where Symon Petlura was murdered
SOVIET RUSSIAN
POLITICAL MURDERS ABROAD
AND ATTEMPTS TO CAMOUFLAGE THEM - Stepan Lenkavsky
The murder of Stepan Bandera is by no means an individual case in the history of the fight between Ukraine and Russia. During the past forty years three leaders of the Ukrainian national fight for freedom have been the victims of political murder by Communist Moscow.
In 1926 Symon Petlura, the head of the state and government of Ukraine, was murdered in the street in Paris by seven bullets.
In 1938 Colonel Evhen Konovalets, the founder and leader of the revolutionary liberation organization the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) killed in the street in Rotterdam by the explosion of a time-bomb.
In 1959 Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, was murdered in the entrance-hall of the house in which he lived in Munich by a shot fired from a poison-pistol.
We do not intend to mention the countless other victims of Soviet Russian terrorism, who played an important part in the national liberation movement of the Ukrainian people, or in the field of scientific and cultural activity and in ecclesiastical life, and who were murdered by Moscow either openly or secretly. We shall confine ourselves here to mentioning only the leading and most outstanding political personalities of the national liberation movement, whose names envied the highest prestige in Ukraine during the years of the latter's occupation by Russia.
The above-mentioned leaders of the Ukrainian fight for freedom — Petlura, Konovalets, Bandera — were murdered outside Ukraine, in the West European states of France, Holland and Germany, by hired murderers and agents sent there by Moscow.
All three of these murderers were tracked down. Two of them were arrested, — one at the scene of the crime immediately after he had committed it, and the other two years after the murder.
Petlura's murderer, Schwarzbart (alias Walsberger), an out-and-out criminal and a leftist socialist, was arrested at the scene of the crime by the French police and handed over to the judicial authorities. The Paris court acquitted him and morally condemned the murdered victim — Petlura.
The man who murdered Konovalets, an agent of the NKVD known under the alias of Valyukh, pretended to be a courier who had allegedly been sent to Konovalets by a national revolutionary, anti-Bolshevist organization in Soviet Ukraine. He handed Konovalets not a parcel containing reports and documents on the activity of this underground organization, but a time-bomb and subsequently escaped to the USSR on a Soviet ship.
The agent of the KGB, Stashynsky (alias Lehmann alias Budeit, alias Krylov), who murdered Stepan Bandera, fled by plane via East Berlin to the Soviet Union after having committed the crime. He remained hidden in the Soviet Union for two Years; then he managed to get from Moscow to West Berlin, where he was arrested by the German police.
The choice of the time at which each of these political murders was committed against leading Ukrainian politicians abroad seems to have been determined by the internal political development of events in Ukraine, as well as by the international position of the USSR, and not solely by any favourable opportunity which presented itself for the practical execution of the crime.
The assassination of Petlura was carried out in 1926 after the internal putch in Poland, when Pilsudski again assumed power. In 1920 he and Petlura had undertaken a joint campaign as allies against the Russians. Since it was well aware of Pilsudski's anti-Russian political attitude, Moscow was afraid lest Petlura, with support from Poland, might kindle a national revolution in Ukraine. The internal situation in Ukraine during these latter years of the era of the "New Economic Policy" (NEP) was characterized by a considerable and sudden increase in patriotism. Moreover, with the intensification of the nationalist trends amongst the youth, the intellectuals and the farmers, with the so-called Ukrainization and the defiant attitude of the Ukrainian national Communists at that time in the Communist Party of Ukraine (similar to the revolt of the intellectuals and the youth in Poland in 1956), the situation as regards Ukraine was becoming extremely precarious for Moscow. At this critical time the hopes of the Ukrainian people as a whole were concentrated on the person of Petlura as the highest representative of the national liberation policy. NKVD chief, Dzerzhinsky, was responsible for the liquidations carried out during this period.
