Hero or Nazi Bender? "real" biography of Stepan Bandera.

Stepan Bandera is a Ukrainian politician, the main figure of Ukrainian nationalism. The biography of Stepan Bandera is filled with a series of terrible events, this politician went through concentration camps, murders and prisons, many facts of his biography are still shrouded in a haze of mystery. Nevertheless, many data about Stepan Andreyevich Bandera are known for certain, mainly thanks to the autobiography he wrote shortly before his death.

Childhood and youth

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugrinov (Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary) in the family of a Greek Catholic clergyman. Stepan was born the second child, after him six more children appeared in the family.

The parents did not have their own home, they lived in a service house belonging to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In his autobiography, the already adult Bandera wrote:

From childhood, the spirit of patriotism reigned in the family, parents brought up in children living national-cultural, political and public interests.

There was a large library in the service house, it was visited by many important politicians in Galicia: Mikhail Gavrilko, Yaroslav Veselovsky, Pavel Glodzinsky. They had an undeniable influence on the future leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Stepan Bandera also received primary education at home, he was taught by his father Andrei Bandera, and some sciences were taught by visiting Ukrainian teachers.

The family of Stepan Bandera was extremely religious, the future leader of the OUN was a very obedient child who respected his parents. Bandera was a believer from an early age, in the morning and in the evening he prayed for a long time. From early childhood, Stepan Bandera was going to become a fighter for the freedom of Ukraine, therefore, secretly from his parents, he prepared his body for pain: he pricked himself with needles, tortured himself with heavy chains, and doused himself with ice water. Due to the so-called painful exercises, Bandera developed rheumatism of the joints, which haunted him until his death.

At the age of five, Bandera witnessed the outbreak of the First World War, they were destroyed, because veterans passed through the village of Stary Ugrinov several times. An unexpected surge in the activity of the national liberation movement had an even greater impact on his future activities. Bandera's father also took part in this movement: he contributed to the formation of full-fledged military units from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and also provided them with all the necessary weapons.

In 1919, Stepan Bandera entered the gymnasium in the city of Stryi, where he studied for eight years, during which he studied Latin, Greek, literature and history, philosophy and logic. In the gymnasium, Bandera was remembered as "a short, poorly dressed youth". In general, Bandera was a very active student, despite the disease of the joints: he played a lot of sports, participated in many youth events, sang in the choir and played musical instruments.

Carier start

After the gymnasium, Stepan was engaged in cultural and educational work, housekeeping, and also led various youth circles. At the same time, Bandera worked underground in the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) - documentarily, he became a member of the UVO only in 1928, but he met this organization while still a high school student.

In 1928, Stepan moved to Lviv, where he studied at the Lviv Polytechnic at the agronomy department. At the same time, he continued to work in the UVO and OUN. Bandera was one of the first members of the OUN in Western Ukraine. Bandera's turbulent activity was multifaceted: an underground correspondent for the satirical magazine "Pride of the Nation", the organizer of the illegal supply of many foreign publications to Ukraine.

In 1932, the career of Stepan Bandera received a new round of development: first he took the post of deputy regional conductor of the OUN, and in 1933 he was appointed acting regional conductor of the OUN in Western Ukraine and the regional commandant of the combat department of the OUN-UVO. From 1930 to 1933, Stepan Bandera was arrested about five times: either for anti-Polish propaganda, or for an attempt on the life of the commissar of the political police brigade E. Chekhovsky, or for trying to illegally cross the Polish-Czech police.

attacks

On December 22, 1932, when OUN militants Danylyshyn and Bilas were being executed in Lvov, Bandera organized a propaganda protest: during the execution, all churches in Lvov rang out bells.

Bandera was the organizer of many other protests. In particular, on June 3, 1933, Stepan Bandera personally led the operation to eliminate the Soviet consul in Lvov - the executor of the operation was Nikolai Lemik, who killed the consul's secretary only because the victim himself was not at the workplace at that moment. For this Lemik was sentenced to life.

In September 1933, Bandera organized a "school action", in which Ukrainian schoolchildren boycotted everything Polish: from symbols to language. In this action, Bandera managed to involve, according to the Polish media, tens of thousands of schoolchildren. In addition, Stepan Bandera was also the organizer of many political assassinations: not all operations were successful, three of them received the widest public outcry:

• an attempt on the school curator Gadomsky;
• assassination attempt on the Soviet consul in Lvov;
• the realized assassination of the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronisław Peracki (on June 15, the diplomat was shot three times in the back of the head).

Bandera was the organizer and participant of a huge number of OUN terrorist acts, in which Polish policemen, local communists, the Galician political beau monde and their relatives were killed. However, Ukrainians also became victims of the OUN. By order of Stepan Bandera, in 1934, the editorial office of the left-wing newspaper Pratsya (Labor) was blown up. The explosives in the editorial office were planted by a well-known OUN activist, Lviv student Ekaterina Zaritskaya.

