Imperialism: 1900–1945

What is conceivable is feasible.

Mao Zedong,
(Chinese leader)

At the very beginning of American statehood, its "founding fathers" of the United States, despite the weakest army in comparison with any European power, were an example of rare ambition and faith in the great future of their country.

The First Steps of Messianic Imperialism

The doctrine of Secretary of State and then President John Monroe (1823) substantiated claims to the dominant and leading position of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. The essence of the doctrine addressed by Europe was expressed in a short formula: "America for the Americans." This meant an indication of the non-interference of European powers in the internal affairs of both American continents.

But since the Americans denied equality to the newly formed Latin American states, then, relying on this doctrine, the United States began to pursue a clearly expansionist policy towards these states, considering the vast region as its “inner courtyard”, in which America, as a zealous host, began to restore real order. .

Missionary mythology, multiplied by the American model of democracy, strengthened the conviction of American politicians in the moral domination of the world and the unification of all mankind on the basis of American culture. The title of the book The New Rome, or the United States of the World, published in 1853 by T. Pesce and C. Genn, spoke for itself. The authors argued that in the near future the United States will become the center around which all nations will unite into a single people. The political philosopher J. Fiske confidently predicted in 1895 the onset in the near future of such a time when all countries of the world "will become English in language, religion, their political customs and, to a large extent, in the blood of the peoples inhabiting them."

By the end of the XIX century. The economic power of the United States was so obvious to the Americans themselves that imperialist calls for the establishment of world domination were already heard in the American ruling class. US Senator Albert Beveridge shaped his vision of the 20th century in this way. and roles and places in the future US world order: “Internal improvement was the main feature of the first century of our development; the possession of other lands and their development will be the dominant feature of our second century... Of all peoples, God has ordained the American people to be his chosen nation for the final campaign and the revival of the world. This is the divine mission of America, it will bring us all income, all glory, all possible human happiness. We are the guardians of world progress, the guardians of a just world… Let us ask the Lord to turn us away from the love of mammon and comfort, spoiling our blood, so that we have the courage to shed this blood for the flag and the imperial destiny.”

Such appeals were soon backed up by the real imperialist and even colonial practices of the Americans. It is no coincidence that the Spanish-American War of 1898 is considered to be the first imperialist war of the era of monopoly capitalism. The very seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain, the establishment of its own protectorate there and the suppression of anti-American insurgent movements there is difficult to justify with America's "noble" desire to liberate these territories from the colonial "yoke" of the Spaniards.

And although Puerto Rico and the Philippines were not formally declared American colonies, they actually became them. American troops remained there, and an American colonial administration was established. Moreover, according to some estimates, the actual colonial occupation of the Philippines and the fight against armed rebels who fought against the Americans cost the Filipino people from 200 thousand to a million lives!

But in fairness it should be noted that in America itself there were many fighters against the imperialist policy of their country. So on November 19, 1898, the Anti-Imperialist League was even founded in Boston, in which representatives of the liberal intelligentsia (the writer Mark Twain was an active member of the league) openly opposed the unjust Paris Peace Treaty, according to which the Philippines and Puerto Rico passed into the possession of the United States, and called for an end to American intervention in the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League was never able to achieve its goals, but the emergence of such a protest movement in the United States, where powerful democratic traditions were preserved, is significant. Such a movement would be hard to imagine in Britain or France.

Nevertheless, the Philippines has become a platform for further US advance into China. It is no coincidence that America supported the intervention of Western countries and Russia in China during the suppression of the "Boxer" rebellion there in 1898-1901. Subsequently, in foreign policy, the United States became more and more closely connected with its former mother country - Great Britain.

Between World War I and World War II

Finally, when the West, torn apart by national-chauvinist sentiments and imperialist contradictions, split into two military-political blocs: the Entente and the German-Austrian-Hungarian alliance, which was joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. The United States began to openly support the Entente, while adhering to the line of non-intervention in European affairs. This made it possible for the United States to continue its geopolitical expansion in Latin America and economic penetration into China without hindrance.

The initial position of non-participation of the United States in the world massacre of 1914-1918. turned out to be financially, geopolitically and humanly beneficial for America, which after the war even closer to its leadership in the Western community. While the victors Britain and France (Italy not counting) found themselves woefully weakened in this "European civil slaughter", their victory was essentially Pyrrhic. The United States, having entered the war almost at the very end and having suffered minimal human losses compared to all European countries, after the war turned into a world economic superpower and began to claim the first roles in world politics.

At the final Versailles Conference following the results of the First World War, the United States proposes its own version of the revision of the entire international system that has developed due to the dominance of Europe in the world. The United States intends to seriously put an end to its traditional "isolationist" foreign policy in order to participate in the first roles in the arrangement of a "fair" world order, based on its messianic worldview and, most importantly, on the basis of the country's economic capabilities.

