"Kill the anti-Semite". The KGB special operations against Yaroslav Stetsko
By Alik Gomelsky
This essay examines yet another complicated attempt of the Soviet authorities' use of the “Jewish card” against the Ukrainian liberation movement. The recently declassified SBU documents of the KGB are astonishing in the scope of what they reveal.
The declassified documents that this chapter will cover are:
1. A memo, dated December 1973, sent from the head of the Ukrainian KGB department, Vitaly Fedorchuk, addressed to Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, the Chief of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
2. A notice that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine received regarding a propagandistic operation carried out by the KGB against Yaroslav Stetsko. Dated October 1969.
3. Propagandistic leaflets created by the KGB in Hebrew and Yiddish with a call to kill Stetsko and a copy of the same KGB leaflets in a Russian translation, for internal use.
4.Two declassified documents from the CIA archive documenting Brezhnev’s visit to the U.S.A, Dated June 1973.
Let’s begin the story with Yaroslav Stetsko, the deputy head of Stepan Bandera’s OUN(B) and Premier of the Ukrainian State which was proclaimed on the 30th of June 1941. Stetsko was arrested by the Gestapo on July 4th in 1941 and was imprisoned until the end of 1944. In 1946, he became the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a position he held for 40 years. At that time Stetsko became one of the most prominent figures of the Ukrainian liberation movement, which, of course, made him one of the primary targets of Soviet special operations.
In his testimony, Bogdan Stashynsky—the assassin of Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera—admitted to having thoroughly studied Stetsko’s habits, routines, and addresses in Munich following the orders of his handlers. However, he claims to have never received the KGB’s order to kill the head of the ABN. Unlike Rebet and Bandera, Stetsko was a popular political figure not only as one of the leaders in the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people, but also as the leader of the international anti-communist movement.
In my opinion, the actions and methods of the KGB seen in the documents below are something akin to a box with radioactive polonium, which irradiates both the Jewish and Ukrainian people with its deadly emanations of discord and hatred.
Decoding: 1. A memo, dated December 1973, sent from the head of the Ukrainian KGB department, Vitaly Fedorchuk, addressed to Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, the Chief of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
Fedorchuk wrote:
“…In order to inflame enmity between Zionists and Ukrainian nationalists, the brochure Lest We Forget was published in the U.S.A, in which, on a documentary basis, exposes the involvement of OUN members in the mass destruction of the civilian population, including participation in anti-Jewish action during the Second World War… Acting as the ‘author’ and publisher of the brochure was one of the leaders of the progressive Ukrainian organization ‘League of American Ukrainians.’ Visiting Ukraine recently, he was legending that he had the materials used in the brochure.”
Hidden behind the safety of a top secret classification, Fedorchuk felt free to be unapologetically frank in the memo. Fedorchuk blatantly pointed out that the goal of this operation was to incite inter-ethnic enmity through the means of a disinformation brochure. Below the memo, documents that said the brochure was created by an agent from the soviet special services who was of Ukrainian diaspora.
“…With the goal to popularize the brochure, the ‘author’…attracted to the implementation of this event, in the role of a ‘co-publisher’, one of the Jewish progressive figures of New York. The joint statement of progressive Ukrainian and Jewish organizations in the U.S.A against the OUN members as war criminals gave a certain political effect…”
I would like to note that the air-quotes placed on the word author and co-publisher appear in the original transcript.
Accordingly, for this KGB special task, a black sheep of the Ukrainian people collaborated with a similar black sheep of the Jewish people. Knowing all the details, including the title 'Lest We Forget,' the publication date of 1973, and its location in the U.S.A, allows us to easily trace this libellous pamphlet online. Would you be surprised if I told you this propaganda brochure is still available? Sold in paperback on Amazon for a whopping $55.44. The author of this gray literature was a native of New Haven, Connecticut, Michael Hanusiak who was a member of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Judging by the type of work he created, the 93 year old “writer” should have received a very warm welcome in hell on October, 11th 2006. He’ll be joined (or already has been) by his friend Sam Pevzner, an employee of the Yiddish newspaper Morgen Freiheit, which was also heavily affiliated with the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Further in the document Fedorchuk writes:
“…The Jewish ‘Organization for Combating Fascism, Racism and Anti-Semitism’ intends to hand over to the FBI a list of names who were exposed by this brochure in committing genocide, demanding their for their search and punishment…”
Who knows what kind of organization Fedorchuk meant by the ‘Jewish Organization for Combating Fascism, Racism and Anti-Semitism.’ My research did not find one, however, if one were to search for it under a general description rather than an exact name, then at least two-to-three different organizations could correspond. In any case, this unallocated organization received trump cards in form of this brochure in order to easily ignite severe enmity between the Jews and Ukrainians.
