Revolution was one of the most significant concepts of OUN ideology. The Ukrainian nationalists believed that they could create a state only in the course of a revolution, which they sometimes called an uprising. During the interwar period, the OUN occupied itself with “permanent revolution,” while preparing Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic for the final act—the “national revolution.” In order to start the latter, however, the OUN needed a convenient opportunity, such as a war or other international conflict between their “occupiers.” When Germany attacked Poland in September 1939, some of the OUN leaders were unsure whether the right moment for the “bloody uprising” had arrived. They were disappointed by the political changes, but Germany—especially the Abwehr—involved them in its next major expansion eastward, the war against the Soviet Union, which the OUN hoped would present the opportunity to start the “bloody uprising” and to establish an authoritarian state of a fascist type. The conflicts and splits within the movement did not prevent the Ukrainian nationalists from elaborating new revolutionary plans. The most efficient and detailed plan for a revolution was manufactured by the OUN-B and called the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” Its architects adjusted it to the ethos of the “New Europe,” with its fascist and racist political order.[673]
On 13 September 1939, thirteen days after Nazi Germany attacked Poland, Stepan Bandera escaped from the prison in Brest. Together with other Ukrainian ex-prisoners, he made his way to Lviv, where he allegedly stayed in the buildings of St. George’s Cathedral and met with Sheptyts’kyi. On 17 September, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east. The German and Soviet attack on Poland was brought about by the Treaty of Nonaggression signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by the German and Soviet Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Viacheslav Molotov. After a few days in Lviv, Bandera, realizing that eastern Galicia would remain in the Soviet sphere of influence, left the city for the area of Poland that was occupied by Germany, and which became known as the General Government. With him went a few other OUN members, including his brother Vasyl’, who had escaped from the Polish concentration camp in Bereza Kartuska. They crossed the German-Soviet border that divided the territory of the now non-existent Second Republic, and went to Cracow.[674]
In the short period of time between the German attack on Poland and the Soviet invasion, there was chaos and a political vacuum in western Ukraine. Before the Soviet army came to western Ukraine, some German units entered this territory and stayed for about two weeks. At that time, the OUN was considering whether to conduct its “national revolution.” In some locations it established a militia, which attacked and killed Jews, Poles, and Ukrainian political opponents.[675] However, once the OUN realized that it was insufficiently prepared and that the political situation on account of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was not favorable for such an event, the leadership decided not to attempt to take power in the territory or to establish a state. In this short period of time, the OUN killed approximately 2,000 Poles in eastern Galicia, about 1,000 in Volhynia, and an unknown number of Jews and political opponents.[676]
At that time, Polish soldiers killed an unknown number of Ukrainians in response to the OUN violence and also because some Ukrainians welcomed the Soviet army, erected triumphal arches for them, and sang “communist songs mixed with religious
hymns.”[677] Jews became the victims of both sides during this period.[678] In Iavoriv (Jaworów), a small town about fifty kilometers west of Lviv, for example, German troops, together with Ukrainian militiamen who were wearing yellow-and-blue armlets, destroyed the local synagogue and humiliated, tortured, beat, murdered, and otherwise mistreated the Jews.[679] Bandera, whose visits overlapped with the first violent acts conducted by the OUN, never mentioned them in his writings, just as he did not mention the greater atrocities that the OUN and UPA later committed, during and after Second World War. In his brief autobiography from 1959 Bandera stated that in September 1939 the OUN “began to establish partisan units that concerned themselves with the protection of the Ukrainian population and took possession of weapons and other military equipment for a future struggle.”[680]