting month. g. intelligence and operational activities to search for the leader of the OUN underground on the so-called. Ukrainian lands - Roman Shukhevych, nicknamed “TUR”, and the development of his business connections, the following data was obtained:
Shukhevych hid for a long time (1946-47) in the Rogatynsky district of the Stanislav region and the Khodorovsky and Stryisky districts of the Drohobych region.
At present, as we have established, the functions of Shukhevych’s personal liaisons continue to be performed by DIDIK Galina, nicknamed “ANNA”, and KUZIMOVICH Maria, nicknamed “MARTA”.
Both of them are illegal, but, having fictitious documents, they travel freely to various cities and regions, carrying out special tasks for Shukhevych.
In addition, “ANNA”, as his most trusted person, is preparing hiding places in those areas where Shukhevych must stay for a long period, or for a meeting with the leadership of the OUN.
To meet with the leadership of the OUN underground, Shukhevych used “dead” communication points, where on designated days his contacts “ANNA”, “MARTA” and the militant “DEMID”, etc., who was with him, went.
Three such points are known:
1. mountains Rohatyn, Stanislav region, at the market near one of the warehouses, where on a specified day a girl in a black scarf with a basket in her right hand should go out.
Communication using a predetermined password.
2. Northeast of the village of Rudki, Rohatyn district, along the road going from Rohatyn to Peremyshlyany, on the right side on the western edge of the forest located east of the village of Rudki.
In this forest, Shukhevych had a small bunker, where he sometimes went with people who came to him.
3. mountains Khodorov, Drohobych region. The meeting with Shukhevych’s contact was located near the pharmacy.
In addition to the contact points listed above, in the city. Stryi, Drohobych region, near the church, “on the lans” Shukhevych also has a point for communication with the head of the propaganda reference office of the central “Wire” of the OUN - “NORTH” through the latter’s liaison office “DARKA”.
During the reporting period, information was also obtained through intelligence investigations that Shukhevych had intentions in the winter of 1947-48. to take refuge in one of the cities of the Drohobych region, and that in connection with this an order was given to prepare an appropriate bunker for him.
There is an assumption that a bunker for Shukhevych should be prepared in the mountains. Stream his personal contact "ANNA".
Taking into account Shukhevych’s intention to spend the winter in one of the cities of the Drohobych region and the presence of communication points known to us, which include his personal contacts “ANNA”, “MARTA”, “DEMID”, “DARKA” and others, we have developed and prepared for implementation a plan for undercover and operational activities, providing for the release of Shukhevych’s likely hiding places to the places of appearance of his contacts (the towns of Stry, Khodorov of the Drohobych region and Rohatyn of the Stanislav region (two raiding intelligence-combat groups, staffed by agents who know by sight both Shukhevych and his contacts , with the aim of capturing the latter and reaching Shukhevych through them.
CORRECT: Officer of the 1st Department of the Criminal Investigation Department of the 2-N MGB of the Ukrainian SSR
And now let us quote a small fragment from the testimony of E. Zaritskaya as presented by MGB officers. Quite spicy...
“In August 1947, Zaritskaya personally went to the village of Grimne to check how prepared the apartment was and became convinced that it was really possible to live in the apartment and organize a bunker.
At the end of August 1947, Shukhevych specifically sent his militants “VLADKO” and “LEVKO” to the village of Grimne so that they would build him a bunker in this house.
According to Shukhevych, Zaritskaya knows that if he does not stay for the winter of 1947–1948. in the village of Knyaginichi, then he will settle for the winter in the village. Grimna, otherwise, he will provide this apartment to the head of the propaganda reference department of the Main “wire” of the OUN “NORTH” or the head of the Lviv regional “wire” of the OUN “FEDOR”. Zaritskaya herself hoped to take refuge in this apartment.
Zaritskaya also testified that Shukhevych suggested that in the winter of 1947–1948. he would take refuge in a “kraivka” that would be prepared for him in one of the cities, but where exactly, he did not tell her.
As Zaritskaya stated, she does not know any other hiding places for Shukhevych and believes that at the time of her arrest he did not have any...
Zaritskaya admitted that, having lived with Shukhevych for a long time, she began to cohabit with him from the beginning of 1945.”
As they say, you can’t stop living beautifully. And Roman Shukhevych, let us note, actively used this...
