OUN LEADER YEVHEN KONOVALETS
Acts of terrorism are a serious threat to mankind, which are becoming a symbol of a destructive modus vivendi. This issue cannot be circumvented, and discounting it means a permanent feeling of discomfort, especially for those who are not afraid to broach “prickly” subjects, seeing in them not only a professional challenge but necessary to society. The high ideals of terrorists are enclosed within quotation marks. Terrorists in the East and West, in America and Australia are described as fanatics, most of whom had a “hungry childhood and lack of vitamins.” Publications that reach deeper than journalistic ones belong to the realm of psychologists and psychiatrists. The possibility of terrorism in Ukraine is also being investigated. The reasons behind this destructive mode are also being found, although it was entirely different when acts of terrorism were being committed in Ukraine.
It is hard to discuss Ukrainian terrorists, but maintaining silence on this subject will not help to establish the historical truth. By consciously concealing unpleasant truths from a nation that already has its own state will not honor the Ukrainian community at large. After acquainting myself with dozens of criminal cases of OUN members at the Volyn Oblast State Archives, I arrived at the conclusion that they are not fabricated. There were ID papers affixed to the files, making it perfectly clear that the terrorists were nationalists; bitter facts but not fictitious. Document after document was the same, reminding one that an OUN member could be not simply a political fighter but also a terrorist. I hope the reader will excuse the numerous quotations; I used them because I am convinced that they contain information that is not known to the general public.
APROPOS OF THE NATIONAL IDEA
Ukrainians can easily condemn terrorism, especially when it has a non-Ukrainian visage. You begin to understand Ukrainian terrorism when you grasp its origins. Then you become convinced that there is no use concealing it. This will not diminish the OUN’s glory.
The foundations of terrorism for the champions of Ukrainian independence were laid by the inspirator of the nationalists, Dmytro Dontsov. Acting through the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), Yevhen Konovalets showed in practice what the Ukrainian terrorist-patriots were capable of. Their efforts to achieve the betterment of Ukrainians with the aid of violence — assassinations of high-ranking Polish officials in Western Ukraine, which was then under Poland — were in vain. The Ukrainian guerrillas were pursuing a lofty goal indeed, the Ukrainian national idea. Here, the position of psychologists, who place the word combination “lofty idea” within quotation marks, appears cynical. To begin with, the Ukrainian terrorists, by committing acts of violence, were not liberating themselves from something but for something. This nuance permeates their ideology, the teachings of Dmytro Dontsov. To argue about the vain sacrifices of the Ukrainian nationalists, their cruelty and inhumane methods of struggle means to fail to comprehend the essence of Ukrainian nationalism, and even more so its adherents, who in the 1920s-1930s regarded Dontsov’s Nationalism as their handbook.
Second, voluntarism, a militant approach, and unreality are the invariable components of the Ukrainian national idea during the period of the OUN’s maturation.
Third, in the current situation, when there are significantly fewer nationalists than socialists or democrats in Ukraine, i.e, those who were adherents of the ideas espoused by Drahomanov, Franko, Hrushevsky, and Vynnychenko, a mythical prescience of a rift among the nationally conscious forces emerges. All this is primarily based on a varied understanding of the national idea, which should unify.
After studying Dontsov, one can read Ukrainian history without a sedative. Among Dontsov’s immutable positions are a condemnation of Kostomarov and Drahomanov, Vynnychenko and Hrushevsky, and the conviction that affectation, not intellectualism, the volitional factor, is the determining one in the consolidation of the nation. Opposing a sword instead of Ivan Franko’s pitchfork with which to clean one’s home manure; proving that among nations, like in nature, only the stronger survive, that glory and strength are measured not by the amount of tears and scope of suffering but by the struggle, the ideologue of the Ukrainian nationalists did not exclude the destruction of opponents. Was this why the members of the OUN were compared to fascists?
“A boiovyk (guerrilla fighter) should unhesitatingly kill his father, brother, best friend when he receives an order and when it is necessary” (State Archive of Volyn oblast, Fonds 191, List 1, File 1289, p. 38). This order was known to all the UVO fighters, and later those of the OUN, but for some reason this is kept secret these days. The Ukrainian reader who has access to the nationalists’ ideological writings does not know the practical principles guiding the fighters for the national idea operated. Instead, new myths have appeared about noble knights in embroidered shirts, who fought the enemy face to face, while treachery and terror are the fabrications of the Polish secret police and NKVD. The attempts to assassinate Pilsudski and Wojciechowski, and the assassination of Professor Tverdokhlib, Dr. Matvianets, curators Sobinski and Hadomsky, Ambassador Holovko, Soviet Ambassador Maslosh, Dr. Babiy and Minister Pieracki — these are only a few entries on a list of terrorist acts perpetrated by the boiovyks of the special OUN department. Who should evaluate and comment on their actions — a psychologist, psychiatrist, historian, or high- ranking official? Maybe this is improper, just like viewing other unattractive aspects when it comes to the national idea?
In the event of failure, the boiovyk Boris Savinkov could shoot himself rather than the soldiers hunting him down; the boiovyk Stepan Bandera and his comrades-in-arms would never shoot themselves. Russian terrorists engaged in terrorist acts because they learned there was no God who would punish them for this; modern terrorists learned there is a God, which also gave them the right to engage in terrorism, because God sees everything, knows the Truth, and will punish those who are truly guilty. The Ukrainian terrorists used the New Testament, having learned that Jesus “came not to send peace, but a sword...” and that “The Son of God used not only spiritual but also physical strength.” All the OUN boiovyks knew this statement by heart.
