Stepan Bandera - who is this? "real" biography of Stepan Bandera

So, who is Stepan Bendera? Who is Western Ukraine so proud of and whom does it proclaim the hero of Ukraine? Let's try to essentially figure out what kind of person this is and whether it is possible to evaluate his actions and actions so highly.
Stepan Bendera was born in the village of Ugryniv, now Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, in the family of a Greek Catholic parish priest. As a boy, Stepan joined the Ukrainian scout organization "PLAST", and a little later, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). At the age of 20, Bandera led the most radical "youth" group in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Even then, his hands were stained with the blood of Ukrainians: on his orders, the village blacksmith Mikhail Beletsky, the professor of philology at the Lviv Ukrainian gymnasium Ivan Babiy, the university student Yakov Bachinsky and many others were destroyed. At that time, the OUN established close contacts with Germany, moreover, its headquarters was located in Berlin, on Hauptstrasse 11 under the sign "Union of Ukrainian Elders in Germany." Bender himself was trained in Danzig, at the intelligence school. In 1934, on the orders of Stepan Bendera, an employee of the Soviet consulate Alexei Mailov was killed in Lvov. On June 15, 1934, the Polish Minister of the Interior, General Bronislaw Peratsky, was killed by the people of Stepan Bender. For the murder of Peratsky, Stepan Bandera, Nikolai Lebed and Yaroslav Karpinets were sentenced to death by the Warsaw District Court. The rest, including Roman Shukhevych, to significant prison terms.
In the summer of 1936, Stepan Bendera, along with other members of the Regional Executive of the OUN, appeared before a court in Lvov on charges of directing terrorist activities. The court considered, among other things, the circumstances of the murder of Ivan Babiy and Yakov Bachinsky by members of the OUN. In total, at the Warsaw and Lvov trials, Stepan Bendera was sentenced seven times to life imprisonment. In September 1939, when Germany occupied Poland, Stepan Bendera was released and began to actively cooperate with the Abwehr, German military intelligence. Irrefutable evidence of Stepan Bendera's service to the Nazis is the transcript of the interrogation of the head of the Abwehr department of the Berlin district, Colonel Erwin Stolz (May 29, 1945) .
"Extract from archival documents"
“... after the end of the war with Poland, Germany was intensively preparing for a war against the Soviet Union, and therefore, measures are being taken along the line of the Abwehr to intensify subversive activities. For these purposes, a prominent Ukrainian nationalist Bendera Stepan was recruited, who during the war was released from prison, where he was imprisoned by the Polish authorities for participating in a terrorist act against the leaders of the Polish government. The last one in touch was with me.”
Three months before the attack on the USSR, Stepan Bender created a Ukrainian legion from members of the OUN, which would later become part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment and be called Nachtigal, in Ukrainian “nightingale”. The regiment carried out special instructions from the German government to conduct sabotage operations in the rear of the USSR troops. However, not only Stepan Bandera communicated with the Nazis, but also persons authorized by him. For example, in the archives of the special services, documents have been preserved that the Bandera people themselves offered their services to the Nazis. In the protocol of interrogation of an Abwehr officer, Lazarek Yu.D. it is said that he was a witness and participant in the negotiations between Abwehr representative Aichern and Bendery's assistant Nikolai Lebed.
“Lebed said that the Bendera would provide the necessary personnel for schools of saboteurs, they would also be able to agree to the use of the entire underground of Galicia and Volhynia for sabotage and reconnaissance purposes on the territory of the USSR.”
To prepare the rebellion on the territory of the USSR, as well as to conduct intelligence activities, Stepan Bendera received two and a half million marks from Nazi Germany. According to the Soviet counterintelligence, the rebellion was planned for the spring of 1941. Why in the spring? After all, the leadership of the OUN should have understood that open action would inevitably end in complete defeat and physical destruction of the entire organization. The answer comes by itself if we remember that the original date of the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR was May 1941. However, Hitler was forced to transfer part of the troops to the Balkans in order to take control of Yugoslavia. Interestingly, at the same time, the OUN ordered all OUN members who served in the Yugoslav army or police to go over to the side of the Croatian Nazis.
In April 1941, the OUN convened the Great Gathering of Ukrainian nationalists in Krakow, where Stepan Bendera was elected head of the OUN, and Yaroslav Stetsko as his deputy. In connection with the receipt of new instructions for the underground, the activities of the OUN groups on the territory of Ukraine became even more active. Only in April, 38 Soviet party workers died at their hands, dozens of sabotage were carried out in transport, industrial and agricultural enterprises.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Germans had high hopes for the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, but Stepan Bandera also allowed himself liberties. He could not wait to feel like the head of an independent Ukrainian state, and he, abusing the trust of his masters from Nazi Germany, proclaimed the “independence” of the Ukrainian state. But Hitler had his own plans, he was interested in free living space, i.e. territories and cheap labor force of Ukraine. The trick with the establishment of statehood was needed in order to show the population its importance. On June 30, 1941, Stepan Bender in Lvov announced the "revival" of the Ukrainian state. Residents of the city reacted sluggishly to this message. According to the words of the Lvov priest, doctor of theology, father G. Kotelnik, about a hundred people from the intelligentsia and the clergy were driven to this solemn gathering. The inhabitants of the city themselves did not dare to take to the streets and support the proclamation of the Ukrainian state.
The Germans, as mentioned above, had their own selfish interest in Ukraine, and there was no question of any revival and granting it the status of a state even under the patronage of Nazi Germany. Giving power to the territory that was seized by regular German military formations to Ukrainian nationalists just because they also took part in the hostilities, but mostly did the dirty work of punishing civilians and policemen, would be ridiculous on the part of Germany. Although Bender meekly served the Nazis. This is evidenced by the main text of the Act of "Revival of the Ukrainian State" of June 30, 1941.
