Mr. Stakhov, you fought for an independent Ukraine. Now we have exactly the country for which you fought?
- We fought for an independent Ukraine, for a democratic Ukraine with social justice, equality, where all citizens were equal. We knew that there are national minorities in Ukraine. At first we had the slogan "Ukraine for Ukrainians", but I fought in Donbass, and my colleagues said that this slogan is not good, and we rejected this slogan and fought for a democratic country with equal rights for all. The main thing was to achieve independence, and then it will be up to the people to decide whether we will have a democratic direction, or a social democratic or socialist one.
My comrades-in-arms and I were very happy when the Soviet Union began to fall. When in 1990 RUKH was making a human chain Kiev-Lvov, I first came to Ukraine. And even when there was a majority of the Communists in the first parliament, this did not matter for us, because the country was independent. And the rest we had to settle in our state in a democratic way. We thought that now we need to work actively so that the democrats defeat the communists. In 1991, the communists also voted for independence, therefore it was democratic. So there is such a Ukraine, for which we fought, and the rest is up to the people to decide. When Kuchma won the election, I was just in Ukraine. We patriots were not for Kravchuk, but when Kuchma won, we were disappointed, because Kravchuk was better than Kuchma.
And then we were very happy when there was Maidan! We thought that now that the Maidan wins, everything will be fine, that after the Maidan there will be the best Ukraine. Maidan … Maidan shouted - to the bandits of the prison. The bandits are walking - more than it was. My colleagues and I are disappointed because the people who were nominated by the Maidan did not live up to the expectations of the Maidan.
Why did it happen?
- I must ask you why it happened! Although ordinary people are not to blame. I think the mountain itself is to blame - those that run the country. On the one hand, there is the President and his secretariat, on the other, the government headed by Yulia Tymoshenko. They are responsible, but the people endure.
You were the organizer of the OUN underground in Donbass. How did the Donetsk people perceive the OUN ideology?
- Donbass is a kind of part of Ukraine, where the majority is from the working class. At first I was in Gorlovka, then in Konstantinovka, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Stalino. People spoke to each other in surzhik, but everyone spoke to me in Ukrainian. I did not understand at all that it was a surzhik. I was visiting a family of teachers in the village of Yasnuvata, and our conversation was in Ukrainian, and their child spoke to us in Russian. And I tell him, why do you speak Russian when everyone speaks Ukrainian. And he told me: "Do I curl up like a Katsap?" "But as?" I ask. And he says: "According to Yasinuvatski." And I realized that this is not Russian, it is a mixture of two languages.
In general, there was no national misunderstanding. In our underground there were Tatars, in the south, between Volnovakha and Mariupol, there were 10-15 Greek villages, and I dealt with the Greeks, who, by the way, spoke Ukrainian - purely, not surzhik. When we fought against the Germans, many from this region said - we are "Russian Ukrainians".
For example, our underground worker betrayed and came from the Gestapo to the apartment where I lived, near the village of Stalino, and I fled. I was afraid that it was a failure, and therefore did not go to our other underground workers. I went to the Russians! I knew a Russian girl to whom I brought letters from her Ukrainian boyfriend who had moved to Krivoy Rog. And they hid me. This is how we were perceived.
But I must say that it was easy to fight against the Germans there. It's harder against the communists. In 1943, we issued a leaflet on which the title was written: "Death to Hitler, death to Stalin." People needed to know who we are. And then the attitude towards us changed. For Hitler's death was easy, and Stalin's death was difficult for him to perceive.
Now Bandera is considered an example of a Ukrainian nationalist. Does he really deserve it?
- This is a big and difficult question. I have already said that at first we had a slogan: "Ukraine for Ukrainians", but in the East this slogan was not perceived as in the West. And we, those who were in the East, decided that we should be with the people, and not decide for them or dictate how it should be.
Therefore, in 1943, it was decided that we would turn to the wire (leadership - M. S.) of the OUN (and the wire was in Lviv) in order to change this ideology. And a conference of underground workers from Volyn, Galicia and Eastern Ukraine took place, and there was a discussion about the program. Galicia thought differently, there was a misunderstanding at these meetings, it could even reach a break, but they decided that we should convene a Great Assembly of Ukrainian nationalists, and the Assembly will decide. The gathering took place in August 1943, and in history it is called the OUN Big Extraordinary Gathering. At that meeting, the program was changed to democracy and equality. Then they decided to get rid of leaderism. Decided to create a bureau of occasion - a triumvirate. Chairman - Shukhevych, Dmitry Maevsky and Rostislav Voloshin.
