Volodymyr Beliaiev, another writer for Radians’ka Ukraїna, published an article in December 1944 about the killing of Polish professors in Lviv on the night of 3–4 July 1941. Unlike later Soviet commentators, he did not connect this fact to the Nachtigall battalion.[1829] In an article “Ukrainian-German Nationalists—the Worst Enemies of the Ukrainian Nation,” O. Kasymenko denounced the OUN-UPA because the Ukrainian nationalists wanted to separate Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Kasymenko, and later several other authors, made a connection between the OUN and politicians such as Petliura and Vynnychenko, who had tried to establish a Ukrainian state during the First World War. What made Petliura the forerunner of the OUN, according to Kasymenko, was that he wanted to separate Ukraine from Russia and that he collaborated with the Germans. Kasymenko, like Halan and several other Soviet writers, mixed facts with completely false information, in order to strengthen the propagandist impact of his writing. Also like Halan, he tried to portray the OUN-UPA as an alien body: “Who are they, the Ukrainian-German nationalists? This is a small band of devious traitors isolated from the nation.” Finishing his article, the author stressed that the Ukrainian nation was consolidated “around the great leader comrade Stalin and will always be faithful to the great idea of the friendship of Soviet peoples.”[1830]

Professor Vasyl’ Osichyns’kyi of Lviv University explained the Soviet interpretation of Ukrainian nationalism in greater detail. He began with the Sich Riflemen who were for him nothing more than an instrument of German politics and who betrayed the Ukrainian nation. According to Osichyns’kyi, only the Soviet Union gave Ukrainians the possibility to establish their “own state—the Ukrainian SSR.” From the very beginning, the Sich Riflemen represented the “Ukrainian nationalistic counterrevolution.” The main activist of this counterrevolution was the Tsentral’na Rada, the assembly of Ukrainian politicians that in 1917 proclaimed the Ukrainian National Republic, supported the imperialistic policies of the German Empire, and thereby “jeopardized the eternal wish of the Ukrainian nation to live in union with the fraternal Russian people.” Petliura, according to Osichyns’kyi, was an early Ukrainian nationalist who betrayed the Ukrainian nation by making an alliance with Poland and offering it the western Ukrainian territories. After the First World War, the Ukrainian nationalists escaped from Ukraine and worked for the intelligence services of such countries as Poland, Romania, and Germany. During the interwar period, “all these traitors gathered mainly in fascist Germany” where the Gestapo “made them into tools of German imperial fascism. On this ground, contemporary Ukrainian-German nationalism grew up, which was an integral part of the German-fascist system.” Osichyns’kyi introduced Konovalets’ as “Hitler’s personal friend” who was killed by the Gestapo in 1938 “through some misunderstanding between lords and mercenaries.” According to Osichyns’kyi, Bandera became the leader of the OUN because the Gestapo did not like Mel’nyk. During the Second World War, the “Ukrainian-German nationalists” helped the Nazis to exploit Ukraine. The Banderites went underground at the Germans’ request in order to give the impression that they were fighting against the occupiers, but in reality they were still serving the Germans. Melnykites did not go underground and openly collaborated with the Germans; they mobilized Ukrainians for work in Germany and established the Waffen-SS Galizien. Osichyns’kyi concluded his article with the words: “Their lords—the German fascists—are perishing under the blows of the Red Army. They, too, will perish.”[1831]

Iaroslav Halan put the Soviet description of Banderites and the “Ukrainian-German nationalists” in a nutshell in his pamphlet Vampires: “Thus, the Hitlerites [hitlery] left; the Banderites [bandery] remained. Allied with fascism and its regime not by life but by death, they kept operating by inertia even after their Mecca, Nazi Berlin, lay in ashes. … Banderites have been lucky enough to avoid the gallows, and they operate according to all the rules of fascist policy.”[1832]

The term “fascism” appeared in early Soviet propaganda very frequently, its meaning completely distorted and politicized. It was used as a political swearword. The Soviet propaganda apparatus identified all opponents of the Soviet Union as fascists. Some of them, such as Bandera, Mel’nyk, and Croatian politicians such as Pavelić, did adopt fascism but a number did not. One example is the depiction of the Polish AK and Polish politicians such as Józef Beck and Edward Rydz-Śmigły as fascists.[1833] Although some Polish politicians were sympathetic toward Nazi Germany prior to the Second World War, and some units of the AK collaborated with the Germans, these politicians and the AK did not adopt fascism. They were introduced in the Soviet narrative as fascists because they did not fight against Nazi Germany on the Soviet side, did not accept Soviet supremacy in Poland, and fought against the Polish communist authorities.[1834] In addition, Soviet propaganda used the term “fascist” as a catchphrase and a weapon and applied it during the Cold War to democratic states from the Western bloc.[1835]

Long before the Red Army came to western Ukraine in spring and summer 1944, Soviet leaders such as Khrushchev had been informed about the murder of Poles and Jews by the OUN and UPA, and their fighting against and killing Soviet partisans. When the Red Army reached western Ukraine, the OUN-UPA was still conducting ethnic cleansing against the Poles in eastern Galicia and murdering Jews who hid in the forests. The Soviet authorities did not invent these atrocities but depicted them in a distorted, simplistic, and propagandist manner, paying no attention to the nature of the crimes, and stripping the victims of the OUN and UPA mass violence of their national identities, by depicting them simply as Soviet people.[1836]

One of the main distortions on the part of Soviet propaganda in the early phase was the identification of the OUN and UPA as an integral part of the Nazi empire. Banderites were not depicted as human beings but either as beasts or the limbs of a beast that was Nazi Germany. One caricature printed in Radians’ka Ukraїna showed a poisonous snake with a trident on its cap and another on its black skin, crawling out of a coffin, which, with a helmet with a swastika on it, symbolized defeated Nazi Germany (Fig. 31).[1837]