US President W. Wilson proposed his plan for the post-war world structure consisting of "14 points". The main thing in this document is the reduction of the traditional role of nation states, the elimination of the emphasis in international relations on nation states (namely, the elimination of the geopolitical principles of Realpolitik), the creation of an international organization - the League of Nations, the internationalization of international problems. The document provided for the possibility of revising the borders of the then existing states, if members of the delegations of the League of Nations recognize them as not meeting the changed national conditions and aspirations in accordance with the principle of self-determination of nations. Behind this project was the desire of the United States to establish itself in the territories controlled by the United States.

But the desire of the United States to play a major role in solving international problems met with active resistance from Great Britain, France and Japan. Therefore, the Paris Peace Conference did not justify the hopes of the United States, and America failed to gain free access to the territory of the colonial possessions of European powers and achieve dominance on the seas, and the Charter of the League of Nations did not provide them with a leading role within this international organization. That is why the United States practically refused to become a guarantor of the stability of the Versailles international system, did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles as contrary to US interests, and refused to join the League of Nations.

After W. Wilson left the presidency in the United States, the approach of non-intervention of the United States in the affairs of the European continent again prevailed, and the doctrine of "isolationism" was again revived to some extent. But this time, America has begun active economic "development" of China and the Pacific Ocean, expanding its geopolitical expansion.

At the same time, its incurable "disease" - nationalism - returned to Europe again. But this time something even more terrible happened under the dominance of a technocratic society, mass culture and unlimited media opportunities, with the relative weakness of civil society in Europe compared to the United States, nationalism was brought to ethnic racism - Germany. In addition, in Germany this was exacerbated by broad revanchist sentiments generated by the unjust Treaty of Versailles for Germany.

According to a number of domestic researchers in the XX century. two ideas collided in the West: the American idea of ​​the West as a single civilization and the German nationalist idea (Ilyin V.V. and others). Both ideas had their supporters among the countries of the Western community. Since the time of Wilson, the United States has countered the nationalist idea of ​​a multitude of states closed within their national borders with the idea of ​​a single liberal-democratic, open, Euro-Atlantic space of the West without rigid national partitions.

But after the First World War, Europe was still psychologically unprepared for such ideas. The American ideology of liberal universalism and the consolidation of the West was once again thwarted by Germany with its Nazi plan of geopolitical revenge. France and Great Britain condoned Hitler, hoping to direct the German war machine against the USSR, but paid dearly for their short-sighted policy.

The catastrophic madness of the Second World War (to some extent the Second Civil War) led to an even greater weakening of Europe. In fact, in 1945 the whole of Europe lay in ruins: destroyed cities, industry and millions of victims. And America? For America, this was a high point, which she took full advantage of. The United States has become a giant reservoir for filling with European currency, ideas and intellectuals who leave the defeated Europe to preserve European culture, but already in America.

America no longer had to impose its help on Europe, Europe itself almost humbly asked America to intervene in its fate and become a strong guarantor of peace in this most unstable region of the planet. This time, no one dared challenge the US claims to leadership in the Western world. In addition, this leadership was reinforced by leadership in the capitalist world-economy. America has received its place in the system of world capitalism, which once belonged to Great Britain. And just like once Great Britain, the United States, adhering to the ideology of liberalism, has become the main force protecting the interests of world capital, markets and freedom of enterprise. But at the same time, American power turned out to be more durable than the British once.

A superpower with a claim to absolute dominance in the world

As a result of World War II, the United States became the only superpower in the Western world, with which no Western country could compete, either in military-political or economic terms. America as the "New World" took over all its European rivals from the "Old World", and the West finally gained civilizational unity under the auspices of the United States. Not surprisingly, the Republican Henry Luce proclaimed in the 1940s that the "American Century" had arrived.

The beginning of the transformation of the West was also unusual in that it visibly contained features of its Americanization. America not only led the global Bretton Woods system (the IMF and the World Bank), it created it, "for itself and for itself", turning them into additional instruments of American hegemony. And, according to J. Arrighi, the Bretton Woods international institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank, for decades played "a secondary role in the regulation of world money in comparison with and in relation to the set of elected national central banks headed by the American Federal Reserve System." The Soviet challenge in many ways served as a factor in the closer consolidation of the West around the United States, which led the West in the fight against the communist "East" - the USSR.

By this time, the United States not only became the most powerful military-political and economic (up to 46% of the total world GDP) power of the West, America also acquired cultural leadership in Western civilization. In the 40s. the Americanization of the West takes place: the flower of world culture moves to America, and the center of world art moves from Paris to New York.

