Master Thesis International Relations in Historical Perspective 2006 Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya (The Ukrainian Insurgent Army) Old struggles in a new nation 17 August 2006 Richard van Witzenburg Studentnummer : 8933065 2 3 4 Contents Glossary............................................................................................................... 6 Introduction........................................................................................................ 7 Origins of Ukrainian nationalism................................................................17 Nationalism and the Ukrainian Republics (1917-1921).............................................. 19 Ukrainians under Poland and the Soviet Union .......................................................... 27 Between the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Operation Barbarossa ........................ 34 The Great Patriotic War..................................................................................38 Hitler’s Lebensraum im Osten and Ukrainian independence..................................... 40 UPA: Fighting Hitler and Stalin ..................................................................................... 49 The war after the War....................................................................................................... 58 Independent Ukraine .....................................................................................64 From Soviet Ukraine to Ukrainian independence........................................................ 65 Building a nation; Orange Revolution, UPA and its consequences.......................... 75 Conclusion ........................................................................................................84 Bibliography.....................................................................................................91 Appendix...........................................................................................................93 The Third Universal of the Ukrainian Central Rada (1918)....................................... 93 The Ten Commandments of OUN-UPA......................................................................... 93 Presidential Elections of 2004 ......................................................................................... 94 5 Glossary OUN – Organizatsia Ukrayinskyh Natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) UPA – Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) UVO – Ukrayinska Viyskova Organizatsia (Ukrainian Military Organization) NKVD – Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennih Del (National Commissariat of Internal Affairs) Einsatzgruppe – Special task force Ostarbeiter – Forced labourers working in Germany during the Second World War UNDO – Ukrayinska Natsionalna Demokratychna Organizatsia (Ukrainian National Democratic Union) Left Bank Ukraine – East Ukrainian regions on the left bank of the river Dnipro Right Bank Ukraine – East Ukrainian regions on the right bank of the river Dnipro West Ukraine – Ukrainian regions that were under Austro-Hungarian rule before the First World War, including its most populous region East Galicia and its capital Lviv East Ukraine – Ukrainian regions that were under Russian rule before the First World War 6 Introduction On 22 November 2004 a crowd gathered in the centre of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Presidential candidate and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had just been pre-announced the winner of the 2004 elections, but it was quite evident that the results had been manipulated on a massive scale. The opposition, led by Viktor Yushchenko, former head of the National Bank of Ukraine, chose not to accept the dubious results of the elections and demanded a regime-change. People from Kyiv were soon followed by Ukrainians from other parts of the country, who were arriving in the capital in large numbers. Many had spontaneously laid down their work and took to the streets. The number of protesters kept growing during the following days to an estimated half a million people three days after the elections. It soon became obvious that the demonstration was turning into a revolution. Like other opposition parties in former Communist countries before it, the Ukrainian opposition chose a name to emphasize the peaceful nature of their rebellion. They called it the Orange Revolution. The Orange Revolution soon attracted the attention of the international media. Under massive national and international pressure the government was forced to give in. The matter was taken to the Supreme Court, which decided that new elections were to be held in December 2004. This time Yushchenko won, but it was not the landslide victory most people had expected. The country remained deeply divided in pro-Western regions west of the river Dnipro, the so-called Right Bank, and pro-Russian Left Bank regions, east of the Dnipro. The new president had the difficult task of showing the Ukrainian people that he was going to be a president for all Ukrainians and keep the country together. The election campaign had had a negative influence on the unity of the young Ukrainian nation. Former Prime Minister Yanukovych specifically focused on emphasizing regional differences within Ukraine to ensure that people would not vote for Yushchenko. Yanukovych tried to portray his opponent as a fanatical pro- Western nationalist who would turn the country over to the United States and treat the ethnic Russian Ukrainians as second-rate citizens. Images of Yushchenko giving the Nazi-salute and portraying the opponent as a Ukrainian clone of the 7 president of the United States (“Bushchenko”) appeared on billboards and in the media, especially in the generally Russophone eastern regions. Through this black public relation campaign Yanukovych tried to show the population what would happen should the former head of the National Bank become Ukraine’s new head of state. These tactics turned out to be quite successful in the eastern regions, where the majority of the people also voted for Yanukovych in the second round. Some East Ukrainian politicians were even talking of separating the Russophone- dominated eastern regions and Crimea from Ukraine to form a new country called New Russia. One of the most striking aspects of the election campaign was the use of the history of Ukrainian nationalism and the fear it was supposed to cause among the ethnic Russian side of the population. Differences between Right Bank, with an ethnic Ukrainian majority, and Left Bank, where most ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians live, were highlighted by bringing up the old subject of Ukrainian nationalism and its partisan movements of the Second World War. In this war the Ukrainian resistance against German occupation was divided into Red partisans, fighting for Stalin and the Soviet Union, and the Ukrainian nationalist partisans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya (UPA). The UPA partisans, a military branch of the ultranationalist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), are seen as heroes in West Ukraine, but as traitors by most people in the eastern regions. It therefore made sense to Yanukovych to link the pro-Western opposition of Yushchenko to West Ukrainian nationalism and its arguable dark past, to warn the Russophone population in the east of the “dangers” of Yushchenko’s plans. Once in power Yushchenko decided it would be a good idea to finally put an end to the debate on UPA and in this way bring the people of west and east closer together. He tried to do this by making use of a special occasion that was coming up early in his presidency: the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in May 2005. The new president and his Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko made an attempt to let Red partisan veterans and veterans of UPA march together in Kyiv, symbolizing the unity of Ukraine. There was no such enthusiasm among 8 the veterans. Even after six decades the feelings of hatred had not vanished and the ex-partisans, all of them at a respectable age, refused to have anything to do with each other. President Yushchenko was forced to find other ways to bring the regions and their populations closer together. It was not a big surprise that the controversy of UPA could not be solved by the shaking of hands at an anniversary. The Second World War had been extremely cruel to Ukraine: millions perished in prisoner of war camps, died of starvation, or were killed in ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Roma were murdered by the Nazi-regime. Old scores from before the war were being settled between 1941 and 1945, particularly between Poles and West Ukrainians. There had been heavy fighting amongst the resistance movements, especially between the Red partisans and the UPA, both officially battling the Nazi invaders. Crimes against humanity were quite common between the two groups of insurgents. This was the main reason why the veterans could not put aside their differences, not even after sixty years. The population of West Ukraine, annexed by the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 23 August 1939, reacted differently from the East Ukrainians when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 under the codename Operation Barbarossa. In West Ukraine the Nazis were welcomed as liberators from the terror-regime of Josef Stalin. The nationalist movements, of which the OUN was the most prominent, collaborated with the Germans in their struggle against the Soviets. In their enthusiasm they misjudged the intentions of