Irena Krzywicka, a writer and feminist activist, had noted, a few years before World War II, that “the eastern borders had always been, in a sense, colonies of Poland”—but who reads her today?

Irena Krzywicka, a writer and feminist activist, had noted, a few years before World War II, that “the eastern borders had always been, in a sense, colonies of Poland”—but who reads her today?

A Nation-State in a Multinational Territory

Just like his contemporary, the anthropologist Józef Obrębski, who showed how

“in these lands, Polish identity, from its very historical origins, was linked to oppression and peasant slavery,” how it was based “on plunder: a savage and destructive exploitation” of the Ukrainian peasantry, and how the Polish lord “had to be a perpetual conquistador; he had to fight ceaselessly against the silent resistance and covert sabotage of the peasants, who destroyed the much-hated lordly values, even though they had been created by the peasants themselves .”

Not to mention the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887), who described the Polish exploitation of Ukrainian peasants as “inhuman extortion, evident almost everywhere,” particularly in the monstrous living conditions of the latter. It took the major work of a foreign historian such as Daniel Beauvois for us to understand (but have we truly understood?) that over the centuries we had established a system that “resembles above all a colonial system.”

The Polish Contribution to Ukrainian Nationalism

When the era of modern nation-states finally extended to Eastern Europe, the Polish state—reborn in 1918—constituted, by the force of circumstances, an anachronistic and ephemeral anomaly. It had, in fact, proclaimed itself a nation-state, even though it encompassed a multinational territory. On half of this territory, Poles constituted a clear minority, while two other nations—the Ukrainians and the Belarusians—constituted a very strong majority, even though they were separated from their compatriots by a national border. It had thus been built on a minefield that was bound to explode sooner or later.

It was the Polish state itself that created conditions highly conducive to the development of integral Ukrainian nationalism. Attempts were made to defuse this bomb through counterproductive means: state assimilation within a strictly centralized state, excluding any national autonomy; or national and religious assimilation and extermination — as it was so evocatively termed by the Polish National Party (SN). Ukrainian nationalists have always closely followed the plans of Polish nationalists for a “policy of extermination” against Ukrainians. These plans propelled their own integral nationalism, while providing it with a doctrinal foundation.

The Origin of “Integral Nationalism”

In the mid-1950s, John Armstrong introduced the term “integral nationalism” and outlined the concept in his studies on the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Since then, this concept has been considerably refined—though arguably not yet to perfection—by Alexander Motyl, Myroslav Shkandrij, Roman Wysocki, Trevor Erlacher, and above all—60 years after Armstrong paved the way—by Oleksandr Zaitsev [see bibliographic note below, Trans.] [1].

The significance of this concept lies in the fact that it allows us to distinguish fascist or Nazi-type movements in nation-states from radical right-wing nationalist movements in oppressed and stateless nations—to distinguish them even when the latter are ideologically and politically influenced by the former, as was the case with the OUN. Integral nationalism, with its inherent dynamic or tendency toward extermination, emerged—before the term even existed—within the context of an anticolonial movement as early as the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, at a time when no one had yet heard of fascism.

“A Foreign and Parasitic Outgrowth”

The dynamic that I consider to define this nationalism or determine its nature is particularly evident within the nationalism of a stateless people, due both to the dominant nation’s settler colonialism and to the glaring national inequality in access to land, which is disadvantageous to the stateless people, even though they constitute an overwhelming majority on their own territory.

In the Volhynia region alone, during the interwar period, a 15% Polish minority exercised unchallenged power over the Ukrainian majority (even in districts where 90% of the population was Ukrainian, only an ethnic Pole could hold the position of prefect) and controlled nearly 35% of the arable land, while the Ukrainian peasantry was crammed into tiny farms. A telling fact: during the “anti-Polish action” by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1943, its commander-in-chief, Klym Savour, ordered “the division of the kolkhozes, sovkhozes, large estates, and farms belonging to former Polish settlers, in order to distribute them among landless individual farmers and smallholders ” [The region was occupied by the USSR in September 1939 following the German-Soviet Pact, until June 1941, hence the presence of kolkhozes and sovkhozes, which the Nazi occupation continued to operate to facilitate control over the peasants and requisitions, NDT].