“The newly reborn Ukrainian State will work closely with the National Socialist Greater Germany, which, under the leadership of its Leader Adolf Hitler, creates a new order in Europe and the world and helps the Ukrainian people free themselves from Moscow occupation. The Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army, which is being created on Ukrainian soil, will continue to fight together with the ALLIED GERMAN ARMY against the Moscow occupation for the Sovereign Collective Ukrainian State and a new order throughout the world.
Among Ukrainian nationalists and many officials who are at the head of modern Ukraine, the Act of June 30, 1941 is considered the day of independence of Ukraine, and Stepan Bendera, Roman Shukhevych and Yaroslav Stetsko are Heroes of Ukraine. But what kind of heroes are these and why are their methods better than Hitler's? Nothing. For example, after the proclamation of the Act of Independence, supporters of Stepan Bender staged pogroms in Lvov. Even before the war, Ukrainian Nazis made “black lists”, as a result, 7 thousand people were killed in the city in 6 days. Here is what Saul Friedman wrote about the massacre organized by Bandera in Lvov in the book “Pogromist” published in New York.
“During the first three days of July 1941, the Nachtigal battalion killed seven thousand Jews in the vicinity of Lvov. Jews - professors, lawyers, doctors - were forced to lick all the stairs of four-story buildings before execution and carry garbage in their mouths from one building to another. Then, forced to pass through the line of warriors with yellow-black armbands, they were stabbed with bayonets.
In early July 1941, Stepan Bender, together with Yaroslav Stetsko and his associates, were sent to Berlin at the disposal of Abwehr - 2 to Colonel Erwin Stolze. There, the leadership of Nazi Germany demanded to abandon the Act of "Revival of the Ukrainian State" of June 30, 1941, to which Bendera agreed and called on "the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to smash Moscow and Bolshevism."
During their stay in Berlin, numerous meetings began with representatives of various departments, at which the Benderites insistently assured that without their help the German army could not defeat Muscovy. A numerous stream of messages, explanations, dispatches, "declarations" and "memorandums" went to Hitler, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and other Fuhrers of Nazi Germany, in which they either justified themselves or asked for assistance and support. Stepan Bendera was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942, he also succeeded in replacing its commander Dmitry Klyachkivsky with his protege Roman Shukhevych
.Yes, it must be admitted that S. Bandera and a number of OUN members spent some time actually under conditional arrest in the Sachsenhausen camp, and before that he lived at the dacha of the Abwehr intelligence service. The Germans did this with far-reaching goals, intending to use S. Bender further in illegal work in Ukraine. Because he tried to create an image of the enemy of Germany. But most of all they feared that for the massacre organized in Lvov, they would simply destroy him. The fact that S. Bandera was kept in a German camp by Ukrainian nationalists is now trying to pass off as the massacre of the Nazis over him, as a fighter against the invaders of Ukraine. But it's not. The Bendera people freely moved around the camp, left it, received food and money. S. Bendera himself attended the school of OUN agents and sabotage personnel, located not far from the camp. The instructor at this school was a recent officer of the Nachtigel special battalion, Yuri Lopatinsky, through whom S. Bendera communicated with the OUN - UPA, operating on the territory of Ukraine.
In 1944, Soviet troops cleared Western Ukraine of the Nazis. Fearing punishment, many members of the OUN-UPA fled with the German troops, moreover, the hatred of local residents for the OUN-UPA in Volhynia and Galicia was so high that they themselves extradited them or killed them. Stepan Bandera, being released from the camp, joined the work as part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow and began to train OUN-UPA sabotage detachments. Irrefutable proof of this is the testimony of a former Gestapo officer, Lieutenant Siegfried Müller, given by him during the investigation on September 19, 1945.
“On December 27, 1944, I prepared a group of saboteurs to transfer it to the rear of the Red Army with special assignments. Stepan Bandera, in my presence, personally instructed these agents and transmitted through them to the UPA headquarters an order to intensify subversive work in the rear of the Red Army and establish regular radio communications with the Abwehrkommando-202.
When the war approached Berlin, Bendera was instructed to form detachments from the remnants of the Ukrainian Nazis and defend Berlin. He created Bender's detachments, but he himself escaped. After the end of the war, he lived in Munich, collaborated with the British special services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the human wire of the entire OUN organization. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bendera was killed in the entrance of his house. Just retribution took place.
During the Great Patriotic War, hundreds of thousands of people of different nationalities were tortured and killed by the hands of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The world knows and remembers the monstrous execution by the Germans of several thousand Jews in Khatyn. The fact itself is undeniable, but I would like to clarify one very important point. Who was the direct perpetrator? There is a version that the same Ukrainian nationalists, associates of Stepan Bendery. The Nazis did not like to do the dirty work themselves, they often shifted it to their lackeys. After that, I would like to ask a question to all sane Ukrainians, how can such a person be recognized as a hero of the Ukrainian people? It seems to me blasphemy to call heroes those who fought for their own personal gain, who sold themselves to all possible occupiers, outraged their people, their honor and valor.
The Ukrainian people are large, they have a long-suffering heart, and they puff and push them around, both strangers and their own corrupt and shameless invader leaders. Ukraine suffers from this, that it is sold and succumbs to other people's tricks. A lot of blood and tears are shed from this. It's time to learn to think, analyze and choose the right choice.

