Bofons ( Ukrainian bofoni ; short for “combat von d” ( Ukrainian fighting fund )) - one-sided (less commonly bilateral) money receipts with a fixed nominal, issued and distributed in the 40s and 50s of the 20th century in the territories where the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) operated.
Bofons played a role not so much financial as agitation - often on currency notes, in addition to OUN and UPA symbolism, episodes from the history of the Ukrainian national liberation movement were depicted, slogans in support of the UPA were posted. A number of famous artists, such as the author of the emblems of the UPA and the German airline Lufthansa, Robert Lisovsky and the graphic artist, the creator of the sketches of the UPA awards, Nil Hasevich, worked on the design of bophones. In total, in the period from 1939 to 1954, at least 500 varieties of bofons were released [1] .
Content
Title
For various periods of the OUN, for strategic and tactical reasons, the organization’s fund was called differently: “combat”, “liberation”, “revolutionary”, “national”, “military” and even “operational”. The term “combat fund” was most often used, which determined the choice of the name of cash receipts for OUN-UPA. In the people the word "bofona" often distorted. Depending on the territory, which were inherent in one or another dialect of the Ukrainian language , they were called "befon", "byfonami" ( Galicia , Bukovina ), "beephons" ( Volyn , Polesye ). Gradually distorted versions of the term fell into the documents of the UPA, and then migrated to the Ukrainian emigre editions. At the moment, the definition of “bophons” is the most common and is recognized by scientists as the only etymologically correct, conveying the original meaning of the abbreviation [2] .
History
On June 30, 1941, in Lviv , the act of proclaiming the Ukrainian state was announced, and on July 5, Yaroslav Stetsko formed the Ukrainian government — the main executive body of the self-proclaimed state, which considered financial issues at the first meeting. Soon the “rule” was dispersed by the Germans , and the next raising of the issue of finances by Ukrainian nationalists took place already in September 1941 at the first OUN conference. According to its results, a decision was made on “mass training of OUN members in military affairs,” which resulted in the need to create a material base. At that time there was no single monetary unit in Western Ukraine: the Krakow zloty introduced by the Germans, the Carbovanians , the occupying Reichsmarks , as well as the Romanian Lei in Bukovina applied here .
The data on who and when he first proposed to issue his own money documents, which later became “bofons”, was not preserved. In this regard, the well-known Ukrainian numismatist and bonist Robert Tkhorzhevsky , who in the 1990s was the first to undertake a detailed study of bofons, decided to resort to the help of residents of Western Ukraine who could inform him of the relevant information. After the first publications of Tkhorzhevsky about bofons, he received a large number of letters with memories on this topic. Thus, G. P. Drul, a Ternopolist, said that he had learned about the existence of “beepons” in December 1941, after being released from a German prison, and suggested that they appeared in August or September of the same year. Being authorized to distribute money receipts among the population, Drul remembered well that for the "beephone" they gave one German mark or two Krakow zloty. It is also known that the bofon at the rate was equal to one Soviet ruble. .
Destination
In operational documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB of the USSR, bofons appear under different definitions: “bond”, “monetary obligation”, “receipt intended for exchange for money”, “token” [3] .
Study
Even during the period of vigorous activity of the insurgents on the territory of Ukraine, the employees of the Soviet special services were engaged in collecting information and studying money receipts of the OUN-UPA, first of all, with a view to further use of the information received in operational activities. In 1965 - 1967, by order of the then leadership of the KGB of the USSR, all materials on this topic were sent to archival funds.
The first information about the existence of secretly printed OUN-UPA banknotes reached the bonists in the late 1950s, but for a long time no one saw them: only in 1967 did the information about “5 rubles UPA” appear in the George Wall catalog, but without accompanying illustrations and any additions - obviously, the author of the catalog himself knew little about them.
Neither in Soviet nor in foreign historiography were there any scientific works devoted to bophone, nor was there any work in which they were described in detail. The author of the first study on this topic was a historian, bonist and numismatist Robert Tkhorzhevsky. In his work, published in 1991 in Ternopil , he tried to summarize and systematize all the known and available data on bofons. In 1995, the brochure “Bifony” by Bogdan-Roman Khavarivsky was published and Oleg Klimenko . Finally, in 2008, Klimenko’s monograph “Bofons - banknotes of the OUN-UPA” was published, which the author himself described as “summarizing the results of research” on the topic of bophons. In the course of his work, Klimenko turned to the materials of archival funds of the KGB of the USSR stored in the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine , which allowed him to obtain information on bofons from operational reports made up by KGB officers, inquiries, protocols relating to the activities of the OUN-UPA, the exposure of underground printing houses and repositories of Ukrainian rebels [4] .
Culture
The mention of bofons can be found in Lev Korneshov's (Konstantinov) story collection “Sword Strike”, as well as in “Blizzard” by Benjamin Rudov .
Notes
- ↑ Klymenko, 2008 , p. 7-8.
- ↑ Klymenko, 2008 , p. 7
- ↑ Klymenko, 2008 , p. 9.
- ↑ Klymenko, 2008 , p. 8-9.
Literature
- Klimenko, O. O. Bofoni: minor documents of the OUN and UPA (in Ukrainian) . - K .: UBS NBU, 2008. - 189 p. - ISBN 978-966-484-041-2 .
- Tkhorzhevsky, R.I. Bifony of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 1941-1952. Part I (in Ukrainian) // NUMBON: Bono-Numismatic Bulletin. - 1994. - № 6 (18) . - p . 5-6 .
- Tkhorzhevsky, R.I. Bifony of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 1941-1952. Part II (in Ukrainian) // NUMBON: Bono-Numismatic Bulletin. - 1994. - № 7 (19) . - p . 5-7 .