1907–1950
Roman Shukhevych
Commander-in-chief of the UPA
General and commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) from 1943. For almost six years he led the armed underground against Soviet rule, and he was killed in combat. He remains a contested figure.
Key accomplishments
- Commander-in-chief of the UPA (1943–1950)
- Head of the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR)
- Led the armed underground against Soviet rule for almost six years (1944–1950)
Who he was
Roman Shukhevych was born in Lviv (other sources say in the small town of Krakovets in the Lviv region) into a family with long-standing cultural traditions. He studied engineering at the Lviv Polytechnic, and was an athlete and an amateur composer. As a young man he joined the Ukrainian Military Organization, and later the OUN.
His story
In 1941, at the start of the German-Soviet war, Shukhevych served in the Nachtigall battalion, which the Abwehr, German military intelligence, had formed from Ukrainian nationalists. After the battalion was disbanded, from December 1941 to the end of 1942 he was deputy commander of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, an auxiliary police unit under German command that operated in Belarus. In 1943 he returned to Ukraine, took command of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and led it until his death. The UPA fought against the Nazi occupiers, Soviet partisans and the Polish underground, and after 1944 mainly against Soviet rule.
On 5 March 1950 officers of the MGB, the Soviet state security ministry, surrounded Shukhevych in the village of Bilohorshcha near Lviv. He was killed in the fighting.
Debates and assessments
Assessments of Shukhevych’s activities are mixed. Historians debate his service in German formations: the Nachtigall battalion and Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, which took part in anti-partisan operations in Belarus. The mass killings of the Polish population of Volhynia began in 1943, before he took command of the UPA, but the anti-Polish actions of 1944 in Eastern Galicia took place when he was already in command; the question of the command’s responsibility remains a subject of research. For many Ukrainians he is a symbol of long-lasting armed resistance to the Soviet regime. The 2007 decree awarding him the title Hero of Ukraine was ruled unlawful by a court in 2010; his legal status is still disputed.
Why it matters today
Shukhevych’s story shows that the struggle for independence in the 20th century took place between two totalitarian empires. It also shows that an honest conversation about the past must include both heroism and tragedies.
