The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; ) 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: "The term integral nationalism was applied to the OUN by the American historian John Armstrong.3 The term has stuck, and many pronationalist historians find it preferable to the term fascism, which today carries strong negative connotations and is used colloquially as a term of abuse. There is no contradiction between fascism and integralism, which is a variety within the fascist tradition... Belonging to a tradition of European generic fascism, the OUN emerged out of an amalgamation between the Ukrainian Military Organization and a number of other extreme right-wing organizations"./or integral nationalism, itself sometimes characterized as proto-fascist,: "During the 1930s, Ukrainian integral nationalism experienced an intense "fascistisation," which resulted in a hybrid ideology with a mixture of national-liberationist and fascist elements. The most appropriate designation for such an ideological movement is proto-fascist integral nationalism in the absence of nation-state." 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,Timothy Snyder. (2004) The Reconstruction of Nations. New Haven: Yale University Press: p. 168 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."Poland's president expresses regret over 1947 Akcja Wisla ", The Ukrainian Weekly 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. In the mid-1950s, the OUN-B split into the broadly social-democratic but short-lived OUN-z and the Dontsovite OUN-r under Bandera. After Ukrainian independence, the OUN-r (also referred to as the OUN-B) set up the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists party while the OUN-M established itself as a non-governmental organization (having retained the name the 'Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists').
History Background and creation
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.Christopher Gilley (2006). A Simple Question of 'Pragmatism'? Sovietophilism in the West Ukrainian Emigration in the 1920s Working Paper: Koszalin Institute of Comparative European Studies pp. 6–13
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. 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.Orest Subtelny. (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 441–446.
Pre-war activities
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, "The ideology of the organization was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Dmytro Dontsov, Italian Fascism, Nietzsche, and German National Socialism, combining extreme nationalism with terrorism, corporatism, and the Führerprinzip." such as Dmytro Dontsov, whose political thought was characterised by totalitarianism, national chauvinism, and antisemitism, as well as Mykola Stsiborskyi and , 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.Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska Partyzantka 1942–1960, Warsaw 2006 This number is likely an underestimate because there were likely unrecorded killings in rural regions.
The OUN's victims during this period included Tadeusz Hołówko, a Polish promoter of Ukrainian-Polish compromise, Emilian Czechowski, Lwow's Polish police commissioner, Alexei Mailov, a Soviet consular official killed in retaliation for the Holodomor, and most notably Bronisław Pieracki, the Polish interior minister. The OUN also killed moderate Ukrainian figures such as the respected teacher (and former officer of the Ukrainian Galician Army) Ivan Babii. Most of these killings were organized locally and occurred without the authorization or knowledge of the OUN's emigre leaders abroad. In 1930 OUN members assaulted the head of the Shevchenko Scientific Society Kyryl Studynsky in his office. Such acts were condemned by the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andriy Sheptytsky, who was particularly critical of the OUN's leadership in exile who inspired acts of youthful violence, writing that they were "using our children to kill their parents" and that "whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of the people."Bohdan Budurowycz. (1989). Sheptytski and the Ukrainian National Movement after 1914 (chapter). In Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.). Morality and Reality: The Life and Times of Andrei Sheptytsky. Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta. p. 57. A more detailed sample of Sheptytsky's impassioned words condemning the OUN, printed in the newspaper of the maninstream western Ukrainian newspaper Dilo: "If you are planning to kill treacherously those who are opposed to your misdeeds, you will have to kill all the teachers and professors who are working for the Ukrainian youth, all the fathers and mothers of Ukrainian children...all politicians and civic activists. But first of all you will have to remove through assassination the clergy and the bishops who resist your criminal and foolish actions...We will not cease to declare that whoever demoralizes our youth is a criminal and an enemy of our people." OUN's terrorist methods, fascination with fascism, rejection of parliamentary democracy and acting against Poland on behalf of Germany did not find support among many other Ukrainian organizations, especially among the Petlurites, i.e. former activists of the Ukrainian People's Republic.