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Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

[Організація українських націоналістів;
Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv, or
ОУН (OUN)]. A Ukrainian political
movement dedicated to the establishment of
an independent Ukrainian state. The OUN arose from the
merger of the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) and
several nationalist student associations—the Group of
Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian
Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. Two conferences of Ukrainian
Nationalists—one on 3–7 November 1927 in Berlin and the other on 8–9 April 1928 in
Prague—paved the way for the founding congress, which was held in Vienna from 28
January to 3 February 1929. It elected a nine-man Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN)
headed by Yevhen Konovalets and including Mykola Stsiborsky, Volodymyr Martynets,
Dmytro Andriievsky, Mykola Kapustiansky, and Yuliian Vassyian; adopted a statute; and
set forth its basic policy. According to its initial declaration the OUN's goal was to establish
an independent, united national state on Ukrainian ethnic territory. This goal was to be
achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out the occupying
powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups. The economy
was to be a mixture of private ownership, nationalization, and co-operation. The OUN
rejected all party and class divisions and presented itself as the dominant force in Ukrainian
life at home and abroad. Defining itself as a movement, not a party, it condemned the legal
Ukrainian parties in Galicia as collaborationist. Blaming the socialist and liberal camps for the
failure of the Ukrainian struggle for independence (1917–20), the OUN stressed the
importance of a strong political elite, national solidarity, and reliance on ‘our own forces.’ It
was attracted to B. Mussolini's fascist regime, which appeared to have saved Italy from
anarchy. By the 1930s differences in outlook had appeared in the OUN: Ye. Konovalets and
most of the PUN were pragmatic realists who thought in terms of traditional militaristic
authoritarianism, whereas the younger members were integral nationalists who espoused a
romantic, irrational devotion to the nation. These ideological differences contributed
ultimately to the split in the organization.

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Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

The OUN accepted violence as a political tool against foreign and home enemies of the cause.
Most of its activity was directed against the Polish regime. Under the command of the
Western Ukrainian Territorial Executive (est February 1929) the OUN carried out in Galicia
and Volhynia hundreds of acts of sabotage, including an incendiary campaign against Polish
landowners (which helped provoke the Pacification of 1930), boycotts of state schools and of
Polish tobacco and liquor monopolies, dozens of expropriation attacks on government
institutions to obtain funds for its activities, and some 60 assassinations. Its most prominent
victims included the Polish officials Tadeusz Hołówko and Bronisław Pieracki, the Soviet
consular official A. Mailov (killed in retaliation for the Famine-Genocide of 1932–3 in Soviet
Ukraine), and Ivan Babii, the director of the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv (a Ukrainian
accused of collaboration with the Polish police).

The OUN's membership consisted overwhelmingly of students and young people. There are
no reliable figures, but estimates range as high as 20,000 (1939). Yet the OUN's influence
greatly exceeded its size. Its spirit of selfless, even fanatical dedication to the national cause
proved tremendously attractive to young people. The OUN can be said to have shaped the
political outlook of an entire generation of Western Ukrainians.

The OUN's major publications were the journal Rozbudova natsiï and the underground
Biuleten’ Kraiovoï ekzekutyvy OUN na ZUZ, Surma (1927–34), Iunak, Natsionalist, and Ukraïns’kyi
natsionalist. A number of legal newspapers in Western Ukraine were under strong nationalist
influence.

Many Galician and Volhynian OUN activists were sentenced by Polish courts in the 1930s,
and there were two trials in Bukovyna in 1937. In 1934 the Polish police arrested the OUN's
leading activists, including Stepan Bandera, the head of the Western Ukrainian Territorial
Executive, and kept them in prison until the outbreak of the Second World War. In spite of
these setbacks, the OUN rebuilt its organizational network. It did not succeed in penetrating
Soviet Ukraine, but Joseph Stalin's regime was concerned enough about the OUN's potential
to order the assassination of Yevhen Konovalets in Rotterdam in 1938.

Yevhen Konovalets's death led to a succession crisis, which revealed fundamental differences
between the OUN members in Western Ukraine and members of the Leadership of
Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN), who lived abroad. Underlying the power struggle were
generational and ideological divisions. The home cadres, who bore the brunt of the
underground struggle, were younger men with an aspiration to leadership and an uncritical
acceptance of fascist ideas and methods. Their outlook was influenced strongly by Dmytro
Dontsov, who propounded a cult of will and power and indiscriminately praised fascist and
Nazi leaders. The older OUN leaders tended to be more conservative; Yevhen Onatsky and
Mykola Stsiborsky, for example, stressed the positive features of Italian fascism but
condemned Nazism.