By the way, we write about this without any moralizing. Let us remember the biblical: “Let him who is without sin throw the first stone at me.” We note this detail in order to show Shukhevych as a person, and not as a varnished icon made of him in recent years.
Shukhevych's next location was a safe house in the village. Grimnoe in the Lviv region, where he moved from the Bibretsky forests. It was prepared by another of Shukhevych’s contacts, Daria Gusyak (nickname “Nyusya”). She, her mother and another of Shukhevych’s connections under the nickname “Marta” settled in it under the guise of immigrants from Poland with, of course, fake documents. Shukhevych also joined it with his fighters after the disaster in Knyaginichi. However, ironically, this place of refuge did not last long for him.
At the beginning of 1948, while Shukhevych was hiding in Lvov, a local police officer suddenly came to the apartment in Grimny to conduct a check and found two armed militants. It is difficult to say now whether this was a planned operation or a random check. Most likely, the latter. One of Shukhevych’s guards who was in the room lost his nerve, and he killed the policeman on the spot with his existing weapon. Thus, this “apartment” also had to be urgently changed..
R. Shukhevych was in Lvov, in a shelter specially equipped for him on Lychakovskaya Mountain, in Lisinichy, in the house of E. Yaremkova - “Gaydamachki” on Krivoy Street.
During this period, he began to have significant health problems. He had them before, but it was during this period that rheumatism, myocarditis, hypertension and other symptoms caused by the above “bouquet” occurred.
And again let us give one more detail. And here you can’t do without assessments. However, everyone is free to understand and perceive them as they wish...
How the “celebrator of the day” was liquidated. (Photo report from the scene)
Much has been written about how Shukhevych was destroyed. Unfortunately, the memoirs of the participants in the events were written quite late, after a long period of time, and therefore do not reflect all the details of those events, and are often subjective in nature. Now works have appeared that make it possible to fairly fully imagine how the operation to capture Shukhevych was carried out. Nevertheless, those “nationally concerned” continue to talk nonsense, repeating the old hackneyed tales of the Ukrainian “diaspora”. Allegedly, according to the testimony of some mythical MGB officer, agent “Maria” was introduced into Shukhevych’s circle back in 1944, who gave the operatives the hiding place of the “chief commander” in Belogorsch. True, it is not clear what this “Maria” was doing for six whole years, and why she did not immediately put the security officers on Shukhevych’s trail. Then follows the story that Shukhevych and his guards “fought to the last bullet” and “got lost” in an unequal battle with several MGB divisions. Some clarify that Shukhevych heroically blew himself up with a grenade, also in an unequal battle, but this time with an MGB special group. As a rule, all these verbal laces are designed to hide the unseemly role of the OUN members themselves in the death of their “beast.” Therefore, it would not be superfluous to clarify this issue.
Since 1944, the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR launched a centralized operational event “Den”, aimed at searching for members of the Central Wire (CP) of the OUN in Ukraine and personally Shukhevych, against whom the “Wolf” search case was opened on October 31, 1945. Similar search cases were opened against other members of the OUN Central Committee, in particular “Rat” (on D. Klyachkivsky - “Klim Savur”), “Badger” (on V. Kuk - “Lemisha”), “Behemoth” (on R. Kravchuk - "Petra"), "Jackal" (on P. Fedun - "Poltava"), "Mole" (on V. Galas - "Orlana"). Duplicates of these cases were conducted by the UNKGB-UMGB of the western regions. These cases accumulated messages from operational sources, information and analytical materials about the tactics of the nationalist underground, the activities of OUN leaders, planning and reporting documents on the progress of their search, liquidation or detention. Later, these cases were transferred to the 2-N Directorate, specially created in the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR (January 1947), as the main unit for the fight against nationalists. It was headed by the Deputy Minister of State Security of the Republic, and he also led the Operational Group in Lvov, the coordination center of anti-nationalist events in the region. The 1st Department of the Directorate conducted a search for members of the OUN Central Committee and the main regional wires; The 2nd carried out the development of lower wires and the “legal grid” of the OUN. The 3rd countered the OUN in the eastern regions; The 4th dealt with the OUN - Melnykovites and other nationalist organizations. The Department also operated communications, support and operational accounting units. In general, around 700–800 operatives were simultaneously involved in the search for Shukhevych in Ukraine. Three times information was received about the liquidation of the “Wolf”, but it turned out to be inaccurate, and therefore the search continued.
