The UPR’s School of Intelligence
In 1919–1920, an Intelligence Officers Training School functioned in the system of special services of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Despite the fact that the leadership of the Armed Forces of the Republic, which constantly cared about conduct of hostilities on several fronts, could not cope with everything at once, the issue of training intelligence staff was important. Archival documents tell us how the education at that school was organized.
1/24/2022
Ivan Lytvynenko's Course of “Combat Intelligence”
Ivan Lytvynenko was one of those who left a noticeable mark on the activities of national special services during the Ukrainian people’s liberation struggle. In the 1920s and 1930s, all the intelligence work of the State Center of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile was subordinated to him in Volhynia. During the Second World War, he headed the intelligence department of the UPA-North National Military Staff, and taught the course “Combat Intelligence” at the school of senior officers. All this time, information about him was accumulated in case files of the GPU / NKVD of the USSR. The currently declassified documents from the archives of the Intelligence provide more information about this brave Ukrainian senior officer, commander, intelligence officer, insurgent.
1/17/2022
Arkadiy Zhukovskyi. Historian, Encyclopedist, Ukrainianist
January 12 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Arkadiy Zhukovskyi, a prominent Ukrainian scientist, encyclopedist, historian, local historian, cartographer, cultural scientist, foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, longtime Chairman of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe. During the forced emigration, A. Zhukovskyi actively engaged in public and political activities, was a member of the Provid (leadership) of Ukrainian Nationalists, and therefore became the object of cultivation of the MGB / KGB of the USSR. Documents preserved in the Branch State Archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine shed light on some hitherto unknown pages of the biography of this extraordinary person.
1/12/2022
“Hetman's Three” in the Sky of America
In 1934, a yellow and blue biplane with a trident on its side and the inscription “Ukraine” would periodically take off to the skies over the United States. Soon it was accompanied by two more planes – “Lviv” and “Kyiv”. They took part in Ukrainian holidays and various aviation parades. The press called them the “Hetman’s Three”. These were the planes of the Union of Hetmanists-Statesmen (UHS). They were going to be used for information and propaganda purposes. But not just for those. Documents from the Intelligence’s archives tell the story of the appearance of planes and aviation schools in Ukrainian emigration circles.
12/23/2021
Lyubomyr from the Huzars Famous Cohort
Lyubomyr Huzar was among those Ukrainian emigrants in Paris, such as Symon Petliura, Nestor Makhno, Oleksandr Shulhin, Oleksandr Udovychenko, Mykola Hlushchenko and others, to whom in different historical periods a great interest was shown by the GPU-NKVD of the USSR. The documents on him in the Sectoral State Archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine allow us to fill in some gaps in the lineage of Chernivtsi and Galician Huzars.
12/10/2021
Solovki’s Escapees- In the UPR Intelligence Service
The archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine contain a number of documents dated 1932–1933 about how the UPR intelligence tried to obtain information about the real state of affairs in Ukraine at that time, including the terrible famine that befell the Ukrainian villages. One of the episodes of that epic is mentioned in the testimony of Hryhoriy Mamchiy, an escapee from the Solovki camp who, on the instructions of Vsevolod Zmienko, the head of the UPR's secret service, crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border to find out the situation in his native Cherkasy region, to establish contacts with locals who had a negative attitude to the Soviet authorities, and to try to organize resistance.
11/26/2021
10 Years in Prison for the Poems about Holodomor
The archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine contain a case that, along with other materials of the special services, sheds light on the horrific events related to the Holodomor in 1932-1933. Archival documents allow us to look into the secret depths of the soul of a simple village teacher, a student of the Literary Faculty of the Kharkiv Vocational Education Institute Oleksiy Nalyvaiko, who kept a diary about the needy life in the village, grief and suffering, attitude to the Communist Party’s policy, Bolshevik propaganda. He expressed his thoughts and impressions both in prose and in verse, which soon became subject to meticulous study by the GPU-NKVD.
11/24/2021
The Task: “To Collect a Lot of Material Information for the Organizers of Anti-Famine Protests”
On the eve of Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine, which this year is marked on November 27, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine publishes a number of materials from archives on how Ukrainian emigrant organizations set up committees to help the starving, how representatives of the UPR and OUN collected intelligence on the crimes of the Stalinist regime, produced leaflets and other propaganda literature that was illegally sent to the USSR, tried to tell the world the truth about the state of affairs in Ukraine and how the Soviet secret services counteracted this and any attempts of protest or free thought inside the country.
11/12/2021
Nestor Makhno. The Last Years of Living Abroad
The Branch State Archive of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine contains a selection of materials from the Foreign Department of the Secret Political Department of the GPU of the Ukrainian SSR, which makes it possible to trace the activities of Nestor Makhno in the last years of his life in exile. And although at that time, in the 1930s, Makhno no longer posed a real threat to Soviet power, its special services continued investigations against him and his immediate environment, recruiting agents from former Makhnovists for deportation.
11/5/2021
Vasyl Vyshyvanyi. A Military Figure, Politician, Diplomat and… Intelligence Officer
Recently, there has been a growing interest in extraordinary colorful figures in Ukrainian history, whose names were forgotten in Soviet times. Among them is the Austrian Archduke Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen, known as Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, who played a prominent role in the Ukrainian national liberation movement. Declassified documents from the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, earlier unknown to the general public, make it possible to clarify and supplement the available information about him as a military figure, politician, diplomat and, to some extent, an intelligence officer.
10/29/2021
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