Yevhen STAKHIV: “In the 1940s there was a better attitude to the OUN in the Donbas than in Galicia”

The history of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is a sensitive and painful subject. Some of the people who devoted their lives to fighting for Ukraine’s independence under the motto “God, Freedom, and Ukraine” are still alive. They can recount how 65 years ago they fought both Nazi and NKVD troops in Galicia, Poltava region, and the Donbas.

One of the last of these Mohicans is Yevhen Stakhiv, who turned 90 on Sept. 15. He was the commander of an OUN subunit, and the documentary exhibition “Eastern Ukraine in the OUN and UPA Underground” opened on his birthday in the building of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine in the Donbas. Stakhiv survived only because he miraculously escaped abroad after the war with the Nazis, whereas those who did not were shot by the Nazis or the NKVD.

Time will tell whether exhibits like this will succeed in dispelling the myth that was imposed on Ukraine, according to which the OUN and the UPA are portrayed as a purely western Ukrainian phenomenon. People are slow to change their views, but this is precisely the goal of the exhibit organizers-a youth organization called the Student Brotherhood, and Oleksandr Dobrovolsky, a historian from the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast, who owns the documents (copies) now on display.

Only copies have survived because, as Dobrovolsky says, many documents from the ar­chives of the Donetsk branch of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) were destroyed, some in recent years.

“They have been cleaning out the archives, i.e., burning documents, in Donetsk oblast, especially after the Orange Revolution. When I got into the archives of the Donetsk branch of the SBU in 2007 after having researched them in 2001-2002 (I was denied access when Viktor Yanukovych was the prime minister), the case files had been largely ‘cleansed.’ The staff had burned pictures of OUN members, administrative orders, and OUN orders. The stored criminal cases thus lacked their core-documents. By the way, the documents on the insurgent movement in the Donetsk region were totally falsified,” says Dobrovolsky.

“I saved the documents that are now on display by copying them. Of course, this is not permitted, but people live by the thieves’ code there. Moreover, I purchased documents from our SBU, which at one time could be bought and sold easily. In this way I published five books and was even awarded an honorary diploma for one that was based on documents purchased from the SBU.”

The Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchytsky agrees that today there are few documents on the OUN’s activities in the Donetsk region in 1941-1943. He says that the events that took place in eastern Uk­raine have been a “blank page” in history for a long time, and everyone thought that there were no nationalists there.

“In fact, the OUN was active all over Ukraine. This was the initial plan: proclaim the revival of the Ukrainian state first in Lviv and then in Kyiv, after which mobile groups that had been trained even before the war would set up local governments as the Germans would conquer more of Ukraine. This is how they wanted to form a Ukrainian state, in a bottom-up fashion,” said Kulchytsky.

“Unfortunately, things went haywire, primarily because the very proclamation of the Ukrainian state in Lviv on June 30, 1941, was interpreted by the Germans as a revolt against the Reich. After a while, when they saw that Stepan Bandera and Ya­ro­slav Stetsko were not rescinding it, an order was issued to ex­terminate the Banderites. No­ne­theless, the activity of the mobile groups continued and reached the Donbas.

“Now we have two sources of information: one is the testimonies of OUN members who were active in eastern Ukraine and were captured by the KGB or SMERSH (the Soviet counter-intelligence department). Cases were opened against them, and now we have an abundance of these kinds of documents. The second source is the testimonies of those who survived by escaping abroad and lived to tell about these events, as Stakhiv did,” the historian explained.

Stakhiv’s book of memoirs Kriz tiurmy, pidpillia i kordony. Povist moho zhyttia (Through Prisons, the Underground, and Borders: The Story of My Life) was published in Kyiv in 1995 and, according to Kulchytsky, it is objective and accurate, in particular, in the section that describes the attitudes of local residents to OUN members and the number of Donbas people who were members of the OUN underground.

“It is claimed that they were all zapadentsy [Russian for “western Ukrainians”]. There were five to six people, like me, who in September 1941 were sent from Lviv to Horlivka in the Donetsk region to form a mobile group. But the rest were locals (according to Soviet intelligence, 300 OUN members were active in Mariupil and 120 in Kramatorsk - O. M.),” Stakhiv recalled with tears in his eyes.

“Young people, former Komsomol members who were good organizers, joined our ranks. There were also former Petliurites. No one refused us a place to stay overnight, even though I would say as soon as I entered a house: ‘If they catch me in your home, they will shoot both of us.’ We were especially welcome in the Greek and Tatar villages of the Donbas, even more so than in Lviv oblast. People told us they believed we would conquer Uk­rai­ne. I was in eastern Ukraine for two years – in Horlivka, Kremenchuk, Kramatorske, and Donetsk – and I am very thankful to people for their attitude to us,” said the OUN veteran.

From Kyiv the exhibit will move to Donetsk and Luhansk. On Oct. 14, closer to the anniversary of the founding of the UPA, it will go on display at Donetsk Na­tional University and Lu­hansk Pedagogical University, where it will be viewed by students, lecturers, and visitors – all those who are concerned with the past and who hope that, for the sake of the truth, we will get rid of the slave in ourselves drop by drop.