There could be no illusions in 1938, the year in which Konovalets was murdered, about the fact that the Western democratic states where not in a position to prevent the three anti-Comintern states, Germany, Italy and Japan, from further acts of territorial expansion by international agreements and pacts. In the Far East Japan assumed the leading role. Italy, who as a result of her war against and her occupation of Abyssinia was in conflict with the measures of the League of Nations, stressed that the resolutions of such an international fiction could not be carried out in practice. The last stage of the civil war in Spain, which lasted for almost three years, revealed not only the weak spot of the Russian world Communist conspiracy, but also the technical perfection of modern German arms. The incorporation of Austria into Germany, which was indeed a triumph for Hitler, afforded Germany the initial position for the revision of her frontiers and those of Czecho-Slovakia and Poland, and in no time the collision between two opposite imperialistic camps loomed on the horizon: German national socialism, which was intent upon realizing its principle of "greater living space" in the East, and Russian Communism, with its unchangeable plans for a "world revolution of the proletariat," that is to say the creation of a Russian world imperium. The prospect of such a clash between these two powers seemed inevitable. Moscow decided to crush the internal forces of resistance as speedily as possible, since in the event of a conflict they might disintegrate the Soviet Russian imperium from within. Three months after the incorporation of Austria into Germany and soon after they had carried out a large-scale ruthless extermination campaign not only in Ukraine but also in the entire USSR amongst the intelligentsia, in the army, the administration and the Party apparatus, a campaign which has gone down in the annals of history as the "Yezhov purge," the Bolsheviks on May 23, 1938, murdered the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Evhen Konovalets, who was living abroad.
This wave of terrorism also included those of Stalin's enemies abroad who were dangerous. That same year, i.e. 1938, the Bolsheviks also carried out a number of attacks on the Trotskyists who played a leading part in the 4th International. In February 1938, for instance, Leo Trotsky's son Lev Sedov, was murdered in Paris, and on June 13, 1938, the secretary of the 4th International, Rudolf Klement, was abducted from Paris. Two years later (on August 21, 1940) Leo Trotsky was murdered in Coyocan (Mexico). The person responsible for the political murders in 1938 was Yezhov, and for those committed in 1940, Beria.
1959, the year in which Stepan Bandera was murdered, held no foreign political and international complications for the Russians. Times had changed. Moscow now holds the initiative in international politics in its hands, and Moscow alone determines in which parts of the world and at what times unexpected acts of aggression, intrigues and conflicts, either on a small or on a large scale, are to take place. The West tries to defend its status quo by means of compromises and complaisance, and when it fails to do so, it endeavours at least to play the part of a belated fire-brigade, a role for which it pays with loss of prestige and more concessions. Hence the choice of time in the case of the murder of Bandera was not a precautionary measure before a storm that threatened to break over Moscow's head in the field of international politics, as had been the case when the other two murders were committed. It was, rather, a preparatory measure, by means of which a favourable starting-point was to be created in the interior of the Soviet Russian colony — that is Ukraine — for Moscow to launch aggressive surprises against the free world (Laos, Berlin). The discontent of the nations subjugated by Russia, in particular of Ukraine, represents an internal obstacle to Russian world-conquest plans and to subversive propaganda in the underdeveloped countries. One can assume that the Russians were afraid lest their provocations might cali forth an unexpected reaction on the part of the West.
How Do the Bolsheviks Explain the Murders Committed by Them?
The Bolsheviks realize only too well that political murder is a two-edged sword. The liquidation of a politician who is a danger to Moscow only serves their purpose if the crime committed evokes no indignation against Moscow in public circles, that is to say in precisely those circles in which the murdered person was regarded as an authority. The Russians have one inalterable principle: Moscow was never guilty and is never guilty of crime. The blame is always thrust on the others, above all on the enemies of Bolshevism, and very often on the victim himself and one those who share his views and ideas. Even if the logical aspect of events objectively reveals incriminating evidence against Moscow, Moscow always invents lies accordingly in order to mislead the public. For every one of its criminal acts it has always invented expedient legends, which are obstinately repeated year after year in its propaganda. In this respect the Bolsheviks rely on the true information, which would expose the real organizers of the murders and the murderers themselves, not getting through the Iron Curtain, and this they seek to prevent by Censoring all letters and disturbing the transmission of broadcast programmes. If, however, some information does seep through to the Soviet citizens, then they are promptly misled by Bolshevist dementis, which make the truth appear questionable and less probable.
But who are the "others" whom Soviet Russian propaganda makes out to be the alleged organizers and perpetrators of the assassinations of Ukrainian leaders of the national liberation movement, instead of Moscow?
Jews and Germans!
According to Bolshevist disinformation, the Jews are to blame for the murder of Petlura. And the Germans are to blame for the murder of Konovalets and of Bandera. In the case of the last two murders, the Ukrainian nationalists allegedly assisted the Germans in carrying out these crimes. This, in brief, is the Bolshevist explanation of the murders perpetrated by Russian agents.
