Ukrainian emigrants in Germany often used pseudonyms at this time, in order to avoid deportation to Soviet Ukraine. “Popel” means snot in German and very likely caused laughter among the officials. It is not entirely clear whether Bandera adopted the pseudonym from the Ukrainian word “popil,” which means “ashes,” or used the passport of the Ukrainian chess player Stepan Popel’, which was allegedly stolen from his apartment in Paris in 1944.[1576]

Bandera also used a number of press cards. One, from 15 October 1950, confirmed that he was a correspondent of the newspaper Ukrainian Independist, living in Söcking. Another from 12 February 1955 was from the French newspaper L’Ukrainien. In 1947 Bandera used a journalist’s pass issued by Ukraїns’ka trybuna.[1577]

In addition to using false documents, Bandera was protected by the American, British, and later, the West German intelligence services. The American and British intelligence services were already taking an interest in Nazis and Nazi collaborators, before the end of the war. They were also interested in people and organizations, such as the German Military Intelligence on the Eastern Front (Fremde Heere Ost, FHO), and the various Eastern European far-right movements, including the OUN, who could provide them with information about the Soviet Union or who possessed other valuable knowledge. With the help of the CIA, Reinhard Gehlen, former head of the FHO, established the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND), the intelligence service of West Germany. American intelligence protected Gehlen and his advisers.[1578]

People such as Bandera, who could either provide information about the Soviet Union or mobilize the émigré communities with anticommunist propaganda or had contact with underground organizations behind the Iron Curtain, were of special interest to the American, British, and German intelligence services. Besides Ukrainians, there were also Croatians, Slovaks, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, and Hungarians who worked for Western intelligence services. That some of them had collaborated with the Nazis and were involved in war crimes did not matter, as long as they were useful for the Cold War. American and British intelligence possessed knowledge, although not always very accurate, about the people with whom they worked.[1579] Harry Rositzke, former head of the CIA, commented in 1985: “It was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anticommunist … [and] the eagerness or desire to enlist collaborators meant that sure, you didn’t look at their credentials too closely.”[1580]

The Ukrainian émigrés understood this situation and tried to benefit from it as much as possible. Collaborating with Western intelligence services meant protection for the OUN from legal proceedings and gained it support for its struggle against the Soviet Union. After Lebed’ returned from Zagreb, he went to Rome, where he claimed to represent the interests of Ukraine as the “foreign minister” of the UHVR, which presented itself as a kind of Ukrainian government-in-exile. Father Ivan Hryn’okh, who was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans for his work in the Nachtigall battalion, accompanied him. Together with Bishop Ivan Buchko, they negotiated with the Americans and British about the repatriation of the Waffen-SS Galizien soldiers. In the spring of 1945, Lebed’ established contact with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Berne, the forerunner of the CIA, and to which Vrets’ona, the former Abwehr agent and chief of the German-Ukrainian police in Lviv, offered his services. Volodymyr Stakhiv, minister of foreign affairs in Stets’ko’s government from 1941, did the same in Munich.[1581] Almost simultaneously, the Soviet Ukrainian writer and poet Mykola Bazhan demanded, at the assembly of the United Nations in London on 6 February 1946, that Ukrainian collaborators be handed over to the Soviet authorities.[1582]

Bandera had met with officials of the British Secret Intelligence Service (known as MI6), in the British zone at the end of the war. MI6 regarded Bandera as potentially useful for Cold War purposes, and therefore decided to help him.[1583] The American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in Munich also protected Bandera from Soviet intelligence, although it was more interested in cooperation with the UHVR, which began to compete with the ZCh OUN after the war. The CIC concluded that Bandera’s extradition would “imply to the Ukrainians that we as an organization are unable to protect them, i.e., we have no authority. In such a case, there is not any reason or sense for them to cooperate with us.”[1584] In a secret memorandum to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), commented on the role of the United States in protecting Bandera and other Ukrainian nationalists in the American occupation zone:

At the end of the last war many members of the OUN came to Western Europe to avoid capture by the advancing Soviets. The OUN re-formed in Western Europe with its headquarters in Munich. It first came to the attention of American authorities when the Russians demanded extradition of Bandera and many other anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists as war criminals. Luckily the [Soviet] attempt to locate these anti-Soviet Ukrainians was sabotaged by a few far-sighted Americans who warned the persons concerned to go into hiding.[1585]

In June 1946, a special MGB task force entered the American occupation zone, in order to kidnap Bandera. The task force consisted of five people in two cars. Before the operation started, negotiations between the Soviet and American officials had taken place. The chief of the CIC, General Edwin Silbert, promised the MVD chief of the Berlin operational sector, Major General Aleksei Sidnev, to help apprehend Bandera in the American occupation zone. Bandera, however, had been under Silbert’s protection since summer 1945, and the negotiations with Soviet intelligence were mere camouflage. Using the Polish alias “Stanislau Sitkowski,” Bandera hid in the complex that housed the Gehlen Organization. The MGB task force did not find him, although it visited several places in several cities where it was informed by the CIC that Bandera might be hiding.[1586]

Bandera was protected and supported by the Gehlen Organization and also received help from members of such organizations as the former Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend), the SS, and other individuals and organizations in situations similar to that of Bandera. The CIC noted that an underground organization of former Nazis helped Bandera to cross the border between the American and French occupation zones several times.[1587] In 1947 American intelligence described Bandera’s bodyguards as ready to “do away with any person who may be dangerous to [Bandera] or his party”[1588] and as “ruthless killers who intercept and liquidate persons who attempt to apprehend Bandera.”[1589] In 1950 he was seen with nine bodyguards.[1590]

In the long run, Lebed’, who became Bandera’s rival after the Second World War, succeeded in cooperating much more successfully with American intelligence than Bandera did. This was so, even though the CIA described Lebed’ as a “well-known sadist and collaborator of the Germans.”[1591] Afraid that OUN-UPA war crimes would cause him and other Ukrainian émigrés problems, Lebed’ wrote a book entitled UPA: Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was published in 1946 by the Publishing Office of the UHVR. In this publication, the former leader of the OUN-B and the SB of the OUN-B depicted the OUN and UPA as anti-Soviet and anti-German freedom fighters and denied or ignored all war crimes on their part. Lebed’ seems to have been especially afraid that the West would find out about his involvement in the murder of Jews and in the ethnic cleansing in Volhynia in 1943.[1592] Lebed’s book was perhaps the first comprehensive post-war publication that not only denied the OUN and UPA atrocities but also argued that the UPA helped ethnic minorities in Ukraine, in particular Jews. Lebed’ wrote that Jews remained in the UPA, even though they had the opportunity to join the Soviets, and that many of them “died a hero’s death protecting the ideals for which the whole Ukrainian nation was fighting.”[1593] He also transformed the Poles into aggressors who threatened and provoked the UPA: “We issued the order to the Poles to leave the territories that were important for UPA actions. When that had no effect, their resistance was liquidated by force.”[1594]

Bandera and Conflicts in the Organization

The conflict between the UHVR, or Lebed’s group of the ZCh OUN, and Bandera, the leader of the ZCh OUN, interfered with the cooperation between the Western intelligence services and the Ukrainian nationalists and complicated the relationship with the OUN-UPA underground in western Ukraine. When Bandera and Lebed’ met in late December 1945, they had a long discussion about politics within the OUN in exile. Both were unhappy with the result of their conversation. The main subject of their discussion was the question whether the ZCh OUN should subordinate itself to the UHVR as Lebed’ suggested, or whether the UHVR should be subordinate to the ZCh OUN, as Bandera argued.[1595] This conflict between two new OUN factions had already manifested itself after Bandera’s release from Zellenbau. Bandera and several other ZCh OUN members, including at least Iaroslav Stets’ko, Stepan Lenkavs’kyi, Bohdan Pidhainyi, Mykola Klymyshyn, Ivan Kashuba, Myron Matviieiko, Osyp Tiushka, Ievhen Lozyns’kyi, Petro Mirchuk, and Ivan Vovchuk, did not accept the supremacy of the UHVR and objected to the rejection, at the Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly in 1943, of the Führerprinzip and other fascist ideas. Bandera’s faction wanted to reintroduce the Führerprinzip and make Bandera the Providnyk of all Ukrainian émigré organizations. Many of Bandera’s post-war supporters had been detained in prisons or concentration camps from the second half of 1941 onward, to the end of 1944 or the beginning of 1945, and had been isolated from what was happening in the OUN-UPA at that time. The opposition to the “fascist faction” was formed by people such as Lev Rebet, Daria Rebet, Mykola Lebed’, Volodymyr and Ievhen Stakhiv, Vasyl’ Okhrymovych, Roman Ilnytzkyi, Ivan Hryn’okh, Ivan Butnovs’kyi, Zenon Matsiuk, Myroslav Prokop, Ievhen Vrets’ona, and Vasyl’ Potishko.[1596]

At a meeting of the OUN-B in December 1944 in Cracow, and later at a conference in Vienna in February 1945, at which he was elected representative of the leadership of the ZCh OUN, Bandera expressed his concerns about the changes introduced at the grand assembly in 1943. He believed that they were redundant and that he should remain the Providnyk of the movement. He understood the rejection of fascism, or as it was called later “democratization,” as “Soviet principles” that damaged the real nature of the OUN.[1597]

In February 1946 in Munich, Bandera’s cohorts declared the ZCh OUN to be their own organization, independent of the UHVR. Bandera’s opponents called themselves the Foreign Representation (Zakordonne Predstavnytsvo, ZP) of the UHVR, or ZP UHVR. Both organizations claimed to represent the OUN and UPA in Ukraine. For a few years there was no clear boundary between the two groups, and the split was not definite. Lebed’, for example, was active in both groups until 1948, when he finally dissociated himself from the ZCh OUN and remained in the ZP UHVR. On 16 April 1946, the ZCh OUN founded the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, or ABN, whose leader became Stets’ko.[1598] Like the ZCh OUN, the ABN was financed by MI6, which used Vatican intermediaries in order to conceal the source.[1599] The OUN-UPA in Ukraine knew about the ABN and had great hopes for it.[1600]