The United States has become, in the literal sense of the word, home to the largest centers of European intellectual life: from philosophers and mathematicians to world-famous psychologists. Such a powerful intellectual European immigration in many respects predetermined the fact that the United States has become the world's main intellectual center. Since that time, the United States has been practicing what later became known as "buying minds", providing the most favorable conditions for the creativity of scientists and cultural and art workers.

According to the political scientist K. Gadzhiev, “America from the very beginning was both the result and the instrument, and a powerful stimulator for the expansion and establishment of Western rationalistic civilization. Moreover, as if standing on its edge, it absorbed and brought to its logical conclusion the most important system-forming components, values, norms and ideological attitudes of this civilization. It is difficult to disagree with this statement.

Initially, the religious-political-messianic idea of ​​the “City on a Hill”, abstracted from reality, over time, as a result of the development of a giant uninhabited space and the unprecedented successes of Americans in the economy, technology, political and social spheres, became attractive not only for Western countries and peoples, but also for million inhabitants of other civilizational regions.

At the same time, America, as the most perfect “New Rome” in history, never hesitated to realize its utopian socio-political dreams, including those of “making happy” other peoples, by force of arms. In this, the "New Rome" miraculously repeated the "Old Rome".

If world industrial production from 1870 to 1913 increased 5 times, then US industrial production - 8.6 times. The United States is ranked 1st in the world in terms of industrial production.

Structural changes are taking place in American industry at this time: before, light industry occupied the leading place, now heavy industry is coming to the fore. The decisive role in this was played by new industries: electrical, oil, rubber, aluminum, automotive. The development of these industries was associated with the achievements of science and technology. American industry was still experiencing a shortage of workers, so invention and new technology found especially favorable ground here.

As a result of a series of Edison inventions in the field of electrical engineering in the 80s. 19th century the famous Edison company is born, which later develops into the largest electrical corporation, General Electric. The electrical industry is becoming one of the leading industries in the US.

The invention of the internal combustion engine was used by entrepreneur Henry Ford to organize mass production of cars. The Ford company in a short time becomes a monopoly - the Ford Concern, and the US automobile industry immediately takes first place in the world. in England at the beginning of the 20th century. there was also a law according to which a person with a red flag had to walk in front of each car to protect pedestrians. In the US at this time there were already about 100,000 cars.

One of the first US monopolies was the Standard Oil oil trust founded by Rockefeller, which already in 1880 processed over 90% of all American oil. Rockefeller managed to negotiate with the railroad companies on a reduced fee for the transportation of goods of his trust, which greatly facilitated his competition with his rivals. And when competing companies started building pipelines to save the day, Rockefeller is our thugs to destroy those pipelines. After some time, the Rockefeller trust penetrates into other countries, organizing the extraction and processing of oil in Mexico, Venes Romania.

The Morgans, according to family lore, were the heirs of the famous corsair. At the beginning of the XX century. they are the foundations of the "Steel Trust", which took the dominant position in the US iron and steel industry. It controlled 75% of the US iron ore reserves and produced half of the iron and steel products.

Trusts appeared, and "kings" of wagons, canned meat, etc. arose in other branches of industry. they already provided 40% of the country's industrial output.

The monopolies inflated the price of products, disarmed the small industrialists, and all this set the country's public opinion against them.

Traditional for America was the doctrine of the spontaneous development of the economy: economic development is the freedom of the struggle of forces, from which the state must stand aside. Now, however, this traditional point of view met with the forces of opponents who believed that "an indispensable condition for human progress" is the state, for which they should limit entrepreneurial activity and prevent monopolies.

Under the pressure of public opinion in 1890, the Sherman "antitrust" law was adopted. The law prohibited associations that hampered freedom of competition, that is, monopolies were formally prohibited. However, the Sherman Act was powerless precisely against trusts. It provided for measures against the "thief" of several firms in the market, i.e., it was sent to monopolies of a lower order - cartels and syndicates, and when these firms merged into one, i.e., a trust arose, the law saw collusion here, and not could interfere in the internal affairs of firms.

After the Sherman Act, a new form of monopolies, the holding company, is gaining ground. A holding is a company that holds a portfolio of shares of various forms, receives dividends and distributes them among shareholders, naturally, as a shareholder enterprise, a holding company sends its directors to these companies and controls their activities. But in the face of the law, the holding is not a monopoly: the company owns only shares as a shareholder, of course, has the right to control those firms in which its capital is invested.

The surprise was that the unions began to suffer from the Sherman Act. According to the formal meaning of the law, a trade union is an association of workers directed against competition in the labor market, the market for the sale of labor.

Parallel to the concentration of industry and the formation of monopolies is the concentration of banks and the formation of financial groups. By the beginning of the First World War, the capitalists Morgan and Rockefeller, already familiar to us, were at the head of the two largest banks in America, and their banks controlled a third of the country's national wealth. Industrial monopolies and entire branches of industry were subordinate to the banks.

