Makar Kushnir and His Contribution to Nation-Building

Makar Kushnir, a former member of the Ukrainian Central Rada and an active assistant to Yevhen Konovalets in the UVO and OUN, was in the thick of the struggle to restore Ukraine’s independence all his life. After writing a series of programmatic articles in the “Rozbudova Natsii” (“Nation Building” – Transl.) journal about the need to take the most decisive measures to protect national interests, he was involved in a car accident that still raises many questions. However, even the complete loss of his eyesight did not hinder his activities on the information front and did not lead to the termination of operational cultivation by the nkvd of the Ukrainian ssr. On the contrary, according to declassified documents from the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, they tried to insidiously use his serious illness to find out the secrets of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists.

The Year 1917. A Member of the Ukrainian Central Rada

The title page of the case file opened on M. Kushnir by the gpu of the Ukrainian ssr in 1930, reads: “Bohush-Kushnir-Dub”. This is both his surname and his OUN code name, such as Yaroslav Dub and Bohush. He also signed his  numerous theoretical and journalistic articles as B. Dniprianskyi, Yakymenko, and so on. He is considered one of the leading publicists of the Ukrainian national liberation movement. He was an active employee and contributor to the newspapers “Nova Rada”, “Trybuna”, “Svoboda”, “Ukrainskyi Holos”, “Rozbudova Natsii”, and others. However, journalism and information activities were only part of his multifaceted activities, mostly hidden, which the chekists failed to fully track and investigate.

Archival documents contain only general information about the early years of M. Kushnir’s political and public activities. It is noted that he was born in Cherkasy, was a member of the Ukrainian Party of Socialists-Federalists and the author of its program, was a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada from that party and was at that time the editor-in-chief of the government newspaper, as well as a member of the UPR’s delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-1920.

Since then, he has maintained many contacts with prominent Ukrainian figures. A secret officer of the gpu of the Ukrainian ssr “Stepovyi” reported that M. Kushnir “knew all the so-called figures of the UPR closely, including: Holubovych, Lozakivskyi, Levytskyi M.H., Levytskyi M.V., Hrushevskyi, with whom he was on good terms, Yefremov, Nikovskyi, whom he disliked, and others” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 6967. – P. 28).

Agents reported that he corresponded with M. Hrushevskyi and that the latter allegedly promised him a professorship at the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian ssr when he returned from emigration to soviet Ukraine. After all, M. Kushnir was once very active in the Mala Rada (Small Council – the executive body of the Ukrainian Central Rada) and in commissions for the preparation of various draft laws. Back in September 1917, he spoke at the Congress of the Enslaved Peoples of russia in Kyiv with a programmatic report on the future administrative and territorial structure. That report had a great resonance. In it, M. Kushnir proposed to divide the territory of the former russian empire into regions-states with a large amount of sovereignty. M. Hrushevski commented positively on that speech in his memoirs.

As for his participation in the Paris Peace Conference during the UPR Directorate, open sources testify that he was a political advisor to the Ukrainian delegation. At the same time, one of the gpu’s papers states that in 1919 he was sent by the Central Rada to Paris to purchase military equipment for the needs of the UPR. After a series of negotiations, he stayed there. For some time he lived in London. And in 1923 he moved to Vienna.

“During his stay in Vienna,” the same document said, “Bohush-Kushnir kept in touch with Konovalets, publishing articles in the press calling on “the workers of Ukraine to fight against the moscow colonizers for Ukraine’s independence.” At the same time, information of a completely different nature was provided – that in his close circle he had declared his non-partisanship. Taking advantage of this, he allegedly infiltrated the environment of communist journalists and translated articles into Ukrainian for the soviet party press and also made his own contributions. “He is on good terms,” the paper said, “with the editors of the Ukrainian newspapers “Visti” and “Proletarska Pravda” and some prominent communists in Kharkiv and Kyiv. Kushnir was always in correspondence with these persons, drawing from letters from Ukraine information (often of a secret nature) about the internal affairs in the communist (bolshevik) party of Ukraine” (FISU – F.1. – Case 6967. – P. 5).

The editor of those newspapers, as the chekists found out, was Ellanskyi. Further investigations showed that it was the poet, journalist, and party activist Vasyl Ellan-Blakytnyi. Other documents mention that back in 1928, M. Kushnir established contact with Mykola Lyubchenko, a member of the editorial board of the newspaper “Komunist”. Pretending to be a sovietophile, he sent his articles written in the communist spirit.