It was the transition from totalitarianism to democracy.
In July 1944, the UGVR, the Ukrainian Main Liberation Rada, was created, which should lead the entire struggle. It included the OUN, the remnants of democratic parties, church leaders. And as proof that this is not a Galician institution, Kirill Osmak, a native of Kiev, was elected president. There were both Catholics and Orthodox. Both Orthodox and Catholics were half and half.
Now about Bandera: in 1941, the Germans arrested the Ukrainian government in Lvov, they arrested Stetsko, and in Krakow, Bandera and my brother, who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Stetsko's government. They were in prison in Berlin. Most of those arrested were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. On September 15, the Germans staged a big pogrom of the Ukrainians. Many people were arrested in Ukraine and students in Vienna, Berlin, Gdansk, Prague.
When the war ended, they left prisons and concentration camps with the same ideology with which they were arrested - totalitarian, Dontsov. None of them had any idea what was going on in Ukraine. Bandera's position was incomprehensible to anyone. In February 1946, there was a conference of those OUN members who were abroad, and at that conference it was decided that in order to fight for Ukraine, it was necessary to create ZCHOUN - foreign parts of the OUN.
Stepan Bandera was elected chairman not of the OUN, but of the ZCHOUN. An internal struggle began. Bandera again wanted to turn back his status, to prove that he is a guide (from the word “provide”, that is, “leader”), a dictator.
A discussion took place between those who came from Ukraine and those who left the prisons. We, those who came out of the kryivoks (secret shelters. Approx. Transl.), Wanted the head of the ZCHOUN to be called "chairman", and Bandera demanded that the name be "guide". We made a compromise that let there be a "conductor", but we choose "wire".
Gradually, two groups were formed. Those who supported the UGVR and were for democracy - "kraiviks", and those who were released from prisons - "katsetniks".
Bandera wanted to return to totalitarianism, which was bad for the Ukrainian people. Consequently, anyone who wants to build a monument to Bandera wants to return to totalitarianism. Bandera, who did not know what was going on here, were monuments, but to those who fought here, what? Shukhevych should have monuments, not Bandera! That is, an offense for those who fought and died, since they died not for Bandera, but for Ukraine.
By the way, there was not a single red and black sign in the UPA! Only blue-yellow and yellow-blue flags, since they were Bandera and Melnikovites. The Ukrainian rebels of the Bandera direction had a blue-yellow flag, and the Melnikovites - a yellow-blue one. And red and black colors appeared in Ukraine only in 1991-1992.
- And where did the red and black flag come from?
- The red and black flag is fascism! For only the Bolsheviks, fascists and Italian fascists of Mussolini made the party flags state. Even Russia has now returned to the normal Russian flag. The red and black flag is the flag of the provocateurs.
I said that I was here in 1990. Then there was the Soviet Union, which ruled everything here, and even then UNA-UNSO appeared in Lvov. They walked with red and black flags. And UNA-UNSO was created not by Ukrainian patriots, but by the Bolsheviks. It was created by the KGB for provocations.
Want proof? Before the declaration of independence, I was in Lviv and lived in the Georges hotel. I went out onto the balcony, I look, and along the street that is now Shevchenko Avenue, UNA-UNSO is marching, about 80 guys in camouflage, and they are carrying red and black flags and singing: “Death, death, lyakham death, death of the Moscow-Jewish commune ". So they walked in circles for an hour. And I was just on my way to Kiev and was familiar with the chairman of the foreign affairs commission in the Ukrainian parliament. And I tell him that Ukrainians have a terrible stigma of anti-Semites, and in Europe, anti-Semitism is equal to fascism, and we can suffer greatly. You are in power and you have to do something about it.. He told me that he saw this "attraction" on Russian television in the evening. The Russians were already there! The KGB organized it all so that the world would know who the Ukrainians are.
The KGB were wise. Let's show the world that they are anti-Semites! And those idiots are still holding that flag.
I was at the first meeting of the UGVR in the village of Sprynya (in the Carpathians near Sambir in the Lviv region). In 1944, there were more blue and yellow flags and less red and black. And in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the UGVR, there were few blue and yellow. And all are red and black! This speaks of the terrible stupidity that helps the enemies of Ukraine!
At the beginning of the war, the OUN concluded an agreement with Hitler's Germany. Why did this happen? Was this contract necessary?
