During the Second World War, the Ukrainian patriotic resistance movement fighting for an independent Ukraine known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) engaged in fierce battles for survival on several fronts – against both Nazi and Soviet troops.
For nearly a decade after the war officially ended for most countries, they continued their insurgency against Soviet forces in the forests of Western Ukraine.
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Upwards of 90 percent of fighters were farmers or villagers. They tended to come from religious families. Some of them were even children of clergymen, and their Christian faith with the accompanying national traditions was a natural expression of their hope for a better future.
The military command sought to maintain their troops’ morale by encouraging traditional holidays, ceremonies, and rituals. Archives contain instructions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) authorities dated 1946 to exploit St. Nicholas Day, New Year, and Christmas for propaganda purposes, uniting the people and revolutionaries in mutual aid and solidarity.
So, Christmas was among the most celebrated holidays, notwithstanding the circumstances in which Ukrainian insurgents found themselves.
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At that time, Christmas was celebrated on Jan. 7, as the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches, the two dominant confessions in Ukraine, adhered to the Julian calendar. It would not be until 2023 that both churches adopted the revised Gregorian calendar, shifting Christmas to Dec. 25.
Every year since 1943, when the first bands of the UPA emerged, various echelons of its command ordered preparations and issued statements to greet troops.
Combat leaders typically commemorated fallen heroes and expressed their support to those in the enemy’s prisons and camps.
They encouraged resilience and strength in the fight for freedom and faith in the victory that would bring an independent Ukrainian State.
A Christmas card with OUN district leader Roman Shchepansky’s (‘Bui-Tur’) greeting signature. Lviv Oblast, January 1951.
“May we prepare our axes, bayonets, and machine guns and learn to wield them to conquer a Free Ukraine for ourselves and to pass it on to future generations. Let today’s Christmas – a symbol of the birth of a new idea, the creator of which was the Victorious Christ – be the birth of our new spiritual effort against violence in the name of an eternal new ideal – the Freedom of Man and the People,” was the Christmas address by the Turiv Group Headquarters in 1944.
OUN’s underground network supported the UPA’s logistics and was ordered to build up a stock of food to provide troops with Christmas Eve supper. Then cooks, often assisted by civilian women, made 12 Christmas dishes, including the obligatory kutia, boiled wheatberries with raisins and honey, according to the tradition.
When it was possible, with German or Soviet forces far away, Ukrainian fighters tried to join civilians in celebrations. Some even managed to get a leave to visit their families.
Christmas carolers in the UPA could be as depicted in this card, printed in the underground.
“We prayed near the Christmas tree decorated with cones and sat down to the Holy Supper,” said Volodymyr Titiun, codename “Bludny,” about the 1947 Christmas in the Lemko region.
“There were no 12 dishes, no family, but faith, enthusiasm, and carols united our insurgent family. At the request of section leaders and riflemen, our commander allowed us to go to the village… We walked from house to house, caroled together… In the morning, we returned to the camp.”
Divine service was a must on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. If the tactical situation prevented fighters from attending church, then a priest would come to a forest camp to celebrate among soldiers. Many UPA units had their own chaplains on duty.
To create a special festive atmosphere in the woods, members of the UPA sometimes decorated their Christmas trees with cartridge belts, hung hand grenades as toys, and placed a torch on the top as a star.
‘Pre-eternal God Was Born’. A picture from an OUN magazine with insurgents as carolers and the OUN emblem as the star
Another embodiment of the Ukrainian Christmas tradition was the vertep, or the Nativity Play, a drama that presented the Nativity scene. Insurgents, often together with local civilians, performed in forest camps or remote villages. Sometimes they were rather creative, at times including the figures of Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill in their play, thus turning the religious drama into a political satire.
The best gift for every UPA soldier was, of course, a leave of absence to their families, as Christmas was deemed a family holiday. Leaves, however, were rather rare practice
“Thy Nativity, O Christ our God” A UPA Christmas card.
Instead, commanders and the OUN underground tried to please their soldiers with Christmas presents. Packages might contain fruit, buns, cakes, tobacco, sausage, mittens, socks, shirts, various knick-knacks, or just a card with wishes.
“The men experienced a pleasant moment as each insurgent received a holiday gift in the form of a package. The insurgents were as happy as children to receive this humble gift, in which they found a comb, a mirror, socks, soap, cigarettes, and various sweets,” recorded the chronicle of Buini (“The Impetuos”) Company, Military District “Lysonia” in Ternopil Oblast in 1944.
The Siromantsi (“Wolves”) Company in the Carpathians were extremely happy to get plenty of presents, sent by local villagers on Jan. 6, 1944.
More often, however, injured insurgents in field hospitals were the first recipients of such gifts, prepared by the OUN Women Network or the Ukrainian Red Cross, a medical branch of the UPA. Or families of those who had fallen in the fight with invaders, as was the case of MD “Lysonia’s” Rubachi (“Wood-Cutters”) Company on Christmas 1946 in Zboriv Rayon, Ternopil Oblast.
Christmas Greetings to an injured UPA fighter by a local OUN leadership, 6 January 1944
In contrast to prayers and church duties, which represented the earnest part of the Christmas celebration, carols belonged to the entertaining part. Singing songs praising the birth of Christ was a powerful spiritual weapon, often more powerful than a gun, as famous UPA officer Myroslav Symchych, alias Kryvonis once said.
“Not only did insurgent songs support the morale of UPA soldiers in the fight against a brutal enemy, but they also preserved the people’s faith in independent Ukraine throughout the Soviet occupation,” he added.
No surprise that new carols appeared, where religious themes were intertwined with the current events: beseeching God for victory, bemoaning deportations to Siberia, rallying to fight for an Independent Ukraine, etc.
The Ukrainian insurgents were not always able to celebrate Christmas properly due to the war. Often units were on the march or conducting a military operation. Or they had to hold defense or at least conceal themselves against hostile offensives on Christmas holidays, which was a tactic of choice of the atheistic Communist regime.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, when the Ukrainian Liberation Movement focused on fighting the Soviet Union, insurgents increasingly had to be content with humble merry-making in underground bunkers where they hid from the State Security’s swoops.
At the time, religious faith and accompanying national traditions were the means of preserving the Ukrainian national identity in resisting the totalitarian indoctrination of the Communist ideology. The guerilla fighters for independence often remained faithful to their rituals even when they ended up in GULAG labor camps.
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