Decoding: 2. A notice that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine received regarding a propagandistic operation carried out by the KGB against Yaroslav Stetsko. Dated October 1969.
Now we turn to the issue of Yaroslav Stetsko. This declassified document from the KGB department in Ukraine informs that:
“...Starting in 1966, the KGB of Ukraine carried out a number of measures, as a result of which the leader of the OUN, Stetsko, was exposed to wide circles of the Jewish public as one of the main culprits of the OUN member participation in the genocidal operations carried out by the Nazis. To promote the success of these events, we have prepared a proclamation in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English on behalf of the peoples of Jewish ethnicity who live in Germany and are outraged by Stetsko’s impunity, calling for revenge against Stetsko for the thousands of innocent victims of genocide. The mentioned proclamations are sent to the editorial offices of the Jewish publishing organs of the USA, England, France, Israel, and Germany…”
Not daring to destroy Stetsko in the 1950s with their own forces, the communists decided to lay falsified accusations on the OUN leader and instigate the Jews against him. In the late 1960s, it was published in Yiddish in many periodicals both in Europe and North America. But I consider the Hebrew text to be key here, and here’s why: there is only one organization in the world that carried out operations for the physical elimination of those who posed a threat to the Jewish population globally, the Israeli Mossad. By using the Hebrew language, the KGB was trying to attract the attention of the Mossad who were mercenaries for the Jewish people, bringing criminals who participated in the Shoah to justice and thus the KGB hoped to provoke them into killing Stetsko. What is the Mossad? The Mossad; le Modiin ule Tafkidim Meyuhadim translates to the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations. Mossad is the widely accepted shortened form, meaning Institute. Here are a couple of high-profile examples of active Mossad operations running during the 1950’s and 60’s:
- The abduction and transportation of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina to Israel.
- Liquidation of several German specialists who worked for the Egyptian missile program.
- The retrieval of five missile boats from the French port of Cherbourg, which were built for Israel but were embargoed.
Executing the assassination or kidnapping of the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Yaroslav Stetsko, who lived openly in Munich and traveled around the world was a fairly simple matter. However, the Israelis, having studied the issue, ignored the pretext fabricated by the KGB, deciding that the Ukrainian leader, who spent three years in a Polish prison and three and a half years in Nazi prisons and concentration camps was dangerous for the USSR, not for Jews and Israel.
A document, signed in October 1969 by the deputy head of the Ukrainian department of KGB is vast and important. In addition to the description of the operation against Stetsko, it also stated:
“…a proclamation was made on behalf of the Ukrainian nationalists, calling to fight for the independence of the Canadian province of Manitoba. One copy of this postcard, with an accompanying forged and hand-written letter attributed to a Ukrainian nationalist living abroad, was sent to the office of Prime Minister P. Trudeau. The goal of this operation was to provoke a negative reaction from the Canadian government as to the manifestations of ‘Ukrainian separatism’ and to sow distrust among the main emigrant centers that exist in the country…”
Therefore, the KGB also tried to disinform the Canadian government, portraying Ukrainian-Canadians as separatists planning the collapse of the country. This was not simply spreading rumors, but included a letter with the forged handwriting of a real person, whose name was never revealed by the KGB. The fact that the USSR was engaged in similar operations as early as 1957 was reported at the hearings in the US Senate Committee by a fugitive to the West, a Senior Security Major (equal to a Major-General in the Soviet army) Alexandr Orlov aka Lev Feldbin.1
The KGB chose the time perfectly for this falsified separatist provocation, because in the second half of the 1960s there was a storm of tension and movement towards separatism in Canada, and it ended with the introduction of Canadian Army units into Ottawa and Montreal in October 1970. Leftist Francophone marginals from the Quebec Liberation Front staged terrorist attacks as early as 1963: explosions, robberies, hostage-taking, murders. Therefore, separatist actions in the center of Canada, in the province of Manitoba, would be, to put it mildly, very untimely for the Canadian leadership and a very serious threat to Canadian security.