While the search lasted, Shukhevych changed “cache” and mistresses. With one of them, Galina Didyk, he even managed to go to the Lermontov resort in Odessa twice (in 1948 and 1949). While the security officers were smoking his warriors out of the ground, the “unscorched Chief Commander” was basking in the sun and treating his chronic rheumatism.
Next, we will give the floor to the Deputy Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Major General Drozdov, who in the final “Certificate on the liquidation of the leader of the OUN underground in the Western regions of the Ukrainian SSR - Shukhevych R.I.” dated March 17, 1950 wrote: “During the activities of the MGB bodies to search for the organizers and leaders of the OUN gang underground in the western regions of Ukraine, it was found that they often maintain contact with the Greek Catholic clergy and receive material support from them.
Regarding the priests in the Stanislav region, the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR received specific data indicating that they hide connected bandit leaders, provide a line of communication and, on instructions from the underground, carry out a lot of nationalist work among parishioners.
In this regard, the intelligence work of the churchmen was intensified, as a result of which specific data was obtained about Shukhevych’s contacts and the places of their stay with his accomplices...
Based on the data received at the direction of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR in January of this year. A simultaneous operation was carried out, during which the most active accomplices of the gang-OUN underground were arrested, who remained in Uniate positions, but formally converted to Orthodoxy. These are the following priests: Pasnak, Tchaikovsky, Vergun, Postrigach, Golovatsky and others...
The arrested Vergun, as Shukhevych's confidant, systematically hid Shukhevych's closest assistants - Didyk Galina (OUN nickname "Anna"), Gusyak Darina (OUN nickname "Nyusya") and other liaison officers of the OUN Central Line.
They received statements from those arrested that in the village of Dugovaya, Rogatyn district, priest Lopatinsky was hiding an illegal immigrant, the mother of Shukhevych’s personal contact - “Nyusi” - Maria Gusyak.
Simultaneously with the use of agents, all identified safe apartments of “Nyusi” were placed under operational surveillance, and ambushes were left in some apartments with the aim of capturing “Nyusi” in the event of her appearance in Lvov...”
On March 3, 1950, the UMGB in the Lvov region received a telephone call. The call was from “Polina,” an agent of the Lvov UMGB, a former active participant in the nationalist underground, who voluntarily confessed and, in exchange for the release of her brother, offered to help the MGB in detaining D. Gusyak (“Nyusi”, “Darki”). “Polina” informed her curator that Gusyak should soon visit the house on the street. Lenin. Immediately, employees of the operational group of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR in Lvov, department 2-N and the intelligence department of the 5th (operational) department of the UMGB left for the indicated address. Opposite the house, at the campaign site, an observation post was installed. The intelligence officer, Lieutenant K., dressed like a housewife, walked in front of the front door with a package in her hands. At about 15.40 a woman entered the house, whose signs coincided with those of D. Gusyak. About an hour later she came out with “Polina”. They went into a knitwear store on Mickiewicz Square, said goodbye, and Gusyak took tram number 2 towards the station, getting off at Nabaiki Street. At about 18.30 she was intercepted by four operatives...
Daria Gusyak (“Nyusya”, “Darka”). 1945
The place in Lviv where D. Gusyak was detained. March 3, 1950.
Major General Drozdov described further events in his “Reference”: “At “Nyus” a “TT” pistol and an ampoule with poison, which she tried to swallow, were discovered.
During active interrogation on March 3 and 4 this year. “Nyusya” refused to indicate the place where Shukhevych was hiding, and diverted the attention of operative workers to the territory where Shukhevych was not. In this regard, a complex intelligence combination was developed and carried out, as a result of which it became known that in the village of Belogorscha, Bryukhovetsky district, located on the outskirts of Lvov, Shukhevych and his closest assistant Didyk Galina were hiding ... "
What was this “complex agent combination”? This was a classic example of in-camera development, brilliantly carried out by UMGB operatives. Taking into account the fact that Gusyak led the operatives by the nose and, instead of the information of interest to the security officers about the whereabouts of Shukhevych, gave the addresses of Lviv merchants she knew, in the evening of the same day she was given a couple of slaps on the sopatka and placed in the “infirmary” (a prison cell was converted into it camera).
