The United Party for the Liberation of Ukraine (OPVU) began its activities in 1955 in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. Its members were young workers and students: Bohdan Germaniuk, Yarema Tkachuk, Bohdan Tymkiv, Myroslav and Vasyl Ploshchak, Ivan Strutynsky, Mykola Yurchyk, Ivan Konevych, and others. This underground organization was created on the principles of the OUN-UPA, but its activities were purely propagandistic. The OPVU conducted agitation among the population, distributed leaflets printed on a typewriter, and had its own charter, program, and text of an oath. The authors of the charter were Bohdan Tymkiv, Ivan Strutynsky, and Vasyl Ploshchak.
Bohdan Germaniuk recalls: “We decided to conduct agitation work and call upon all of Ukraine, our entire Ukrainian people, to struggle: religious people, the intelligentsia, and workers—we intended to involve everyone in this struggle. In addition, we had plans to contact other republics: with Byelorussia, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, because even then we understood that if we all fought together, the Soviet Union would not be able to withstand it, and so this idea was born among us, to unite all the republics and our entire Ukrainian people to fight for an independent Ukraine”[1].
Unfortunately, the members of the OPVU did not have time to expand their activities beyond Ukraine—their organization was exposed. The first arrests took place on December 4, 1958. Twenty-eight members of the organization were arrested and interrogated. Not all were tried, as some of those detained ended up serving as witnesses in the case. Eight men were convicted: Bohdan Germaniuk, Yarema Tkachuk, Bohdan Tymkiv, Myroslav Ploshchak, and Ivan Strutynsky each received 10 years of imprisonment; Mykola Yurchyk and Ivan Konevych each received 7 years; and Vasyl Ploshchak received 2 years of imprisonment[2].
[1] Audio interview with B. Germaniuk, conducted by V. Ovsiyenko // KHPG Archive, 2000, p. 2.
[2] Ibid., p. 4.