Stepan Andreyevich Bandera - the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism - is an extraordinary person. There is no end to the debate as to who he should be considered - a defender of the independence of Ukraine or an accomplice of fascism.

Bandera Stepan biography

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugriniv, Kalush district (now Ivano-Frankivsk region) in the family of a Greek Catholic priest. After the civil war, this part of Ukraine became part of Poland. From a young age, Stepan Bandera was attracted by political activities. In 1922 he joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he became a student of the agronomic faculty of the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School (however, he failed to finish it).

After a fairly short time, having entered the organization of Ukrainian nationalists (OUN), Bandera headed the most radical youth group. The goal of the OUN was to create an independent Ukrainian state in the eastern lands of Poland.

Then Bandera's career was on the rise. In 1933, having become the plenipotentiary representative of the OUN in Galicia and Bukovina, he actively joined the struggle against the Polish authorities. Bandera took an active part in the actions of retribution and the murders of opponents. For example, he was one of the organizers of the murder of the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronisław Peracki.

All the organizers of this crime were arrested by the Polish police in the summer of 1936. The leaders of the conspiracy (including Bandera) were sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.

After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bandera left the prison walls and soon began to actively cooperate with the German military intelligence Abwehr. And in April 1941, Stepan Bandera was elected head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Cooperation with the Nazis continued. Shortly before Germany attacked the USSR, Bandera created a Ukrainian legion from members of the OUN. A little later, this legion, called Nachtigal, became part of the Brandenburg-800 regiment. 2.5 million marks received by Bandera from the Nazis were intended for subversive activities and intelligence operations on the territory of the Soviet Union.

In the summer of 1941, after the arrival of the Nazis, Bandera called on "the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to smash Moscow and Bolshevism." At the end of June of the forty-first year, Nachtigall, together with the Nazis, entered Lvov. On the same day, the restoration of the great Ukrainian state was proclaimed. Bandera ignored the opinion of the German command on this matter. The Act on the revival of the Ukrainian state was read out, and an order was issued on the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the creation of a national government.

The Nazis in response to this "arbitrariness" immediately took action. Bandera was arrested, and 15 leaders of Ukrainian nationalists were shot. The Nachtigall Legion (in whose ranks fermentation began after the repressions) was recalled from the front. Then he was engaged in the performance of police functions in the occupied territories. Bandera looked at the white light through the prison bars for a year and a half, and then another punishment followed - he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, he, along with other Ukrainian nationalists, was kept here in privileged conditions. Bandera not only could meet with each other, but also receive food and money from their relatives. More than once they left the camp. The purpose of their "walks" were contacts with the "secret" OUN. The nationalists also visited the Friedental castle, where the school of OUN agents and saboteurs was located.

One of the main initiators

It was Bandera who was one of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (October 14, 1942), the purpose of which was proclaimed the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. An agreement was reached between representatives of the German authorities and the OUN that the UPA would protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans and provide full support to the German occupying forces.

And what was promised to Bandera in return? The supply of ammunition and weapons to UPA units and even the opportunity to create a Ukrainian state in the event of the victory of the Nazis over the USSR, however, under the protectorate of Germany. The soldiers of the rebel army took part in the punitive operations of the Nazis. Until the end of hostilities, Bandera collaborated with the Abwehr in terms of training sabotage groups.

The war is over, but...

Bandera continued his activities in the OUN (its centralized administration was in West Germany). In 1947 he became its leader. In 1953 and 1955 he was re-elected to this position. Stepan Bandera led the terrorist activities of the OUN and UPA in the Soviet Union. Later, Ukrainian nationalists were actively used by the secret services of Western countries in the fight against the USSR.

In the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, who had been taken out of East Germany. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

Time will put everything in its place

In 1992, after the 50th anniversary of the UPA was celebrated, attempts began to be made in Ukraine to give its members the status of war veterans. And then, in general, the OUN was relieved of responsibility for cooperation with Nazi Germany and the recognition of the UPA as a national liberation movement that defended the "true" independence of Ukraine.

In January 2010, Stepan Bandera was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine (posthumously). The decree on this was signed by the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, and his second decree recognized the members of the UPA as fighters for the independence of Ukraine. Monuments were erected to Stepan Bandera in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk regions. In many cities and villages of Western Ukraine, streets bear his name.

Many veterans of the Great Patriotic War do not agree with such a policy of the Ukrainian authorities. They accuse Bandera of collaborating with the Nazis. However, part of Ukrainian society (who live mainly in the west of the country) considers Bandera a national hero. Well, time, as they say, will put everything in its place.

