BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN

UKRAINIAN SUPREME LIBERATION COUNCIL

The Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (Ukrainska holovna vyzvolna rada – UVHR) was formed in the last years of WWII as political leadership for forces fighting for Ukrainian independence. The UVHR was chiefly by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists- Bandera (OUN-B). OUN-Melnyk refused to participate in its formation.

The UVHR was founded in July 1944; it declared itself the “supreme organ of the Ukrainian people in its war of revolutionary liberation.” The UVHR adopted democratic principles of governance, and outlined a social and economic program that the future Ukrainian government would implement. Among the members elected to the presidium of the UVHR, as director of the general secretariat, was Roman Shukhevych, commander of the UPA. The UVHR was responsible for coordinating UPA resistance in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, and the propaganda campaign against Soviet occupation, guided by OUN-B.

Shukhevych was killed by Ministry of Internal Affairs troops in 1950; most of the leadership of the UVHR in Ukraine were either arrested or killed in the early 1950s. Several UVHR leaders had left Ukraine in the last year of the war, and established the External Representation of the UVHR (ZP UVHR). The ZP UVHR sent memoranda to the Western Allies concerning the situation in Ukraine, and organized assistance for UPA units that had escaped to the West. The ZP UVHR also set up a press bureau and publishing houses that continued to function into the 1980s.