Besides, he was in contact with the poet, publicist, and one of the most famous representatives of the executed revival, Mykola Khvylovyi. One of the documents states that during Khvyliovyi’s stay in Vienna (1927-1928), M. Kushnir often visited him. At the same time, he met his wife Yulia Umantseva, with whom he corresponded after the poet’s death. He also had contacts with some employees of the soviet consulates in Vienna and Prague, through whom he received some information. This was probably M. Lyubchenko, who in 1929-1931 worked as an adviser to the Embassador of the ussr to Czechoslovakia (arrested in 1934 for counterrevolutionary activities, sentenced to death in 1937).

M. Kushnir tried to closely monitor everything that was happening in Ukraine. As a result, he was considered a well-known expert on soviet Ukraine in his circle. His public contacts helped him a lot. He also had unofficial ones. One of the documents of the gpu stated that he had a contact at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Kharkiv.

All of this worried the Chekists greatly. They suspected that M. Kushnir was deliberately playing the role of a person who allegedly showed a keen interest in everything that was happening in soviet Ukraine and supported certain issues, but in fact was only playing the role assigned to him. The goal was to obtain information about the realities of the stalinist regime and to exert influence on individual figures. But then, as shown by archival documents, this was exactly the case.

The Year 1929. A Member of the Provid of Ukrainian Nationalists

The circumstances of M. Kushnir's rapprochement with the OUN are not reported in archival documents. It is only mentioned that his contacts with E. Konovalets dated back to 1926. In January-February 1929, he took part in the First Congress of the OUN in Vienna. At the Congress, he delivered a speech on “Economic Relations between Ukraine and russia in the ussr”. It was then that  he was elected Chief Judge of the OUN Organizational Court and became a member of the Provid of Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN). He was responsible for the OUN publications in foreign languages.

“In March 1930”, pointed out the next report of the gpu of the Ukrainian ssr, “Kushnir suddenly left Vienna, having received substantial funds from somewhere, and showed up in Geneva under the name Bohush (K’s literary pseudonym in the press of Ukrainian nationalists) as the right hand of the leader of the Provid of Ukrainian Nationalists Konovalets, and took up the position of representative of the Provid and Chief of the Provid’s Press Bureau at the League of Nations” (FISU. – F. 1 – Case 6967. – P. 5).

His responsibilities included coordinating the publication of Ukrainian newspapers abroad and publishing the Ukrainian Information Bulletin in foreign languages. At the same time, he was directly involved in editing the OUN’s official organ, the journal “Rozbudova Natsii” and published his articles in other newspapers.

The researchers point out that M. Kushnir’s articles in the “Rozbudova Natsii” were distinguished by their conceptual nature and touched upon fundamental issues of the liberation struggle and the formation of the OUN’s ideological foundations. He strongly promoted the idea of consolidating enslaved peoples. In particular, he proposed the creation of a League for the Liberation of the Peoples of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Transcaspia. The idea was to coordinate the work of enslaved peoples in the struggle for self-determination of nations.

In his publications, he discussed his own draft model for building the Ukrainian state as a presidential republic, with power divided between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. He rejected the idea of building a state with a dictatorial regime. Instead, he interpreted democracy as the optimal form of government. At this, he considered national dictatorship to be a temporary necessity during the period of statehood establishment.

One of the archival documents states that M. Kushnir was not only the ideologist of the OUN and Yevhen Konovalets’ right hand. He was also in charge of all affairs of the eastern lands. In confirmation of this, copies of his essays entitled “Pan-Ukrainian Union of States” and “Our Policy and Tactics” were sent from foreign residenturas of the gpu. These essays were allegedly prepared for expanded plenums of the OUN, which were supposed to revise certain ideological positions and new tactics of the Organization’s activities in the East of Ukraine.

One of the tactical innovations mentioned was the delivery of literature to the territory of the Ukrainian ssr by balloons. “According to Bohush”, reads one of the agent reports dated 1934, “they ordered 50 balloons in Germany to transport literature. These cylinders burst after flying a certain distance, and the literature scatters. They are going to use them in the spring. They believe that this is a very good method, there is less risk, but there are many readers” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 31.– Vol. 4. – P.32).