Bandera, Stepan Andreevich(1909-1959) - leader of the Ukrainian national liberation movement in the first half and middle of the 20th century.

Born January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary in Galicia (modern Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father received a theological education at Lviv University and served as a priest in the Greek Catholic Church. According to the memoirs of Stepan Bandera himself, an atmosphere of national patriotism and the revival of Ukrainian culture reigned in their house. Representatives of the intelligentsia, Ukrainian business circles, and public figures often gathered at my father's. In 1918–1920 Andriy Bandera was a member of the Rada of the West Ukrainian People's Republic.

In 1919 Stepan Bandera entered the gymnasium in the town of Stry not far from Lvov. In 1920, Poland occupied Western Ukraine, and the training took place under the supervision of the Polish authorities.

In 1921, Stepan's mother, Miroslava Bandera, died of tuberculosis.

In 1922, Bandera became a member of the Union of Nationalist Youth of Ukraine, and in 1928 he entered the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School with a degree in agronomy.

The situation in western Ukraine was aggravated by repression and terror by the Polish authorities, caused by the disobedience of the Ukrainian population of Galicia and other regions. Thousands of Ukrainians were thrown into prisons and a concentration camp in the Kartuz region (the village of Bereza). In the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded by Yevgeny Konovalts back in 1920, Stepan Bandera, who was deeply indignant at the actions of pan Poland, could not fail to notice, and since 1929 he has been leading the radical wing of the OUN youth organization. In the early 1930s, Bandera became deputy head of the regional leadership of the OUN. Attacks on mail trains, expropriations and robberies of post offices and banks, murders of political opponents and enemies of the national movement of Ukraine are associated with his name.

Stepan Bandera did not manage to defend his thesis at Lviv University - in 1934 for organizing, preparing, assassinating and liquidating the Minister of the Interior of Poland Bronislaw Peratsky, he, along with other organizers of the terrorist attack, was sentenced to capital punishment in 1936 at the Warsaw trial. However, the death penalty is subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.

In 1938, the leader of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, died at the hands of the Soviet intelligence officer, the future Minister of the Ministry of State Security Pavel Sudoplatov. Colonel Andriy Melnyk, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian national movement, was elected his successor in the OUN at a congress in Rome in August 1939.

Meanwhile, Bandera is in prison until the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 13, 1939, thanks to the retreat of the Polish army and the flight of the prison guards, he is released and sent first to Lvov, which By that time it had already been occupied by Soviet troops, and then, illegally crossing the Soviet-German border, to Krakow, Vienna and Rome to coordinate further plans for the OUN. But during the negotiations between Bandera and Melnik, serious disagreements arose.

At the same time, in Volhynia and Galicia, there were general arrests of supporters of Stepan Bendery. Suspicions of betrayal fall on Melnik and his people. Bandera returns to Krakow, and in February 1940, his supporters at a conference accuse Melnyk and his faction of complicity with Nazi Germany, which, in reality, was in no way going to recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine. The decisions of the Rome Conference of 1939 are annulled, and Stepan Bandera is proclaimed the leader of the OUN. Thus, there was a split into Bandera and Melnikovites. Soon the confrontation between the factions grew into a fierce armed struggle between the two factions.

Bandera forms armed groups from his supporters and on June 30, 1941, at a rally of many thousands in Lvov, he proclaims an act of independence for Ukraine. Bandera's closest associate, Yaroslav Stetsko, becomes the head of the government of the newly created national Ukrainian cabinet of ministers.

Following this, in early July, in the zone of Soviet occupation, the NKVD shot Stepan's father Andrei Bandera. Almost all of Bandera's close relatives were transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

However, the reaction from the fascist authorities followed immediately - already in early July, Bandera and Stetsko were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Berlin, where they were asked to publicly abandon the ideas of a national Ukrainian state and annul the act of independence of Ukraine of June 30.

In the autumn of 1941, the Melnikovites also tried to proclaim Ukraine independent, but they were followed by the same fate as the Banderaites. Most of their leaders were shot by the Gestapo in early 1942.

The atrocities of the fascist invaders on the territory of Ukraine led to the fact that more and more people went to partisan detachments to fight the enemy. In the autumn of 1942, Bandera called for the unification of the disparate armed detachments of the Melnikovites and other partisan associations of Ukraine under the command of Roman Shukhevych, the former head of the OUN battalion "Nakhtigal". On the basis of the OUN, a new paramilitary organization is being formed - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The national composition of the UPA was quite diverse (the rebels were joined by representatives of the Transcaucasian peoples, Kazakhs, Tatars, etc., who ended up in the territories of Ukraine occupied by the Germans), and the number of the UPA reached, according to various estimates, up to 100 thousand people. A fierce armed struggle took place between the UPA and the fascist invaders, red partisans and units of the Polish Craiova Army in Galicia, Volhynia, Kholmshchyna, Polissya.

After the expulsion of the German invaders in 1944 from the territory of Ukraine by Soviet troops, the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists entered a new phase - the war against the Soviet Army, which lasted until the mid-1950s. 1946–1948 were especially fierce, when, according to information from various sources, over the years there were more than four thousand bloody battles between the Ukrainian rebels and the Soviet Army on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.

