On October 15, 1959, in Munich, during an operation carried out by the KGB, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, Stepan Bandera, was killed. This date became an occasion to remind (and tell those who do not know) about how it was, talk about Bandera himself and his role in the history of Ukraine.
Munich resident Stefan Popel
On October 15, 1959, a man with a face covered in blood was taken to a Munich hospital. The victim's neighbors who called the doctors knew him as Stefan Popel. When the medics arrived, Popel was still alive. But the doctors did not manage to save him. Popel died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness. The doctors could only state the death and establish its cause. Although the delivered man had a fracture in the base of his skull caused by a fall, the immediate cause of death was cardiac paralysis.
On examination, a holster with a pistol was found on Popel, this was the reason for calling the police. The police officers who arrived quickly established that the true name of the deceased was Stepan Bandera, and he was the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists. The body was examined again, more thoroughly. One of the doctors noticed the smell of bitter almonds, coming from the face of the deceased. Vague suspicions were confirmed: Bandera was killed: poisoned with potassium cyanide.
Required Foreword - 1: OUN
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) emerged in Western Ukraine in 1929 as a response to the oppression of the Ukrainian population of Galicia by the Polish authorities. According to a treaty of 1921, Poland pledged to give Ukrainians equal rights with Poles, autonomy, a university and create all conditions for national and cultural development.
In fact, the Polish authorities pursued a policy of forced assimilation, polonization and catholicization against the Galicians. In local government bodies, only Poles were appointed to all positions. The Greek Catholic churches and monasteries were closed. In a few schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, Polish teachers taught. Ukrainian teachers and priests were persecuted. Reading rooms were closed, Ukrainian literature was destroyed.
The Ukrainian population of Galicia responded with mass actions of disobedience (refusal to pay taxes, participation in the census, elections to the Senate and the Seimas, service in the Polish army) and acts of sabotage (arson of military warehouses and state institutions, damage to telephone and telegraph communications, attacks on gendarmes) … In 1920, former military personnel of the UPR and ZUNR created the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), which became the basis for the OUN, created in 1929.
Required Foreword - 2: Stepan Bandera
Bandera was born in 1909 into the family of a Greek Catholic priest, a supporter of Ukrainian independence. Already in the 4th grade of the gymnasium, Bandera became a member of the semi-legal nationalist organization of students, took part in organizing boycotts and sabotaging the decisions of the Polish authorities. In 1928, Stepan became a member of the UVO, and in 1929 - the OUN.
Thanks to his outstanding organizational skills, he quickly became a leader. Since the beginning of the 30s, the leadership of the organization entrusted Bandera with organizing military and terrorist actions. Bandera considers enemies not only to Poland, but also to Soviet Russia. He organizes the assassinations of the secretary of the Soviet consulate in Lvov A. Maylov (October 1933) and the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Peratsky (June 1934).
Since 1939, Bandera has been a recognized leader of the revolutionary wing of the OUN, the leader and ideological inspirer of the underground nationalist movement in Western Ukraine. The commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych has always stated that he is exclusively subordinate to Bandera.
In the fall of 1949, the Supreme Court of the USSR at its closed session sentenced S. Bandera to the death penalty. The authorities were tasked with eliminating the leader of the OUN.
Liquidator Bogdan Stashinsky
In May 1958, the entire leadership of the OUN gathered in Rotterdam. On May 23, at the city cemetery at the grave of the founder of the organization, Yevgeny Konovalets, a mourning rally was held, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of his death. (On May 23, 1938, Konovalets was killed by an agent of the NKVD P. Sudoplatov.) Bandera was the first to speak at the rally. Among those present - a young man, according to the documents - Hans Joachim Budayt, a native of Dortmund. In fact, it was the KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky, who was entrusted with the elimination of the OUN leader.
OUN member Stashinsky was recruited by the NKVD in 1950. In his track record, the introduction of the Bandera troops into the detachment and the subsequent destruction of the gang, the murder in 1957 of one of the leaders of the OUN, Lev Rebet. Since 1958, his goal is Bandera. Stashinsky arrived in Rotterdam with the sole purpose of seeing the "object" of the future action in person. He gazes intently at the speaker.
Everything is ready for the operation
In May 1959, Stashinsky arrived in Munich. It is somewhere here, according to the operational data of the KGB, that S. Bandera lives under a false name. By October Stashinsky tracked down Bandera and established his address - Christmanstrasse, 7. The liquidator received a secret weapon - a double-barreled cylinder with a spring and a trigger, loaded with ampoules with hydrocyanic acid (potassium cyanide). Under the influence of a low-power pore charge, the ampoules break, the poison is thrown up to a distance of 1 meter. The person who inhaled the vapor loses consciousness, the victim's heart stops. The performer himself preliminarily takes a drug that neutralizes the effect of the poison.
This is how Stashinsky killed Lev Rebet in 1957. The operation to eliminate Rebet was successful: doctors pronounced him dead from a heart attack. Now it's Bandera's turn.