Before the war, Colonel Mykola Stsiborsky [1898–1941, Editor’s note], a member of the OUN leadership, wrote:

“Poland, completely disregarding the fundamental interests of the peasantry of Western Ukraine, is striving to populate Galicia and Volhynia with settlers (mainly former military personnel), with a view to both its economic expansion and its political-strategic objectives.” That is why “the nationalist authorities will oppose this hostile colonization and its consequences with uncompromising determination. This foreign and parasitic growth on our national body will be destroyed root and branch .”

He announced that these authorities would act in the same manner in the future post-Soviet Ukraine with regard to Russian settlers. “It is to be expected that a large portion of these Muscovite, Polish, and other foreign settlers established in Ukraine will be annihilated materially and physically from the very first stages of the revolution. The remnants of this hostile colonization will be eliminated by the nationalist authorities through legislative and administrative measures”—namely, by deporting the settlers.

However, in the eyes of Stepan Bandera [1909–1959, Ed.], leader of the younger generation of nationalists, Stsiborsky was not a true nationalist: Bandera lambasted him for being one of those OUN leaders in exile, “married to Jewish women.” Among the integral nationalists, however, there were also those who believed that “anti-Semitism was a stab in the back of our revolution.” When the OUN split in 1940, Stsiborsky opposed Bandera [OUN(b)], siding with Andriy Melnyk [of the OUN(m)], who would not engage in “anti-Polish action” [2].

Along with a few other young OUN activists, Mykhaylo Kolodzinsky [1902–1939, Ed.] had undergone military training in Italy with the Ustaše—extremist Croatian nationalists—and was influenced by them, albeit selectively: he did not adopt their racial theories, but it was from them that he got the idea to develop a military doctrine for the OUN’s use. He drafted it before his death—in March 1939, he was shot by Hungarian troops during the annexation of Carpathian Ukraine. Officially, the OUN would never adopt this doctrine. In it, he wrote that, as part of a Ukrainian national uprising, it was necessary to “accept the help of national minorities, such as the Tatars, Germans, or Bulgarians,” but to “destroy the enemy’s active forces.” Among these were “all minorities hostile to Ukrainian independence ,” namely “the Poles, the Muscovites, and the Jews.”

During the German occupation, this doctrine would successively guide two activists critical of the OUN leadership, who opposed the idea of forming a clandestine Ukrainian army. First was Ivan Klymiv, known as “Legenda,” in 1941, at the start of the German-Soviet War. He founded the Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army (UNRA), which existed under German occupation for only a few weeks—in reality, in an embryonic stage—before he died under torture at the hands of the Gestapo. Then there was Dmytro Klyatchkivsky “Klym Savour” [1909–1945, Translator’s note] and those with whom he would carry out the plan for “anti-Polish action” in Volhynia: Vassyl Ivakhiv “Sonar” and Ivan Lytvyntchouk “Doubovy.”

The Extermination. Whose Idea Was It?

On the Ukrainian question, the Polish National Party “not only fully maintained its prewar policy of extermination in this regard, but radicalized it considerably” and “announced a policy of exterminatory displacement against the Ukrainians, modeled after the displacement operations carried out by the Hitlerite and fascist regimes .” This is how the headquarters of the Home Army (AK), the main Polish resistance organization, characterized that party’s position at the time on the Ukrainian question. This position was well known to the OUN. Consequently—as Klym Savour, Sonar, and Doubovy reasoned—the question of “who will defeat whom” depends on “who will act the fastest”: the Polish state, which currently exists only underground, lacks the means to do so at this time. We, in Volhynia, with our overwhelming national majority, do have the means. The army we are going to create will ensure our effectiveness.

The Political Heterogeneity of Ukrainian Nationalism

The history of liberation movements among colonial and oppressed peoples in the 20th century shows that the more these movements are dominated by certain political organizations, the more heterogeneous they become, with multiple ideological and political currents ranging from the right to the left. Rival currents, vying for dominance, cooperate within them, sometimes even in an antagonistic manner—a fact often revealed by sudden crises. At such times, a “shift in dominance” may occur: certain factions lose their dominant position, while those that had previously been dominated gain the upper hand. The history of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) or the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is among the many telling examples of these internal dynamics.

When, in 1929, the OUN was formed at its congress in Vienna, Moscow, through the Comintern and with the help of Polish communists, had just ousted “Shumskyism” [named after Oleksandr Shumsky, a former leader of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (KPZU) and advocate for the Ukrainization of theSoviet Ukraine, who had then been removed from his post as People’s Commissar of Education by Stalin on charges of nationalist deviation, Translator’s Note], a majority faction that refused to submit to its authority and was, in reality, separatist.