The Morgan financial group included Steel Heats, the General Electric Company, the Pullman Wagon Company, 21 railroads, 3 insurance companies, etc. The Rockefeller financial group was narrower in composition - it included mainly oil corporations .

Agricultural production also continued to develop successfully during this period. The United States has moved into first place in the world in the production and export of grain, and has become the main supplier of agricultural products to Europe. But this economy developed differently in different parts of the country.

The main industrial region of the USA - the industrial North - was at the same time the region of the most developed agriculture. 60% of the country's agricultural products were produced here. Cities and industrial centers here showed an increased demand for food, so agriculture turned out to be very profitable, and there were no free lands, so production could only be increased through intensification, i.e., raising the technical level and increasing production from the same space.

In the former slave-owning South, the main part of the land remained in the ownership of the former large landowners. They, as a rule, leased the land to small tenants, which often used primitive forms of sharecropping lease, when the tenant had to give away part of the crop to the owner of the land. Naturally, the technical level of agriculture here was much lower.

Colonization continued in the Far West. The region was relatively sparsely populated, and agriculture was predominantly extensive! Since there was not enough land, farmers did not try to get the maximum production of the area, but increased production by expanding the area.

Thus, not all of the country's territory has yet been fully developed economically. The process of internal colonization of the country continued. Therefore, the export of capital from the United States was small, import prevailed. If American capital decline abroad by the beginning of the First World War amounted to about 3 billion dollars, then US foreign investment was about 6 billion. This means that the United States did not yet need colonies. However, in accordance with the general trend, at the end of the XIX century. The US begins colonial expansion. However, the US colonial policy had features that distinguished it from the colonial expansion of European countries.

Firstly, underdeveloped countries, potential colonies, were nearby, on their own continent, there was no need to go overseas. And the United States is adopting the doctrine - "America for the Americans." Initially, this doctrine was the slogan of the struggle of the peoples of Latin America against European colonialism. Under this slogan, these peoples were freed from colonial dependence. Later, when there were almost no European colonies left in America, the meaning of the doctrine changed. The United States, relying on it, did not allow the penetration of European capital into the countries of Latin America, reserving it for its colonial activities.

Secondly, the colonial expansion of the United States from the very beginning acquired the features of neo-colonialism. The United States does not declare the countries of Latin America as its colonies. Formally, they remain sovereign states. But, taking advantage of the economic weakness of these countries, the US capitalists import their capital there and exploit the national wealth. If the government of a particular country tries to get out of the control of the Yankees, the United States, using its influence, will organize a coup d'état. This is how, for example, the "revolution" in Panama was arranged for the sake of capturing the Panama Canal.

Thirdly, in the countries of the Old World, the United States promotes the principle of "open doors", that is, equal opportunities for the capitalists of all countries. The USA is against colonialism, it is for the competition of capitals in underdeveloped states. And this allows them to penetrate into the underdeveloped countries of Asia.

The dry wording of the first CIA sabotage operation reads: Operation Aerodynamics is one of a number of secret CIA operations against the USSR, carried out in cooperation with the special services of Great Britain, Italy and Germany. Persons who had previously collaborated with Nazi Germany were involved in the operation. It was started in 1948 under the code name CARTEL, the OUN (b) was chosen as the main partner during the implementation, the main contact person was the first head of the OUN (b) Security Council, Mikola Lebed.

Wisner developed battle plans for the next five years in a month. He intended to create a multinational media conglomerate for propaganda purposes. He wanted to wage an economic war against the Soviets through counterfeit currency and market manipulation. He spent millions trying to tip the scales in his favor. He wanted to recruit legions of exiles - Russians, Albanians, Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Romanians - to form armed resistance groups capable of penetrating the Iron Curtain. According to Wisner, there were about 700,000 Russians in Germany, left to the mercy of fate in one way or another, who could join such organizations. He wanted to transform a thousand of them into political shock groups. But in the end I found only seventeen people ...

The word "Nightingale" was the code name for the Ukrainian resistance unit that Forrestal had assigned to wage a secret war against Stalin. Among its leaders were Nazi collaborators who killed thousands of people during World War II ...

Mykola Lebed (1909-1998)

A key clause of the 1949 law gave the CIA the ability, in the interests of national security, to admit up to a hundred foreigners to the United States each year, providing them with "permanent residence, notwithstanding their impossibility of entry into the country under immigration or any other laws." On the same day that President Truman signed the CIA Act of 1949 into law, General Willard G. Wyman, head of the Special Operations Administration, told US immigration officials that a Ukrainian named Mykola Lebed was "providing valuable assistance to this agency in Europe." Under a recently approved law, the CIA moved Lebed to the United States.

