Kohut A. Features of Deportation of the Ukrainian Population During the Operation “Zapad” (“West”) according to the HDA SBU documents.

The dissertation is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of Operation “Zapad” (“West”) – the mass deportation of the local population in 1947, carried out by the MGB in October 1947. After the end of the Second World War, the largest deportation from the territory of Western Ukraine was Operation “Zapad” (“West”), which began on October 21, 1947. Within a few days, 26,332 families – 77,791 persons – from seven regions were forcibly deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Mass forced evictions meant the transformation of Soviet deportation policy – a return to the practice of conducting mass operations. “Zapad” became chronologically the first operation conducted by the Ministry of State Security (MGB) of the USSR. The analysis of historiography showed that in the context of the Soviet deportation policy, along with subsequent MGB operations “Zapad” is little studied and less known. The relevance of research is in the need of a comprehensive study of the genesis, conduct and consequences of Operation “Zapad” on the basis of archival evidence of the MGB, which are now stored in the Branch State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine. The optimal theoretical and methodological approach to the study is a combination of general historical methods with special historical and with the use of approaches of the methods of case studies.