All this time, from the autumn of 1941 to the middle of the second half of 1944, Stepan Bandera was in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen. At the end of 1944, the fascist leadership changed its policy towards Ukrainian nationalists and released Bandera and some members of the OUN from prison. In 1945 and until the end of the war, Bandera collaborated with the intelligence department of the Abwehr in the preparation of OUN sabotage groups.

Stepan Bandera continued his activities in the OUN, whose centralized administration after the end of the Great Patriotic War was located on the territory of West Germany. In 1947, at a regular meeting of the OUN, Bandera was appointed head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and was re-elected to this position twice in 1953 and 1955.

In the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, who had been taken out of Soviet-occupied East Germany. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Andreyevich Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

After the collapse of the USSR, for modern Ukrainian nationalists, the name of Stepan Bandera became a symbol of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine against Polish oppression, fascist Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism. In 2005, the government of Ukraine declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv. In 2005, the government of Ukraine declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv, but in January 2011 the court invalidated the decree of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko dated January 20, 2010 on awarding S. Bandera the title "Hero of Ukraine".

Name: Stepan Bandera

Age: 50 years

Place of Birth: Stary Ugrinov village, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Ukraine

Place of death: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Activity: politician, ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism

Family status: He was married to Yaroslav Oparovskaya

Stepan Bandera - biography

Stepan Bandera is a politician of Ukraine who went down in history as a theorist and ideologist of nationalism in Ukraine.

Childhood, the Bandera family

Despite the fact that many facts of his biography are unknown and shrouded in some mystery, but most of the fate of this man is known, since he himself wrote his autobiography. It is known from it that Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909. His homeland was the village of Stary Ugrinov, which is located in the kingdom of Galicia.

The father of the future politician was a clergyman. The family was large: eight children. In this family, Stepan was born the second child. But this large family did not have its own home, so they were forced to live in a house that made it possible for the position of the father. The house where they lived for a long time belonged to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Parents have always tried to instill patriotism in their children, to instill in them love for their homeland. Religion was accepted in the family. Stepan has always been an obedient boy who loved and respected his parents. Even in his early years he always prayed. This always happened in the morning and in the evening, and every year these prayers became longer and longer.

Already in childhood, Stepan Bandera wanted to fight and defend his homeland. He always wanted Ukraine to be free, so already in his childhood he tried to accustom himself not to feel pain. So, he conducted tests on himself in order to temper himself and his body. Among such tests were not only dousing with cold and ice water, but also pricking with needles, as well as beating with heavy metal chains. Because of this, he soon developed rheumatism of the joints, the pains of which tormented him all his life.

Stepan Bandera - Education

The greatest influence on Stepan in his childhood years was exerted by the books that were in their house, as well as those prominent politicians of that time who visited this library. Among them were Yaroslav Veselovsky, and Pavel Glodzinsky, and others.

But at first the child did not go to school, but received primary education at home. Some sciences were taught by Ukrainian teachers who came to their homes, and some subjects were explained by Father Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera himself. But in 1919, when the First World War was already underway, and the boy's father participated in the liberation movement, the child was sent to a gymnasium. This educational institution was located in the city of Stryi. He spent eight years there.

Even though he was poor compared to other high school students, he was very active and went in for sports. In addition, he was fond of music, and even sang in the choir. Stepan Bandera tried to participate in all events that were held for young people.

After graduating from the gymnasium, he moved to Lviv, entering the Polytechnic Institute, choosing the Faculty of Agronomy. At the same time, he begins to develop rapidly and his secret activities in an underground organization.

Stepan Bandera's career

A new page in the biography of Stepan Andreevich Bander began at the gymnasium, where he was not only fond of sports and music, led circles and was responsible for the economic part, but at the same time secretly became a member of the military organization of Ukraine.

In Lviv, he is not only already a member of this organization, but also becomes a correspondent for a satire magazine. In 1932, an active participant Stepan Bandera begins to move up the career ladder in a secret organization and takes the post of deputy regional conductor, and a year later he acts as the regional conductor himself.

During this time, Stepan Bandera was arrested five times for his underground activities, but each time he was released. In 1932, he organized a protest against the execution of militants of his secret organization. After that, in 1933, he was instructed to lead the operation to eliminate the consul of the USSR, who was in Lvov. In the same year, he used schoolchildren for his protest action.

But he also had a lot of murders related to politics on his conscience. He organized terrorist acts in which many people who had something to do with politics, as well as their families, died. For all the crimes that he had already committed, in July 1936 he was arrested. But even in prison, he was able to organize a hunger strike that lasted 16 days and which forced the government to make concessions to him.

After the German attack on Poland, Stepan Bandera is released. But already in 1941 he was arrested by the German authorities. First he was in prison, and then spent a year and a half in a concentration camp, where he was under constant surveillance. But still he did not agree to cooperate in Germany. After that, he lived in this country, although he closely followed all the events that took place in Ukraine. In 1945, he takes over the leadership of the underground society OUN.

Stepan Bandera was killed in October 1959 in Munich, where he then lived. His killer was a KGB agent Stashevsky.

Stepan Bandera - biography of personal life

He met his wife Yaroslava Vasilievna in Lvov when he studied at the Polytechnic Institute. This is a happy page in the biography of the Ukrainian nationalist.