On what do the Bolsheviks base their lies and tricks in this respect?
The choice of the person who was to commit the murder has always served as the basis for the invention of lies and legends about the actual murder itself. They have always chosen persons to whom — in the event of their arrest — credible tales about motives other than the orders of the Kremlin, motives of a personal or political character,
| Paris — The corner of Rue Racine and Bd. St.
Michel, where Symon Petlura was murdered |
In the case of Petlura, a Jew, Schwarzbart, was instructed by Moscow to carry out the murder. He received orders to give himself up of his own accord to the police as a Communist agent, in order to start a political trial in this way. Thus there was a two-fold purpose behind this murder: to murder Petlura who was a danger to the Bolsheviks, and to direct the political trial of this murder in such a way that the person of Petlura and the Ukrainian government which he represented, as well as the national liberation movement, which was a danger to Moscow, could be defamed from the political point of view. It was Schwarzbart's task during this trial to conceal the part played by the Russian GPU in this murder and to pose as a national avenger of the Jewish people for the brutal pogroms committed against them by various anarchist groups, who operated in Ukraine during the years of the revolution, that is from 1919 to 1921, and in the interests of Russia also fought against the Ukrainian state. The blame for the pogroms carried out by these groups was to be imputed to Petlura. By planning the trial in this way the Russians managed to gain a two-fold success. In the first place, they succeeded in winning over most of the Jews in the world for the defence of the Communist agent Schwarzbart and in arousing anti-Ukrainian feelings, which, incidentally, persisted a long time, amongst the Jews, and, secondly, as a result of the unjust verdict of the Paris court, the Russians and other enemies of an independent Ukraine where able to obtain "the objective judgement of an impartial court in an unprejudiced state," which could then be used in anti-Ukrainian propaganda. For years the Russians made use of this judgement in order to defame Petlura in the eyes of the world and to misrepresent the Ukrainian state government which he represented and the Ukrainian liberation movement as an anti-Semitic, destructive and not a constructive state movement, which would be capable of ensuring human democratic freedoms to the national minorities in Ukraine. The jury of the Paris court, who consisted for the most part of supporters of the popular front at that time and of socialist liberals, refused to believe the testimony of the numerous witnesses of various nationalities, which clearly proved that Petlura had neither had any share in the pogroms against the Jews, nor could be held in any way responsible for them. They ignored the actual facts of the murder, and by their acquittal of the murderer rendered Bolshevist Moscow an even greater service than it had expected. Thus Moscow scored two successes. But it did not score a third, for the Paris trial did not help Moscow to change the anti-Russian attitude of the Ukrainians into an anti-Semitic one or to conceal its responsibility for the murder of Petlura from the Ukrainians.
In the case of the murder of Konovalets the Bolsheviks did not attempt to start a trial. On the contrary, the motives for this insidious murder were, in view of the manner in which it was carried out, to remain a mystery in order to maintain for as long as possible doubts as to which political forces that were hostile to Ukraine could have been anxious to liquidate Konovalets. The mystery surrounding this question made it easy for the Russians to arouse political ill-feeling amongst the Ukrainians against various political forces which the
| Rotterdam — Koolsingel. The mutilated body
of Colonel Evhen Konovalets, who was murdered by a bomb planted by a Russian agent. |
It was necessary for the Russians to choose a murderer of Ukrainian nationality for the simple reason that such a person was more likely to gain the confidence of his victim and be able to establish personal contact with him, a fact which made it easier to carry out the murder later on. The very fact that the agent who posed as a courier of a fictitious or real underground organization was of Ukrainian nationality, can be regarded as a negative for a revolutionary organization and as an advantage for Moscow, since in this way the impression could be created that the OUN had no check whatever on the agents who wormed their way into its ranks. Indeed, after Konovalets' death reproaches to this effect were voiced by certain Ukrainian opportunist groups who did not approve of the form of the revolutionary national liberation movement in the underground.
The suspicion that the Poles and not the Russians had murdered Konovalets was short-lived. After a time the Soviet Russians began to circulate a new version with various variations, according to which Konovalets had been murdered by the Germans with the aid of one of his co-workers. The Russians did not even bother about the fact that this new version was contradiction of their previous propaganda lies, according to which Konovalets had been an ally and also an agent and a hireling of Hitler. In this connection we should like to quote a passage from a Bolshevist book published in 1956:
"The first fatal blow was dealt the OUN in 1938; Soviet security organs discovered and destroyed the entire network of its underground cells in Ukraine. That same year Hitler and the Gestapo leaders decided that the OUN ringleader Konovalets knew too many secrets of the German government and that he had so many international contacts that it would in future be difficult to hold their own against him. Prior this reason they gave instructions that a special "present" was to be sent to Konovalets, who at that time was attending a congress of Ukrainian nationalists iu Rotterdam (Holland).
