Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Struggle by Means of the Printed Word

10/5/2022
singleNews

Among the materials on the activities of the UPA stored in the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine there are some variously themed leaflets, which were addressed to different groups and strata of the population: city and rural intelligentsia, teachers and tutors, workers and peasants, soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, NKVD -NKGB -MGB internal troops, representatives of other nationalities and more. By content, they can be divided into information, explanatory and leaflets-calls. Each of these varieties had its own peculiarities.

The archival documents are mentioning leaflets in which the UPA informed the population about the results of its fight against Hitler's invaders. The leaflets themselves on this theme have not been preserved in operational cases. At the same time, the excerpts from them in the papers of the MGB of the USSR make it possible to get a general idea of ​​the orientation of such information materials.

Thus, a special message to People's Commissar of the State Security of the USSR Serhiy Savchenko, dated December 1943 and signed by Head of the 4th Directorate of the NKGB of the USSR Pavel Sudoplatov, reads as follows:

Regarding its combat actions, “UPA”, in the emergency issue of the underground OUN’s leaflet “Visti”(News”- Transl), publishes the following information:

“… In March, UPA detachments took the towns of Volodymyrets, Stepan’, Vysotsk, Dombrovytsya. The Germans ran away.

March 25- 31, UPA units twice fought with the German police near Derazhnya. At the end of March, Derazhnya was captured by the UPA, in the town and district the Ukrainian national-revolutionary power was established, all the state farm was distributed to the population. There were no German authorities in this territory for more than three weeks.

In late March and early April, after the battles with the Germans, UPA units took the towns of Ludvipol, Olevsk, Tsuman’ and Horokhiv. After a two - day stay, the UPA units left them for tactical reasons.

… The UPA detachments broke prisons and released the arrested in the cities of: Kremenets, Dubno, Rivne, Kovel and Horokhiv. The liberated joined UPA. At the same time, the concentration camp in Lobachivka (Horokhiv district) and a prisoners of war camp in Kovel were taken. In the town of Kivertsi, the UPA detachment destroyed the point where people intended for being sent to Germany were kept. All those people were freed. Many of them immediately joined UPA.

In Kremenets, there was a great battle between the former Schutz- battalion, which as a whole had come to the side of UPA, and the Germans. The Germans were defeated... ”(BSA of the SZR of Ukraine. - F. 1. - Case 7088. - V. 1. - P. 109-110).

A number of leaflets are devoted to the recommendations on how the Ukrainian population had to act with the approach of the front. This, in particular, is stated in the special report of the NKGB of the USSR of November 6, 1943 “On OUN Orders to and Leaflets for UPA units”. It says: “In leaflets and orders, the OUN detachments are proposed to go to the forest and build dugouts. OUN members are invited to stay where they are for underground anti -Soviet activities. There is also an order for military operations aimed at acquiring weapons, ammunition, uniforms and food... In leaflets addressed to Ukrainian youth, intelligentsia and railway workers, they are called to reject evacuation with the Germans and to go to the forest, organize combat groups and join UPA” (BSA of the SZR of Ukraine. - F. 1. - Case. 7088. - V. 1. - P. 72).

The authors of the leaflets emphasized the equally criminal essence of both totalitarian regimes – the Nazi and the Communist. At this, they often resorted to the use of such statements as “Hitler-Stalin imperialism”, Hitler and Stalin were equally called “bloodthirsty”, “executioners of peoples”, etc. Revealing the criminal essence of the oppressors, UPA resorted to historical parallels. For example, a leaflet entitled “Ukrainians!”, which is kept in the Intelligence’s archive, reads as follows:

“We are going through the times of the Tatar tribulation. Just as once the Tatar invasion, advancing, destroyed everything in its path –slaughtering children and old people, burning villages and cities, plundering houses, and taking into slavery the capable of work– yasyr – so now a new horde has arrived to replace the bolshevik one – a horde of German imperialists who set themselves the goal of robbery and enslavement of the whole world.

The equally bloodthirsty Hitler came to replace the bloodthirsty Stalin...

But our situation has not improved today, it did not become better with the change of the occupier. Today there is no longer a citizen in Ukraine who would not feel the hardness of a new yoke of perpetrators against our will...

The Ukrainian people who want to live a free state life on the land of their great -grandfathers, today on the eve of the collapse of the imperialists, raise weapons in the name of their own self -defense...”

Then there are calls not to go to work in Germany, hide in forests, help each other in trouble, fight against moscow and Hitler's imperialism together:

“We will do nothing if each is on his own. Each step of ours should be organized and mass. We need to mutually assist each other. The village – the city, the city – the village!

United we will win, divided we will fall!

Long live the front of enslaved peoples, death to imperialists!”

(BSA of the SZR of Ukraine. - F. 1. - Case. 7088. - V. 1. - P. 42-43).