THE PROPAGANDA ACTIVITY OF MEMBERS OF THE UNDERGROUND INSURGENT MOVEMENT IN THE WESTERN REGIONS OF THE USSR AFTER THEIR RETURN FROM CAMPS AND SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS (SECOND HALF OF THE 1950S – 1970S)

Abstract

After the return of the underground insurgent movement members from camps and special settlements to the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR, some of them began to resume illegal propaganda activities. This is hardly covered in Ukrainian historiography. Based on numerous factual material, obtained from the 2nd and 16th funds of the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine and for the first time introduced into scientific circulation, the authors found out its forms and features: distribution among the population of the program documents of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, production and distribution of leaflets, inscriptions, drawings of anti-Soviet content, hanging yellow-blue flags, holding conversations on forbidden topics in the working and youth environments. The article shows the influence of propaganda activities of OUN members on the emergence and development of the dissident movement. The material presented in the article also shows that a part of the Ukrainian intelligentsia with nationalist beliefs, which, fearing repressions, for a long time stood aside from the anti-Soviet struggle, began to speak out more courageously, trying to rehabilitate themselves in front of their comrades from the underground. In particular, its representatives in their conversations, speeches, publications criticized the national policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the course of Russification of Ukraine, the attack on the Ukrainian language, the thesis of the "great Russian people", etc. The position taken by them was, according to KGB officers, identical to the position of former members of the OUN underground. It is proved that the state security agencies of the Ukrainian SSR made great efforts, using a variety of techniques and methods, to neutralize the anti-Soviet underground and to discredit it in the eyes of the public.