Ukrainska Povstanska Armiya

[Freedom1]

Zbignew, no I am not familair with his work, but I hasten to add that this inquiry is new to me. I am a "hobbyist" military historian, and was until recently most interested in the Vietnam war. Unit tactics and dispositions, not macro politics.

I am receiving a personal file today, from a recently deceased UPA operative. His death triggered this new focus of inquiry for me, although we were not close. I guess the reasons for my interest are not relevant, it exists.

I will search down more information on your author.

Be patient, many things are going on right now, and my "fun" time is somewhat limited.

Might we can start a new thread and eliminate 10 pages of diatribe? Since I am in pusuit of a good knowledge base on these topics, it may run for a year given my time constraints. However, I will guarantee if it becomes 10 pages long, it will be an informative, education, thought provoking ten pages. Not diatribe.

I think it very positive indeed that you and I, coming from very different backgrounds, political leanings and overall epistemologies can carry on a mature and thought provoking discussion without these emotional 'kvas nationalism' digressions...

it like the discussion on another board re the UPA. A fella posts a picture of young ( 2-4 yr ol) kids strung up around a tree trunk by their necks claiming the UPA did it.Being a father of two young boys, the picture had a more extreme effect.

Hard to fathom really, and who knows if they were Polish, Ukrainian or Jewish kids, but my reply as a Ukrainian American was, if true, I apologize for my countrymen. As a solider I cannot fathom the neccessity of such terror, and I "figuratively" piss on my countrymens' graves.

So much terror was metered out by all sides, it seems pointless to point fingures at anyone...

Well except Stalin's boys, the NKVD. They were just evil all the way around. They can kiss my white...

Whoops, an emotion snuck in there!

[Freedom1]

Polishchuk, Viktor, 1925- Main Title: Falszowanie historii najnowszej Ukrainy ; WolyЄn--1943 i jego znaczenie / Wiktor Poliszczuk. Variant Title: Falszowanie historii najnowszej Ukrainy ; WolyЄn--1943 i jego znaczenie Published/Created: Toronto ; Warszawa : W. Poliszczuk, 1996. Related Names: Polishchuk, Viktor, 1925- WolyЄn--1943 i jego znaczenie. Related Titles: WolyЄn--1943 i jego znaczenie. Description: 90 p. : ill., map ; 21 cm. ISBN: 0969944438 Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-65). Subjects: Orhanizatsiia ukradnsЄkykh natsionalistiv.

You have to love ISBN numbers, they make finding books so easy!

[Zbyszek]

Originally posted by steve_vlasenko
Written by Jews not Ukrainians, without nationalistic bias in favour of Ukraine or Poland. Hard to swallow for the haters of Ukrainian freedom.

Ukrainian Insurgent Army
(UPA), military arm of the Bandera wing of the Orhanizatsyia Ukrainskykh Natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists; OUN). In the late summer of 1942, OUN emissaries, headed by Vasyl Sidor, went to Volhynia to organize armed independent Ukrainian formations in the area and found resistance groups that had already sprung up. Among them were the Poliska Sich (Unit of Polesye) units, commanded by Maksim Borovets, whose code name was Taras Bulba. The emissaries sought to unite the groups and consolidate them into a Ukrainian national army; the first unit came into being on October 14, 1942, the date on which the UPA is regarded as having been established. On December 1, 1942, when the Ukrainisches Legion (Ukrainian Legion), which included the Nachtigall and Roland units, was disbanded, a group of Ukrainian officers escaped to join the UPA. One of them was Roman Shukhevych, who was appointed commander of the UPA, with the code name Taras Chuprynka. In March 1943, six thousand men of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian Auxiliary Policedeserted from their unit in Volhynia, taking their arms with them, and joined the UPA, adding to its strength and speeding up its consolidation. In mid - 1943, UPA units began to form in Eastern Galicia, Bukovina , and Ruthenia as well.
Reorganization.
In September 1943, the UPA's organization was changed: the military staff of the OUN became the headquarters of the UPA, and Lieutenant Colonel Shukhevych ("General Chuprynka") was appointed its commander. UPA operations were split up into four areas: (a) North: Volhynia and Polesye; (b) West: Eastern Galicia, Bukovina , Ruthenia , and the San River area; (c) and (d) South and East: parts of the Soviet Ukraine in its 1939 borders. Areas (c) and (d) existed as such for a short time only, and were abolished when the Soviet army recaptured the region. UPA units were reorganized in order to improve their tactical and military flexibility and to enable them to operate as an underground. The basic unit was the battalion (kuren), consisting of four hundred to eight hundred fighters, which was subdivided into companies (Sotnia), platoons (choten), and squads (roy).
In the second half of 1944 the UPA began to attack the German seizing equipment and capturing soldiers in the rear of German combat units. The Germans reacted by launching large - scale raids. On June 15, 1944, a council was established, the Ukrainska Holovna Vyzvolna Rada (Supreme Ukrainian Council of Liberation; UHVR), to serve the UPA as its political and public framework. Prior to the German retreat in mid - 1944, the UPA controlled central and southern Volhynia and wide areas of Eastern Galicia, such as the Bobrka, Przemysl Berezhany, and Rogatin subdistricts.
Struggle with the Soviet and Polish Authorities.
When the Red Army liberated the western Ukraine (between July 22 and October 3, 1944), the UPA entered into a bitter struggle with the Soviet authorities. At the beginning of 1945, it began an armed conflict with the Polish authorities in the southern part of the Lublin district and in the San River area. Both the Soviets and the Poles had to divert large security forces, as well as military units, to deal with the UPA. UPA forces ambushed and killed Soviet general Nikolai Vatutin, the officer commanding the First Ukrainian Front (March 2, 1944), and Polish general Karol Swierczewski, one of the commanders of the Polish army (March 28, 1947), as well as large numbers of officers, policemen.
The Liquidation of the Organization.
It was not until some time after the end of the war, in the summer of 1947, that the Soviets, Poles, and Czechs coordinated their operations against the UPA and dealt it the decisive blow, in which General Chuprynka (Shukhevych) was killed. By the beginning of 1948, the organization was totally liquidated; most of its men fell in battle, and only a few groups, each numbering several dozen, were able to make their way through Czechoslovakia to the American zone in Germany The Soviets exiled tens of thousands of Ukrainians and emptied entire villages of their inhabitants; the Poles transferred all the Ukrainians from the San River area and the southern Lublin district into the German areas that it had annexed in the west.

