Front of the Ukrainian revolution

The emergence of the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution along with other partisan national formations in the summer and autumn of 1942 in Volyn was a direct consequence of the intensification of the German occupation terror in Ukraine, the final defeat of the Wehrmacht near Stalingrad , the beginning of an organized armed rebel movement in Ukraine.

The front of the Ukrainian revolution was formed under the leadership of Vladimir Yavorenko, a former Soviet officer. At the beginning of World War II, like many other Soviet officers and soldiers, Lieutenant Yavorenko was surrounded, but, avoiding captivity, joined the rebel movement . During the winter-spring of 1942 he was in the Bandera underground in the Eastern arena, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, although he himself was not a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists . Later, disappointed in the very radical forms and methods of activity of the OUN (b) , he breaks off contacts with the nationalist underground and returns to his native land, where he actively participated in the organization of the partisan detachment, which was called the “Front of the Ukrainian Revolution”.

The base of the detachment consisted of the same as he, former Red Army men and representatives of Ukrainian nationalists who had departed from Bandera. Following the example in the Red Army, the detachment had its own political instructor Ostap, who carried out political work with fighters and the population on the principles of adherence to the democratic ideals and traditions of the national liberation struggle of 1917-1921 in Ukraine.

The movement was actively supported by peasants, tired of the brutality of the German occupation, large-scale expropriations of grain and other agricultural products.

Until the beginning of 1943, the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution was primarily engaged in propaganda and campaigning, collecting weapons and ammunition, and establishing ties with other partisan detachments. The first anti-Nazi action by the FUR should be considered an attack on the Kremenets district printing house in February 1943 in order to seize its equipment. At the beginning of 1943, the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution also made several successful military raids on Galicia. In operational-tactical terms, the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution collaborated with the Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army Taras Bulba-Borovets , operating in the spring of 1942 in Polesie and armed groups of the OUN (m) and OUN (b) (Bandera), which arose in February 1943 on Kremenets region ^[1] . Together, the nationalists defended Ukrainian villages from German occupiers, Soviet partisans, and Polish units of the Home Army (AK) .

By May 1943, the territory under control of the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution was limited to the villages of Barsuki, Snigirevka and several farms of the Lanovetsky district , and the village of Krasnaya was the city of permanent deployment of its headquarters. Yavorenko was an opponent of large detachments, always with him there were about two dozen militants. During the campaign, he gathered several hundred of his supporters, who, after the end of the operation, dispersed in neighboring villages.

FUR had its own printing house and published campaign materials.

From the very beginning of its existence, the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution had tense relations with the Bandera wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists because of its desire to unite all the rebel groups under its leadership. This led to misunderstandings of the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution with a detachment of the OUN (b) led by Voron, with which Vladimir Yavorenko more than once concluded military agreements on joint actions and even fought for hundreds of months along with his detachment as a fighting hundred under his leadership. However, Yavorenko decided to finally break the alliance with Bandera only in early June 1943 after an unsuccessful joint raid with the military detachment of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on Eastern Ukraine. Having lost about 50 fighters in battles with the Germans, the remnants of his department of 80 people went over to the side of the Melnikovtsy .

But the military alliance with OUN Melnik was short-lived. On July 6, 1943, the local partisan detachment of Melnikovites was surrounded and disarmed by Bandera. To preserve their independence, in the summer of 1943, Yavorenko went to an alliance with Bulba-Borovets . However, in the autumn of that year, he was forced to dissolve people and go underground, where he died at the end of that year, probably killed by the OUN Security Service (b).

In September 1943, the remnants of the Front of the Ukrainian Revolution partially joined the Ukrainian Insurgent Army .

• Front of the Ukrainian Revolution (Reasons for the history of wrestling Wolin) / K. Girnyak; O. Chuyko. - Toronto: T-in "Wolin", 1979.
• Dovidnik from Ukraine. T. 3. (P - I). / Ed. І. Z. Pidkovi, R. M. Shusta. - Kyiv: Genesis, 1999 .-- 688 p.

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