Communist Guerrilla Warfare Against the Japanese: Base Area Utilization and Expansion

China's Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh review Communist troops before they leave for action behind the Japanese lines.

by Dr. Stephen N. Twining, Ph.D

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces had a long history of using guerrilla warfare tactics against superior conventional forces. Strangely, during the initial stages of the Japanese invasion the CCP met the Japanese forces with conventional force tactics. The results were a disaster. The CCP, however, was later able to take advantage of the situation by returning to a strategy of guerrilla warfare that used base areas and stressed political mobilization of the peasants with the backing of the Eighth Route Army. In the sense that the CCP was able to maintain and increase its force levels while increasing its political control at the expense of the Kuo Min Tang (KMT), the tactic was a success.

The CCP discovered a situation that was perfectly suited to their strategy and experience following the Japanese invasion in 1937. The superiority of the Japanese military negated any chance of positional warfare. Yen Hsi-shan's crushing defeat in Shansi was a vivid reminder. The Japanese failure to occupy the rural areas combined with the brutal nature of its invasion provided the CCP with a fertile ground for their insurgency: the peasants. The CCP analyzed the Japanese Army as having certain weaknesses that favored the use of the party's long-time tactic of guerrilla warfare. Chu Teh, commander of the communist forces, felt that the Japanese infantry was inferior when forced to independent actions and was overly dependent on mechanical means of transport for communications and supply. This obliged them to take the easiest and most level routes of advance and preclude any advantage they might have in the hill country. He advocated fighting in the hills and avoiding battles in the open country.

Mao Tse-tung felt that the Japanese had underestimated the Chinese strength. The internal conflicts among the Japanese militarists combined with the Japanese underestimates of Chinese strength were seen by Mao as causing many mistakes on the part of the Japanese military command. Mao saw these mistakes as:

Piece-meal reinforcement.

Lack of strategic coordination.

Dispersion of main forces at certain times.

Failure to utilize certain opportunities for military action.

And failure to wipe out forces it had surrounded.

In addition to the tactical style of the Japanese Army, there were factors inherent in the Central Chinese Army that were conducive to the CCP guerrilla warfare. Whereas the Japanese Army had an excellent mobilization and conscription plan, the Central Chinese Army under Chiang Kai-shek had little or no plan. China had no reserves to mobilize to active duty status. (The Japanese had mobilized six infantry divisions from the reserves.) The machinery for mobilization utilized by the Chinese was inadequate and inefficient. Control was placed at the provincial level with local warlords controlling conscription at the local level. The Central Government did not send directives to guide the conscription except in areas under its direct control. Even then the system functioned poorly. Individuals drafted from one area were sent on foot hundreds of miles to join their units. One source states that of those drafted only 56% reached their assigned units due to attrition by death and desertion. This had the effect of leaving large supplies of manpower resources untapped for conscription. The manpower was therefore of potential availability as guerrillas.

In view of the above factors, several plans for successful resistance were formulated by the CCP leadership under a general concept of protracted war. Victory was possible only if decisive engagements were avoided in unfavorable circumstances. The concept of compulsory mobilization must be replaced by political mobilization. A united command must be formulated and through this the army must be controlled, disciplined, and its efforts combined with the partisan warfare of the people. Only by preserving friendly forces and liquidating enemy forces could victory be gained. To accomplish this, Mao recommended that the CCP use of mobile warfare of independent initiative be combined with the fullest possible use of guerrilla tactics.

The guerrilla principles were stated by Mao in Strategic Problems of Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Warfare to be:

Carry out offensives in a defensive war on their [the unit's] own initiative, with flexibility and according to plan with battles of quick decision in a protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations.

Coordinate with regular warfare.

Establish base areas.

Undertake strategic offensive.

Develop into mobile warfare.

Establish correct relation of commands.

These principles would insure the continuance of the protracted war. It was imperative to maintain protracted war in order to gain time to strengthen Chinese resistance while simultaneously expediting and awaiting changes in the international situation as well as the defeat to the Japanese from within. Once this was accomplished a strategic counteroffensive could be launched driving out the Japanese. Space would also yield the time that was needed to accomplish revolutionary organization and political cohesion.

These theories made good sense in view of the conditions facing the communist forces in North China. They failed, however, to specify the manner in which the theory was to be applied. Mao's writings are also "after the fact" and were describing what had already come to pass. The individual, who apparently adapted the long-time communist strategy of guerrilla warfare to the North China situation, was Liu Shao-ch'i. His vehicle was to utilize Mao's concept of the base area and adapt it to the conditions in North China being produced by the Japanese invasion.

After initial attempts at mobile warfare, the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army sought to establish base areas in mountainous terrain that were less vulnerable to the Japanese offensive tactics. The main architect of this was Liu Shao-ch'i. Liu saw these base areas as necessary to sustain long-term guerrilla warfare. Five categories of conditions were necessary for the establishment of these anti-Japanese base areas: political, military, social, topographical, and the war's continuance. A government had to be able to organize, arm and guide the masses in the resistance. The military had to be of sufficient armed strength for self-defense to insure the base would not be destroyed by the Japanese.

Social conditions must be such that the masses would cooperate with the military and the government. The terrain had to lend itself to guerrilla development while simultaneously placing the Japanese at a disadvantage. Liu considered the best terrain that which was the poorest for transportation. The war had to be continued throughout the nation to prevent the Japanese from concentrating their superior power solely against the guerrillas. This would also cause the rear areas to become more empty of enemy troop concentrations and thus indirectly aid CCP development.

The CCP priorities in the Sino-Japanese War were: maintain base areas; expand to new areas (not necessarily due to strategic considerations but definitely to increase CCP strength among the peasantry); absorb or eliminate rival nationalistic groups; and conduct anti-Japanese operations only in self-defense or to keep the nation in the war. Utilization of the base area concept, combined with the effective use of the Eighth Route Army for expansion, was the key to a successful guerrilla strategy.

Mao maintained that a centralized command was essential to coordinate operations. The actual implementation of strategic directives, however, was left to the subordinate commands in their campaigns and battles. This allowed the necessary elasticity for the conduct of guerrilla warfare. Chu Teh stressed the importance of coordinated action and the ability of various units to cooperate with each other.

The military tactics of the CCP were to attack supply columns, sever communication lines, and raid isolated Japanese outposts or small groups only when assured of superior strength. Military tactics were mainly a function of the political and economic policy and were suited to CCP arms and equipment. Attacks on supply and communication lines were to force the Japanese to maintain their garrison force strength, spend money on maintenance and repair, and lower Japanese morale. In addition to the military campaigns, the base areas were to extend their political and economic control in areas adjacent to the Japanese occupied areas.

The Eighth Route Army would avoid a pitched battle with a strong enemy. When a Japanese column would penetrate base areas, the tactic was to offer passive resistance to the force of the Japanese attack while attacking the enemy flanks and rear attempting to cut off his communication line. When the Japanese would encamp during an operation, night attacks would be launched to disturb the enemies' rest.

The base areas were originally established by units of the eighth Route Army. The 115th Division settled in the Northeast Shansi mountainous area establishing the Chin-Ch'a-Chi base. The topography of the area was suited to the establishment of a base area. This base also controlled the access to the plains of Hopei and its peasant population. The 115th found the Fou-p'ing area in a virtual political vacuum. Local officials and KMT troops were gone. A border government was established in January 1938 utilizing non-CCP politicians who had retreated from Taiyuan and were members of the Shansi Sacrifice League (Hsi Meng Hui).

The 120th Division under Ho Lung established itself in the Northwest Shansi region in April 1938. This area was barren, poverty stricken, and sparsely populated. It was, however, a strategically important area controlling the communications and defense between Shen-Kan-Ning base (Yenan) and Chin-Ch'a-Chi base.

The 129th Division under Liu Po-ch'eng established a third area in southeastern Shansi. This base area became known as the Chin-Chi-Lu Yu base (Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan). This base did not achieve status as a border region government until early 1941 but had a governmental office in August 1938 under Yan Hsiu-feng and Sung Jench'iung.

The Shen-Kan-Ning base had been established prior to the Sino-Japanese War. This was the Yenan base. Several authors have stated that this base was in command of the other base areas. The political structure does indicate this. An equally convincing argument is held by other authors that the political control of base areas was extremely difficult and that the Chin-Ch'a-Chi area served as a model for other base areas. The military chain of command appears to have run from each base area headquarters to the General Headquarters in the T'ai-hang Mountains. Military decisions seemed to have been made independent from Yenan until after the 100 Regiments campaign.

Regardless of the source, the policy was to expand to new areas after establishing a base area. Upon occupying an area the support of the local population was secured. The militia was then recruited as the Self-Defense Corps. Normally, a village would be able to sustain a 30-man platoon. Equipment and training would be provided these militia when it was available. Recruitment proceeded rapidly during the period 1937-1940, but never at a rate that exceeded the size of the area's population or resources. The key to recruitment for military purposes was the growth of the political consciousness of the population. The development of guerrilla forces and the desired degree of political and economic cooperation was seen by many as in direct proportion to the political commitment of the population. The peasant had to be persuaded to feed, house and inform guerrilla units; and the effectiveness of the units would depend upon the goodwill of the villagers. This was accomplished through propaganda, mass organizations, the press, education, the theater (Ting Ling's dramatic troupe) was well as by eliminating marauding bandits and by instilling discipline into the recruited armies. In situations where these techniques did not produce a committed peasantry, the CCP would burn resident certificates of a village to force it to resist the Japanese. Gentry who sympathized with the Japanese were branded as traitors and their properties were confiscated by the CCP. The gentry's only alternative was to take part in the leadership of the resistance forces and made contributions to its support.