Dmitry Galkovsky

It so happened that Stepan Bandera became a key figure in the political history of Ukraine. This is the most mentioned figure in modern Ukrainian history. In the split Ukrainian society, there are two versions of his biography.

For the East (as well as for the Russian Federation), Bandera is the head of Ukrainian nationalists, a terrorist and a murderer who supports the occupation regime in the fascist Reichskommissariat Ukraine, who took refuge in the West after the war, and tried to conduct American espionage and terrorist-sabotage activities on the territory of the USSR. For which he was eliminated in 1959.

For the Lviv West, Bandera is again the head of Ukrainian nationalists, a fiery fighter for independence - first with the Polish oppressors, then with the German invaders and finally with the Soviet (or, let's call a spade a spade, Russian) occupiers. For which these invaders vilely and killed.

In my opinion, both versions are far from the truth. Although both myths themselves have a right to exist, just as the peoples who gave birth to them have a similar right to exist.

Let's start with the fact that Bandera was never the head of an organization of Ukrainian nationalists. The head of the OUN (and before its establishment - UVO: Ukrainian Military Organization) was Yevgeny Konovalets, an ensign of the Austro-Hungarian army who went through the World War. After his assassination in 1938, the OUN was headed by Andrei Melnik, also an Austrian with experience in the First World War and then the Civil War. These people were almost 20 years older than Bandera; Bandera himself looked like a Komsomol activist against their background. He really was such an activist.

Andrey Melnik

The maximum position of Bandera in the OUN is the head of the Krakow organization, that is, entry not even into the second, but into the third echelon of management. And he did not stay long in this position.

There is no Bandera among the organs of independent Ukraine during the Nazi occupation.

On October 5, 1941, the Ukrainian National Council was established in Kyiv on the initiative of Melnyk and under the leadership of the Kyiv professor Mykola Velichkovsky. There was no place for Bandera in this Ukrainian proto-government.

A similar body was created in the district of Galicia - the Ukrainian part of the Polish governor-general. It was headed by Vladimir Kubiyovych, Associate Professor at the University of Krakow. Bandera was not there either.

Bandera was not a party ideologist, like the Bolshevik Bukharin, or at least a "golden pen", like the Bolshevik and Bandera's countryman Karl Radek.

On the contrary, the cultural level of Bandera is quite low. He went to school only at the age of 10, then he tried to study as an agronomist, but something did not work out.

Polish pioneers, that is, scouts. Far right - Bandera.

Maybe this is some kind of fiery chegevara, who left behind a lot of revolutionary "deeds"? Also no. While studying at school, he really liked secretary Komsomol work - meetings, lightning, reading scout literature. As a student, he was arrested several times, mostly for smuggling nationalist literature.

On the right is Bandera with scout badges. A well-recognized type of school "excellent student". It is always said that in childhood, for authority, Stepan Andreevich strangled cats in front of enthusiastic classmates. Oh, the brave stranglers do not remember this. They are told by hard-nosed brats who have suffered slaps on the back of the head from school hooligans.

Then he was arrested on someone else's case and hanged a life sentence. In June 1934, the Ukrainian nationalist Hryhoriy Matseyko assassinates the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronisław Poretsky. The killer manages to escape abroad, and the enraged Polish government hangs the organization of the murder on the OUN activists who turned up. 12 people are appointed responsible, including one arrested the day before the murder of Bandera (in another trifling case - smuggling of Ukrainian literature across the Czechoslovak border). In the end, Terpila “confesses” to everything, and two more murders are immediately blamed on him - a professor and a student of Lviv University, which occurred ONE AND A HALF YEAR AFTER HIS ARREST. Terpila agrees with this accusation, and receives a life sentence.

That's the whole "terrorist activity" of Bandera until 1939 - he transported books, wrote articles in the regional press, organized terrible boycotts: do not buy Polish vodka and cigarettes in local shops. And he signed up for three murders that he did not commit, and COULD NOT commit.

Where did Bandera come from, and why did his name become so popular?

At the time of the Stalin-Hitler partition of Poland, Bandera was imprisoned in the Brest Fortress and, consequently, fell into the Soviet zone of occupation. It is believed that he left the prison during the shift change, a few days before the arrival of Soviet troops. That's quite possible. But then ... further it is stated that Bandera manages to hide for some time, move to the Soviet Lvov, hold meetings with party comrades, and then safely cross the German-Soviet border. Along which combat divisions are stationed along the entire front, and special groups of the NKVD are operating in the rear. Moreover, this is also possible for his brother, who was previously held in a Polish concentration camp in Beryoza-Kartuzskaya. Although it is believed that this camp did not have a shift change at all, and Soviet troops occupied it.

It is easy to see that the miraculous liberation and crossing of the Bander brothers across the border repeats like two peas the equally miraculous escape from the camp and crossing the border of the Solonevich brothers. True, then, while still in exile, his wife joined Solonevich. You will laugh, but in a few months the single Stepan Bandera will marry a girl who, in 1939, was also imprisoned in Lvov and also miraculously escaped. It should also be noted that both Solonevich and Bandera were imprisoned just for an unsuccessful border crossing. They couldn't cross the border from home. And from prison - it turned out. It turned out to be much easier.

