Social and Legal Studios

The article deals with the authenticity of bilateral losses in confrontation between the Soviet repression machine, on the one hand, and the Ukrainian armed underground, on the other hand. Documents of the State Archives of the Russian Federation and Ukrainian sources of scientific, journalistic and memory nature are used. The authors’ estimates of the irreversible losses of the Ukrainian side are suggested. The question of the credibility of the sources that give a picture of the scope of Stalin's repressions in the western regions of Ukraine in the postwar years remains open. Obviously, the sources presented by the Ukrainian independent scientific school with its reliance on the nationalist, mainly emigrant literature and the “memories” of the direct participants of the events of the Ukrainian side are unreliable. Serious researchers of the events of 1944 – early 1950 s should apprehend them critically. At the same time, Soviet sources, including documentaries, cannot be considered to be entirely reliable. The fantasy of the authors was significantly stimulated by career ambitions and the desire to receive state awards, but those indicators that were harder to fake – in particular, the number of weapons confiscated from “bandits”, restrained that process. However, there is no doubt that there are facts of so-called Soviet power, which acted as cruelly as possible, without even complying with the conditional requirements of “Soviet legality”. Torture against detained “bandits” and “accomplices” was the principle; responsibility for cases of authority abuse, including unprovoked killings of civilians, is not even recorded in official Soviet documents