Communism is losing ground, nationalism is gaining ground

“To explain the rise of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in Galicia in the second half of the 1920s, one cannot ignore the simultaneous decline of the communist movement,” Marko Bojcun [1951–2023,a British historian, political scientist, and economist of Ukrainian origin, NDT], long ago. Moreover, while militant Ukrainian youth circles in Poland had previously, while operating underground, had a choice between two radical currents—nationalism and communism—the latter had now completely lost itsappeal. Many of those who would previously have chosen the KPZU therefore turned to the OUN. This phenomenon recurred after 1933, following the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine, when the truth about it reached Galicia: some of those who had then left the KPZU or refused to join it joined the ranks of the nationalists.

This does not, however, mean that they became full-fledged nationalists. On the contrary, they often contributed to an even greater heterogeneity within the OUN than before and exacerbated the antagonistic aspects of cooperation within the organization. As we shall see, Mykhaylo Stepaniak is a prime example in this regard: “communist and member of the OUN leadership”—this is how he was described in 2011 in the Ukrainian newspaper *Istorychna Pravda*.

Another emblematic figure is Ivan Mitrynga [1907–1943, Translator’s note], who, had it not been for the Stalinist repression of “Chumskyism” within the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (KPZU), would have wavered between joining the KPZU and the OUN. Before the war, he led an influential faction that, on some points, was still steeped in integral nationalism, while on others, it was already radically challenging it from the left. Even at that time, he asserted that “the OUN could pass the test of history only as a revolutionary movement, ideologically close to the popular masses of Ukraine, and in particular the proletariat of the Donbas and other industrial centers” of Soviet Ukraine.” And that the new Ukrainian revolution “was gaining momentum within the very ranks of Bolshevism, and that Bolshevism would never eradicate these new forces, for it constantly gives birth to them itself,” just as it had already given birth to its champion, Mykola Khvylovy [1893–1933, a Bolshevik activist, writer, and leader of the Free Academy of Proletarian Literature (VAPLITE), who became an advocate for Ukrainian independence, Translator’s note].

An Eastern Wind on Ukrainian Nationalism

In 1941, Mitrynga and his men, like other “expeditionary groups” from the recently formed Bandera faction of the OUN—which we will henceforth refer to exclusively—set out in the wake of German troops toward Soviet Ukraine. He returned no longer as a nationalist, but—as he now defined himself—as a “revolutionary democrat.” From then on, Mitrynga’s supporters would assert that the OUN could only gain support in eastern Ukraine on the condition that it promote neither a national dictatorship—considered fascist there—“nor even a bourgeois democratic regime,” but instead call for the creation of “an independent Ukrainian state of the councils”.

The councils (radas/soviets)—the first and, until then, only form of democracy that the masses and peoples of the Russian Empire had discovered during the 1917 Revolution: democratically elected, multiparty councils, before they were subjected to Bolshevization. Under the slogan, “Only in an independent Ukraine will we defend and deepen the social gains of the October Revolution,” Mitrynga’s supporters soon left the OUN. They distinguished themselves to such an extent that, with the exception of Mitrynga himself—who was killed during the war—their entire leadership, in exile after the war, including Borys Levytsky [1915–1984, Translator’s note] (who later became a “very valuable” close associate of Jerzy Giedroyc [director of the Polish Literary Institute in Paris between 1946 and 2000; he supported the Polish democratic opposition and worked toward a Polish-Ukrainian understanding, Translator’s note], founded, together with Ukrainian independence-seeking Marxists, a joint party under the name—so typically Mitrynga-esque—of the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP).

Neither Mitrynga nor Stepaniak has to date been the subject of any monograph, nor even a collection of their writings, because their thinking and political activity deeply baffle historians, particularly those who practice “historical politics .” Among many other facts that will be discussed here, they also fail to take into account, for example, the fact noted by Timothy Snyder and confirmed by Per Anders Rudling: that before the war, in Volhynia, there was intense cooperation between the OUN and the KPZU, which had proven to be surprisingly un-Stalinist in that region. In Volhynian Polesia, during the summer of 1939, the communist organization—which had survived Stalin’s dissolution of the KPZU (as well as the Polish party)—even formed a short-lived joint military organization with the OUN.