Daria Gusyak. 1950
In the “infirmary”, “Nusya” was already waiting for the experienced agent “Rosa” (a former Gestapo employee who was arrested by the MGB and agreed to cooperate; thanks to her help, one of the “beasts” of the OUN, O. Dyakiv, was eliminated). “Rose” was thickly smeared with green paint, supposedly “after the beating.” Having “come to her senses” a little, she began to tap out “a message to the next cell” in Morse code, and then write a note with a “hidden” pencil stub. When the intrigued Gusyak tried to look into the text of the note, “Rose” hid it. In the end, Gusyak could not stand it and directly asked whether her “friend in misfortune” had connections with the underground. She was silent for a long time, and then asked: “Do you know “Coin”? This was the nickname of E. Zaritskaya, Shukhevych’s mistress, who at the same time coordinated the work of the “chief commander’s” personal liaisons.
Ekaterina Zaritskaya (“Coin”).
In 1947, Zaritskaya was arrested, having shot and killed an operative worker during the arrest. Therefore, the mention of “Coin” made an indelible impression on Gusyak. “She’s in the next cell,” added “Rose,” and warned: “Keep your mouth shut. If you give me away, I’ll strangle you at night!” And Gusyak, completely forgetting numerous OUN instructions, “swam”... The next day, March 4, “Rose” informed Gusyak that the investigation had no evidence against her and they were forced to release her, and suggested that her neighbor give the note “to freedom.” Gusyak happily agreed. In the note she wrote:
“... Please be respectful that I have spent so much time in the Bolshovitsa language, where there are no people, as if I would have passed those who are counting on me, and would not have gotten angry.
After the first stage, I’m tiring, but I don’t know what will happen next... There’s a lot to know about me, but the main thing is about SHU and DI (that is, about Shukhevych and Didyk.).
Six people buried me and there was no possibility of committing suicide. They knew that I had a gun and it was broken.”
Translation
“... Keep in mind that I ended up in a Bolshevik prison, where there is no person who could go through what awaits me and not break.
After the first stage, I’m holding on, but I don’t know what will happen next... They know a lot about me, but the main question is about SHU and DI (i.e., about Shukhevych and Didyk).
I was captured by six people and there was no way to commit suicide. They knew I had a gun and poison
Having written a note, Gusyak asked “Rose” to give it to Natalya Khrobak in the village. Belogorsch, and described in detail how to find her house.
...Today D. Gusyak, who has safely survived to this day, quite often appears on television screens, excitedly talking about the atrocities and torture to which the “Embassy agents” subjected her, seeking information about Shukhevych’s hiding place.
Without trying to present the MGB as a standard “human rights” organization, I would still like to draw attention to the following:
1 . The Instructions for conducting investigation and interrogation in the OUN Security Service stated: “We use physical coercion... when:
1) The investigator is convinced that the object is a criminal and fundamentally does not want to talk;
2) The interrogated person does not respond to the questions put to him.” We also find confirmation of this practice of interrogation by the OUN Security Council in the testimony of V. Kuk (“Lemish”): “To speak truthfully, it should be said that during interrogations in the Security Service, measures of physical coercion were often used on persons who were subjected to detention and interrogation. The detainees were mocked and in this way they obtained testimony from them, which in many cases did not correspond to reality. Accordingly, incorrect protocols were drawn up and, consequently, incorrect decisions were made on murders and executions.” Therefore, I would like to answer all Gusyak’s cries about the “katuvannya” in the MGB - there is no point in blaming the mirror if the face is crooked.
2 . If you carefully study the chronology of events related to Gusyak’s arrest, it will become clear that the security officers simply did not need any “torture.” On March 3 at 18.30 she is arrested, the first interrogation is carried out, and she is sent to the “infirmary”, where Gusyak meets “Rosa” that same evening, and on March 4 he gives “Rosa” a note, and the operatives receive all the information they are interested in.
Thus, it was not the “torture” and other “torments” of the security officers, and certainly not the mythical agent “Maria” introduced into Shukhevych’s entourage in 1944, but exclusively the carelessness and stupidity of D. Gusyak herself that became the reason for establishing the exact location of R. Shukhevych.
Based on the information received from D. Gusyak, the deputy head of the 2-N Department of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel Shorubalka, the head of the UMGB of the Lvov region, Colonel Maystruk, and the head of the Internal Troops of the MGB of the Ukrainian District, Major General Fadeev, immediately developed a “Plan for a Chekist-military operation to capture or eliminate the Wolf” .
Deputy Head of the 2-N Directorate of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Shorubalka.
Commander of the Internal Troops of the NKVD-MGB of the Ukrainian District, Major General Fadeev (far left). June 1945, Czechoslovakia.