Liquidation
On October 15, at about 12:50 pm, Stashinsky, several minutes ahead of Bandera, enters the entrance of the house and climbs several flights up. Hearing the front door slam, he put an antidote pill under his tongue and began to descend. Having caught up with Bandera, Stashinsky threw forward his hand with a cylinder wrapped in newspaper and released a jet of poison directly into the face of the OUN leader. Without slowing down or looking back, the agent headed for the exit. As he closed the door, he heard the sound of a fallen body behind him.
In Moscow, the chairman of the KGB A. Shelepin personally congratulated the agent on the successfully completed assignment and in a solemn atmosphere presented him with the Order of the Battle Red Banner. Taking this opportunity, Stashinsky asked Shelepin for permission to marry his old friend, an East German woman Inga Paul, and received consent.
Defector Stashinsky
Inga, to whom Bogdan, in violation of all instructions, told about his service in the KGB, got scared and began to persuade her husband to flee to the West. For almost 2 years, she convinced Stashinsky that sooner or later the KGB would liquidate him as an unnecessary witness, and in the end she was able to persuade him to escape. On August 12, 1961, just a day ahead of the start of the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Stashinskys crossed the border dividing the city into sectors. Bogdan surrendered to the police and applied to the authorities for political asylum. He spoke in detail about the actions he carried out to destroy the political opponents of the Kremlin. The trial that took place over the defector in Karlsruhe was widely covered in the international press (except for the Soviet one) and even became the reason for introducing some changes to the system of German legislation. Stashinsky was given 8 years.
After the trial
The echo of the process in Karlsruhe reached the USSR as well. Only its consequences were slightly different … The chairman of the KGB "iron Shurik" Alexander Shelepin lost his post, and along with him 17 more KGB officers of the highest ranks.
Of the 8 years awarded, Stashinsky served four years. After his release, his traces are lost. There are versions that with the help of plastic surgery, his appearance was changed and then transported to South Africa. There is information on the Internet that allegedly in the early 2000s, two elderly foreigners, a man and a woman, came to the native village of Stashinsky Borshchevichi near Lvov. And it seems that one of the villagers recognized in the old man a native of this village Bogdan Stashinsky - a former KGB officer who began his career in the authorities with betrayal, betrayal and ended it.
What was the significance of the OUN struggle for Ukraine?
We will try to get rid of ideological predilections (although this is difficult) and to assess the activities of Bandera for Ukraine with an open mind. Was she a blessing?
What chances did the OUN have of winning?
1. No outside support. (The partisans of Belarus were supported by Moscow, the Afghan mujahideen - by the United States, Chechen militants - by the Islamic world, the UPA - nobody).
2. Scattered detachments were opposed by the victorious army in World War II.
3. The NKVD, MGB and SMERSH fought against the nationalist underground, whose employees honed their professionalism in the fight against the Abwehr and Zeppelin SD.
4. At the head of the state was a leader who did not hesitate to make tough and even cruel decisions.
What could the OUN oppose to all this? History itself has long answered this question: the underground movement in Ukraine was ultimately defeated, and Bandera's “legacy” is still “hiccuping” in Ukraine, the remaining divided state.
As it was in Poland …
With its last order dated January 19, 1945, the Home Army leadership, thanking all its soldiers for serving their homeland, released them from the oath and announced their self-dissolution. Yes, Soviet Poland was not the state many Poles dreamed of. But the AK leadership recognized the futility of the struggle in Poland occupied by the Red Army and did not fan the flames of the civil war. Not all AK people laid down their arms, but it was already a personal choice of each separately, to which the AK leadership had nothing to do.
… And like in Ukraine
Bandera, until the last day of his life, was a supporter of the struggle against Soviet power. Neither chronicle frames nor recordings of his speeches have survived, but all contemporaries are unanimous: he was a charismatic leader, able to convince and lead people. And people followed him. Thousands, tens of thousands of Yunaki and Divchat - the best representatives of the Ukrainian people, its pride, its color, its gene pool, ready to die for Ukraine, at the call of Bandera, joined the struggle and perished, perished, perished.
The civilian population suffered huge casualties. Anyone who gave an underground member or UPA fighter a piece of bread, a piece of bacon or a jar of milk became an accomplice and paid severely for it. Tens of thousands were repressed, imprisoned, camps, evicted. Following in the footsteps of the UPA, the NKVD troops fought not in white gloves. (From the report: “during the operation, 500 bandits and their accomplices were destroyed, 15 rifles were captured” 500/15! Comments are needed?)
Those who closed the door to the "fighters for the freedom of Ukraine" were credited as "accomplices of the Muscovites." The executions of the apostates were so terrible (atrocities!) That death from a bullet or a noose was bestowed as the greatest mercy that still had to be earned! The nationalist underground was kept up not only by the support, but also by the fear of the people.
Civil war on the territory of Ukraine
The fight against the UPA was fought not only by the forces of the NKVD troops, but also by extermination battalions formed from the population of the same regions and villages. The "hawks" and Bandera's people who faced each other in battle were often fellow villagers, knew each other by name and by sight. Ukrainians killed Ukrainians. How many of them died in that civil war fanned by Bandera? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
So who says that Bandera is the glory of Ukraine?
Bandera is Ukraine's misfortune.