At the entrance of the hall in which the congress was being held, one of Konovalets' co-workers, a trustworthy Gestapo agent, handed him a parcel with the remark that it was intended for him personally. When Konovalets opened it, the bomb inside it exploded and tore him to pieces. Thus Konovalets became the "martyr" of the Ukrainian "nationalist" movement. High-ranking Nazi personalities later said quite openly and candidly: "After his death Konovalets became more useful to us than he had been during his lifetime."
Konovalets' death at the hand of one of his co-workers was no exception."*)
|
*) V. Byelyayev — M. Rudnytsky: "Under Foreign Banners," Kyiv, 1956, p. 36. |
Here for once the Bolsheviks were right. For the case of such a Bolshevist lie was indeed no exception! It was repeated again in 1961 on the occasion of unsuccessful agitation attempt made by Lippolz (alias Liebholz), who "testified" in East Berlin that Bandera, too, had been murdered by the Germans with the assistance of one of his own co-workers. We shall discuss this amazing lack of imagination and stereotype invention of lies later on. In the first place we should, however, like to rectify two lies of less importance: firstly, no congress of Ukrainian nationalists took place in Rotterdam. Konovalets went to Rotterdam alone, — by plane; secondly, Colonel Konovalets met Vaiyukh alone in a café as arranged, and for reasons of conspiracy there were no intermediaries and no witnesses with them, since the presence of several persons might have drawn the attention of enemy secret services to their meeting. Nor was the parcel handed to Konovalets by a middleman. After a short conversation Valyukh hurried out of the café and left the parcel, which he had brought with him behind. Konovalets left immediately after him with the parcel in his hand and a few minutes later when he was in the street the time-bomb in the parcel exploded and killed him.
In the third case, the insidous murder of Stepan Bandera, the organization and arranging of the circumstances connected with this murder and all the perfidious Bolshevist intrigues will only be revealed in all detail when the trial is held. It is, however, clearly obvious from the data available so far that the attempt on Bandera's
| Munich — Kreittmayerstrasse No. 7, the house in which Stepan Bandera lived. |
When the post-mortem examination, however, revealed traces of poison in the body of the victim, a whole avalanche of different explanations and versions started moving, all of which were advantageous for Moscow since they cast suspicion on others and diverted it from Moscow.
The version which persisted longest was the one that Bandera had committed suicide for political or personal reasons. A Swiss weekly even published a whole series of freely invented reports about a grim massacre in the national revolutionary underground movement and about unsuccessful insurrections in Ukraine, which had allegedly driven Bandera to despair and to suicide. Another version affirmed that one of the secretaries in Bandera's office, who shortly before his death had been with him in town when he bought in fruit, had given him the poison. Although police investigations ascertained nothing
| The staircase — on which Stepan Bandera was murdered by a KGB agent. |
When the Soviet Russians learnt that the murderer had escaped from their clutches, they staged an unsuccessful "press conference" with Lippolz (alias Liebholz) in East Berlin, after having racked their brains for a month. But in this way they only incriminated and compromised themselves still more. In order to simplify this urgent matter, the Bolsheviks based this new agitation on their old hackneyed version, according to which attepmts on the lives of leading Ukrainian personalities are carried out by the Germans with the assistance of the Ukrainian nationalists. The plan on which the Bolsheviks based their agitation campaign in the case of the murders of Konovalets and Bandera can be summed up in certain identical facts, and if we substitute the name Bandera for that of Konovalets and the word "poison" for "time-bomb," we have in brief the following scheme, as conceived by the Bolsheviks:
[Gestapo]/[Oberländer] decides to liquidate [Konovalets]/[Bandera] because he knows too much about the secrets [of the Reichs government]/[of his "crimes"]. [Gestapo]/[Secret service Gehlen] through one of its trustworthy agents and co-workers of [Konovalets]/[Bandera] hands him the [parcel]/[lunch] intended for him personally. When [Konovalets]/[Bandera] accepted the [parcel]/[lunch] he was killed by [the bomb]/[the poison].
