Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations

International anti communist organization

Anti Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was an international anti communist organization founded as a coordinating center for anti communist and nationalist émigré political organizations from Soviet and other socialist countries. The ABN formation dates back to a conference of representatives of non Russian peoples that took place in November 1943, near Zhytomyr as the Committee of Subjugated Nations/the Anti Bolshevik Front on the initiative of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. It dissolved in 1996.

In the 1930s, in the region of Galicia which at the time belonged to Poland, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) had emerged among the Ukrainians of Galicia to fight for independence from Poland. In turn, the OUN had received support from the Abwehr, German military intelligence, in its struggle against Poland, marking the beginning of a relationship with Germany that continued into World War Two. The OUN B faction led by Stepan Bandera had attracted many veterans of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a Waffen SS division mostly made up of Ukrainians from the Galicia region. The OUN in Galicia was in conflict with the Polish state in the 1930s, waging a terrorist campaign of bombings and assassinations. During the Second World War, the OUN fought against the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resistance group for the control of Galicia, a region the OUN saw as part of the future Ukrainian state it wished to establish. Because of this background, Polish emigre groups shunned the ABN, which was regarded as a vehicle for the anti Polish OUN. The OUN was described by the historian Anna Holian as a "deeply anti Semitic" group, citing the OUN's resolution at its Second Great Congress in 1941 that it "combats Jews as the prop of the Muscovite Bolshevik regime". American journalist Russ Bellant described the OUN's program as: "OUN, even in its postwar publications, has called for ethno genetically pure Ukrainian territory, which of course is simply calling for purging Jews, Poles, and Russians from what they consider Ukrainian territory." The OUN activists had provided many of the gunmen working for the SS who shot down 90, 000 Ukrainian Jews in 1941 42 and that Stetsko had organized a pogrom in Lviv in 1941 that killed thousands of Jews and Poles.

Alfred Rosenberg, the Minister of the East, has come to identify Russia with the Soviet Union, and Russia in turn with Asia. In contrast to his hostility towards the "Asiatic" Russians, Rosenberg had great hopes of using the non Russian peoples of the Soviet Union to raise new armies to replace the Wehrmacht's heavy losses on the Eastern Front. Rosenberg favored an approach he called "political warfare", under which Germany would support the independence of the non Russian peoples to undermine the Soviet Union.

