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 The
CIA-backed "Captive Nations" movement
The Captive Nations movement was a CIA-funded
psychological warfare effort of the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN).
This US-based group, created in 1954, was funded for decades by the CIA’s
National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE). While this was not admitted until
1971, the CIA website is now proud to state:
NCFE was actually the public face of an
innovative ‘psychological warfare’ project undertaken by the CIA. That
operation—which soon gave rise to Radio Free Europe—would become one of the
longest running and successful covert action campaigns ever mounted by the US. 3
Created in 1949 to "conceal [the]
CIA’s hand" in "massive propaganda campaigns," the NCFE was a creature of its
covert operations wing.4 NCFE founder, Allen Dulles, who led its first executive
committee, was the longest standing CIA Director (1953-61). He ran the
Bay-of-Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961) and—with his brother, US Secretary of State
John F.Dulles—led US coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). The NCFE was "a thinly veiled ‘private-sector’ cover," said journalist Christopher
Simpson, for passing "clandestine US funds" to ACEN exile groups.5 Simpson also
exposed Nazi collaborators among the ACEN’s Albanian, Lithuanian and Latvian
delegates.6
The US government’s "Captive Nations Week" law
 The ACEN’s greatest legacy was to
create Captive Nations Week. It began in 1959 with a unanimously-adopted US law.
Since then, every US president has issued declarations about "captive nations"
during this annual propaganda offensive. While blindly ignoring US apartheid,
the genocidal subjugation of First Nations, the sponsorship of dozens of coups,
invasions and dictatorships held captive by the US, this law calls America the
"citadel of human freedom." In stark contrast to the "democratic process" which
it claims created the "harmonious national unity" of the US "from the most
diverse of racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds," the Captive Nations law
refers to the "enslavement of a substantial part of the world’s population" by
"imperialistic policies of Communist Russia." The USSR, it says, "led ... the
subjugation of the national independence" of many captive nations.7 Among the
"nations" listed by this law were Cossackia, Idel-Ural and White Ruthenia. These
fictitious nations were "invented" by Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg.8 As an
ideological architect of the Holocaust and the Nazi’s Minister for Occupied
Eastern Regions, Rosenberg was executed at Nuremberg in 1946.
Leaders of the Captive Nations
crusade have included SS veterans who hated Jews, communists and Russians. For
example, a 1984 Captive Nations Week event in New York, heard from Nicholas
Nazarenko, a "Cossackia" liberation leader who said he interrogated POWs
for the SS. His talk minimized the "Jewish Holocaust," by claiming that
communism killed 140 million religious people. He also critiqued what he called
"a certain ethnic group that...makes its home in Israel."
This group, he said, "works with the
Communists all the time. They were the Fifth Column in Germany and in all the
Captive Nations." He then claimed that Jews "would spy, sabotage and do any act
in the interest of Moscow.... They had to be isolated ... [so] the Fifth Column
was arrested and imprisoned."9 The "Captive Nations Committee’s crowd," said
Simpson, gave "excited applause in the most enthusiastic welcome for any speaker
that evening."10
Famed Banderite, Lev Dobriansky,
was "Mr. Captive Nations"
The 1959 Captive Nations Week law
created the National Captive Nations Cttee. (NCNC) which aided local groups with
"leaflets and other means of propaganda."11 Lifelong NCNC chair, Lev Dobriansky,
the Ukrainian-American who wrote the law, had been a US intelligence officer in
Germany during WWII. In the Cold War he taught economics at Georgetown University
(1947-88), was a loyal ally of Bandera’s OUN(B) army and helped lead the ABN’s
US chapter (the American Council for World Freedom).
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Lev Dobriansky |
As NCNC founder/leader, Dobriansky
represented it at ABN and WACL global events. For instance, in 1969 he shared
the WACL rostrum with ABN president, Yaroslav Stetsko,12 in Saigon, South
Vietnam, a brutal US puppet regime. Having secured Stetsko’s first US visa in
1958, Dobriansky celebrated July 4 with him. Dobriansky was on WACL’s North
American Executive Committee in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and worked closely with the WACL’s
global chair, Ku Cheng-kang, a leading Taiwanese fascist. To fight the USSR,
Dobriansky worked with "Holocaust deniers,... white supremacists, ...
anticommunist cult leaders, ... Ukrainian neo-fascists and other rabid Cold War
fanatics."13
For decades, Dobriansky led the top US
Banderite front, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. When addressing its
mass rally in Newark, NJ, in 1952, his excessive vitriol shone through with a
vengeance:
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Yaroslav Stetsko (left) and
Lev Dobriansky (right)
with
Congressman Philip Crane (Rep. Illinois,
1969-05) and Robert Crane
(advisor to President Nixon; Deputy Director Planning, US National
Security Council),
at a July 15, 1981, "commemoration
of the 40th anniversary of the
Re-establishment of Ukrainian Statehood in 1941."
