«THE OUN MEMBER» VARVARA ZHURBENKO: THE FATE OF A REPRESSED TEACHER (BASED ON ARCHIVAL-CRIMINAL CASE FILE)

Abstract

The article reveals Varvara Stepanіvna Zhurbenko's biography. In 1946, the Soviet state security authorities accused her of being a «parricide» and a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The article's relevance is due to the need to determine whether V. Zhurbenko was an OUN member. The article also illustrates the illegal mechanisms used by the Soviet repressive authorities. The research's main source was the V. Zhurbenko's archival-criminal case, which is stored in the Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Lviv region. As a result of the study, it was found that V. Zhurbenko participated in the activities of one of the OUN grassroots units in Dnipropetrovsk in early 1943. She did not join the OUN, but her contacts with OUN's member N. Voronina, who was also an agent of Soviet special services, played a tragic role in her later life. Having received a pedagogical education, V. Zhurbenko worked in the incomplete secondary school of the village Khidnovychi in the Drohobych region. In late 1944 – early 1945, she corresponded with N. Voronina. She was arrested in October 1946. During the investigation, V. Zhurbenko was forced to confess to belonging to the OUN. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Soviet concentration camps. After J. Stalin's death, when the totalitarian regime weakened somewhat, V. Zhurbenko tried to achieve justice. As a result, her case was double-checked (in 1955 and 1959), and eventually, V. Zhurbenko was rehabilitated. She was able to prove that the criminal case against her had been fabricated by an MGB investigator who had used the beating and threats. Thus, the authors found out that V. Zhurbenko was not a member of the OUN, although some contemporary historians were convinced that she belonged to this organization. Keywords: Varvara Zhurbenko, MGB, OUN, Dnipropetrovsk, Drohobych region, military tribunal, rehabilitation.