This Notice also stated:
“…on behalf of the OUN-Bandera members, who reside in West Germany, a letter was prepared in German with reproachment in address to the Germans of FRG2 and threats to “Independently defend the traditions of Christian humanity and traditions of German society and settle scores with the Germans for past hurts.” The document is being sent to newspapers, journals, as well as individual bourgeois political and public figures…”
This was done with the aim of compromising Ukrainian emigrants from the OUN(B) who lived in Germany, some of whom worked in various departments of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe which were anti-communist broadcast stations located in West Europe. But that’s not all; I will quote further:
“…In order to deepen the split and strengthen the contradictions between the FP3 of the OUN and their opponents in the camp of the Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists…an anonymous letter was sent to the address of Bishop Platon Korneliak, who offered to hold a religious service in memory of Bandera. The anonymous letter was sent on behalf of a nationalist from the Melnyk’s fraction4 with a proposal to abandon the intention[for a religious service] because the perpetrator of the split in the OUN, Bandera, was the initiator of the ‘fratricidal actions that followed this split and weakened the Ukrainian revolutionary movement’…”
This quote documents that the KGB closely monitored the conflict between the two fractions of the OUN, and skillfully harassed and manipulated each of them.
Decoding: 3. Propagandistic leaflets created by the KGB in Hebrew and Yiddish with a call to kill Stetsko and a copy of the same KGB leaflets in a Russian translation.
Here are a few quotes translated and explained from it.:
1. “…Yaroslav Stetsko is responsible for the actions of the Ukrainian police and gangs, the so-called UPA…”
This is slander, the Ukrainian police were recruited by the Nazis, and not by the OUN(B). The UPA was generally formed only in 1942-1943, during which time Stetsko was imprisoned by the Nazis for a year and a half.5
2. “…We absolutely do not pay attention to how the Hitlerite Oberlander and Stetsko formed the ‘European Council of Freedom’ together with others alike.”
They were referring to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL).
3. “…The global public, outraged by the increase in telephone rates, calmly looks at how British Prime Minister Wilson accommodates Stetsko, Oberlander, and their friends’ gang in his residence…..”
Here is the point: if the head of the Labour Party of Great Britain officially communicated with Stetsko, not considering him a war criminal, well then he likely was not…
4. “...Until when will we meekly tolerate this bastard? Is there really not one amidst the Jewish people, who so brilliantly defend their motherland, capable of…putting bullets into his [Stetsko’s] smug muzzle?”
This excessively overboard line clearly exposed the agenda of the KGB instigators, who called on the Israelis for the political assassination of the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN).
A few words on the infamous manuscript, the auto-biography of Yaroslav Stetsko was referenced by the US communists Hanusiak and Pevzner, and it was picked up and declared as an authentic document by historians John-Paul Himka, Karel Berkhoff, and researcher Marco Carynnyk. I have already had to refute Berkhoff and Carynnyk in the topic of the alleged “Transcript of the OUN(B) Conference #Zero” which turned out to be an agitator forgery.
I will quote an article by Oles Horodetsky6 regarding Stetsko’s so-called ‘auto-biography,’
“...Professor Taras Hunchak, in his article for the Harvard journal, pointed out the gross signs of falsification: inconsistency of the chronology indicated in Stetsko’s biography with true fact, non-existent positions and organizations, the use of Soviet spelling of the Ukrainian language, finding the ‘biography’ in the Soviet and not the German archives…” Horodetsky continues, “...Yaroslav Stetsko himself objected to the writing of this ‘biography,’ considering it a blatant falsification of Soviet propaganda. Later, his wife and others who knew him well, repeatedly claimed that the corrections to the typewritten text were not made in his handwriting…The expert opinion of the specialists of the Central State Archive of Higher Authorities and Administration in Kyiv also testified to the dubiousness of the authenticity of the ‘biography.’ In a document dated November 2002, titled ‘Characteristics and Analysis of Documents of F. 3833, Inv. 3, Case 7, National OUN Leadership in Western Ukrainian Lands during 1941-1946’, which is stored in the CSAHAA7 of Ukraine – the same archive where the so-called auto-biography is kept, the following is written: ‘…Another noteworthy feature of the documents is the actual paper on which they are printed: German on thick paper and Polish documents are mostly on cigarette paper, their physical condition is satisfactory, however, reading the text is difficult as the documents are mostly double-sided and single-spaced. The Ukrainian documents are printed on newsprint, which means that these documents were created in the respective regions corresponding with the documentation practices of clerical services in the countries that created them: Germany, Ukraine, Poland…Unfortunately, when we read the documents, we see that in some cases, there is no beginning or end of the document. As for the originality of the documents, 90% of the documents are uncertified copies, that is, they do not have signatures, some of them are certified – with a signature or seal…If we believe that Yaroslav Stetsko’s signature is really his, then such documents would be considered originals, but we maintain that they are not Stetsko’s signatures…”
The KGB documents mentioned above were dated and cover the period between October 1969 and December 1973, but there is still much to learn in this complex Stetsko case.
