FAKES AND PROPAGANDA IN THE INFORMATION STRUGGLE OF THE SOVIET AUTHORITIES WITH THE OUN (B)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the content and methods of presenting fakes in the information struggle of the Soviet government against the nationalist movement. Dialectical, systemic, and structural-functional methods were used for the complex study of the research goal. The article analyzes the destructive use of the press as a tool of information warfare. The following components of Soviet propaganda were established: 1) the object of informational influence was the individual and group consciousness of the population of the USSR; 2) the goal was to neutralize the influence of the OUN and the planting of communist ideology; 3) fixed assets – propaganda, misinformation, manipulation, fakes. The content of the main propaganda narratives of the Soviet press is described. The press has become one of the means of manipulating and internally controlling the public opinion of the population of the USSR. In the information confrontation, the Soviet authorities formed a branching infrastructure. The means used by Soviet propaganda ranged from half-truths to outright lies. One of the principal fakes was identifying the Ukrainian nationalist movement with German Nazism, which aimed to create stereotypes in the minds of the Ukrainian population, an attempt to form an image of the internal enemy, which is under external control. This basic narrative was divided into narrower plot lines, including the «kulak» origin of the members of the OUN (b) and, accordingly, the hostile attitude of nationalists to the majority of the population of the USSR. One of the tasks of the Soviet press was to disorganize the OUN (b), which was achieved through the publication in newspapers of numerous appeals and letters from former OUN members, data on the successful activities of Soviet security forces with the nationalist movement. The specificity of Soviet propaganda was the consideration of the religious factor in creating fake information, which was to improve the perception of the population of Western Ukraine of the simplified and distorted information broadcast by the Soviet authorities.