In the fall of 1943, there was a significant number of non-Ukrainian officers and rank-and-file soldiers in the ranks of the UPA in Volyn. Only in the group of the UPA “Bohun” were there a separate hundred Azerbaijanis numbering 160 soldiers, a detachment of Georgians – 39 soldiers and a detachment of Uzbeks – 26 soldiers. A significant number of soldiers of other nationalities were dispersed in various units and Jewish doctors worked in hospitals. Accordingly, there was an urgent need to fill the ideological content of their service in the ranks of the Ukrainian rebels. Ukrainians fought for their own state against two totalitarian empires – German and Soviet. All the others who, by chance or by their own decision, got into the UPA, were forced to consciously or unconsciously help in this. It is clear that for the foreign units in the UPA, it was necessary to develop an ideological basis that would clearly motivate their anti-German and anti-Soviet direction. Therefore, the main forces of Volyn propagandists worked out various appeals and studied the history of nations forcibly united into an empire called the USSR. In the end, they crystallised the idea of nations enslaved by Bolshevism, who would restore their independent states on the ruins of the empire with the help of Ukrainian rebels. Therefore, it was necessary to gather representatives of these nations in one place and hold a kind of unifying congress or conference.
At one time, D. Shumuk-“Boremskyi” recalled that in the fall of 1943 he was engaged in the issue of selecting delegates for the conference and only then realized how difficult it was to have people of different nationalities under the leadership: “The regional leadership of the OUN was preparing to convene a conference of the enslaved nations of the East. Lisovyk and I were destined to be friends with a group of “representatives” of the Caucasian nations. Here, together with three Georgians, three Armenians and three Azerbaijanis, we headed in the direction of the city of Kolok. At that time, we did not know that those nations were not friends with each other. On the way, of course, we understood everything. The representatives of those three Caucasian nations kept separate from each other all the time. They were already travelling in a large group from Kolok to Maly Stydyna, because they also included representatives of the Central Asian nations.
Later on, part of the delegates were brought to the southern Rivne region, to the area of the village of Batkivtsi, where at that time the headquarters of the Southern Group of the UPA was located. In a few days, the head of the OUN Provid (leadership)Roman Shukhevich-“Tur” and the SB (Security Services) representative M. Arsenych-“Mykhailo” arrived here. The conference was attended by two representatives from the OUN Wire Bureau, which gave it exceptional importance.
So, on November 21-22 1943, the first Conference of Enslaved Nations of Europe and Asia was held in the south of the Rivne region. Representatives of 13 nations that fought in the ranks of the UPA at that time gathered here: from Georgians – 6 delegates (chairman, Major Carlo ); from the Azerbaijanis – 6 delegates (head lieutenant Fizul ); from Belarusians – 2 delegates (chairman Druzhny ); from the Bashkirs – 1 delegate Kagarman ; from the Armenians – 4 delegates (head Hogiy ); from Kabardians – 1 Baksan delegate; from the Kazakhs – delegate Dezhumen ; from the Ossetians – 2 delegates (the head of the Temple ); from the Tatars – 4 delegates (head Tupai ); from the Uzbeks – 5 delegates (chairman Shirmat ); from Ukrainians – 5 delegates (chairman Professor Stetsenko ); from the Circassians – delegate Dzhigit ; from the Chuvash – delegate Skvortsov . The largest delegations were from Georgians and Azerbaijanis, with 6 delegates each. The Ukrainian delegation was headed by Rostyslav Voloshyn , who chose the pseudonym “Stetsenko” during the conference. All those present were gathered on the premises of the village school. A total of 39 delegates participated in the conference.
The conference was opened by a member of the leadership of the OUN Omelyan Logush-“Ivaniv” with a short introductory speech. “Some time around 9 o’clock in the morning, the meeting hall was filled with Conference participants. Most of them were in uniform, with weapons. One had the impression that people gathered here not only to consult, discuss, and exchange opinions but were also ready to attack at any moment… at the suggestion of Omelyan Logush, the conference began with a moment of silence, which honoured the memory of the fighters of all the enslaved nations of Eastern Europe and Asia, who gave their life for the freedom of the oppressed nations. Rostyslav Voloshyn addressed all the nations enslaved by Moscow imperialism from the OUN Wire. The presidium of the conference was elected, consisting of: chairman – Rostyslav Voloshyn, first deputy chairman – Azerbaijani “Chaili”, and second deputy – Georgian “Carlo”. The secretariat of the conference included: Belarusian “Druzhny”, Uzbek “Shirmat” and Kateryna Meshko-“Vereshchak” (at the conference “Ozerska”).