In the Hopei-Shansi-Chahar base areas in Central Hopei 15% of the agricultural land was redistributed through the confiscation of gentry property.

New base areas were established by a variety of methods. Common methods were:

To use a propaganda unit from a regiment as a stay-behind force while the remainder of the regiment retreated before advancing Japanese units.

To send a regular army column deep into occupied territory.

To infiltrate army political cadres into their native regions alone without military backing.

A thorough area study would be conducted prior to infiltration into an area. This study would include knowledge of local politics, economy, grievances, Japanese strength, pro-Japanese sentiment, culture and superstitions. After infiltration, supporters of the resistance would be identified and become the base of the organization. Expansion was desirable in the anti-Japanese strategy as well as in the expansion of CCP strategy. It was similar to an old Chinese chess game where one can deny an area to an enemy by surrounding an area with one's pieces. Even if the blocked area contains no strategic piece, it is still area denied the enemy. Area denied the enemy meant less area available for his future occupancy and reduced the potential for profitable occupation.

The motivation to expand received a push in February 1938. The Eighth Route Army attempted to recapture Taiyuan in Shansi and incurred losses severe enough to force the 120th Division to seek replacements by expanding into the Hopei Plains. The failure of the offensive in Shansi combined with the lack of ammunition and food drove guerrilla bands to surrender. Vanguard units of the 129th encountered guerrilla units, militia, Japanese puppet troops and other anti-Japanese military organizations. The success of these vanguard units encouraged Liu Po-ch'eng to dispatch the main body of the division to southern Hopei establishing the Chi-Nan Military District. Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien led the first column to the area and assisted by young Yenan political activists, village level militia and local troops, seized partial political control over thirty hsien in southern Hopei. Guerrilla units were gradually organized from selected bands already engaged in guerrilla operations when the CCP reached their operational area. This was part of a general pattern in which fighting units were formed from pre-existing anti-Japanese units and the previously unmotivated population was recruited with these units as a nucleus. Peasants, previously unmotivated but later converted, were not used as main force military units until after 1941. During the period in question, they were built up as a base for future use.

The development of the Central Hopei zone by the Chin-Ch'a-Chi Border Region was also an example of CCP expansion primarily through conversion of local Nationalists and guerrilla leaders assisted by the arrival of Red Army units. The leader of the anti-Japanese forces in the area was Lu Chen-ts'ao, a Nationalist military commander. After the fall of Paoting, he had refused to retreat south with the rest of the Nationalist troops and united with the local militia in Ankuo hsien. He and his men were "voluntarily" incorporated into the Eighth Route Army.

The CCP had sent political agents to contact Lu shortly after the Fou-p'ing area was established. Lu had already organized a local government in his area and had a force of 3,000 men. The agents invited Lu and his men to undergo six weeks of political training. After this was completed, the agents returned accompanied by the 129th Division to mobilize the peasants. General Lu then set up a training camp.

After the success of this base, the Eighth Route Army penetrated east Hopei in the spring and summer of 1938 settling in the rural areas of Hsing-lung, Ch'ie-nan, Pao-ti, Feng-jun, Chi, Yu-tien and Tsun-hua hsiens. In order to divert Japanese troops from the Central China front and delay the fall of Hankow, General Lu organized an uprising. Seven thousand T'ang-shan miners and peasants rose up against the Japanese in July 1938. The miners and peasants joined the guerrillas under the leadership of Li Yun-ch'ang. The main unit involved was the Sung-Teng Detachment. It had been formed from an assortment of Peiping University students, bandits, and soldiers from Manchuria. In 1937-38 this force had held the P'ing-Hai area west of Peking. The uprising was planned to extend the Sino-Japanese War, deepen the political consciousness of the people, increase the spirit of resistance in the area, and capture the strategic area from the Japanese. It was an action completely out of character with CCP strategy and must have stemmed from General Lu rather than the CCP. The plan failed. The action brought a Japanese guerrilla hunt. By autumn the Sung-Teng column of the Eighth Route Army was obliterated and the remnants retired to the west of Peking.

The Japanese Army slackened the pressure on the area for a nine-month period. This allowed the second Column of the Eighth Route Army to enter the area. Attention was concentrated on political activity because the CCP supposed the peasants may have feared the guerrillas due to Japanese mopping-up operations. A guerrilla base was finally established in the summer of 1941 under the overall guidance from the Chin-Ch'a-Chi area. The guerrillas maintained a low profile, merely maintaining themselves and not provoking the Japanese to undertake more mopping-up operations. General Lu's abortive uprising convinced the CCP (and General Lu) of the need to develop mass political organizations in the new base areas prior to undertaking extensive military operations and of the need to insure central military direction among absorbed guerrilla units by attachment of Eighth Route Army units to these absorbed units.

Ho Lung, commander of the 120th Division, sent detachments north in the summer of 1938 to expand his base area. In June, Li Ching-ch'uan proceeded into Suiyuan in the Ta-ching-shan range with a small detachment of young political activists. Their efforts were successful and laid the foundations for the future Shansi-Suiyuan base area. In the autumn of 1938 Ho Lung was forced to move the main body of the 120th Division to central Hopei to support Hieh Jung-chen's and General Lu's defense against the Japanese offensive stated above. The pressure eased due to Japanese withdrawals to support the battle for Wuhan. Ho Lung took over the command of General Lu's guerrillas. During this period peasants were recruited and trained for the regular division and complete militia units were inducted into his force. This was unusual for the period in question. The 120th then conducted conventional warfare instead of the usual guerrilla themes being espoused from Yenan. By the end of 1939, Ho Lung returned to northwest Shansi to protect the strategic area in the face of the KMT blockade and pressure on Shen-Kan-Ning.

The standard tactic of alliances was aided during this period due to the vacuums created by withdrawal of Japanese units being sent to support units engaged in conventional battles against Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The Eighth Route Army attempted to either convert or eliminate the irregular bandits that arose in the early months of the war. Those leaders that agreed to ally with the Eighth Route Army had to agree to do the following:

Fight the Japanese.

Accept orders.

accept political training and political leaders.

Do not harm the people.

Operate within their budgets.

Eat the same food regardless of military rank.

Accept the pay schedule of the Central Army.

Prove sincerity by attacking the Japanese.

The alliance placed units in subordinate status to the CCP. Those units that resisted the alliance were labeled bandits. If a unit desired to remain independent, the CCP would simply not aid them during Japanese mopping-up campaigns. The CCP methods left no room for any victor over Japan besides itself. The CCP operations were aimed to thwart the Japanese invasion and also to displace the KMT. The fear of irregular troops becoming marauding bands was not without basis. The outlying villages outside Peking were reported to be in bad condition. The population was suffering from actions of bandits and remnants of the 29th Army.

The Shantung area had a long history of peasant rebellion and local military organizations in the rural areas. The refusal of Han Fu-ch'u to offer resistance to the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War had several long-lasting effects. His capitulation was followed by a general retreat of government leadership from the area. This left the populace to their own devices and produced a strong feeling against collaborators. The conventional war came to the area in the early spring when the Japanese suffered the temporary but unexpected setback at T'ai-ehr-chuang in April 1938. The weapons on this battlefield combined with those of the retreating troops of Han provided arms for the peasants. In addition, many students had moved to Shantung after Japan occupied Peiping and Tientsin. The province topography consisted of mountainous areas and areas containing moors and swamps. It was an ideal situation for guerrilla warfare. The Japanese had been present in the area for a long time as economic imperialists and a strong anti-Japanese sentiment had resulted. There were literally hundreds of guerrilla and bandit forces operating in the area. A three-sided struggle resulted between the KMT, the CCP, and the Japanese.

The middle class peasants formed more self-defense organizations after the spring 1938 Japanese offensive. These organizations were formed around already existing semi-religious societies: the Red Spear, the Black Flag, the Yellow Oust, Wu Chi Tao, Kang Feng Tao and others.

After the Japanese captured the provincial capital of Tsinan, a guerrilla force known as the 15th Mobile Column arose in northeast Shantung, headed by Wan Shang-chin and boasting of a scattered force of 20,000 men. Another unit was formed south of Changyi by Yang Hsiufeng. One observer reports that these independent guerrilla units experienced encroachments on their areas by communist units. (Yang later became chairman of the Chin-Chi-Lu-Yu Border Government.) The problem apparently was that the communists had established a headquarters in northeast Shantung and the independent guerrilla territory lay between this headquarters and another communist headquarters in northwest Shantung.

Another unit was formed in the Liao-ch'eng area under Fan Chu-hsien. This man, a former subordinate of Han Fu-chu, maintained a 30,000-man force in the area until the force was defeated in November 1938 by the Japanese and Fan was killed in action. This removed the force's influence in the area and a puppet government was set up in the area by the Japanese. Eighth Route units did little to assist Fan when he was surrounded by the Japanese.

The area came under communist influence due to pressure from both the Eighth Route Army's 115th Division and the New Fourth Army. The first column of the 115th Division entered the area in October 1938 under the command of Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien. Initially entering the south Shantung area, Hsu concentrated on incorporating many local guerrilla units. This encroached upon a 20,000-man guerrilla unit in the southern Shantung area under General Tan whose headquarters was in Chowsien.

The area had been the responsibility of a Central Army unit known as the 69th Corps under the command of KMT General Shih Yu-san. The unit with attached marines was tasked with conducting guerrilla operations in southern and central Shantung beginning 15 May 1938 following the Japanese counterattack at T'ai-ehr-chuang. They were later joined by the 57th Corps of the 24th Army Group from northern Kiangsu. The arrival of the Eighth Route units was in direct competition with these two corps and infringed on their operational areas.