The CIA's own dossier described the Ukrainian faction, led by Lebed, as a "terrorist organization." Lebed himself was convicted of murdering the Polish Minister of the Interior in 1936. He escaped from prison three years later, when Germany attacked Poland. He saw the Nazis as his natural allies. From his associates, the Germans formed two battalions, including a battalion called "Nightingale", which fought in the Carpathians and survived until the end of the war. Thoughts of him haunted Secretary of Defense Forrestal. Lebed posed as the self-proclaimed foreign minister in Munich and offered the CIA the help of Ukrainian partisans to engage in subversive activities against Moscow.

Bronislaw Peracki (1895-1934)

Minister of the Interior of Poland. He led the campaign of "pacification" of the Ukrainian population of Poland (in particular, in Lvov in 1930), during which he was able to carry out operations to arrest most of the most active members of the OUN-UVO. According to the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs, the actions were carried out in 450 villages of 16 districts of Galicia. In the Ternopil Voivodeship, the action was repeated in 53 villages. During the summer-autumn of 1930, 1739 people were arrested on suspicion and for participation in the actions of the OUN-UVO. His assassination on June 15, 1934 was organized by Mykola Lebed and Stepan Bandera and performed by Grigory Matseyko.

According to the definition of the Ministry of Justice, it was a war criminal who killed Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. But all attempts to deport him back to the USSR stopped after Allen Dulles personally wrote to the federal immigration commissioner, stating that Lebed was of "invaluable importance to the agency" and was actively assisting in "operations of the highest importance."

The CIA “had a range of intelligence-gathering methods in the Soviet Union and had to use every opportunity, despite the low probability of success and the unreliability of the agents,” recorded in the reports of Ukrainian operations. “Almost the only alternative was groups of emigrants, including people with a very dubious past.” Therefore, "the sometimes brutal record of many members of the émigré groups became more vague as they grew in importance to the CIA." By 1949, the United States was ready to work against Stalin with just about any scoundrel. In that sense, Lebed was perfect for the role."

/Tim Weiner. CIA. True story. Chapter 4 “In an atmosphere of the highest secrecy. Chapter 5 "The Rich Blind Man"./

declassified document.

Item: Mikola Lebed.

“An invaluable role for the agency in its operations. Due to the Agency's future emergency operations, it is urgently necessary that the subject be able to relocate to Western Europe. However, before a subject may make such a move, the Agency must be satisfied that it can re-enter the United States without an investigation or other incident that would bring undue attention to its activity. Your service has previously stressed that it cannot provide such a guarantee because the subject was charged in 1936 for the murder of the Polish Minister of the Interior and sentenced to death, subsequently subjected to life imprisonment. The subject matter of the investigation by the Polish court was largely politically motivated, and the Agency has no reason not to believe the subject's denial of guilt in the murder. However, the commission of a crime involves moral depravity, which raises the question of whether the subject is allowed to enter under the Immigration Act. Your service has indicated that if the subject re-enters the United States, the investigation must continue...

In order to remove obstacles to the Agency's planned operations, and in accordance with the authority given by section 8 of the CIA Act of 1949, I confirm and forward for your approval the possibility of entry of this subject into the United States for permanent residence under the said Act, because such entry is essential for national intelligence missions and carried out for the purposes of national security…”.

The National Archives of the United States, in terms of the interaction between the Nazis and American intelligence agencies during the Cold War, gives a detailed report on the activities of Mikola Lebed.

National Archives Report: Hitler's Shadow

Richard Brightman and Norman Goda

The report states:

“Nikolai Lebed's relationship with the CIA continued throughout the Cold War. While most CIA operations involving war crimes perpetrators backfired, Lebed's operations increased the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.
Attempts to build a relationship in 1945 and 1946 between the Strategic Management Service and Lebed did not materialize due to initial distrust.
In December 1946, Lebed's group turned to the American intelligence agencies, asking for money and weapons, as well as help in communications and training of agents. In return, this group promised to create an intelligence network in Ukraine. However, the Office of Strategic Services (an early prototype of the CIA), with whom Lebed's representatives contacted, refused to help them, noting in their report "the irrelevance of their argument and disunity among the emigration."

In July 1947, a report by the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) called Lebed "a well-known sadist and German collaborator". //Card Ref. D 82270, July 22, 1947, NARA, RG 319, E 134B, B 757, Mykola Lebed IRR Personal File, Box 757.

Such an assessment was quite natural.

As the co-author of the archival work “Hitler’s Shadow” notes in an interview, in 1939 Lebed was trained at a German training center in Zakopane, Poland. If the CIA had delved into the history of Western Ukraine during the war years, it would have easily established that the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists participated in ethnic cleansing. And Lebed after the war was very successfully transformed. He wrote a pamphlet about the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that portrayed the rebels in a favorable light: they fought the Germans after 1941 and the Soviets after 1944. The brochure did not say anything about participation in the extermination of Jews in Western Ukraine, or about the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia.// Interview with Norman Gouda. Shadow of Hitler.

