1944

1944 18 January
The first clash between the UPA and NKVD troops takes place in Volyn.
31 January
At a meeting of the Politburo Stalin gives a speech entitled “About Anti-Leninist Errors and Nationalist Distor-tions in Dovzhenko's Screenplay “Ukraine in Flames.” The film script is severely criticized and declared “anti-Soviet” and a manifestation of “nationalism, national narrow-mindedness.”
19 May
The Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults is created within the Council of People's Commissariats of the USSR. This structure is authorized to control the internal life of all confessions.
11-15 July
On the initiative of the Main Leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists a Grand Assembly is convened in the forest near the village of Luzhok-Horishnii in Turkiv raion, Drohobych oblast. At the assembly representatives of all nationalist organizations decide to create a single organ for the Ukrainian nationalists called the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR) in order to wage a struggle against the Communist regime and to fight for the separation of Ukraine from the USSR. A platform and proclamation of this organ are ratified, and an underground government is elected. Kyrylo Osmak is elected president of the UHVR.
21 July
Stalin signs a decree deporting 86,000 Meskhet Turks and Kurds from the Caucasus.
9 September
In Lublin (Poland) the Soviet Ukrainian government and the Polish Committee of National Liberation conclude an agreement on the evacuation of the Ukrainian population from the territory of Poland and Polish citizens from the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. The head of the Radnarkom of the Ukrainian SSR Nikita Khrushchev signs agreement in the name of the Soviet Ukrainian government; the signatory from the Polish side is E. Osubka-Morawski.
13 September
The President of the UHVR Kyrylo Osmak is arrested. He is sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment. He dies in Vladimir Prison on 16 May 1960

From 1944 to 1952 nearly 500,000 people in the western oblasts of Ukraine were subject to various kinds of repressions, including executions, by the Communists' punitive structures. This figure includes 134,000 people placed under arrest and 153,000 people who were executed.

The “Sovietization” of the western Ukrainian lands takes place under the control of the central Moscow organs. In essence, this is an affirmation of the socialist model that the Bolshevik regime had already tried and tested in the 1920s and 1930s, i.e., the forcible unification of all spheres of life according to the standards of a totalitarian society.

The Communist regime carried out brutal, violent acts in the western Ukrainian lands, in particular deportations of the population. The greatest number of mass deportations took place in 1947, which affected nearly 78,000 people. During 1944-1953 65,906 families, representing a total of 203,662 people, were deported from the western oblasts of Ukraine, with the exception of Zakarpattia oblast.

The oath of a soldier of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Ratified by the UHVR and implemented by order of the Supreme Military Headquarters no. 7 of 19 July 1944.

I, a warrior of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, having taken up arms, solemnly swear by my honor and conscience to the Great Ukrainian Nation, to the Holy Ukrainian Earth, to the blood shed by the Finest Sons of Ukraine, and to the Highest Political Leadership of the Ukrainian People:

To fight for the total liberation of all Ukrainian lands and the Ukrainian people from the occupiers and to achieve the Ukrainian Independent Unified State. In this struggle I shall spare neither blood nor life and will fight to my last breath for ultimate victory over all the enemies of Ukraine.

I will be brave, courageous, and valiant in battle and merciless to the enemies of the Ukrainian land.

I will be an honest, disciplined, and revolutionarily diligent warrior.

I will carry out all the commands of my superiors.

I will strictly maintain military and state secrets.

I will be a worthy comrade in battle and in combat life to all my comrades-in-arms.

If I violate or renounce this oath, then may I be punished by the strict law of the Ukrainian National Revolution and may the contempt of the Ukrainian People fall upon me.

In 1943-1944 the armed formations of the UPA were a significant military force. According to German data, in November 1944 the UPA had 60,000 soldiers. In one way or another UPA detachments controlled a territory of up to 150,000 kilometers with a population of 15 million. The UPA sought to ratify illegal national-state structures and alternative organs to Bolshevik rule.