The closer the German attack against the Soviet Union approached, the more specific were the OUN-B’s plans for the establishment of a Ukrainian state. The Ukrainian state was planned to come into being as a result of the “Ukrainian National Revolution,” under the leadership of the OUN-B. In May 1941, as part of the preparation for the revolution, the OUN-B completed a very important document called “The Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime,” further referred to here as “Struggle and Activities,” on which OUN-B leaders Bandera, Lenkavs’kyi, Shukhevych, and Stets’ko had been working for several weeks.[764] The document was intended to provide the revolutionaries with orientation and specific information concerning the development of the revolution. According to the document, the OUN-B planned to use a “favorable situation” of a “war between Moscow and other states,” in order to conduct the revolution, to which the OUN-B sought to mobilize the whole Ukrainian nation.[765] The goal of the revolution was to establish the “totalitarian power of the Ukrainian nation in the Ukrainian territories,” which would need a “strong political and military organization in all Ukrainian territories,” that is to say the OUN-B.[766]
A huge challenge for the OUN-B revolution and state were the minorities. The authors of “Struggle and Activities” divided them into: “a) our friends, i.e. the members of the enslaved nations [and] b) our enemies, Muscovites, Poles, and Jews.” Since the first group was expected to help the OUN conduct the revolution against the Soviet Union, they were to “have the same rights as Ukrainians” in the future Ukrainian OUN-B state. The second group would be “destroyed in the struggle, in particular those who protect the regime” of their country. This corresponded with the principle: “Our power should be horrible for its opponents. Terror for enemy aliens and our traitors.”[767] There was to be no mercy for Ukrainians who disagreed with the politics of the OUN-B. The Ukrainian people would have to understand that the OUN-B was the only power in Ukraine. To convince the masses of this, OUN-B members tried to frighten the resistant parts of the nation by assuring them that they would be punished.[768]
After the start of the revolution, revolutionaries coming to Ukraine from the General Government were intended to get in touch with the OUN underground and to take control of radio stations for the purpose of mobilizing the masses.[769] A very important point contained in “Struggle and Activities” was to concentrate on the ideological, propagandistic, and theatrical parts, and not to waste energy fighting, which should be limited to fighting for such crucial points as radio stations or industrial areas.[770] If possible, the OUN was not to fight against the Red Army[771] or NKVD units[772] and was to actively prevent all Ukrainians from doing so,[773] probably because the OUN-B expected the Germans to do it for them. Using the political vacuum, that would follow the withdrawal of the Soviet authorities, was, for the OUN-B, more important than warfare. While taking advantage of the political vacuum, the OUN-B would establish the organs of the state. The officials of the state and ordinary citizens would welcome the incoming German army and express a wish to collaborate with Nazi Germany:
We treat the coming German army as the army of allies. We try before their coming to put life in order, on our own as it should be. We inform them that the Ukrainian authority is already established, it is under the control of the OUN under the leadership of Stepan Bandera; all matters are regulated by the OUN, and the local authorities are ready to establish friendly relations with the army, in order to fight together against Moscow and collaborate [with Nazi Germany].[774]
When greeting the arriving German troops, OUN members were to inform them that they had already cleared the terrain of Soviet troops and were ready for further struggle, alongside the Germans, against the Soviet Union.[775] Since the Jews, according to the resolution of the Second Great Congress, were the “main pillar of the Bolshevik regime, and the avant-garde of Russian imperialism in Ukraine,” they were, for the OUN-B activists, as for the Germans, synonymous with agents of the Soviet Union.[776] In 1941, the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism” was prevalent in the OUN-B. Jews blurred with “Soviets” in the minds of the Ukrainian nationalists and, like the “Soviet occupiers,” were to be removed from the “Ukrainian territories.”
While taking over power and establishing a dictatorial regime, the OUN-B were to nominate new officials as village, city, and town presidents, administration staff, militiamen, and so forth. All these officials were obliged to swear an oath to Stepan Bandera.[777] All important posts were to remain in the hands of OUN members.[778]
Another important aim of the revolutionary propaganda was to convince the Ukrainian people that the proclamation or the “rebirth” of the state was real and was a very important act. For this purpose, OUN-B-members were to organize meetings in all possible villages, towns, and cities, and read out their manifesto about the “renewal of the Ukrainian state.”[779] The standardized text of this manifesto was:
In the name of all Ukraine, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera proclaims the Ukrainian state, for which entire generations of the best sons of Ukraine have given their lives. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which, under the leadership of its Creator and Leader Ievhen Konovalets’ conducted an intense struggle for freedom in the last decades of Muscovite-Bolshevik oppression, calls upon the whole Ukrainian nation not to lay down its arms until there is sovereign Ukrainian authority over all Ukrainian lands.
