Information on the thesis

The  dissertation  characterizes  an  image  of  Ukrainian  national-liberation
movement of 1944–1989 in the information space of Ukrainian SSR. The research is
based on a representative source basis, the structure built on the chronologically and
thematically principle.
The thesis examines some issues on the activities of Ukrainian nationalists in
war and postwar periods through the course of informational confrontation with their
main enemies. Also right next to the main theses that were asserted here some little-
known  moments  from  the  history  of  the  liberation  movement  in  Ukraine  of  the
twentieth century were mentioned.

It was determined the tools that were used by the Soviet authorities to form a
negative  image  of  the  Ukrainian  insurgent  army  and  armed  underground,  the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Autocephalous Churches among the general public. In
that context was  found, that the efforts of the Soviet security  organs consisted not
only of direct operational measures but also the «accusatory» journalistic advocacy.
Describing  the  birth  of  independents  armed  forces  only  as  an  action  plan  of
Nazi Germany institutions, the authors of the Communist era completely rejected any
subjectivity  of  the  Ukrainian  liberation  movement.  For  such  defamation  they
primarily invented definition «Ukrainian-German nationalists». Party-state leadership
of the Soviet Ukraine sought to sow distrust of the population to the OUN and UPA
by the similar terms – «thugs» or «bandits», «thugs assistants» However emphasizes
the  considerable  ambiquity  and  inconsistency  of  reporting,  that  the  example  of
different documents and propagandist materials are quite noticeable.
Outlined  is  a  set  of  measures  and  mechanisms  (from  official  speeches  of
functionaries to the means of printed word and visual images) by which the Soviets
waged incessant fight against the Ukrainian nationalism. The dissertation mentions
separately the techniques aimed at weakening and ultimately destroying the opposing
community of dissentients. Attention is also paid to the attempts of dissidents to resist
this in every way, namely the general denigration of the movement in front of their
fellow citizens as well as in front of the international community.
In  the  dissertation  were  analyzed  the  attitude  of  society  of  UkrSSR  to  the
phenomena  of  liberation  movement  of  1940s–80s.  Since  one  of  the  fundamental
sources of creating the stable picture of that movement is the soviet propaganda, have
been detailed how choiceless this propaganda was and how it grabbed consciousness
of an ordinary resident for his further formation of his own opinion towards certain
historical events.
Key words: OUN, UPA, nationalist underground, non-violent resistance, KGB,
soviet propaganda, samvydav (samizdat).