“ “Terror is a bad idea”

The OUN’s great diversity came to light on the first anniversary of its proclamation of a—short-lived—Ukrainian sovereignty, immediately after German troops captured Lviv in June 1941. TheGerman offensive and the retreat of Soviet troops were accompanied by waves of deadly anti-Semitic pogroms, repressions against communists, and acts of anti-Polish violence. In an official underground publication of the OUN, a summary of the previous year’s events was published, signed bya pseudonym, which severely criticized many of the nationalists’ actions. It appears that criticism was so widespread within the OUN that the leadership deemed it appropriate—even necessary—to provide a controlled outlet for it.

The author, after asserting that “ feelings such as revenge have nothing to do with genuine political activity,” strongly condemned the terror directed against “Poles, Jews, and Roman Catholic Ukrainians,” as well as Ukrainians who were “Russified and Polonized in the major cities.” “Furthermore,” he noted, “if someone was a communist by conviction, they had to be turned into a nationalist.” “As for the Jews, long before the war, the principle had been clearly established: our attitude toward them is extremely negative, but we do not participate in any pogroms. Despite this, there have been cases where politically immature Ukrainian elements have allowed themselves to be drawn into pogrom actions.” Within the OUN, every member understood that these were not, in reality, “incidents” nor “politically immature elements” who had “allowed themselves to be swept up,” but rather that this was the voice of those denouncing the active participation and leadership role of many nationalists in the pogroms.

“Without large landowners or capitalists, without a communist dictatorship”

In 1943, the OUN found itself in a crisis. In Galicia, its leadership was then undergoing deep political divisions. Many believed that remaining underground was paralyzing and ineffective, and called for engaging in armed struggle. Mykola Lebed’ [1909–1998, Ed.], who was serving as interim president in the absence of Bandera—who was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen—openly opposed the idea of launching a guerrilla war. Faced with growing criticism, he resigned from his post. The position was then taken over—withina now-collegial executive board—by Roman Shukhevych [1907–1950, Ed.], representative of the organization’s military wing. At the same time, a wave of ideological change was sweeping in from the East. Those who had been sent to German-occupied Soviet Ukraine expanded the OUN’s activities not only to Kyiv but even to the major industrial and working-class centers of the Donbas. From there, they began to demand ideological and programmatic changes.

“Down with the slogan ‘Ukraine for the Ukrainians,’” they declared. Here, people do not accept it; they consider it chauvinistic. They associate nationalism with fascism. They want “an independent Ukraine, without large landowners or capitalists, and without the dictatorship of the Communist Party,” with a council democracy. There is no point in seeking support here from the older Petliura generation [Symon Petliura had been a leading figure in Ukrainian nationalism and president of the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic from February 1919 to October 1920, Ed.]; support must be sought among the younger generation, already educated in the USSR, particularly among the most politicized Komsomol youth (according to the principle: “If he is a communist by conviction, make him a nationalist”). It is to this generation that the ideas of the pro-independence communist Khvylovy—who committed suicide in 1933 in protest against the Holodomor—are directed. They will follow us in the name of the idea of independence, but only on the condition that the program be modified. What Mitrynga had predicted much earlier was confirmed. Integral nationalismhad no chance of gaining support here, and it was here that the OUN rejected it. After the war, in exile, Lev Chankovsky [1903–1995, Trans.] would devote a book to this experience; Yevhen Stakhiv [1918–2014, Trans.] would recount his own experience—that of the Donbas—at length and on numerous occasions.

“The UPA Has Discredited Itself”

Vasyl Kouk [1913–2007, Ed.], sent there from Galicia, who was now leading the OUN’s underground network in southeastern Ukraine from Dnipropetrovsk, supported the increasingly urgent calls from his activists. In August 1943, their delegation to the Third Extraordinary Congress of the OUN demanded the adoption of a new program, the draft of which they presented. The delegates from Volhynia strongly supported it. The congress voted that, within the ranks of the OUN, “peasants, workers, and the intelligentsia” were fighting:

— “for national and social liberation”, — for a Ukrainian state “without large landowners, without capitalists, and without Bolshevik commissars,” — “for the free transfer to the peasants of the western regions of Ukraine of all lands belonging to large landowners, monasteries, and the Church,” — “for large-scale industry to be national and state-owned, and small-scale industry to be cooperative and communal,” — “for workers’ participation in the management of enterprises,” — “for freedom of the press, of expression, of thought, of belief, of religion, and of worldview,” — “for complete equality between women and men,” — “for the full and complete right of national minorities to cultivate their own national culture,” — “ for the equality of all Ukrainian citizens, regardless of their nationality.”