Decoding: 4. Two documents from declassified CIA archive documenting the visit of Brezhnev to the USA, Dated June 1973.
Recently declassified CIA archives shed additional light on the extent of KGB operations against Yaroslav Stetsko and the Ukrainian immigrants in the United States. On the eve of Brezhnev’s visit to the USA on June 18th, 1973, a representative from the USSR Embassy in Washington addressed the American special services with a statement that Ukrainian nationalists, led by Stetsko, were planning to kill Brezhnev during his visit. The act of the assassination was entrusted, as the CIA document writes,
“...To young Ukrainians who took part in combat operations of the U.S Army in Vietnam and are known for their fanaticism… the most active part in these plans and in the actual preparation of the terrorist attack is US Army Major Krawciw, the son of Ukrainian nationalist Bohdan Krawciw...”
As seen in the list of addressees in the document, then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was fully informed about the ongoing investigation. It then follows, that the hunt and provocations against Stetsko. However, the KGB not only did not cease from the years of 1969-1973 but were expanded to include a secondary purpose: to compromise a key U.S Army figure, Nicholas Krawciw. Krawciw fought in Vietnam, and was one of the developers of U.S Army tactics for Vietnam, operations in Panama (1989-1990), and in Iraq, including operation “Desert Storm” in 1991 and the liberation of Iraq in 2003. After his retirement as a U.S Army Major-General, Krawciw spent several years assisting in the creation of the army of newly independent Ukraine.
To fully understand the situation surrounding the Soviet diplomat’s contact with the FBI on June 11th, 1973, it is necessary to consider additional materials from the recently published OUN(B) archives. Specifically, the written correspondence of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) management, Mr. Yaroslav and Mrs. Slava Stetsko, with the Zionist, Gulag prisoner, World War II veteran, Israeli politician and publicist, Avraham Shifrin.
The fact that such a correspondence along with the envelopes marked from the Israeli post office addressed to the Stetsko in Munich, are shocking evidence of interaction and friendly relations between Jewish and Ukrainian nationalists. The contents of one of Shifrin’s letters completely destroyed the myths about Stetsko’s anti-Semitism and simultaneously revealed why the USSR made such colossal efforts both for the moral and physical destruction of the head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). In connection, Avraham Shifrin wrote the following:
“…I want to tell you about one plan that will surely interest you as well. Currently in the world, there is an operation-campaign against Soviet diplomats. For example, in the U.S.A, one of our girls [Jewish] publicly poured blood on a Soviet press attache at a press conference. How do you feel if perhaps you also can find people who are lovers of such direct actions? For example, publicly giving a diplomat a slap on the face from a woman, or pulling down his pants on the street (undoubtedly there are strong guys who can do it quickly!) and whip him in public. It would have a great effect. And the court will only give them a fine, and in court you have to speak openly and explain that this was done for those enslaved in the USSR who cannot do it themselves. Write to me immediately about what you think of this…heartfelt greetings to your wife. With respect, Avraham.”
This letter was dated April 10th 1972, so it was quite easy to find that the incident described by Avraham took place on March 15th, 1972, when a 17-year old American school girl from the Jewish
Defense League8 spilled blood on the head of the Soviet diplomat Aleksander Yevstafiev yelling the words “Murderer, free the Jewish prisoners!” According to a spokesman for the Jewish Defense League, it was not fake stunt blood, but a litre of real blood collected from the girl and two other students.
