the Ukrainian insurgent army,collaborators or resistants?

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Georgien
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#151

Post by Georgien » 05 Jan 2006, 03:44

Larry

You mention sources, sources... many do here. But tell me this how do you determine the validity of sources? For example in this case of UPA? How do you know they are actual facts? Lets say im claiming that Holocaust did not happen. I can find many sources which can back up my claims, right? But you have vast knowledge of History so you will dismiss those invalid sources, right? How about the region or topic you did not read about or studied? Somebody here quotes sources which are invalid to the facts. How can you tell they are reliable sources or not if you don’t know anything about the topic? There are many sides, believes and also are many sources which contradict each other. In some cases you don’t need a source to explore or understand an issue. Many you here remind me of lawyers, demanding evidence to everything, sometimes getting to the point of absurdity. And you will agree that most of the sources on the net are not reliable. Take example of Wikepedia. Its not a valid source or accurate encyclopedia. Everyone can be a contributor on Wikepedia, which is wrong. Most of them have biased and misleading opinions and unresearched materials. So you telling me that those who post sources all the time are digging into the libraries of US Congress and Oxford University?
Therefore sometimes i wonder, when you mention sources.. you know better than me that many sources are far from the truth or fact. Even the concept of truth and facts are controversial. :)

So the logic is as i can understand it: does not metter the source is invalid, its important for every claim to quote something from somewhere from the net or an article (which in fact can be more biased than your oppinion) and call it a "source" :)

Example: AnaOgs hate site which has nothing to do with Ukrainians or Ukrainian character.

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AdaOg
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#152

Post by AdaOg » 05 Jan 2006, 09:58

It is possible to use credible sources. I checked Mr Himka (article - Black spot on Ukrainia Diaspora).
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/historya ... lhimka.cfm

Wisenthal, Yad Vashem, and Ushmm are for me reliable.

Quoted
Robin O'Neil is universally acknowledged as the central research source for the Schindler story and the former death camp at Belzec of which he has been engaged for over 30 years. Historical consultant to several TV documentaries and radio broadcasts in the UK and abroad. Is an Honoured guest of Schindler's home town, Svitavy, Czech Republic and is a regular lecturer at universities in the United Kingdom, America, Israel and Eastern Europe.

Quoted Norman Davies is world known historian.

Quoted Professors Poliszczuk and Hrytsak are Ukrainian scientists.

But still I have troubles. I want to find something about alleged Polish opressions towards Ukrainian Nationalists before WWII and I could find only information provided by Ukrainian Nationalists - what makes me impossible to compare Polish official information and Ukrainian (both are very far fretched).


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Askold
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#153

Post by Askold » 05 Jan 2006, 10:54

AdaOg:

Can you answer my question or not?

P.S. Here's a source for you on Polish brutalities:

The Nation,

Volume: 132 • Issue #: 3418 • Date: January 07, 1931

"Pacification" of the Ukraine

by Farson, Negley



Short abstract:
...Hundreds of others lay in far villages, unable to receive medical attention as the Ukrainian doctors who tried to get out to them were arrested...

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#154

Post by AdaOg » 05 Jan 2006, 11:49

1. What question? About Jews in UPA? Or else???
If You mean jews in Upa - proove me after many Jewish bad memoires that they stayed in UPA voluntary!!! I'm waiting.

1. Is your source avialble on web sites ? Who is the author?

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#155

Post by Larry D. » 05 Jan 2006, 15:39

Georgien wrote:
But tell me this how do you determine the validity of sources?
As I noted, it is for each reader to determine the validity of the sources provided. You do this by further study. Carefully weighed primary (archival) sources are the most valid and scholarly studies by university professors and others are second best, provided they have been favorably reviewed. The subject is also a clue. People will falsify or slant books and articles about the Holocaust because they are anti-Semites or revisionists, but usually not some obscure and insignificant technical thing like the number of tanks the 2. SS-Pz.Div. "Das Reich" had on 17 October 1943.

You are also correct about the internet. It is overflowing with garbage posted by people with agendas and by provocateur troublemakers so one must be very careful. Some locations, like Marcus Wendel's Axis History Factbook and Lexikon der Wehrmacht are pretty safe because everything is sourced and no one can enter those sites and change the information. At worst, they might contain a few errors repeated from the sources used.

