The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Ukrainian: Організація Українських Націоналістів; Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'kykh Natsionalistiv, abbreviated OUN), was a radical far-right Ukrainian ultranationalist political organization established in 1929 in Vienna. The organization first operated in Eastern Galicia (then part of interwar Poland). It emerged as a union between the Ukrainian Military Organization, smaller radical right-wing groups, and right-wing Ukrainian nationalists and intellectuals represented by Dmytro Dontsov, Yevhen Konovalets, Mykola Stsyborsky, and other figures.
The ideology of the OUN is described as similar to Italian Fascism. The OUN sought to infiltrate legal political parties, universities and other political structures and institutions. The OUN's strategies to achieve Ukrainian independence included violence and terrorism against perceived foreign and domestic enemies, particularly Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Romania, and the Soviet Union.
In 1940, the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members supported Andriy Atanasovych Melnyk and the OUN-M, while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera's OUN-B. After the start of the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), the OUN-B in the person of Yaroslav Stetsko declared an independent Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941 in occupied Lviv, while the region was under the control of Nazi Germany, pledging loyalty to Adolf Hitler. In response, the Nazi authorities suppressed the OUN leadership. In October 1942 the OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In 1943–1944, in order to pre-empt Polish efforts at re-establishing Poland's pre-war borders, UPA military units carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing against Polish people. Historians estimate that 100,000 Polish civilians were massacred in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
After World War II, the UPA fought against Soviet and Polish government forces. During Operation Vistula in 1947, the Polish government deported 140,000 Ukrainian civilians in Poland to remove the support base for the UPA. In the struggle Soviet forces killed, arrested, or deported over 500,000 Ukrainian civilians. Many of those targeted by the Soviets included UPA members, their families, and supporters. During and after the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, covertly supported the OUN.
A number of contemporary far-right Ukrainian political organizations claim to be inheritors of the OUN's political traditions, including Svoboda, Right Sector, the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence, and the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. The role of the OUN remains contested in historiography, as these later political inheritors developed a literature denying the organization's fascist political heritage and collaboration with Nazi Germany, while also celebrating the SS Division Galicia. Some scholars argue that political opponents emphasized the far-right or extreme-right aspects of modern OUN descendants for electoral purposes.
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