Conclusion

On July 2, 1936, Stepan Bandera ended up in the Mokotow prison in Warsaw for his crimes. The next day, he was transferred to the Sventy Krzyż (Holy Cross) prison near Kielce. Bandera recalled that he felt bad in prison due to the lack of normal living conditions: there was not enough light, water and paper. Since 1937, the conditions for staying in prison have become even more stringent, so Bandera himself and the OUN organized a 16-day hunger strike, protesting against the prison administration. This hunger strike was recognized, Bandera made concessions.

During his imprisonment, Bandera was moved to various Polish prisons, in which he held numerous protests. After Germany invaded Poland, Bandera was released, like many other Ukrainian nationalists.

On July 5, 1941, Bandera was invited to a meeting by the German authorities, allegedly for negotiations, but at the meeting Bandera was arrested because he did not want to abandon the "Act of the Revival of the Ukrainian State", after which they were first placed in a German police prison in Krakow, and after a year and a half to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he was kept in a block for "political persons", he was constantly monitored.

When Stepan Bandera refused the offer of the German authorities, he did not become a victim of new persecution, but remained “outside what is happening” - he lived in Germany and did nothing. He tried to keep abreast of what was happening in Ukraine, but was completely isolated from it. But this did not last long, after the split of the OUN, already in 1945 he headed the OUN (b) on the initiative of Shukhevych.

Death

Stepan Bandera died not by his own death, he was killed on October 15, 1959 in Munich. According to sources, the murder of Stepan Bandera took place in the entrance of his house: he came home for lunch, but KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky was waiting for him in the entrance - he had been waiting for the right moment to kill Bandera since January. Bandera was killed by Stashinsky with a cyanide pistol.

Bandera, who was killed in the entrance, was found by neighbors who heard his scream. He was covered in blood. It was assumed that the leader died of heart failure, but law enforcement agencies helped to find out the true reason for the murder of Stepan Bandera.

The murderer of Stepan Bandera Bogdan Stashinsky was arrested by the German police, in 1962 a high-profile trial began against Stashinsky, in which he pleaded guilty. The KGB agent was sentenced to eight years in prison, but after six years in prison, Stashinsky disappeared in an unknown direction.

Title of Hero of Ukraine

Posthumously in 2010, Stepan Bandera received the title of Hero of Ukraine, which was awarded to him by the then president "for the invincibility of the spirit." Then Yushchenko noted that millions of Ukrainians had been waiting for a long time for Bandera to be awarded the Hero of Ukraine, and Yushchenko's decision was accepted by a storm of applause from the public present at the award ceremony for Stepan Bandera's namesake grandson.

Nevertheless, this event caused a great public outcry, many disagreed with Yushchenko's decision. The European Union also reacted negatively to this event, so they called on the newly elected president to cancel the decision.

At present, the personality of Stepan Bandera evokes different points of view in society: if in Western Ukraine Bandera is considered a symbol of the struggle for independence, then Eastern Ukraine, Poland and Russia perceive this politician mostly negatively - he is accused of terrorism, fascism, and also of radical nationalism.

Who are the "Banderites"?

The concept of "Bandera" came from the name of Stepan Bandera, at present this expression has already become a household name - in modern society, all nationalists are called "Bandera".

Sources note that the concept of "Bandera" in modern society does not mean that nationalists have an entirely positive attitude towards Stepan Bandera - this is what all nationalists are called, regardless of their point of view on Bandera's activities.

poison jet

Munich, a warm October day in 1959. Local time 12.50. A young man approached the entrance of a gray five-story building at 7 Kroitmeierstrasse with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand, opened the front door with a key and disappeared through the entrance. A few minutes later, an elderly man with the remains of sparse hair on an almost naked skull appeared at the same entrance and, holding shopping bags in his right hand, opened the same door with his left key. Entering the entrance, he saw a young man with an impassive face descending the stairs, who, passing by him and already grasping the door bracket, sharply raised his hand with a newspaper. The elderly gentleman did not have time to be frightened, as he did not have time to raise his left hand (he was left-handed) to grab the Walter pistol, which was always under his right armpit.

There was a barely audible pop - and a jet of instantly evaporated liquid hit the bald gentleman in the face. The young man, who already had one foot on the street, stepped out of the entrance and slammed the door behind him. He did not hear the sound of the falling body, did not see the blood-red tomatoes scattered from the bag on the floor. The young man walked towards the city park, where he threw something metal into the stream.

Thus, the death sentence of the Supreme Court of the USSR to the executioner of thousands of Soviet citizens, the leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera, was carried out.

