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Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; Ukrainian: Організація українських націоналістів, romanized: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv) was a Ukrainian nationalist organization established on February 2, 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. The OUN was the largest and one of the most important far-right Ukrainian organizations operating in the interwar period on the territory of the Second Polish Republic. The OUN was mostly active preceding, during, and immediately after the Second World War. The ideology held by the OUN has been characterized by scholars as a Ukrainian form of fascism and/or integral nationalism, itself sometimes characterized as proto-fascist, or more broadly as extreme or radical nationalism influenced by fascist movements. Its ideology was influenced by the writings of Dmytro Dontsov, from 1929 by Italian fascism, and from 1930 by German Nazism. The OUN pursued a strategy of violence, terrorism, and assassinations with the goal of creating an ethnically homogeneous and totalitarian Ukrainian state.
During the Second World War, in 1940, the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members supported Andriy Melnyk's OUN-M, while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera's OUN-B. On 30 June 1941 OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv, which had just come under Nazi Germany's control in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. OUN-B pledged to work closely with Germany, which was described as freeing the Ukrainians from Soviet oppression, and OUN-B members subsequently took part in the Lviv pogroms. In response to the OUN-B declaration of independence, the Nazi authorities suppressed the OUN leadership. Members of the OUN took an active part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland. In October 1942, OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In 1943–1944, in an effort to prevent Polish efforts to re-establish prewar borders, UPA units carried out massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
In the course of the war, with the approaching defeat of Nazi Germany, the OUN-B changed its political image, exchanging fascism for democratic slogans. After World War II, the UPA fought Soviet and Polish government forces. In 1947, in Operation Vistula, the Polish government deported 140,000 Ukrainians as part of the population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine. Soviet forces killed 153,000, arrested 134,000, and deported 203,000 UPA members, relatives, and supporters. During the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, covertly supported the OUN. A contemporary organization that claims to be the same Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is still active in Ukraine.[citation needed]
In 1919, with the end of the Polish–Ukrainian War, the Second Polish Republic took over most of the territory claimed by the West Ukrainian People's Republic and the rest was absorbed by the Soviet Union. One year later, exiled Ukrainian officers, mostly former Sich Riflemen, founded the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian: Українська Військова Організація; Ukrainska Viiskova Orhanizatsiia), an underground military organization with the goals of continuing the armed struggle for independent Ukraine. The UVO was strictly a military organization with a military command structure. Originally the UVO operated under the authority of the exiled government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, but in 1925 following a power struggle all the supporters of the exiled president Yevhen Petrushevych were expelled from the organization.
The UVO leader was Yevhen Konovalets, the former commander of the Sich Riflemen. West Ukrainian political parties secretly funded the organization. The UVO organized a wave of sabotage actions in the second half of 1922, when Polish settlers were attacked, police stations, railroad stations, telegraph poles and railroad tracks were destroyed. An attempt to assassinate Poland's Chief of State Józef Piłsudski was made in 1921. In 1922, they organized 17 attacks on Polish officials, 5 of whom were killed, and 15 attacks on Ukrainians, 9 of whom died, among them Sydir Tverdokhlib.
UVO continued this type of activity, albeit on a smaller scale later. When the League of Nations recognized Polish rule over western Ukraine in 1923, many members left the UVO.[citation needed] The Ukrainian legal parties turned against the UVO's militant actions, preferring to work within the Polish political system. As a result, the UVO turned to Germany and Lithuania for political and financial support. It established contact with militant anti-Polish student organizations, such as the Group of Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. After preliminary meetings in Berlin in 1927 and Prague in 1928, at the founding congress in Vienna in 1929 the veterans of the UVO and the student militants met and united to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Although the members consisted mostly of Galician youths, Yevhen Konovalets served as its first leader and its leadership council, the Provid, comprised mostly veterans and was based abroad.
Prior to World War II, the OUN was smaller and less influential among the Ukrainian minority in Poland than the moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance. The OUN sought to infiltrate legal political parties, universities, and other political structures and institutions. OUN ideology was influenced by several political theorists, such as Dmytro Dontsov, whose political thought was characterised by totalitarianism, national chauvinism, and antisemitism, as well as Mykola Stsiborskyi and Yevhen Onatsky, and Italian fascism and German Nazism. OUN nationalists were trained by Benito Mussolini in Sicily jointly with the Ustase, they also maintained offices in Berlin and Vienna. Before the war, the OUN regarded the Second Polish Republic as an immediate target, but viewed the Soviet Union, although not operating on its territory, as the main enemy and greatest oppressor of the Ukrainian people. Even before the war, impressed by the successes of fascism, OUN radicalised its stance, and it saw Nazi Germany as its main ally in the fight for independence.
In contrast to UNDO, the OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. Most of its activity was directed against Polish politicians and government representatives. Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established in February 1929), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and assassinations. From 1921 to 1939 UVO and OUN carried out 63 known assassinations: 36 Ukrainians (among them one communist), 25 Poles, 1 Russian and 1 Jew. This number is likely an underestimate because there were likely unrecorded killings in rural regions.