"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
╘1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
No one is guilt free in this period, but some of us can't deal with the fact that Poles helped the Soviet Union keep control of Ukraine.
Vlas.

I'd like to discuss the above quote as a clear example of how skipping someting can be as disastrous as saying too much.
I found the source in the Internet and to my big surprise I discovered that two important paragraphs were missing so I quote them now:
(http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x33/xm3330.html)

Murder of Jews.

Throughout 1943, the UPA fought mostly against the Soviet partisan movement. This reached a climax in the summer of that year, when the Soviet partisan corps, commanded by Gen. Sidor Kovpak, campaigned in the Carpathian Mountains. In the course of the fighting, UPA units murdered Jews who had taken refuge in the forests and in villages. In March, the UPA also embarked upon the mass murder of Poles, first in Volhynia and later in Eastern Galicia. The number of victims among the Poles is estimated at forty thousand.

Turning Against the Germans.

In the second half of 1944 the UPA began to attack the German army, seizing equipment and capturing soldiers in the rear of German combat units. The Germans reacted by launching large - scale raids. On June 15, 1944, a council was established, the Ukrainska Holovna Vyzvolna Rada (Supreme Ukrainian Council of Liberation; UHVR), to serve the UPA as its political and public framework. Stefan Bandera's supporters were in the majority in the UHVR, and at the end of July it signed an agreement with the Germans on a joint struggle against the Soviet Union. The agreement ended the clashes between UPA and German forces, and that August the Germans began supplying the UPA with arms and ammunition, equipment, and training materials. Prior to the German retreat in mid - 1944, the UPA controlled central and southern Volhynia and wide areas of Eastern Galicia, such as the Bobrka, Przemysl, Berezhany, and Rogatin subdistricts.
Now, it is logical why the Simon Wiesenthal Center mentioned the UPA organization.
Conclusion: the source is OK but Vlasenko is not.
Bartosz in turn quotes data which are much overstated and he does not care about explaining anything. His "500 000 Poles killed in 1943" were mentioned by Davies but with a remark that President Kravchuk must have received the wrong numbers. The victim numbers oscillate between 30 000 [West Ukrainian historians] and 120 000 [quoted by Wiktor Polishchuk].
Polishchuk points out that the most terrible crimes were committed by the UPA bespeka [security guards] so relatively narrow circle of murderers was involved. He also points out that recruitment and iron order in keeping this organization was based on terror so it could not be regarded as a genuine independence movement which is normally a voluntary one.
However, the amount of the Ukrainians butchered by the UPA is something which puzzles me the most. The communists mentioned roughly that such crimes took place but they did not allow any serious research at the same time so it is still unexploited research area.

I would like to make it clear that I'd NEVER consider every UPA soldier as murderer. I'd like to point out that the absolute number of Ukrainians whose conscience is burdened by war crimes is not big in proportion to all Ukrainian society. I can say I would be really satisfied if every UPA veteran would be able to ask himself questions which Yevhen Stahiv did ask[ OUN/UPA activist interview with him in referenced in the other thread about the UPA].

[Edited by Zbyszek on 2nd October 2003 at 23:28]