The young man who carried out the sentence was the Soviet agent Bogdan Stashinsky, who had undercover pseudonyms "Oleg" and "Moroz". He was not new to this business. In October 1957, in the same place, in Munich, Stashinsky liquidated the well-known theorist and ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism, the Banderite Lev Rebet. The method of carrying out the sentence was the same, only this time Bogdan had a more advanced weapon: a syringe pistol, it was made by a special KGB laboratory. It housed ampoules with hydrocyanic acid, broken and pushed out by a piston under the influence of a micropowder charge. The coronary vessels of the heart instantly contracted, which led to cardiac arrest. Then the vessels returned to their original state, and forensic experts could not find signs of violent death.

OUN noose

Stepan Bandera was guilty of the mass extermination of Soviet citizens - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and therefore the death penalty was a fair punishment for him. He was a terrorist by vocation. A few years after graduating from the Higher Polytechnic School, Bandera was arrested. For what? For the assassination of Polish Minister of the Interior Peracki. He was sentenced to death "for atrocities and mockery of the Ukrainian people." Bandera was on death row. But later it was replaced with a life sentence.

Bandera was released after a five-year stay in prison by the Germans who captured Poland. He immediately organizes the struggle against Soviet power in Western Ukraine. Then he moves to Germany, where he proclaims himself the leader of the new revolutionary OUN. From now on, every member of the OUN must live by the principle: either you "get a vilno and independent Ukraine", or die in the struggle for it.

But the Germans did not need "independent Ukraine". When the Ukrainian legion "Nachtigal" ("Nightingale"), created by Bandera with the help of the Abwehr, broke into Lviv and Bandera proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state, he was immediately arrested. And planted. And, even while sitting in a concentration camp, Bandera created the many thousands of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). It was then that Hitler drew attention to him. Bandera was released for sabotage in the rear of the Red Army.

All those who opposed the "independent Ukraine", for an alliance with Russia, were to be destroyed. The so-called security service of the OUN-SB was especially zealous. Its militants killed thousands of people. This was usually done with a rope-noose. Sophisticated tortures and executions were used to intimidate the population - they sawed off people's heads, hung them by the legs, put them on a stake.

In 1945, in the village of Kravniki, Kalushsky district, Stanislavsky (Ivano-Frankivsk region), members of the SB gang brutally raped their 18-year-old daughter in front of their mother, and then burned her alive, thrusting her head into a burning stove, only because she had returned from forced works in Germany, the girl did not give her suitcase with things to the bandits. In 1947, in one of the villages of the Lviv region, in front of a six-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister, militants from the Security Service strangled their parents with a stranglehold, and then announced: “Live and tell your children about us” ... These already elderly people live today in Kyiv.

After 1945, Bandera quickly found a new owner - American intelligence. The Americans completely took over the maintenance of the ZCH (Out-of-cord units) of the OUN that had settled in Munich. They sent paratroopers-emissaries of the OUN, radio operators, spies and saboteurs into the territory of Western Ukraine, and supplied the underground with weapons. The OUN leaders were ready to take any steps in order to take Ukraine away from the "Bolshevik occupiers-Muscovites."

Chekist turned out to be a traitor

For the liquidation of the OUN ideologist Rebeta, agent Stashinsky received a monetary reward from the KGB and a valuable gift - a Zenith camera, and for Bandera - the Order of the Red Banner. On this, the career of an agent, according to all the rules of the special services, should have ended. He should have settled in Moscow with a good pension and an apartment, but ... Stashinsky was allowed to go to his German wife in Berlin.

And then something happened that the Ukrainian Chekists were so afraid of. On August 12, 1961, a day before the blocking of sectoral borders in Berlin, Stashinsky ... fled to the West! They were looking for him ... The author of these lines with the curator Stashinsky was sent to West Berlin in search of a traitor agent.

As soon as we crossed the sectoral border, the curator said: “Giorgi, if we find Bogdan, leave. I will kill Stashinsky. And yourself. I consider myself guilty of not seeing the traitor.” Bogdan was never found...

In the memory of his supporters and followers, Bandera is preserved as a national hero and a fighter for the liberation of Ukraine from the "Moscow occupiers", for the creation of a free and "independent Ukraine". In a number of cities in Ukraine there are his busts, the streets bear his name, and this cannot be ignored. The grandson of the "leader", also Stepan Bandera, who lives today in Canada, is going to settle in Western Ukraine, where he plans to continue the "Bandera".

... I don’t know where the 70-year-old Stashinsky is now and whether he is alive, under what name he is hiding in the West from Ukrainian nationalists, who also sentenced him to death. But, I think, until the end of his days, he will not forget the trusting eyes of a dog - on it, with me, he tested the effect of the weapon with which he killed Stepan Bandera ...