This was an unprecedented resolution. On paper, it overturned integral nationalism within the OUN. On paper, that is, because it was precisely at this very time that integral nationalism reached its peak in Volhynia.

The Volhynia Massacres

Klym Savour then took it upon himself to create the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Volhynia and proclaimed that its headquarters constituted the supreme insurgent authority for all of Ukraine. He integrated the OUN into the UPA as its political apparatus, demoted it to the status of a rear-area organization, and dissolved it within his own structures. In other words, the OUN lost its political supremacy over the nationalist movement in Volhynia, while Klym Savour and the UPA, which was subordinate to him, effectively ceased to be under the central leadership of the organization.

The situation “within the nationalist camp was very complicated: the OUN in Volhynia liquidated the OUN organizationally,”, Levytsky would recount, “the ‘Eastern’ OUN liquidated the OUN ideologically, reorienting its entire mindset and ideology toward new paths, while the OUN of Galicia, amid internal strife, was in fact also seeking something new,” but “discouraged and opportunistic, it continued to simmer, as usual, in its own juices .”

In July 1943, the OUN leadership issued an appeal to the Poles, proclaiming that “the common destiny that has united us and our struggle against the invaders from Berlin and Moscow for our own states require an agreement between the two nations,” and that on the basis of a “common front of struggle for all enslaved nations,” this agreement must guarantee “free nation-states for the Ukrainian and Polish peoples on their ethnographic territories”.

However, in the meantime, Klym Savour, once again acting on his own initiative, launched an “anti-Polish campaign”—a deadly ethnic purge, described by Polish historians as the “Volhynia massacre” [which reached its peak in July–August 1943, Ed.]. When news of this “anti-Polish campaign” reached Galicia, within the central leadership—which was already deeply confused about what was happening in Volhynia—Lebed’ and Stepaniak concluded that “ the UPA had discredited itself through its criminal actions against the Polish population.” They were in the minority, as adopting such a position would inevitably have led to a split with the Volhynian nationalists.

A Marxist in the OUN Leadership

Mykhaylo Stepaniak [1905–1967, Ed.], a “Chumskist,” had been an activist in the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, which he had left in the 1930s due to his radically anti-Stalinist and independence-seeking views. He had done so under very specific circumstances, which his friend Levytsky would recount. When, in 1936, in his hometown of Berejany, nationalists had killed a “Chumskist” peasant activist ,” “anticipating (or perhaps carrying out) the death sentence handed down against this communist loyal to Ukraine by Stalinist agents,” Stepaniak, “deeply distressed by the nationalist activists’ lack of vision, decided to join their organization in order to exert influence from within and steer their struggle in the right direction .”

As a lawyer, he defended nationalists in Polish courts and collaborated with them, particularly at their training schools, giving lectures on the Soviet NEP, the nature of the Stalinist regime, and its rule in Ukraine. During the first Soviet occupation, he joined the OUN. Quickly co-opted into the leadership, he enjoyed great authority among the nationalists. He developed plans for state-building and, as a talented negotiator, conducted talks on behalf of the OUN, notably with Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and with the Polish Home Army. Together with Vasyl Mudry, the vice-president of the pre-war Polish parliament, he strove to unite Ukrainian independence circles around a project aimed at creating a nonpartisan institution, which Shukhevych, Mudry, and others later founded [in July 1944, Ed.], without his participation, under the name Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHWR).

He was convinced that, even if, as he put it, the OUN had “discredited itself” through its earlier collaboration with Nazi Germany, it was the only political force upon which rested the possibility of building the new revolutionary independence organization to which he aspired. He remained a Marxist. Within the leadership, he advocated for the dissolution of the OUN, the creation of a new organization, and the preparation of an armed uprising against the German occupiers, so that it would break out before the Soviet Army entered Western Ukraine. His reasoning regarding the uprising was similar to that which Colonel Jan Rzepecki and General Leopold Okulicki would adopt when they campaigned within the headquarters of the Home Army to launch the Warsaw Uprising [August 1 – October 2, 1944, Ed.]. However, like Lebed’, he opposed the creation of the UPA and plans for guerrilla warfare behind Soviet lines once Soviet forces had entered the territory, as he believed such a war was impossible to wage.

