page_title: Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
section_title: Background and creation
hierarchical_section_title: Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists / History / Background and creation
caption_attribution_description: English: Yevhen Konovalets — military commander of Ukrainian People's Army and political leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement. Українська: Євген Коновалець, український військовий діяч, полковник Армії Армії УНР.
context_page_description: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was a radical far-right Ukrainian ultranationalist political organization established in 1929 in Vienna. The organization first operated in Eastern Galicia. 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 OUN sought to infiltrate legal political parties, universities and other political structures and institutions. As revolutionary ultra-nationalists the OUN have been characterized by most historians as fascist. OUN strategies to achieve Ukrainian independence included violence and terrorism against perceived foreign and domestic enemies, particularly Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.
  In 1940 the OUN split into two parts. The older, more moderate members supported Andriy Melnyk and the OUN-M, while the younger and more radical members supported Stepan Bandera's OUN-B.
context_section_description: In 1919 with the end of the Polish–Ukrainian War, the Second Polish Republic took over most of the territory claimed by the West Ukrainian National Republic (the rest was absorbed by the Soviet Union). One year later, exiled Ukrainian officers set up the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukrainian - Українська Військова Організація: Ukrayins'ka Viys'kova Orhanizatsiya, the UVO), an underground military organization composed of Ukrainian veterans with the goals of continuing the armed struggle against Poland, of destabilizing the political situation, and of preparing disarmed veterans for an anti-Polish uprising. The UVO was strictly a military organization with a military command-structure. Originally the UVO operated under the authority of the exiled government of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, but in 1925 following a power struggle all the supporters of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic's exiled president Yevhen Petrushevych were expelled.
  Yevhen Konovalets, the former commander of the elite Sich Riflemen unit of the Ukrainian military, led the UVO. West Ukrainian political parties secretly funded the organization.  Although it engaged in acts of sabotage and attempted to assassinate the Polish Chief of State Józef Piłsudski in 1921, it functioned more as a militant protective organization rather than as a terrorist organization.  When in 1923 the Allies recognized Polish rule over western Ukraine, many members left the organization. The legal Ukrainian parties turned against the UVO's militant actions, preferring to work within the Polish political system. As a result, the UVO turned to Germany and Lithuania for political and financial support. It established contact with militant anti-Polish student organizations, such as the Group of Ukrainian National Youth, the League of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. After preliminary meetings in Berlin in 1927 and Prague in 1928, at the founding congress in Vienna in 1929 the veterans of the UVO and the student militants met and united to form the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Although the members consisted mostly of Galician youths, Yevhen Konovalets served as its first leader and its leadership council, the Provid, comprised mostly veterans and was based abroad.
caption: Yevhen Konovalets
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