05/02/2010

The fading President Yushchenko finally awarded Stepan Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine. According to VTsIOM, 37% of Russians consider Bandera a terrorist and a murderer. According to my feelings, 95% of Russians do not know anything about him. Studying the biography of Bandera, you experience deja vu. Something painfully familiar in the story. Then you understand: this is a classic biography of some fiery Leninist revolutionary. Yes, even Iron Felix. I was stuffed with such biographies in school.

story character

COLORS OF THE BANNER OF STEPAN BANDERA

A new look at the leader of Ukrainian nationalists

Stepan Andreevich Bandera ( "bandera" - translated into modern language means "banner") was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv, Stary Kalushsky district of Galicia (now Ivano-Frankivsk region), which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the family of a priest of the Greek Catholic rite. In the family, he was the second child. In addition to him, three brothers and three sisters grew up in the family.
My father had a university education - he graduated from the theological faculty of Lviv University. My father had a large library, business people, public figures, and the intelligentsia were frequent guests in the house. Among them, for example, a member of the Austro-Hungarian parliament J. Veselovsky, sculptor M. Gavrilko, businessman P. Glodzinsky.
S. Bandera wrote in his autobiography that he grew up in a house in which an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism, vibrant national-cultural, political and public interests reigned. Stepan's father took an active part in the revival of the Ukrainian State in 1918-1920, he was elected to the parliament of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. In the autumn of 1919, Stepan passed the entrance exams to the Ukrainian classical gymnasium in the city of Stry.
In 1920 Western Ukraine was occupied by Poland. In the spring of 1921, Miroslav Bandera's mother died of tuberculosis. Stepan himself suffered from rheumatism of the joints since childhood and spent a long time in the hospital. Starting from the fourth grade, Bandera gave lessons, earning money for his own expenses. Education in the gymnasium took place under the supervision of the Polish authorities. But some teachers were able to invest Ukrainian national content in the compulsory program.
However, the main national-patriotic education of the gymnasium students received in school youth organizations. Along with legal organizations, there were illegal circles that raised funds to support Ukrainian periodicals and boycotted the events of the Polish authorities. Starting from the fourth grade, Bandera was a member of an illegal gymnasium organization.
In 1927, Bandera successfully passed the matriculation exams and the next year entered the Lviv Polytechnic School in the agronomic department. By 1934, he completed the full course as an agricultural engineer. However, he did not have time to defend his diploma, as he was arrested.
Various legal, semi-legal and illegal organizations operated on the territory of Galicia at different times, aiming to protect Ukrainian national interests. In 1920, in Prague, a group of officers founded the "Ukrainian Military Organization" (UVO), which set the goal of fighting the Polish occupation. Soon, the former commander of the "Sich Riflemen", an experienced organizer and authoritative politician Yevgen Konovalets, became the head of the UVO. The most famous action of the UVO is the failed assassination attempt on the head of the Polish state, Jozef Pilsudski, in 1921.
Patriotic youth organizations were under the patronage of the UVO. Stepan Bandera became a member of the UVO in 1928. In 1929, in Vienna, Ukrainian youth organizations, with the participation of the UVO, held a unifying congress, at which the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was established, which included Bandera. Later in 1932, the OUN and the UVO merged.
Although Poland occupied Galicia, the legitimacy of its rule over the western Ukrainian lands remained problematic from the point of view of the Entente countries. This issue was the subject of claims against Poland by the Western powers, especially England and France.
The Ukrainian majority of Eastern Galicia refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Polish authorities over them. The population census of 1921 and the elections to the Polish Sejm in 1922 were boycotted. By 1930, the situation worsened. In response to the actions of disobedience of the Ukrainian population, the Polish government launched large-scale operations to "pacify" the population, in the current terminology - "cleansing" the territory of Eastern Galicia. In 1934, a concentration camp was formed in Bereza Kartuzskaya, in which there were about 2 thousand political prisoners, mostly Ukrainians. A year later, Poland abandoned its obligations to the League of Nations to respect the rights of national minorities. Mutual attempts were periodically made to find a compromise, but they did not lead to tangible results.
In 1934, members of the OUN made an attempt on the life of the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronislaw Peracki, as a result of which he died. S. Bandera took part in the attack. For participation in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Peratsky, he was arrested and in early 1936, along with eleven other defendants, he was convicted by the Warsaw District Court. S. Bandera was sentenced to death. According to the amnesty announced earlier by the Polish Sejm, the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.
Stepan was kept in prison in strict isolation. After the German attack on Poland, the town in which the prison was located was bombed. On September 13, 1939, when the position of the Polish troops became critical, the prison guards fled. S. Bandera was released from the solitary cell by the released Ukrainian prisoners.
The OUN, with about 20 thousand members, had a great influence on the Ukrainian population. There were internal conflicts in the organization: between the young, impatient and more experienced and reasonable, who went through the war and the revolution, between the leadership of the OUN, living in comfortable conditions of emigration, and the bulk of the OUN members, who worked underground and police persecution.
OUN leader Evgen Konovalets, using his diplomatic and organizational talent, was able to extinguish contradictions, uniting the organization. The death of Konovalets at the hands of the Soviet agent Pavel Sudoplatov in 1938 in Rotterdam was a heavy loss for the nationalist movement in Ukraine. His successor was Colonel Andrei Melnik, a well-educated man, reserved and tolerant. The faction of his supporters, taking advantage of the fact that most of their opponents were in prison, in August 1939, at a conference in Rome, announced Colonel Melnik as the head of the OUN. Further events took a dramatic turn for the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