Hsu assimilated diverse guerrilla groups in the area including many members of units commanded by a General Sun. One source is extremely critical of Sun claiming that he was jealous of the successes of the rival guerrilla units. He was also accused by the source as indiscriminately recruiting bandits, alienating the landlords and gentry, misusing his authority by interfering in hsien politics by appointing magistrates, attempting to wreck the United Front, and disliking the Fourth Brigade and the Eighth Route Army. Regardless of the truth of this, Sun was temporarily promoted out of the situation winding up as Chairman of the Provincial Government of Chalar. The beneficiary of his unit's manpower was the Eighth Route Army. Parts of the 69th Corps were later recalled from the area and put into the battle of Hankow in October 1938 leaving the area open for CCP expansion.

In April 1939, the 115th Division Headquarters and the 343rd Brigade of the 115th Division arrived in northwestern Shantung to assist the CCP expansion in the area. These units were controlled by Ch'en Kuang and Lo Jung-huan. Prior to its arrival, it had linked up with the remnants of Fan Chu-hsien's guerrillas.

The 343rd eventually established bases on the Shantung promontory south of Chefoo and Lung-k'ow and in the area around Tsinan. Fighting was continuous in the area during the period in question between rival guerrilla units. Forces under KMT Admiral Shen Hun-lieh and KMT General Yu Hsueh-chung contested the communist incursions into their territories. The line separating the operations of the Eighth Route units and the New Fourth Army units became the Lunghai Railway.

The major base areas in Central China were created by the New Fourth Army. In September 1937, the Central Government placed the New Fourth Army within the KMT Corps under the command of K'u Ch'u-tung and directed it to operate north of the Yangtze River. The initial period of the war was a period of expansion rather than one of military operations for the unit. This expansion was difficult to the south of the Yangtze due to the competition with the KMT remnant units and the presence of the Japanese. There were small scale guerrilla operations run against small Japanese patrols and raids undertaken against isolated Japanese bases, supply columns, railroads and puppet troops.

Thus, the CCP military forces took advantage of the lack of Central Government (KMT) influence in areas and established base areas that were used to mobilize the peasantry and to act as springboards for further expansions. Rival KMT and independent guerrilla units were absorbed or eliminated by the CCP directly or were unaided by the CCP when under attack by the Japanese. Thus, the CCP used guerrilla warfare to establish itself as the major Chinese political and military force in North China and then awaited international events to defeat the Japanese enemy.

China's Mao Tse-tung (center) with Col. Barratt, U.S. Army Observer section.

Chu Te (Zhu De), Colonel David D. Barrett, and Mao Zedong. Yan’an, Shaanxi Province. 1944.

Chinese guerrilla fighter.

Lo Shan, China, 12 June 1945. Left to right: Liu Young, Communist (Kungchantang) New Fourth Army (NFA); 2nd Lieutenant John F. Kinney, USMC; 2nd Lieutenant John A. McAlister, USMC; James D. McBrayer, Jr., USMC; Lewis Bishop, AVG pilot; 2nd Lieutenant Richard M. Huizenga, USMC; Commissar Soong, NFA; a soldier, NFA; a major, Chinese Nationalist Army (Kuomintang or KMT); Hu Ping, interpreter, NFA; a soldier NFA.

Ko Yang, China, 14 June 1945. Standing, left to right: First three men are Kuomintang (KMT) soldiers; Colonel H. M. Liu, 1st Brigade, KMT; Major General Li Hwa, 1st Brigade, KMT; next three are staff officers, 1st Brigade. Sitting, left to tight: John Wu, KMT interpreter; Magistrate of Ko Yang; 2nd Lieutenant John A. McAlister, USMC; 2nd Lieutenant John F. Kinney, USMC; 2nd Lieutenant James D. McBrayer, Jr., USMC; 2nd Lieutenant Richard M. Huizenga, USMC; Lewis Bishop, AVG pilot; KMT staff officer.

Tai Ho, China, 16 June 1945. Standing, left to right: W. C. Wang, Blockade station master; Protestant missionary; next five are KMT staff officers. Sitting: Major General Tang, Vice C-in C, Kuomintang (KMT) armies north of the Hwai River; General Lu, C-in-C, KMT armies north of the Kwai River; 2nd Lieutenant John A. McAlister, USMC; 2nd Lieutenant John F. Kinney, USMC; 2nd Lieutenant James D. McBrayer, Jr., USMC; 2nd Lieutenant Richard M. Huizenga, USMC; Lewis Bishop, AVG pilot; the Reverend F. Paul Greck, Catholic missionary from Malta; Shu Han Sung, magistrate of Tai Ho.

Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) on the left and Zhu De (Chu Teh) on the right pose for a very rare portrait before their eventual overthrow of the Nationalist Chinese government. Zhu is considered the founder of the Chinese Red Army. Yan'an, China; c. 1938.

Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, better known as Mao Tse-tung, addresses a meeting calling for even greater efforts against the Japanese, at the Kangdah (Anti-Japanese) Cave University.

Chinese Communist guerrilla leader Mao Tse-tung, the future President of communist China and chairman of the Communist Party, addressing a meeting. 12 November 1944.

Mao Zedong during what is thought to be the Long March: here with the Army in the course of the northern Shaanxi, China, 1934 - 1935.

A group of survivors from the Long March after their arrival in Shenxi in 1934. This Long March was undertaken by members of the Chinese Communist party and army after having been forced to flee from the south (where they had been based) by the anti-Communist action led by Chiang Kai-Shek. They headed north with Mao at their head.

Soldiers of the Red Army's Fourth Front Army led by Chairman Mao Zedong are pictured in 1935 in northern Shensi at their arrival after the long journey, called "the Long March", through China from October 1934 to October 1935.

The future dictator and leader of the Chinese Communist Party Mao Zedong leading the Communists on the Long March with political commissioner Zhou Enlai and commander in chief of the People's Liberation Army Zhu De at his side. Jiangxi, 1935.

Chinese guerrilla fighter Cheng Benhua smiling moments before execution by the Japanese; she was 24; circa late 1938.

Soldiers of the Northeast anti-Japanese coalition forces; circa 1940s.

Eighth Route Army fighting on Futuyu Great Wall, 1938.

Chinese Communist 8th Route Army bayonet training.

 

Ukrainian Insurgent Army

Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldiers.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian: Українська повстанська армія, УПА, Ukrayins’ka Povstans’ka Armiya, UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and later partisan formation. During World War II, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland and Nazi Germany. It was established by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The insurgent army arose out of separate militant formations of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera faction (the OUN-B), other militant national-patriotic formations, some former defectors of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, mobilization of local populations and others. The political leadership of the army belonged to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera. It was the primary perpetrator of the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

Its official date of creation is 14 October 1942, day of the Intercession of the Theotokos feast. The Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army at the period from December 1941 till July 1943 has the same name (Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA).

The OUN’s stated immediate goal at the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was the re-establishment of a united, independent Nazi-aligned, mono-ethnic national state on the territory that would include parts of modern-day Russia, Poland, and Belarus. Violence was accepted as a political tool against foreign as well as domestic enemies of their cause, which was to be achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out what they considered to be occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social groups. The organization began as a resistance group and developed into a guerrilla army. In 1943, the UPA was controlled by the OUN(B) and included people of various political and ideological convictions. Furthermore, it needed the support of the broad masses against both the Germans and the Soviets. Much of the nationalist ideology, including the concept of dictatorship, did not appeal to former Soviet citizens who had experienced the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Hence, a revision of the OUN(B) ideology and political program was imperative. At its Third Extraordinary Grand Assembly on 21–25 August 1943, the OUN(B) condemned “internationalist and fascist national-socialist programs and political concepts” as well as “Russian-Bolshevik communism” and proposed a “system of free peoples and independent states [as] the single best solution to the problem of world order.” Its social program did not differ essentially from earlier ones, but it emphasized a wide range of social services, worker participation in management, a mixed economy, choice of profession and workplace, and free trade unions. The OUN(B) affirmed that it was fighting for freedom of the press, speech, and thought. Its earlier nationality policy, encapsulated in the slogan “Ukraine for Ukrainians”; in 1943, the most extreme elements of it were officially abandoned, although the actual policy of the OUN(B) hadn’t changed significantly, and the UPA undertook ethnic cleansing in 1943.

During its existence, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought against the Poles and the Soviets as their primary opponents, although the organization also fought against the Germans starting from February 1943 – with many cases of collaboration with the German forces in the fight against Soviet partisan units. From late spring 1944, the UPA and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-B (OUN-B)—faced with Soviet advances—also cooperated with German forces against the Soviets and Poles in the hope of creating an independent Ukrainian state. The OUN also played a substantial role in the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population of Volhynia and East Galicia, and later preventing the deportation of the Ukrainians in southeastern Poland.

After the end of World War II, the Polish communist army—the People’s Army of Poland—fought extensively against the UPA. The UPA remained active and fought against the People’s Republic of Poland until 1947, and against the Soviet Union until 1949. It was particularly strong in the Carpathian Mountains, the entirety of Galicia and in Volhynia—in modern Western Ukraine. By the late 1940s, the mortality rate for Soviet troops fighting Ukrainian insurgents in Western Ukraine was higher than the mortality rate for Soviet troops during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Between February 1943 and May 1945, unlike most resistance movements, it had no significant foreign support. Its growth and strength were a reflection of the popularity it enjoyed among the people of Western Ukraine. Outside of Western Ukraine, support was not significant, and the majority of the Soviet (Eastern) Ukrainian population considered, and at times still viewed, the OUN/UPA to have been primarily collaborators with the Germans.