The Second Grand Assembly of the OUN, held in Rome on 27 August 1939, elected Andrii
Melnyk to head the organization and adopted the title vozhd (equivalent to Führer) for its
leader, declaring him responsible only to ‘God, the Nation, and his own conscience.’ By this

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abrupt departure from its conservative orientation PUN tried to head off any challenge to
Melnyk's authority from the home cadres. The measure backfired: Stepan Bandera and his
followers, who had emerged from prison after Poland's collapse in 1939, formed the
Revolutionary Leadership on 10 February 1940 and claimed the right of succession. Melnyk
tried in vain to resolve the crisis by negotiation. In April 1941 the Bandera faction held its
own Second Extraordinary Congress in Cracow, which declared the Rome assembly illegal,
elected Bandera leader, and adopted a program that reaffirmed the basic resolutions of 1929.
Most of the home members accepted Bandera's authority, and the rift soon became
irreversible. The two factions became known as the OUN(B), ‘Banderites,’ and OUN(M),
‘Melnykites,’ after their leaders. During the war the OUN(B) adopted the name
Revolutionary OUN (OUN[R]).

Both factions expected that in the impending conflict between Germany and the USSR they
would establish an independent Ukrainian state. Hence, each sought a tactical alliance with
the Germans. Adolf Hitler's abandonment of Carpatho-Ukraine (where younger OUN
members had helped create a defense force) to the Hungarians in 1939 aroused misgivings
about the German alliance but did not discourage either faction. With German approval the
OUN(B) formed two battalions of about 600 men, Nachtigall and Roland, which were
intended as the nucleus of a future army (see Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists). Following
the German invasion of the USSR the OUN(B) proclaimed Ukrainian independence in Lviv
on 30 June 1941, with Yaroslav Stetsko as premier (see Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood,
1941). The Germans, needing Ukrainian assistance against Russia, were expected to acquiesce
in the fait accompli. Although elements of the German military were inclined to do so, they
were overruled by Hitler, whose racial prejudice against Ukrainians precluded co-operation.
Stepan Bandera and some of his associates were arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo.
Many OUN(B) members were killed outright, or perished in jails and concentration camps.
Mykola Lebed assumed control of the organization and in May 1943 transferred his powers
to Roman Shukhevych. Determined to build an independent state, both factions sent
clandestine OUN expeditionary groups into Ukraine to set up local administrations with
nationally conscious Ukrainians. Estimated at 2,000 men (mostly OUN(B) members), the
groups were active in the larger cities. An OUN(M) group, which reached Kyiv in September
1941, published the newspaper Ukraïns’ke slovo and formed the Ukrainian National Council
(Kyiv), consisting mostly of eastern Ukrainians and headed by Mykola Velychkivsky. Its
members were arrested in December 1941, and over 40 of them, including Olena Teliha and
their leader, Oleh Olzhych, were killed immediately or later, some of them in Babyn Yar.
Andrii Melnyk was kept under house arrest in Berlin until January 1944, when he and other
principal OUN(M) figures were arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Anti-German resistance began with the formation of the Polisian Sich led by Taras Borovets,
who co-operated with the OUN(M). In the autumn of 1942 both OUN factions organized
armed detachments in Volhynia and Polisia to fight the Germans and Soviet partisans (see
Soviet partisans in Ukraine, 1941–5). The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the
control of the Bandera faction disarmed the Polisian Sich and the Melnyk detachments in
1943 and absorbed many of their members. Relations between the two nationalist factions
were extremely hostile. Although the UPA was controlled by the OUN(B), it included people

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of various political and ideological convictions. Furthermore, it needed the support of the
broad masses against both the Germans and the Soviets. Much of the nationalist ideology,
including the concept of dictatorship, did not appeal to former Soviet citizens who had
experienced the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Hence, a revision of the OUN(B)
ideology and political program was imperative. At its Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly
on 21–25 August 1943, the OUN(B) condemned ‘internationalist and fascist national-socialist
programs and political concepts’ as well as ‘Russian-Bolshevik communism’ and proposed a
‘system of free peoples and independent states [as] the single best solution to the problem of
world order.’ Its social program did not differ essentially from earlier ones, but it emphasized
a wide range of social services, worker participation in management, a mixed economy,
choice of profession and workplace, and free trade unions. The OUN(B) affirmed that it was
fighting for freedom of the press, speech, and thought. Its earlier nationality policy,
encapsuled in the slogan ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians,’ was dropped in favor of the rights of
national minorities. The OUN's command structure was modified: one-man rule was replaced
by collegial leadership. A three-man Leadership Bureau consisting of Roman Shukhevych,
Zynovii Matla, and Dmytro Maivsky was elected. After the congress an all-Ukrainian
representative body, the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR), was formed, in
July 1944. Most of its members were Banderites, and its General Secretariat was headed by R.
Shukhevych. The OUN(M) conducted a similar policy and set up the All-Ukrainian National
Council in Lviv in the spring of 1944.