Once free, Stepan Bandera arrived in Lviv. A few days before that, Lvov had been occupied by the Red Army. At first, it was relatively safe to be there. Soon, through a courier, he received an invitation to arrive in Krakow to coordinate the further plans of the OUN. Urgent treatment was also required for a joint disease that had worsened in prison. I had to illegally cross the Soviet-German demarcation line.
After meetings in Krakow and Vienna, Bandera was delegated to Rome for negotiations with Melnik. Events developed rapidly, and the central leadership showed slowness. The list of disagreements - organizational and political, which needed to be eliminated in negotiations with Melnik, was quite large. The dissatisfaction of OUN members from the underground with the leadership of the OUN was approaching a critical point. In addition, there was a suspicion of betrayal of Melnik's inner circle, since the mass arrests in Galicia and Volhynia concerned mainly Bandera's supporters.
The main difference was in the strategy of conducting the national liberation struggle. Bandera and his like-minded people considered it necessary to maintain contacts with the OUN both with the countries of the German coalition and with the Western allied countries, without getting close to any group. It is necessary to rely on one's own strength, since no one was interested in the independence of Ukraine. Miller's faction believed that relying on one's own strength was untenable. Western countries are not interested in the independence of Ukraine. This was already demonstrated by them in the 1920s. Germany then recognized the independence of Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to bet on Germany. The Melnikovites believed that it was impossible to create an armed underground, as this would irritate the German authorities and repress them, which would not bring political or military dividends.
Unable to reach a compromise as a result of the negotiations, both groups proclaimed themselves the only legitimate leadership of the OUN.
In February 1940, in Krakow, the Bandera faction, which consisted mainly of young people and made up the numerical majority of the OUN, held a conference at which they rejected the decisions of the Rome conference and chose Stepan Bandera as their leader. Thus, the OUN split into Bandera - OUN-B or OUN-R (revolutionary) and Melnikov - OUN-M. Subsequently, the antagonism between the factions reached such intensity that they often fought against each other with the same bitterness with which they fought against the enemies of independent Ukraine.
The attitude of the German leadership towards the OUN was contradictory: the Canaris service (Abwehr - military intelligence) considered it necessary to cooperate with Ukrainian nationalists, the Nazi party leadership, led by Bormann, did not consider the OUN a serious political factor, therefore, rejected any cooperation with it. Taking advantage of these contradictions, the OUN managed to form the Ukrainian military unit "Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists" numbering about 600 people, consisting of two battalions - "Nakhtigal" and "Roland", staffed by Ukrainians of predominantly pro-Banderist orientation. The Germans planned to use them for subversive purposes, and Bandera hoped that they would become the core of the future Ukrainian army.
At the same time, mass repressions unfolded on the territory of Western Ukraine, which had ceded to the Soviet Union under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Leaders and activists of political parties and public organizations were arrested, many of them were executed. Four mass deportations of the Ukrainian population from the occupied territories were carried out. New prisons were opened, in which tens of thousands of detainees were kept.
Father Andrei Bandera with his two daughters Marta and Oksana were arrested at three in the morning on May 23, 1941. In the interrogation protocols, when asked by the investigator about his political views, Fr. Andriy replied: “For my convictions, I am a Ukrainian nationalist, but not a chauvinist. On the evening of July 8 in Kyiv, at a closed meeting of the military tribunal of the Kyiv military district, A. Bandera was sentenced to death. The verdict stated that it could be appealed within five days from the date of handing over a copy of the verdict. But Andrei Bandera was already shot on July 10th.
Marta and Oksana were sent without trial one by one to the Krasnoyarsk Territory for an eternal settlement, where they were driven from place to place every 2-3 months until 1953. The bitter cup did not pass even the third sister - Vladimira. She, the mother of five children, was arrested along with her husband Teodor Davidyuk in 1946. She was sentenced to 10 years hard labor. She worked in the camps of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Kazakhstan, including the Spassky death camp. She survived, having served her full term, they added a settlement in Karaganda, then she was allowed to return to her children in Ukraine.
The hasty retreat of the Red Army after the start of the war had tragic consequences for tens of thousands of those arrested. Not being able to take everyone to the east, the NKVD decided to urgently liquidate the prisoners, regardless of the verdicts. Often cellars filled with prisoners were simply thrown with grenades. In Galicia, 10 thousand people were killed, in Volhynia - 5 thousand. Relatives of the prisoners, who were looking for their loved ones, witnessed this hasty, senseless and inhuman massacre. All this was then demonstrated by the Germans to the International Red Cross.
With the support of the Nachtigal battalion, on June 30, 1941 in Lvov, at a rally of many thousands in the presence of several German generals, Bandera proclaimed the "Act of the Revival of the Ukrainian State." A Ukrainian government was also formed consisting of 15 ministers headed by Yaroslav Stetsko, S. Bandera's closest associate. In addition, following the front, which was rapidly moving east, OUN detachments of 7-12 people were sent, a total of about 2,000 people, who, seizing the initiative from the German occupation authorities, formed Ukrainian local governments.
The reaction of the German authorities to the Bandera action in Lvov followed quickly: on July 5, S. Bandera was arrested in Krakow. and on the 9th - in Lvov, J. Stetsko. In Berlin, where they were taken for trial, S. Bandera was explained that the Germans came to Ukraine not as liberators, but as conquerors, and demanded the public cancellation of the Act of Revival. Not having obtained consent, Bandera was thrown into prison, and a year and a half later - to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept until August 27 (according to other sources - until December), 1944. Brothers Stepan Andrei and Vasily were beaten to death in Auschwitz in 1942.
