UNUSUAL NAZISM: UKRAINIAN NATIONAL-SOCIALIST WORKERS’: PARTY IN THE POST-WAR DONBAS

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to research an extremely interesting phenomenon of post-war Ukrainian society – an attempt to create an underground Ukrainian National Socialist Workers' Party (UNSWP) in the Donbass and Sloboda Ukraine. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, multifactority, concreteness, science and comprehensiveness. The following general historical methods were used: historical-comparative, retrospective, problematic, microhistorical analysis. The Scientific Novelty. Having introduced a series of new archival materials from the collections of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Services of Ukraine to the scientific circulation, we covered a whole new episode on the history of the anti-Soviet resistance movement in the East of Ukraine in the first years after World War II – the activity of the UNSWP that was not connected to the Ukrainian nationalist underground and did not obey its leadership. The article reconstructs the main episodes, related to the emergence of the underground party, its structure, activities, ideology, tasks. The Conclusions. The analysed documents of the bodies of the state security and constituent materials of the USNWP confirm that the main initiator of the creation of an illegal party was a native of Luhansk region Bronislav Boglachov-Stogneyev, who, during his service in the Red Army, was stationed in the Rivne area and got captured by the Ukrainian independence ideas, which he tried to adopt to the needs of his native working environment of the eastern regions of Ukraine. The illegal party he created was not characterized by nationalism or racism, national or cultural intolerance, and more closely resembled leftist populists in its rhetoric and vision of the future social order. The struggle for independence for B. Boglachov-Stogneyev and his few followers was rather a means of solving the pressing social problems of the population of East, South and Center of Ukraine (collective farms liquidation, private ownership of land, private trade, improvement of social security of workers, etc.) and not its prime mission. The party declared armed methods to fight the stalinist regime, but never used weapons or attempted to launch an uprising. All underground activity was limited to the production of program documents, the formation of structures and the attempt to seize the financial resources necessary for further clandestine work.