Melnykites

Melnykites (Ukrainian: Мельниківці, romanized: Melnykivtsi) is a colloquial name for members of the OUN-M or OUN(m), a faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that arose out of a split with the more radical Banderite faction in 1940. The term derives from the name of Andriy Melnyk (1890–1964), the leader of the OUN formally elected to the post in August 1939 following the May 1938 assassination of the previous leader, Yevhen Konovalets, by the NKVD.

The OUN(m) collaborated with Nazi Germany for much of the Second World War on the Eastern Front, contributing to the formation of various collaborationist units over the course of the conflict. The OUN(m) despatched expeditionary groups to shadow the Wehrmacht's advance into the Soviet Union and set up local administrations in occupied-Ukraine, though from November 1941 onwards its members were subjected to violent crackdowns by the German authorities. As members of Ukrainian Auxiliary Police units, many Melnykites were complicit in the implementation of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

From October 1942, the OUN(m) and local Melnykites set up partisan units that competed for influence with Banderite, Polish, and Soviet partisan groups, while some OUN(m) partisans independently resisted the German occupation and participated to a peripheral extent in the massacres of the Polish population of Volhynia in 1943. Almost all of them were forcibly disarmed or merged into the Banderite Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) by the autumn of that year. Around the same time, the local Melnykite leadership around Lutsk negotiated the formation of the Ukrainian Legion of Self-Defense under the SS that combatted Soviet partisans and pacified Polish towns and villages.

Almost the entirety of the OUN(m) leadership were arrested by the Nazis over the course of the war. However they were later released in October 1944 in order to negotiate support for the retreating German Army, which was suffering from manpower shortages, with a broad spectrum of Ukrainian nationalist groups represented under the Ukrainian National Committee. With the war nearing its end, and Nazi officials still rejecting demands for the recognition of Ukrainian statehood, Melnyk and his supporters withdrew from the committee and travelled west in early 1945 to meet the Allied advance.

During the Cold War era, the exiled OUN(m) moderated its ideology away from fascism, and in 1993 registered as a non-governmental organisation in independent Ukraine. Since 2012, the OUN(m) has been led by activist and historian Bohdan Chervak.