Organization

The UPA’s command structure overlapped with that of the underground nationalist political party, the OUN, in a sophisticated centralized network. The UPA was responsible for military operations while the OUN was in charge of administrative duties; each had its own chain of command. The six main departments were military, political, security service, mobilization, supply, and the Ukrainian Red Cross. Despite the division between the UPA and the OUN, there was overlap between their posts and the local OUN and UPA leaders were frequently the same person. Organizational methods were borrowed and adapted from the German, Polish and Soviet military, while UPA units based their training on a modified Red Army field unit manual.

The General Staff, formed at the end of 1943 consisted of operations, intelligence, training, logistics, personnel and political education departments. UPA’s largest units, Kurins, consisting of 500-700 soldiers, were equivalent to battalions in a regular army, and its smallest units, Riys (literally bee swarm), with eight to ten soldiers, were equivalent to squads. Occasionally, and particularly in Volyn, during some operations three or more Kurins would unite and form a Zahin or Brigade.

UPA’s leaders were: Vasyl Ivakhiv (Spring – 13 of May 1943), Dmytro Klyachkivsky, Roman Shukhevych (January 1944 until 1950) and finally Vasyl Kuk.

In November 1943, the UPA adopted a new structure, creating a Main Military Headquarters and three areas (group) commands: UPA-West, UPA-North and UPA-South. Three military schools for low-level command staff were also established.

Former policemen constituted a large proportion of the UPA leadership, and they comprised about half of the UPA membership in 1943. In terms of UPA soldiers’ social background, 60 percent were peasants of low to moderate means, 20 to 25 percent were from the working class (primarily from the rural lumber and food industries), and 15 percent members of the intelligentsia (students, urban professionals). The latter group provided a large portion of the UPA’s military trainers and officer corps. With respect to the origins of UPA’s members, 60 percent were from Galicia and 30 percent from Volhynia and Polesia.

The number of UPA fighters varied. A German Abwehr report from November 1943 estimated that the UPA had 20,000 soldiers; other estimates at that time placed the number at 40,000. By the summer of 1944, estimates of UPA membership varied from 25,000 to 30,000 fighters up to 100,000 or even 200,000 soldiers.

Structure

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was structured into four units:

UPA-North

Regions: Volhynia, Polissia.

Military District “Turiv”

Commander – Maj. Rudyj.

Squads: “Bohun”, “Pomsta Polissja”, “Nalyvajko”.

Military District “Zahrava”

Commander – Ptashka (Sylvester Zatovkanjuk).

Squads: “Konovaletsj”, “Enej”, “Dubovyj”, “Oleh”.

Military District “ Volhynia-South”

Commander – Bereza.

Squads: “Kruk”, “H.”.

UPA-West

Regions: Halychyna, Bukovyna, Zakarpattia, Zakerzonia.

Military District “Lysonja”

Commander – Maj. Hrim, V.

Kurins: “Holodnojarci”, “Burlaky”, “Lisovyky”, “Rubachi”, “Bujni”, “Holky”.

Military District “Hoverlja”

Commander – Maj. Stepovyj (from 1945 – Major Hmara).

Kurins: “Bukovynsjkyj”, “Peremoha”, “Hajdamaky”, “Huculjskyj”, “Karpatsjkyj”.

Military District “Black Forest”

Commander – Col. Rizun-Hrehit (Mykola Andrusjak).

Kurins: “Smertonosci”, “Pidkarpatsjkyj”, “Dzvony”, “Syvulja”, “Dovbush”, “Beskyd”, “Menyky”.

Military District “Makivka”

Commander – Maj. Kozak.

Kurins: “Ljvy”, “Bulava”, “Zubry”, “Letuny”, “Zhuravli”, “Bojky of Chmelnytsjkyj”, “Basejn”.

Military District “Buh”

Commander – Col. Voronnyj

Kurins: “Druzhynnyky”, “Halajda”, “Kochovyky”, “Perejaslavy”, “Tyhry”, “Perebyjnis”

Military District “Sjan”

Commander – Orest

Kurins: “Vovky”, “Menyky”, Kurin of Ren, Kurin of Eugene.

UPA-South

Regions: Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Zhytomyr Oblast, southern region of Kyiv Oblast, southern regions of Ukraine, and especially in cities Odessa, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk, Mariupol, Donetsk. 

Military District “Cholodnyj Jar”

Commander – Kost’.

Kurins: Kurin of Sabljuk, Kurin of Dovbush.

Military District “Umanj”

Commander – Ostap.

Kurins: Kurin of Dovbenko, Kurin of Buvalyj, Kurin of Andrij-Shum.

Military District “Vinnytsja”

Commander – Jasen.

Kurins: Kurin of Storchan, Kurin of Mamaj, Kurin of Burevij.

UPA-East

Regions: northern strip of Zhytomyr Oblast, northern region of Kyiv Oblast, and Chernihiv Oblast.

Greeting

The greeting “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” (Slava Ukrayini! Heroyam slava!) appeared in the 1930s among members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who started using this slogan. Since October 2018 Glory to Ukraine is an official greeting of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian National Police.

Anthem

The anthem of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was called the March of the Ukrainian Nationalists, also known as We were born in a great hour (Ukrainian: Зродились ми великої години). The song, written by Oles Babiy, was officially adopted by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1932.

The organization was a successor of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, whose anthem was “Chervona Kalyna”. Leaders of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen Yevhen Konovalets and Andriy Melnyk were founding members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. For this reason, “Chervona Kalyna” was frequently used by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Flag

The battle flag of the UPA was a red-and-black banner. The flag continues to be a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. The colors of the flag symbolize ‘red Ukrainian blood spilled on the black Ukrainian earth. Use of the flag is also a “sign of the stubborn endurance of the Ukrainian national idea even under the grimmest conditions.”

Awards

Cross of Merit

The Cross of Merit (Ukrainian: Хрест Заслуги) was an award of Ukrainian Insurgent Army. It awarded for distinguished services to the state and people of the Ukrainian army. The Order was instituted on January 27, 1944 by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council leaders, Roman Shukhevych and Dmytro Hrytsai.

The Order is awarded in five (golden, silver and bronze) grades and had a red ribbon with a black stripe on each edge.

Cross of Combat Merit

The Cross of Combat Merit (Ukrainian: Хрест Заслуги) was the highest award of Ukrainian Insurgent Army. It awarded for distinguished services to the state and people of the Ukrainian army. The Order was instituted on January 27, 1944 by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council leaders, Roman Shukhevych and Dmytro Hrytsai.

The Order is awarded in five (golden, silver and bronze) grades and had a red ribbon with a black tripe.

Military Ranks

The UPA made use of a dual rank-system that included functional command position designations and traditional military ranks. The functional system was developed due to an acute shortage of qualified and politically reliable officers during the early stages of organization.

UPA rank structure consisted of at least seven commissioned officer ranks, four non-commissioned officer ranks, and two soldier ranks. The hierarchical order of known ranks and their approximate U.S. Army equivalent is as follows:

UPA RANKS	US ARMY EQUIVALENTS
Heneral-Khorunzhyj	Brigadier General
Polkovnyk	Colonel
Pidpolkovnyk	Lieutenant Colonel
Major	Major
Sotnyk	Captain
Poruchnyk	First Lieutenant
Khorunzhyj	Second Lieutenant
Starshyj Bulavnyj	Master Sergeant
Bulavnyj	Sergeant First Class
Starshyj Vistun	Staff Sergeant
Vistun	Sergeant
Starshyj Strilets	Private First Class
Strilets	Private

The rank scheme provided for three more higher general officer ranks: Heneral-Poruchnyk (Major General), Heneral-Polkovnyk (Lieutenant General), and Heneral-Pikhoty (General with Four Stars).

Armaments

Initially, the UPA used the weapons collected from the battlefields of 1939 and 1941. Later they bought weapons from peasants and individual soldiers, or captured them in combat. Some light weapons were also brought by deserting Ukrainian auxiliary policemen. For the most part, the UPA used light infantry weapons of Soviet and, to a lesser extent, German origin (for which ammunition was less readily obtainable). In 1944, German units armed the UPA directly with captured Soviet arms. Many kurins were equipped with light 51 mm and 82 mm mortars. During large-scale operations in 1943–1944, insurgent forces also used artillery (45 mm and 76.2 mm). In 1943 a light Hungarian tank was used in Volhynia.

In 1944, the Soviets captured a Polikarpov Po-2 aircraft and one armored car and one personnel carrier from UPA; however, it was not stated that they were in operable condition, while no OUN/UPA documents noted the usage of such equipment. By end of World War II in Europe the NKVD had captured 45 artillery pieces (45 and 76.2 mm calibers) and 423 mortars from the UPA. In the attacks against Polish civilians, axes and pikes were used. However, the light infantry weapon was the basic weapon used by the UPA.

Formation

1941

In a memorandum from 14 August 1941, the OUN (B) proposed to the Germans, to create a Ukrainian Army “which will join the German Army ... until the latter will win” (preferable translation: “which will unite with the German Army ... until [our] final victory”), in exchange for German recognition of an allied Ukrainian independent state.

At the beginning of October 1941, during the first OUN Conference, the OUN formulated its future strategy. This called for transferring part of its organizational structure underground, in order to avoid conflict with the Germans. It also refrained from open anti-German propaganda activities.

A captured German document of 25 November 1941 (Nuremberg Trial O14-USSR) ordered: “It has been ascertained that the Bandera Movement is preparing a revolt in the Reichskommissariat which has as its ultimate aim the establishment of an independent Ukraine. All functionaries of the Bandera Movement must be arrested at once and, after thorough interrogation, are to be liquidated...”