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[T]he peoples enslaved by Moscow are by far
the most powerful weapon the West has against bolshevism and Russian
imperialism. The ideal of the freedom of these nations is the most affective
weapon for destroying the Russian-bolshevist dungeon of peoples.... 14
Dobriansky glorified Bandera’s
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in his preface to a 1954 book on its "Fight for
Freedom."15
In 1982, he was on the international
committee honouring the UPA's 40th anniversary. That committee included generals
from Canada, the US, Europe, Asia and Australia, leaders of Nazi
collaborationist armies, Ukrainian church leaders from Canada, the US and
Europe, US-backed Afghan mujahideen "freedom fighters," Ukrainian Bandera
youth leaders, Senator Barry Goldwater and ABN leader, Stetsko.16
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President George W. Bush
dedicating the "Victims of Communism" monument in Washington, DC., 2007. |
It is no wonder then that for 40 years (1951-90), Dobriansky’s leadership of the
Captive Nations movement was so often hailed by loyal followers of Stepan
Bandera. For over four decades, Dobriansky’s articles, speeches and books were
continually praised in the major OUN(B) publications.17
Dobriansky’s legacy includes leading
the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation" (VCMF) in Washington, DC. Its
monument, promoted by Bill Clinton, was dedicated in 2007 by then-president
George W. Bush. Bush praised Dobriansky and noted the presence of his daughter
Paula18 who was then Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs
(2001-09).
Besides being a director of the VCMF,
Paula Dobriansky has furthered her father’s far-right legacy through work as a
US diplomat and policy maker in the administrations of five presidents. She has
also served in key roles within the National Security Council, the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlantic Council, Freedom
House, Thomson Reuters, the American University in Afghanistan and the National
Endowment for Democracy.
References and notes
1. See this search of
ABN Correspondence
http://bit.ly/ABN-captive
2. WACL Bulletin, Sum. 1973.
http://bit.ly/WACL73-2
3. "The National Committee for Free Europe,
1949," May 29, 2007. http://bit.ly/CIA-NCFE
4. John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The
Secret Wars of the CIA, 2006.
http://bit.ly/CIAwars
5. Christopher Simpson, Blowback:
America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Destructive Impact on our Domestic and
Foreign Policy, 1988. p.126.
6. Ibid., p.268.
7. Public Law 86-90 "Captive Nations Week"
http://bit.ly/PL86-90
8. Edward Lozansky, "Some Notes on the
Discussion of the Captive Nations Resolution at the Russian Academy of
Sciences," July 15, 2008.
http://bit.ly/FictiveCNs
9. Simpson, op. cit., pp.274-75.
10. Ibid.
11. ABN Correspondence, Sept-Oct.
1960, p.2. http://bit.ly/NCNCgoal
12. ABN Correspondence, Jan.-Feb.
1969, p.2. http://bit.ly/WACL-69
13. Moss Robeson, "Is Paula Dobriansky a
Neo- Banderite?" Covert Action, July 4, 2018.
http://bit.ly/CA-Dobriansky
14. Ukrainian Observer, Jan.-Feb.
1952, p.15.
http://bit.ly/Dobriansky-1952
15. Ukrainian Review, 1954, p.72.
http://bit.ly/Dob-54
16. ABN Correspondence, Mar.-April
1982, p.33-35.
http://bit.ly/Dobriansky-1982
17. Ukrainian Observer (Jan-Feb
1952, p.15); Ukrainian Review (Winter 1954, p.72; Fall 1959,
pp.94-95; Spring 1964, pp.14-16); ABN Correspondence
(Mar-Apr 1957, p.14; Sep-Oct 1960, p.2; Jan-Feb 1960, p.16; Mar-Apr 1962, p.3;
May-Jun 1962, p.32; Mar-Apr 1966, p.37; Nov-Dec 1966, p.5; Jul-Aug 1968, p.13;
Jan-Feb 1969, pp.2,4,27; May-Jun 1970, pp.12-16; Jan-Feb 1979, p.43; Mar-Apr
1982, p.40; Jul-Oct 1982, pp.33, 58-62, 87-90; Sep-Oct 1990, p.19.)
http://bit.ly/ABNCor
18. George W. Bush, "Remarks at the Victims
of Communism Memorial Dedication," June 12, 2007.
http://bit.ly/GWBanticom
ABN Correspondence, Sept-Oct 1981, p.12.
https://diasporiana.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/books/14107/file.pdf#page=220
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