Now this is the official greeting in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is used to greet Presidents.
Despite the enemy’s scoundrels, the red-and-black flag is an indispensable attribute of all Ukrainian soldiers. On an armour or assault backpack, in a trench or on a combat vehicle – it is part of our code.
“We Were Born at the Great Hour” is the official march of the Ukrainian Army.
And to everyone around us, we are just “Banderites.”
All this is a greeting, symbolism, and leadership from the organization whose 96th anniversary we are celebrating.
O.U.N.
After the Order of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the most unique creation of the Ukrainian nation.
An organization whose goal, purpose, methods, and most importantly, ideas are still mega-relevant.
“Conquer the Ukrainian State, or die fighting for it.”
“Spread her Power, Glory, Wealth and Space.”
“Focus on one’s own strengths.”
Our predecessors went “against the tide” because they dared to resist fate in perhaps the most difficult physical and psychological period of the nation’s existence. In times of lost liberation struggles, lost sovereignty and torn apart by enemies.
And the “romantics” and “fanatics” did defy fate and put all the pragmatists and realists to shame. Because the Ukrainian State exists. It exists and will exist.
So
3 February 1929 – The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was formed.
A Legend Organization transformed the enslaved people into a nation of Banderites. It created the UPA, an army that challenged and stood up to the largest empires in the world. It adopted the ideology of nationalism, a single nationalist ideology.
96 years ago, on 28 January – 3 February 1929, the First Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists was held in Vienna, which officially formalized the creation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Colonel Yevhen Konovalets was elected Head of the Ukrainian Nationalists’ Leadership.
As a result of the merger of several nationalist organizations GUNM (Group of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth), LUN (League of Ukrainian Nationalists), SUNM (Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth), and based on UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), an organization order emerged that became a pivotal one in the struggle for a Ukrainian Independent Unified State in the 20th century.
In its programme materials, the OUN declared: “Taking the idea of a Ukrainian Independent Unified State as the basis of its political action and not recognizing all those international acts, conditions and institutions that created and consolidated the state of Ukrainian national-state disintegration, not limiting its activities to one area or another, but striving to master a Ukrainian national reality in all Ukrainian lands and foreign territories inhabited by Ukrainians, the OUN will pursue a policy of an all-Ukrainian statehood without giving it a party, class or any other social-group character, and in direct sequence opposes it to all party and class groupings with their methods of political work.”
Having created an organization of a qualitatively new plan – an organization-order (rank), Ukrainians were able not only to survive in the most unfavourable conditions and circumstances but also to boldly oppose all invaders and put forward the idea of a new world order under the slogan “Freedom for Nations – Freedom for the Individual!”
All of Ukrainian life was marked by the revolutionary struggle of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists: organized resistance to Polish occupation in Western Ukrainian lands (protests, sabotage, attempts on Polish chauvinists and their own Janissaries), protest actions against the famine in the USSR, and the organization of a heroic struggle for Carpathian Ukraine.
At a time when the Ukrainian parties in the ZUZ (Western Ukrainian Territories) recognized the Polish government, the OUN waged an uncompromising struggle for independence; even the murders and mass imprisonment of OUN members (it happened that several regional leaderships were simultaneously in Polish concentration camps) did not stop the functioning of the organization. Any change in the situation led to the paralysis of official political life (as was the case in 1939, when all Western Ukrainian political parties were dissolved after the first Bolshevik shot). But the change in the situation could in no way stop the struggle of the order – the OUN. Amid World War II, the OUN under the leadership of Stepan Bandera proclaimed on 30 June 1941 in Lviv, the restoration of Ukraine’s independence: and the creation of the government of the Ukrainian State Board headed by a member of the OUN (revolutionary) Yaroslav Stetsko.
On the ground, members of the OUN marching groups sacrificially carried the Ukrainian idea throughout the Ukrainian territory: from the Carpathians in the west to Crimea, Donbas, and the Voronezh region in the south and east.
In 1942, the OUN created the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – an army that, without any external assistance, waged an uncompromising and heroic struggle in defence of the restored Ukrainian state for more than 10 years.
In November 1943, the OUN convened the First Conference of the Enslaved Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia and created a common front of nations against Moscow – the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.
In 1944, the OUN created the Main Liberation Council (UGVR) – the parliament of warring Ukraine.
After the end of World War II and the suppression of the armed resistance of the OUN-UPA, the OUN did not cease to conduct a broad political liberation campaign.
Members of the OUN (Banderites) fought a life-and-death struggle in the Bolshevik camps and repeatedly raised uprisings; other OUN members scattered around the world abroad did not lose their cemented unity and led an international political campaign for the liberation of Ukraine.
The declaration of independence was not a bloodless political act; it was the result of a long-standing struggle of the Ukrainian nation, in which the OUN always stood at the forefront.
For me, the OUN is the history of the Idea and the Order oriented towards the ultimate goal: the will and self-realization of the Ukrainian nation in its own independent Ukrainian united state.
The OUN never derived its goal from the existing state. It didn’t matter that there was no state, that the nation was torn between different occupiers – the OUN set itself the goal of gaining a Ukrainian state…or dying in the fight for it. It was impossible not to fulfil this goal.
Not a state given from the outside, not a state whose borders are defined by international agreements, but a state won in a struggle based on one’s own forces, a state that would encompass the entire territory of the settlement of the Ukrainian nation, even if parts of this settlement were not part of any Ukrainian state formation for a thousand years, as was the case with Carpathian Ukraine.
To set a goal beyond the limits of the possible, against all odds. Let there be no state of Ukraine, and its territory torn to pieces by the occupiers, let the most powerful world powers rally behind it – it doesn’t matter, steadfastly go towards the goal.
For a nation is an indissoluble unity of the dead, the living, and the unborn; an entire active generation may die so that its successors may continue the movement toward the goal.
The OUN is an organization of the entire nation (not exclusively its diaspora part or Western Ukrainian lands) – this means everyone, regardless of age, gender, and place of residence.
Today they say that it was a good symbiosis of hardened soldiers and idealistic youth; in fact, it was not age or experience that united them and led to success; all OUN members were united by a youthful faith in their cause and the will to fight for it to the end.
Whether an experienced marksman or a young high school student, they all went towards their goal without a doubt and any compromise with their idea: to win the Ukrainian Independent Sovereign State or die fighting for it.
It was the action within the timeless, in conditions beyond the possible, focusing on the absolute goal that led to significant progress in achieving the goal.
Today we have a territory and a country that is not yet completely independent and not fully united, with a post-colonial government and a nation that has not gained full power, but the opponents of the OUN, who had much greater power, have completely disappeared, have crumbled and become nothing, and the current state of the country must be corrected by the current generation, continuing the struggle.
Proceeding not from one’s self-interests, not from the position of the current situation, but from the eternal mission of the nation, understanding that the fruits will be enjoyed by the unborn generation of the nation.
It is too early to put an end to the OUN. Because the absolute idea and the absolute goal will without any doubt continue.
The main thing is not to give up on the goal. Not to lower the bar. Not to lose faith and not to stop fighting. And Victory will definitely come!