The ABN united the representatives of several Eastern European “enslaved nations.” Some of them, for instance Ferdinand Ďurčanský, former minister for internal and foreign affairs in Jozef Tiso’s clerical fascist Slovakia, had collaborated with the Nazis and had been deeply involved in the persecution and annihilation of Jews and in other war crimes. Similarly to Stets’ko and Lenkavs’kyi in relation to Ukraine shortly before the beginning of the Second World War, Ďurčanský had talked about “solving the Jewish Question [in Slovakia] ‘as in Germany.’” During the war Ďurčanský supported the anti-Jewish policies of Tiso’s government, which led to the destruction of several thousand Slovak Jews. After the war he was tried in absentia and sentenced to death by the same court that condemned Tiso to the death-penalty. Unlike his Vodca, Ďurčanský was never arrested and died a natural death in 1974. Some other members of the ABN were former Nazis, or veterans of movements such as the Ustaša and the Romanian Legionaries, which had cooperated with the OUN before and during the Second World War. The ABN regarded the Soviet Union as a “prison of nations” and like the OUN-B during the war, and the ZCh OUN after the war, wanted to separate this multinational empire into nation states with far-right authoritarian governments. In the ABN’s plans for a post-Soviet Eastern Europe, there was no place for Jews, Russians, or other minorities who did not live in their “own ethnic territories.”[1601]

In January 1947, conflict between the ZCh OUN and the ZP UHVR escalated. Ievhen Stakhiv wrote in his memoirs that the ZP UHVR was “democratic,” and the ZCh OUN “totalitarian.” Although the two factions certainly differed in their attitude toward democracy, the ZP UHVR and the “democratic” factions of the OUN émigrés who cooperated with it did not have much in common with the principles of democracy. They ignored and denied the war crimes of the OUN and UPA and falsified the history of the movement, similarly to the ZCh OUN. Antisemitism and nationalism pervaded both groups.[1602] In 1947 Bandera became extremely angry with the “democratic” émigrés who refused to subordinate themselves to him and who refused to accept the supremacy of the ZCh OUN. He used the SB of the ZCh OUN to intimidate and liquidate opponents whom he regarded as traitors and foes. The Providnyk ordered the head of the SB of the ZCh OUN, Matviieiko, to conduct a range of assassinations, targeting among them Lev and Daria Rebet.[1603] Not all these “death sentences” were carried out. In the case of the Rebets, the SB officers refused to execute the order, because it meant killing people they had known for many years. Nevertheless, members of the “democratic” faction were frightened, and some began to carry weapons.[1604] During one dispute in March 1947, Lebed’ either fired a pistol at Bandera or threatened him with it, after which Bandera ordered Matviieiko to kill Lebed’.[1605]

The ZCh OUN in Bavaria applied terror toward opponents and “traitors,” as the OUN-UPA did in western Ukraine, although not on the same scale. It is not clear how many people the ZCh OUN killed after the Second World War. The police department in Munich noted that Ukrainians in DP camps, particularly in the Mittenwald camp, talked about a hundred people who had been killed by the SB of the ZCh OUN, and also about the cremation of the corpses. The Bavarian police assumed that these incidents were not reported because the Ukrainian emigrants were intimidated by the perpetrators. The police were unable to bring any charges for these murders. In general, they were confused and overwhelmed by the conflicts among the Ukrainian émigrés and by the intrigues of the MGB, from 1954 the Committee for State Security (Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti, KGB). It may be that some of the crimes were concealed by American and British intelligence, or even committed in cooperation with them, as these services had assigned the ZCh OUN to spy on the “Bolsheviks” and “communists” among the DPs.[1606]

Stephen Dorril, a historian specializing in the subject of secret services, states that the SB killed more than one hundred people in total in West Germany after the Second World War, and that it cooperated with the CIA by liquidating individuals suspected of communism or of cooperation with the Soviet Union. According to Dorril, the bodies of some of the victims were cremated by the SB and the CIC in the Mittenwald DP camp.[1607] Ukrainian émigré Borys Levyts’kyi, who privately investigated SB crimes in West Germany, estimated the number of the SB’s victims at between thirty and forty, some of them his friends.[1608] In addition, about twenty OUN-M members were killed by the OUN-B after the war in Bavaria.[1609] Only a few ZCh OUN activists were put on trial, such as the three Ukrainian nationalists who tried to kill their political opponent Diomed Gulay, on 15 November 1951 in the Schliessheim DP camp.[1610] Furthermore, only a few people had the courage to report that their relatives had disappeared.[1611]

Ukrainians living in the DP camps spoke about OUN torture cellars, in which people disappeared.[1612] In 1962 the western Ukrainian KGB agent Stashyns’kyi, who was informed by infiltrators into the ZCh OUN about the criminal side of the ZCh OUN, stated to West German investigators that the SB had a bunker close to Munich, in which it interrogated, tortured, and “let disappear” Ukrainian émigrés who were accused of being traitors or of cooperating with the Soviet Union. Stashyns’kyi said that the methods used by the SB were very similar to those he knew from the KGB, and that both secret services rendered homage to the slogan “We have no prisons.”[1613] The last documented violent act of the OUN was planned to take place in Canada in 1974, where the OUN, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), was “planning a violent act—possibly the kidnapping of a Soviet diplomat.”[1614]

In addition to killing opponents, the ZCh OUN intimidated journalists who did not write about Bandera and the organization in a way that his followers thought appropriate. For example, in an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a reporter named Hart described the paramilitary training programs of Bandera and the Banderites in Germany.[1615] After the publication of his article, a “Committee of Ukrainians in Munich” invited Hart to Dachauerstrasse 9, where the ZCh OUN had its office. The journalist went there with two policemen. The committee told Hart that he had published incorrect information and that it would sue him for libel. He explained to the angry nationalists how they could initiate proceedings. During the meeting, one of the policemen perceived “hidden threats in the words and gestures of the Ukrainians.”[1616]

Shukhevych, leader of the UPA and OUN in Ukraine, supported the ZP UHVR rather than the ZCh OUN. In September 1947, he wrote a letter to OUN émigrés, emphasizing that the UHVR had the right to represent the UPA, while acknowledging that the UPA had been founded by the OUN-B. He also appealed to the émigrés to stop fighting each other and to concentrate on the struggle against the common enemy.[1617] In an announcement on the fifth anniversary of the founding of the UPA in October 1947, Shukhevych emphasized once more that the UHVR represented the UPA, and he did not mention the ZCh OUN or Bandera.[1618]

Bandera’s relationship with the American intelligence agencies began to deteriorate in the late 1940s. The CIA changed its attitude to the ZCh OUN because of Bandera’s conflict with Lebed’ and the ZP UHVR, which was the main Ukrainian partner of the CIA. In 1947 Bandera still believed that a third world war would break out no later than 1950. He considered that he needed good relations with the United States in order to liberate Ukraine with its help. He also attempted reconciliation with Mel’nyk and the OUN-M.[1619] Bandera met with Mel’nyk in January 1948 and apparently later as well. Their discussion in 1948 included some very sensitive matters, such as the murder of OUN-M members by the OUN-B during and after the war. On 10 February 1948, Bandera published an official announcement on this subject to all OUN members, in which he declared that the OUN-B had never murdered any OUN-M members. It is hardly surprising that the OUN-M and OUN-B were never reconciled.[1620]

From 28 to 31 August 1948, the Second Extraordinary Conference of the ZCh OUN took place in Mittenwald. The two factions again discussed whether they could come to an agreement. Bandera demanded the full subordination of all ZCh OUN members, which the “democratic” faction again refused, stressing the supremacy of the UHVR. Rebet openly criticized the Führerprinzip and Bandera’s fascination with fascism. According to Ievhen Stakhiv, Bandera slammed his fists on the table and shouted: “There will be no compromise. Either they subordinate to me or they can leave.” After the conference, the individuals from the “democratic” faction officially left the ZCh OUN. Their decision was strengthened by an open letter, in which the older OUN member Vrets’ona informed Bandera that he might intimidate ZCh OUN members and extort full subordination from them, but that he could not do so from the ZP UHVR. Bandera again called all Ukrainian emigrants who were not loyal to him “traitors” and “communists.” In letters to the leadership of the OUN in Ukraine, he described the ZP UHVR as a “sick phenomenon [khoroblyve iavyshche]” that was costing him half his energy. After the official split, the ZCh OUN continued to compete with the ZP UHVR, which included the “democratic” faction of the ZCh OUN, for the loyalty of the leadership of the OUN and UPA in Ukraine. Contact with the nationalist underground in Soviet Ukraine was essential for the collaboration with the American, British, and other intelligence services on which the ZCh OUN and the ZP UHVR were financially dependent.[1621]

After the split in August 1948, Bandera even wanted to go to Ukraine in person, but his supporters Klymyshyn and Tiushka apparently dissuaded him.[1622] MI6 refused to parachute Bandera into Ukraine, because it thought that the Soviet Union might not interpret this as intelligence gathering but as a political step.[1623] During the competition for the loyalty of the leadership of the OUN-UPA in Ukraine, each faction sent several members to Soviet western Ukraine. The most important emissary from the ZCh OUN was Myron Matviieiko, who was dropped, together with five other people, from a plane under the orders of MI6 on the night of 14–15 May 1951. The ZP UHVR sent Vasyl’ Okhrymovych with three other people in a CIA plane four days later. It seems that only the ZP UHVR succeeded in contacting the leadership in Ukraine.[1624]

