Suppression of UPA Resistance and Operation "Vistula" (1944–1951)

Regular chekist-military operations by the NKVD and MGB to sweep western Ukrainian villages: the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR T. Strokach personally "directed and coordinated operational-chekist operations to liquidate the underground of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and mass deportations of the population in Western Ukraine"^[3]. Already "on April 5, 1944, on the basis of a directive of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR, a scheme of arrests and deportation of OUN–UPA members was worked out"^[1].

Extrajudicial killings of civilians in the course of suppressing the insurgency: the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee itself admitted, in its resolution "On the Political and Economic Situation of the Western Oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR" of May 26, 1953: "From 1944 through 1952, up to 500 thousand people in the western oblasts of Ukraine were subjected to various kinds of repression, including over 134 thousand arrested, over 153 thousand killed, and over 203 thousand deported forever from the Ukrainian SSR"^[4][5] – the authorities did not divide the killed into insurgents and civilians, and already on July 2, 1953, after Beria's arrest, the resolution itself was revoked as conducive to "the activization of bourgeois-nationalist elements"^[4]. Terror was also waged by disguised MGB "special groups" acting under the guise of the UPA: the military prosecutor of the MVD troops of the Ukrainian district, Kosharsky, in his report to Khrushchev (February 15, 1949), cited "examples of beatings, rapes and robberies of the population" by agent-fighters and stated: "the actions of the so-called MGB special groups are of a pronounced bandit, anti-Soviet character and, of course, cannot be justified by any operational considerations"^[6].

The creation of an atmosphere of total fear through the bloody provocations of NKVD special groups operating in the guise of the UPA: People's Commissar Strokach "initiated the formation of special groups of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR from former partisans for the struggle against the UPA" and "personally interrogated the captured leaders of the OUN networks of Western Ukraine"^[3]. The terror was also demonstrative: "one of the forms of struggle was the policy of intimidating OUN and UPA members and the local population: open trials and executions, putting the bodies of the dead on public display, and destroying insurgent graves"^[7].

The coordination of actions with the pro-Soviet government of Poland to destroy the Ukrainian underground: Operation "Vistula," "as a deportation action, was elaborated in detail and carried out by the Polish authorities," but its execution "was coordinated with the party-Soviet organs of power of the USSR" - the Soviet command transferred "from Lviv oblast one tank division and special NKVD units, and blocked the Ukrainian-Polish border with border troops"^[2].

The forcible removal of insurgents' families to Siberia and the deportation of the Ukrainians of Zakerzonnia: the removal of "bandit accomplices" with their entire families began at once - already in the summer of 1944 "more than 17,000 people were carried off to Krasnoyarsk Krai"^[1]; in all, in 1944–52, 203,662 people were removed to special settlements, among them "representatives of the families of members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and their sympathizers — 182,543 people"^[1]. Operation "Vistula" was carried out in order to "deprive it of socio-economic and moral-psychological support from the local Ukrainian population," and ended in the scattering of the community: the authorities rid themselves of the Ukrainian population, "dispersing about 150 thousand people"^[2].

Mass arrests of UPA fighters, OUN members, and those suspected of aiding them, followed by dispatch to the GULAG camps, upon which the regime placed "the isolation of 'unreliable elements'" as one of its key tasks^[5]. During Operation "Vistula," for civilians suspected of assisting the underground there was provision for "the introduction of courts-martial and concentration camps, in particular at Jaworzno"^[2]. By 1951 Ukrainians had become the second-largest nation of the GULAG: according to the agency's own statistics, the "National composition of GULAG prisoners (as of January 1, 1951)" counted 506,221 Ukrainians out of some 2.5 million prisoners - about 20%^[8].

The use of captured resistance members and deportees as free labor: the tasks of the GULAG included "using them as cheap labor and transferring them, as needed, from place to place"^[5]; deportees from Western Ukraine were sent to special settlements and hard labor - in the summer of 1944 alone "more than 17,000 people were carried off to Krasnoyarsk Krai"^[1].