In the autumn of 1944 the Germans released Stepan Bandera, Andrii Melnyk, and other
nationalist leaders in a belated attempt to win support for their war effort. At the end of the
war Melnyk resumed his leadership of the OUN(M); Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko were
elected to the leadership in Ukraine. In February 1946 the External Units of the OUN (ZCh
OUN) were formed in Munich under Bandera's leadership, and in April the Anti-Bolshevik
Bloc of Nations was set up by Stetsko to unify non-Russian nationalities opposed to the
Soviet regime. A conflict over the ideological revisions of 1943 arose between a group of
OUN(B) emissaries from Ukraine (Mykola Lebed et al) and Bandera's organization abroad.
The latter was accused of resisting the changes and their necessary consequences—the
democratization of the OUN(B), the autonomous status of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council, and the renunciation of dogmatism and
elitism. The emissaries voiced their criticism in Ukraïns’ka trybuna. In their principal organ,
Vyzvol’na polityka, Bandera and his group argued that the revision brought the OUN too close
to socialism and communism. The controversy culminated in the expulsion of the opposition
at the ZCh OUN conference in Mittenwald on 28–31 August 1948. In 1953–4 the OUN(B)
leadership in Ukraine reaffirmed the ideological revisions and instructed Bandera, Zynovii
Matla, and Lev Rebet to form a new ZCh OUN leadership. Negotiations proved fruitless, and
in 1956 two of the triumvirate leadership, Matla and Rebet, set up a new organization known
as the OUN (Abroad), or dviikari (‘twosome’ for the two leaders). Its activists established the
Prolog Research Corporation, published Ukraïns’kyi samostiinyk, and sponsored the monthly
Suchasnist’. After Rebet's assassination in 1957, the organization was led by Bohdan Kordiuk
and, later, by Rebet's widow, Dariia Rebet.

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The OUN(M) after the war developed a conservative corporatist ideology purged of fascist
trappings. At its Third Grand Assembly on 30 August 1947, it limited the leader's power by
making him responsible to a congress that had to be convoked every three years, and
introduced into its program the principles of equality before the law, judicial independence,
and freedom of conscience, speech, the press, and political opposition. Osyp Boidunyk's
Natsional’nyi solidaryzm (National Solidarism, 1945), which updated the organization's
ideology, advocated a Ukrainian nation-state based on the solidarity of corporate social
groups.

Strife between the two OUN factions continued in Germany immediately after the war: they
fought for dominance in the displaced persons camps and in the Ukrainian National
Council. The OUN(M) and its allies won control of the council, and the External Units of the
OUN withdrew from it. The OUN factions have had a decisive impact on the Ukrainian
émigré community. The community's identity and public image have been shaped largely by
the nationalist commitment to Ukraine's liberation. Soviet propaganda aimed at discrediting
the OUN as a Nazi collaborator and a hireling of Western intelligence agencies. Claiming to
be the vanguard of the struggle against Russian imperialism, the OUN(B) has tried to
dominate émigré life. Its umbrella organization, the Ukrainian Liberation Front (est 1973),
includes the Organization for the Defense of Four Freedoms for Ukraine (United States), the
Canadian League for Ukraine's Liberation, the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the
Union of Ukrainians of France, Prosvita (Argentina), the League for the Liberation of Ukraine
in Australia and New Zealand, and their affiliated organizations. Its major publications are
Shliakh peremohy (Munich), Vyzvol’nyi shliakh, The Ukrainian Review, and Ukraïns’ka dumka
(London), Natsional’na trybuna and Visnyk (New York), and Homin Ukraïny (Toronto). Stepan
Bandera led the OUN(B) until his assassination in 1959; he was succeeded by Stepan
Lenkavsky, Yaroslav Stetsko (1968–86), Vasyl Oleskiv (1987–91), Slava Stetsko (Ya. Stetsko's
widow; 1991–2000), and A. Haidamakha (2000–).

