Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe - Stepan Bandera_ The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist-ibidem-Verlag (2014).pdf- (9.99 MiB) Downloaded 92 times
Page numbers in front of paragraph
WEAK UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM BUILT ON ETHNIC IDENTITY
22 Examples of other important political myths embedded in far-right Ukrainian nationalist ideology are the myth of the proclamation of Ukrainian statehood on 30 June 1941 in Lviv; military myths, including the myth of the tragic but heroic UPA; and the myths of other OUN members and UPA insurgents such as Ievhen Konovalets’, Roman Shukhevych, Vasyl’ Bilas, and Dmytro Danylyshyn. Finally, it should be added that the Bandera myth was an important component of Soviet ideology and the ideology of Polish nationalism, each of which evaluated Bandera very differently from the way the Ukrainian nationalist ideology defined him.
23 The OUN was integral in the sense of being exclusive: it anticipated the establishment of an ethnic Ukrainian state without Jews, Poles, Russians, and other minorities.
23 If Armstrong’s theoretical approach to the subject was not entirely useful for the contextualization of the OUN, the empirical part of his study—which has significantly influenced later studies of the OUN and UPA—appears today to be truly problematic. Limited access to sources concerning the OUN and UPA, and some of his methods of studying and selecting documents led Armstrong to depict only a part of the history of the movement, while purporting to present the whole. Like many historians at that time, Armstrong had no access to Soviet archives and did not use testimonies and memoirs left by survivors of the OUN and UPA terror. Armstrong based his study mainly on German documents, and on interviews with Ukrainian émigrés who had served in the OUN and UPA. In so doing, he was not able to detect, investigate, and understand many of the atrocities committed by the OUN and UPA during the Second World War. This prevented him from providing an appropriate evaluation of extremist Ukrainian nationalism, affected his understanding of the movement as a whole, and channeled the subsequent study of Ukrainian nationalism into a particular direction.
29 Almost four years later, in March 1938, Nazi Germany invaded Austria. After the Anschluss, the absorption of Austria into Nazi Germany, the Germans arrested Dollfuss’s successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, and kept him as a special political prisoner (Ehrenhäftling or Sonderhäftling). Together with his family, Schuschnigg was held from 1941 in a house in a special area of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Bandera was subsequently detained as a special political prisoner in another section of the same camp,[58] as was Horia Sima—the leader of the Romanian fascist Iron Guard, founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as the Legion of the Archangel Michael.[59]
42 “Ukraine” as the term for a nation only came into use in Galicia in about 1900.
BOURGEOIS HISTORIANS REWRITE OUN HISTORY
34 For a long time, historians who studied the Holocaust, or movements such as the OUN, concentrated on perpetrator documents and overlooked the testimonies, memoirs, reports, and other accounts left by survivors. Those historians believed that the perpetrator documents hold much more reliable data than the documents left by survivors, victims, and bystanders.
34 In the view of such historians, perpetrators were objective, exact and emotionally detached. Survivors, on the other hand, were considered to be emotional, traumatized, and not able to produce any reliable account of the events. This approach was typical of historians such as the OUN specialist John Armstrong, and some German historians such as Martin Broszat, Thilo Vogelsang, and Andreas Hillgruber, who had grown up in Nazi Germany and served in the German army. Similarly, some leading Holocaust historians such as Raul Hilberg and the first director of Yad Vashem, Ben-Zion Duner, also applied this approach. Historians such as Joseph Wulf or Léon Poliakov, who objected to the perpetrator-oriented approach, were mainly Holocaust survivors themselves. They were discredited especially by the German historians as “unscholarly.”[77]
35 In 1955, for example, in a new edition of documents entitled The OUN in the Light of the Resolutions of Great Congresses, the OUN reprinted the resolutions of the Second Great Congress of the OUN in Cracow in April 1941. According to the original resolutions, the OUN adopted a fascist salute, consisting of raising the right arm “slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head,” while saying “Glory to Ukraine!” (Slava Ukraїni!), and answering “Glory to the Heroes!”(Heroiam Slava!). The 1955 edition left out this particular part of the text.[83]
