Bohdan, a mysterious brother of Stepan Bandera
On January 1 we marked the 100th anniversary of Stepan Bandera’s birth. We have detailed knowledge about his contribution he made to the struggle for Ukraine’s independence as a leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). However, due to a lack of documentary sources, not much is known about what his siblings did in championing the liberation ideas. One of the obstacles is that their biographies are so complicated that sometimes remind a detective story that becomes clear only when you have read the last page.
The least fortunate among them is Bohdan Bandera. His short life story is studied very little, and we have merely versions without documentary proof of how and where he died. According to Roman Pastukh, a researcher from Drohobych, Oksana and Volodymyra Bandera thought that in the 1940s NKVD agents destroyed their brother. According to other sources, Bohdan Bandera was killed by agents of Gestapo in Mykolaiv. There is still another version: he and his wife with some other insurgents met their death on Dec. 19, 1949 in a shelter (kryivka) in the village of Starychiv, Rozhniativ raion, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast.
Even the grandson of the OUN Bandera faction leader, whose name is also Stepan Bandera, said at a solemn event honoring his grandfather’s anniversary that was recently held in the National Opera of Ukraine in Kyiv that he does not know anything for sure about Bohdan’s life.
The materials that I managed to discover in the SBU Archives, in particular in Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia oblasts, and the help of Yurii Zaitsev, a regional ethnographer from Mykolaiv, enabled me to partly unveil the last years of Bohdan Bandera’s life.
The year of 1940 became a turning point. Faced with the danger of being persecuted for his OUN membership, Bohdan had to leave his native lands (Western Ukraine had just become a part of the Soviet Union) and started living as an itinerant undergrounder. He successfully crossed the western border of the Ukrainian SSR, settled in Chelm, and studied in a gymnasium there. Shortly before the Soviet-German war, when the OUN was sending its mobile groups to Central, Eastern, and Southern Ukraine, he joined one of them and, together with other Western Ukrainians, entered the Kherson region.
In 1944 the Soviet power was being reestablished in Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Kherson oblasts. Interrogated by the NKVD, the local members of the underground — Oleksandr Yakovlev, Pavlo Mykytenko, and Liubomyr Aliman — told about the OUN network and often mentioned a Bohdan. However, neither one of them knew exactly whom they dealt with.
A skeptic would say that Bohdan Bandera’s true name served as his pseudonym in the OUN, something that was nearly never the case. However, an optimist would pay attention to the following fact: the interrogated OUN members mentioned above concurred that Bohdan was 25 or 26. This is exactly the age of Stepan Bandera’s brother — he was born in 1919.
In the autumn of 1943 Bohdan, who was also known as “Bohdanchyk” and “Ivan,” headed the youth network of the OUN unit in the Kherson region. It was accountable to the Mykolaiv Leadership headed by Director. Domna Yakovleva was responsible for the communication between Bohdan and Director. Yurko, i.e., Vasyl Kuk, a well-known figure in the OUN and UPA, was above Director in the organization hierarchy. He was the head of the Regional Leadership headquartered in Dnepropetrovsk. The number one task for Bohdan, who was a favorite of Director, was propaganda of the OUN’s ideas among young people.
This was a high-priority task for the OUN in Mykolaiv region because, with constant Gestapo terror, there was a great need for new people. At first, after testing their ideological foundation, the interested people were given some propaganda literature — periodicals or leaflets that were regularly brought from Western Ukraine. Then the newcomers were given some simple assignments: transferring a package or documents or meeting someone. Eventually the OUN membership candidate had to take an oath of allegiance to the organization.
In October or November of 1943 Bohdan was made an attempt on the life of a German policeman, and had to run. Baffling Gestapo agents pursuit in Mykolaiv, he and his friends — Yakovlev, Chuhlib, and Khvylia, came to the village of Pisky. One night, when the friends gathered together in the house of Nina Yakovleva, the village elder arrived with a policeman, who was a distant relative of Yakovlev, and ordered them to put their hands up. As soon as the search began, Bohdan snatched the rifle out of the policeman’s hands, while Khvylia shot the policeman in the head, instead hitting his ear, after which the OUN members split.
In early 1944 the head of the Mykolaiv Leadership was replaced, and Bohdan was sent to Bashtanka raion to take charge of the underground there because things had been moving slowly there. The new leader made things hum. Pavlo Mykytenko, the leader of OUN(B) unit in Mykolaiv, was impressed by his activeness that at an NKVD interrogation he said that Bohdan was one of the most dangerous individuals and characterized Bashtanka raion as being infected with nationalism the most in the entire Mykolaiv region.
