Freedom and dignity have always been fundamental values for Ukrainians. They motivated the struggle for independence.
The modern history of Ukraine has three stages of revival of an independent state on all Ukrainian ethnic lands:
The First Liberation Struggle (1917-1921) - the creation of a state in the aftermath of the First World War;
The Second Liberation Struggle (1938-1950) - the creation of an independent state in the context of World War II;
Third liberation struggle (since 2014) - protection and defense of the state in the context of Russian aggression.
On the occasion of Ukraine's Independence Day, we offer a closer look at the latest stages of the Ukrainian people's heroic struggle for a united and independent state.
Before the First World War, before the Second Liberation Struggle, Ukraine was fragmented and divided by empires into little connected pieces.
The loss of statehood in the early 1920s resulted in the emergence of the Ukrainian liberation movement. The main goal of organizing the liberation movement was to continue the armed struggle for the establishment of an independent, united Ukraine on Ukrainian ethnic lands.
In 1920, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was created from the interned units of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic (Sich Riflemen) and the Ukrainian Galician Army, headed by Yevhen Konovalets, commander of the most combat-ready unit of the UPR Army, the Sich Riflemen.
At that time, the UVO conducted covert terrorist operations against the Polish and Bolshevik authorities.
In 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a unit for young UVO personnel, was created.
October 1938 became a landmark because of the events in Carpathian Ukraine, an autonomous part of Czechoslovakia. In order to defend themselves, the local Ukrainian population created the so-called "Carpathian Sich People's Defense Organization" (ONOKS). This paramilitary organization, in addition to assisting the local police and border guards, provided semi-legal military training for the population, which came in handy when the collapse of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 allowed the declaration of independence of the new state of Carpathian Ukraine, with Augustin Voloshyn as president, but the very next day Hungarian troops occupied the region. The ONOX could not hold the Hungarian regular troops for long and were defeated, and the territory of Carpathian Ukraine was incorporated into Hungary. Despite the defeat, this act demonstrated the desire of Ukrainians for statehood. Carpathian Ukraine existed as an independent state for only one day.
On August 23, 1939, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the western Ukrainian lands were annexed to the USSR. On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine. And in 1940, mass arrests and deportations of residents of the annexed lands took place.
When Nazi Germany and its allies launched Operation Barbarossa, many Poles and Ukrainians, tired of the oppression of the Soviet Union, looked upon the invaders as liberators. Ukrainian nationalist activists felt that they needed to seize the right moment to create an independent Ukrainian state. In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Germans encouraged Ukrainian nationalists to some extent by promising to proclaim a "Greater Ukraine."
On June 30, 1941, Ukrainian nationalists proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian state in Lviv. However, a Slavic state in Eastern Europe did not really "fit" into Hitler's plans for the "Eastern peoples," and so he ordered the liquidation of the newly created state and the arrest of its leaders.
Since 1941, the ideologists of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Ivan Mitringa and Dmytro Myron, have been developing a thesis about relying on their own strength and the strength of other peoples enslaved by totalitarian regimes, about the need to create a common front with them based on the principle of national self-determination.
In December 1943, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists made adjustments to its program, moving toward a social democratic model and opposition to Bolshevism. The new slogan was "Freedom to the peoples! Freedom to the people!".
Between 1942 and 1943, the Ukrainian liberation movement, in particular the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), fought against both occupiers in an effort to restore an independent state.
During 1943, the UPA absorbed other Ukrainian nationalist partisan groups and expanded its activities from certain areas of Volyn to the whole of western Ukraine, fighting against the Germans and Soviet partisans.
After the liberation of the entire territory of Ukraine from the Nazi invaders in the fall of 1944, the UPA continued its struggle against the Soviet government, which, in turn, spared no effort to fight the UPA. However, neither the battles of the winter of 1944-45 nor the offensive of the Red Army in the summer of 1945 could destroy the UPA, although they did inflict significant losses on it. Only the "Winter Blockade" of January-April 1946 yielded results: heavy losses led to the decision to demobilize most UPA units and the rebels' transition to the OUN underground, although active hostilities continued until the early 1950s. The activities of small groups of insurgents and the armed underground continued until the mid-1950s and early 1960s, when the last battles were recorded during the capture of bunkers.
The second stage of the liberation struggle demonstrated the steadfastness of Ukrainians' aspirations for freedom, despite two occupations and mass repression. This period left a powerful legacy of heroism, sacrifice, and the struggle for independence that influenced the formation of national memory in the decades that followed, inscribing the names of the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in golden letters in the history of Ukraine. "To gain or not to be!" This slogan of the unconquered nationalists was inherited by subsequent generations of fighters for Ukrainian statehood as a battlefield legacy. It was used to defend Ukraine by the glorious galaxy of artists of the Sixties, by our contemporaries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and by Ukrainians in the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity. The Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred and thousands of defenders of the Motherland gave their lives for the right to be the master of their land. In the Ukrainian Maidans, in the face of military aggression and information warfare by the imperial Russia, Ukraine, which has been a dream for centuries, is being won.