According to Stephen Dorril, the Zhytomyr conference of 21–22 November 1943 where the ABN's forerunner, the Committee of Subjugated Nations (CSN), was established was part of Rosenberg's "political warfare". Dorril and Mark Aarons argue that the post war claim that the ABN had been founded as an anti Nazi and anti Communist group has no basis in reality as the CSN had been founded by Rosenberg's Ostministerium. At a time when the Red Army was steadily pushing the Wehrmacht back, part of the purpose behind the Anti Bolshevik Front was to create a framework for waging guerrilla warfare against the Soviets in territories such as Galicia that the Germans expected to lose in the near future. About the formation of the CSN in 1943, Bellant stated in a 2014 interview:<blockquote>"The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in 1943 under German sponsorship organized a multinational force to fight on behalf of the retreating German army. After the battle of Stalingrad in ’43, the Germans felt a heightened need to get more allies, and so the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and others with military formations in place to assist came together and formed the united front called the Committee of Subjugated Nations, and again worked on behalf of the German military. In 1946, they renamed it the Anti Bolshevik Bloc of Nations or ABN. Stetsko was the leader of that until he died in 1986. I mention this in part because the OUN tries to say, well, during the war we fought the Germans and the Communists. The fact of the matter is that they were the leadership of this whole multinational alliance on behalf of the Germans the last two years of the war and in the war thereafter. All the postwar leaders of the unrepentant Nazi allies were under the leadership of Yaroslav Stetsko." who supported the Holocaust and anti Soviet politician, from the time of foundation until 1986, the year of his death. Stetsko was succeeded by his widow, Slava Stetsko. She wrote the foreword to the 1969 book Captive Nations our first line of defense by Bailey Bernadine that offered the following political definitions:
"Anti semitism: A smear word used by the Communists against those who effectively oppose and expose them. Fascist: An anti Communist. Nazi or Hitlerite: An active anti Communist". In her foreword, she praised Captive Nations as "objective, factual" and "highly recommended". In 1950, Stetsko hosted an ABN conference in Edinburgh funded by MI6 that Dorril describes as attended by several collaborators such as Alfrēds Bērziņš of Latvia; Dr. Stanislaw Stankievich who had headed the Belarusian Central Council; and Veli Kayyum Khan of the National Turkestan Unity Committee. Representing Romania at the conference was the Legion of the Archangel Michael (better known as the Iron Guard); Bulgaria the Bulgarian National Front and Croatia members of the Ustaše. The conference attracted much publicity in Britain, most of it very favorable. Stetsko stated the ABN was ready and willing to fight and claimed to be able to "set up an army of more than ten million soldiers" to fight against the Soviet Union. A number of Polish emigre groups, which had boycotted the Edinburgh conference out of distaste for the OUN, accused the ABN of ignoring the "harsh reality" of Eastern Europe, namely that the vast military forces the ABN claimed to command did not exist. A press release issued by the Polish government in exile in London denounced the ABN, saying there was "no opportunity to shake off the hated Bolshevik yoke Today, any active measures against Russia would be lunacy; it would only bring bloody repression, massacres, and mass deportations, without even the slightest hope of achieving the aim so much desired". As early as 1951 the American anti Stalinist magazine The New Leader ran a two part series under the title "Allies We Don't Need" documenting the ABN was founded at the instigation of Rosenberg's Ostministerium in 1943 and that nearly all the ABN leaders had been on the Axis side. Under a photograph of Rosenberg with the caption "His memory lingers on", the article translated extreme anti Russian ABN statements that were a direct continuation of wartime Ostministerium propaganda such as one ABN pamphlet that stated the Russians have "never been able to form an order of society worthy of human beings". Such criticism had some effect; the United States government which had initially supported the ABN came to shun it, saying that Stetsko had "totalitarian tendencies", not the least of which was his habit of ordering the assassinations of rivals. Furthermore, the American government came to feel that Stetsko was "too extreme" as his stated aim was to provoke World War Three, arguing that this was the best way to achieve his aim of breaking up the Soviet Union. The possibility of a nuclear war killing hundreds of millions of people and that a Soviet American nuclear exchange would turn Eastern Europe into a radioactive wasteland did not concern Stetsko or any of the other ABN leaders. By the mid 1950s, both the British and American governments had ceased to subsidize the ABN, which was regarded as too dangerous. The American historian Richard Rasche wrote that the ABN had "at least a dozen well known Nazi collaborators" on its board of directors. The chairmen of the ABN Peoples' Council included A. Bērziņš, V. Kajum Khan, F. Ďurčanský, F. Farkas de Kisbarnak, and R. Ostrowski. The head of the Romanian Liberation Movement affiliated with the ABN was Horia Sima, formerly the leader of the Iron Guard. The long time general secretaries were Dr. Niko Nakashidze and C. Pokorný. Bērziņš was a Latvian who served as an obersturmführer in the SS and was accused of torturing and murdering 2, 000 Jews. Also sitting on the ABN's board was Edward O'Connor, a former member of the American National Security Council who had favored using emigre groups to break up the Soviet Union. O'Connor has been described as the "single most important activist" in the ABN. A number of Holocaust deniers such as Austin App, the author of The Six Million Swindle were ABN members. The headquarters and cells of the ABN organized mass anti Soviet rallies, protest demonstrations, press conferences, and international congresses, and the distribution of various memoranda. ABN activists held rallies outside of Soviet embassies and consulates; led boycott campaigns against department stores selling goods made in Eastern Europe; pressured school boards and libraries to remove books they considered to be pro Communist; threw eggs at Soviet diplomats, and lobbied politicians. The ABN co operated with the World Anti Communist League (WACL) and the European Freedom Council (EFC). The ABN's magazine, ABN Correspondence, frequently praised wartime collaborationist leaders such as Ante Pavelić of Croatia and Father Jozef Tiso of Slovakia as "freedom fighters" against Communism. In the United States, ABN excelled at political organizing among Americans who were either immigrants from Eastern Europe and descended from immigrants from Eastern Europe. The ABN came to enjoy a certain power in the United States as many Americans of Eastern European background voted for candidates endorsed by the ABN, causing both Democratic and Republican politicians to court the favor of the ABN. ABN activists in the United States supported politicians who took the most extreme anti Communist line such as Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy who in turn lavished praise upon the ABN. Besides for the United States, the ABN also came to enjoy power in Canada in the 1950s when there was a significant Ukrainian Canadian population who voted for candidates endorsed by the ABN. In March 1958, at a conference in Mexico City, the ABN united with the Asian People's Anti Communist League, the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Red China, and the Inter American Confederation for the Defense of the Continent to form the World Anti Communist Congress for Liberation and Freedom. The Asian People's Anti Communist League was an organization supported clandestinely by the governments of the Republic of China (Taiwan), South Korea, the Philippines, and South Vietnam. The ABN wanted an alliance with Asian People's Anti Communist League largely to get a slice of the money provided by the Asian governments that supported it, and to do so, the ABN toned down the anti Asian racism that previously characterized it. The cut off in Anglo American financial support had caused the ABN serious monetary problems, and thus led the group to seek financing from anti Communist Asian governments as a way of compensation. The goal of the World Anti Communist Congress for Liberation and Freedom was to render "moral and material support to forces behind the Iron Curtain in Europe and Asia" and to "achieve the ultimate objective of liberating and restoring national independence, freedom, and liberty to all the enslaved peoples on their ethnic territories". By July 1958, the Congress had collapsed as the leader of the Committee of One Million, Marvin Liebman, had pulled out saying he did not want to work with Stetsko again. Liebman, whose Jewish parents came from Galicia had been shocked to learn Stetsko had been involved in organizing pogroms against Galician Jews in 1941. Liebman called Stetsko and his followers "jerks", stating that Stetsko was an anti Semite who equated Communism with Jews as he still maintained his belief in "Judeo Bolshevism". After Liebman left, he started receiving death threats from OUN members calling him a "Jew Bolshevik". In 1959, the ABN's American branch successfully lobbied Congress to proclaim the public holiday of Captive Nations week and to declare American support for independence for all of the "captive nations" as defined by the ABN. In several states in the Northeast and the Midwest, there were sufficient concentrations of voters influenced by the ABN to give the movement a degree of power as a lobbying group. The resolution was passed unanimously through according to one observer it was "churned out" of Congress "along with casual holiday resolutions such as National Hot Dog Day". The ABN lobbyists help write the resolution, and much of the resolution reflected the ABN's ideas about which nations were "captive nations". The ABN equated Communism in the Soviet Union with Russians, and Russia was conspicuously absent from the list of "captive nations" listed in the resolution. The American journalist Christopher Simpson wrote that two of the "captive nations" mentioned in the resolution, Idel Ural and Cossackia, were "fictitious entities created as a propaganda ploy by Hitler's racial theoretician Alfred Rosenberg during World War Two". The American Vice President, Richard Nixon, was visiting Moscow at the time the resolution was passed, and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was extremely angry about the resolution. Khrushchev asked Nixon how it was possible for him to negotiate with a nation that just proclaimed the break up of his country as its foreign policy goal. Nixon, in effect, was forced to apologize for the resolution, saying that neither he nor President Eisenhower had any control over the resolutions passed by Congress, and stated: "Neither the President nor I would have deliberately chosen to pass a resolution of this type passed just before we visited the USSR". At the time, there was much tension in American Soviet relations owing to the latest Berlin crisis, and Nixon had been sent to Moscow to find a way to ease tensions in order to end the Berlin crisis peacefully. The general feeling in Eisenhower administration was that the resolution was ill timed. The American diplomat George F. Kennan came to deplore the ABN, complaining the group had an over sized influence over Congress as most congressmen and senators were afraid of being labeled "soft on Communism", and charged that the ABN had a vested interest in inflaming Cold War tensions. Kennan wrote that the ABN in the United States was a classic example of a domestic lobby taking over foreign policy to achieve its own ends, even if those goals were not necessarily in the broader interest of the United States. During his time as the American ambassador to Yugoslavia, Kennan complained that his efforts to influence Marshal Josip Broz Tito to undertake a more pro American foreign policy were being constantly undercut by the ABN, which successfully lobbied Congress to pass resolutions calling for the overthrow of Tito and for the break up of Yugoslavia. From 1962 onward, the ABN worked closely with Lady Birdwood, described as the "largest individual distributor of racist and antisemitic material" in Britain. The leader of the British branch of the European Freedom Council, founded in 1967, was Lady Birdwood. The ABN activists in Britain who worked with Lady Birdwood expressed anti Semitic and far right views. Representatives from the ABN and related organizations participated in the congresses of the WACL and EFC. In November 1967, the ABN organized rallies in Ottawa outside of the Soviet embassy and in Montreal outside of the Soviet consulate to protest the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The main speaker at the ABN rally in Ottawa was Stetsko whose speech calling for Ukrainian Independence caused the Ukrainian Canadian audience to erupt in rapturous joy. At another ABN rally held shortly afterward was attended by the former prime minister, John Diefenbaker, and the Conservative MP Mike Starr, the first Ukrainian Canadian cabinet minister. In the 1968 election, a Hungarian American ABN activist, Laszlo Pasztor, who began his political career as a student activist for the Arrow Cross while attending university in his native Hungary, campaigned hard for the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. Pasztor had been convicted of crimes against humanity in Hungary in 1946 for his role in the Holocaust in Hungary as he served as a diplomat for the short lived Arrow Cross regime of 1944–45 in Berlin. Fedorak, who served as president of Ukrainians for Bush, organized the rally at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Warren, Michigan. At the rally, Fedorak denounced the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which was in charge of investigating and deporting Nazi war criminals from the United States. Bellant recalled in 2014 about Bush's campaign appearance: "So they denounced them, the OSI investigations, in front of Bush. Bush nodded his head, but he wouldn't say anything because he didn't want to sound like he was sympathetic to the Nazi war criminals, but at the same time he didn't want to offend his hosts by disputing the issue with them." The Anti Bolshevik Bloc of Nations was disbanded in 1996 after the collapse of the USSR and Soviet communism.