So it's up to the individual. There is a business management graph that demonstrates the theoretical cost of perfect information. The scale along the left margin is the percentage of perfect information from 0% to 100% and the horizontal scale along the bottom is cost from $0 to infinity. The curve starts from the bottom left corner and curves upward and to the right. As it extends toward infinite cost it never quite reaches 100%. The lesson is that the cost of perfect information is infinite. This is true in historical research as well as business. The cost of acquiring 100% perfect or accurate information is beyond the cost of most of us, so we do the best we can with what resources we can afford.

Regarding your example of the Holocaust, you probably do not have the time or money to read every primary and secondary document, book and article on the subject, so you must pick the most widely accepted studies and focus on those. If you have lots of money and time, you can go the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz (SS documents) and Freiburg (military documents) and read the original reports of the Einsatzgruppen and related documents, and the huge number of entries in unit Kriegstagebücher und Anlagen that speak of executing Jews and communists from one end of Russia to the other. All of these documents have been examined over and over again by experts and certified as being 100% authentic. Then you can go to the various archives and read the trial testimony of thousands and thousands of eye witnesses who corroborate what is in the documents.

O.K. That's as far as I can go on this. I am old and tired and I just don't have the strength and the will any longer to engage in these endless, time consuming discussions.

Cheers,

--Larry

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#156

Post by Askold » 05 Jan 2006, 18:06

AdaOg:
1. What question? About Jews in UPA? Or else???
If You mean jews in Upa - proove me after many Jewish bad memoires that they stayed in UPA voluntary!!! I'm waiting.
- In this forum it is customary to answer for your own words. Don't answer my question with another question. It was you who stated that Jews were forced in UPA, so please provide me with sorces on forcefull mobilization of Jews into UPA.

1. Is your source avialble on web sites ? Who is the author?
- Please read the posting again, I provided the name of the author. As for online reading - I suppose if you go to your university library it shoud have access to some on line journals, including this one.

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#157

Post by AdaOg » 06 Jan 2006, 12:06

I CAN read so far ....and as asked who was the autor - I meant what was his occupation. Historian or nationalist?

We have such saying: 'I cannot proove you that I am not the camel."

Ps proove me that Jews were voluntary. Against that thesis tell sources of UPA's murders committed on Jews. What can you tell me as a evidence for they free will to stay in UPA?

Ps. Be more kind if you can. Do not tell me what I should do or not.

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#158

Post by AdaOg » 06 Jan 2006, 12:43


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#159

Post by Askold » 06 Jan 2006, 19:16

AdaOg
I CAN read so far ....and as asked who was the autor - I meant what was his occupation. Historian or nationalist?

Farson Negley is obviously a Ukrainian nationalist.

We have such saying: 'I cannot proove you that I am not the camel."

Ps proove me that Jews were voluntary. Against that thesis tell sources of UPA's murders committed on Jews. What can you tell me as a evidence for they free will to stay in UPA?
- My God, I've been talking to a camel! You were the first one to make the statement that Jews were forced in UPA (this is amuzing, because none of you even knew that Jews were in UPA, and yet right away you started to tell me that they were forced) If you can come up with proof of that, than I can provide you with contrary sources that Jews went in UPA freely. However its obvious that you don't have the sources to prove your point, so instead of admitting that this was a lie, you try to change the subject or simply bicker.
Ps. Be more kind if you can. Do not tell me what I should do or not.
- Ofcourse I can. For example, intead of providing me with information of how Jews were forced in UPA, you post info on 1918 pogroms in Eastern Ukraine. Stupid or just elusive? ;)

Dear Ada, you wasted few days of my time, and proved nothing to me. You cannot argue or support your claims, therefore I won't waste anymore time on you.

Ciao bella

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#160

Post by AdaOg » 09 Jan 2006, 11:40

It is your problem. Isn't it?

ps. I have never talked to kind open-minded Ukrainian Nationalist. Global sickness or something???