All speakers from the Ukrainian side used the Ukrainian language, while the non-Ukrainians used Russian. The speeches covered the following topics: “Assessment of the current political situation” (Yakov Busel and “Carlo” spoke), “Political tasks of enslaved nations” (O. Logush), “Organisation and practical goals of the united front of enslaved nations” (K. Meshko). The participants of the conference adopted a number of important appeals to other nations, created the Revolutionary Committee of the Enslaved Nations and invited the delegates to form organizational groups among their compatriots. In the materials of the conference, the “Appeal of the First Conference of the Enslaved Nations of the East to the Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia” was published and distributed in two languages - Russian and Ukrainian.
In the final speech, the chairman of the conference, Rostyslav Voloshyn, said that this ” Conference will go down in history as an invincible manifestation of the will of the nations of Eastern Europe and Asia to independent life .”
A more realistic assessment of the achievements of this conference was made by an employee of the political reference office of the “Bohun” Higher Education Institution, a native of the village of Busha, V. Dudko-“David”, who was transferred to the newly created section of enslaved nations just in November 1943. He personally delivered OUN propaganda literature to the national departments of the UPA and studied their reaction. In his opinion, the OUN leadership at that time had not yet developed a final strategy regarding foreign soldiers in the ranks of the UPA. Although there was already an instruction not to concentrate non-national units in one place, on the contrary, to disperse them among Ukrainian soldiers and conduct surveillance on them. After a month or two, a large part of these units en masse went over to the side of the Soviet partisans or surrendered to the Red Army, putting individual rebel bases under attack.
The case of the Conference of Enslaved Nations worked abroad a few years later when the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) led by Yaroslav Stetsk was formed on its ideological basis.
The place and time of the conference were kept a deep secret. They even talked and wrote about the fact that it took place somewhere in Zhytomyr Oblast. Therefore, at the time of the declaration of independence of the Ukrainian state in 1991, there was little information about this event. Only a few years later, Petro Duzhiy, a participant in those events, and Guriy Bukhalo, a well-known Rivne historian, published new data about this event. It was noted that it took place in the village of Buderaj, Zdolbuniv district. But to date, information has appeared that the Conference was held not in Buderazh, but in the village of Ilyashivka, Ostroh district.
Even not so long ago, the author of these lines was convinced that this event took place on November 21-22, 1943 in the village of Buderazh, Zdolbuniv district, Rivne region. It turned out that the first to write about it on November 19, 1993, was by now the deceased, well-known local historian Guriy Bukhalo. As soon as it was submitted, this information was spread by a well-known figure of the OUN who lived in Lviv, Petro Duzhy. Although he was with Roman Shukhevych at the Conference, he did not remember the name of the village, so in his publications, he used the material of H. Buhal as an authoritative source.
Guriy Vasyliovych gleaned this information from the memoirs of Oleksa Skoropada, an active member of the OUN, who apparently performed with the choir at this event. A copy of these memoirs, written in the early 90s of the 20th century is also in the Rivne Regional Museum of Local Lore. Indeed, in them, Oleksa describes his performance in Buderazh as a performance for the participants of the Conference of Enslaved Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia.