Deputy Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Head of the 2-N Department of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Major General V. Drozdov.
Head of the Department of “DR” (sabotage and reconnaissance) under the USSR MGB, Lieutenant General P.A. Sudoplatov.
The operation plan, printed in a single copy, was approved by Lieutenant General P.A. Sudoplatov and Deputy Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Major General V.A. Drozdov.
It said:
“To implement the received data with the aim of capturing or eliminating the Wolf at dawn on March 5 this year. conduct a security and military operation in the village of Belogorscha and the adjacent forest area, as well as on the western outskirts of the village of Levanduvka...
a) Collect all operational reserves of the 62 SD Internal Troops of the MGB, the headquarters of the Ukrainian border district and the Lvov Police Department available in Lvov.
b) Remove on alert the military forces that are taking part in the operation at the junction of the administrative boundaries of the Glinyansky, Peremyshlyansky and Bobrkovsky districts of the Lviv region in the amount of 600 people and concentrate by five o’clock on March 5 this year. in the courtyard of the UMGB of the Lviv region.
c) The operation will be carried out by blocking the village of Belogorscha, the nearby farmsteads, the western outskirts of the village of Levanduvka and the forest.”
And here, by the way, is how the “Svidomo doslidnyks” submit this document:
“a) Take all operational reserves available from the city of Lvov: 62nd Infantry Division of the Red Army of the Internal Forces.
b) Introduce military units into the operation, which are stationed near the Lviv region, and engage the border military...".
The quote is followed by a “profound” conclusion:
“Of course, for the burial of Army Commander Shukhevych, a number of divisions of the Red Army were involved.”
Translation
“a) Collect all operational reserves available in Lvov: the 62nd Infantry Division of the Red Army of Internal Troops.
b) Introduce military units stationed in the Lvov region into the operation on alert and involve border troops...”
“Consequently, several divisions of the Red Army were used to capture Army Commander Shukhevych.”
It is with such deft distortions in the text of a real document that the next “Svidomo” myths are born.
In total, as the map shows, 60 operatives, 376 soldiers of the Internal and Border Troops of the MGB were involved in the operation to cordon off the area of operations in four areas, 170 to inspect objects, and 320 were in reserve.
According to the plan, the 8th company of the 10th Infantry Regiment of the 62nd Infantry Division, under the command of the experienced bandit catcher Captain Pickman, blocked not just one house, which was indicated by D. Gusyak, but several houses in which Shukhevych could probably be located.
House of Natalia Khrobak in the village. Belogorsch. March 1950.
Suddenly, her son Danil came out of Natalya Khrobak’s house. He told the operatives that in the center of the village there was the house of his mother’s sister, Anna Konyushek, whose housekeeper looked like Shukhevych’s assistant Galina Didyk...
And what about Shukhevych himself? G. Didyk herself, who lived in the Chernigov region after her liberation, left her “memoir” about what happened that day in the “Wolf” shelter. Before her death in 1979, she dictated her memories onto tape. Here's what she said:
“In 1950, the people arrested Odarka (i.e. Daria Gusyak). And just before the arrest, I was still a little acquainted with her. Everyone started to wail because I got together with Gifts on Friday (then the 3rd Birth), and on Saturday we became aware of the arrest. They planned to take over this house on Monday. During the week, Bilogorscha will have some kind of election. A committee was on its way to marvel , how will there be a vibori..."
Translation
“In 1950, Odarka (that is, Daria Gusyak) was arrested. And before the arrest, I met with her. Everyone was worried, so I met with Odarka on Friday (that is, March 3), and on Saturday we learned about the arrest. We decided leave this house on Monday. On Sunday some kind of elections were supposed to take place in Belogorsch. A commission came to the village council to see how the elections would take place..."
However, G. Didyk does not mention in a single word where Shukhevych’s guards went. Each more or less significant guide had his own security team, consisting of several people. What can we say then about the head of the OUN Central Committee himself, and even the “chief commander” of the UPA, who had to be guarded especially carefully. Meanwhile, in Belogorsch, Shukhevych remained only with G. Didyk. Some information on this matter was voiced by Shukhevych’s successor at the post of “zvernyk” of the OUN-UPA V. Kuk-“Lemish”:
“The commander commanded that night, on Friday, Zenka and Levka to organize a new location. The ordered Commander had such spare “houses”, otherwise it would be necessary to verify her reliability. starts early in the 5th week of pregnancy. "All local elections suggested that the week would be calm. This explains the fact that at a critical moment the Commander himself, without protection."