The leaders of the OUN and UPA in Ukraine continually appealed to the émigrés to stop quarrelling. They confirmed that the ZP UHVR was the main representative of the OUN-UPA and claimed that the ZCh OUN should subordinate itself to the UHVR, which had been established to represent all Ukrainian nationalist organizations.[1625] Neither Shukhevych, nor Kuk, the last leader of the UPA, had much sympathy with the conflicts within the émigré community, with Bandera’s dictatorial and terroristic management of the ZCh OUN, or with his sustained fascination with fascism and authoritarianism.[1626]

In 1950, in order to end the conflict with the ZP UHVR, Bandera resigned from his position as leader of the ZCh OUN. Lenkavs’kyi became the new leader of the ZCh OUN, followed, at the Third Conference of the ZCh OUN in Munich in April 1951, by Stets’ko.[1627] On 22 August 1952, Bandera also resigned as leader of the entire OUN but, after he realized that his resignation did not improve matters between the ZCh OUN and the ZP UHVR, he decided to resume the leadership of both the OUN and the ZCh OUN. The ZCh OUN and the ZP UHVR continued to compete bitterly for the loyalty of the OUN-UPA leadership in Ukraine, until the last Ukrainian nationalist insurgents were killed by the Soviet authorities.[1628]

In 1953 the Fourth Conference of the ZCh OUN took place in London. It was decided at this conference that the OUN leadership in Ukraine had the decisive word in the conflict between the ZCh OUN and the ZP UHVR. Bandera was sure that the conflict would be resolved in his favor because Matviieiko, who in the meantime had been caught by the MGB and was working for them, sent him a telegram that confirmed Bandera’s supremacy in the OUN. However, the ZP UHVR received also a radiogram from Vasyl’ Kuk, in which Bandera was blamed for not applying the resolutions of the Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly of the OUN-B in August 1943. After the receipt of these two communications, a committee—consisting of Lev Rebet, Zinovii Matla, and Stepan Bandera—was appointed as the leadership of the OUN. Bandera agreed to this but announced a week later that the radiogram from Kuk to the ZP UHVR was a Soviet falsification. After this incident, Rebet and Matla established the OUN-abroad (OUN-za kordonom, OUN-z), with Rebet as its leader. Lebed’, on the other hand, had lived in the United States since 1949, where he headed the CIA-controlled Cold War propaganda-for-profit enterprise Prolog Research Cooperation, which published newspapers, booklets, and books, and prepared radio programs for Ukraine, the Ukrainian émigré communities, and eventually other countries behind the Iron Curtain.[1629]

Because the Rebet-Matla faction had taken over the newspaper Ukraїns’kyi samostiinyk, the ZCh OUN opened its own newspaper Shliakh peremohy in 1954, which was printed in the new publishing house Cicero at Zeppelinstrasse 67, Munich.[1630] The conflict between the two factions was so vicious that in February 1954 the Munich police had to intervene. The Rebet faction reported to the police that after Bandera had lost the publishing house of Ukraїns’kyi samostiinyk, he sent his people to destroy some of the Rebet faction’s printing facilities. When preparing to oppose the operation, the police assumed that the angry Banderites might be armed.[1631]

The conflict between the two factions remained virulent until the very end of their existence and was to some extent inflamed by the KGB. The OUN-z was permanently afraid of the ZCh OUN, which referred to the OUN-z as “communists,” “traitors,” and “democrats.” The visit of Volodymyr Kurovets’ to Munich illustrates the climate of the time. Kurovets’ arrived in Munich from England on 7 January 1956. He visited Pidhainyi and celebrated the Greek Catholic Christmas with him. Kurovets’ had belonged to the ZCh OUN until 1953 and had worked as a courier between Munich and western Ukraine, which suggests that he might have been turned by the KGB. Pidhainyi had been close to Bandera for a long time. Like Bandera, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Warsaw trial and was with Bandera in prison. He left the ZCh OUN in 1952. In Munich on 8 January 1956, Kurovets’ told Pidhainyi that he would go to the ZCh OUN office the next day, to celebrate Stepan Bandera’s name day. On 9 January, he left Pidhainyi’s apartment and disappeared. Pidhainyi immediately presumed that the ZCh OUN had killed Kurovets’. As the ZCh OUN could not explain what had happened to his friend, Pidhainyi went to the Munich police and reported his disappearance.[1632] But Bandera had an alibi: he had not been in Munich from 8 to 10 January but in the Tyrol with his family.[1633] The police could not solve the disappearance of Kurovets’, just as it could not solve the mysterious disappearance of many other Ukrainian emigrants.[1634]

The ZCh OUN was attacked several times by other émigré organizations and by the intelligence services of the Eastern bloc. On the night of 6–7 March 1957 an intruder broke into the office of the ZCh OUN and searched for documents.[1635] Although the police suspected Stefan Lippolz (Liebholz), a KGB agent who infiltrated the Ukrainian nationalists in Munich, they could not prove this.[1636] On 18 April 1958, the ZCh OUN received a parcel containing explosive materials, which was intended as a threat and not to kill, although the explosion was strong enough to blacken the person who opened the parcel. The ZCh OUN most likely received it from the KGB rather than from the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Natsional’no Trudovoi Soiuz, NTS), a radical-right Russian émigré organization with which the ZCh OUN was in conflict, and which also received parcels containing explosive materials.[1637] In July 1958, people living close to the office of the ZCh OUN at Zeppelinstrasse 67 received letters from a “Group of Ukrainian Emigrants,” accusing Bandera and other members of his organizations of killing several people named in the letters and of committing other crimes. One ZCh OUN member was accused of raping a female who lived in the building in which the ZCh OUN had its office.[1638] In a letter sent to the police on 2 June 1958, Bandera’s people were accused of raping German women and poisoning Rebet.[1639] The police investigated the allegation of rape and determined that it was unfounded. They concluded that the letter had been prepared in the intelligence office in Karlshorst in East Berlin, and they closed the investigation of Bandera and the ZCh OUN.[1640]

Bandera and Western Intelligence Services

As early as 1945, American military intelligence had helped Bandera to establish an intelligence school. It was located a few kilometers from Munich, apparently in the Mittenwald DP camp. Courses in “infiltration into installations, explosives, codes, ciphers, courier systems, organizing of informant nets, etc.” were taught there.[1641] Also in 1945, the MGB began to “turn” ZCh OUN operatives. Demyd Chyzhevs’kyi and Iaroslav Moroz, two of the first ZCh OUN members who were sent to Ukraine in 1946 and 1947 as couriers, came back to Germany as Soviet agents. Chyzhevs’kyi’s task was to split the OUN, and Moroz’s to kill Bandera, Stets’ko, Lebed’, and Hryn’okh.[1642]

In 1947 or 1948, Bandera ordered UPA commander Petro Mykolenko-Baida, who had come with a UPA unit from Ukraine to Bavaria and was living in a DP camp in Regensburg, to organize a Ukrainian partisan movement in the forests of Bavaria. This idea surprised Mykolenko-Baida, who believed that a partisan movement could be established only in Ukraine. Nevertheless, following Bandera’s order, Baida and a few other OUN-UPA members, recruited several Ukrainians from the DP camps, for training in the Bavarian forests. During the course of this training, Bandera informed the recruits that they would go back to the Soviet Union and fight for an independent Ukraine. The same recruits later attended espionage courses in the Mittenwald DP camp and were sent to the Soviet Union.[1643]

Bandera’s insistence on dominating the OUN as its sole leader, and his wish to retain the fascist structure of the OUN-B in the ZCh OUN, which led to fierce conflicts with other Ukrainian organizations, caused his relationship with American intelligence to deteriorate. The CIA preferred to cooperate with Lebed’ and the ZP UHVR, because it regarded them as more professional, efficient, and reliable than Bandera and the ZCh OUN. In 1951 a CIA agent infiltrated the ZCh OUN. At about the same time, when Bandera tried to penetrate the CIA with his agents, the CIA concluded that Bandera had become “anti-American” and put an end to its cooperation with him.[1644]

MI6 had trained Bandera’s agents in Munich and London and had parachuted them into western Ukraine since 1949. The CIA did the same with ZP UHVR people and warned MI6 that Bandera had no support from the OUN leadership in Ukraine. This, however, did not convince MI6, which claimed that the CIA underestimated the importance of the leader of the “strongest Ukrainian organization abroad.”[1645] MI6 perceived Bandera as “a professional underground worker with a terrorist background and ruthless notions about the rules of the game. … A banditry type if you like, with a burning patriotism, which provides an ethical background and a justification for his banditry. No better and no worse than others of his kind.”[1646]

Several ZCh OUN agents were trained in MI6 facilities in London. At a course in April 1951, Bandera taught the recruits that Britain and the United States would soon attack the Soviet Union and help Ukraine gain independence. Stets’ko taught them about the ABN, and Lenkavs’kyi instructed them about the activities of the OUN in exile. The agents were to be flown to Malta, from where the plane to Ukraine was to take off. One day before the flight, Bandera, Stets’ko, and Lenkavs’kyi bid farewell to the agents and reminded them to establish contact with the OUN in Ukraine. In Malta, Pidhainyi, the main connection between the ZCh OUN and MI6, gave the agents capsules of potassium cyanide to take if they were arrested by the Soviet authorities. The poison was handed to the agents on the initiative of the ZCh OUN. The agents were equipped with a rifle, two pistols, forged Soviet documents, and radios with which they were to establish contact with London and Munich.[1647]