Nationalist émigré organizations founded in the 1930s, such as the Organization for the
Rebirth of Ukraine (United States), the Ukrainian National Federation (Canada), and the
Ukrainian National Alliance in France, sided with the OUN(M) after 1940. The Federation of
Ukrainians in Great Britain was established in 1949 as a rival to the Association of Ukrainians
in Great Britain. All these organizations belong to a co-ordinating body known as
Ideologically Related Nationalist Organizations. The major OUN(M) publications have been
Ukraïns’ke slovo (Paris), Samostiina Ukraïna (Chicago), Novyi shliakh (Toronto), Nash klych
(Buenos Aires), and Khliborob (Curitiba). Since Andrii Melnyk's death in 1964 the OUN(M)
has been led by Oleh Shtul, Denys Kvitkovsky (1977–9), and Mykola Plaviuk (since 1981). In
the last two decades political groupings opposed to the OUN(B) have tended toward closer
co-operation and consolidation and have formed broader associations, such as the Ukrainian
Democratic Alliance (1976) and the Conference of Ukrainian Political Parties and
Organizations (1979).

Rivalry among the OUN factions has long divided and sapped the strength of émigré
umbrella organizations. To accommodate the nationalist factions the World Congress of Free
Ukrainians has had to sacrifice the principle of majority vote and an efficient decision

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procedure. In 1980 the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was taken over by the
OUN(B) and thus ceased to represent the Ukrainian community as a whole. The power and
influence of the OUN factions have been declining steadily, because of assimilatory pressures,
ideological incompatibility with the Western liberal-democratic ethos, and the increasing
tendency of political groups in Ukraine to move away from integral nationalism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lisovyi, R. [Vasyl’ Rud’ko]. Rozlam v OUN (Neu-Ulm 1949)
Martynets’, V. Ukraïns’ke pidpillia: Vid UVO do OUN (np 1949)
Armstrong, J. Ukrainian Nationalism (New York 1955; 2nd edn, 1963; 3rd edn, Englewood, Colo
1990)
Orhanizatsiia Ukraïns’kykh Natsionalistiv, 1929–1954 (Paris 1955)
OUN v svitli postanov Velykykh Zboriv, Konferentsii ta inshykh dokumentiv z borot’by 1929–1955 rr.
(np 1955)
Shankovs’kyi, L. Pokhidni hrupy OUN (Munich 1958)
Krychevs’kyi, R. [Il’nyts’kyi, R.]. OUN v Ukraïni, OUNz i ZCh OUN: Prychynok do istoriï
ukraïns’koho natsionalistychnoho rukhu (New York–Toronto 1962)
Knysh, Z. Rozbrat (Toronto nd)
———. B’ie dvanadtsiata (Toronto nd)
———. Pered pokhodom na skhid, 2 vols (Toronto nd)
Rebet, L. Svitla i tini OUN (Munich 1964)
Mirchuk, P. Narys istoriï Orhanizatsiï ukraïns’kykh natsionalistiv, 1929–1939 (Munich–London–
New York 1968)
Stets’ko, Ia. 30 chervnia 1941: Proholoshennia vidnovlennia derzhavnosty Ukraïny (Toronto–New
York–London 1968)
Torzecki, R. Kwestia ukraińska w polityce III Rzeszy (1933–1945) (Warsaw 1972)
Szcześniak, A; Szota, W. Droga do nikąd: Działalnóść Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i jej
likwidacja w Polsce (Warsaw 1973)
Ievhen Konovalets’ ta ioho doba (Munich 1974)
Bandera, S. Perspektyvy ukraïns’koï revoliutsiï (Munich 1978)
Motyl, A. The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism,
1919–1929 (Boulder, Colo 1980)
Melnyk, K., et al., (eds), Na zov Kyieva: Ukraïns’kyi natsionalizm u II svitovii viini (Toronto–New
York 1985)
Kosyk, W. L'Allemagne national-socialiste et l'Ukraine (Paris 1986)
Potichnyj, P.; Ye. Shtendera (eds). Political Thought of the Ukrainian Underground, 1943–1951
(Edmonton 1986)
Motyka, Grzegorz. Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960: Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich
Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii (Warsaw 2006)

Myroslav Yurkevich

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]

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Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

List of related links from Encyclopedia of Ukraine pointing to Organization of Ukrainian

Nationalists entry:

1 Andriievsky, Dmytro
2 Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
3 Argentina
4 Bandera, Stepan

5 Banderites
6 Bilas, Vasyl
7 Bukovynian Battalion of 1941
8 Chaikovsky, Danylo

9 Chas (Chernivtsi)
10 Class
11 Concentration camps
12 Conservatism
13 Danylyshyn, Dmytro

14 Dissident movement
15 Dontsov, Dmytro
16 Drahan, Antin
17 Famine-Genocide of 1932–3

18 Front of National Unity

19 Galicia
20 Government-in-exile of the Ukrainian National Republic

+ 20 Records >>

A referral to this page is found in 83 entries.

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