“Mutual Massacres”

It was he who, after Lebed’s resignation, convinced the leadership to elect Roman Shukhevych as the new president. Shukhevych, however, deviated from the plan to prepare for the uprising—which the leadership had previously supported—and advocated for strengthening the UPA, thereby effectively his support to Klym Savour. Stepaniak favored negotiations with the “Mitrynguists” regarding their return to the OUN. The Mitrynguists set conditions: they demanded a critique of the OUN’s ideological principles as well as its entire policy to date, a distancing from the UPA’s “anti-Polish actions,” punishment for those guilty of such “actions,” a renunciation of nationalism, and a change in the organization’s name.

Shortly thereafter, largely due to his tenacious yet fruitless efforts to reach an agreement with Polish political forces—with whom he tirelessly sought to engage in dialogue— Stepaniak came into conflict with Shukhevych. When Shukhevych traveled to Volhynia in October to reach an agreement with Klym Savour, Stepaniak, in his absence, convinced the OUN leadership to issue a statement on the massacres in Volhynia. Lebed’ supported this. In this statement, distributed in Galicia in the form ofposters, it denounced—without mentioning the UPA, of course—the “mutual massacres” in Volhynia. It asserted that they had taken place because “on both the Polish and Ukrainian sides, there were elements” who, under German and Soviet influence, “had allowed themselves to be drawn into a foreign cause” and that “all arbitrary acts of terror, regardless of their origin,” were considered “the work of foreign agents” and that the OUN “would resolutely combat them.”

Extending Ethnic Cleansing to Galicia

Shukhevych returned from Volhynia in December after reaching an agreement with Klym Savur. They agreed that, as president of the OUN, Shukhevych would also assume the position of commander-in-chief of the UPA, while Klym Savour, until then commander-in-chief, would remain at the head of the Volhynia UPA. Shukhevych had thus neutralized the threat of dissent in Volhynia. In exchange for maintaining the unity of the OUN, under pressure from Klym Savour, he had agreed toengage the Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNS) of Galicia—which had also just adopted the name UPA—in “anti-Polish action” on its territory. Admittedly, he exercised a certain degree of restraint in this regard compared to what was happening in Volhynia, but this did not change the fundamental reality: he ordered the ethnic purge to be extended to Galicia.

He had deemed it reprehensible that, in his absence, a statement had been issued regarding the events in Volhynia which, although it formally attributed responsibility to both sides and made no mention of the UPA, was in reality an act of distancing himself from the “anti-Polish action .” He lashed out at Stepaniak in retaliation: he ordered the UPA gendarmerie to take him—who until recently had been the head of the OUN in Galicia—to Volhynia to undergo political re-education. This was a mistake on his part. Indeed, Stepaniak soon allied himself there with Vasyl Kouk, who had returned from eastern Ukraine in the face of the Soviet Army’s advance, as well as with Yakiv Boussel [1912–1945, Ed.], who headed the OUN’s political apparatus in Volhynia—now integrated as a political service within the Volhynian UPA command. Boussel was sympathetic to the ideas of the “mitrynguists” and was, in fact—albeit discreetly until then—an opponent of Klym Savour.

It turned out that Kouk and Boussel shared Stepaniak’s vision regarding “anti-Polish action”—which had already brought them closer together—and that, in general, their ideological views were very similar. This trio, for the first time in the history of the OUN, formed the hard core of a left wing that had until then been scattered and invisible. It intended to “reverse the prevailing trend”: building on the programmatic shift that had already taken place formally, it sought to deepen and radicalize it, and, more generally, to reorient the OUN toward a new path by dissolving it to create, in its place, a new Revolutionary People’s Liberation Organization.

The Left Wing Takes Shape

As early as January 1944, Klym Savour appointed Boussel as his first deputy, tasked with assuming all his duties in his absence and leading both the UPA and the OUN in Volhynia. Boussel immediately issued instructions to the local political leaders under his command: after the Soviet troops entered, “the political orientation of our work will, from the very beginning, be anti-regime. Direct all propaganda against Stalin and the NKVD—against the regime. The task at hand will be to integrate the Russian element into the struggle against Bolshevism. We do this by spreading our message: ‘Freedom for the peoples and for the individual’—we proclaim and wage the struggle against Bolshevik imperialism, not against the Russian people.” Not against the Russian people—in accordance with the general policy of abandoning integral nationalism.

