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Lev Rebet (; 3 March 1912 – 12 October 1957) was a Ukrainian political writer and anti-communist during World War II. He was a key cabinet member in the Ukrainian government (backed by Stepan Bandera's faction of OUN), which proclaimed independence on 30 June 1941. For a time, Rebet was the leader of the Ukrainian government.
Rebet attended the Stryi Gymnasium, which offered parallel Ukrainian classes, and joined the Ukrayinska Viyskova Orhanizatsiya, UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization; ) at age 17. Soon after its founding in 1929, he became an active member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN (), whose activities at that time were mainly focused against the Polonisation efforts of the Warsaw government in eastern Galicia. Предтеча української державності. Лев Ребет: політик, вчений, публіцист
When the OUN split in 1940 into OUN-Melnyk and OUN-Stepan Bandera, Rebet joined the OUN-Bandera group.
The German occupying forces did not recognise the OUN move for independence. They successively arrested Bandera and Stetsko, leading to Lev Rebet briefly becoming acting prime minister of the Ukrainian national government.
He Bandera was arrested in 1934 and afterwards he never returned to Ukraine: apart from a brief period in 1940 and 1941 he had no direct connection with the organization, being as he was either in prison, or in a concentration camp, or in exile abroad. However, for a whole series of reasons, it is his name (mainly after the OUN split in 1940...) that turned out to be most closely associated with the history of the organization, much more closely than the work he contributed to it could really justify. Andrii Portnov. Bandera. An Invitation to a Calmer Conversation KHPG, 2021.
In 1956, this eventually led to a split between Bandera's OUN-B and the more moderate , jointly led by Rebet and .
Stashynsky would go on to assassinate Rebet's associate Stepan Bandera by similar means in 1959.
Explaining what motivated him to kill Rebet, Stashynsky told a court that he had been told that Rebet was "the leading theorist of the Ukrainians in exile," since "in his newspapers Suchasna Ukrayina (Contemporary Ukraine), Chas (Time), and Ukrayinska Trybuna (Ukrainian Tribune) he not so much provided accounts of daily events as developed primarily ideological issues."
According to former Nazi Germany military intelligence officer and West German Intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen,
...Bohdan Stashinskyi, who had been persuaded by his German-born wife Inge to confess to the crimes and take the load off his troubled conscience, stuck resolutely to his statements. His testimony convinced the investigating authorities. He reconstructed the crimes exactly as they had happened, revisiting the crumbling business premises at the Stachus, in the heart of Munich, where Lev Rebet had entered the office of a Ukrainian exile newspaper, his suitcase in his hand. And he showed how the hydrogen cyanide capsule had exploded in Rebet's face and how he had left him slumped over the rickety staircase. The case before the Federal court began on October 8, 1962, and world interest in the incident was revived. Passing sentence eleven days later, the court identified Stashinskyi's unscrupulous employer Shelyepin as the person primarily responsible for the hideous murders, and the defendant -- who had given a highly credible account of the extreme pressure applied to him by the KGB to act as he did -- received a comparatively mild sentence. He served most of it and was released...Reinhard Gehlen, The Service, World Publishing, 1972. Page 241.
In 1984, Associated Press reported that Bohdan and Inge Stashinsky had been given new identities and had been provided asylum by the Government of South Africa.
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