1942

At the Second Conference of the OUN(B), held in April 1942, the policies for the “creation, build-up and development of Ukrainian political and future military forces” and “action against partisan activity supported by Moscow” were adopted. Although German policies were criticized, the Soviet partisans were identified as the primary enemy of OUN (B).

The “Military conference of OUN (B)” met in December 1942 near Lviv. The conference resulted in the adoption of a policy for the accelerated growth for the establishment of OUN(B)’s military forces. The conference emphasized that “all combat capable population must support, under OUN banners, the struggle against the Bolshevik enemy”. On 30 May 1947, the Main Ukrainian Liberation Council (Головна Визвольна Рада) adopted the date of 14 October 1942 as the official day for celebrating the UPA’s creation.

Germany

Despite the stated opinions of Dmytro Klyachkivsky and Roman Shukhevych that the Germans were a secondary threat compared to their main enemies (the communist forces of the Soviet Union and Poland), the Third Conference of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, held near Lviv from 17 to 21 February 1943, took the decision to begin open warfare against the Germans (OUN fighters had already attacked a German garrison earlier that year on 7 February). Accordingly, on 20 March 1943, the OUN(B) leadership issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined the collaborationist Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in 1941–1942 to desert with their weapons and join with UPA units in Volhynia. This process often involved engaging in armed conflict with German forces as they tried to prevent desertion. The number of trained and armed personnel who now joined the ranks of the UPA was estimated to be between 4 and 5 thousand.

Anti-German actions were limited to situations where the Germans attacked the Ukrainian population or UPA units. Indeed, according to German general Ernst August Köstring, UPA fighters “fought almost exclusively against German administrative agencies, the German police and the SS in their quest to establish an independent Ukraine controlled by neither Moscow nor Germany.”

During the German occupation, the UPA conducted hundreds of raids on police stations and military convoys. In the region of Zhytomyr insurgents were estimated by the German General-Kommissar Leyser to be in control of 80% of the forests and 60% of the farmland.

According to the OUN/UPA, on 12 May 1943, Germans attacked the town of Kolki using several SS-Divisions (SS units operated alongside the German Army who were responsible for intelligence, central security, policing action, and mass extermination), where both sides suffered heavy losses. Soviet partisans reported the reinforcement of German auxiliary forces at Kolki for the end of April until the middle of May 1943.

In June 1943, German SS and police forces under the command of Erich von dem Bach, the head of Himmler-directed Bandenbekämpfung (“bandit warfare”), attempted to destroy UPA-North in Volhynia during “Operation BB”. According to Ukrainian claims, the initial stage of Operation “BB” (Bandenbekämpfung) against the UPA had produced no results whatsoever. This development was the subject of several discussions by Himmler’s staff that resulted in General von dem Bach-Zelewski being sent to Ukraine. He failed to eliminate the UPA, which grew steadily, and the Germans, apart from terrorizing the civilian population, were virtually limited to defensive actions.

From July through September 1943, as a result of an estimated 74 clashes between German forces and the UPA, the Germans lost more than 3,000 men killed or wounded while the UPA lost 1,237 killed or wounded. According to post-war estimates, the UPA had the following number of clashes with the Germans in mid-to-late 1943 in Volhynia: 35 in July; 24 in August; 15 in September; 47 during October–November. In the fall of 1943, clashes between the UPA and the Germans declined, so that Erich Koch in his November 1943 report and New Year 1944 speech could mention that “nationalistic bands in forests do not pose any major threat” for the Germans.

In Autumn of 1943, some detachments of the UPA attempted to find rapprochement with the Germans. Although doing so was condemned by an OUN/UPA order from 25 November 1943, these actions did not end. In early 1944 UPA forces in several Western regions engaged in cooperation with the German Wehrmacht, Waffen SS, SiPo and SD. However, in the winter and spring of 1944 it would be incorrect to say that there was a complete cessation of armed conflict between UPA and German forces as the UPA continued to defend Ukrainian villages against the repressive actions of the German administration.

For example, on 20 January, 200 German soldiers on their way to the Ukrainian village of Pyrohivka were forced to retreat after a several-hours long firefight with a group of 80 UPA soldiers after having lost 30 killed and wounded. In March–July 1944, a senior leader of OUN(B) in Galicia conducted negotiations with SD and SS officials resulting in a German decision to supply the UPA with arms and ammunition. In May of that year, the OUN issued instructions to “switch the struggle, which had been conducted against the Germans, completely into a struggle against the Soviets.”

In a top secret memorandum, General-Major Brigadeführer Brenner wrote in mid-1944 to SS-Obergruppenführer General Hans-Adolf Prütz­mann, the highest ranking German SS officer in Ukraine, that, “The UPA has halted all attacks on units of the German army. The UPA systematically sends agents, mainly young women, into enemy-occupied territory, and the results of the intelligence are communicated to Department 1c of the [German] Army Group” on the southern front. By the Autumn of 1944, the German press was full of praise for UPA for their anti-Bolshevik successes, referring to the UPA fighters as “Ukrainian fighters for freedom” After the front had passed, by the end of 1944 the Germans supplied OUN/UPA by air with arms and equipment. In the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, there even existed a small landing strip for German transport planes. Some German personnel trained to conduct terrorist and intelligence activities behind Soviet lines, as well as some OUN-B leaders, were also transported through this channel.

Adopting a strategy analogous to that of the Chetnik leader General Draža Mihailović, the UPA limited its actions against the Germans in order to better prepare itself for and engage in the struggle against the Communists. Because of this, although the UPA managed to limit German activities to a certain extent, it failed to prevent the Germans from deporting approximately 500,000 people from Western Ukrainian regions and from economically exploiting Western Ukraine. Due to its focus on the Soviets as the principal threat, UPA’s anti-German struggle did not contribute significantly to the liberation of Ukrainian territories by Soviet forces.

Poland

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

In 1943, the UPA adopted a policy of massacring and expelling the Polish population. The ethnic cleansing operation against the Poles began on a large scale in Volhynia in late February (or early Spring) of that year and lasted until the end of 1944. 11 July 1943 was one of the deadliest days of the massacres, with UPA units marching from village to village, killing Polish civilians. On that day, UPA units surrounded and attacked 99 Polish villages and settlements in three counties – Kowel, Horochów, and Włodzimierz Wołyński. On the following day 50 additional villages were attacked. In January 1944, the UPA campaign of ethnic cleansing spread to the neighboring province of Galicia. Unlike in Volhynia, where Polish villages were destroyed and their inhabitants murdered without warning, Poles in eastern Galicia were in some instances given the choice of fleeing or being killed. Ukrainian peasants sometimes joined the UPA in the violence, and large bands of armed marauders, unaffiliated with the UPA, brutalized civilians. In other cases however, Ukrainian civilians took significant steps to protect their Polish neighbors, either by hiding them during the UPA raids or vouching that the Poles were actually Ukrainians.

The methods used by UPA to carry out the massacres were particularly brutal and were committed indiscriminately without any restraint. Historian Norman Davies describes the killings: “Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away.” In total, the estimated numbers of Polish civilians killed by UPA in Volhynia and Galicia is about 100,000. On 22 July 2016, the Sejm of the Republic of Poland passed a resolution declaring the massacres committed by UPA a genocide.

Post-War

After Galicia had been taken over by the Red Army, many units of UPA abandoned the anti-Polish course of action and some even began cooperating with local Polish anti-communist resistance against the Soviets and the NKVD. Many Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with earlier massacres against the Poles, seeking to defend themselves against communists, joined UPA after the war on both the Soviet and Polish sides of the border. Local agreements between the UPA and the Polish post-AK units began to appear as early as April/May 1945 and in some places lasted until 1947, such as in the Lublin region. One of the most notable joint actions of UPA and the post-AK Freedom and Independence (WiN) organization took place in May 1946, when the two partisan formations coordinated their attack and took over of the city of Hrubieszów.

The cooperation between UPA and the post-AK underground came about partly as a response to increasing communist terror and the deportations of Ukrainians to the Soviet Union, and Poles into the new socialist Poland. According to official statistics, between 1944 and 1956 around 488,000 Ukrainians and 789,000 Poles were transferred. On the territories of present-day Poland, 8-12 thousand Ukrainians were killed and 6-8 thousand Poles, between 1943 and 1947. However, unlike in Volhynia, most of the casualties occurred after 1944 and involved UPA soldiers and Ukrainian civilians on one side, and members of the Polish communist security services (UB) and border forces (WOP). Out of the 2,200 Poles who died in the fighting between 1945 and 1948, only a few hundred were civilians, with the remainder being functionaries or soldiers of the Communist regime in Poland.

Soviet Union

German Occupation

The total number of local Soviet Partisans acting in Western Ukraine was never high, due to the region enduring only two years of German rule (in some places even less).

In 1943, the Soviet partisan leader Sydir Kovpak was sent to the Carpathian Mountains, with help from Nikita Khrushchev. He described his mission to the western Ukraine in his book Vid Putivlia do Karpat (From Putivl to the Carpathian Mountains). Well-armed by supplies delivered to secret airfields, he formed a group consisting of several thousand men which moved deep into the Carpathians. Attacks by the German air force and military forced Kovpak to break up his force into smaller units in 1944; these groups were attacked by UPA units on their way back. Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov was captured and executed by UPA members after unwittingly entering their camp while wearing a Wehrmacht officer uniform.

Fighting

As the Red Army approached Galicia, the UPA avoided clashes with the regular units of the Soviet military. Instead, the UPA focused its energy on NKVD units and Soviet officials of all levels, from NKVD and military officers to the school teachers and postal workers attempting to establish Soviet administration.