The ZCh OUN was so badly infiltrated that the group accompanying Matviieiko included an MGB agent by the name of “Slavko.” Matviieiko was captured on 6 June 1951, three weeks after his parachuting. By the end of June, he had switched sides and agreed to work for the MGB. The ZP UHVR member Okhrymovych, who was parachuted into Ukraine four days after Matviieiko, was caught on 6 October 1952. From both of them the MGB obtained crucial information about the ZP UHVR and the ZCh OUN in Munich. Okhrymovych refused to cooperate and was executed on 19 May 1954. Matviieiko, head of the SB of the ZCh OUN however, began his second career as an intelligence officer—with the MGB. He soon became an important agent with whose help the MGB liquidated the last OUN-UPA troops in Ukraine. He also deceived the ZCh OUN for several years by sending fake radio telegrams. On 19 June 1958, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR forgave Matviieiko all his offences.[1648]

Between 1949 and 1954, a total of seventy-five ZCh OUN and ZP UHVR agents were parachuted into Ukraine. With Czech wartime pilots at the controls, the planes evaded Soviet radar screens by flying at 200 feet (61 meters) across the Soviet border and climbing at the last moment to 500 feet (152 meters), the minimum height for a safe parachute drop. In May 1952, one group was sent by submarine. In 1953 two groups used hot-air balloons that lifted from British and West German ships close to the Polish coast. Other groups tried to reach Ukraine on foot. Ukrainian MI6 and CIA agents did not realize that very few of their missions could meet with success, because of infiltration by Soviet intelligence. In particular, the ZCh OUN was heavily infiltrated. In 1948 Leon Łapiński alias “Zenon,” director of OUN SB in the Lublin region of south-east Poland, began to work for the Polish Department of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB) and the Soviet MGB. The two intelligence services launched a joint operation, “C1,” which lasted until 1954. With the help of “Zenon” the UB built up an entirely fictitious network of OUN members. In late 1948 and early 1949, “Zenon” established contact with the ZCh OUN in Munich. Thereafter, the UB controlled the ZCh OUN agents and couriers who went through Poland to western Ukraine. The UB also established its agents in West Germany. In addition, MI6 agent and Soviet spy Kim Philby, among others, kept Soviet intelligence informed about the parachuting of ZCh OUN agents. Bohdan Pidhainyi, who was responsible in the ZCh OUN for the connection between Munich and Ukraine, realized in 1952 that the agent network of the ZCh OUN was entirely controlled by the UB and MGB. He left the ZCh OUN and joined the ZP UHVR, which was also compromised. Only in 1955 did the leadership of the ZCh OUN recognize and admit that their agent networks in West Germany and Vienna were deeply infiltrated.[1649]

MI6 realized that the ZCh OUN was heavily infiltrated and that its rival, the ZP UHVR, controlled the “entire Ukrainian liberation movement in Ukraine,” in 1953. At this time, American and British officials tried to reconcile Bandera with Lebed’, but Bandera opposed these attempts. In February 1954, MI6 ended its cooperation with Bandera, ceased to train agents loyal to him, and informed Lebed’ that it “would not resume [its] relationship with Bandera under any circumstances.”[1650] Bandera then tried to establish his own intelligence service, which he financed in part with counterfeit money. The ZCh OUN had been forging American dollars since 1948. As a result, several of Bandera’s couriers were arrested. Matviieiko and his wife had to hide in France from the American authorities, for almost a year.[1651]

For the purpose of training its own agents, the ZCh OUN even bought a farm. Stets’ko, however, tried to dissuade Bandera from training teams and sending them to Ukraine. He argued that they would be captured by the MGB, but Bandera continued these operations because he believed that they strengthened the reputation of the ZCh OUN. Otherwise, Bandera thought, the ZCh OUN would become merely an émigré organization without connections to its country and would cease to be of interest to the intelligence services that financed it.[1652] In general however, Bandera was much less successful with intelligence work than he was as the symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. In 1957 the CIA and MI6 concluded that all the agents Bandera had sent to Ukraine were under Soviet control. The CIA and MI6 wanted to “silence” Bandera because his unprofessional intelligence work only disturbed their plans for the Soviet Union. At the same time, they tried to prevent Soviet intelligence from kidnapping or killing the legendary Ukrainian Providnyk, which would have turned him into a martyr.[1653]

After MI6 ceased to cooperate with Bandera, the ZCh OUN leader began to search for new sponsors and alliances. In 1955 Bandera and Stets’ko went to Paris, to negotiate with French intelligence. There is no evidence that they were successful, even though the OUN had cooperated with French intelligence in 1946.[1654] After MI6, no other intelligence service parachuted Bandera’s people into Ukraine, but sponsorship of the ZCh OUN and other Ukrainian émigré groups by secret services continued. For example, the Belgian and very likely the Canadian intelligence services sponsored nationalist anti-Soviet propaganda through particular newspapers and radio stations.[1655]

In 1956 the Italian Military Intelligence (Servizio Informazioni Forze Armate, SIFAR) sponsored Bandera for a short time, apparently not realizing that all Bandera’s connections to Ukraine were infiltrated. The only intelligence service that did not cease to support Bandera was the German BND.[1656] Bandera’s personal contact in the BND was Heinz-Danko Herre, who, during the Second World War, had been Chief of Staff of Vlasov’s ROA, and Gehlen’s deputy in FHO, German Military Intelligence on the Eastern Front.

Although the CIA and MI6 informed the BND that the ZCh OUN had been infiltrated by the Soviet intelligence and had no contact with Ukraine, Herre did not change his attitude toward Bandera. In April 1959, when Bandera again asked the BND for support, Herre simply pointed to Bandera’s popularity and to the continuity between the BND and the pre-war Abwehr: “Bandera has been known to us for about twenty years. … Within and without Germany he has over half a million followers.”[1657] Herre believed that Bandera supplied him with “good reports on the Soviet Union.” “Due to political overtones,” he did not inform the West German government about the cooperation with Bandera, and kept it secret even within the BND.[1658]

Bandera also maintained contacts with Franco’s post-fascist regime in Spain. Vasyl’ Sushko, Bandera’s guard and close friend, pointed out that, of all the countries in the world, it was with Franco’s Spain that the ZCh OUN had the best relationship, where Stets’ko was still treated as the prime minister of Ukraine.[1659] In 1950 Bishop Buchko went to Spain and met with Franco on Bandera’s behalf. Buchko persuaded Franco to admit UPA partisans and Waffen-SS Galizien veterans to his military academy. Later that year, the Providnyk and Stets’ko went together to Madrid to discuss this and related questions, in person with the Caudillo. One result of this cooperation was the institution of Ukrainian nationalist broadcasting from Madrid, three times a week.[1660] In 1956 Franco invited Bandera to settle in Spain, where, after the Second World War, several other far-right leaders from various countries, such as Ante Pavelić and Juan Perón, found shelter. Bandera considered this generous proposal while visiting Spain again and taking a closer look at the country. In the end, however, he did not accept the offer, probably because his organization was deeply entrenched in Munich.[1661]

Contact with the Spanish leader led to a dispute between the Providnyk and Stets’ko’, who had been “premier” of the OUN-B “government” in 1941. Bandera was jealous of Stets’ko’s excellent relationship with the Caudillo. Together with Bandera’s unlimited appetite for power, this led to conflict with his closest ally. Stets’ko’ always regarded Bandera as his Providnyk and obeyed him in accordance with his political beliefs. Democracy was for Stets’ko as great an evil as it was for Bandera. They both believed that only a national revolutionary power could combat the totalitarian Soviet Union. They cooperated with democratic states like the United Kingdom and the United States for pragmatic and strategic reasons, and not because they believed in or valued democracy. The ABN, headed by Stets’ko, was financially dependent on Bandera’s ZCh OUN. In 1955 Bandera decided that he would finance only half the ABN’s costs (DM 100,000 per year). This step forced Stets’ko to dismiss personnel and to look for funds elsewhere. Bandera stated that he had cut funding because he believed that other nations represented in the ABN should cover the other half of the ABN’s expenses, but his move also had psychological ramifications and was related to Stets’ko’s political prestige in international far-right circles. In particular, Stets’ko’s pilgrimage to Franco and a visit to Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan in 1955–1956 made Bandera envious.[1662]

In addition to protection by the intelligence services, Bandera was protected by other institutions in Germany and by networks of former Nazis. In 1956 the Bavarian state government considered proceedings against Bandera in connection with such illegal activities as kidnapping, murder, and counterfeiting money. Early that year, the Munich police interrogated Bandera about the confusion surrounding his name, the disappearance of Kurovets’, and related questions. However, Bandera was, at that time, protected by the West German official Gerhard von Mende, of the Office for Displaced Persons (Büro für heimatvertriebene Ausländer). During the Second World War, von Mende had headed the section for the Caucasus and Turkistan in Alfred Rosenberg’s Ostministerium, recruiting Soviet Muslims from Central Asia to fight against the Soviet Union. He occasionally acted as liaison between the Germans and the Ukrainian nationalists. After the war, von Mende cooperated with American intelligence and was associated with former Nazi officials, several of whom occupied influential positions. One of them, Theodor Oberländer, even served in Adenauer’s government between 1953 and 1960, as the federal minister for displaced persons, refugees, and war victims. On behalf of Bandera, von Mende interceded with the Bavarian government in 1956 and earlier, in respect of residence permits and other matters. As a result of such interventions, some police files concerning Bandera were closed.[1663]