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#161

Post by AdaOg » 12 Jan 2006, 13:32

Proove of UPA attitude to jews, and information about Jewish doctors in UPA:
HOLOCAUST BYSTANDERS - THE UKRAINIANS.
by Alexander Kimel
The Einsatzgrouppen wiped out the Jews in the Ukraine in a short period of time. The help of the local population in identifying, catching and killing the Jews was so extensive that the "resettlement" to the Death Camps was superfluous. At the beginning of the extermination process the Germans had difficulties in shooting children the Ukrainian militiamen volunteered to help them. They did the job with such bloodthirstiness that the Germans put together a few battalions of volunteers, whose main purpose was killing of the Jews. The Russian POW camps were toured and volunteers signed up. They were mostly Ukrainians and Lithuanians. Soon the Ukrainians guards with their outstanding cruelty and brutality wrote the most "glorious" pages of their history. The Ukrainians played a major role in all phases of the Final Solution: they helped in liquidation of the ghettos, guarded the death trains shooting all jumpers, work at the unloading of the death trains, and provided all the terror necessary for herding the victims into the gas chambers, operated the diesel engines. All this ghastly work was done with enthusiasm and unbelievable cruelty: Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka is holding a world record of cruelty.

Ukrainian History:

The Ukrainian were a fiercely independent people, mostly runaway feudal serves that settled the steppes at the river Dnieper. Ukrainians were never a free people, always under the Polish or Russian yoke, strongly nationalistic. The persecutions and harsh living conditions made them hard and cruel. The famous Ukrainian Cossacks, were famous for their raping and plundering the Jewish people, during the World War I.

Deeply religious people, Greek orthodox, the Ukrainian were known for their anti-Semitism and cruelty towards the Jews. The centuries of oppression developed a high national frustration level reflected even in their literature. The famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shewczenko wrote in his poem called "Testament":

" When I die, bury me in the steppes of the Ukraine, overlooking the River, so I can hear the roar of the Dnieper and see the fertile fields. And only when the Dnieper will overflow with the blood of our enemies, then I will leave everything and fly to God to pray, until this time I don't know God."

In the 17th century Poland experienced an upheaval, the uprising of the Ukrainian serfs under the leadership of Bogdan Chmielnicki. The Ukrainian peasants, enslaved and exploited by the Polish Gentry, staged a bloody uprising, fighting the Poles but killing the Jews. Many of the border towns were besieged, and the Jewish population massacred. The Jews were made to be the scapegoats and were the major victims of violent brutality. " Killing was accompanied by barbarous tortures; the victims were flayed alive, split asunder, clubbed to death, roasted on coals, or scalded with boiling water. Even infants at the breast were not spared. The most terrible cruelty was shown towards the Jews. They were destined to utter annihilation and the slightest pity shown towards them was looked upon as treason. The Cossacks who danced on them while drinking whiskey took scrolls of the Law out of the synagogues. After this Jews were laid upon them and butchered without mercy. Thousands of Jewish infants were thrown into wells or buried alive. Contemporary Jewish chroniclers paint a vivid picture of the brutality and sufferings of this period. Victims of massacres were purposely allowed to live longer in order to torture them; hands and feet were cut off; children were split asunder fish like and roasted on a fire; bellies of women were split open and live cats sewed up in them while they were alive."

On September 22, 1941, a German Lieutenant Bingel witnessed a Massacre of Jews in the Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa. After witnessing the massacre some of his men suffered a complete nervous breakdown. In the massacre about six thousand Jews were murdered. Those were the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed. The lieutenant Bingels describes:

In the morning at 10.15, wild shooting and terrible human cries reached our ears. At first. I failed to grasp what was taking place, but when I approached the window from which I had a broad view over the of the town park, the following spectacle unfolded before my eyes and those of my men who, alerted by the tumult, had meanwhile gathered in my room.

Ukrainian militia on horseback, armed with pistols, rifles and long, straight cavalry swords, were riding wildly inside and around the town park. As far as we could make out, they were driving people along their horses - men, women, and children. A shower of bullet was than fired at this human mass. Those not hit outright were struck down with swords. Like ghostly apparition, this horde of Ukrainians, let loose and commanded by S.S. officers, trampled savagely over human bodies, ruthlessly killing innocent children, mothers, and old people whose only crime was that they had escaped a great mass murder, so as eventually to be shot or beaten to death like wild animals.