In March 1944, UPA insurgents mortally wounded front commander Army General Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kyiv when he led Soviet forces in the Second battle of Kiev. Several weeks later an NKVD battalion was annihilated by the UPA near Rivne. This resulted in a full-scale operation in the spring of 1944, initially involving 30,000 Soviet troops against the UPA in Volhynia. Estimates of casualties vary depending on the source. A letter to the state defense committee of the USSR, Lavrentiy Beria stated that in spring 1944 clashes between Soviet forces and UPA resulted in 2,018 killed and 1,570 captured UPA fighters and only 11 Soviet killed and 46 wounded. Soviet archives show that a captured UPA member stated that he received reports about UPA losses of 200 fighters while the Soviet forces lost 2,000. The first significant sabotage operations against communications of the Soviet Army before their offensive against the Germans was conducted by the UPA in April–May 1944. Such actions were promptly stopped by the Soviet Army and NKVD troops, after which the OUN/UPA submitted an order to temporarily cease anti-Soviet activities and prepare for further struggle against the Soviets.

Despite heavy casualties on both sides during the initial clashes, the struggle was inconclusive. New large scale actions of the UPA, especially in Ternopil Oblast, were launched in July–August 1944, when the Red Army advanced West. By the autumn of 1944, UPA forces enjoyed virtual freedom of movement over an area of 160,000 square kilometers in size and home to over 10 million people and had established a shadow government.

In November 1944, Khrushchev launched the first of several large-scale Soviet assaults on the UPA throughout Western Ukraine, involving according to OUN/UPA estimates at least 20 NKVD combat divisions supported by artillery and armored units. They blockaded villages and roads and set forests on fire. Soviet archival data states that on 9 October 1944, one NKVD Division, eight NKVD brigades, and an NKVD cavalry regiment with a total of 26,304 NKVD soldiers were stationed in Western Ukraine. In addition, two regiments with 1,500 and 1,200 persons, one battalion (517 persons) and three armored trains with 100 additional soldiers each, as well as one border guard regiment and one unit were starting to relocate there in order to reinforce them.

During late 1944 and the first half of 1945, according to Soviet data, the UPA suffered approximately 89,000 killed, approximately 91,000 captured, and approximately 39,000 surrendered while the Soviet forces lost approximately 12,000 killed, approximately 6,000 wounded and 2,600 MIA. In addition, during this time, according to Soviet data UPA actions resulted in the killing of 3,919 civilians and the disappearance of 427 others. Despite the heavy losses, as late as summer 1945, many battalion-size UPA units still continued to control and administer large areas of territory in Western Ukraine. In February 1945 the UPA issued an order to liquidate kurins (battalions) and sotnya’s (companies) and to act predominantly by chotys (platoons).

Spring 1945–Late 1946

After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Soviet authorities turned their attention to insurgencies taking place in Ukraine and the Baltics. Combat units were reorganized and special forces were sent in. One of the major complications that arose was the local support the UPA had from the population.

Areas of UPA activity were depopulated. The estimates on numbers deported vary; officially Soviet archives state that between 1944 and 1952 a total of 182,543 people were deported while other sources indicate the number may have been as high as to 500,000.

Mass arrests of suspected UPA informants or family members were conducted; between February 1944 and May 1946 over 250,000 people were arrested in Western Ukraine. Those arrested typically experienced beatings or other violence. Those suspected of being UPA members underwent torture; (reports exist of some prisoners being burned alive). The many arrested women believed to be affiliating with the UPA were subjected to torture, deprivation, and rape at the hands of Soviet security in order to “break” them and get them to reveal UPA members’ identities and locations or to turn them into Soviet double-agents. Mutilated corpses of captured rebels were put on public display. Ultimately, between 1944 and 1952 alone as many as 600,000 people may have been arrested in Western Ukraine, with about one third executed and the rest imprisoned or exiled.

The UPA responded to the Soviet methods by unleashing their own terror against Soviet activists, suspected collaborators and their families. This work was particularly attributed to the Sluzhba Bezbeky (SB), the anti-espionage wing of the UPA. In a typical incident in Lviv region, in front of horrified villagers, UPA troops gouged out the eyes of two entire families suspected of reporting on insurgent movements to Soviet authorities, before hacking their bodies to pieces. Due to public outrage concerning these violent punitive acts, the UPA stopped the practice of killing the families of collaborators by mid-1945. Other victims of the UPA included Soviet activists sent to Galicia from other parts of the Soviet Union; heads of village Soviets, those sheltering or feeding Red Army personnel, and even people turning food in to collective farms. The effect of such terrorist acts was such that people refused to take posts as village heads, and until the late 1940s villages chose single men with no dependents as their leaders.

The UPA also proved to be especially adept at assassinating key Soviet administrative officials. According to NKVD data, between February 1944 and December 1946 11,725 Soviet officers, agents and collaborators were assassinated and 2,401 were “missing”, presumed kidnapped, in Western Ukraine. In one county in Lviv region alone, from August 1944 until January 1945 Ukrainian rebels killed 10 members of the Soviet active and a secretary of the county Communist party, and also kidnapped four other officials. The UPA travelled at will throughout the area. In this county, there were no courts, no prosecutor’s office, and the local NKVD only had three staff members.

According to a 1946 report by Khrushchenv’s deputy for West Ukrainian affairs A.A. Stoiantsev, out of 42,175 operations and ambushes against the UPA by Destruction battalions in Western Ukraine, only 10 percent had positive results – in the vast majority there was either no contact or the individual unit was disarmed and pro-Soviet leaders murdered or kidnapped. Morale amongst the NKVD in Western Ukraine was particularly low. Even within the dangerous context of Soviet state service in the late-Stalin era, West Ukraine was considered to be a “hardship post”, and personnel files reveal higher rates of transfer requests, alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, and refusal to serve among NKVD field agents there at that time.

The first success of the Soviet authorities came in early 1946 in the Carpathians, which were blockaded from 11 January until 10 April. The UPA operating there ceased to exist as a combat unit. The continuous heavy casualties elsewhere forced the UPA to split into small units consisting of 100 soldiers. Many of the troops demobilized and returned home, when the Soviet Union offered three amnesties during 1947–1948.

By 1946, the UPA was reduced to a core group of 5-10 thousand fighters, and large-scale UPA activity shifted to the Soviet-Polish border. Here, in 1947, they killed the Polish Communist deputy defence minister General Karol Świerczewski. In spring 1946, the OUN/UPA established contacts with the Intelligence services of France, Great Britain and the USA.

End of UPA Resistance

The turning point in the struggle against the UPA came in 1947, when the Soviets established an intelligence gathering network within the UPA and shifted the focus of their actions from mass terror to infiltration and espionage. After 1947 the UPA’s activity began to subside. On May 30, 1947, Shukhevych issued instructions joining the OUN and UPA in underground warfare. In 1947–1948 UPA resistance was weakened enough to allow the Soviets to begin implementation of large-scale collectivization throughout Western Ukraine.

In 1948, the Soviet central authorities purged local officials who had mistreated peasants and engaged in “vicious methods”. At the same time, Soviet agents planted within the UPA had taken their toll on morale and on the UPA’s effectiveness. According to the writing of one slain Ukrainian rebel, “the Bolsheviks tried to take us from within...you can never know exactly in whose hands you will find yourself. From such a network of spies, the work of whole teams is often penetrated...”. In November 1948, the work of Soviet agents led to two important victories against the UPA: the defeat and deaths of the heads of the most active UPA network in Western Ukraine, and the removal of “Myron”, the head of the UPA’s counter-intelligence SB unit.

The Soviet authorities tried to win over the local population by making significant economic investment in Western Ukraine, and by setting up rapid reaction groups in many regions to combat the UPA. According to one retired MVD major, “By 1948 ideologically we had the support of most of the population.”

The UPA’s leader, Roman Shukhevych, was killed during an ambush near Lviv on 5 March 1950. Although sporadic UPA activity continued until the mid-1950s, after Shukhevich’s death the UPA rapidly lost its fighting capability. An assessment of UPA manpower by Soviet authorities on 17 April 1952 claimed that UPA/OUN had only 84 fighting units consisting of 252 persons. The UPA’s last commander, Vasyl Kuk, was captured on 24 May 1954. Despite the existence of some insurgent groups, according to a report by the MGB of the Ukrainian SSR, the “liquidation of armed units and OUN underground was accomplished by the beginning of 1956”.

NKVD units dressed as UPA fighters are known to have committed atrocities against the civilian population in order to discredit the UPA. Among these NKVD units were those composed of former UPA fighters working for the NKVD. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) recently published information that about 150 such special groups consisting of 1,800 people operated until 1954.

Prominent people killed by UPA insurgents during the anti-Soviet struggle included Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church, killed while travelling in a German convoy, and pro-Soviet writer Yaroslav Halan.

In 1951 CIA covert operations chief Frank Wisner estimated that some 35,000 Soviet police troops and Communist party cadres had been eliminated by guerrillas affiliated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the period after the end of World War II. Official Soviet figures for the losses inflicted by all types of Ukrainian nationalists during the period 1944–1953 referred to 30,676 persons; amongst them were 687 NKGB-MGB personnel, 1,864 NKVD-MVD personnel, 3,199 Soviet Army, Border Guards, and NKVD-MVD troops, 241 communist party leaders, 205 komsomol leaders and 2,590 members of self-defense units. According to Soviet data the remaining losses were among civilians, including 15,355 peasants and kolkhozniks. Soviet archives state that between February 1944 and January 1946 the Soviet forces conducted 39,778 operations against the UPA, during which they killed a total of 103,313, captured a total of 8,370 OUN members and captured a total of 15,959 active insurgents.