After the Second World War, Bandera visited Ukrainian communities in Austria, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, Holland, and Italy.[1664] In Canada, Bandera probably visited the main pre-war ideologue of Ukrainian nationalism, Dmytro Dontsov, who had been teaching Ukrainian literature at the Université de Montréal.[1665] In 1953 Bandera invited Dontsov to become the editor of a ZCh OUN newspaper. Dontsov turned down the offer, as he had done before the war in a similar case.[1666] The only country that Bandera attempted to visit, but to which he was never admitted, was the United States. In his visa application from 1955, Bandera asserted that he wanted to visit his family, but the American officials did not trust him: “Bandera and his organization are widely disliked by émigrés of many persuasions and nationalities. It is believed that Bandera wishes to come to this country to conduct political agitation against legitimate political organizations with ties with Ukrainian groups abroad, which the Agency supports [like the ZP UHVR] or upon which it looks with favor.”[1667] Bandera’s applications were rejected until October 1959. Only shortly before his assassination, the officials in Munich recommended that he be granted a visa.[1668] He never made the trip, but his speeches were recorded, and sent to the United States, where Bandera adherents listened to them at gatherings.[1669]

Bandera’s Private Life

It is difficult to provide an accurate description of Bandera’s private life after the Second World War because memoirs and testimonies, of people who were related to him, worked for him, or were his friends, differ substantially from each other and leave a very ambiguous impression. This is caused, on the one hand, by the ideologization of perception and memory, especially by people such as Iaroslava Stets’ko and Vasyl’ Sushko, for whom Bandera was the Providnyk and a hero. On the other hand, Bandera’s inconsistent character and personality left different impressions on different people. Bandera was a loving father who could tenderly play with his children but then hit them if they did something against his wishes, such as going to a festival at which folklore groups from the Soviet Union danced or sang. In public, he appeared to be a good husband especially when he was among his friends, but he could hit his wife Iaroslava when he was angry with her. He apparently did not abuse alcohol and remained very religious, although he had some extra-marital affairs. In addition to the Greek Catholic church, he sometimes attended a German Catholic one.[1670]

Bandera’s private life was known to his SB bodyguards, such as Matviieiko, Kashuba, and Shushko, who spent much time with Bandera while protecting him and his family. From Matviieiko’s and Kashuba’s statements, we know that the Providnyk used his position and sometimes his “charisma” for private purposes. When Matviieiko was interrogated by the MGB, he might have exaggerated in his descriptions of Bandera’s private life, but Kashuba did not have any reason to manipulate his evidence. Matviieiko’s and Kashuba’s statements about Bandera overlap on his obsession with women and on his extramarital affairs. According to Matviieiko, Bandera proposed an affair to Ievhen Harabach’s wife Maria Metsyk, who looked fifteen years younger than Bandera’s wife Iaroslava. Harabach overlooked the affair because, as the financial officer in the ZCh OUN, he was involved in fraud relating to the organization’s funds. This allowed Bandera to intimidate him and to demand that he ignore the adulterous relationship with his wife. Bandera also tried to develop a sexual relationship with a female servant, who was subsequently dismissed by his wife.[1671] According to Kashuba, Bandera also had an affair with the “German female au pair” of a “Jewish family” in the house where he lived in Munich after 1954. The affair was known to Iaroslava, who was frequently angry with her husband.[1672]

Two more children were born to Bandera after the war. The first was a son born on 16 May 1946 in Munich and registered under the name Andrii Popel, and the second was a daughter born on 27 August 1947 in Regensburg and registered as Alexandra Popel.[1673] When Bandera’s wife went to hospital for the birth of their third child, Lesia, the wife of one of Bandera’s security guards, Mykhailo Banias, took care of Bandera’s children. According to Matviieiko, Bandera tried to rape her during the night. When her husband noticed traces of violence on his wife’s body in the morning and learned from her what had happened, he became so angry that, at first, he wanted to shoot Bandera. Finally he decided to report the matter to his superior, Matviieiko, head of the SB. After this incident, Banias ceased to work for the SB.[1674]

According to Matviieiko, although Iaroslava loved Stepan, he frequently hit and kicked her. He even kicked her in the belly when she was pregnant. In general, Iaroslava was unhappy with her marriage after 1945. She probably stayed with Stepan because she had no other choice and was intimidated by him. Some of Bandera’s

 

Fig. 24. Bandera 1958. Posivnych, Stepan Bandera—zhyttia, prysviachene svobodi, 5.

friends did not like to visit the family.[1675] Bandera was sometimes rude to and severe with his three children. He hit them, and forbade them to participate in events in which Russian, Polish, or Jewish children participated.[1676] Several people refused to work with Bandera on account of his difficult character. His attitude to his wife also repelled people.[1677]

Although the American and British intelligence services protected Bandera after the war, his way of life was determined by the danger of being killed or kidnapped by Soviet intelligence. Bandera and his family had to hide when the MGB or KGB were looking for them. His children grew up with the family name Popel and were not aware of their real family name until the death of their father.[1678] Details concerning his financial status are not known, but he presumably had at his disposal a considerable amount of money, received from the intelligence services and from OUN members living around the world, who sponsored his fight against the “red devil.” In addition Bandera counterfeited American dollars, and received non-monetary gifts from the intelligence services. In 1950, for example, MI6 presented him with a new car on St. Nicolas Day. All this allowed him to lead quite a comfortable life.[1679]

Photographs of Bandera’s private life reveal that he appeared in public as a good and loving father and husband.[1680] This image is strengthened by the memoirs of people such as Iaroslava Stets’ko and Vasyl’ Sushko. Yet for Stets’ko, Bandera was the Providnyk and “such a great person that it is not easy to talk about him.” Although Iaroslava Stets’ko’s memories are structured in a clearly propagandist way to “praise the wisdom and strength” of her Providnyk, they have to be considered in this brief analysis of Bandera’s personality. They show us, on the one hand, how Bandera’s admirers perceived him and, on the other hand, how he might have behaved in the presence of his followers and friends. According to Stets’ko, Bandera was a very good father who took care of his family and friends. He liked to laugh and frequently joked. One of his hobbies was developing photographs. Others were hiking and skiing.[1681]

After his death, Bandera’s widow Iaroslava stated that he had loved his children very much, and that his children had loved him. “Although I was often mournful and sad at home, my husband was very fun-loving,” she stated. “He could play with our children as a child.” He was empathetic toward people from his organization. The sickness of an employee could make him sad.[1682] Dmytro Myskiv, who was close to Bandera’s family and spent weekends and holidays with them from about 1954, also remembered that Bandera had a good relationship with his children and wife, and that he was very religious. On Sundays, they always went to church and only afterwards, out for a trip.[1683]

The memoirs of Vasyl’ Sushko, one of Bandera’s security guards, are interesting but also problematic. Like Stets’ko, Sushko regarded Bandera as his Providnyk, a hero, and a father figure. His memoirs therefore lack information that would contradict his image of the Providnyk. Sushko went as far as to claim that Bandera respected his political opponents, omitting the fact that Bandera had ordered several of them to be assassinated. Yet despite the ideological nature of Sushko’s memoirs, they do complement the picture of Bandera’s private life. According to Sushko, Bandera liked to exercise and encouraged his friends and employees to do so, because he wanted to have a strong and healthy organization. He enjoyed swimming, skiing, and jogging. While exercising with Sushko, Bandera made comments like, “Vasyl’, we have to be healthy because Ukraine needs people with healthy bodies and spirits.” Like Stets’ko, Sushko also claimed that Bandera was a good father and had a harmonious family life. However, he substantiated this claim with observations that Bandera gave his daughter Natalia flowers on her birthday, because Iaroslava refused to celebrate it. Sushko wrote that he and Bandera stayed in a hotel only once during their business trips. They usually slept either in a tent or in the apartment of an OUN member, in order to save organizational funds.[1684]

After Bandera’s assassination, Iaroslava and her three children moved to Toronto. This was made possible by the financial help of the ZCh OUN, which opened a fund to provide support and bought a house for the family in Toronto. Natalka Bandera married OUN-B member Andrii Kutsan and lived with him from 1970 until her death in Munich in 1985.[1685] Bandera’s sisters Marta and Oksana had been deported in 1942 to Krasnoyarsk Krai, where they lived and worked on several collective farms. Volodymyra was arrested, sentenced to ten years detention and banishment, and was deported to Kazakhstan in 1946. According to the MGB, they received financial help from the OUN-UPA underground. After Stalin’s death in 1953, they were taken to Moscow for two months. According to Arsenych, the MGB proposed that they could remain in Moscow if they would appeal on the radio for OUN-UPA partisans to emerge from the underground. The sisters apparently refused and were returned to where they had lived before coming to Moscow. Volodymyra was released and returned to Ukraine in 1956. Marta and Oksana were officially released in 1960 but were not allowed to return to Ukraine. They were made to work at jobs such as house building, woodcutting, and labor in kolkhozes. They were moved from one place to another, apparently every two or three months. Marta died in 1982 in Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Oksana returned to Ukraine in August 1989 to her sister Volodymyra, but was allowed to stay permanently in Ukraine only in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.[1686]

Bandera’s Worldview after the Second World War

After the Second World War, Bandera published a range of articles. He also gave several interviews, which were broadcast or were published in newspapers. After his death, his articles and interviews were collected and republished by the ZCh OUN.[1687] While awaiting the third world war and continuing to work on the Ukrainian national revolution, Bandera visited Ukrainian communities in Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. During his visits, Bandera made speeches, in which he encouraged Ukrainian émigrés not to give up the fight against the Soviet Union, to support the “Ukrainian liberation movement,” and not to stop “fighting for freedom.” In all his articles, interviews, and speeches, Bandera either ignored or denied the atrocities the OUN-B and the UPA had committed during and after the Second World War. He wrote his articles in solemn, monotonous, pathetic language, which resembled the writings of Soviet officials, although he used vocabulary typical of far-right thinkers. His main subjects were “liberation” and the “struggle for independence.” All other matters, including the well-being of entire nations or the human dignity, were subordinated to these “noble” concepts.

