During the Great Patriotic War, about 1.5 million Ukrainian citizens are believed to have participated in the guerilla movement, comprising 46 large guerilla formations, 1,993 guerilla detachments and 3,992 underground groups.
These courageous fighters are credited with the deaths of 465,000 enemy soldiers and officers, as well as the destruction of 5,019 military echelons, 1,566 tanks and 13,500 automobiles. They destroyed 211 planes, sank 105 vessels, ruined thousands of bridges, and smashed hundreds of garrisons.
To combat these guerillas, Nazi commanders diverted 120,000 soldiers from the front. The guerillas lost more than 200,000 people during the war, and the fascists burned 250 Ukrainian villages in retaliation.
Apart from significant dates, the history of any nation is made up of people whose personalities express the spirit, talent and the psychological portrait of the nation they represent. Learning more about these personalities held in the nation's collective memory, one can easily understand the mentality of the nation. These charismatic personalities reflect the attitude of the nation to paramount values, which is why they are respected and remembered.
Ukrainians have always put certain people first: The most respected of them are the defenders of the motherland and the common people from enemies and oppressors. These are talented creators, healers and authors of songs and tales. We learned the names of the founders of Kyiv from the ancient chronicles. Their names were Kyi, Dir, Khorev and their sister Lybid. Today, the bronze monument to the four members of that family is the symbol of our city. Our memory keeps alive the name of the miraculous hero Illya Mouromets and two monks: the doctor Agapiy and Nestor the Chronicler.
We remember many names of the Cossack leaders from the period of the liberating war - Petro Sagaydachny, Petro Doroshenko, Ivan Sirko and Petro Kalnysh. Ukrainians will never forget the leaders of the peasant rebellion: Maxim Zaliznyak, Ivan Gonta and Ustym Karmelyuk. We appreciate the songs of the poet Maria Churay and the works of other legendary authors.
The 19th century gave us the military surgeon, Mykola Pyrogov. When I was a child, I used to hear stories about Pyrogov's ability to reattach hands amputated by mortar shells.
The nation endowed these personalities with exaggerated power and wisdom, honor and nobility - we endowed them with the features we wanted to see in our idols and defenders.
It is therefore not surprising that history tends to treat these people charitably, overlooking their human faults and foibles. This is a necessary process as mortals are transformed into legends.
My contemporaries, especially those who survived the German fascist occupation and witnessed the resistance guerilla movement, tend to make legends of their heroes - the remarkable Kalashnik, about whom I have already written in The Ukrainian Observer, and the guerilla general Sydir Kovpak, a man twice named Hero of the Soviet Union.
During the occupation Kovpak was the commander of the biggest group of guerilla detachments. These guerilla raiders fought many battles against the German Army, destroying their communications and killing their soldiers. The fascist commanders had to transfer divisions from the front to fight Kovpak. There were times when Kovpak was dealt setbacks, and was forced from some regions, but he was never eliminated. Author Ivan Stadnyuk claims that Kovpak was one of few commanders who - like Alexander the Great or Alexander Suvorov - did not lose a single battle. The scale of his military operations in the rear of the enemy was so great that before Allied forces landed in France, the territory on which Kovpak fought was called the "second front."
Kovpak's reputation for invincibility was such that small German detachments sometimes let guerilla groups go without resistance in the mistaken belief that they were Kovpak's divisions. Near the end of 1943, a large guerilla detachment was passing through the village where I lived. The German commandants simply ran away, while the Romanian garrison remained totally neutral. It was only after the war that I learned that Kovpak had not headed the detachment.
Kovpak's reputation for invincibility also lead detachments of the UBA (Ukrainian Rebel Army), which fought against Germans and Soviet guerillas in western Ukraine, to remain neutral when Kovpak moved from the south into the Carpathian Mountains.
Today, some of the surviving rebels who fought against the Soviets say that Kovpak negotiated their neutrality with them. This is most probably not true. The rebels had no chance to resist the powerful Kovpak and his people. The fight against Kovpak would have compromised them as the occupiers' confederates.
Josef Stalin, as commander-in-chief, ordered Kovpak on a great 1,000-kilometer raid to the Carpathian Mountains, where he was to destroy the communications at the rear of the enemy and to disable the oil wells in the Carpathian region. The Germans had constructed defensive facilities along the way, the remains of which can still be seen near bridges. Huge numbers of soldiers were sent to locate Kovpak in the mountains and to kill him. They failed.
Thousands were attracted by the opportunity to fight alongside the charismatic Kovpak. As the Red Army retreated, it left many men behind to recuperate from their injuries. But Kovpak was selective, and vetted his troops carefully. He understood that the Germans could easily use their captives as agents. Kovpak's prudence was justified. He kept his detachments secure against enemy agents, ensuring that his operations were unexpected. Surprise, after all, is the guerilla's most potent weapon.
Even so, there were failures, which became public only after the war. German counterespionage worked well, even against Kovpak's talented fighters. Many of the betrayals and failures, which occurred early in the war, were attributed to inexperience.
Kovpak obtained his first guerilla experience during the Civil War. He also had military experience as a cavalryman with the famous Chapaev division. In addition, he was able to communicate easily with different officials. In fact, people who knew him said that his talent for understanding people, evaluating their skills and their ability to apply them was one of his greatest strengths.
Kovpak chose Semen Rudnev to lead a guerilla detachment. Rudnev, a commissar and professional military officer had been disgraced, and the Soviet security service encouraged Kovpak to pass him over. But he saw ability in Rudnev, and in time the two became close partners in war. Rudnev had experience and talent that complimented Kovpak's own. Both are remembered as prominent Ukrainian guerilla leaders.
As a young man, I had the opportunity to meet Kovpak. After graduation, I was sent to work to the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Kovpak was in charge of the department where I was supposed to work. In fact, he was deputy head of the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada for a long time. The interview took place in the office of the head of the Presidium.
I remember that Kovpak asked me simple and capacious questions very different from the official, standard questions set out by the head of the Presidium. In one hour, he learned almost everything about my life and my parents, my attitude toward life and my preferences in art, literature and poetry. I was rather surprised, as Kovpak did not have a regular education. He was a self-taught person who attended various courses, proving that a talented person does not necessarily have to study in an academy to have a good education.
One thing impressed me during that meeting. He produced a leather tobacco pouch on which was embroidered, "To grandfather Kovpak, from the pupils of the children's home." Then, he extended his hand to tear off a piece of newspaper to roll a cigarette. At this second, Mr. Nyzhnyk (the head of the Presidium) took the newspaper away and looked at Sydir Artemovych with reproach, indicating that Kovpak should not smoke cigarettes made from newspapers and stuffed with cheap tobacco. He handed a pack of Kazbek cigarettes to his deputy. Sydir Artemovych mumbled something angrily, and said: "Never mind, I do not need to show off in front of this guy. He is ours." I was pleased that Kovpak did not take me for a stranger. In fact, I was "theirs" because I truly wished to work with this person, not because he was the famous "grandfather Kovpak," but because he often used his authority (or, as the high officials said, "abused his position") to help ordinary people.
Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to work with him. However, every year when the day of guerilla glory or Kovpak's birthday is celebrated, I read the newspaper accounts attentively. I feel that people sincerely celebrate these holidays because they love their hero, a man whose monument will one day stand at the entrance to the capital, as was once promised.
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