A special place in the documents of the gpu of the time was given to the decision of the conference of the Provid of Ukrainian Nationalists, which took place in the summer of 1933 in Berlin. Among a number of other issues, it dealt with the famine in the Ukrainian ssr caused by the policy of the kremlin leadership. The task was to collect information about the crimes of the stalinist regime and convey it to the world community. One of the ways to draw attention to and take revenge for the abuse of Ukrainians was the elimination of Bolshevik figures responsible for such policies and numerous repressions. In particular, it was noted that the PUN Court headed by M. Kushnir sentenced to death second secretary of the central committee of the communist party of Ukraine P. Postyshev, chief of the gpu of the Ukrainian ssr V. Balytskyi, and the people’s commissar of education V. Zatonskyi.

The issue of terror was actively debated in OUN circles. M. Kushnir was directly involved in this and even devoted a number of theoretical articles to it. The case file contains a typewritten copy (translated into russian) of his unpublished article “Terror and Revolution” for the journal “Rozbudova Natsii”. In it, the author emphasized that if a nation is enslaved and oppressed, acts of terror against odious individuals responsible for crimes committed against its existence are possible and even necessary.

“The methods of violence and terror are said to be inappropriate and even harmful”, he reflected, “because the enemies, in turn, will demoralize and introduce anarchy into Ukrainian political reality through provocation. Do these statements deserve attention and justification? No, they cannot be justified. Because in the conditions of moscow’s reality, built on a system of mass terror, espionage and provocations..., is any party-parliamentary struggle for the liberation of our nation possible?”

After presenting a number of arguments, the author stated: “...It [terror] is moral if it is used by an enslaved nation for self-defense in the struggle for its existence and liberation…”. He further pointed out that the leaders and organizers of the “terrible famine tragedy are still safe and sound,  while the dignity and honor of our nation demands that the punitive hand of Ukrainian avengers pay the executioner his due” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 6967. – P. 119-126).

The text of the article, accompanied by a special message, was sent to the leaders of the nkvd of the ussr and the Ukrainian ssr, H. Yagoda, V. Balytskyi, and others, to take immediate decisive measures against M. Kushnir.

The Year 1934. The Victim of a Car Accident

Receiving this information from agents and reporting it to moscow coincide with another event. Around the same time, while attending an economic conference in London, M. Kushnir was injured in a car accident. As a result of his injuries, he began to go blind and soon lost his eyesight completely. Researchers assume that the accident was not an accident and that the stalinist secret services of the time were involved.

No direct confirmation of this was found among the declassified documents. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that M. Kushnir’s operational cultivation was carried out both from the standpoint of the nkvd of the Ukrainian ssr and by foreign residenturas of the nkvd of the ussr in Belgium, Switzerland, Great Britain and other countries where M. Kushnir lived and performed various tasks at that time. He was also one of the defendants in the case “Stavka”, which involved the development and liquidation of Yevhen Konovalets.

A number of reports by agent “Lebed” (Vasyl Khomyak), found in the case “Stavka”, shed light on the hitherto virtually unknown period of M. Kushnir’s activities after the car accident.

The gpu sent “Lebed” abroad in August 1933 under the guise of a refugee from soviet Ukraine. He was given the task of infiltrating the OUN leadership, in particular the inner circle of Yevhen Konovalets. He arrived in Belgium on a soviet cargo ship. At the time, M. Kushnir was in Brussels on some business. So he was involved in contact with the “refugee”. As pointed out in the documents, he immediately recognized the guest and recalled that in 1918, when the Central Rada, of which he was then a member, evacuated from Kyiv to Zhytomyr, he and V. Khomyak were traveling in the same carriage.

The memory of that meeting and their old acquaintance left an imprint on further events. After M. Kushnir was involved in a car accident and lost his eyesight, he was forced to retire from active political activity. With this in mind, the members of the PUN decided that the best option would be to temporarily let V. Khomyak live in M. Kushnir’s apartment. Khomyak was to help the blind man in his everyday life and in the work that he could still do in the interests of the Organization. M. Kushnir himself was not going to step down from leading roles and sought to be useful to the Ukrainian cause. This included the preparation of documents for conferences, meetings, and congresses of the OUN, articles, speeches, and the processing of various documents. That is, in that situation, V. Khomyak was to become M. Kushnir’s secretary.