Bandera’s early post-war writing did not differ much from the OUN-B ideology of 1940 and 1941, when he essentially shaped the line of the OUN-B’s convictions. After the war Bandera avoided several words and expressions popular in 1941, but he propagated similar values to those of 1941, such as the cult of war, and heroic death. As before the German attack on the Soviet Union, he wanted to control and use the masses to achieve his nationalist ends. In a letter to Shukhevych in November 1945, Bandera wrote: “Our struggle is first of all a struggle for the soul of the human being, for the masses, for access to them and influence over them.”[1688]

Bandera’s first postwar article appeared in January 1946 under the pseudonym S. Siryi, in the newspaper Vyzvol’na polityka. In this article Bandera expressed his wish to continue the revolution that had failed in summer 1941, but he used different rhetoric to describe his plans. In particular, he avoided antisemitic and fascist phrases but maintained the ultranationalist far-right core of his argument. As in the letter to Shukhevych in November 1945, Bandera concentrated on the question of mobilizing the masses. He regarded them as a weapon, a tool to achieve his sacred aim: “In our fight, the mass is an important factor; as a conglomeration of individuals, we incorporate and unite it.”[1689]

In an article “To the Principles of Our Liberation Policy” from November 1946, Bandera returned to the idea of the “Ukrainian National Revolution” from 1941. He began by announcing: “The Ukrainian national revolution is the struggle for the life and liberty of the nation and the individual.” Unlike in 1941, he did not identify Jews and Poles as enemies, because they had been killed during the war or resettled afterwards and had thus ceased to be a problem for him and other nationalists. He also changed the tone or adjusted it to the early Cold War situation, replacing the 1941 notion of “Jewish Bolshevism” with “Russian Bolshevik imperialism” but left the ultranationalist and populist core of his argumentation unchanged: “Russian Bolshevik imperialism … tries to rule the whole world and, with this aim, it subordinates, exploits, and causes the deterioration of nations and individuals.”[1690]

Bolshevism and communism were, for Bandera, the same as Russian imperialism and nationalism: “The Russian nation tied its fate to Bolshevism. Decisive for it was Russian imperialism, which went into the blood of the whole Russian nation and the sympathy for Bolshevism.”[1691] He wrote in another article: “Communism—this is the most important form of hidden Moscow imperialism.”[1692] Bandera’s desire to conduct a revolution against the Soviet Union, together with other nationalist movements, goes back to the 1940–1941 concept of a multi-nationalist revolution, in which the OUN-B had planned to involve many other far-right movements rooted in other Soviet republics. In 1946 Bandera wrote: “We put an equals sign between the Ukrainian revolution and the liberation of all nations oppressed by Bolshevism.”[1693] For this purpose, the ZCh OUN wanted to mobilize the masses not only in Ukraine but also in other republics of the Soviet Union. The multi-nationalist revolution would begin “when in the consciousness of the masses of all [revolutionary] nations occurs the understanding for the idea that the struggle of every nation is our common struggle.”[1694]

In a paper, “A Word to The Ukrainian Nationalists-Revolutionaries Abroad,” which was intended to be distributed in 1948 in western Ukraine as a brochure, Bandera explicitly denied that the OUN-B had any sympathy for Nazi Germany in 1941:

Some reproach [the OUN-B] for using phrases and gestures in a sympathetic tone toward Germany in the act of 30 June 1941. In this matter, it is time to state some open words because our truth is unambiguous and clear and we should stop the erroneous labeling of reality. We always stress the independence of Ukrainian policy, which concentrates only on the Ukrainian matter and not flirtation (an ineffective one!) with foreign powers.[1695]

In the same article, Bandera omitted several other facts that could have compromised the movement. He did not mention that Stets’ko sent letters in 1941 to the leaders of the European fascist states, or that the OUN-B wanted its state to become a part of the “New Europe,” although he admitted that the interests of the OUN-B coincided with those of Germany. His apologetic narrative concealed the fact that in 1941 the Ukrainian nationalists resembled the Nazis in many essential matters, such as their common interest in the annihilation of the Jews in Ukraine, whom both groups saw as communists, parasites, and an alien race.[1696] In the same piece Bandera encouraged the Ukrainian insurgents to persist in fighting, and ordinary Ukrainians to continue sacrificing their lives: “In all parts of the national struggle, in all its forms, the Ukrainian nation established hecatombs of victims, of its best children. But not in vain. They all [the sacrificed Ukrainians] protect the spirit of the Ukrainian nation.”[1697] He encouraged them to fight and die, despite the fact that the OUN-UPA could not win against the Soviet Union, being much weaker, unable to produce any weapons or equipment, having no hospitals, and so forth. This indicates that the Providnyk did not respect human life and regarded the people living in Ukraine as a means to achieve his sacred aims.

After 1945 Bandera developed two ways of using the term “democracy.” On the one hand, he claimed that democracy was a betrayal of Ukrainian nationalism. His opponents from the ZP UHVR and the OUN-z were for him communists and Bolsheviks, because they claimed to be democrats. The statements of the Lebed’ group, OUN-z, and the ZP UHVR, that they were democratic and anti-totalitarian, angered Bandera. This was for him an “expression of socio-political primitivism and the egoism of a clique.”[1698] Democracy was for Bandera a betrayal of his sacred revolutionary and nationalist ideals. It blurred the boundaries between communism and nationalism and was therefore a Bolshevik provocation. On the other hand, he felt resentful if someone from outside the organization called the ZCh OUN undemocratic. Then he argued that only “opponents of the Ukrainian national movement” would state that the ZCh OUN was undemocratic, totalitarian, or fascist.[1699]

It was clear to Bandera that there was nothing wrong with the ultranationalist and criminal nature of the OUN and UPA. He believed that only such a movement could fight effectively against the Soviet Union. Therefore, people who demanded “democratization” of the OUN and UPA were traitors and communists.[1700] In a similar spirit Bandera protested against the “international boycott” of Spain and Franco. He claimed that reproaching Franco was a gesture of Bolshevism, not democracy. In short, Bandera never had a problem recognizing the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union but found it difficult to criticize states such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or Franco’s Spain. For Bandera, fascism and far-right authoritarianism were legitimate state systems, superior to democracy because they were more distanced from communism than democracy was. Nazi Germany was not evil because it had annihilated European Jewry and killed millions of other civilians, but because it was imperialistic and did not allow the OUN-B to establish a Ukrainian state.[1701]

Materialism, which Bandera saw as the “product of a completely alien foreign spirit,” was no less an evil for him than communism or democracy. According to Bandera, “the materialistic world view was introduced in Ukrainian life, partly by foreign colonization of Ukraine, and partly by socialism.” It was introduced in Ukraine by communists “to destroy the soul, entity, and idiosyncrasy of the Ukrainian people, to turn the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian individual into a subservient object that accommodates Moscow’s goals.”[1702]

In the spirit of Dontsov, Bandera placed emphasis in his writings on the power of ideology and “Ukrainian power of liberation.”[1703] For him, the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism was closely related to God and religion: “Huge, clear idea of Ukrainian nation, the struggle for the freedom of Ukraine and for God’s Truth in the Ukrainian territory—this is the inexhaustible source of power of our movement. … God sanctifies and supports our struggle for the truth against Satan’s red kingdom.”[1704]

Bandera’s concept of nation was based on ontology and racial theory. He not only repeatedly stressed the “idiosyncrasy of the Ukrainian nation” but regarded it as an organism or human being. He believed that the destruction of communism and the foundation of a Ukrainian state would enable its citizens to develop “their own social order, adequate to the whole Ukrainian nation’s needs and wishes, which would guarantee the Ukrainian nation the best development, and all citizens of Ukraine unmeasured liberty, justice, and wealth.”[1705]

Bandera’s critique of the Soviet Union had not only an ideological and propagandistic but also a ritualistic character. He repeated the same or slightly modified anti-Soviet phrases over and over again. In his propagandist crusades against the Soviet Union Bandera was certainly correct in condemning its totalitarian character, but the deeply antidemocratic nature of his critique did not allow him to articulate that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state that arrested, deported, and killed millions of innocent people and continually violated human rights. Instead, like a Greek Catholic priest, he divided the universe into good and bad, or black and white. Communism, the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, Soviet ideology, materialism, and the Soviet people were on the dark side. The revolutionary Ukrainian nationalism, its followers, and other forms of radical right activism that could destroy the Soviet Union and “liberate” the people living in it were white. Democracy was black, rather than grey. On these grounds, Bandera’s worldview was no less problematic and anti-democratic than that of the Soviet leaders. His orthodox nationalism did not allow him to level any democratic or constructive criticism at the Soviet Union.

Because of his nationalist and far-right worldview and his dislike for democracy, it is difficult to classify Bandera as a dissident, even if he was a vehement opponent of the Soviet regime ruling Ukraine. When the Providnyk criticized the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he wrote that the Soviet Union applied the “Moscow-Bolshevik strategy of pogroms,” but he never admitted the Ukrainian involvement in the anti-Jewish pogroms in 1941.[1706] Similarly, he never took a stand for democracy in the republics and satellite states of the Soviet Union. In accordance with Bandera’s post-war writings, it seems reasonable to believe that he would have introduced some kind of far-right or neo-fascist autocracy in Ukraine, had there been such a possibility. Such a Ukrainian state would have been, in terms of democracy, no better than the Soviet Union and would have needed a real antitotalitarian opposition to turn it into a democracy.