When, in the spring, in Volhynia, the front line separated Klym Savour from the main forces of the UPA and he lost contact with them, the first thing Boussel did was to strip Dubovy of command of the military district “Zahrava” (one of the three UPA districts in Volhynia) and to remove him outright from all military activity. Previously, Boussel had demanded in vain that Klym Savour take this measure. Grzegorz Motyka [a Polish historian and specialist on the “Volhynia massacre ,” Ed.] emphasizes that Doubovy had a major influence on decisions regarding “anti-Polish action,” that he was, along with Klym Savour and Sonar (who had already died by then), one of the three who had made the decision, and that 40% of the Poles murdered in Volhynia up until June 1943 had been killed in his territory.

John-Paul Himka [an American-Canadian historian of Ukrainian origin, translator’s note] confirms that the region under Doubovy’s command “was characterized by more systematic killings than in other regions .” As can be seen, Doubovy now bore, alongside Klym Savour himself, the greatest responsibility for the ethnic cleansing, including the large-scale massacres perpetrated in the Polish workers’ town of Janowa Dolina and at the Polish self-defense base in Huta Stepańska. The political significance of this move by Boussel—and, in reality, by the entire trio—was considerable: it targeted Klym Savour, including his “anti-Polish activities.”

The People’s Revolutionary Liberation Organization (NVRO)

In mid-July 1944, under Soviet occupation, Kouk, Boussel, and Stepaniak convened a congress bringing together ten activists near Derman, at which Stepaniak’s pamphlet *In the New Reality* was specially published, and the full text was distributed (only excerpts had previously been published in the OUN journal *Ideya i Tschyn*). After presenting an in-depth analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union as “the state apparatus of Russo-Bolshevik imperialism and the defender of the interests of that imperialism—that is, of the oppression and exploitation of people and nations ,” Stepaniak asserted that “preparing and carrying out the Ukrainian revolution amounts to preparing and carrying out the revolution throughout the entire USSR .” This therefore means, on the one hand, that “breaking out of Ukrainian isolation to enter the vast arena of revolution throughout the entire USSR is a historical necessity,” and, on the other hand, that it is necessary to build a “revolutionary political organization” capable of undertaking “the enormous historical task of serving as the organizer and leader of the revolution.”

This, Stepaniak continued, cannot be accomplished “solely through an armed insurrection by our organization, the UPA, and similar organizations of other nations .” For the revolution to be victorious, “the entire people must rise up to fight; all its forces must be mobilized”; it is therefore necessary to “completely revolutionize the current Red Army, dismantle the state administration, and bring the entire mass of soldiers, as well as the best commanders and administrative officials —those who have not been demoralized by the regime and who are loyal to the people—to rally to the revolution. Only in this way will the entire people be able to take up arms and successfully direct them against their relentless enemy”. In this regard, it is necessary to “fight relentlessly against the tendency to limit all of our revolutionary work to the countryside,” for “in the history of revolutionary movements, there has never been a case to date where a revolutionary overthrow was accomplished by the countryside and where the cities were conquered from the countryside.” The cities of Ukraine were heavily Russified or Polonized. It was imperative to extend revolutionary political work there and strive to rally the broadest possible segment of the urban population.

At the congress, the People’s Revolutionary Liberation Organization (NVRO) was created to replace the OUN, with the aforementioned trio at its helm under Kouk’s presidency. The NVRO aspired to lead the revolution throughout the entire USSR, considering the participation of the Russian people themselves in the revolution to be indispensable. Stepaniak soon fell into the hands of the NKVD. Three weeks after the congress, Klym Savour made an appearance. On the surface, he seemed to have resigned himself to the situation: it was the NVRO, not the OUN, that was operating in Volhynia. When Shukhevych and Kouk, along with their men, found themselves on the same side of the front line and reestablished contact, the two sides met in late fall. At the meeting, Klym Savour insisted on the dissolution of the NVRO and the return of its members and organizational structures to the OUN.

In exchange, Kouk and Boussel secured a commitment that the OUN would henceforth genuinely adhere, in practice, to the 1943 program—something that, until then, had by no means been a given on the part of Shukhevych and his men. This would take on full significance when it became clear that, from abroad, Bandera opposed this program. But his position was rejected, and in 1950, the clandestine OUN within the country expanded its program: by affirming that it was “opposed to a return to the capitalist and latifundia system,” it would guarantee that, in an independent Ukraine, the political system would be a democracy, including “freedom of political and social organizations.”