This scheme shows only too plainly that in the case of Bandera the Soviet Russians were obliged to quote additional proof in order to emphasize the probability of their lying inventions:
1) that Oberländer had committed some criminal act or other and had let Bandera into this secret;
2) that Bandera ate a poisoned lunch which was handed to him by one of Oberländer's agents and co-workers.
On what did the Bolsheviks base the credibility of their lies? They invented corresponding legends and intrigues on a large scale.
Legends about the Crimes of Oberländer, Shukhevych and the Ukrainian Legion
As regards the "crimes" of Oberländer, the Soviet Russians circulated the accusation that the mass-murders of prisoners, who had been arrested by the Bolsheviks and were murdered by them in the prisons of Lviv (Lemberg) prior to their retreat in 1941, were committed by the Ukrainian "Nightingale" battalion of volunteers. The latter, according to the Soviet Russians, were under the command of Shukhevych and Oberländer, who entered the town at the same time as the German forces. The Russians demanded that Oberländer, since he was a "war-criminal," should be removed from his post as Minister in the German Federal government, and, indeed, after a time their request was successful. In their aggressive propaganda they then continued for some time to quote the testimony of "witnesses" who corroborated these accusations. The political purpose of this lying campaign was obvious: the blame for the crimes committed by Moscow was to be cast on the German Federal Minister as a war-criminal and on the Nazis who had gone into hiding, as well as on Shukhevych and the Ukrainian Legion, as hirelings of Hitler.
In order to investigate these accusations an International Investigatory Committee "Lemberg 1941," which consisted of former members of the resistance movements against the Hitler regime in Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland, was formed in The Hague on December 27, 1959. This Committee, consisted of 5 members, heard testimony by 232 witnesses, who made their statements under oath, and carefully investigated the incriminating material and the said testimonies. The Committee ascertained that on June 22, 1941, the Soviet Russian security authorities (NKVD) carried out the arrest of thousands of persons of various nationalities who were regarded as politically untrustworthy. Since it was impossible to transfer the persons who had been arrested to the east territories owing to the collapse of the Soviet transport system, the leaders of the NKVD groups on June 24, 1941, received orders over the radio from Nikita S. Khrushchov personally that all the political prisoners were to be killed and the criminal prisoners to be released. As was unanimously corroborated by all the witnesses who testified before the above-mentioned Committee, these orders were carried out by the NKVD units in the prisons of Lviv and other towns in West and Central Ukraine during the last few days before the Soviet troops retreated. Prior to the entry of the German troops and the Ukrainian Legion under the command of Shukhevych and Oberländer, the latter as liaison officer of the German High Command, the inhabitants of Lviv discovered the corpses of murdered prisoners in the prisons, which were no longer guarded. Many of them recognized their relatives amongst the prisoners who had been murdered, and Shukhevych also found the body of his brother, who had been arrested by the Bolsheviks, there.
The legend of the crimes committed by the Ukrainian Legion against the prisoners proved to be a flagrant lie. Oberländer did not carry out the massacre, nor did he have any opportunity to cooperate with Bandera, for Bandera did not belong to the Ukrainian Legion. Hence, Bandera could not have been initiated into the "secret plans of destruction" of Oberländer. When the Bolsheviks were murdering the prisoners, Bandera was not in Lviv at all but behind the German frontlines, and during the entry of the Ukrainian Legion into the town of Lviv Bandera was already under police surveillance in Cracow, where he was neither in a position to escape nor to see the murdered prisoners in Lviv.
These facts which are ignored or overlooked by the Soviet Russians refute their theory that Oberländer intended to liquidate Bandera since he was the only person in the West who was in the know as regards the secret of the alleged crimes committed by Oberländer.
Lippolz's Speculations on the Poisoning of Bandera
The Lippolz affair was more or less only a continuation of the previous legend. The technical execution of Oberländer's orders to murder Bandera, so it was alleged, was undertaken by the Gehlen secret service, which in any case wanted to settle up with Bandera since he was said to be in contact with the British and refused to collaborate with the Germans. The Gehlen secret service allegedly gave Lippolz orders to poison Bandera, but when Lippolz failed to worm his way into the circles most closely connected with Bandera, the German secret service, at Lippolz' advice, passed on these orders to someone who was closely connected with Bandera, namely Myskiv, who allegedly carried them out and then died five months later.