Religion never ceased to play a crucial role in Bandera’s political essays. He believed that the Greek Catholic Church was the foundation of Ukrainian nationalism. He frequently stressed that Christianity was a significant component of Ukrainian identity and that religion gave Ukrainians the power to resist the Soviet Union: “Faith tremendously strengthens the powers of the soul. A true and deep faith in God, the Redeemer, gives every man and the whole nation the possibility to take as much power as the soul can accommodate.”[1707] By the same token, he feared that communism would deprive Ukrainians of Christianity and thereby undo the “Ukrainian people.”[1708] The Providnyk equated the physical destruction of people in the Soviet Union with the politics of atheism and thus believed and argued that atheism could physically annihilate people. Human beings without religion and nationality were dead for Bandera, even if they were in the best physical and intellectual condition.[1709]

Bandera’s fascination with war, and his wish to fight another one, was enormous. Until his death he did not stop hoping that a third world war would break out soon and enable Ukrainians and other peoples to combat the Soviet Union and to establish national states. In an interview in 1950, Bandera said that people in Ukraine knew that a war would break out, because the Soviet Union was preparing itself for one and would start it soon.[1710] In a letter in 1951 to the leadership of the OUN in Ukraine, he argued that the Western countries were preparing themselves for a war against the Soviet Union and needed two more years to produce enough weapons to begin one.[1711] When Dwight Eisenhower visited Germany in 1951, Bandera prepared himself for a meeting with the NATO commander. He wanted to discuss the role of the OUN in a third world war and to ask him for financial help in preparing soldiers for this huge liberation event.[1712] In 1958 Bandera still claimed that “The Third World War would shake up the whole structure of world powers even more than the last two wars.”[1713] The number of victims that such a war would create did not matter to the Providnyk, because nationalist independence was more important than human life:

A war between the USSR and other states would certainly cause a great number of victims to the Ukrainian nation, and also probably great destruction of the country. Nevertheless, such a war would be welcomed not only by active fighters-revolutionaries, but also by the whole nation, if it would give some hope of destroying Bolshevik suppression and achieving national independence.[1714]

Bandera was against the reduction of nuclear weapons and claimed that the “fear of nuclear war” in the West was groundless. He argued that the West did not understand the true nature of the Soviet Union and was too afraid of a nuclear war. According to him, the politics of appeasement toward the Soviet Union was a mistake. The West should understand that it was threatened by the Soviet Union’s nuclear power and should have demonstrated its own power.[1715]

Although Bandera and the ZCh OUN cooperated with MI6, the BND, and to a lesser extent with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, Bandera never ceased to depict Ukrainian nationalists as brave, autonomous, and self-sufficient fighters. Similarly, he argued that Ukrainians could achieve independence only on their own: “A nation that is suppressed by a foreign state can achieve its real and durable liberation only by its own struggle.”[1716] In addition, he propagated the message that Ukrainian nationalism was a romantic insurgent movement that had nothing in common with fascism, violence, antisemitism, and ethnic politics:

The terms “Ukrainian nationalist” and “nationalist movement” have a completely different meaning from similar terms in the West. The Ukrainian nationalist movement has nothing in common with Nazism, Fascism, or National Socialism. Ukrainian nationalism struggles against imperialism, totalitarianism, racism, and every kind of dictatorship or application of violence.

The name “Ukrainian nationalist” is equal to “Ukrainian patriot,” one who is ready to struggle for the liberty of his own nation and to sacrifice for his nation everything that he possesses, even life.[1717]

The climate of the Cold War provided Bandera’s thinking with enough legitimacy to keep his self-presentations from being challenged. The atrocities committed by the OUN-UPA, and Bandera’s role in them were hardly known, and if some information on these subjects appeared, it was rebuffed as groundless anti-Ukrainian Soviet propaganda. In radio interviews Bandera claimed that the OUN could not have been involved in any kind of war crime because it was a “liberation movement” that “fought for freedom.” In the 1950s, he stated that his organization still had contact with the OUN-UPA underground in Ukraine and that he frequently sent his best “fighters for independence” to Soviet Ukraine.[1718] Such statements must have made a considerable impression on his audience who would have perceived him as a real, important, devoted, and admirable anticommunist freedom fighter. Although Bandera must have known that the OUN-B was not popular in eastern Ukraine, he argued that all Ukrainians supported him and his organization: “The bright masses of the Ukrainian nation provide this movement [OUN-UPA] with the fullest possible support and follow its leadership,” he stated in a radio interview in 1954.[1719]

Although Bandera’s speeches and writings touched upon various political subjects such as the Soviet Union, a third world war, and nuclear weapons, they were all about “liberation,” “freedom,” and “independence.” They combined the monotony of a Soviet official with the fanaticism of a far-right activist and the futurist, revolutionary enthusiasm of a fascist. The “liberation” of Ukraine was Bandera’s life goal and he was ready to sacrifice the well-being of entire nations to achieve it. He ignored and concealed the atrocities committed by the OUN and UPA during and after the war because he believed that the Ukrainian nationalists had the right to kill thousands of civilians in order to achieve their aims. His writings suggest that he did not feel any empathy for people murdered in the name of “liberation” or “independence.” He portrayed himself and the OUN and UPA as victims of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, because this was the only way to could continue the struggle for independence. Admitting the atrocities committed by the movement and its extensive fascistization would compromise him, other émigrés, and the very idea of “liberation” and “independence.”

Stashyns’kyi, Oberländer, Lippolz,
and the Assassination of Bandera

The MGB, and from 1954 the KGB, tried several times to kidnap or assassinate Bandera.[1720] Assassinations and more often the seizure of Ukrainians who engaged in the nationalist underground were common after the Second World War in countries such as Germany and Austria. For example, the OUN-B member Volodymyr Horbovyi, a Bandera’s defense lawyer during the trials in Warsaw and Lviv in 1935–1936, was apprehended in Prague in 1946. He was interrogated first in Poland, then in the Soviet Union. During the interrogations, he was beaten and otherwise mistreated. Finally, he spent twenty-five years in the Gulag.[1721] Similarly, the Ukrainian patriot Wilhelm von Habsburg, who had helped the OUN to establish contacts with the Allies after the war, was seized in Vienna on 26 August 1947. He was sentenced to twenty-five years but died of tuberculosis a year after he was seized, or more precisely as the result of catastrophic conditions in Soviet prisons and the withholding of medical help.[1722]

According to OUN-B historiography, Iaroslav Moroz prepared the first attempt to assassinate Bandera in 1947. He intended to leave the impression that Bandera was killed by his Ukrainian émigré opponents.[1723] Although the OUN-B historiographers did not mention it, Moroz was an OUN-B courier who arrived in Ukraine from Bavaria in 1946 and was turned into an MGB agent. When he went back to Munich in order to assassinate Bandera, the SB killed Moroz in June 1947.[1724] According to OUN-B historiography, the next attempt was prepared by Volodymyr Stel’mashchuk, who was identified by OUN-B historiographers as a Polish agent of the MGB, with the position of captain in the AK. Although Stel’mashchuk had several helpers, the SB uncovered his identity and he failed to murder Bandera.[1725] It might be that he arrived in Bavaria without the intention of assassinating Bandera, but in order to capture him or to infiltrate the ZCh OUN. Like Moroz, Stel’mashchuk was executed by the SB in May 1949.[1726] In 1950 the OUN-B found that two agents from Prague were preparing to assassinate Bandera. They failed because he was warned and went into hiding. His family moved at that time to the DP camp in Mittenwald. Next, two agents from East Berlin came to Munich in 1952 but were arrested by Western intelligence services and released after two years.[1727] In 1953 the agent Stepan Lippolz appeared in Munich and infiltrated the ZCh OUN.[1728] In 1955 Bandera received a letter from Vienna, in which he was warned that the KGB was organizing an assassination attempt against him from East Berlin.[1729]

The actual assassination took place on 15 October 1959. Iaroslava Bandera was sunbathing on the balcony of her apartment when, at about 1 p.m., a car drove into the courtyard of the building at Kreittmayrstrasse 7. Hearing its arrival, she looked down from the balcony and recognized the vehicle as her husband’s. From his apartment on the first floor, Melach Gamse heard someone scream and fall to the ground in the stairwell. He opened the door of his apartment and discovered his neighbor from the third floor, whom he knew as Stefan Popel, lying between his apartment and the one opposite, with his head against the wall. Bandera’s mouth and nose were bleeding slightly. He could not speak and was gasping for air. Magdalena Winklmann, who had also opened her door when she heard someone gasping in the stairwell, testified that Bandera’s last utterance was “Ui.” After a while, Iaroslava Bandera heard Melach and Chaja Gamse screaming to her from the stairwell and went down to see what happened. Melach Gamse called an ambulance which took Bandera to a hospital at about 1:20. The Providnyk died on the way.[1730] At the hospital, a pistol was found on Bandera, in a shoulder-holster.[1731]

Before the ambulance arrived, Iaroslava called the office of the ZCh OUN at Zeppelinstrasse 67. Iaroslav Bentsal’, Kashuba, and Lenkavs’kyi drove to Bandera’s house, where they learned from Natalia that her father had been taken to hospital. Kashuba and Lenkavs’kyi spoke to the Gamses, who explained what had happened. They remembered the Gamses as a “Jewish family.”[1732] Four months later, during the investigation of Bandera’s death, Kashuba stressed that both families who found Bandera in the stairwell were Jewish.[1733] During the investigation, Iaroslava Bandera also testified that both families were Jewish. According to her, the Gamses had lived in Vilna before the Second World War and had come to Munich in 1955 from Israel. They and the Bandera family were on good terms. Natalia gave private lessons to Mr. and Mrs. Gamse’s son. The Weiner family came to Munich, according to Iaroslava, from Israel or Belgium.[1734]