In confirmation of this fact, G. Bukhalo quotes the memoirs of another member of the UPA, a fellow villager of Skoropada, A. Kisil-“Nemo”, who accompanied the Hungarian delegation in December 1943 in the village of Bouderaj: ” A conference of enslaved nations was held not far away in this neighbourhood .” Please note that A. Kysil for some reason does not clearly indicate Buderaj, but writes about the neighbourhood. Hardly a mistake. Rather, G. Bukhalo did not fully understand the author of the memoirs, he did not mean Buderaj. Why, we explain further. Recently published in a separate book, the memoirs of the famous rebel commander M. Androschuk-“Vorony” contain several small references to this event. Interestingly, he, as an employee of the “Enea” headquarters, again avoids mentioning Buderaj, and clearly writes that in November 1943 in the village, a Conference of Enslaved Nations was held in Batkivka, after which several photographs were taken. So, Batkivtsi is a village where the headquarters of the Southern Group of the UPA was located in the fall of 1943 and at the beginning of 1944, and where the Conference of Enslaved Nations could quite possibly have taken place. But even here it turns out that everything is not so simple. It was possible to find in the archive of the Security Service of Ukraine the protocols of the interrogations of two direct participants of the Conference, D. Palamarchuk-“Lyman” and the teacher from Buscha V. Dudka-“Davyd”, who at that time were in Batkivtsi with the representative of the OUN delegation O. Logushev-“Ivanov”. According to their testimony, it was he who gathered delegates from various parts of the UPA to this conference. D. Palamarchuk testified in August 1944: ” I was present at the conference… but not as a delegate. It was convened in the village of Lyashivka (Ilyashivka) of Ostroh District during the German occupation. He noted that there were about 36 delegates and 10 guests. The event lasted three days.
The village of Ilyashivka is located in the neighbourhood of Batkivtsi and is not far from Buderazh. That is why the already mentioned A. Kysil wrote about the neighbourhood. In addition, it is quite logical to hold such an event not at the location of the headquarters (the village of Batkivtsi), but nearby. All doubts are dispelled by the testimony of a native of the village. Buderaz Volodymyr Onufriyovych Dudko, born in 1918, who used the pseudonym “Kurgan” in the underground: “On November 21-22, 1943, the so-called conference of enslaved nations was convened in the school of the village of Lyashivka, Ostroz district, Rivne region… The conference was attended by representatives of non-national divisions of the UPA: Uzbeks, Tatars, Georgians, Kazakhs and many other nationalities… There was also a Ukrainian delegation at this conference, headed by a member of the Central Board of the OUN “Ivaniv” (he spoke at the conference under the pseudonym “Stetsenko”).
So, all the sources cited above indicate that the Conference of Enslaved Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia was held not in Buderazh, but in the village of Ilyashivka, Ostroh District. But the attentive reader will say, wait, but what about the memoirs of O. Skoropada, on which G. Bukhalo once relied? It turns out that time has repeatedly proven that memories are a rather subjective source that must be constantly checked and compared with other information. Indeed, Oleksa Skoropada performed with the choir in the village Buderaz but not at the Conference, but at the meeting of the leadership of the Southern Group of the UPA. His handwritten testimony from November 1944, which he wrote in Rivne after coming out of the underground, has been preserved, but in it, there is no word about the Conference, but it contains information that at the end of December 1943, many local leaders of the OUN and UPA gathered in Buderazh for a meeting. In the assembly hall of the local school, O. Skoropada met many acquaintances – Rostyslav Voloshin-“Horbenko”, “Enea”, “Ivaniv”, Hryhoriy Kucheruk-“Buyny”, Vasyl Tybenko-“Klim”, Meletii Sydorchuk-“Platon”, the district leader “Samson” and others. It was then that the Derman choir performed well for the first time under his leadership. That means, at the time of writing the author’s memoirs, two events merged into one. Besides, he really was not at the Conference and did not mention it in 1944. Another interesting fact is that the OUN underground had its own organizational division, which did not coincide with the administrative zoning of the Rivne Region at that time. In particular, the two villages of Derman and the surrounding villages in the direction of Ostrozhchyna formed a separate sub-district, which was governed by the Ostrozh district branch of the OUN, and not Zdolbunivskyi or Mizotskyi, which was also active at that time. That is, the conference was provided both materially and organizationally by the leadership of the Ostroh district branch of the OUN.
To date, we have a number of testimonies of the participants of those events, which do not confirm the holding of this important event in the village of Bouderaj, and clearly indicate the village of Ilyashivka, Ostroh district. Unfortunately, the local school did not survive but burned down during the war.
Ihor Marchuk
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