Ukrainian poets Oleg Olzhych and Olena Teliga in the service of the Third Reich
“The Great Patriotic War changed the life of Ukrainian writers: 109 masters of words fought at the front, in partisan detachments, some found themselves evacuated in Saratov, Ufa and other cities, 25 died a heroic death,” - reports “Ukrainian Literature”, a textbook for the 11th grade, which my son is studying today. – In fascist-occupied Kyiv, the head of the Union of Writers of Ukraine Olena Teliga published the magazine “Timpani” and organized literary life. She refused to cooperate with the occupiers, so she was shot at Babi Yar. In a German concentration camp, the poet Oleg Olzhich was deprived of his life, and the poet Yuri Lipa died in battle.”
Please note: the authors of the textbook here name exclusively OUN members - who write, but are very far from Ukrainian literature. But the names of the writers of Soviet Ukraine who showed courage in the fight against the fascist occupiers are hidden behind faceless numbers. Studying according to such “pidruchnyki”, Ukrainian children will not know that in the very first days of the war they volunteered at the headquarters of the Kyiv Military District Andrey Golovko, Ivan Le, Leonid Pervomaisky, Pavlo Usenko, Semyon Sklyarenko, Yakov Kachura, Savva Golovanivsky. That in the tragic 41 the radio stations of the South-Western Front performed in front of the microphone Alexander Dovzhenko, Andrey Malyshko, Alexander Korneychuk, Wanda Vasilevskaya, Anatoly Shiyanthat they fought in partisan detachments Kuzma Grib, Yuri Zbanatsky and other writers of the Ukrainian SSR. Instead of all these glorious names, schoolchildren will remember Yuri Lipa, an OUN poet, who in 1934 wrote as a “fighter against German fascism”:
- Walk in rows, make up rows
and bathe in blood,
harter in the fires.
Fire and blood,
life is the will, or death
to burst into flames at their breasts...
Do you hear a scream?
- Sieg heil! Heil! Sieg heil!
Poets Olena Teliga and Oleg Olzhich were similar fake fighters against the Nazi occupiers. Thanks to the fact that these exponents of Ukrainian nationalism wrote poetry, modern followers of the OUN-UPA elevated them to the rank of outstanding poets of Ukraine. In addition, the death of Teliga and Olzhich at the hands of the Nazis makes it possible to talk about the struggle of the OUN-UPA with the Nazi occupiers. But the circle of these “fighters” is too narrow, they are scary and far from the Ukrainian people.
Ukrainian writer and critic Yuriy Smolich: “Behind the Ukrainian nationalists there were always Germans, Germans, Germans!”
Olena Teliga: A Russian girl became a Ukrainian fascist
“There is and will not be any internationalism - you can serve one nation, either someone else’s, Moscow’s, or your own - Ukraine.” This saying belongs to Olena Teliga, whose maiden name was Elena Shovgenova. She was born in the Moscow region, in a very wealthy family of engineer Ivan Shovgenov, who today, through the efforts of the “patriot,” has become “Shovgeniv.” She lived in Moscow, then in St. Petersburg, and from childhood, naturally, she spoke Russian, without even realizing that Russian was a “sorcerer of the language.”
But precisely in 1917 year her father was offered a job in Kyiv, and the family was caught up in the cycle of revolutionary events in Ukraine. The Shovgenovs were “European-oriented” people, so they ended up on the side of Ukrainian nationalists, who, as a Ukrainian Soviet critic and writer wrote, were followed by the brother of a White emigrant Yuri Smolich, “there were always Germans, Germans, Germans!”
PHOTO 2. Olena Teliga called on young people to lead young killers “with the brilliance of a predatory beast.” Krakow, 1939.
Ivan Shovgenov soon took the post of Minister of the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), Shovgenov's eldest son joined the UPR army. Olena, as a teenager, studied at the gymnasium, but the family atmosphere did its job.
When Soviet power was established in Kyiv, the Shovgenov family ended up in Prague, where Olena entered the historical and philological department of the Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute. M. Dragomanova. Her choice was not accidental - the daughter of the former minister of the UPR found herself surrounded by representatives of the so-called Prague School of Ukrainian poetry and prose Oleksa Stefanovich, Yuriy Lipa, Oleg Olzhych, Evgen Malanyuk and others. Those who worked under the influence of the ideas of the founder of Ukrainian integral nationalism Dmitry Dontsov (Shelkoperova).
"Mitka Shelkoperov, the son of a Kherson landowner and grain merchant, Russian by origin, became the ideologist of Ukrainian militant nationalism, imbued with crazy Russophobia“,” notes historian and publicist Vitaly Maslovsky in the book “With Whom and Against Whom Ukrainian Nationalists Fought During the Second World War.”