35 They removed undesirable and inconvenient phrases from republished documents, especially those relating to fascism, the Holocaust, and other atrocities. In 1955, for example, in a new edition of documents entitled The OUN in the Light of the Resolutions of Great Congresses, the OUN reprinted the resolutions of the Second Great Congress of the OUN in Cracow in April 1941. According to the original resolutions, the OUN adopted a fascist salute, consisting of raising the right arm “slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head,” while saying “Glory to Ukraine!” (Slava Ukraїni!), and answering “Glory to the Heroes!”(Heroiam Slava!). The 1955 edition left out this particular part of the text.[83]
35 Ievhen Stakhiv, another OUN member and the author of important autobiographical publications, admits that Mykola Lebed’, another important OUN leader, asked him to forget and not to mention uncomfortable elements of the past, such as Bandera’s direction to the movement in late 1941 to repair relations with Nazi Germany and to attempt further collaboration with the Nazis.[87]
MARKED DIFFERENCES BETWEEN EAST AND WEST UKRAINE
41 Dmytro Dontsov (1883–1973), Ievhen Konovalets’ (1891–1938), and Stepan Bandera (1909–1959). These political figures tried to establish a single Ukrainian nation that would live in one Ukrainian state.[125]
42 One of the most important factors that contributed to the increase of cultural and religious differences between western and eastern Ukrainians was the military conflict between the OUN-UPA and the Soviet regime during the 1940s and early 1950s. This conflict was followed by a powerful propaganda battle between nationalist factions of the Ukrainian diaspora and the Soviet Union; as a consequence, each side demonized and hated the other. In Soviet and Soviet Ukrainian discourse, the personality of Stepan Bandera acquired a significance completely different from that perceived by Galician Ukrainians. As a result, two contradictory myths relating to Stepan Bandera marked the cultural and political division of Ukraine.[126]
42 Galician Ukrainian culture was for centuries deeply influenced by Polish culture, while eastern Ukrainian culture was strongly influenced by Russian culture. As a result of longstanding coexistence, cultural and linguistic differences between Ukrainians and Poles on the one side became blurred, as they did between Ukrainians and Russians on the other. The differences between the western and eastern Ukrainians were evident. The Galician dialect of Ukrainian differed substantially from the Ukrainian language in Russian Ukraine. Such political, social, and cultural differences made a difficult starting point for a weak national movement that sought to establish a single nation, which was planned to be culturally different from and independent of its stronger neighbors.[133]
46 The nationalist hostility to Jews was related to the fact that many Jews were merchants, and to the fact that some of them worked as agents of the Polish landowners. The Ukrainians felt that the Jews supported the Poles and exploited the Ukrainian peasants. The resentment toward Russians was related to the government by the Russian Empire of a huge part of the territories that the Ukrainian national movement claimed to be Ukrainian. While the Jews in Galicia were seen as agents of the Polish landowners, Jews in eastern Ukraine were frequently perceived to be agents of the Russian Empire. The stereotype of Jews supporting both Poles and Russians, and exploiting Ukrainians by means of trade or bureaucracy, became a significant image in the Ukrainian nationalist discourse.
ETHNIC HATRED BECOMES MAIN UKRAINIAN-NATIONALIST ANCHOR POINT
48 Mikhnovs’kyi politicized the ethnicity of ukrainians and demanded a “Ukraine for Ukrainians” (Ukraїna dlia ukraїntsiv). He might have been inspired by Hrushevs’kyi’s historization of contemporary Ukrainians and by contemporary European discourses that combined nationalism with racism. Although Mikhnovs’kyi’s concept of ethnicity was based on language, his main aim was a biological and racial marking of the Ukrainian territories or the “living space” of the Ukrainians. He claimed the territory “from the Carpathian Mountains to the Caucasus” for a Ukrainian state without foes. By “foes” Mikhnovs’kyi meant “Russians,
48 Mikhnovs’kyi went so far in his ethno-biological concept as to demand, in one of “The Ten Commandments of the UNP,” which he wrote for the Ukrainian National Party (Ukraїns’ka Narodna Partia, UNP), cofounded by him in 1904: “Do not marry a foreign woman because your children will be your enemies, do not be on friendly terms with the enemies of our nation, because you make them stronger and braver, do not deal with our oppressors, because you will be a traitor.”[147]
50 This was the case of many Ukrainians after centuries of coexistence with Poles, Russians, Jews, and other ethnic groups. It was also not a political or cultural program with which the nationally non-conscious Ukrainians could have been transformed through education into nationally conscious Ukrainians. It was rather a social Darwinist concept based on the assumption that there exists a Ukrainian race, which must struggle for its survival against Russians, Poles, Jews, and other non-Ukrainian inhabitants of Ukrainian territories. Mikhnovs’kyi understood this concept as the historical destiny of the Ukrainian people and stressed that there was no alternative: “Either we will win in the fight or we will die.”[148] This early Ukrainian extremist also demanded: “Ukraine for Ukrainians, and as long as even one alien enemy remains on our territory, we are not allowed to lay down our arms. And we should remember that glory and victory are the destiny of fighters for the national cause.”[149]
