This paper is a study of the history of the Ukrainian nationalist movement which arose in Western Ukraine in the 1920's and reached the peak of its development during the German-Soviet war of 1941-45. Emphasis is given to the War period when this movement was able to penetrate the Ukrainian SSR in the wake of the German advance and occupation of Soviet territories. The study focuses on the development of the politics of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'ykh Nafsionalistiv-OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Amy OJkrayins'ka Povstanss'ka Armiya-UPA1 which were the principal nationalist parties during the period, and examines their roles in the light of the changing balance of military forces and the attitudes of Eastern and Western Ukrainians to the German occupation. The OUN was formed in 1929 as a fusion of several nationalist groups in Western Ukraine and in East European Ukrainian communities. The programme adopted by the OUN at its founding Congress called for the establishment of an independent corporatist state to include all ethnographically Ukrainian territories--Soviet Ukraine, Bukovinia and Bessarabia in Northern Rumania, Transcarpathia in Czechoslovakia and the Ukrainian provinces of Poland. In the course of its activity during the decade before the outbreak of the Second World War, the nationalist movement succeeded in becoming the principal spokesman for national liberation with its own particular proposed solutions. The ascendancy of the OUN concurred with the demise of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (CPWU), the organisation which had championed national aspirations of the Western Ukrainian populace in the 1920's. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)
