WAS THERE BETRAYAL IN THE OUN? (HISTORIOGRAPHICAL EVALUATIONS REASONS AND PREREQUISITES FOR THE SPLIT OF THE NATIONALISTS ORGANIZATION IN 1940)

Abstract

The study presents views of Ukrainian and foreign authors on the circumstances that led to the split of the OUN in 1940, pays attention to the so-called "betrayals" in the nationalist environment, carried out the classification of the causes of the crisis in the underground organization, provides promising areas of research problems. There are two groups of priority reasons for the split of the OUN in 1940: internal and external. From the first group, some researchers have singled out the following factors: tactical (Stepan Lenkavskyi, Petro Mirchuk, Volodymyr Kosyk, Mykhailo Koval, Ryszard Torzecki, etc.), psychological (Zenon Pelenskyi, Ivan Patryliak) and personal (Zynovii Knysh, Oleksandr Ischuk) character. External causes of the split were due to German (Anatolii Kentii) or Soviet (Ihor Havryliv) factors. In the historical literature, there is no unambiguous answer to the question: was there betrayal in the OUN? Right-wing professor Stanislav Kulchytskyi, who was in charge of a historical working group at the Government Commission for the Study of the OUN and UPA, stated there was no betrayal by Yevhen Konovalets' inner circle. It is necessary to talk about the betrayal of individual OUN members, such as Roman Baranovskyi. It is alleged that due to the absence of reliable historical sources and its politicization has no prospects of study question about the so-called «Archive of Senyk». Nevertheless, historians should continue exploring the relationship between the OUN Regional Executive and the Ukrainian Nationalist Leadership in 1929–1940. It is emphasized that in the context of Ukrainian national memory policy, historians' important task is a deep analysis of the lessons of the OUN split 1940. After all, the question is very relevant to today's consolidation and unity not only nationalist structures but also all national-state one's forces. Keywords: historiography, historiographical source, OUN, betrayal, schis