- Cooperation between the OUN and the Germans has been around for a long time. Long before World War II. Even from the era of the West Ukrainian People's Republic, from the time of the Petliura-Pilsudski treaty: tragic and unfortunate for Ukraine.
The Poles did not conquer us, but Petliura in this treaty renounced Western Ukraine and gave it to the Poles. Petrushevich could not support Petliuraism, and no one in Western Ukraine could support this. And then the following slogan appeared: "Though with the devil, but against Poland." Then the Sovietophilia began to develop between the Galicians. Then they began to look for contacts with the Germans, and Germany at that time was republican - democratic.
Both the UVO and then the OUN had contacts with the German army. Even before Hitler came. The Ukrainians, together with the Germans, sabotaged Poland and were supported by German military intelligence.
And when Hitler came, the contacts were interrupted. Why? Because the Polish dictator Pilsudski was smarter than all other rulers in Europe. Seeing the threat posed by Hitler, he turned to other countries with a proposal to go to Germany and strangle Hitler.
He was refused and then, fearing an attack, he concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany and agreed on cooperation against the Bolsheviks - he hoped that in this case he would not be touched. Now documents have been found, which indicate on what principles this agreement was built. There was an agreement: as soon as they together destroyed the USSR, Poland would receive Ukraine.
After that, the head of the German intelligence service, Canaris, called E. Konovalets (one of the main organizers and long-term leader of the OUN - MS) for a secret conversation and said that “there is an agreement with the Poles, and we can no longer support you in the fight against the Poles. But you organize an underground movement against the Bolsheviks. And this became the cause of Konovalets' death. The Bolsheviks abandoned their station to us, and one of these residents killed Konovalets. And when Hitler signed a treaty with Stalin, then everything again returned to the other side, and we again together with the Germans were against Poland. This is about the old collaboration.
And now about how everything was during the war: the Versailles Treaty divided Ukraine in half, leaving a part under Poland. Germany fought to revise this treaty. We, all patriots, also stood for revising this treaty in order to reunite Ukraine. So we stood with the Germans on an equal footing in revising this treaty. And when Hitler started the war, we were happy, because we thought that this was another chance to make Ukraine independent.
On June 30, 1941, the independence of Ukraine was proclaimed in Lvov, and in all our proclamations it was written - "Long live Hitler!" Because we hoped that we would be a united country in a new Europe, although we understood that the so-called “New Europe” would be the Hitlerite USSR! We were ready to become a German vassal for the sake of the unification of Ukraine. And now I say that the Germans did a good job, that they dispersed us then, because we would never have an independent Ukraine. The world would curse us that we are German servants!
They have arrested our government. My colleagues boast that we have started to fight against the Germans. No. It was the Germans who forced us to fight with them. I was just as Germanophile as everyone else, but when the Germans started looking for me, I began to fight with them.
But tell me - if Stalin signed a treaty with Hitler, is that good? And how we concluded an agreement with Hitler, is it bad?
Now this memory of cooperation with the Nazis interferes with the recognition of the UPA
- The UPA is not guilty of anything, because then there was no UPA! The UPA appeared in 1943 on the basis of the fight against the Nazis. It was an uprising against the Germans. Now they say "OUN-UPA", but this is a Bolshevik provocation. There was the OUN, and there was the UPA. Whoever unites the OUN and the UPA is a provocateur.
And now they started adding "OUN-UPA divisions". What are you talking about? So you only help the enemies, so our opponents immediately add two letters "SS" to the word "division" - and that's it, we have a stamp. I have repeatedly spoken abroad with those "divisional men" who were really in the German divisions, and they say that they "fought for Ukraine." Which one? Under the Germans? And when I say that you fought for Germany, they rage.
The President of Ukraine awarded Roman Shukhevych the title of Hero of Ukraine. Is it worth now to resort to glorification, causing such controversy in Ukraine?
- Kuchma gave me the Order of Merit to Ukraine, Yushchenko gave me the Order of Yaroslav the Wise in 2006. I am proud that, at least, they have now admitted that I fought for Ukraine.
Shukhevych deserves the order! The rewarding of Shukhevych made the "regionals" a little nervous (meaning the members of the "Party of Regions", approx. Transl.), And made Putin even more nervous. But I believe that it is not for Putin to decide who in Ukraine will receive orders. It's none of their business! Or is Ukraine their property, that they have to decide who deserves the order and who does not? We are not interested in whom you give orders, to whom the Americans give orders, to whom China gives orders, why are you interested in whom we give orders? We give orders to those who fought against you!
