After the amnesty expired on 20 July 1945, the strategy of Soviet propaganda toward Ukrainian nationalists changed. “The people forgave those who dropped their weapons and surrendered to the Soviet authorities,” we read in an article of that date, “but those who continue the notorious cause of Cain will die a dog’s death in their Hitlerite garbage. … This is the will of the people. It will be carried out as soon as possible. Those who prevent us from building up a happy life in our free, united Soviet Ukraine, in our Soviet Motherland, must and will be annihilated!”[1819]

For several months prior to the amnesty of 20 July 1945, Soviet propaganda let the Ukrainian nationalists themselves speak, in order to demonstrate the felonious nature of the OUN-UPA and to encourage their members to surrender. The Ukrainian nationalists were described in the Soviet press as if they had understood that they were deluded by their leaders and were enemies of the Ukrainian people. On 6 February 1945, Vil’na Ukraїna printed a report “Our Country! Soviet Country!” by Ostap Vyshnia about Peremyshliany, a provincial town in the Lviv oblast. Vyshnia described a speech, by a man aged about thirty-five, to his fellow citizens:

Citizens! You know me. I was in command of the Banderite station in our district. I requested you to fight against the Soviet authorities, not to surrender, to kill Soviet people, and asked you to hide in “bunkers” and forests. I ordered you to kill those who defected to the Soviet authorities and to kill not only them but also their parents, wives, and children. … But now I regret what I and my comrades did. Now I understand how much misery and calamity we caused with our work. Now it is clear in my mind where our leaders and Bandera were leading us. It is no secret that Bandera—and with him all we Banderites—worked according to the advice of the Gestapo, and it is right to call us German-Ukrainian nationalists. I call on all those who were following me to go to the representatives of Soviet power and to give up their weapons. ... You see, I am alive; the Soviet authorities did not do anything bad to me. I beg you once more, let us end our miserable doings, let us cooperate with the Soviet authorities.[1820]

After the speech, according to Vyshnia, people who had lost relatives at the hands of the OUN-UPA wept. To change the attitude of the population toward the OUN-UPA, the speakers frequently introduced murders committed by the local nationalists against people who were known to the community. At the same time, they omitted Soviet crimes committed toward the same local population.

On 18 February 1945, Vil’na Ukraїna published “To All Deceived Who Are in Forests and Bunkers—Our Appeal” written by a group of Banderites who had left the underground. The signatures of the defectors and a group photograph appeared. The authors of the article confessed their crimes and tried to encourage the nationalists in hiding to leave the underground. “We were in forests and bunkers for a long time, we carried out the will of German imperialists, Hitlerites,” the defectors claimed:

We deceived our peasants, our youth, we spread different hostile rumors, we claimed that we were fighting for a “free Ukrainian independent state,” but in reality we were murdering our village men and faithfully serving the Germans.

But when we read the appeal of the government of Soviet Ukraine we understood that our deeds are against the people—we broke with our dark past life and we approach a new path, the path of honest labor and activity. ...

We were intimidated several times with the idea that if we surrendered to the Soviet authorities we would be killed, tortured, or deported to Siberia. In reality, this is a lie, an invention. Having come back from the forests, we are free and are not under any pressure.[1821]

Similarly, in the issue of Radians’ka Ukraїna for 20 July 1945, a member of the SB OUN reported that he was deceived by his leaders: “I, Borys Ivan, joined the OUN in 1942 and worked as the sub-district commander of the SB. The leaders … deluded us. They ordered us to help the Germans in the struggle against the Soviet Union; they ordered us to kill innocent people. They told us that we would achieve our Ukraine in this way but we see that the leaders of the OUN deceived us.”[1822]

In its early phase, the campaign against the OUN-UPA was embedded in the hate campaign against Nazi Germany which did not distinguish between Nazis and Germans. Killing a German was equal to killing a Nazi and was an expression of Soviet patriotism and bravery. “If you haven’t killed a German in the course of the day, your day has been wasted. … If you have killed one German, kill another: nothing gives us so much joy as German corpses,” wrote Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the leading Soviet writers.[1823] Similarly, the campaign against Ukrainian nationalists was, from the very beginning, embedded in an ideological campaign to strengthen Soviet patriotism in Ukraine, especially in the western regions. The Ukrainian nationalists were introduced as the negation of the Soviet ideal of patriotism and as traitors to the Ukrainian SSR, who helped the Germans to enslave the motherland.[1824] During the campaign against the Germans, Radians’ka Ukraїna, Vil’na Ukraїna, and many other Soviet Ukrainian newspapers published reports of the Extraordinary State Commission that investigated Nazi crimes in Ukraine. The reports were presented in a furious, accusatory, and vengeful narrative.[1825]

On 29 October 1944, Radians’ka Ukraїna announced that, because western Ukraine had been in the Soviet Union for less than two years, the policy of Sovietization should be introduced scrupulously: “Especially here in the western oblasts, the mass political and ideological work should be developed on a particularly wide scale, and with particular scope, and should be conducted with particular knowledge.” The article further introduced the Ukrainian nationalists as “Ukrainian-German nationalists, all these Banderites, Bulbites etc.” It explained that these “Banderites and Bulbites” had betrayed their motherland, the Soviet Union:

Here, in the western oblasts they conducted their Cain’s work with a particular determination—they spread national hatred and tried to sever the friendship of the Ukrainian people with the great Russian people and other peoples of the Soviet Union, they lied and dishonored. They did everything to weaken the Ukrainian people and in this manner they helped the Hitlerites to conduct the Germanization of Ukraine, to turn it into a German colony.[1826]

In the same article the anonymous author argued that the “Ukrainian-German dogs of Hitler” were not only the OUN-B and the UPA but also all other Ukrainian nationalists and collaborators, including the OUN-M, the Waffen-SS Galizien, the UTsK headed by Kubiiovych, and people working in the collaborationist newspapers and administration. They appeared in Soviet propaganda as a homogenous group that, with the help of Nazi Germany, harmed the Ukrainian people. The worst or most vicious elements of this group were the OUN and UPA. Unlike many others, they did not leave with the Germans but stayed in the underground and prolonged the German terror, continuing to murder peaceful Soviet citizens.[1827]