Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society. Группа авторов

Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society - Группа авторов


Скачать книгу
fighting activity until the mid-1950s. However, as early as the turn of 1945 and 1946, due to the activity of the NKVD, large guerrilla fighter units were demobilized and adopted the tactics known as “deep underground.” In this period, nearly four hundred thousand residents of this region, i.e., almost every family, were affected by Soviet repression. The memory of these acts of repression has contributed to the emergence of the cult of the UPA in present-day Ukraine.

      Key words: NKVD Internal Troops, OUN and UPA, Stalinist-era repression, dragnet operations targeting guerrilla fighter movements, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, deportation.

      The Internal Troops of the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) were an important element of the Soviet repressive apparatus. This unit was formed back in 1918 (as the Military Corps of the VChK (the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission)) and from its early days was viewed as the armed wing of the communist party, intended to perform special tasks. The assumption was that it should be composed of soldiers who were particularly enthusiastic about communist ideals and ready to carry out repressions against anyone considered an enemy of the revolution.

      In the pre-war period, Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were parts of the Polish state. They were inhabited by more than five million Ukrainians and one and a half million Poles (as well as around seven hundred and fifty thousand Jews, most of whom were murdered during the Holocaust). In September 1939, these areas were seized by and illegally annexed to the USSR; from 1941 they were occupied by the German army; and at present they make up the western part of the Ukrainian state. These areas saw the operation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which was formed in 1943 and was subordinate to the Banderite wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). Its purpose was to fight for the creation of an independent, united, and de facto mono-ethnic Ukrainian state.

      However, the leadership of the OUN and the UPA viewed the USSR as the biggest threat to Ukrainian independence aspirations. Mindful of the experience of the 1930s, when in Ukrainian lands belonging to the USSR the communists provoked artificial famine as a result of which three million people died, the leadership feared that Ukrainians living in Volhynia and Galicia might suffer the same fate. This is why the activity of the Ukrainian underground movement increased considerably once the front had moved through these areas. Local residents were called on to boycott the Red Army mobilization and prohibited from providing the obligatory in-kind contributions. UPA members killed local activists and attacked the newly-created village councils. The guerrilla movement spread into vast wooded areas and in both regions met with massive support on the part of the local Ukrainian population.

      In mid-1944, the UPA reached the peak of its development. More than a hundred sotnias (the equivalent of a company or a squadron) had between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand guerrilla fighters. When this number is increased by groups of conspirators organized in units covering a major portion of Ukrainian villages and by numerous supporters, it can be assumed that UPA units were able to mobilize up to a hundred thousand individuals. The spirit of resistance was reinforced by rumors being spread suggesting that the Soviets intended to “physically annihilate” the Ukrainian nation and planned to displace all Ukrainians from the two regions to Siberia.

      In Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, activities targeting the Ukrainian underground movement were commanded by People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR Ivan Ryasnyi, his deputy Tymofiy Strokach, and People’s Commissar of Security Affairs of the USSR Sergei Savchenko. In October 1944, the Soviets managed to reconstruct the network of Soviet security bodies, i.e., the NKVD/NKGB, to which the NKVD Internal Troops were operationally subordinate.


Скачать книгу