50 In February 1920, the majority of the UHA soldiers deserted from the Whites and allied themselves with the Bolsheviks because the latter were at war with both the Poles and the AUNR. In these circumstances it was hardly surprising that some Ukrainian politicians, for example Osyp Nazaruk, voiced the opinion that the Galician Ukrainians were a different nation from the eastern Ukrainians.[153]
POGROMS ONLY STOP WITH THE COMING OF THE RED ARMY
50 During the revolutionary struggles, many pogroms took place in central and eastern Ukraine, especially in the provinces of Kiev, Podolia, and Volhynia, which were controlled by the Directorate, the Whites, and anarchist peasant bands. The troops of the Directorate and the Whites not only permitted the anti-Jewish violence but also participated in it. The pogroms only ceased with the coming of the Red Army. Nakhum Gergel, a former deputy minister of Jewish affairs in the Ukrainian government, recorded 1,182 pogroms and 50,000 to 60,000 victims. This scale of anti-Jewish violence was much greater than that of the pogroms of 1881‒1884 and 1903‒1907. Only during the Khmel’nyts’kyi Uprising in 1648 did anti-Jewish violence at a comparable level take place in the Ukrainian territories: according to Antony Polonsky, at least 13,000 Jews were killed by the Cossacks commanded by Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi.[157]
WHICH STATE UKRAINIANS WERE IN IN INTERWAR PERIOD
51 Between the First and Second World Wars, Ukrainians lived in four different states. About 26 million lived in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukraïns’ka Sotsiialistychna Radians’ka Respublika, Ukrainian SRR), 5 million in the Second Polish Republic (II Rzeczpospolita Polska), 0.5 million in the Czechoslovak Republic (Czech: Československá Republika, Slovak: Republika Česko-Slovenská), and 0.8 million in Greater Romania (România Mare).[158]
53 Polish officials and politicians frequently treated the national minorities in Poland as inferior citizens or even as enemies. This only strengthened the nationalism of the Ukrainians and other national minorities in the Second Republic and exacerbated the political situation and interethnic relations.[164] As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put it in an analytical paper, the Ukrainians were perceived as a huge problem to the Polish state: “The Ukrainian question is not as difficult to solve as the Jewish one, it is not as dangerous as the German one, but it is the oldest one, and it is the most important one because the Ukrainian population is the largest national minority in the state.”[165]
53 The Sanacja and Endecja movements developed two separate policies toward the Ukrainians and other minorities in the Second Republic. The Sanacja followed the principle of state assimilation (asymilacja państwowa); and the Endecja, national assimilation (asymilacja narodowa). National assimilation required the minorities to become Polish and to give up their language and culture. State assimilation did not expect such cultural surrender but required loyalty to the Polish state. Such loyalty was against the interests of Galician and Volhynian Ukrainians, who neither wanted to become Polish nor to be loyal to the Polish state. As a result, even liberal and left-wing Polish politicians of the Sanacja movement, who tried to improve Polish-Ukrainian relations, never gave up the notion of teaching Ukrainians loyalty to the Polish state, in order to maintain the status quo of the Second Republic.[167]
78 Until the First World War Ukrainians lived in the Habsburg Empire together with such groups as Poles, Jews, and Romanians, and in the Russian Empire with Russians, Jews, and Poles.
EASTERN UKRAINIANS WERE UNITED BY COMMUNISM AND COMMUNIST PARTY AND WESTERN UKRAINIANS BY ETHNO-NATIONALISM
54 Unlike the nationalists in Galicia, the radical Ukrainian elements in Volhynia during the interwar period were united by communism and organized in the Communist Party of Western Ukraine (Komunistychna partiia Zakhidnoї Ukraїny, or KPZU).[170]
64 A leading OUN member, Mykhailo Kolodzins’kyi, gave military courses in this camp. He also began work there on “The War Doctrine of the Ukrainian Nationalists,” an important OUN document in which he planned a Ukrainian uprising, propagated the cult of war, and presented a Ukrainian version of imperialism, which was intended to protect “our own race” and to extend the Ukrainian territories.[226]
POLISH CHAUVINISM TOWARD UKRAINIAIN MINORITY
54 Ukrainians regarded the Polish state as an occupier, rather than as a legitimate authority. They not only withdrew their loyalty but also developed feelings of hatred toward Poland and Poles. Polish politicians frequently tried to induce loyalty to Poland by repressing Ukrainian national aspirations. Polish schools and the teaching of Polish patriotism were intended as important tools for the enforcement of loyalty to the Polish state among the national minorities.
