Secret Alliances of the Cold War: “Prolog” and The Anti-Soviet Cooperation of the Ukrainian Émigrés and the CIA

The wave of the WWII Ukrainian emigration to the West was one of the most politically active and organized. To continue clandestine operations for Ukraine’s self-determination and against the Soviet regime, OUN and UPA created the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council and its External Representation (in Ukrainian, short ZP UHVR) in 1944. This institution managed to find financial support among the Allies for operations both within and outside the Soviet Ukraine. The newly established Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided ZP UHVR with the financial means to continue their operations during the Cold War under the name “Aerodynamic” project, making it one of the longest-lasting anti-Soviet projects of the CIA. Thanks to this collaboration, the Research and Publishing Corporation “Prolog”, one of the project agencies, organized multiple activities to support the cultural and political underground and dissident movement in the Soviet Ukraine and globally, enabling the transfer of texts banned by the Soviet authorities through the Iron Curtain in both directions. Their activities included trips to Soviet Ukraine and meetings with Soviet Ukrainians abroad, which helped the CIA collect intelligence on the Soviet Union and Ukraine in particular. In my presentation I will analyze the activities of the “Prolog” in the 1960s-1980s based on the declassified and digitalized reports available in the CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. As opposed to the existing studies of Taras Kuzio and Per Anders Rudling dedicated to this topic, I will concentrate more on the content of the reports throughout the two decades to re-examine its activities, tensions, and achievements of this cooperation, helping us better understand its role in the hybrid warfare of the Cold War, as well as its influence on the Ukrainian thought.