In the autumn of 1941, the Melnikovites in Kyiv also attempted to form a Ukrainian government. But this attempt, too, was brutally suppressed. Over 40 leading figures of the OUN-M were arrested and shot at Babi Yar at the beginning of 1942, including the well-known Ukrainian poetess 35-year-old Elena Teliga, who headed the Writers' Union of Ukraine.
By the autumn of 1941, the disparate Ukrainian armed detachments of Polissya united in the partisan unit "Polesskaya Sich". As the mass Nazi terror unfolded in Ukraine, partisan detachments grew. In the autumn of 1942, at the initiative of the OUN-B, the partisan detachments of Bandera, Melnikov and the Polesskaya Sich united into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), headed by one of the organizers of the OUN, the highest officer of the recently dissolved Nachtigal battalion, Roman Shukhevych (General Taras Chuprynka) . In 1943-44, the number of UPA reached 100 thousand fighters and it controlled Volyn, Polissya and Galicia. It included detachments of other nationalities - Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kazakhs and other nations, in total 15 such detachments.
The UPA waged an armed struggle not only against the Nazi and Soviet troops, there was a constant war with the Red partisans, and on the territory of Volhynia, Polissya and Kholmshchyna, exceptionally fierce battles took place with the Polish Home Army. This armed conflict had a long history and was accompanied by ethnic cleansing in the most savage form on both sides.
OUN-UPA at the end of 1942 turned to the Soviet partisans with a proposal to coordinate military operations against the Germans, but failed to agree. Hostile relations turned into armed skirmishes. And already in October and November 1943, for example, the UPA fought 47 battles with German troops and 54 with Soviet partisans.
Until the spring of 1944, the command of the Soviet Army and the NKVD tried to portray sympathy for the Ukrainian nationalist movement. However, after the expulsion of German troops from the territory of Ukraine, Soviet propaganda began to identify the OUN with the Nazis. From that time on, the second stage of the struggle began for the OUN-UPA - the struggle against the Soviet Army. This war lasted for almost 10 years - until the mid-1950s.
Regular troops of the Soviet Army fought against the UPA. So, in 1946 there were about 2 thousand battles and armed clashes, in 1948 - about 1.5 thousand. Near Moscow, several training bases were organized to combat the partisan movement in Western Ukraine. During these years, among the prisoners of the Gulag, every second was a Ukrainian. And only after the death of UPA commander Roman Shukhevych on March 5, 1950, organized resistance in Western Ukraine began to decline, although individual detachments and the remnants of the underground operated until the mid-50s.
After leaving the Nazi concentration camp, Stepan Bandera did not manage to get to Ukraine. He took up the affairs of the OUN. The central organs of the organization after the end of the war were in the territory of West Germany. At a meeting of the leadership council of the OUN, Bandera was elected to the leadership bureau, in which he oversaw the OUN's foreign units.
At a conference in 1947, Stepan Bandera was elected head of the entire Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. By this time, opposition to Bandera had arisen in the foreign parts, which reproached him with dictatorial ambitions, and the OUN that it had turned into a neo-communist organization. After lengthy discussions, Bandera decides to resign and go to Ukraine. However, the resignation was not accepted. The OUN conferences in 1953 and 1955 with the participation of delegates from Ukraine again elected Bandera as the head of the leadership.
After the war, the family of S. Bandera ended up in the zone of Soviet occupation. Under false names, the relatives of the OUN leader were forced to hide from the Soviet occupation authorities and KGB agents. For some time the family lived in the forest in a secluded house, in a small room without electricity, in cramped conditions Six-year-old Natalia had to walk six kilometers through the forest to school. The family was malnourished, the children grew sickly.
In 1948-1950 they lived under an assumed name in a refugee camp. Meetings with the father were so rare that the children even forgot him. Since the beginning of the 50s, the mother and children settled in the small village of Breitbrun. Here Stepan could visit more often, almost every day. Despite being busy, my father devoted time to teaching the Ukrainian language to his children. Brother and sister at the age of 4-5 already knew how to read and write in Ukrainian. With Natalka Bandera studied history, geography and literature. In 1954, the family moved to Munich, where Stepan already lived.
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Bandera let go of the guards and entered the entrance of the house in which he lived with his family. On the stairs he was met by a man whom Bandera had already seen earlier in the church. From a special pistol, he shot Stepan Bandera in the face with a jet of potassium cyanide solution. Bandera fell, shopping bags rolled down the stairs.
The killer turned out to be a KGB agent, 30-year-old Ukrainian Bohdan Stashinsky. Soon, the chairman of the KGB, Shelepin, personally presented him with the Order of the "Red Banner of Battle" in Moscow. In addition, Stashinsky received permission to marry a German woman from East Berlin. A month after the wedding, which took place in Berlin, Stashinsky was sent with his wife to Moscow to continue their studies. Listening to home conversations with his wife gave grounds to the authorities to suspect Stashinsky of insufficient loyalty to the Soviet regime. He was expelled from school and forbidden to leave Moscow.
Stashinsky's wife, in connection with the upcoming birth in the spring of 1961, was allowed to leave for East Berlin. In early 1962, news came of the unexpected death of a child. For the funeral of his son, Stashinsky was allowed a short trip to East Berlin. Steps were taken to monitor him. However, the day before the funeral (just on the eve of the day the Berlin Wall was erected), Stashinsky and his wife managed to break away from the escort, which was traveling in three cars, and escape to West Berlin. There he turned to the American representation, where he confessed to the murder of Stepan Bandera, as well as to the murder of OUN activist Professor L. Rebet two years earlier. An international scandal broke out, as at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 the USSR officially declared its rejection of the policy of international terrorism.
At the trial, Stashinsky testified that he acted on instructions from the leadership of the USSR. On October 19, 1962, the court of the city of Karlsruhe pronounced a sentence: 8 years in prison with a strict regime.
Stepan's daughter Natalya Bandera ended her speech at the trial with the words:
"My unforgettable father raised us in love for God and Ukraine. He was a deeply believing Christian and died for God and independent free Ukraine" .