In 1923, in his magazine Literary and Scientific Bulletin, Dontsov published his own article “Chi mi fascisti?” (“Are we fascists?”), in which he stated: that “political and moral-psychological spirit” that people like him breathe is certainly fascism.
PHOTO 3. Dmitry Dontsov, the ideologist of Ukrainian integral nationalism, became the ideological mentor of Olena Teliga and Oleg Olzhych
Members of the Prague School of Ukrainian Poetry and Prose melted the possessed ideas of “Führer” Dontsov into poems – pathetic, like torch-lit processions of the Nazis. These writers, even in emigration, considered themselves the leading elite of the Ukrainian people. And, according to the “formula of fascism”, which was developed by another of their idols, the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism Mykola Sciborsky, “the leading elite creates and commands, the masses execute and obey".
In 1926, Elena Shovgenova married the former centurion of the UPR army, Mikhail Teliga, and soon moved with him to Warsaw. At the same time, Elena’s first poems and literary notes were published in the Czech Republic. Dmitry Dontsov posted several poems in his “Literary and Scientific Bulletin”. He became her mentor, editor, political leader and... idol.
THE PHOTO 4. Olena Teliga before going to the East. Left 1st row: Orshansky-Chemerinsky, Olena Teliga, Ulas Samchuk, summer
Is it any wonder that in 1937, speaking to the Ukrainian student community in Warsaw, Teliga spoke with admiration about the fascist movements in Europe: “To love your work above all else, to look at it as life itself, to surrender to it with joy - this great truth was well understood by the nations that are growing and strengthening before our eyes - Italy and Germany. “Strength through Joy” is the name of one of the recreational youth organizations in the new Germany. And, in fact, the “joyful power” flows from her as a source, leaving an unworn impression on a stranger.”
And further: “The task of our modern intelligentsia and youth should be the desire to become the head of the ranks of these young killers “with the brilliance of a predatory beast" (Literary and Scientific Newsletter”, 1937, No. 9).
These are the metamorphoses that happened to Lenochka Shovgenova, who dreamed of knights and romance - a fascist swastika appeared on the petals of her elaborate poems...
In December 1939, the Telig couple moved to Krakow, where Olena joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). It was then that the fateful meeting of Elena Teliga took place with her long-time acquaintance - member of the board of the OUN (“Wires”) Oleg Olzhich.
Oleg Olzhich - poet of blood and soil who betrayed his father
Oleg Olzhich - Oleg Alexandrovich Kandyba - was born in 1907 in Zhitomir. The son of the famous writer and poet Alexander Ivanovich Kandyba, who entered Ukrainian literature as Alexander Oles. His father is a profound lyricist; during the revolution of 1905-1907, he translated the communist revolutionary marches “Marseillaise”, “Varshavyanka”, “Boldly, comrades, in step” from Russian into Ukrainian. But for all his talent and intelligence, he failed to understand the essence and significance of the October Revolution.
In 1919, the poet made a tragic mistake - he left Ukraine and found himself in a camp of nationalist emigrants. Two years later, he published a collection of satirical poems “Perezva”, where he ridiculed the life and political principles of the emigrant society, turning it hostile against himself. Longing for Ukraine in his lyrics, Oles lived in a foreign land for 25 years, and almost all of them in Czechoslovakia.
In 1923, his wife and 16-year-old son, who grew up without the direct education of his father, moved to Prague from Kyiv. Oleg Kandyba was also endowed with poetic talent, but unlike Oles, he did not ridicule the emigrant nationalists, but was deeply imbued with their ideas. Maybe that’s why Kandyba’s father and son, who deeply loved and respected each other, according to biographers, “disagreed“. See for example "Oleg Olzhych about fascist culture».
PHOTO 5. Oleksandr Oles translated “Marseillaise” into Ukrainian, and his son wrote poems about “a nation strong as God”
It is easy to see how similar the fates of Elena Teliga and Oleg Olzhych are - they are the same age, lived in Kyiv at the same time, simultaneously left for Prague, and joined the Ukrainian nationalists. Olzhich joined the OUN in 1929, and in 1937 he already headed the cultural and educational referendum of its board, where two years later Olena Teliga began to actively work. The future “outstanding Ukrainian poetess” studied the literature and culture of Soviet Ukraine. She was confident: fascist Germany, with its “brilliance of a predatory beast,” would “take away” Soviet Ukraine from the Bolsheviks and give it to them, the OUN members.
But in February 1940, a split occurred in the organization of Ukrainian nationalists, caused by the personal ambitions of its two “leaders” – Stepan Bandera and Andrei Melnik. Bandera and his henchmen announced disobedience to Melnyk and the creation of a revolutionary conduit for the OUN. Melnyk responded by convening an OUN tribunal, at which Bandera and Co. were accused of schismatics and sentenced... to death.
