Ukrajinské nacionalistické nebezpečí proti míru a lidovým demokraciím

Abstract

This article describes the activities of the Czechoslovak State Security Service (Státní bezpečnosti, StB) against the Ukrainian underground (primarily the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, OUN) after World War II. In particular, it focuses on the cooperation between the security services of Poland, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia against the OUN couriers who maintained contacts between the Bavarian centre and structures in Poland and the Soviet Union. Based on the collected material, the author concludes that the activities of the Czechoslovak security service against the Ukrainian underground mostly ended in failure. The StB members carried out illegal activities (they mainly spread physical and psychological terror and also constructed non-existent ‘groups of Ukrainian nationalists’) and fabricated some actions. They were completely ignorant of the issues with which they dealt and believed in untrue theses disseminated by the communist regime, which hindered their work because most of their actions were carried out against Ukrainians who had nothing to do with the OUN. If they had successes, they mostly achieved them by accident or in cooperation with Polish or Soviet counterintelligence.The article is based primarily on Czechoslovak materials deposited in the Security Services Archive (Archiv bezpečnostních složek). These materials are only a fragment of the original source base, most of which was destroyed in the 1960s. The author of this article did not have the ambition to research the topic completely, but he wanted to present the issue based on the collected sources. The full text will be published in Czech in the journal Historia a vojenství.