Many UPA members were imprisoned in the Gulag, they actively participated in Gulag uprisings (Kengir uprising, Norilsk uprising, Vorkuta uprising).

Soviet Infiltration

In 1944–1945 the NKVD carried out 26,693 operations against the Ukrainian underground. These resulted in the deaths of 22,474 Ukrainian soldiers and the capture of 62,142 prisoners. During this time the NKVD formed special groups known as spetshrupy made up of former Soviet partisans. The goal of these groups was to discredit and disorganize the OUN and UPA. In August 1944, Sydir Kovpak was placed under NKVD authority. Posing as Ukrainian insurgents, these special formations used violence against the civilian population of Western Ukraine. In June 1945 there were 156 such special groups with 1783 members.

From December 1945 to 1946, 15,562 operations were carried out in which 4,200 were killed and more than 9,400 were arrested. From 1944 to 1953, the Soviets killed 153,000 and arrested 134,000 members of the UPA. 66,000 families (204,000 people) were forcibly deported to Siberia, and half a million people were subject to repressions. In the same period Polish communist authorities deported 450,000 people.

Soviet infiltration of British intelligence also meant that MI6 assisted in training some of the guerrillas in parachuting, and unmarked planes used to drop them into Ukraine from bases in Cyprus and Malta, was counter-acted by the fact that one MI6 agent with knowledge of the operation was the traitor Kim Philby. Working with Anthony Blunt, he alerted Soviet security forces about planned drops. Ukrainian guerrillas were intercepted and most were executed.

Holocaust

The OUN pursued a policy of infiltrating the German police to obtain weapons and training for fighters. In that role, it helped the Germans to carry out the Holocaust. Although most Jews were actually killed by Germans, the OUN police, working for the Germans, played a crucial supporting role in the liquidation of 200,000 Jews in Volhynia in the second half of 1942 although in isolated cases Ukrainian policemen also helped Jews to escape. Most of the police deserted in the following spring and joined UPA.

Numerous accounts ascribe to the UPA a role in the killing of Ukrainian Jews under the German occupation. According to Ray Brandon, co-editor of The Shoah in Ukraine, “Jews in hiding in Volhynia saw the UPA as a threat.”

While anti-Semitism did not play a significant role in Ukrainian politics, with the first anti-Semitic ideology and acts traced back to the Russian Civil War, by 1940-41 the publications of Ukrainian terrorist organizations became explicitly anti-Semitic. German documents of the period give the impression that Ukrainian ultranationalists were indifferent to the plight of the Jews and would either kill them or help them, whichever was more appropriate for their political goals. According to John Paul Himka, OUN militias were responsible for a wave of pogroms in Lviv and western Ukraine in 1941 that claimed thousands of Jewish lives. The OUN had repudiated pogroms but changed its stand when the Germans, with whom the OUN sought an alliance, demanded participation in them. According to Unian.net, recently declassified documents have shown that the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) was most likely not strongly involved in anti-Jewish activities in 1941.

Jews played an important role in the Soviet partisan movement in Volhynia and participated in its actions. According to Timothy D. Snyder, the Soviet partisans were known for their brutality by retaliating against entire villages suspected of working with the Germans, killing individuals deemed to be collaborators, and provoking the Germans to attack villages. UPA would later attempt to match that brutality. By early 1943, the OUN had entered into open armed conflict with Nazi Germany. According to Ukrainian historian and former UPA soldier Lew Shankowsky, immediately upon assuming the position of commander of the UPA in August 1943, Roman Shukhevych issued an order banning participation in anti-Jewish activities. No written record of this order, however, has been found. In 1944, the OUN formally “rejected racial and ethnic exclusivity”. Nevertheless, Jews hiding from the Germans with Poles in Polish villages were often killed by UPA along with their Polish saviors, although in at least one case, they were spared as the Poles were murdered.

Despite the earlier anti-Jewish statements by the OUN, and its involvement in the killing of some Jews, there were cases of Jewish participation within the ranks of the UPA, some of whom held high positions. According to journalist and former fighter Leo Heiman, some Jews fought for the UPA, and others included medical personal. These included Dr. Margosh, who headed UPA-West’s medical service, Dr. Marksymovich, who was the Chief Physician of the UPA’s officer school, and Dr. Abraham Kum, the director of an underground hospital in the Carpathians. The latter individual was the recipient of the UPA’s Golden Cross of Merit. Some Jews who fled the ghettos for the forests were killed by members of the UPA.

According to Phillip Friedman, many Jews, particularly those whose skills were useful to UPA, were sheltered by them. It has been claimed that the UPA sometimes executed its Jewish personnel, but Friedman evaluated such claims as either uncorroborated or mistaken. However, it has been said by the historian Daniel Romanovsky that in late 1943, the commander of the UPA, Shukhevych, announced a verbal order to destroy the Poles, Jews and Gypsies with the exception to medical personnel, and later fighters executed personnel at the approach of the Soviet Army.

According to Herbert Romerstein, Soviet propaganda complained about Zionist membership in the UPA, and during the persecution of Jews in the early 1950s, they described the alleged connection between Jewish and Ukrainian nationalists.

One well-known claimed example of Jewish participation in the UPA was most likely a hoax, according to sources such as Friedman. According to the report, Stella Krenzbach, the daughter of a rabbi and a Zionist, joined the UPA as a nurse and intelligence agent. She is alleged to have written, “I attribute the fact that I am alive today and devoting all the strength of my thirty-eight years to a free Israel only to God and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. I became a member of the heroic UPA on 7 November 1943. In our group I counted twelve Jews, eight of whom were doctors”. Later, Friedman concluded that Krenzbach was a fictional character, as the only evidence for her existence was in an OUN paper. No one knew of such an employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she supposedly worked after the war. A Jew, Leiba Dubrovskii, pretended to be Ukrainian.

Reconciliation

During the following years the UPA was officially taboo in the Soviet Union, mentioned only as a terrorist organization. Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, there have been heated debates about the possible award of official recognition to former UPA members as legitimate combatants, with the accompanying pensions and benefits due to war veterans. UPA veterans have also striven to hold parades and commemorations of their own, especially in Western Ukraine. This, in turn, led to opposition from Soviet Army veterans and some Ukrainian politicians, particularly from the south and east of the country.

Recently, attempts to reconcile former Armia Krajowa and UPA soldiers have been made by both the Ukrainian and Polish sides. Individual former UPA members have expressed their readiness for mutual apology. Some of the past soldiers of both organizations have met and asked for forgiveness for the past misdeeds. Restorations of graves and cemeteries in Poland where fallen UPA soldiers were buried have been agreed to by the Polish side.

2019 Official Veteran Status

Late March 2019 former members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (and other living former members of Ukrainian irregular nationalist armed groups that were active during World War II and the first decade after the war) were officially granted the status of veterans. This meant that for the first time they could receive veteran benefits, including free public transport, subsidized medical services, annual monetary aid, and public utilities discounts (and will enjoy the same social benefits as former Ukrainian soldiers who served in the Red Army of the Soviet Union).

There had been several previous attempts to provide former Ukrainian nationalist fighters with official veteran status, especially during the 2005–2009 administration of President Viktor Yushenko, but all failed.

Prior to December 2018 legally only former UPA members who “participated in hostilities against Nazi invaders in occupied Ukraine in 1941-1944, who did not commit crimes against humanity and were rehabilitated” were recognized as war veterans.

Monuments for Combatants

Without waiting for official notice from Kyiv, many regional authorities have already decided to approach the UPA’s history on their own. In many western cities and villages monuments, memorials and plaques to the leaders and troops of the UPA have been erected, including a monument to Stepan Bandera himself which opened in October 2007. In eastern Ukraine’s city of Kharkiv, a memorial to the soldiers of the UPA was erected in 1992. In late 2006, the Lviv city administration announced the future transference of the tombs of Stepan Bandera, Yevhen Konovalets, Andriy Melnyk and other key leaders of the OUN/UPA to a new area of Lychakiv Cemetery specifically dedicated to Ukrainian nationalists.

In response, many southern and eastern provinces, although the UPA had not operated in those regions, have responded by opening memorials of their own dedicated the UPA’s victims. The first one, “The Shot in the Back”, was unveiled by the Communist Party of Ukraine in Simferopol, Crimea in September 2007. In 2008, one was erected in Svatove, Luhansk oblast, and another in Luhansk on 8 May 2010 by the city deputy, Arsen Klinchaev, and the Party of Regions. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Vice Prime Minister Viktor Tykhonov, the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Pro-Russian Party of Regions Oleksandr Yefremov, Russian State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin, Luhansk Regional Governor Valerii Holenko, and Luhansk Mayor Serhii Kravchenko.

Monuments Commemorating Polish Victims

Polish survivors from Wołyn and Galicia who lived through the massacres, constructed monuments and memorial tables in the places where they settled after the war, such as Warsaw, Wrocław, Sanok and Kłodzko.

Commemoration in Ukraine

According to John Armstrong, “If one takes into account the duration, geographical extent, and intensity of activity, the UPA very probably is the most important example of forceful resistance to an established Communist regime prior to the decade of fierce Afghan resistance beginning in 1979... the Hungarian revolution of 1956 was, of course, far more important, involving to some degree a population of nine million... however it lasted only a few weeks. In contrast, the more-or-less effective anti-Communist activity of the Ukrainian resistance forces lasted from mid-1944 until 1950”.

On 10 January 2008, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko submitted a draft law “on the official Status of Fighters for Ukraine’s Independence from the 1920s to the 1990s”. Under the draft, persons who took part in political, guerrilla, underground and combat activities for the freedom and independence of Ukraine from 1920 to 1990 as part of or assisting the following:

Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO)

Karpatska Sich

OUN

UPA

Ukrainian Main Liberation Army

They will be recognized as war veterans.