On the blue eye

In April 1940, Bandera, for some reason, like Lenin in 1917, not in need of money, travels to Italy, where he meets with the head of the OUN, Melnik. Again, like Lenin, Bandera stuns the venerable head of the Ukrainian nationalists with the “April theses”: there is nothing to focus on Germany, it is necessary to create an armed underground in the territory occupied by the Wehrmacht and wait for the X-hour to raise an all-Ukrainian uprising. Let me remind you that this was said in a situation where there was no Ukrainian population at all in the occupation zone of Germany. Only individual emigrants in the amount of several thousand people. The situation was so delusional that Melnik ordered Yaroslav Baranovsky, head of the OUN counterintelligence, to take up the biography of the talented agronomist. To which Bandera said that Baranovsky was a proven Polish spy and he should be killed (and indeed, in 1943 he was killed by Bandera). Baranovsky (by the way, a doctor of law from the University of Prague) could well work for Polish intelligence. Why not? The question is how Bandera could know about this and where did he get the evidence of such an accusation.

In the official history of the OUN, it is generally accepted that the organization since that time, like the RSDLP, has split into the OUN (m) and OUN (b) (Menshevik-Melnikov and Bolshevik-Bandera). But this analogy is wrong. The OUN was before and remained after that under the leadership of Melnyk. And Bandera created a noisy and incomprehensibly financed organization that appropriated a different name for itself and included only people from one region of Ukraine.

Until June 22, 1941, Bandera led a splitting campaign against the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and, despite Melnik's warnings, sent underground groups to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. Naturally, the groups were immediately identified and thrown into the prisons of the NKVD, but (lo and behold!) after June 22, some of Bandera's comrades-in-arms "fled" from Stalin's prisons and crossed the front line. A striking example is Dmitry Klyachkivsky. In September 1940, he was arrested by the NKVD as a German spy, but in July 1941 he "escaped" from Stalin's prison and then (attention!) headed the security service of the military organization OUN (b) - "Ukrainian Insurgent Army".

Now what happened after June 22nd. From the beginning of 1941, the Germans formed the Nachtigal special battalion from Ukrainians who had experience of serving in the Polish army. It was not a political, but a purely military (military sabotage) unit, designed to solve tactical tasks (mining behind enemy lines, destroying communications equipment, etc.). The staffing of "Nachtigal" by Bandera was carried out without permission, they simply signed up as Ukrainian volunteers. The Melnikovites had real support at the German top then, they formed several combat units on the Slovak border.

On June 29-30, Nachtigal ended up in Lvov, at the same time Bandera emissaries arrived there. They began to exterminate the Jews (deliberately pointless, in order to completely discredit the Germans in front of the United States - for example, mathematics professors from Lviv University) and proclaimed the creation of an independent Ukrainian republic, as well as the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian armed forces (in order to seize the initiative from the Germans and present them with a fait accompli ). The Germans were stunned by such impudence, "Nachtigal" was taken out of Lvov (it's not at all clear how he got there) and soon disbanded. Already in early July, Bandera and his self-appointed government were arrested by the Germans. The Ukrainian state, as agreed with the venerable Melnyk, was proclaimed in Kyiv three months later.

The problem was that in other settlements Bandera acted with the same agility and they managed to form cells of activists on the wave of anti-Stalinist enthusiasm of the population. The Germans considered this and soon Bandera was released. But about positive work (in the understanding of the Germans), Bandera did not have a trace. Relying on armed groups of activists, he began the physical destruction of the Melnikovites.

Ukraine is great, but there is nowhere to retreat - on the back of Bandera.

On August 30, two members of the leadership of the Melnikov OUN were shot dead in Zhytomyr, then several dozen more people were killed in different cities, and in total, the Banderaites pronounced about 600 death sentences against the Melnikovites. Massive oppression of the Polish population also began. Already at this stage, the cause of creating an independent Ukraine under the auspices of Germany was hopelessly thwarted. Soon the Germans again imprisoned Bandera and sent him to a concentration camp, where his two brothers ended up (later killed by the camp administration from the Poles).

At the same time, it cannot be said that Bandera was guided by ... well, for example, Stalin, and Melnik - Hitler. In principle, Melnik had no disagreements with Bandera, it was about tactics and common sense. Melnyk wanted to fortify himself with the help of the Germans, and if they lost, he would jump on the overhead and recreate an independent Ukrainian state. Therefore, in 1944, the Germans put him in prison.

Here I will allow myself a small digression.

As I already had the honor to explain in the Belarusian cycle, the history of partisan wars is the most deceitful area of ​​historiography (after church history). You can safely forget what you have been told for 70 years about Kovpak and Ponomarenko. The real church history and the real history of the partisan movement (if it exists) with the so-called. the townsfolk should be absolute fiction.

It is believed that the partisan movement during the war years was carried out by a certain "Central partisan headquarters at the headquarters of the supreme command" under the leadership of the party bureaucrat and electrical engineer Ponomarenko. It was partly true, but the scheme did not work. Because in order to conduct a guerrilla war, you need to have the appropriate personnel and specialist leaders. They did not exist in the USSR, and you cannot master such a thing by trial and error. There is too much trial and error, and feedback is delayed by months or none at all.