For a long time the name of the movement was distorted - "Bendera" instead of "Bandera", in the 50s. The NKVD created punitive detachments, dressed in the form of "Bandera", which were destroyed in order to arouse hatred for the OUN-UPA, etc.

4. During the Patriotic War, which began in 2014, separatists and Russians called all the defenders of Ukraine none other than "Banderites" or "Bandera punishers."

5. What are the main merits of Stepan Bandera to the people of Ukraine? He

Became one of the organizers in 1929 of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) - the main instrument of the national liberation movement of Ukrainians in subsequent decades. From 1933, Bandera became the regional conductor of the OUN in Western and the regional commandant of the combat department of the OUN-UVO, from 1940 - the head of the OUN-UPA (b);

On July 5, 1941, members of the OUN-UPA (b) in Lvov announced the "Act of the Revival of the Ukrainian State", which announced the creation of a "new Ukrainian state on the mother Ukrainian lands", for which Stepan Bandera was arrested on the same day, subsequently sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp until September 1944;

His followers, led by Roman Shukhevych, created the Ukrainian army of the OUN-UPA, which fought both the fascist (1942-1944) and the communist regime in the USSR from 1944 to 1956.

2010 - Hero of Ukraine "for the invincibility of the spirit in defending the national idea, heroism and self-sacrifice in the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state."

The then President of Ukraine, during the celebrations in honor of the Day of Unity, noted that millions of Ukrainians had been waiting for Stepan Bandera to be awarded the title of "Hero of Ukraine" for many years.

The post-war years were the most difficult for Stepan Bandera. So, for example, only in 1948 he changed his place of residence six times (Berlin, Innsbruck, Seefeld, Munich, Hildesheim, Starnberg). Ultimately, Bandera and his family moved to Munich in order to give his daughter a good education. The fact is that Stepan, together with his wife, tried to protect from everything that was happening around her father, and never told her that the famous Stepan Bandera was actually her blood father. “At the age of 13, I began to read Ukrainian newspapers, in which they wrote a lot about Stepan Bandera. Over time, based on my own observations, as well as constant name changes, and also due to the fact that there were always a huge number of people around my father, I some suspicions arose. And when one of my acquaintances let it slip, I was sure that Stepan Bandera was my own father, "said Natalia, Bandera's daughter.