In the town of Rohatyn the Ukrainians asked and received permission from the German Authorities to conduct a local pogrom. Hundreds of Ukrainians converged on the city from the villages armed with sticks and knives and provided with sacks for the pillage. The mob started to catch Jew, and beat them, and lead them towards the synagogue, where they had to pass in front of two row of Ukrainians, beating them mercilessly. At five o'clock, the beating stopped, and the bleeding people were released, some of them received serious injuries, requiring hospitalization.

During the WWII the forests of the Ukraine was teeming with Ukrainian partisans in a big variety: Petlurowcy, Banderowcy, UPA (Ukrainian Partisan Army), Bulbowcy, etc. Their aim was to gain independence for the Ukraine, but they never fought with the Germans, avoided engagement with the Russians, but they great achievement was the killing of the Jewish survivors hiding in the forest.

The various Ukrainian partisans, were killing Jews caught in the forest, with one exception- doctors and pharmacists, needed for their health care. The Ukrainian resistance flourished even after the Germans withdrew, they were fighting the Russians. There were some cases where Jewish doctors were caught by the Russians, convicted for subversive activities and given long prison sentences. In one case the Ukrainian Partisan made an special effort to save a Jewish family, but in the prevailing atmosphere of hatred, they failed.


In the town of Podhajce, a special detachment of Ukrainians Partisans rescued Dr. Neuman and his family from the ghetto. In 1920 the Ukrainian nationalist established a short lived Ukrainian Republic, under the leadership of Hetman Petlura, and Dr. Neuman, being a avid Ukrainian nationalist, served as a finance minister in his government. Dr. Neuman and his family were hid in the Ukrainian village of Rudniki, under the protection of the Petlura partisans. After a few months, another band of Ukrainian partisans killed them outright. In retaliation the Petlura band killed them.

The Ukrainians played an extensive role in the Final Solution. The Ukrainian Guards were known for inhumanity and cruelty. Chiel Rajchman, a survivor of Treblinka, testified during his deportation proceedings against the infamous Ivan the Terrible.

On a hot day the Ukrainian helpers feel very good. They work with their whips from right to left, in all directions. Nikolai and Ivan who work as machinists at the motor from which the gas goes into the chambers, which also serves that lights Treblinka, they feel very good and happy on such hot day.

Ivan is about 25 years old, looks like a strong big boss. He is pleased when he has an opportunity to expend on the workers his energies. From time to time he gets the urge to take a sharp knife, stop a worker who is running by, and cut off his ear. The blood spurts out, the worker is screaming, but he has to keep running with the stretcher ( a stretcher-type device to carry corpses). Ivan waits patiently until the worker runs back. He tells him to put down the carrier, tells him to get undressed, to go over the pit where he shoots him.

Ivan came once over to the well where I and another dentist named Finkelstein were washing the teeth extracted from the corpses, with a tool used for boring holes in wood. He told Finkelstein to lie down and drilled the metal in his anus . This was just a joke. The unfortunate man didn't even scream out loud, he only groaned. Ivan laughed and kept yelling, "Lie still or else I will shoot you."

Chiel Rajchman was asked if he had seen Ivan at the gas chambers :

" Every day, whenever there were transports. They (Ivan and Nikolai) beat people. Ivan had - he had a weapon of destruction; he had a pipe, a sword, a whip, and he tortures the victims with this before they entered the gas chambers, especially the women, he cut pieces between their legs. I saw it with my very eyes."

Rajchman described an incident of cruelty by Ivan :

" I saw that he brought a Jewish man with a long beard and ear locks, naked. Ivan appeared behind the gas chambers, he pulled apart with his own hands the barbed wire in the fence and pushed the Jew's head inside ah beat him with his whip. The Jewish man screamed; he threw himself - it looked as if the barbed wire cut his throat, and he choked after a little while."

Helping the Jews.

