On 17 November 1944, one of the first articles about the Ukrainian nationalists by the prominent Ukrainian communist writer Iaroslav Halan appeared in Radians’ka Ukraїna. The article was titled “In the Black Pit of Betrayal and Crimes.” At the beginning, Halan stated: “In terms of crimes, the Banderite bandits are not inferior to their hosts—Hitlerite masters. They burn people alive. Cut off arms and legs. Bury people alive. This is the German school. The Gestapo is the teacher of crime for the Banderites, Bulbites, and Melnykites.” Halan wrote that the Ukrainian nationalists printed anti-German leaflets in a German printing plant in Luts’k, but that not one “German perished from the Banderite leaflets, and the Banderites’ bullets flew not against German troops but against the bodies of Ukrainian and Polish peasants, their mothers, wives and children, and against partisans.”[1828] Caricatures printed next to articles written by Halan and other Soviet writers frequently made fun of the proclamation of 30 June 1941, Stets’ko’s government, and the idea of an independent Ukrainian state (Figs. 29 and 30).