Stepan Bandera's mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 33, and he himself was in poor health since childhood. Basically he was worried about the joints, often rendered legs. In this regard, all his efforts to get into the "Plast" turned out to be fruitless. He managed to join this organization only in the third grade. “He was short, brown-haired, very poorly dressed,” his comrade Yaroslav Rak recalled to Bandera.

Once, a group of students gathered in the Academic House in Lvov, one of whom immediately declared that he had nothing to do with politics and was outside of it. Stepan Bandera was also present. When a "non-political" student tried to shake his hand, Bandera turned away. Then Stepan was reprimanded, to which he replied: "If you don't like it, you can sue me." A few decades later, the same student, whose last name turned out to be Stashinsky, became the murderer of Stepan Bandera.

The social network "" also has a fairly large number of groups dedicated to Bandera. The largest of them is Group under the name "Stepan Bandera".

Biography of Stepan Bandera.

1927 - Bandera entered the Ukrainian Academy of Economics in the village of Podebrady (Czechoslovakia). However, the Polish refused to provide him with a passport, in connection with which he continued to live in his native village, where he was engaged in cultural, educational and economic activities;

1928 - moved to live in, where he enrolled in the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School, where he studied until 1933, and before the final exams he was arrested because of his political activities;

1932-1933 - deputy regional conductor;

1933 - appointed regional conductor of the OUN in Western Ukraine;

1934 - arrested by the Polish police. He was under investigation in the prisons of Lvov, Warsaw and Krakow;

From November 18, 1935 to January 13, 1936, the Warsaw Trial took place, in which Stepan Bandera, along with 11 other defendants, was convicted for involvement in the OUN, as well as for organizing the murder of Bronislaw Penatsky, the Polish Interior Ministry. Initially, Bandera was sentenced to death, but later it was commuted to life imprisonment;

On September 19, 1939, when the situation of the Polish troops became almost critical, Bandera was released;

On July 5, 1941, shortly after the adoption of the act of proclaiming the restoration of the Ukrainian state, the Germans arrested Bandera;

December 1944 - Bandera is released along with several other OUN conductors;

1950 - resigned from the post of head of the OUN conductors;

August 22, 1952 - resigned from the post of head of the conductors of the entire OUN-B. However, his decision was not officially accepted, and therefore he remained in this position until his death;

The last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich under the name Stefan Popel.

The murder of Bandera.

On October 15, 1959, in Munich, at the entrance of house number 7, located on Kraitmayr Street, at 13:05 local time, Stepan Bandera was found bloody, but still alive. However, he soon died.

The results of the medical examination showed that the cause of Bandera's death was poison. As it turned out, later, his killer, who was Bogdan Stashinsky, shot Bandera in the face with a special pistol loaded with potassium cyanide.

Two years after Bandera's death, the judiciary announced that Stashinsky had acted on the orders of Khrushchev and Shelepin. The killer was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Later, the German Supreme Court declared that the USSR in Moscow was responsible for the death of Stepan Bandera.

Bandera's funeral took place in 1959 in Munich.

Commemoration of Stepan Bandera.

1995 - Ukrainian director Oleg Yanchuk filmed "Atentat - Autumn Murder in Munich", which is dedicated to the post-war fate of Bandera;

2005 - "Unconquered", in general about the fate of Bandera;

Rohir van Aarde, a writer from the Netherlands, wrote the novel "Attempt", dedicated to the political assassination of Stepan Bandera;

January 1, 2009 - in honor of the centenary of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian state enterprise "Ukrposhta" issued a commemorative envelope and a postage stamp with his image.

2009 and 2014 in the Ternopil region of Ukraine were declared the years of Stepan Bandera;

2012 - Lviv Regional Council initiated the founding of the award named after the Hero of Ukraine Stepan Bandera;

In honor of Bandera, streets were named in the following cities: Lviv, Lutsk, Dubovitsy, Rivne, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chervonograd, Drohobych, Stry, Dolina, Kalush, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Gorodenka, Izyaslav, Skole, Shepetovka and some others settlements, including villages and towns;

There are 6 museums of Stepan Bandera in the world:

Stepan Bandera Museum in Dublyany;

Museum-estate of Stepan Bandera (Will-Zaderevatskaya);

Historical and Memorial Museum of Stepan Bandera (Stary Ugryniv village);

Museum of Stepan Bandera (Yagolnitsa);

Stepan Bandera Museum of the Liberation Struggle (London);

Museum-estate of Bandera (Stry).

Monuments to Bandera.

Most of the monuments to Stepan Bandera were erected in the period 1990-2000, since until that moment the identity of Bandera was banned by the communist ideology of the Soviet Union.

The following monuments to Stepan Bandera are currently known:

1991, Kolomyia - a monument;

2007, Lviv. Monument;

1998 - Borislav;

2001 - Drohobych;