Bohdan settled in the village of Pisky. The new leader lived in the house of the girl Motia. She was a short, round-faced brunette (or blonde, according to other sources) and lived in the part of the village that is near the floodplains. She belonged to a group of women in the village who supported OUN members.
There are some interesting facts about Bohdan’s character and personality at the time. One of his comrade-in-arms testified: “He was 25, Western Ukrainian, illegal alien; his whole family was repressed by the Soviet authorities.” In some other records we read: “He looked like an 18-year-old, but in fact was 26. He hails from Bukovyna and is a short, thin, light-skinned man with disheveled fair hair. He has an oval pale face, grayish blue eyes, straight nose, big ears, and uneven teeth.” Bohdan was fairly talkative, and so Mykytenko learned numerous interesting facts about the OUN unit in the Kherson region from him. He said that Bohdan was “very weak physically but very firm and brave” and that “he would rather die fighting than surrender.”
Another conspicuous thing about the new OUN leader in Bashtanka raion was his somewhat strange behavior. According to Mykytenko’s observations Bohdan Bandera always wore his gray coat unbuttoned, had a dark-blue suit underneath, and his trousers were covered with mud up to his knees. He walked slowly, making little steps like a girl, with his arms turned to the sides and his fingers constantly moving.
Some time in February 1944, when it became clear for everyone that soon the Soviets would oust Germans, one of the OUN leaders, Roman, issued an order to build shelters (kryivkas) for the leaders to stay there in times of hardship. Yakovlev said that Bohdan Bandera was also involved in the digging of one of such underground shelters near the village of Marianivka. In early March he settled in a shelter eight kilometers east of Pisky.
The leaders of Mykolaiv and Bashtanka underground networks hoped to stay in this kind of shelters until the new power was established and then legalize themselves as former Soviet partisans. Bohdan recommended joining the Red Army and find new members for the OUN there. At the same time, they planned to recruit people to a military unit (boivka). Eventually, the insurgents planned to send both groups to Volyn as UPA members. Many were concerned about the land issue. Bohdan promised that in the future land would be parceled out to peasants for “individual use.”
Bohdan Bandera had company in the shelter — Oleksandr, Domna, and Motrona Yakovlev, Romanenko, Tykhonenko, Chukhlib and other undergrounders, who were Pisky residents. Liubomyr Aliman, nicknamed Borys, fetched food and clothes to the hideout. However, within two to three days the Germans found the place. A skirmish broke out. Semen was killed and Borys vanished into thin air. The insurgents managed to escape and were hiding in a stack of straw.
In March the Mykolaiv underground suffered great losses from the Soviet-run massacre. The leader of the underground, Dmytro, and Mykytenko’s deputy nicknamed Mykola died under unknown circumstances. Mykytenko, who, in his own words, “personally knew” Bohdan Bandera, later defected to the NKVD. However, in February 1945 he was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp for “high treason.”
In Soviet times the OUN(B) underground network in the Mykolaiv region fell apart like a house of cards. For example, during an NKVD interrogation, the OUN member Kononov alone named 98 other members he knew in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv oblasts, including the heads of the respective regional Leaderships.
According to eyewitness accounts, Bohdan Bandera’s life path came to an end in March — April 1944. Tamara Zadyraka, a villager from Pisky, is quoted by Zaitsev as saying that Bohdan was accidentally shot by the Red Army men from the Siberia division, who were on vacation in the village. This took place on March 11 or 12.
“When he ran into the garden, the soldiers encircled him and started to beat him. They took him for a German spy. The skirmish came to an end, and he started speaking to them, saying that he was not German and asking them to hand him over to the commandant’s office. I was standing there as if thunderstruck. My memory flashed back to the rally and this voice. Then I started from where I was and ran up to the guys.
“I told them, ‘He is not German!’ And they asked, ‘Do you know him?’ ‘No, I don’t. But I hear that he is speaking with a Polish accent as Western Ukrainians do.’
“I immediately guessed that he was the same young man who had spoken at the rally. He understood that I was trying to defend him and said, dying: ‘I am Bohdan. I am a Ukrainian from Lviv.’ And soon afterward he died.”
Bohdan Bandera was buried near Zadyraka’s house. Before covering the body with earth, the residents of Pisky stripped it of the clothes.
All attempts to find official documents that would finally clarify this story have been fruitless. What has survived are a few indirect documentary pieces of evidence. Bohdan Bandera was briefly mentioned in the transcript of Yakovlev’s interrogation that took place on May 30: “He is rumored to have been killed.” On June 28, 1944, the head of the SMERSH’s 4th detachment that operated on the 3rd Ukrainian front, said that Bohdan was not in Mykolaiv oblast.