55 “Patriotic” demonstrations and other gatherings also resulted in casualties. In 1939 in Berezhany, Polish high school students organized a “funeral of Ukraine,” marching through the town with a coffin marked “Ukraine is dead.” After a few days, the bodies of two Poles who had taken part in the “funeral” were found in a river in a suburb.[176]
56 Having completed their degrees, Ukrainians were often unable to make a career in public institutions or to find other employment, because of their ethnicity. Such people frequently ended up working for Ukrainian agricultural companies that hired only Ukrainians. To some extent the situation in the former eastern Galicia was similar to a state within a state.
56 The second half of the 1930s was especially unfavorable for Polish-Ukrainian relations. It was not so much the renunciation of the Little Treaty of Versailles, or the assassination of the Polish interior minister Bronisław Wilhelm Pieracki by the OUN, both in 1934, but the political changes after Piłsudski’s death that intensified the Polish-Ukrainian conflict. After his death, Polish and Ukrainian politicians who worked to normalize Polish-Ukrainian relations were marginalized, and Polish policies toward the Ukrainians became more and more repressive. In these circumstances the competition between Ukrainian and Polish nationalism increased. In October 1938 the Polish police prevented demonstrations in favor of a Ukrainian Carpathian state. In response Ukrainian agricultural companies refused to deliver butter to Lviv and other cities, and Ukrainian nationalists set several Polish farms on fire. The Polish government reacted with collective punishment, conducting punitive expeditions against Ukrainian villagers and making mass arrests. Ukrainian politicians estimated that in late 1938 about 30,000 Ukrainians sat in Polish jails.[182]
56 In 1939 local Polish politicians in Lublin were talking about the “extermination” of Ukrainians.[183]
102 Piłsudski, on the other hand, was present in almost every sphere of life. He was on every second page in the newspapers. His portraits hung in every room of official buildings, for example in the classrooms of the high school that Bandera attended. Piłsudski’s visits to other countries, his political speeches, and his health were the subject of daily talks and radio broadcasts.[398] Like some other OUN
POLISH SETTLERS SENT TO COLONISE UKRAINE
55 Although Poles made up only about 30 percent of the population of eastern Galicia and Volhynia, they still possessed more land there than the Ukrainians. In addition, settlers (Pol. osadnicy), many of them veterans of the First World War, received land in the eastern parts of the country with the objective of strengthening the Polish element in those regions. This irritated the Ukrainian peasantry, most of whom possessed little land despite their efforts for decades to obtain more.[177] In general, Ukrainians had very good reasons to resent their Polish rulers. Even in regions with a predominantly Ukrainian population, Ukrainian civil servants were rare. The Ukrainian language was regarded by Polish officials as a substandard variety of Polish, and Ukrainian culture was perceived as inferior to Polish culture.
UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS HOPING THE HITLERITES WILL ARRIVE TO EXTERMINATE THE POLES
56 A German journalist who travelled to the area in the spring of that year observed that the Ukrainian population hoped that “Uncle Führer” would bring order to the area and solve the problem of the Poles.[184]
57 In the late 1930s the majority of Ukrainians living in Poland began to consider Nazi Germany as a possible liberator and ally, as the OUN had done since the early 1920s.