The fact that both families who found the dying Bandera were Jewish did not leave the community of Ukrainian nationalists in peace. The Ukrainian commission to investigate Bandera’s death, established in 1959 by the ZCh OUN, interrogated a number of OUN and ABN émigrés. Reading the protocols of the investigations makes it clear that the Ukrainians who were questioned frequently connected Bandera’s death to Jews, apparently because the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism” still persisted in this community. When interrogated, the ZCh OUN members, spoke very ill of Ukrainian émigrés who had a relationship with a Jew, and did not want such people to work for the OUN-B’s newspaper.[1735]

After Bandera’s death, the ZCh OUN and Bandera’s relatives suspected, or insisted—as did Stets’ko—that the Providnyk had been murdered, and they demanded a post-mortem. The autopsy was conducted on 16 October 1959 and the results were announced on 19 October. Bandera had died as the result of contamination with potassium cyanide. Dr. Laves, who conducted the post-mortem, attended by other doctors, determined the cause of death by a bitter almond oil smell from the brain, and by traces of cyanide in the stomach.[1736]

The Bavarian police, the Ukrainian commission of five ZCh OUN activists investigating Bandera’s death, and private investigators from the Yorkshire Detective Bureau, hired by the ZCh OUN, determined that either Bandera was poisoned when he ate something that contained cyanide, or that cyanide was forced into his mouth immediately before his death. Another theory was that he had swallowed the poison in order to end his life. Yet nobody could ascertain how the cyanide actually found its way into Bandera’s body, and whether it did so by “enemy hand” as the ZCh OUN and other Ukrainian organizations suggested. Bavarian police officer Adrian Fuchs, who investigated the case, did not exclude this theory, but he found it more likely that Bandera had ended his life himself, which the Ukrainian émigrés found unacceptable. The Yorkshire Detective Bureau came to the conclusion that Bandera was murdered, but they could not establish exactly how.[1737]

At about noon on the day in question, Bandera had driven from the building of the ZCh OUN organization on Zeppelinstrasse, with Eugenia Mack in his car, to a marketplace where he bought a box of grapes, a box of plums, and a small basket of tomatoes. He drove Mack back to the building and then drove without a bodyguard to his house for lunch. When Mack had suggested that he call a bodyguard, Bandera had said that he did not need one.[1738] Bandera was usually picked up in the morning by a bodyguard and accompanied by one on his way home. On 15 October, it was Osyp Ferlewycz who came to Bandera’s house by moped at 7:40 a.m. and accompanied Bandera in the car in which Bandera drove his son Andrii and a friend to school, and which he then drove to work. Bandera planned to eat lunch all that week in the canteen of the organization and therefore noted in the schedule for his security personnel that he did not need security at lunchtime.[1739]

Between noon and 12:30 Bandera ate a piece of apple and half a plum in the market hall, but the police ruled out the possibility that the poison arrived in his stomach with these items, as other people ate the fruit without problems.[1740] A day before his death, Bandera had lunch with two BND officials in the Ewige Lampe restaurant.[1741] Because of the secret nature of such meetings, the police could not ascertain who were the people with whom Bandera had lunched, but they ruled out the possibility that poison was given to Bandera during this meal, because cyanide kills immediately. There was a possibility, however, that Bandera might have swallowed the cyanide in a slow-dissolving capsule, which would cause death after delay, but there was no evidence to support this idea. Investigating officer Fuchs considered that the most plausible theory was that Bandera took his own life on account of family problems, in particular, conflict with his wife concerning an alleged affair with the neighbor’s au pair.[1742]

The Soviet Union immediately connected Bandera’s assassination with Theodor Oberländer, the federal minister for displaced persons, refugees, and war victims in Adenauer’s government. On 21 October 1959, Radians’ka Ukraїna, and a day later, Komsomol’skaia pravda insinuated that Oberländer murdered Bandera because he knew too much about the minister’s role in the pogroms in Lviv in 1941.[1743] In May 1960, KGB agent Stefan Lippolz tried to convince the journalist Gösta von Uexküll and the Munich police that Bandera was killed by ZCh OUN member Dmytro Myskiv. Lippolz lived in Munich from 1953 until 1956 and owned the Stephansklause restaurant, which ZCh OUN activists regularly visited. He was a KGB agent and spied on Ukrainian émigrés in Munich. Von Uexküll lived in Hamburg and worked for Die Welt, in which he had a newspaper column that dealt with the Ukrainian nationalists.[1744] Von Uexküll informed the police about Lippolz’s suggestions but, as Myskiv was not in Munich at the time of Bandera’s death, the police did not pay much attention to them.[1745]

In 1956, the CIC had arrested Kostiantyn Kapustyns’kyi, a KGB agent, in Munich. After nine months of investigations, they handed him over to German authorities, who sentenced him to fifteen months imprisonment. After his release, Kapustyns’kyi no longer wanted to work for the KGB, but was forcibly recruited again. According to OUN-B sources, Kapustyns’kyi defected to the West in May 1960 and informed the German police who had killed Bandera. Kapustyns’kyi’s alleged disclosure in May 1960 did not make any impact on the investigation.[1746] On 8 October 1960, the ZCh OUN received a letter from the Bavarian police, to the effect that it had closed the investigation because it had no indication as to who might have poisoned Bandera.[1747]

Everything changed when Bohdan Stashyns’kyi entered the building of the police station at the Tempelhofer Damm in West Berlin on 12 August 1961. The handsome thirty-year-old man with an East European accent informed the police that he was a Soviet intelligence agent and that he wanted to talk to the Americans. After forty-five minutes he and his wife were picked up by an American intelligence officer. The next day, Stashyns’kyi was flown to Frankfurt am Main. He originally stayed in a private community of houses used only by the CIA or the American army and was interrogated several times by American intelligence officers. On 1 September, the Americans handed him over to the German authorities. Stashyns’kyi revealed first to the CIC and later to the BND and the West German police, how he had killed Lev Rebet, leader of the OUN-z, on 12 October 1957 in Munich, and then how he had killed Bandera in the same city almost exactly two years later. He also explained why he had decided to give himself up to the West Berlin police. His story seemed so incredible that he had to make a great effort to convince the investigating officers, and later the court, to believe him.[1748]

Stashyns’kyi revealed to his investigators that he was born in 1931 in the village of Borshchovychi, about twenty kilometers from Lviv. In autumn 1948, he began to study pedagogy at Lviv University. He was arrested in 1950 for travelling as a student without a valid ticket. An officer proposed that he work for the Soviet authorities and implied that the MGB was aware of his family’s connection to the nationalist underground. Concerned about the fate of his family, he agreed to cooperate.[1749]

Stashyns’kyi’s first task was to find the murderer of the Ukrainian communist writer Iaroslav Halan who had been killed with a hatchet in his apartment in Lviv on 24 October 1949. In order to smuggle Stashyns’kyi into the OUN-UPA underground, the MGB pretended to be searching for Stashyns’kyi in Borshchovychi and Lviv in late March and early April 1951. This convinced the local OUN-UPA activists that Stashyns’kyi was hiding from the MGB, and enabled him to join the underground. After about two months with the OUN-UPA, Stashyns’kyi reported to the KGB that he had discovered Halan’s assassin and had left the underground. After three months the alleged assassin, Mykhailo Stakhur, was caught and executed.[1750]

After this operation, Stashyns’kyi could not continue to study in Lviv. He worked for the MGB in the Lviv region until the summer of 1952, arresting OUN-UPA activists who were in hiding. He was then trained for two years in Kiev, to work as an MGB agent abroad. In addition to practical training, he learned German and attended ideological courses to strengthen his Soviet patriotism. In July 1954, he moved to Poland and four months later to the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) where the KGB provided him with papers under the name “Joseph Lehmann.” Stashyns’kyi posed as an ethnic German repatriate.[1751] In 1956 his supervisor “Sergej” explained to him that the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalist organizations in West Germany were harming the Soviet Union. Their anti-Soviet propaganda damaged the Soviet image and discouraged many Ukrainian émigrés from returning home. “Sergej” informed Bohdan that the first leader he was to assassinate would be Lev Rebet.[1752]

The method used to kill Rebet was to fire a jet of poison gas at his face from a spray gun, in which a cyanide capsule had been crushed. The gun was small and flat, and it could easily be hidden from view, if wrapped in a newspaper, for example. The cyanide would narrow the blood vessels of the victim and cause death. After a while, they would enlarge and return to their normal size. The inhaled cyanide would evaporate after ten minutes, which would make it impossible to ascertain that the person died a violent death as the result of inhaling poison. The assassin would swallow a pill before the assassination and inhale an antidote shortly after it, in case he himself had inhaled some of the poison. To calm his nerves he would take a sedative half an hour before the assassination.[1753]

After spying on Rebet and other Ukrainian émigrés in Munich for several weeks and preparing the assassination, Stashyns’kyi found a convenient moment on 12 October 1957. He fired the poison toward Rebet’s face with the spray gun wrapped in a newspaper, at a distance of about forty centimeters (sixteen inches), in the stairwell of the house at Karlsplatz 8, where Rebet had his office. Rebet was found dead on the second floor of the stairwell at 10:40 a.m. Stashyns’kyi flew to East Berlin the next day and reported on 14 October that he had accomplished his task. The doctor who conducted the post-mortem examination of Rebet found no evidence of a violent death and concluded that he probably died of a heart attack.[1754]

In May 1958, Stashyns’kyi was sent to Rotterdam, where the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Ievhen Konovalets’ was to be commemorated. He photographed the ceremony on 25 May at the graveside. The KGB had planned to disturb the ceremony, having planted a stink bomb, which did not explode. In the first instance, the KGB had even thought about detonating a real bomb, but changed their minds when they realized that the explosion would kill not only the Ukrainian nationalists but also a number of random bystanders (Figs. 25 and 26).[1755]