Sovereign Ukrainian authority will guarantee the Ukrainian people law and order, the universal development of all its forces, and the satisfaction of all its needs.[780]
All the people gathered, including women and children, were to commit themselves to the leadership of Stepan Bandera, and to swear an oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian state. They were expected to swear that they would serve the Ukrainian state with their lives, defending it to the last drop of their blood. At the end of the proclamation, every Ukrainian fit for service was to be inducted into the “Ukrainian National Army,” and mobilized for immediate deployment in the area.[781]
One task of the recruited militiamen and soldiers, who had already sworn an oath to Bandera, was to take “disturbing persons” and survivals from the enemy side (marodery, nedobytky) from their place of residence to a “hidden and inaccessible place (forests, mountains etc.), where particular liquidation actions” were to be conducted.[782] The OUN-B members, and in particular the OUN-B militiamen were advised to follow the rule: “During the time of chaos and confusion, it is permissible to liquidate undesirable Polish, Muscovite [Russian or Soviet], and Jewish activists.”[783] Moreover, the Ukrainian insurgents were obliged to compile blacklists with personal data of “all important Poles … NKVD people, informers, provocateurs … all important Ukrainians who, in the critical time, would try to make ‘their politics’ and thereby threaten the decisive mind-set of the Ukrainian nation.”[784]
The part of the document concerning the Security Service (Sluzhba Bezpeky, SB) of the OUN-B was also unambiguous about what to do with non-Ukrainians:
We have to remember that these existing elements have to be, as the main pillar of the NKVD and the Soviet authority in Ukraine, exterminated while [we are] establishing the new revolutionary order in Ukraine. These elements are:
1. Muscovites [Moskali], sent to the Ukrainian territories in order to strengthen the Moscow power in Ukraine.
2. Jews [Zhydy], as individuals as well as a national group.
3. Aliens [Chuzhyntsi], especially various Asians with whom Moscow colonized Ukraine …
4. Poles [Poliaky] in the western Ukrainian territories, who have not ceased dreaming about the reconstruction of a Greater Poland.[785]
The OUN-B used similar standards to define the “enemies of the Ukrainian nation” in the eastern Ukrainian collective farms. In this regard, the OUN-B classified as enemies “all the strangers who came to the collectives to oversee the exploitation of the collectivized villages,” “Jews, working in the collectives, as the implementers of Bolshevik power,” “all the representatives of the Bolshevik power,” and informers.[786]
During the revolution, however, the crucial role of destroying the enemies of the OUN and establishing the new authority was to be played, not by the SB, but by the National Militia (Narodnia Militsiia). All men between the ages of eighteen and fifty and capable of bearing arms were to be included in the militia.[787] Because the OUN-B had no uniforms for the militia, every militiaman was to wear either a yellow-and-blue armband, or a white armband with the inscription “National Militia.”[788] The leader of a militia unit should be a “known nationalist,” loyal to the OUN-B.[789] The building in which the militia station would be established was to have a yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag on it.[790] For the purpose of establishing the militia, the OUN-B was wary of “provincial cities that are inhabited with foreign-national elements.” In such cases, the Ukrainian militiamen were to be recruited from adjacent villages.[791] The Ukrainian militiamen from villages were expected to establish “order [lad i poriadok]” in the cities and to “cleanse” them of “Soviet intelligence, counter-insurgency, etc. officials, Muscovites, Jews, and others.”[792]
The act of registering all Jews by the militia was related to the plan to exterminate or remove them from Ukraine after establishing the state. In view of the number of Jews in the Ukrainian territories, this could happen only step by step.[793] During the first phase of the revolution, the registration would simplify the act of detaining the Jews in concentration camps together with “asocial elements and wounded.”[794] Citizens of the OUN-B state were expected to provide the militia with information about “Red Army soldiers, NKVD men, Jews [zhydiv (evreïv)], and informers—in short, everyone who does not belong to the village community.”[795]
Propaganda would also play an important role during the revolution because, as the authors of the text knew, it could mobilize the masses to revolutionary action. The OUN-B activists were obliged to employ all kinds of propaganda, from spreading rumors to singing revolutionary songs, printing and distributing booklets and newspapers, and broadcasting “national revolutionary” propaganda by radio.[796] The main content of the propaganda was the “renewal” of the Ukrainian state by the OUN-B, and the necessary war against the “Muscovite-Jews” and other enemies of the Ukrainians.[797] Very popular was the slogan “Kill the enemies among you—Jews and informers.”[798]
Slogans that the OUN-B leadership invented for the Ukrainian soldiers in the Red Army contained many antisemitic and nationalist expressions. To motivate the soldiers to change sides, the inventors of the slogans frequently used the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism.” Some of them were: “Death to Muscovite-Jewish Communism!” “Stalin’s and Jewish Commissars—the First Enemy of the Nation!” “Marxism—a Jewish Creation!” “Muscovite-Jewish Communism—the Enemy of the Nation!” “Without the Muscovite-Jewish Commune Everyone Will Be an Owner,” “Kill the Enemies among You, the Jews and Informers!” In addition to antisemitic slogans, the OUN-B invented numerous radical nationalist, populist, and racist ones, such as “Ukraine for Ukrainians!” “In the Ukrainian Territory—Ukrainian Rule!” “Ukrainian Property into Ukrainian Hands,” “Death to the Exploiters of Ukraine!” “It is Better to Destroy National Property than to Give it to the Muscovite Stealers!” “Ukrainian Bread and Gold Only for Ukrainians!” “With the Nation—Against the Enemies of the Nation.”[799] The slogans from “Struggle and Activities” appeared, among others, in the leaflets prepared for the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” The illustrations in these leaflets mixed nationalism with antisemitism (Figs. 11–12).