The contents of Shifrin’s letter is very important in the sense that its leakage to the USSR made Stetsko a target. If we recall what was mentioned above, that in the summer of 1973, an unnamed Soviet diplomat began the attack on Stetsko via verbal communication to both the FBI and the U.S State Department in order to prevent unification between Ukrainian nationalists and Jewish Zionists in their fight against the USSR.
Although the special KGB operation did not bring the desired result of assassinating Yaroslav Stetsko, the propaganda effect turned out to be incredibly strong and long-lasting. On the basis of many discussions and disputes with numerous opponents, I can state that even 50 years after this operation, many still consider Stetsko a pathological anti-Semite and an “executioner of the Jewish people.” Just one example of propaganda released by the USSR is a caricature where Yaroslav Stetsko is depicted speaking under the symbols of Jewish and Ukrainian freedom: the magen David and the tryzub.9 Very eloquent and symbolic visual propaganda. It was published in 1977 in a Soviet magazine called Peretz (translated pepper).
Let us re-think, dear readers, as the only evidence of Stetsko’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is a phrase or two from his alleged “biography,” which is a forgery fabricated by the USSR’s KGB. The main leader of the Ukrainian national liberation movement, Stetsko, as well as the head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, Symon Petliura, were falsely accused and slandered by Soviet propaganda with the aim of inciting inter-ethnic enmity between the two nations closest to me: Jewish and Ukrainian.
1 Alexander Orlov aka Leiba Feldbin was a fugitive from Spain to the West who stated under oath during the US Senate Committee hearings in 1957 that his last rank in the NKVD was a senior state security major which corresponds to an army major general and while in Spain he was an NKVD resident spy and chief advisor on intelligence, counterintelligence and guerrilla warfare under the republican government. Soviet sources, in order to minimize the effect of having such a high-ranking employee escape to the West, tried to present Orlov/Feldbin as an insignificant person in the NKVD hierarchy, and denied his role in the export of Spain’s gold stock to the USSR and asserted that his rank was actually that of a major of state of state security corresponding only with the rank of an army colonel.
2 Abbreviation of Federative Republic of Germany, aka West Germany.
3 FP stands for Foreign Parts of the OUN - a union of members of the OUN(B) who ended up in the West after the end of the Second World War. Stepan Bandera was the head of the FP of the OUN. On February 1, 1954, at a meeting of the FP of the OUN, the FP splitted into three parts (fractions).
4 The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) is a Ukrainian socio-political movement that set itself the goal of establishing an independent Ukrainian cathedral state, its preservation and development. The OUN was founded on February 3, 1929 in Vienna. On February 10, 1940, the OUN split into two parts, when a part of the OUN members (who were mostly located in Ukrainian lands) elected the Revolutionary Front of the OUN, and at the "Great Meeting in Krakow" convened by them on April 1-4, 1941, they elected Stepan Bandera as their leader and proclaimed a separate The Organization of Ukrainian nationalists (revolutionary), or OUN(B) - that is, the Bandera faction, its members began to be called the Banderites. The other part of the organization's members remained under the leadership of Andriy Melnyk, that is, the OUN(M), and members of that fraction were tentatively called Melnykites.
5 Volodymyr Birchak, Sergii Riabenko. ‘A few words for Christopher Miller about “Banderites” and Ukrainian history’ ‘Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance’, February 25, 2019.
https://uinp.gov.ua/pres-centr/novyny/a-few-words-for-christopher-miller-about-banderites-and-ukrainian-history
6 Oles Horodetsky. "Where do PR myths about ‘fascists’ come from" Istorichna Pravda. https://www.istpravda.com.ua/columns/2013/06/4/125283/
7 The Central State Archive of Higher Authorities and Administration - one of the main archives of Ukraine. Located in Kyiv.
8 Jewish Defense League (JDL) was founded in the USA in 1968 by a group of Jewish youth under the leadership of Rabbi Meir Kahane (may his memory be blessed) to protect the Jewish population in Brooklyn’s mixed neighborhoods from hooliganism and provocations from anti-Semitic members from the Afro-American and Latin-American quarters of the city, and then quickly grew into a political organization that set itself the goal of protecting the interests of the Jewish people throughout the world. Since 1969, the organization has been active in fighting for the rights of Soviet Jews to be repatriated to the state of Israel.
9 Colloquially known as the tryzub (Ukrainian: тризуб, lit. 'trident') is the coat of arms of Ukraine is a blue shield with a golden trident.