One of the dangers is over simplification and creating stereotypes. It is true that Ukrainians contributed a lot manpower to the Nazi extermination machine. Those facts are well known, what is not know that on many individual Poles or Ukrainians helped Jews. A Holocaust Survivor recalls:

"One story that affected me personally is the help received from an old Ukrainian peasant, a real gentlemen. My father used his services many times as a messenger or he provided transportation with his horse and baggy. On the eve of the Judenrein in the ghetto, my sister sent an urgent letter through our Ukrainian friend, asking our father to come to take her out from the ghetto. My father went immediately, arrived at night and smuggled himself into the ghetto. It was Friday night, and he decided to sleep for the last time in his bed. The same night the action began. My father and my sister survived the first day in the bunker, on the second night my father took my sister and escaped from the burning ghetto. They run to our Ukrainian friend, who sheltered them, later dressed my sister as an Ukrainian peasant girl; my father was dressed like an old beggar, and brought them to the forest. My joy on seeing them is difficult to describe. It is true that we paid him for the services, but compared to the risk of life he ran, the payment was less than a token. It is sad but today I don't even remember his name or the name of his village"


http://www.kimel.net/Ukraine.html

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#162

Post by David Thompson » 19 Jan 2006, 18:19

A post from AdaOg at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 155#823155 was edited by this moderator to remove graphic images which were outside the forum standards, and replace them with links:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=5#5 (incorporating by reference)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

See also:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 365#561365
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 779#722779
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 039#619039
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 984#550984
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 754#513754
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 693#163693
2. Atrocity photographs

Atrocity photographs are not specifically covered in the forum rules. The policy here is, if the photos are "graphic," the contributor should post a link to the photographs, rather than the photographs themselves, so that the other viewers have a choice as to whether or not to take a look.

That leaves us with the question of what is "graphic." This is apparently discretionary with the moderator/host. Here's my view on it:

I don't care who is supposed to have committed the atrocities in the photographs. Whether the subject matter is Nazi, communist, ethnic, regional, racial, religious or any other type of atrocity, links and descriptions should be posted for the following classes of photographs and illustrations:

(a) Mutilated persons, alive or dead;

(b) Severed body parts, insufficient in themselves to constitute a person; and

(c) Dead persons who are not only dead, but who clearly appear to be the worse for wear.

There are specialty sites which cater to necro-voyeurs, but this isn't one of them. In case of doubt, ask first via private message.

Noncomplying posts will be deleted without warning.

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#163

Post by Manweru » 06 Jun 2006, 18:44

(moved from http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 45&start=0)
Petro wrote:Qvist,
I would gladly do that but how can I stand aside when these people call the brave men and women who fought for the freedom of my homeland fascists?
Petro, but they were fascists and the problem is not in me or any other Pole stating the fact, but in you rejecting historical facts.

Please remember the actual deeds of OUN and UPA:

1. Planned, organised ethnic cleansing/genocide of civilians.
2. Absolute, ruthless glorification of the nation[-ality] as the highest value, casting traditional moral norms aside.
3. Hate filled, genocide-promoting propaganda against other nationalities.
4. Promotion of authoritative form of goverment, armed terror against political enemies (Melnyk's sub-faction for example)

Which of these 4 points you think you can deny?


M.

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#164

Post by Petro » 07 Jun 2006, 15:10

1.There are facts that deny your first statement.
2.No, OUN and UPA members never denied traditional moral norms. They all attended church. In the UPA each kurin' and sometimes even each sotnia had a priest.
3.Well, the Polish nation destroyed our independence. What else did you expect?

4.Here are some of the decisions of an OUN gathering in 1929:

"2. В часі визвольної боротьби лише національна диктатура, зможе забезпечити внутрішню силу української нації та найбільшу її відпорність назовні. "
"2.In the TIME OF OUR STRUGGLE for freedom only a national dictatorship can ensure strength for the Ukrainian nation.."
The document goes on to say that only after gaining freedom will Ukraine decide its fate.

