At the sixth session of the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet in Kiev on 1 March 1944, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech entitled “Liberation of the Ukrainian territory from German invaders and the current tasks concerning the rebuilding of the national economy in Soviet Ukraine.”[1800] Khrushchev extolled Stalin, the Soviet Union, Soviet partisans, and the Red Army, which was “destroying the fascist invaders and cleansing the Soviet territory from them.”[1801] He stressed that the Soviet people had suffered considerably during the previous three years, and he mentioned several atrocities that Nazi Germany had committed in Ukraine, such as the massacres at Babi Yar, Dnipropetrovs’k, and Kharkiv. Khrushchev did not mention that the majority of the victims in these massacres were Jews, in order to evoke the impression that the main victims of Nazi terror were the Soviet people in general.[1802] This kind of approach to the Second World War became standard in the Soviet Union and continued until its very end. It was a part of Soviet nationalism that was intended to strengthen Soviet identity. It negated the Holocaust as genocide against Jews and claimed that Soviet citizens were the group that suffered most.[1803] Khrushchev also appealed to Ukrainian patriotism. He pointed out that “the Ukrainian people are faithful to the great Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”[1804] Furthermore, he stressed that the Ukrainian people would try to include in the Ukrainian Soviet state as many of the Ukrainian territories as possible and would oppose the plans of the Polish government in London, “which does not represent the interests of the Polish people but of lords [pany] and wants not only to include western Ukraine ... but dreams also about a great Polish state from the Dnieper to the Black Sea.”[1805]
The first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine devoted one section of his speech to the “Ukrainian-German nationalists—Hitler’s henchmen, the worst enemies of the Ukrainian people.”[1806] He said that the “Ukrainian-German nationalists did everything ... to enable Germans to enslave our Ukrainian people,” and thus were traitors.[1807] Khrushchev did not point to Bandera but mentioned “Melnykites, Banderites, Bulbites.”[1808] He emphasized that the “Ukrainian-German nationalists” went underground and developed anti-German slogans after they realized that nobody in Ukraine supported them. He also stressed that the nationalists “were fighting only against the Soviet partisans and the Red Army and terrorized the population.”[1809] Toward the end of the speech, Khrushchev stated that “we should contend with them as we did with the German intruders ... as enemies of our homeland.”[1810]
After the Germans left the western Ukrainian territories in early summer 1944, Soviet propaganda frequently labeled the OUN and UPA as the “Ukrainian-German nationalists” or “German-Ukrainian nationalists.” It thereby suggested that the Ukrainian nationalist underground was an integral part of the Nazi empire, which was to be defeated like its masters who had meanwhile withdrawn from Ukraine but had left their accomplices. This propaganda campaign was intended to help defeat the nationalist underground and was therefore interwoven with the terror campaign against the OUN-UPA and against members of the western Ukrainian population who either supported the nationalist underground or were accused of doing so. A very popular and drastic method used in this campaign was the public hanging of Banderites and “collaborators.”[1811] The bodies of the hanged individuals were sometimes left for several days in public with inscriptions such as “Banderite,” “Ukrainian-German Nationalist,” or “For the Betrayal of the Ukrainian Nation.” Sometimes the Soviet executioners removed trousers and underwear from the hanged “bandits” to humiliate them even more and to strengthen the propaganda effect. Local people, sometimes entire groups of school children, were forced to watch these executions.[1812] Sometimes, the authorities herded up to 8,000 peasants from several villages to attend a public trial.[1813] UPA partisans or OUN activists were frequently hanged without trial. The suspicion that a person belonged to or had helped the OUN-UPA was enough to hang that person in public as a Banderite. Sometimes a rumor was spread shortly before the execution that the Banderite possessed cut-off ears of several dozen people when he was apprehended.[1814] The public hanging of Banderites took place almost everywhere in western Ukraine.[1815]
In 1944 and 1945, western Ukraine was bombarded with propaganda material that aimed to persuade OUN activists and UPA partisans to surrender. Many of the leaflets used a national-religious narrative that resembled OUN rhetoric. Soviet material portrayed the OUN and UPA as traitors to the Ukrainian people and as henchmen of the Nazis. On the one hand, Soviet propaganda promised to do no harm to those “Ukrainian-German nationalists” who threw away their weapons and left the forests. On the other, it intimidated those who did not submit to the authorities. In a leaflet from 12 February 1944 we read: “Leave the OUN bands! Break off all connection with the German-Ukrainian nationalists! … They misled you into betraying the Ukrainian people, brought dishonor and death on you—take revenge on them! … Leave the forests! Give your weapons to the Red Army! Go back to your villages, to honest, peaceful work for the well-being of our nation!”[1816] The leaflet ended with a guarantee to “forgive all misdeeds committed against the Fatherland” if the recipients broke off their connections with the OUN and UPA.[1817]
On 20 July 1945, Radians’ka Ukraїna reported that several Ukrainian nationalists had accepted the government’s offer of amnesty. They had been forgiven and were now living in peace but many “bandits” were still in hiding and were terrorizing the population. A caricature printed beside the announcement demonstrated what happened to those “Ukrainian-German nationalists” who refused to submit to the authorities. The caricature shows an oversized fist, which emerges from the sleeve of an embroidered shirt, a symbol of Ukrainian folklore and nationalism, and smashes a bandit. The newspaper informs us that the fist stands for the “forty-million-strong free Ukrainian people.” Just above the fist, we read “20 July,” and see that the bandit has dropped a pistol with an engraved swastika from the blow of the fist. His hat, decorated with a trident, another symbol used by Ukrainian nationalists, flies off his head. As in numerous other Soviet caricatures from this time, the swastika, trident, and yellow-and-blue are symbols of the “Ukrainian-German nationalists” (Fig. 28).[1818]