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Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; Ukrainian: Організація українських націоналістів, romanized: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv) was a Ukrainian nationalist organization established on February 2, 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups. The OUN was the largest and one of the most important far-right Ukrainian organizations operating in the interwar period on the territory of the Second Polish Republic. The OUN was mostly active preceding, during, and immediately after the Second World War. The ideology held by the OUN has been characterized by scholars as a Ukrainian form of fascism and/or integral nationalism, itself sometimes characterized as proto-fascist, or more broadly as extreme or radical nationalism influenced by fascist movements. Its ideology was influenced by the writings of Dmytro Dontsov, from 1929 by Italian fascism, and from 1930 by German Nazism. The OUN pursued a strategy of violence, terrorism, and assassinations with the goal of creating an ethnically homogeneous and totalitarian Ukrainian state.
During the Second World War, in 1940, the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members supported Andriy Melnyk's OUN-M, while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera's OUN-B. On 30 June 1941 OUN-B declared an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv, which had just come under Nazi Germany's control in the early stages of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. OUN-B pledged to work closely with Germany, which was described as freeing the Ukrainians from Soviet oppression, and OUN-B members subsequently took part in the Lviv pogroms. In response to the OUN-B declaration of independence, the Nazi authorities suppressed the OUN leadership. Members of the OUN took an active part in the Holocaust in Ukraine and Poland. In October 1942, OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In 1943–1944, in an effort to prevent Polish efforts to re-establish prewar borders, UPA units carried out massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
In the course of the war, with the approaching defeat of Nazi Germany, the OUN-B changed its political image, exchanging fascism for democratic slogans. After World War II, the UPA fought Soviet and Polish government forces. In 1947, in Operation Vistula, the Polish government deported 140,000 Ukrainians as part of the population exchange between Poland and Soviet Ukraine. Soviet forces killed 153,000, arrested 134,000, and deported 203,000 UPA members, relatives, and supporters. During the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, covertly supported the OUN. A contemporary organization that claims to be the same Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists is still active in Ukraine.[citation needed]
In 1919, with the end of the Polish–Ukrainian War, the Second Polish Republic took over most of the territory claimed by the West Ukrainian People's Republic and the rest was absorbed by the Soviet Union. One year later, exiled Ukrainian officers, mostly former Sich Riflemen, founded the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian: Українська Військова Організація; Ukrainska Viiskova Orhanizatsiia), an underground military organization with the goals of continuing the armed struggle for independent Ukraine. The UVO was strictly a military organization with a military command structure. Originally the UVO operated under the authority of the exiled government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, but in 1925 following a power struggle all the supporters of the exiled president Yevhen Petrushevych were expelled from the organization.
The UVO leader was Yevhen Konovalets, the former commander of the Sich Riflemen. West Ukrainian political parties secretly funded the organization. The UVO organized a wave of sabotage actions in the second half of 1922, when Polish settlers were attacked, police stations, railroad stations, telegraph poles and railroad tracks were destroyed. An attempt to assassinate Poland's Chief of State Józef Piłsudski was made in 1921. In 1922, they organized 17 attacks on Polish officials, 5 of whom were killed, and 15 attacks on Ukrainians, 9 of whom died, among them Sydir Tverdokhlib.
UVO continued this type of activity, albeit on a smaller scale later. When the League of Nations recognized Polish rule over western Ukraine in 1923, many members left the UVO.[citation needed] The Ukrainian legal parties turned against the UVO's militant actions, preferring to work within the Polish political system. As a result, the UVO turned to Germany and Lithuania for political and financial support. It established contact with militant anti-Polish student organizations, such as the Group of Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. After preliminary meetings in Berlin in 1927 and Prague in 1928, at the founding congress in Vienna in 1929 the veterans of the UVO and the student militants met and united to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Although the members consisted mostly of Galician youths, Yevhen Konovalets served as its first leader and its leadership council, the Provid, comprised mostly veterans and was based abroad.
Prior to World War II, the OUN was smaller and less influential among the Ukrainian minority in Poland than the moderate Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance. The OUN sought to infiltrate legal political parties, universities, and other political structures and institutions. OUN ideology was influenced by several political theorists, such as Dmytro Dontsov, whose political thought was characterised by totalitarianism, national chauvinism, and antisemitism, as well as Mykola Stsiborskyi and Yevhen Onatsky, and Italian fascism and German Nazism. OUN nationalists were trained by Benito Mussolini in Sicily jointly with the Ustase, they also maintained offices in Berlin and Vienna. Before the war, the OUN regarded the Second Polish Republic as an immediate target, but viewed the Soviet Union, although not operating on its territory, as the main enemy and greatest oppressor of the Ukrainian people. Even before the war, impressed by the successes of fascism, OUN radicalised its stance, and it saw Nazi Germany as its main ally in the fight for independence.
In contrast to UNDO, the OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and domestic enemies of their cause. Most of its activity was directed against Polish politicians and government representatives. Under the command of the Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (established in February 1929), the OUN carried out hundreds of acts of sabotage in Galicia and Volhynia, including a campaign of arson against Polish landowners (which helped provoke the 1930 Pacification), boycotts of state schools and Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and assassinations. From 1921 to 1939 UVO and OUN carried out 63 known assassinations: 36 Ukrainians (among them one communist), 25 Poles, 1 Russian and 1 Jew. This number is likely an underestimate because there were likely unrecorded killings in rural regions.