Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) (Ukrainian: Організація Українських Націоналістів, Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins’kykh Natsionalistiv or ОУН) is a Ukrainian political organization which as a movement originally was created in 1929 in Western Ukraine (at the time interwar Poland). The OUN held violence to be an acceptable tool in the fight against foreign and domestic enemies particularly Poland and Russia. The OUN's stated immediate goal was to protect the Ukrainian population from repression and exploitation by Polish governing authorities in particular; its ultimate goal was an independent and unified Ukrainian state that would include territories inhabited primarily by ethnic Ukrainians but which were under the rule of the Polish, Soviet, Romanian, and Czechoslovak states. In 1940, the OUN split into two parts, with the older more moderate members supporting Andriy Melnyk (OUN-M) while the younger and more radical members supporting Stepan Bandera (OUN-B). The latter group came to control the nationalist movement in western Ukraine including the OUN's military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was the major Ukrainian armed resistance movement.