The decision was supported by Ye. Konovalets. This was reported in April 1934 by a resident of the nkvd in Belgium. In his report to moscow, he wrote as follows: “By a strange coincidence, on April 10, I had to leave Geneva for Brussels in the same carriage as Bohush. Bohush, about 42 years old, tall above average, brown-haired, wearing dark glasses, apparently very poorly sighted. He was accompanied by two Ukrainians, one of whom looked like Konovalets. Later he was identified as Bohush, when “Lebed” gave his description” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 31. – Vol. 4. – PL. 193).

At that time, “Lebed”, who appears in the document as Naidenko (a code name given to him by OUN leaders abroad), reported to the nkvd about a letter which  M. Kushnir brought for him from Ye. Konovalets. In the letter, the OUN leader pointed out: “Dear Sir, Comrade Naidenko. We are very dissatisfied with your refusal to go to Finland to organize the point. Bohush will talk to you about your future work. But as long as there is time, I ask you not to leave Bohush on his own but to help him in his work for the next month and a half, especially in reading and writing letters, which Bohush, who has eyesight problems, cannot do himself” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 31. – Vol. 4. – P.194).

During the coexistence under the same roof, agent “Lebed” prepared and handed over through the nkvd residentura a number of reports and copies of materials that he secretly made, taking advantage of M. Kushnir’s illness. It was from “Lebed” that moscow learned the details of the planning of attacks against P. Postyshev, V. Balytskyi and V. Zatonskyi and the role of the “secret five OUN members” who were to go to soviet Ukraine. He also reported on Ye. Konovalets and M. Kushnir’s plans to organize the escape of prominent Ukrainians abroad, including soviet party figure Oleksandr Shumskyi and writer Mykola Kulish.

One nkvd’s document reads: “Bohush, in a conversation with “Lebed” told him a lot about Shumskyi and the escape that was prepared for him, and shared that he tried to influence the playwright Kulish, but so far nothing has worked” (FISU. – F.1. – Case 31. – Vol. 4. – P. 15). Another document on this matter stated that M. Kushnir tried to persuade M. Kulish to escape and publish an anti-soviet declaration on behalf of intellectuals of soviet Ukraine through some unknown person.

At that time, Ukrainian soviet and party activist O. Shumskyi was exiled in Krasnoyarsk for anti-soviet nationalist activities, murdered in 1946 on Stalin’s orders and with the direct participation of P. Sudoplatov on his way from exile to Kyiv.    Dramatist, publicist, and cultural figure of the “Executed Renaissance” period, M. Kulish, was arrested in 1934 and accused of counterrevolutionary activity. He was executed in 1937 in the Sandarmokh tract (Karelia) along with many other Ukrainian cultural figures.

“Lebed” gained M. Kushnir’s trust to such extent  that after numerous conversations, the latter completely dispelled the suspicions he had about the guest after the first meetings. In view of this, the agent quoted  Kushnir’s words in one of his messages: “Here I am talking to you and I see what a nice and open man you are. I will never believe that you were really sent to us by the bolsheviks.”

The loss of his eyesight, along with other reasons, prevented M. Kushnir from recognizing V. Khomyak as a bolshevik agent. Although he did not have such a task. Meanwhile, V. Khomyak reported to the nkvd curators everything he learned during their communication. At the same time, these reports indicate that M. Kushnir, despite losing his eyesight, at least in 1934, did not pay attention to the disease, tried to keep abreast of all the affairs of the OUN leadership, actively defended his position and his vision of further development of the Organization and continuation of   the struggle for the restoration of Ukraine’s independence. The loss of his eyesight did not prevent him from seeing that the main enemy of Ukraine’s independence was moscow.

For the last 17 years of his life, M. Kushnir was forced to live in Belgium without leaving. He passed away on August 2 (according to other sources, September 16), 1951. Under soviet rule, his name was silenced. Honoring him began in modern times. In April 2016, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building of the former Cherkasy Men’s Gymnasium, where he studied, and in May of that year, Paris Commune Lane was renamed Makar Kushnir Lane.

Meanwhile, his great journalistic output is still waiting for thorough research. In particular, the works devoted to the problems of the state structure of the future independent Ukraine and joint actions of the enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe. He promoted the idea of restoring Ukraine-Rus’ leading role in Eastern Europe, as it was in the times of Princes Volodymyr and Yaroslav. In his view, this involved the creation of a strong independent state on the entire Ukrainian ethnic territory and regional leadership in Eastern Europe.