Apparently, the current sector of sabotage and partisan work (and it, of course, was) was supervised by a group of foreign specialists, and the partisan movement itself unfolded against the backdrop of complex forms of cooperation with local oppositionists. So the backbone of the partisan group of Dmitry Medvedev consisted of Spanish saboteurs trained by the British, dressed in the form of Melnikovites. In turn, the Melnikovites used the clothes of the Soviet army, etc.

Moreover, all this magnificence was covered by the German leadership of Ukraine.

I think everyone has heard about the fascist fanatic Gauleitor of Ukraine Koch, he was killed there by partisans or hanged in Nuremberg. So no.

Rosenberg in Kyiv. Far right - Erich Koch.

After the war, Erich Koch safely moved to the British zone of occupation and lived there until the summer of 1949. Although it seems that the chela had to search long and hard, and it was quite easy to do this - because of the pathologically short stature. Most likely, the British were well informed about his whereabouts, but after advertising they were forced to arrest him. However, they themselves did not judge him, but handed over the chief executioner of the USSR. What about the USSR? But nothing - he handed over the Gauleiter ... to Poland. It is very strange, but the NDP must have been pulled off to the fullest. No, at first his death sentence was suspended for 10 years, and then completely canceled. There was no pomp, at the trial Koch for some reason said that he loved the USSR, and did a lot of useful things. He lived in Poland until the age of 90, died in 1986, was actually kept under house arrest. This, I repeat, is one of the main fanatics even after the mass executions of the leaders of the Third Reich.

What, by the way, were the names of Soviet agitators of Ukrainian collaborators during the war? It turns out for the most part it doesn't. "Police". After the war, three names appeared: "Melnikovtsy", "Bandera" and "Bulbovtsy". Bulbovtsy - named "Taras Bulba", in the world - Taras Borovets, the head of the third group of Ukrainian nationalists, united in the "Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army". (Borovets was eventually sent to a German camp as well, while the Bandera people seized his wife and killed him after monstrous torture.)

"Taras Bulba" in the form of a civilized officer.

"Taras Bulba" in the image of the commander of the Russian partisan detachment (pay attention to the plywood birches).

And this is a home view, "in slippers." As far as I understand, the “bulbovtsy” were the real field commanders of the occupied Ukraine.

Gradually, in the 60-70s, the “Melnikovites” and “Bulbovites” were forgotten, in the Soviet propaganda literature, the name Bandera was firmly established behind all the independentists. Meanwhile, Bandera himself from September 1941 to September 1944 was in a concentration camp and could not lead operations and generally take part in the course of affairs. (For comparison, Melnik was imprisoned from February to September 1944, Bulba - from December 1943 to September 1944). In the absence of Bandera, the OUN (b) was led by Nikolai Lebed, who, unlike Melnik or Bulba, was IN ILLEGAL STATION, and the Germans put a reward on his head. The main activity of the OUN (b), - rather insignificant - was the destruction of the people of Melnik and Bulba, as well as terror against the Polish population (Volyn massacre of 1943).

Emigrant affairs.

After the war, Bandera's emigre activity naturally again came down to the surrender of the MGB to agents abandoned by the Americans, in addition, the OUN (b) itself split into two parts. The breakaway part was headed by Lev Rebet, who was soon killed by the Staro-Banderites. The answer followed two years later. Despite the fact that Bandera was highly encrypted (even his children did not know that he was Bandera, and thought that their dad was an ordinary Bandera member named Poppel), the Rebetovites tracked him down and killed him.

As is customary in such cases among Ukrainians, two years later another independent nationalist appeared on the horizon - Stashinsky, and stated that he personally killed both Rebet and Bandera ... on the instructions of the KGB. Further, with all the stops up to mysterious disappearances, plastic surgeries, polonium poisoning, etc. Recently, we all saw the Ukrainian performance on the example of Litvinenko-Lugovoy - also with the miraculous finding of lost parents, articles in the yellow press and Polish zilch at the end.

On vacation in Switzerland. The scout net is sorely lacking.

As for the OUN(m), led by Melnyk, it finally merged with, so to speak, the indigenous Ukrainian national movement - the Petliurist government in exile, which, like the Poles, survived until the collapse of socialism and committed a symbolic act of transferring power to the legitimate government of Ukraine in the early 90s.

Shukhevych is a junior officer of the auxiliary German troops, who then went underground and removed Lebed from the military leadership of the OUN (b). Now it is fastened by the nationalists to Bender, because he did not take part in any action at all.

Why, after all, did the “Banderites” become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism, and not the respectable (and, in the end, more or less legitimate) “Melnykovites”, and not the brave “Bulbovites”? From the point of view of Soviet propaganda, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, the point is a significant surname. "Bandera" from "gang", "Bandera" = "bandits".

Lenin is, Lenin is not. Happiness.

Well, as a teenager, I discovered the brochure of the publishing house of foreign literature "Korean proverbs and sayings." She always lay on the shelf, and then I take it and open it. The first thing I saw was the saying: "Spoiled air is the loudest indignant of the one who spoiled it." The next day, the whole "sixth be" was laughing, the brochure was read to the holes. And the state is a teenager.