Regarding, Melnyk's group. Probably most of you know that in 1940 the OUN was divided into two parts, those of Andriy Melnyk and Stepan Bandera. There were many reasons for this. Here is one of them. In 1936 Stepan Bandera, Yaroslav Stetsko, Mykola Lebid and other key members of the OUN in Ukraine were on trial for organizing the assasination of the minister of internal affairs in Poland . Bandera was sentenced to life in prison. Obviously the OUN's leader Yevhen Konovalets was living abroad. One of the key pieces of evidence against Bandera was the so called "Senyk archive". Omelian Senyk had been an UVO memeber since 1920 and later joined the OUN. A few years before the trial Senyk joined the central command of the OUN abroad. He lived in Prague and had the responsibility of the OUN's main archive. The archive contained a lot of vauluable info, like the oraganization of attacks, the financing of the OUN and many other aspects. In 1936 this archive somehowe got into the hands of the Polish police. Bandera, Lebed and the whole krayova eksekutyva was thrown into prison. Senyk for some reason was not arrested. Till the end of his life Stepan Bandera believed that Senyk was a Polish agent.
After the murder of Konowalets by a Soviet agent in Rotterdam in 1938 the OUN had a to elect a new leader. Konowalets wanted Melnyk to be his follower. They had become very close friends during World War I when fighting together in the Ukrainian Sitch Riflemen division which was part of the Austrian army. Of course Bandera was in jail at that time. Melnyk did not prove to be a good leader for the Organization. His personality was weaker than that of Konowalets and he allowed people like Omelian Senyk to influence his decisions greatly. This led to cardinal differences between the central command of the OUN abroad and the krayova eksekutyva in Ukraine. When Poland was crushed Bandera and his people came out of jail. Bandera still thought that the OUN should eliminate Senyk from the central command and give more power to the Organization in Ukraine. A meeting took place between Melnyk and Bandera but it brought no results. In February 1940 Bandera formed the Revolutionary OUN. Historians claim that nearly 90% of all OUN members joined Bandera's group.
When Bandera's OUN started the formation of the UPA in Volyn' at the end of 1942, Melnyk's OUN also put together amred groups. Armed fighting was rare among the representatives of these formations but sometimes it happened. I would not call the conflict between the two OUNs a military deal. It was political. The conflict between Bandera's OUN and the group of Taras Bulba on the other hand was a military conflict. The leadership of Bandera's OUN wanted to prevent the thing that happened to Ukraine's partisan movement after WWI. It is know that when the Soviets occupied Ukraine in 1919 a huge Ukrainian underground movement started. Unfortunately this movement didn't have one list of objectives and one leader. In the South of Ukraine (Zaporizhya, Sicheslav, etc.) the movement was led by the anarchists (Nestor Makhno and his army). In other parts of the country many groups wanted the return of the Ukrainian National Republic and Symon Petlura. Among them was the Cholodny Yar (Cold Ravine) region near Chyhyryn in central Ukraine. This "republic" was led by the legendary otaman Vasyl' Chuchupaka who was killed in 1920 by the Soviets. There were many others: Hryhoryev, Zeleny, etc. In short many regions were controlled by otamans who were not united among themselves. That is one of the main reason that caused the movement to disappear completely by 1922.
Bandera's OUN wanted the national movement to be under one roof. They offered Taras Bulba Borowets to be the head of the UPA's main base. He declined. Borowets didn't have much influence. His group probably never exceeded 1000 people and controlled a small region. I acknowledge. There was some fighting among them and in the end Bulba's group was disarmed and joined the UPA. Borowets himself escaped and emigrated with a few supporters. What is interesting is that he had one person with him that had a lot of authority. That was colonel Ivan Lytvynenko, a veteran of the army of the Ukrainian National Republic and the epic Winter March of 1919-1920. Lytvynenko gladly joined the UPA. He was killed by the Soviets in 1947.
In short Ukraine needed one united national movement. If Borowets had had control over a good army the UPA would have probably negotiated with him. But what is there to negotiate with a war lord who controls two villages?

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#165

Post by Musashi » 07 Jun 2006, 19:37

Petro wrote: 3.Well, the Polish nation destroyed our independence. What else did you expect?
Do you mean in 1918-1921? OK, but do you really believe Ukraine would have been independent or the result would have been the whole Ukraine would have belonged to the Soviet Union? Do you believe the Soviets would have allowed a small part of Ukraine occupied by Poland to be independent? :) I don't belive you are so naive. Of course you are aware of that what happened to the Ukrainian population in the Soviet Union in 1931-1932. If Poland had not occupied western part of Ukraine, the result would have been the Soviet occupation and 1-2 million more Ukrainians starved to death.

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