Translation:
“The commander sent Zenko and Levka to organize a new premises that same night, Friday. The Commander had such spare “huts” at his disposal, but it was first necessary to check their reliability. The transition was supposed to take place on the night of Sunday, March 5th. There were supposed to be some local elections that day and therefore they hoped that on Sunday it would still be calm. This is precisely what explains why at the critical moment the Commander was alone, without security.”
Reading such maxims, you wonder: either Cook has completely lost his mind in his old age, or, on the contrary, he takes his readers for idiots. Firstly, during elections, security in villages was always strengthened, fearing terrorist attacks by Bandera’s supporters, and nearby houses were checked especially carefully. Therefore, expecting that everything will be calm on this day is simply stupid. Especially in the context of the fact that the security officers could already receive information from Gusyak about the cache in Belogorsch (as mentioned above, Shukhevych knew about Gusyak’s arrest the next day). Secondly, there were not two guards, but more (some researchers put the figure at 11 people). And thirdly, in order to check the reserve cache, it was enough to send one militant, or all together leave Belogorsch on the same day. Well, the guards, in violation of all the instructions of the Security Service, could not leave the “zvernyk” alone, and even on the eve of a possible “attack” by the security officers. For such deeds, the Security Service would simply tear these militants apart. Meanwhile, Mikhailo Zayets (Cook erroneously, or deliberately, calls him “Zenko”, although in fact M. Zayets’s nickname was “Vladko”) happily continued to be underground - at least until 1953 his name was mentioned in MGB search documents. It should also be added that the underground participants did not learn about Shukhevych’s death very soon, but Cook received this information within a few days, and from none other than “Vladko” himself. If we take into account that the relationship between Cook and Shukhevych was on the verge of open hostility, then the question of where the security went looks more than ambiguous for Cook. Today Vasyl Stepanovich says in all interviews that there were no disagreements between him and Shukhevych. And at the same time, he persistently avoids answering uncomfortable questions about how it could have happened that the guards left Shukhevych alone, limiting himself to the stories quoted above...
So, at about 8 o’clock in the morning on March 5, the head of the UMGB of the Lviv region, Colonel Maystruk, and his deputy, Colonel Fokin, accompanied by a group of operatives and soldiers of the Internal Troops, approached house 76-A, which was indicated by the son of Natalka Khrobak, and in which Shukhevych and Didyk were probably hiding.
House 76-A in the village. Belogorsch, where R. Shukhevych was hiding. March 1950.
It was a two-story building opposite the school. The chairman of the village council lived on the ground floor, and in the side room there was a small cooperative store. On the second floor there were two rooms and a kitchen, as well as a fairly large attic.
Let's give the floor to Galina Didyk again:
“Raptom is knocking very hard on the door. The conductor immediately dropped by the corner, and I went to open the door. I noticed that there were a lot of people standing there, one with a gun pointed at the door. It became clear that there was filth on the right. We had an agreement with the Guide: since the situation is unclear, I am going to open the doors, and during this hour we can jump out. I thought: since there are only one or two of them, then as long as the stench goes away, while they search the hut, the Guide will be able to show up and fight. They immediately took my hands. When they led me uphill, I immediately began to say loudly: “What do you want here, what are you kidding?” I specifically shouted to the Providnikov nobles who escaped here. They rushed me into the room, sat me on a stool and forced me to tell me who was still in the house. At first there were only two of them. Hello, I feel that more of them are coming at the gathering - there’s filth on the right!..”
Translation:
“Suddenly someone knocked very hard on the door. The guide immediately jumped into the hiding place, and I went to open the door. I saw that there were armed people standing there, one with a weapon placed at the door. It became clear that things were bad. The Guide and I had an agreement: if there is any unclear situation, I go to open the door, and during this time he may be able to jump out. I thought: if there are only one or two of them, then while they enter, while they search the house, the Guide will be able to disappear or hide. But they immediately took me by the hand. As they led me up the stairs, I immediately began to say loudly: “What do you want here, what are you looking for?” I almost screamed on purpose to let the Guide know that they had broken in here. They pushed me into a room, sat me on a stool and demanded to tell me who else was in the house. At first there were only two of them. But I hear that they are still going up the stairs - things are bad!..”