ETERNAL PATHOS! PEACE IS BUT A DREAM!
As a rule, the media views the personalities of terrorists in a variety of ways. Psychological reasons are sought, which could have caused the breakdown of the personality. When no significant social reasons are found, a terrorist is described as a fanatic or a savage. As a method of total struggle against terrorism, a shift of spiritual accents from worshipping force and will to arming oneself with universal human values is proposed. This is not a new phenomenon; there was a similar situation in the 1930s, when Poland, a seemingly democratic state, “instructed” the Ukrainian nationalists, showing them the right way, by shifting the accents from individual to the general. However, the UVO-OUN boiovyks did not change, and did not halt the terror, the so-called assassinations, because they did not have personal grudges; they were not trying to save themselves. They justified their deeds by the obvious threat to the nation and were trying to save it. Everything “rotated” around the Ukrainian national idea.
For the ideologues of Ukrainian nationalism, Ukrainian terrorism was a constructive mode. The sheer eclectic environment in which the “bloodless” advocates of independence found themselves was obviously not to the liking of the Ukrainian nationalists, who were certain that separation and Ukraine’s separateness would not create a free Ukraine, since the state-building aspect had been forgotten. For when a nation seeking peace avoids expansion, the “disappearance of the need for an organizational-state center” takes place, and this in turn leads to the loss of statehood, and later to the circumstance that the nation ceases to be a nation.
“Kill the distributors of the press that is hostile to us, drive them out of the villages and cities, kill them!” This is what the Ukrainian boiovyks were instructed to do in the 1930s, as well as to destroy Polish shops, drive away non-Ukrainian beggars, disarm forest rangers, and kill, kill, kill. Inadvertently, the image of the Ukrainian boiovyk turned into a monster horrifying the advocates of Drahomanov, Vynnychenko, Franko, and Hrushevsky’s ideas, and everyone who was dreaming of a little windmill and a cherry orchard. The Ukrainian Rakhmetovs were remote from the masses, yet they could not see Vera Pavlovna’s dreams. The Ukrainian national idea was primarily a revolutionary idea. It proved to be nonviable without a romantic factor, an abstract will to live and act, which gives rise to a kind of affectation, pathos (often called fanaticism). This pathos is remote from low feelings and selfishness; it is a supreme passion that contains excessive love and hatred. Carriers of this pathos know nothing about tolerance; a martial spirit is one of their characteristics; they acknowledge the amorality of their deeds in regard to the morality of the gray masses, the lower-middle class. The OUN boiovyk morality was defined as a true morality, inasmuch as it served the liberation and development of social energy, rather than its curbing. Dontsov, the inspirator of the Ukrainian nationalists wrote, “From the point of view of this morality, hatred for the enemy must be felt even if he has done nothing harmful to you until now (Plato), from this point of view the viper must be trampled even when it is not aware that it is doing harm (Lesia Ukrainka).”
As a rule, contemporary researchers regard terrorists as primitive individuals who never hesitate when it comes down to “killing or not killing.” Standing behind the phenomenon of self-sacrifice, some kind of artificial ideal, is a weak personality that fears long and urgent work in the name of a lofty ideal. This principle of research is not new.
In 1935, after the trial of the assassins of Pieracki, the Polish interior minister, similar ideas were expressed about Stepan Bandera, Mykola Lebid, Ivan Maliutsa, and other defendants. All of them had immobile, stony expressions on their faces and boldly expressed their hatred of Poland and Russia. Winners of the (Yaroslav) Halan Prize, affected by socialist realism, characterized these nationalists just like they did the fascists. A nationalist terrorist could not have anything attractive about him, even outwardly.
The Soviet government condemned foreign terrorists while having its own in the NKVD and KGB. To love or hate terrorists who consciously went to their deaths in the name of the national idea is definitely a matter of personal choice for every Ukrainian. One thing is understood today: in the 1920s-1930s, OUN members knew that an oppressed nation would not be free, i.e., to rule without applying force, without coercion. Ukrainian pathos had to reject everything alien and that was the only way it had a future, that it could vanquish the enemies of the Ukrainian national idea. “If militant fascism or Bolshevism had not had the same spirit in them that inspired triumphant fascism and Bolshevism, they would have never triumphed.” Dontsov’s conclusion was accessible and understandable to the OUN leaders and boiovyks. To make the national idea work, it had to be promulgated-not with the aid of enlightenment efforts but through aggression: Ukrainian pathos, the psyche of a nation as master, not a slave, should have overcome what was alien to Ukraine, including their own “people of little faith.” The leader of the OUN, Colonel Yevhen Konovalets, died in 1938 in Rotterdam from a bomb planted by Moscow terrorists. The OUN leadership called him a superman, who never feared physical death. The Great Leader’s body, mutilated by the explosion, did not frighten the OUN boiovyks. They were inspired by a truly great idea. Filled with pathos, they marched firmly, even though their path was thorny. On the sidelines stood many fellow Ukrainians, who also wanted an independent Ukraine, but without shedding innocent blood. Now those who marched down that road and those who stood on the sidelines have one state, a single independent Ukraine, and are afraid of terrorism in Ukraine. Better to see it in another country. Then this worldwide evil could be explained and commented on the broadest possible scale, from the first manifestations of terrorism in the 12th century to the events in Moscow and New York City. But what about our own terrorism? Can we remain silent on the subject?
There is no answer.
