Four Bandera

Recently, in the avalanche of information about the Perm-36 museum, there are sometimes reasoning that the main contingent of the prisoners in this colony were the Bandera . I would like to make clarity to this issue once and for all, based not on ideological orientation, but based on specific facts and documents.

Under the "Bandera" - it is clear that there is no such term in legal documents - they mean the so -called "nationalists". All of them were convicted under two articles of the accusations: in the "treason of the Motherland" and in "organizational activities aimed at preparing or committing especially dangerous state crimes, to create an organization aimed at committing such crimes, as well as participation in an anti -Soviet organization", without accusations of "anti -Soviet agitation and promotion." Some of them also have accusations of terrorist acts.

The prisoners of three Perm political camps (colonies for especially dangerous state criminals) often moved from one to another. Some are noted in all three. Available sources do not allow you to accurately determine which prisoners were contained in each of the camps in one or another period. But in the archive of the autonomous non-profit organization "Perm-36" there are copies of the full lists of prisoners of all three camps, listing the articles of the sentence of each of them, as well as copies of accounting cards of most of the prisoners. These documents allow you to make a fairly complete idea of the composition of the prisoners of all three Perm political camps.

Prisoners convicted of combining charges of treason and participation in an anti -Soviet organization, without accusing anti -Soviet agitation, in the total list of 994 prisoners - 173 people, or 17.4%. They were arrested in a wide range from 1947 to 1980. Among them were Russians, in particular the creator of the "All-Russian Social-Christian Union of Liberation of the People" Igor Ogurtsov.

The instructive materials of SMERSH and party bodies identified three categories of participants in the nationalist underground in Western Ukraine and the Baltic: active members, reserve and sympathetic. Active members - the "forces of the armed order" - belonged to the permanent composition of the armed nationalist underground. To the reserve - potential militants who could participate, as an amplification, in separate promotions. They attributed those who did not take part in the armed struggle, but helped militants with food, transport, money, information.

To say that the Perm-36 camp contained mainly Bandera, of course, do not have to

All three categories were subject to arrest and condemnation. The first - active members of the "Forces of the Armed Order" - as a rule, were sentenced to the highest extent. A lot has been written about this, the information is contained in published sources. This group includes 10 prisoners sentenced to a “highest extent”, then replaced by the maximum term of conclusion. 92 prisoners from among the "nationalists" were not accused of committing terrorist acts, that is, they, according to the Soviet judicial authorities, did not belong to the armed underground. The rest - 71 prisoners, had such an accusation, but most of them received the terms of imprisonment below the maximum. Apparently, these were those whom Smersh's instructions were attributed to the "nationalist reserve".

The Perm-36 camp was tougher compared to two other Perm political camps, and it is possible that in some period the percentage of “nationalists” in it was more than two others, but to say that this camp “contained mainly Bandera”, of course, does not have to. There was simply no such number of "nationalists".

And specifically about the "Bandera". If you do not interpret expansion, then they understood the members of the armed underground of Western Ukraine, primarily from among the "Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists" - OUN. The OUN margin is contained only on four cards from the number of those whose copies are in the archives of ANO "Perm-36".

Viktor Shmyrov-candidate of historical sciences, director of ANO "Perm-36"