The political aim of this legend is the same as that of the previous one: to represent someone else as the guilty party instead of Moscow, to foster hostility between the Ukrainians and the Germans, and at the same time to create the suspicion that there are agents of foreign secret services in the leading circles of the OUN.
The Bolshevist agitators were not in the least concerned by the fact that this version was a contradiction of the other versions circulated by their propaganda only a few months earlier, according to which the OUN was to cease collaboration with the British and act as agents for the German secret service. They considered it necessary to impute to the German secret service other motives apart from the less credible motive harboured by Oberländer, namely that he wanted to settle up with Bandera, a tale the validity of which could not be ascertained by readers who were not thoroughly acquainted with Bolshevist propaganda.
The entire legend is based on the testimony of one single person, the old Bolshevist agent Lippolz, whom the Russians sent to Munich and who, during the years 1953 to 1957, was to worm his way into the circles connected with Bandera for the purpose of poisoning him. He was also to collect information about other Ukrainian political groups. But in inventing this legend the Russians committed three fatal errors:
1) they overlooked the fact that Lippolz had long since been exposed as a Bolshevist agent by the Ukrainian nationalists and that they were keeping a check on him;
2) they imputed tire handing of the poison to Bandera in his lunch to the late Myskiv, who at the time of the murder was in Rome. And they completely overlooked the fact that Bandera on the day of his death did not have his lunch in the office canteen but was on his way home for that purpose;
3) they accused certain persons of having "murdered" the Bolshevist agent Skob, who in 1956 was recalled to the USSR, and mentioned the names of three Ukrainian nationalists, regardless of the fact that two of them at the time of his return to the USSR were serving sentences in a German prison, and the third person was in Italy.
Bolshevist Defamation Tactics
Soviet Russian defamation of the Ukrainian liberation movement, its leading personalities and members, to which method the Russians resort in order to cover up their own crimes, either already committed or planned, is by no means an invention of recent years. Since the Russian-Ukrainian wvar and the first occupation of Ukraine by Soviet Russia, practically every Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Communist Party of Ukraine decrees measures and directives for the Party and administrative apparatus in order to combat Ukrainian nationalism as a "counter-revolutionary force," as the "enemy" of the "people," which serves the interests of the "capitalistic states." In this propaganda campaign, which has been going on for years, the unscrupulous application of lies, half-lies and the misrepresentation of facts and events has become a firmly established habit with the Bolshevist agitators. Nor do they need to fear any opposition or refutation of their lies, since every opponent is only too well aware that he himself will be branded as an "enemy of the people" if he undertakes such an attempt. There is an old Ukrainian saying — "to lie like a Russian," which participators in meetings and readers of the Bolshevist press undoubtedly repeat to themselves or in confidential circles as soon as the applause has died away and the proclamations of obligations and of homage for the "wise" Party leaders have ceased.
The typical stereotyped methods of Bolshevist lying propaganda, which have been practised for years, and other vile methods resorted to in Ukraine and elsewhere include the following:
1) the casting of blame for the failure of thoughtless and impracticable economic plans, drawn up by the Party leaders, onto Party functionaries of lower rank, and the reproach of negligence, damage or even sabotage which is uttered against the proletariat, subjugated by the Bolsheviks;
2) compulsory obligations for the workers to carry out higher quotas of work in order to exploit their 1abour-power, to engage in financial self-taxation to the state in the form of state loans or investment capital out of the income of the industrial concerns, etc., merely for illusory promises that in five years' time, that is to say after the completion of the Five-Year Plan, there will be a considerable improvement in the standard of living;
3) the propagation of atheism and contempt of the traditions of the Church, as well as the destruction and desecration of churches;
4) the falsification of history and the organizing of mass anniversaries and jubilees for the purpose of singing the praises of Ukrainian political and cultural personalities, whose attitude and whose works are falsely represented as pro-Russian;
5) the constant dissemination of defamations and misinformation regarding the policy, social and economic conditions, and military plans of individual Western and non-Communist states, and, at the same time, the arrogant and exaggerated eulogizing of the military strength and achievements of the "socialist" construction in the USSR and in other Communist states;
6) the concealment of their plans of aggression, war and subversion in foreign states by means of the usual fairytale about defending those who have been deprived of their rights, exploited, attacked or threatened by the capitalists and colonial rulers;
7) the systematic defamation of the Ukrainian national liberation movement and its leading personalities, together with the constantly repeated allegation that Soviet Ukraine, thanks to the help of Soviet Russia, is now an independent and sovereign state.
