THE STUDENT RESISTANCE TO THE SOVIET TOTALITARIAN SYSTEM IN WESTERN UKRAINE (1944–1953)

Abstract

The place of student youth in the general picture of the ideological confrontation between the Ukrainian national liberation movement and the Soviet authorities in Western Ukraine in the postwar period is studied. The participation of students of higher educational institutions of the Western Ukrainian region in the movement of Resistance to Stalinist totalitarian system was analyzed. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the analysis of the ideological confrontation between the OUN and the Soviet authorities for influencing the student youth of the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR. In the course of the research, problem-historical, search methods, as well as methods of microhistory and local history were used. The main forms and methods of students’ intellectual resistance to Stalin’s totalitarian regime are determined. The peculiarities of the ideological and educational activity of the OUN among the youth and its opposition to communist education are considered. On the basis of a wide source base, it is substantiated that the Soviet ideology caused the opposition of the most active part of the students of Western Ukrainian higher education institutions. It was studied that the main methods of activity of nationally conscious youth in 1944–1953 varied from individual speeches and expressions of dissatisfaction with the Soviet government to the creation of conspiratorial nationalist organizations and groups. It was determined that underground student structures set themselves the goal of conducting oral anti-Soviet agitation, producing and distributing leaflets and nationalist literature within the walls of universities and among the population, raising the level of knowledge, spreading national education, and in some places, they performed the tasks of the OUN underground in collecting the necessary information. It was established that manifestations of individual disobedience or organized resistance were immediately blocked by the Soviet punitive structures, and bearers of the Ukrainian national idea were subjected to repression. Keywords institution of higher education, students, intellectual resistance, propaganda, totalitarian regime, western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, postwar period.