Shukhevych’s assistant tried to pass herself off as Stefania Kulik, a migrant from Poland, but operatives immediately identified her. As the Deputy Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Major General Drozdov, wrote in the above-mentioned Certificate, then G. Didyk was “categorically suggested that Shukhevych Roman, who is hiding with her, surrender and that she assist in this, then their lives will be saved.” Didyk: “And I shout that I don’t know anyone, that there’s no one else here. Without a doubt, the Guide of understanding, what is going on..." Then a search began in the house...
“I felt one vistril. It escaped from my hands, rushed to my friend’s room shouting: “Oh, kick!.. They’ll shoot right away!..” ... From now on, lying down, I began to open the ampoule with the open one, which I took under my tongue again, when I went to open the door as soon as possible . I realized that I was no longer tired... I just had a shot, one, another, a third... They were shot here on the street. I’ve come to my senses, it’s already over.”
Translation:
“I heard one shot. I escaped from my hands, rushed into another room shouting: “Oh, lie down!.. Now they will shoot!..”... Now, lying down, I began to chew the ampoule of poison, which I took under my tongue even when I was going up the stairs to open it. door. I felt that I was already losing consciousness... I also heard a shot, one, two, three... The shots were somewhere on the street. I realized that this is already the end...”
Shukhevych at that moment was in a specially equipped “krivka” - a small part of the second floor corridor fenced off with a wooden partition with two sliding partitions and an exit to the stairs, which was covered with a carpet.
Entrance to the "krivka" in which Shukhevych was at the time of the operation. March 1950.
Major General Drozdov described further events as follows: “During the search, shots were fired from behind a wooden partition on the landing of the stairs.
At this time, the head of the department of the 2-N Department of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR, Major Revenko, and the deputy head of the UMGB of the Lvov Region, Colonel Fokin, were climbing the stairs.
Head of the 3rd department (communications) of the fourth department of the 2-N Directorate of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Major A.O. Revenko.
The head of the 2-N department is the deputy head of the UMGB for the Lvov region, Colonel V.I. Fokin.
In the resulting shootout, Comrade. Revenko was killed on the landing of the stairs. During the shooting, a bandit jumped out from cover with a pistol and a grenade in his hand and rushed down the steps, where he came across Colonel Fokin, who was going down. At this time, Sergeant Polishchuk, who was standing in the yard, ran up and killed the bandit with a machine gun burst. The murdered man was identified as the leader of the OUN underground in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, Shukhevich Roman Iosifovich, known under the nicknames “General Taras Chuprinka”, “Tur”, “White”, “Old”, etc.” At 8:30 am the operation was completed.
Thus, there was no trace of any battle “until the end of the day with several divisions of the Red Army,” just as there was no mysterious “special group of the MDB.” A security-military operation took place, as a result of which Shukhevych was destroyed. Some researchers note that when examining Shukhevych’s body, in addition to three bullet holes from a machine gun fire in the chest area, another bullet hole was discovered in the temporal region on the right, and hemorrhage from the ear on the opposite side. These observations allow researchers to conclude that Sergeant Polishchuk could not inflict such wounds on Shukhevych with one machine gun burst, and, most likely, the mortally wounded Shukhevych himself shot himself in the temple. Regarding this, we can say the following: firstly, it makes absolutely no difference whether Shukhevych died from Polishchuk’s bullets, or, having already been hit by a machine gun fire, shot himself; secondly, in the fight that formed between Shukhevych and Colonel Fokin on the stairs, after Polishchuk’s shots and Shukhevych and Fokin fell down the stairs, another operative could have inflicted a wound on Shukhevych’s right temple (in some reports about the operation, the name of Sergeant Petrov was mentioned instead of Polishchuk serves as indirect evidence of this version).
Researchers also question the success of the operation itself, citing the fact that Shukhevych could not be captured alive. Of course, it was desirable for the operatives to end the operation this way, however, the liquidation of Shukhevych was an unconditional victory for the state security agencies. By the way, the name of the operation, approved by Sudoplatov and Drozdov, suggests that the possible liquidation was planned in advance. And the case with Shukhevych was not isolated. In the same way, during KGB-military operations, members of the OUN Central Committee D. Klyachkivsky - “Klim Savur” and R. Kravchuk - “Petro” were destroyed.