The following examples will serve to illustrate the manner in which the Bolsheviks seek to defame the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
In the years 1917 to 1921, Lenin was already alarmed lest the advocates of an independent Ukraine should try to break the "brotherly ties" between the Ukrainian and the Russian people. Even in those days Russian Bolshevist propaganda was already accusing the government of Ukraine (the Central Council) in Kyiv of serving German and Austrian interests. The setting up of the Ukrainian Legion in Galicia (the Ukrainian Sich infantry) in 1914 and of Ukrainian military units in 1917, consisting of Ukrainians who had been taken prisoner-of-war by the Austrians and who until then had served in the Russian tsarist army and now wanted to take part as volunteers in the fight for freedom of Ukraine against tsarist Russia (the Grey Division), is to this day still designated by the Bolsheviks as "agents' service" on the part of these Ukrainian patriots. At the same time, however, they take good care to keep silent about the fact that the German secret service enabled Lenin to return to Petersburg, and they draw no conclusions regarding any agent's activity, dependence or collaboration on the part of Lenin with the German secret service.
A fierce Russian Bolshevist attack was, incidentally, launched against Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky in those days, who was alleged to be a German agent simply because he continued to cooperate politically and militarily with the Germans in order to protect Ukraine against Russian Bolshevist annexation. But they also made similar accusations regarding agents' activity for the Germans in the case of Skoropadsky's opponents, who were trying in vain to find allies for Ukraine in England and France. It has become an established and evil habit of the Bolsheviks to brand every Ukrainian politician, who has tried either successfully or unsuccessfully to win friends for Ukraine and for its fight for freedom against Soviet Russia, as an agent in the secret service of the foreign state in question. In the course of time the Russians have also begun to spread accusations and defamations about the Ukrainian politicians who carried on the fight for freedom in Ukraine against the foreign occupation forces (Poland, Nazi Germany), and have affirmed that they were agents of the secret service of these very occupation powers which were persecuting them, allegation which could not be more untrue and illogical.
Forty-eight years have passed since the first world war, when the Ukrainian fighting forces were organized and liberated Ukraine from tsarist Russia. Both Russian monarchist and, later, Russian Bolshevist propaganda have endeavoured up to the present time to defame the soldiers who belonged to the ranks of the Sich infantry (USS), of the "Grey Division" and of the Ukrainian National Republic Army (UNR Army) of the years 1917—1920 and to brand them as "pogrom instigators" or agents of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
True to the Russian stereotyped way of thinking, the Bolsheviks defame the legion commanded by General Shukhevych 21 years ago as a unit which was in the service of the Nazis as an agent, in spite of the fact that this legion was disbanded by the Nazis and then became an insurgent anti-Nazi army under the leadership of General Shukhevych. The Bolsheviks try to thrust the responsibility for the massacres which they themselves committed onto this unit.
For fifty years the Bolsheviks have been repeating the same old hackneyed lies and defamations, which for the past decades have been directed in particular against the Ukrainian patriots in the ranks of the OUN, and since they murdered Stepan Bandera they have been trying to defame the OUN and UPA as hirelings of various western secret services and as the perpetrators of vile atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people.
Such falsehood and defamations are not unusual in the East.
The same category of thought, the same methods of mendacity and defamation, which have been applied by Russia during the past fifty years, have also served her as a "weapon" for centuries, in particular whenever Russia was discovered red-handed in the act of committing a crime.
Under the volley of defamatory Bolshevist propaganda, which in accordance with the Russian custom is based on falsehoods, the trial against the murderer of Bandera is approaching. During the Paris trial in 1927 the Bolsheviks successfully applied their tactics of defaming the highest representative of the Ukrainian state, Symon Petlura. And the strategic plan of the defence of Schwarzbart was based on these tactics. The attention of the court was diverted from the murderer and from those who had commissioned him to commit this crime and was directed to an account of the atrocities which occurred here and there in Ukraine contrary to Petlura's orders and measures and as a result of the revolutionary chaos in that country. Instead of accusing the murderer and summoning those who had commissioned him to perpetrate the crime, before the court, the plaintiffs representing the widow of the victim, Symon Petlura, were obliged to defend the latter against the defamatory accusations made regarding his responsibility and participation in the said atrocities.