In 2007, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) set up a special working group to study archive documents of the activity of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to make public original sources.

Since 2006, the SBU has been actively involved in declassifying documents relating to the operations of Soviet security services and the history of liberation movement in Ukraine. The SBU Information Centre provides an opportunity for scholars to get acquainted with electronic copies of archive documents. The documents are arranged by topics (1932–1933 Holodomor, OUN/UPA Activities, Repression in Ukraine, Movement of Dissident).

Since September 2009, Ukrainian schoolchildren take a more extensive course of the history of the Holodomor and the fighters of the OUN and the UPA fighters.

Yushchenko took part in the celebration of the 67th anniversary of the UPA and the 65th anniversary of Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council on 14 October 2009.

To commemorate National Unity Day on 22 January 2010, Yushchenko awarded Bandera the Hero of Ukraine honor posthumously. A district administrative court in Donetsk cancelled the presidential decree granting the honor to Bandera on 2 April 2010. The lawyer Vladimir Olentsevych argued in a lawsuit that the honor is the highest state award that is granted exclusively to citizens of Ukraine. Bandera was not a Ukrainian citizen, as he was killed in exile in 1959 before the 1991 Declaration of Independence of Ukraine.

On 16 January 2012, the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine upheld the presidential decree of 28 January 2010 “About recognition of OUN members and soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as participants in struggle for independence of Ukraine” after it was challenged by the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Nataliya Vitrenko, recognizing the UPA as war combatants.

On 15 May 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a bill into law that provides “public recognition to anyone who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century”, including Ukrainian Insurgent Army combatants.

In Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zhytomyr, the UPA flag may be displayed on government buildings “on certain holidays”.

In December 2018, Poroshenko confirmed the status of veterans and combatants for independence of Ukraine for UPA fighters.

In late 2018, the Lviv Oblast Council decided to declare the year of 2019 to be the year of Bandera.

Popular Culture

The Ukrainian black metal band Drudkh recorded a song entitled Ukrainian Insurgent Army on its 2006 release, Кров у Наших Криницях (Blood in our wells), dedicated to Stepan Bandera. Ukrainian Neo-Nazi black metal band Nokturnal Mortum have a song titled “Hailed Be the Heroes” (Слава героям) on the Weltanschauung/Мировоззрение album which contains lyrics pertaining to World War II and Western Ukraine (Galicia), and its title, Slava Heroyam, is a traditional UPA salute.

Two Czech films by František Vláčil, Shadows of the Hot Summer (Stíny horkého léta, 1977) and The Little Shepherd Boy from the Valley (Pasáček z doliny, 1983) are set in 1947, and feature UPA guerrillas in significant supporting roles. The first film resembles Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), in that it is about a farmer whose family is taken hostage by five UPA guerrillas, and he has to resort to his own ingenuity, plus reserves of violence that he never knew he possessed, to defeat them. In the second, the shepherd boy (actually a cowherd) imagines that a group of UPA guerrillas is made up of fairytale characters of his grandfather’s stories, and that their leader is the Goblin King.

Also films such as Neskorenyi (“The Undefeated”), Zalizna Sotnia (“The Company of Heroes”) and Atentat (“Assassination. An Autumn Murder in Munich”) feature more description about the role of UPA on their terrain. The Undefeated is about the life of Roman Shuhevych and the hunt for him by both German and Soviet forces, The Company of Heroes shows how UPA soldiers had everyday life as they fight against Armia Krajowa, Assassination is about the life of Stepan Bandera and how KGB agents murdered him.

Films

1951 – Akce B (Czechoslovakia)

1961 – Ogniomistrz Kaleń (Polish People’s Republic)

1962 – Zerwany most (Polish People’s Republic)

1968 – Annychka (USSR)

1970 – The White Bird Marked with Black (USSR)

1976 – The Troubled Month of Veresen (USSR)

1977 – Shadows of the Hot Summer (Czechoslovakia)

1983 – The Little Shepherd Boy from the Valley (Czechoslovakia)

1991 – The Last Bunker (Ukraine)

1991 – Carpathian Gold (Ukraine)

1992 – Cherry Nights (Ukraine)

1993 – Memories about UPA (Ukraine)

1994 – Goodbye, Girl (Ukraine)

1995 – Assassination. An Autumn Murder in Munich (Ukraine)

1995 – Executed Dawns (Ukraine)

2000 – The Undefeated (Ukraine)

2004 – One – the soldier in the field (Ukraine)

2004 – The Company of Heroes (Ukraine)

2004 – Between Hitler and Stalin (Canada)

2006 – Sobor on the Blood (Ukraine)

2006 – OUN – UPA war on two fronts (Ukraine)

2006 – Freedom or death! (Ukraine)

2007 – UPA. Third Force (Ukraine)

2010 – We are from the Future 2 (Russia)

2010 – Banderovci (Czech Republic)

2012 – Security Service of OUN. “Closed Doors” (Ukraine)

2016 – Wołyń (Poland)

Fiction

Fire Poles (Вогненні стовпи) by Roman Ivanchuk, 2006.

Songs

The most obvious characteristic of the insurgent songs genre is the theme of rising up against occupying powers, enslavement and tyranny. Insurgent songs express an open call to battle and to revenge against the enemies of Ukraine, as well as love for the motherland and devotion to her revolutionary leaders (Bandera, Chuprynka and others). UPA actions, heroic deeds of individual soldiers, the hard underground life, longing for one’s girl, family or boy are also important subject of this genre.

Taras Zhytynsky “To sons of UPA”

Tartak “Not saying to anybody”

Folk song “To the source of Dniester”

Drudkh – “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”

References

English

Subtelny, Orest (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Davies, Norman (2005). God’s playground: a history of Poland: in two volumes, Vol. 2, Chapter 19. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Jeffrey Burds (1997). “Agentura: Soviet Informants’ Networks & the Ukrainian Underground in Galicia, 1944-48”, East European Politics and Societies v.11

Volodymyr Viatrovych, Roman Hrytskiv, Ihor Derevianyj, Ruslan Zabilyj, Andrij Sova, Petro Sodol’. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army: A History of Ukraine’s Unvanquished Freedom Fighters (exhibition brochure). Lviv 2009.

Ukrainian

Антонюк Ярослав Діяльність СБ ОУН на Волині. –Луцьк : “Волинська книга”, 2007. – 176 с.

Антонюк Ярослав Діяльність СБ ОУН(б) на Волині та Західному Поліссі (1946–1951 рр.) : Монографія. – Луцьк:”Надстир’я-Ключі”, 2013. – 228 с.

УПА розпочинає активні протинімецькі дії (UIA Start the Active anti-German actions) (За матеріалами звіту робочої групи істориків Інституту історії НАН України під керівництвом проф. Станіслава Кульчицького)

Володимир В’ятрович, Ігор Дерев’яний, Руслан Забілий, Петро Солодь. Українська Повстанська Армія. Історія Нескорених. Третє видання. Львів (2011).

Петро Мірчук. Українська Повстанська Армія 1942–1952. Львів 1991.

Юрій Киричук. Історія УПА. Тернопіль 1991.

С.Ф. Хмель. Українська партизанка. Львів 1993.

Іван Йовик. Нескорена армія. Київ 1995.

Анатоль Бедрій. ОУН і УПА. New York – London – Munich – Toronto. 1983.

Litopys Online. The website of the chronicles of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Various works.

В´ятрович В. М. Друга польсько-українська війна. 1942–1947. - Вид. 2-е, доп. - К.: Вид. дім “Києво-Могилянська академія”, 2012. - 368 с.

Polish

Wołodymyr Wiatrowycz, Druga wojna polsko-ukraińska 1942–1947, Warszawa 2013

Za to że jesteś Ukraińcem ... : wspomnienia z lat 1944–1947 / wybór, oprac., wstęp i posłowie Bogdan Huk. Koszalin [etc.] : Stowarzyszenie Ukraińców Więźniów Politycznych i Represjonowanych w Polsce, 2012. 400 s. : il. ; 23 cm.

Sowa, Andrzej (1998). Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie 1939–1947. Kraków.

Motyka, Grzegorz (2006). Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960. Warszawa: ISP PAN / RYTM.

Motyka, Grzegorz; Wnuk, Rafał (1997). Pany i rezuny: współpraca AK-WiN i UPA 1945–1947 (in Polish). Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Volumen.

Cross of Merit.

 

Cross of Combat Merit.

Military Ranks.

Military Ranks.

The black and red flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and OUN-B.

UPA insurgents with captured German soldiers.

UPA insurgents from Turka area, Lviv region, 1944.

UPA insurgents from the Rivne region.

UPA insurgents from the Stanyslaviv region.

UPA insurgents from the Hutsulshchyna tactical sector.

UPA insurgents from the Kosiv region.

UPA propaganda poster. OUN/UPAs formal greeting is written in Ukrainian on two of the horizontal lines Glory to Ukraine - Glory to (her) Heroes. The soldier is standing on the banners of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

2nd company of the 115th Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft Battalion at the consecration ceremony of the Ukrainian national yellow-blue flag. Dereczyn, Belorussia. October 31, 1943.

Polish civilian victims of March 26, 1943 massacre committed by Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) assisted by ordinary Ukrainian peasantry (so called “chern”, pol. czerń) in the village of Lipniki (Kostopol County), Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

Christmas card made and distributed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 1945.

Roman Shukhevych, Dmytro Hrytsai and Catherine Miéchko-Lagouch (uk) in Buchach in November 1943, shortly before the penultimate phase of massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in Rivne, Lutsk, Volodymyr and Kovel.

Shukhevych, October 1943.