Ukrainian community to mark 50th anniversary of the heroic death of Roman Shukhevych (02/20/00)

Ukrainian community to mark 50th anniversary of the heroic death of Roman Shukhevych

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - March 5 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Brig. Gen. Roman Shukhevych (nom de guerre: Taras Chuprynka), supreme commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), who died in the town of Bilohorscha, outside of Lviv, during combat with special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) of Soviet Ukraine.

Born in 1907 in Krakovets, Yavoriv county in western Ukraine, he had joined the active struggle for Ukraine's independence at an early age. Only 42 at the time of his death, Shukhevych had joined the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) in 1923, when he was 16, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929. During this period he was also a university student, a member of the youth organization Plast and its Chornomortsi fraternity, and an active sportsman.

Throughout the 1930s he participated in many actions against the inter-war Polish occupation of western Ukraine and for a period, along with many other anti-Polish fighters, was jailed in the notorious Bereza Kartuzka prison.

In 1941 Shukhevych was deputy battalion commander of the joint Nachtigall and Roland battalions. When the arrests of the battalion officers began in January 1943, he escaped and joined the UPA, of which he was appointed supreme commander in November 1943. In August 1943 he was confirmed as the head of the OUN Home Leadership and in July 1944 was elected to head the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) General Secretariat.

After the retreat of the forces of Nazi Germany from the territory of western Ukraine at the end of the second world war and the subsequent occupation by the USSR, Shukhevych continued to command insurgent forces in western Ukraine that fought ruthlessly against the troops of the Soviet military and special forces.

Information about the relentless struggle of the UPA forces in the late 1940s against Soviet occupation appeared in Western press reports of the time occasionally, despite the Soviet information blockade and attempts to characterize Shukhevych and his forces as "bandits," "murderers" and "slaves of Anglo-American imperialists."

In its recent Ukrainian-language statement commemorating the 50th anniversary the death of Shukhevych, the Ukrainian World Congress noted that Shukhevych "was a rare genius in modern insurgent warfare ... one who opposed both the Hitlerite-German and Bolshevik-Russian occupations. The measure of the quality of the military activity of Roman Shukhevych transformed him among the people into one of legendary status as the commander of the 'Armiya Bezsmertnykh' (Army of the Immortals)."

The UWC statement urged Ukrainian communities worldwide to honor the memory of this "great son of the Ukrainian nation on the anniversary of his heroic death."

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