Thirty-six years have elapsed since the murder of Petlura. In 1962 the Bolsheviks will now stand accused before a court of a free Western state a second time on account of a political murder committed abroad. This fact alone is an embarrassing political exposure and disgrace for them before the rest of the world. How do the insidious Russian murderers intend to get out of this difficulty?
By means of a lie, of course. And according to the old watchword: "Moscow is never to blame for a crime. The others are always to blame." Who are "the others"? As usual, — those to blame are their murdered victim and his adherents, or those in whose country the trial is to be held in which the Russian Bolshevist murderers are the accused. This latter manoeuvre is a blackmail manoeuvre, intended as discouragement, to prevent an objective judgement from being pronounced.
The big propaganda campaign of the years 1961-62, the aim of which has been to defame Bandera and his organization regarding the alleged vile atrocities in Ukraine and abroad, indicates that on this occasion, too, the Bolsheviks would tike to repeat the strategic plan to which they resorted 25 years ago. Once again the attention of the court is to be diverted from the murder that has been committed. In the Stashynsky trial the plaintiffs are to be occupied in refuting the stories and defamations invented by the Bolsheviks. If this plan does not succeed, then the Western press is to be misled, at least for a short time, by the lies blared forth to the world by agitators such as Lippolz, Verhun and others.
In the course of the 36 years that have elapsed since the Paris trial, the world has become more closely acquainted with Moscow's insidious methods of deception and mendacity than was the case in those days. The documentary reports on the fight of the Ukrainian underground movement supplement this experience by means of facts which are not well known enough in the west but nevertheless suffice to show the world the true character of Bolshevism with the mask off.
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These three murders committed in the West by Soviet agents against three leaders of the Ukrainian liberation movement complete the series of victims and should prompt the leading statesmen of the free world to ponder over the manner in which they can successfully combat Soviet Russian terrorism in their states, even though the victims are only foreigners. The West, lulling itself in its freedom and prosperity, has not drawn adequate conclusions as regards itself from the grim experience of the peoples subjugated by Russia.
In the countries which it occupies, Moscow carries out mass and individual murders, either openly and brutally, or under the guise of a sham legality. Conditions are either created which result in a slow death in the places of exile to which people are deported, or else Moscow disposes of the persons whom it considers a danger by means of treacherous murders. The West is aware of these facts but it keeps silent about them, no doubt because it wrongly assumes that to call Moscow to account before an international tribunal for its cynical and constant violations of the convention of human rights behind the Iron Curtain would be equivalent to an "intervention in the internal affairs" of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, however, Moscow does not fear such reproaches on the part of the West. It uses the slightest unrest and cases of strikes in the West as an opportunity to make hysterical accusations against the West without bothering to consider whether such tactics might perhaps be construed as intervention in foreign affairs or not.
Since "socialist legality" was introduced with considerable publicity there have been no statistics whatever on the rate of mortality of Soviet subjects as a result of sudden "heart attacks." Moscow is in no hurry to announce these figures. But who can guarantee whether the poison pistol invented by the MVD, the existence of which has now by chance become known in the West, is not being turned out in serial production and being used on a large-scale in the Soviet Union, too, against persons whom Moscow considers to be a political danger?
The discovery that this insidious weapon is used by the Bolsheviks provides the West with a unique opportunity to take sides with the enemies of Soviet Russian rule for whom "socialist legality" is no protection against the murders perpetrated by the Soviet state organs.
The cunning form of Soviet Russian terrorism applied in a free state of the West, which has been exposed by Stashynsky's confession, is a further warning to those who are willing to comprehend it. The penalties provided for by law in many of the democratic states are an inadequate deterrent against the Soviet Russian terrorists, agents and series, together with their accomplices, who undermine public law and order and spy out the state secrets of the free world.
An attack against the colonial system and against the subjugation of the peoples in the USSR, as well as the calling to account of the Soviet rulers before the free world for every crime that is exposed would be a more effective means of undermining the power of the enemy and exposing him than the denials and rectifications which the West has practised so far as regards Bolshevist accusations and defamations.
The trial of Stashynsky, the murderer of Bandera, is to be held in
the very near future. On this occasion the West will be reminded once
more of the fact that Bandera is already the third victim of the Soviet
Russian terrorism directed against the most prominent Ukrainian freedom
fighters, but, above all, the question will be raised as to why Moscow
for decades has felt that it is threatened by the fight for freedom of
the Ukrainian people and why Ukraine — a factor of strength which is
underestimated by the West — is such a danger to Moscow.