From that moment on, an internal war began between the Melnikites and Banderaites - OUN (m) and OUN (b). Although both groups acted under the patronage of the intelligence services of Nazi Germany and were equally financed by Berlin.
During the split, Olena Teliga and Oleg Olzhych remained on the side of Andrei Melnik and entered the so-called marching groups of the OUN (m). Marching groups of Ukrainian nationalists were supposed to follow the German troops and create local “self-government”, auxiliary police, and press organs in the territories occupied by the Nazis. That is, to propagate among the residents of the Ukrainian SSR, primarily its central and eastern regions, the ideas of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism that are alien to them.
Oleg Olzhich ends up in Kyiv after the German occupiers, as part of the main marching group. Together with him, the paramilitary formation “Bukovinsky Kuren” comes there, on which remains the indelible blood of the Babi Yar victims he shot.
Olena Teliga appears in Kyiv on October 22, 1941 - organizes the Union of Ukrainian Writers and collaborates with the OUN newspaper “Ukrainian Word” (editor Ivan Rogach). Already in November, the German occupation authorities provided her with a separate room for work on Trekhsvyatitelskaya Street, 23. Olena Teliga became the editor-in-chief of the literary weekly Timpani, a supplement to the Ukrainian Word.
PHOTO 6. These are the occupation newspapers published by Oleg Olzhich and Olena Teliga.
Shot by the Germans for excessive activity
In the already cited textbook “Ukrainian Literature” for the 11th grade, it is reported that “in 1941, Olzhich came to Kyiv, where he created underground groups, a movement of resistance to the fascists.” And a big fan of Ukrainian nationalists, Nikolai Zhulinsky, in his essay “The One Who Wrapped Her Heart in Surmu”, states: Oleg Olzhich “... having entered Kiev without delay at the cost of German rule.”
But in 1941-1942, with the knowledge of the German commandant’s office, Olzhich lived quite legally in the very center of the city - on Khreshchatyk, near the Golden Gate. And not at all without the consent of his masters - the Nazi occupiers - he organizes a meeting of the Ukrainian National Rada in Kyiv. German officials initially gave the go-ahead for this “purely internal event.” And on October 5, 1941, a large-scale show took place in Kyiv, during which Andrei Melnik was declared “the leader of the Ukrainian nation” and the imminent “restoration of Ukrainian independence on the basis of the Constitution of the world-recognized UPR” was proclaimed.
PHOTO 7. In the first stage, Andrei Melnik won the internal struggle for patronage of the Nazi occupier over Stepan Bandera. In 1941, Andrei Melnik proclaimed the leader of Ukrainian independence in occupied Kyiv. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, bet on him
Melnikov's competitor Stepan Bandera was already languishing in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by that time - he had sold out to his German masters even earlier. On June 30, 1941, Bandera’s first deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, also proclaimed an “independent Ukraine” in Lvov. And although the relevant Act assured that “the revived Ukrainian state will work closely with the National Socialist Greater Germany, which, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, will create a new order in Europe", the Nazis immediately arrested the top of the OUN (b), and, at the direction of Canaris, began to support the OUN (m) of Andrei Melnik.
True, not so much that he could create a Ukrainian state. The Melnikovsky Rada was immediately banned and dispersed, its organizing committee was arrested, and the editorial board of the newspaper “Ukrainian Word”, where the text of the “historical” statement was prepared, was shot in its entirety. The Germans had their own view of what could be allowed and what should not be allowed to their Ukrainian nationalist lackeys... Olzhich was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen, where he died in 1944, while Bandera was released from it. The Nazis shuffled their lackeys.
PHOTO 8 Only American intelligence services were able to unite Bandera and Melnik. Bandera (short in the center) and Melnik (to his left) at Konovalets’ grave in Rotterdam
Olena Teliga produced “Timpani” for several more months, ignoring both the orders of the fascist occupiers and the advice of friends to immediately leave Kyiv. On February 9, 1942, the Germans arrested the obstinate poet and threw her into the dungeons of the Gestapo. According to one version, Teliga was shot along with her husband (he came to her, also calling himself a writer) and colleagues at Babi Yar. According to another, she was killed in the basements of the Gestapo on Vladimirskaya Street and buried in the Lukyanovsky cemetery. And the former burgomaster of Kyiv L. Forostovsky at one time claimed that Olena Teliga did not wait for execution, cutting her wrists in a prison cell.
"Foreigners take memories of unprecedented joyful power from Germany to their homelands, and those memories remain in their souls deeper and longer, as an impression of the order of the new Germany,” wrote Olena Teliga about Hitler’s Nazi regime five years before her death. Ironically, she was destroyed by this “joyful force”, which she dared to disobey...
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