But the operatives managed to capture G. Didyk alive. After she swallowed an ampoule of strychnine (and not cyanide, as is sometimes written) in an attempt to poison herself, Didyk was immediately sent to intensive care. As a result, they managed to save her, and she, together with her “comrades” E. Zaritskaya - “Moneta” and D. Gusyak - “Nusey”, gave the security officers the addresses of 105 safe houses, three dozen of which were in Lviv. Based on their testimony, by August 1950, 93 had been arrested, 14 had been recruited, and 39 members of the nationalist underground were in development.
Shukhevych's weapons and personal belongings found during the search.
Pistols "Walter" Shukhevych and Didyk. Shukhevych's watch and typewriter.
Medical instrument used by Shukhevych.
Seals and stamps that Shukhevych used to forge documents.
A fictitious military ID used by Shukhevych.
During a search in the house where Shukhevych and Didyk were hiding, the following were discovered: personal weapons, a radio, a camera with photographic devices, tools for making fictitious seals and stamps, and a large number of already made fictitious seals and stamps; ciphers and codes, OUN literature, records of points and times of organizational meetings, medical instruments, fictitious documents of Shukhevych in the name of Polevoy and Didyk in the name of Kulik, money in the amount of over 16,000 rubles. Also discovered were: the secret instruction “Osa-1”, instructions for legalized participants of the OUN underground, instructions on organizing an information service in the cities “Igumen”, notes from Shukhevych, which mentioned serious discrepancies between the foreign Wire and the leadership of the underground in Western Ukraine. In addition to all of the above, security officers confiscated the parachutes of one of the courier groups that arrived to Shukhevych from abroad.
In conclusion, we present another document drawn up based on the results of the operation on the same day, March 5, 1950.
Top secret
Note on "HF"
Ministry of State Security of the USSR to Comrade N. S. Abakumov.
To the Minister of State Security of the Ukrainian SSR
Lieutenant General Comrade N.K. Kovalchuk
We report that as a result of a number of intelligence and operational activities and a security and military operation carried out on March 5 of this year. at 8.30 in the morning in the village of Belogorscha, Bryukhovetsky district, Lvov region, during an attempt to seize, he offered armed resistance and killed the well-known organizer and leader of the OUN underground gangs in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR Shukhevych Roman, known under the nicknames “General Taras Chuprinka”, “Tur”, “White”, “Old”, “Father”, etc., and his closest assistant in the underground, Didyk Galina, who had the nicknames “Lipa”, “Gasya”, etc. in the underground, was captured alive.
In addition, on March 3 this year. at 19:00 in Lvov, R. Shukhevych’s personal contact Gusyak Darina, nickname “Darka”, was captured.
During active interrogation on March 3 and 4 this year. “Darka” refused to indicate Shukhevych’s hiding place and diverted our attention in another direction.
In this regard, a combination was developed and carried out at 22.00 on March 4 this year. the village where Shukhevych and Didyk were hiding became known.
At 8.00 on March 5 this year. the village of Belogorscha was surrounded, and the houses of the displaced Natalia Khrobak and her sister Anna were blocked.
At 8.30 a.m., Khrobak Anna Shukhevych and Didyk were found near a resident of the village of Belogorscha.
Our group, which entered the house, began the operation, during which Shukhevych was asked to surrender.
In response to this, Shukhevych offered armed resistance, opened fire from a machine gun, with which he killed Major Revenko, the head of the department of the 2-N Directorate of the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, and, despite the measures taken to capture him alive, during a shootout he was killed by a sergeant of 8 SR 1 °SP VV MDB.
During the operation, Didyk swallowed an ampoule of poison that was in her mouth, but thanks to the measures taken, she was saved.
In the house where Shukhevych lived, a large number of documents were found that were of great operational importance: fonts and codes for communication with the leaders of the OUN underground, a passport, military ID and other documents addressed to Polevoy Yaroslav.
Shukhevych's corpse was presented for identification: to his son Yuri, who is being held in the internal prison of the UMGB in the Lviv region; his former partner, one of the active participants in the OUN underground, Zaritskaya Ekaterina, and the former economic assistant of the Central “Wire” of the OUN, Blagiy Zinovia.
All of them immediately and without any hesitation identified Shukhevych in the corpse.
Lieutenant General Sudoplatov
Major General Drozdov
Colonel Mystruk
Narrated by Drozdov
Received: at the USSR Ministry of State Security, Head of the 2nd Main Directorate, Major General Comrade Pitovranov at 13.00.