Norman Gouda, PhD, received his PhD from the University of North Carolina, USA. He is a professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Florida.

Professor Carl Berkhof, in his book A Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Nazi-ruled Ukraine, writes:

“According to Borovets, Bandera (he mentions Lebed) imposed a collective death sentence on the Poles of “Western Ukraine” in March 1943 and in April sent him a list of demands for the implementation of the “purge”, instructing him to complete the operation of the “purge” as soon as possible.

// Berkhoff, Karel C.: Harvest of Despair. Life and Death in Ukraine under the Nazi Rule. Cambridge: Belknap 2004. P. 291

Karel Berkhof (b. 1965) and his book
"Harvest of Despair"

Yale professor Timothy Schneider echoes:

“In April 1943, Nikolai Lebed, the then leader of the OUN (b), advocated a policy of “cleansing the entire revolutionary territory of the Polish population.”

// Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 165.

In the course of the “Map” study conducted in Poland, it was found that as a result of the actions of the UPA-OUN (B) and the Security Council of the OUN (b), in which part of the local Ukrainian population and sometimes detachments of Ukrainian nationalists of other movements took part, the number of Poles who died in Volhynia amounted to at least 36,543 - 36,750 people whose names and places of death were established. In addition, the same study counted from 13,500 to more than 23,000 Poles, the circumstances of whose death were not clarified.

A number of researchers say that the victims of the massacre were probably about 50-60 thousand Poles. // Grzegorz Motyka, Ukrainian partyzantka 1942-1960, str. 410.

Professor Timothy Schneider (b. 1969) his book "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus (1569-1999)"

Ethnic cleansing of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Volhynia and Galicia continued throughout 1943 and throughout most of 1944, until the arrival of the Soviets. While the UPA killed Jews, Czechs, Magyars, Armenians and other ethnic minorities, the Poles remained their main target. “Long live the great independent Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans. Poles - out, Germans - to Berlin, and Jews - to the gallows, ”said one of the slogans of the OUN (b) in the late autumn of 1941.

// Bruder, “Den ukrainischen Staat,” 166, citing Ereignismeldung UdSSR Nr. 126 of October 27, 1941, Meldung der Kommandeurs der Sipo und des SD in Lemberg, BArch Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 58/218, Bl. 323.

John Loftus (b. 1950). American writer,
former State Attorney and
former army intelligence officer.

He is President of The Intelligence Summit and President of the Florida Holocaust Museum. He began working for the US Department of Justice in 1977 and in 1979 joined the US Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, which was responsible for prosecuting and deporting Nazi war criminals. His book "Secrets of American Nazis".

Excerpt from Loftus' letter to the CIA.

Today's CIA director has no idea where his predecessors hid the files on the Ukrainian Nazis. No one in the CIA today even knows that major Nazi figures such as Nikolai Lebed once worked for the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) at the highest levels. After World War II, the CIA arrested Lebed and other OUN/SB members as war criminals. At the same time, the OPC was spending millions of CIA dollars on the OUN/SB organization, and recommended Lebed for US citizenship under the CIA's 100 Persons a Year Act. According to army intelligence files, the OUN/SB was a classic example of one wing of the CIA catching Nazis and another recruiting them.

It would be more fair and historically accurate to view the OPC as a separate State Department agency rather than a CIA unit. It is true that the OPC paid for its Nazi agents with CIA funds, but the CIA did not know this. The CIA records regarding the OUN/SB are completely clear. Let me clear this point first.

The CIA's predecessor, the Office of Special Services (OSS), has identified the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists as an extremist nationalist movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II to varying degrees. The most extremist faction, the OUN/B, led by Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko, briefly served as the Nazi puppet government of Ukraine. But the political leadership was recalled to Berlin and remained in VIP custody until the end of the war. Bandera continued to demand ever higher forms of political recognition that Hitler was unwilling to grant him.

In essence, Bandera's demands for an independent fascist state in Ukraine ran counter to the all-Russian goals of other pro-fascist émigré groups such as the People's Labor Union of Russian Solidarists and the Vlasov movement. As the political battles continued in Berlin, the OUN/B security service, the OUN/SB under Nikolai Lebed, was a highly valuable, if brutal, SS unit in Ukraine. The OUN/SB was looking for local volunteers for the SS mobile massacre groups (Einsatzgruppen) and SS-funded anti-partisan units (UPA). Lebed's people played a significant role in the Ukrainian Holocaust (for example, in the murder of Simon Wiesenthal's mother). The OUN/SB used the torture and murder of Ukrainian political rivals to benefit the Nazis.