There would be democracy in an independent Ukraine

In exile, during the postwar years, Levytsky wrote (italics in the original):

“The transitional nature of the divided OUN [between the Banderites and the Melnykists] was linked, in the years 1940–1944, not only to the contradictory nature of the OUN-B’s ideology. From this still-undefined nature also stemmed its disconcerting tactics and political practice of those years. This practice of the OUN resulted from the sum ofenormous contradictions, in which the noblest acts of which man is capable went hand in hand with common crime, fratricide, and terror. Heroic resistance against the occupier went hand in hand with acts that cast a stain on the honor of Ukrainians. These are facts that can neither be ignored nor erased from our recent history. It must be understood, however, that this practice stemmed from the OUN’s heterogeneous ideological structure and its generally transitional nature. This was the source of the heterogeneous human element within the OUN: primitive nationalist fanatics, raised according to the old commandments, felt “at home” there alongside entirely new people who had grown up in the wake of new ideas. In the course of the historical development process, these new elements completely filled the ranks of the Ukrainian liberation movement.”

Although he lacked a political mind of Stepaniak’s caliber, Boussel, with Kouk’s support, trained and promoted these new figures. After Boussel’s death at the hands of the NKVD in 1945 —six months after that of Klym Savour—this task was taken up by Kouk, who was already vice president of the OUN at the time, and then, after Shukhevych’s assassination by the NKVD in 1950, as its last president, until his capture by the Soviets in 1954. It was these newcomers—such as Petro Fedun “Poltava” [1919–1951, Translator’s note] and Osyp Diakiv “Hornovy” [1920–1950, Translator’s note], young democratic revolutionary nationalists—who would carry out a radical ideological overhaul of the organization. Poltava, as head of the ideological apparatus, would, with the support of the leadership, the use during training sessions and the reprinting by underground publishing houses of everything the OUN had published before 1944, with the sole exception of the 1943 programmatic resolution.

“Our worldview from 1929–1939”—that is, integral nationalism—“had already failed,” he explained, “back when, in Polish prisons, we were forbidden to debate with the communists, for they overwhelmed us with their arguments, and it failed even more completely in 1941, when we set out for the East.” In the ongoing internal debate over changing the organization’s name and removing all references to nationalism—which would require convening a congress of delegates, impossible to organize while operating underground—he argued for retaining the historical name, but with the essential addition of a clarification. The name would then be: “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Independence, Democracy, Socialism .”

In the gulag and from within the gulag, Stepaniak worked tenaciously for more than a dozen years to build the NVRO. “Stepaniak’s ideas,” according to a KGB report on his political activity in the gulag, “are shared by former OUN leaders at the Vorkuta correctional labor camp.”

Where does crime come from?

“There is something in human history that resembles retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instruments are forged not by the offended, but by the offenders themselves.” Who wrote that? Jacek Kuroń, speaking of the Polish-Ukrainian historical controversies? One could easily be mistaken. No, it is Marx. “The excesses committed by the rebellious sepoys in India are truly horrifying, hideous, and unspeakable,” he continued, but “however infamous the conduct of the sepoys may be, it is merely a concentrated reflection of England’s conduct in India.”

When, in the mid-19th century, the sepoys—Indian soldiers in the British colonial armies—turned their weapons against their officers, they also massacred thousands of British and Anglo-Indian civilians, including women and children. As fighters in the First Indian War of Independence, they are enshrined in India’s national pantheon. For my part, I present these incidents—of which history is replete—as follows: if the liberation movement of an oppressed people commits crimes against the ruling people, the cause is national oppression, not the desire to free oneself from it.

* This article appeared on August 22, 2026, in the weekly magazine of the Polish newspaper *Gazeta Wyborcza*, in the “Adam Michnik Recommends” section. Our translation from Polish, reviewed by the author.

Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski studies revolutionary and liberation movements. His most recent works in Polish are *Rap: Between Malcolm X and Gang Subculture. The Nation of Islam in Black America* (2020) and *The Ukrainian Revolutions* (2023, to be published in French in 2025), No Country for Free Men: The Polish Case in the Haitian Revolution (2024). Since the 1980s, his various essays and studies on the history of the OUN and the UPA have been published in English, Spanish, French, Polish, and Ukrainian.

zbigkowa@gmail.com

Notes