Yevhen Konovalets

Yevhen Mykhailovych Konovalets (Євген Михайлович Коновалець; 14 June 1891 – 23 May 1938) was a Ukrainian military commander and political leader of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

A veteran of the First World War and the Ukrainian-Soviet War, he is best known as the one of the founding members and leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from its foundation in 1929 to his assassination in 1938.

Life
Konovalets was born 14 June 1891 in the village of Zashkiv in Austro-Hungarian Galicia; today the village is in Lviv Raion, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. His mother Katarzyna (née Wengrzynowska) was ethnically Polish.

Konovalets attended the Lviv Academic Gymnasium and in 1909 enrolled at the University of Lviv, where he studied mathematics. In 1910 he participated in a protest demanding a Ukrainian university in Lviv, during which protest at least one person was killed.

Konovalets became an active member of Prosvita ("Enlightenment"), a Ukrainian educational association, and a representative in the executive committee of the Ukrainian National-Democratic Party. In 1912 he became secretary of Prosvita's Lviv department. In 1913 he became a leader of the local student movement. He was greatly influenced by the nationalist ideology and rhetoric of such prominent Ukrainians as Ivan Bobersky, Myroslav Sichynsky, and Dmytro Dontsov.

Young Konovalets was outwardly modest and placed high demands on himself in all his activities.

In 1909–1912 he immersed himself in social activities in his hometown and neighboring villages, giving lectures and organizing educational Prosvita and sport Sokil (Falcon) societies. During the final years of gymnasium and early student years, Konovalets chose Prosvita because he believed it was the only way to provide mass education in the native Ukrainian language, overcome pro-Moscow influences, and awaken national sentiments among the people.

Family
In 1922 Konovalets married Olha Fedak.

Their son Yurko, born January 1924, grew up in a harmonious, loving household. Due to the family's constant forced relocations, Yurko had to learn different languages for his schooling – German, French, Italian – but at home his mother insisted on their speaking their native Ukrainian.

Military career
In the summer of 1914, Konovalets was mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian Army and during the First World War rose to the rank of a second lieutenant serving in the 19th Regiment of the Lviv Regional Defense. In 1915, he was taken prisoner of war by the Russians during the battles near the mountain Makivka (Carpathian Mountains) and interned in a POW camp in Chornyi Yar, located between Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan. In 1916, he was transferred into the concentration camp near Dubovka. While in captivity he joined a group of former Galician officers (such as Andriy Melnyk, Roman Sushko, and Fedir Chernyk among others) who fled to Kyiv together. In November 1917, together with the Galician-Bucovina Committee, he organized the Halytsko-Bukovynsky Kurin of the Sich Riflemen as part of the Doroshenko Regiment. Two months later he assumed its command and helped suppress the Communist uprising in Kyiv as well as resisting the Antonov-Ovseenko offensive. In March 1918 his riflemen, together with the Zaporizhia Corps of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the reformed Haydamaky Kish of the Sloboda Ukraine, liberated Kyiv from the Soviets. In May 1918 his military unit was disbanded due to its political views.

Political career
In the summer of 1918 he convinced Pavlo Skoropadskyi, Hetman of Ukraine, to create a Special Platoon of Sich Riflemen, which was established in Bila Tserkva. In November 1918 he officially requested a void of the Federal Union with Russia from the Hetmanate and actively supported the forces of the Directoria in the battle of Motovylivka (fought at Motovylivka railway station, near Motovylivka, Kyiv Oblast) in the ousting of Skoropadskyi.

According to Peter Kenez, "On December 14, after the Directorate arrived at an agreement with the Germans, who were anxious to complete their evacuation and therefore promised neutrality, the Army of the Directorate under General Konovalets entered the Ukrainian capital and met only sporadic resistance. Fifteen hundred Russian officers were sequestered in the Pedagogical Museum; their weapons were taken away and they were regarded as prisoners of war."

On December 6, 1919, by the Order of the Head Otaman he demobilized his military formations. The same year he was taken prisoner and interned in a Polish POW camp in Lutsk, although he was released in the spring of 1920 and moved to Czechoslovakia. In 1920, as a result of the shattered struggle for Ukrainian independence, Konovalets set up a new organization capable of clandestine activities on the lands claimed by Ukrainians and controlled by Poland, Russian SFSR, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Created in August of that year in Prague, the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was aimed at armed resistance against Poland and Russia and was involved in the military training of youth and the prevention of any form of cooperation between Ukrainian and Polish authorities. The organization often resorted to terrorist attacks against Polish politicians as well as members of Ukrainian intelligentsia striving for cooperation with Poles (assassination of Sydir Tverdokhlib and Sofron Matviyas ). The name of the organization was inspired by Piłsudski's Polish Military Organisation, which operated during the World War I. The foundation of the organization became the leaders of the Ukrainian Halych Army. After the end of the Polish–Soviet War and the battle for Lviv, Konovalets became the leader of the UVO in the city.

Exile and assassination
In December 1922 Konovalets fled the country. During his exile years he lived in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1929, in Vienna, he took part in the first congress of Ukrainian nationalists, which decided to form an Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), with Konovalets its leader.

He promoted its influence among Ukrainian emigres throughout Europe and America while establishing contacts with intelligence agencies of Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and other countries. He helped form Associations of Sich Riflemen in North America. The OUN's goal was to revive an independent Ukraine via armed struggle.

Konovalets' activities raised Kremlin fears of the OUN's penetration into the Soviet Union. On 23 May 1938 he was assassinated in Rotterdam by a bomb concealed in a box of chocolates disguised as a present from a close friend. The friend was actually an NKVD agent who had infiltrated the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists: Pavel Sudoplatov, who on a recent visit to the Soviet Union had been personally ordered by Joseph Stalin to assassinate Konovalets in retaliation for the 1933 assassination of a diplomat at the Soviet consulate in Lviv.

Sudoplatov, after a period of training, had slipped into Finland in July 1935, using the alias "Pavel Gridgdenko". According to Sudoplatov, Stalin had told him: "This is not just an act of revenge, although Konovalets is an agent of German fascism. Our goal is to behead the movement of Ukrainian fascism on the eve of war and force these gangsters to annihilate each other in a struggle for power."

Legacy
Due to his sudden disappearance, the OUN immediately suspected Sudoplatov of Konovalets' murder. Therefore, a photograph of Sudoplatov and Konovalets together was distributed to every OUN unit. According to Sudoplatov, "In the 1940s, SMERSH... captured two guerrilla fighters in Western Ukraine, one of whom had this photo of me on him. When asked why he was carrying it, he replied, 'I have no idea why, but the order is if we find this man to liquidate him.'"

On 1 October 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy handed a ribbon of honorary to the 131st Separate Reconnaissance Battalion of the Ground Forces to be named in honor of Konovalets.

Commemoration
In 2006, the Lviv city administration announced the future transference of the remains of Yevhen Konovalets, Stepan Bandera, Andriy Melnyk and other key leaders of OUN and UPA to a new area of Lychakiv Cemetery specifically dedicated to heroes of the Ukrainian liberation movement.

On June 17, 2011, in Vilnius, Lithuania the conference "Yevhen Konovalets: Lithuanian citizen - the Ukrainian patriot. Celebration of 120th birthday" was organised by the Lithuanian Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, People's Liberation Movement Research Centre (Ukraine) and Ukrainian organizations in Lithuania.