UPA soldiers testify that orders to kill Poles often overlapped with orders to kill surviving Jews, sometimes reflected in UPA war songs. The OUN song had the following content:

“We will be butchers for the Jews, strangle the Poles and build a Ukrainian state!”

One surviving Pole recalled that UPA soldiers, passing through the Polish column of Glebozhitsa in Vladimir-Volynsky, sang:

“We slaughtered the Jews, we will slaughter the Poles, both old and small to the last; We will slaughter the Poles, we will liberate Ukraine.”

Veteran of the security agencies of the USSR, Vladislav Vasilievich Chubenko recalls:

In 1941, the head of the OUN Security Service, Nikolai Lebed, as Bandera's personal representative, arrived in Lvov with special powers from the Abwehr and the OUN Wire. The headquarters of Bandera, headed by Lebed, was located on Ruska Street, No. 20 with a sign on the house "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists." Even before the war in Krakow, they compiled lists of people who were supposed to be liquidated in Lvov. But these lists were not brought in time, so the list of victims among the Ukrainian intelligentsia of Lvov, on behalf of Lebed, was arbitrarily compiled by his assistant executioners Yevgeny Vretsiona and Ivan Klimiv-Legend using a telephone directory. More than 300 persons were included in the list. The head of Nachtigall, Roman Shukhevych, maintained constant contact with the SD, the Gestapo and Lebed, and Nachtigall, under the control of Lebed, carried out bloody actions in the cities of Ukraine.

// "MGB vs. CIA and SIS"

Excerpts from declassified documents of the USSR

In Viktor Polishchuk's book "The Bitter Truth. Crimes of the OUN-UPA (Confession of a Ukrainian)”, published in Toronto, the author testifies:

“Mikola Lebed and Roman Shukhevych divided the executioners into groups, sent them to predetermined sections of the city, controlled their “work.”

According to a former resident of Lviv, Khaim Goldvin, the future commander of the UPA took a personal part in the torture:

“... So I witnessed the parade of the Nachtigal battalion at the town hall, on which a yellow-blue flag hung next to the Nazi flag.”

Jewish men and women clean the street near the Opera House in Lvov. Two men direct the process as the audience in the crowd enjoy the spectacle, especially the woman in the center of the photo (photo credit: David Lee Preston)

Despite this, the same CIC began cooperation with Lebed when he offered information about Ukrainian emigration and Soviet activities in the American occupation zone, as well as general information about the Soviet Union and Ukrainians.

In November 1947, Ivan Grinyokh requested, on behalf of Bandera himself, that the American authorities transfer Lebed from Rome to Munich to protect him from Soviet extradition requests when the American military administration in Italy ended the following month. The CIC in Munich gained Grignoch's trust and hoped to arrange a meeting with Bandera in person. In December, the armed forces moved Lebed and his family to Munich. At the same time, Lebed whitewashed his military records regarding the Bandera group and the UPA in his 126-page book, in which he emphasized his struggle against the Germans and the USSR.

Ivan Grinyokh (1907-1994).

Priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, leader of the foreign representation of the unrecognized Ukrainian government.

So, at the end of 1947, Lebed carefully cleaned out his archives of the pre-war and war period for American use. In his presentation, he presented himself as a victim of the Poles, Soviets and Germans, for the rest of his life he presented a leaflet about his wanted by the Gestapo as evidence of his anti-Nazi activities. He also claimed that after the arrest of the OUN(b) leaders, he began to organize resistance to the Germans and became the "spiritual father" of the UPA, for which both the Gestapo and the NKVD allegedly put a reward on his head, and the Gestapo took his family to Buchenwald and Auschwitz in an attempt to force give it up. //Breitman, Richard. U.S. intelligence and the Nazis. — Cambridge University Press, 2005, p.251.

The blockade of Berlin in 1948 and the threat of a European war prompted the CIA to organize Soviet émigrés into groups and increase the extent to which they could support important intelligence operations. As part of the ICON project, the CIA studied 30 groups and recommended operational cooperation with the Grignoh-Swan group to organize underground work. Compared to Bandera, Grinyokh and Lebed were seen as more moderate, stable and providing security for the group in conjunction with the Ukrainian underground in the USSR.

Ivan Grinyokh with OUN fighters

Resistance/intelligence groups outside the Soviet borders were supposed to be useful in case of war. The CIA provided money, equipment, training courses, radio transmissions, and trained parachute agents to speed up the slow courier routes through Czechoslovakia used by UPA fighters and liaisons. As Lebed said later:

"operations ... landings were the first real indicator ... that US intelligence was ready to provide active support in establishing a line of communication in Ukraine."

CIA operations with the Grignoch-Swan group began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, but soon the name changed to AERODYNAMIC. Grinyoch remained in Munich, while Lebed moved to New York and acquired the status of a permanent resident, that is, American citizenship. This kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak with Ukrainian émigré groups. In addition, he was allowed to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe. However, his reputation in New York was condemned by other Ukrainians and associated with the leader responsible for the "massacre murders of Ukrainians, Poles and Jews". In addition, the immigration agency saw in Lebed a typical case of a person for deportation.

After Lebed found himself in the United States, he became the head of contacts with the CIA for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his "cunning nature", his "relationships with the Gestapo and ... Gestapo training", and the fact that he was "a very ruthless type". // to Chief, FDM, Cartel 2 Debriefing Report, December 16, 1949, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ-19, B 9, Aerodynamic: Operations, v. 9 f. 1. Memorandum for the Record, February 15, 1950, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ-19, B 9, Aerodynamic Operations, v. 9 f. 1.

"Neither side," said one CIA official, comparing Bandera and Lebed "is pure"// SR/W2 to SR/WC, May 21, 1952, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ 19, B 10, Aerodynamic : Operations, v. 10 f. 2.

Like Bandera, Lebed was constantly annoyed that the United States had never promoted Ukraine's secession from the USSR along national lines, that the United States had collaborated with imperially minded Russian émigré groups as well as other Ukrainians, and that the United States had later pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets. .

On the other hand, Lebed had no personal political ambitions. He was unpopular among many Ukrainian emigrants due to his brutal participation in the UPA during the war, reprisals against prisoners and opponents. In this regard, he was an ideologically absolutely safe figure. To prevent Soviet infiltration, he did not introduce anyone into his entourage who arrived in the West after 1945. He was said to have a first-class operational mind, and by 1948 he was, in the words of Dulles, "of great importance to this agency and its activities." The operation files contained an enormous amount of operational detail.

The first phase of AERODYNAMIC was to infiltrate Ukraine and then exfiltrate CIA-trained Ukrainian agents. By January 1950, the operation involved the CIA's covert intelligence gathering unit (Special Operations Office, OSO) and the covert operations unit (Office of Policy Coordination, OPC). This year's operations revealed a "well-organized and robust underground movement" in Ukraine that was even "wider and more fully developed than previous reports indicated."

Washington was particularly pleased with the high level of UPA training in Ukraine and its potential for further guerrilla action and "the extraordinary news that ... active resistance to the Soviet regime was spreading steadily eastward, from the former Polish Greek Catholic provinces."// Joint OSO-OPC Report On the Ukrainian Resistance Movement, December 12, 1950, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ-19, B 9, Aerodynamic: Operations, v. 9 f. 1.

Priest of the UGCC, Abwehr captain Ivan Grinyokh (center), one of the leaders of the OUN-B and an agent of the Nazi special services Mykola Lebed (in a beret) and cadets of the British intelligence school "Bogdan", "Slavko", "Semenko" before being thrown into the Soviet Union on September 24 1951 // Vedeneev D.V. The Odyssey of Vasily Cook. Military-political portrait of the last commander of the UPA (Series: Secret Wars: History and Modernity). - K.: K.I.S., 2007. - 208 p.

The CIA received information about the activities of the UPA in various Ukrainian regions, the Soviet commitment to the policy of destroying the UPA, the relationship of the UPA with the Ukrainians, the potential of the UPA to expand the movement to 100,000 fighters in wartime.

During the post-war decade, the OUN-UPA forces carried out about 14.5 thousand various actions against the regime, including 195 sabotage, 457 attacks on representatives of law enforcement agencies, 4912 terrorist attacks. The top of the underground tried to flexibly rebuild its tactics in order to preserve its strength until the explosion of the Plague - this is how the beginning of the armed conflict between the countries of the West and the USSR was encrypted in the documents of the OUN. The tactical schemes "Orlik" (creation of positions in the eastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR), "Oleg" are introduced, which provide for the education of young people to replenish the organization (only during January-September 1950, the Soviet regime liquidated 335 youth groups of the OUN, in which there were 2488 participants and 340 units weapons). The leader was the "Dazhbog" scheme, which provides for a transition to a deep underground, the legalization of OUN members, and their rooting in official structures. // D. Vedeneev, Y. Shapoval, "The Maltese Falcon, or the fate of Miron Matvieyko", Zerkalo Nedeli, August 10, 2001

The CIA decided to expand its operations to "support, develop and use the Ukrainian underground for resistance and intelligence purposes." “Due to the scale of the resistance movement in Ukraine,” said the head of the covert operations unit Wiesner, “we believe that this is one of the priority projects.” // Operations into Ukraine, November 28, 1950, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ-19, B 9, Aerodynamic: Operations, v. 9 f. 1. Wisner to Director of Central Intelligence, Joint OSO/OPC Report on the Ukrainian Resistance Movement,” January 4, 1951, and attachments, NARA, RG 263, E ZZ-19, B 9, Aerodynamic: Operations, v. 9 f. 1.

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