57 They hoped that Germany would smash Poland and give Ukrainians a chance to establish a state. They saw nothing wrong in cooperating with Nazi Germany and were convinced that this might help them achieve their goals.[187] After the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938, the Ukrainians tried to establish a Carpatho-Ukrainian state, in territories that had belonged to Czechoslovakia and were inhabited by Ruthenians (Rusyny), people ethnically related to the Ukrainians. The Germans ignored the requests of the Ukrainian nationalists to recognize and support the state and allowed Hungary to occupy these territories; but the disappointment of Ukrainian nationalists concerning the proposed Carpathian-Ukrainian state did not change their attitude toward Nazi Germany.[188]
OUN HOPES TO ESTABLISH A FASCIST DICTATORSHIP
58 To further its political aims, the OUN adopted two concepts of revolution: “permanent revolution” and “national revolution.” The two notions were interrelated but were not identical. In general, the “permanent revolution” was a process of preparing the Ukrainian people for the “national revolution,” which was intended to become an uprising or a revolutionary act, as a result of which the OUN would defeat their enemies and establish a Ukrainian state.[192] By planning the revolution, the OUN combined many different elements that could help it seize power. It modeled itself on the Polish and Russian insurgents and revolutionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and on the contemporary fascist and ultranationalist revolutionaries. After taking power in the “ethnic Ukrainian territories” the OUN would subordinate all non-loyal elements and establish a one-party system. The new authority would represent all social strata of Ukrainians, whose loyalty to the OUN would be enforced. The state the OUN planned to establish after the revolution would be dictatorial. Democracy was, for the OUN, a hostile and dangerous political system, distrusted by OUN members because of its non-nationalist nature.[193]
WESTERN UKRAINIANS WERE SHOCKED AT EASTERN UKRAINIANS DISLIKE FOR ETHNIC NATIONALIM, RACISM AND FACISM
59 The UVO and the OUN propagated a very western Ukrainian or Galician form of nationalism and they believed that Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine would approve of its plans for “liberating Ukraine.” During the Second World War this belief would cause the OUN considerable problems, when the organization would be confronted for the first time with eastern Ukrainians and their dislike for ethnic nationalism, racism and fascism. The western Ukrainian or Galician form of nationalism was also not entirely compatible with the mentality of Volhynian Ukrainians, who found it very difficult to comprehend the mystical nationalism of the Galician type.[197]
60 Ukrainian youth was also divided. Not all young Ukrainians supported the extreme version of Ukrainian nationalism represented by the OUN. The SUNM, for example, was divided into a radical branch, which consisted of OUN activists or sympathizers, and a moderate one, which sympathized with the UNDO. Relations between these two branches were so tense that students who belonged to the moderate branch of the SUNM, and who lived in the Ukrainian Academic House in Lviv, used an external canteen elsewhere, in order to avoid eating together with the fascistized nationalists.[208]
95 In 1936 Bandera stated that although he was only eight years old at that time, he understood that Ukrainians were on both sides of the front and had to fight against each other.[358]
95 Bandera had almost no contact with Russian and other Soviet citizens, whom the Ukrainian nationalists frequently called “Muscovites.” He knew them only as an abstract, demonized enemy. We cannot tell whether, in his youth, Bandera knew how different, especially in terms of culture and mentality, eastern Ukrainians were from Galician Ukrainians.
OUN MEMBERS SAY THEY ARE IDEOLOGICALLY SIMILAR TO NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN GERMANY AND FASCISM IN ITALY
61 Andrii Mel’nyk, who succeeded Konovalets’ as leader of the OUN, seems also to have been an adherent of fascism. In a letter to Joachim von Ribbentrop on 2 May 1938, Mel’nyk claimed that the OUN was “ideologically akin to similar movements in Europe, especially to National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy.”[212]
64 The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had good relations with the leading circles of the revolutionary Croatian organization Ustaša. These relations, between the two Leaderships, became even closer in exile, outside the borders of Croatia. … In general, Croatians—and in particular Croatian students—respected the OUN, trusted their members, regarded the Ukrainian nationalists as more experienced in matters of revolutionary struggle, and invited them to their discussions, meetings, and congresses.[228]
66 Like the OUN, they regarded parliamentary democracy as a sham. In 1933 the Ukrainian Canadian newspaper Novyi shliakh, which was controlled by the Ukrainian War Veteran’s Association (UWVA), compared Konovalets’ to Hitler and Mussolini.[233] According to Karol Grünberg and Bolesław Sprengel, Konovalets’ met Hitler in 1933. After the meeting, the leader of the OUN appealed to Ukrainians to support the Führer because he would “open the doors to the East.”[234]
70 In Natsiokratiia, a treatise written in 1935, leading OUN member and ideologist Mykola Stsibors’kyi condemned democracy, socialism, and communism; at the same time, he praised fascism and dictatorship.
71 According to the draft constitution, the Ukrainian state was to be based on the totalitarian dictatorship of a nation that would be defined in a nationalist and racial sense and would therefore guarantee rights to ethnic Ukrainians alone. Other than the OUN, all political groups, parties, and other such organizations would be forbidden. As in natsiokratiia, the leader of the OUN would be the “Head of the State—The Leader of the Nation [Holova Derzhavy-Vozhd’ Natsiї],” whose period of office would be unlimited. In this sense, all aspects of political, social, and cultural life would be controlled by the OUN, the only legal party and organization in the state.[258]
72 statement: “Fascism, as a worldview, completely corresponds with the historical traditions and the present-day Ukrainian ideological currents whose initiator and propagator is Dr. Dmytro Dontsov.”[261]
95 Dontsov, and OUN ideologists such as Onats’kyi, familiarized the young Ukrainian nationalists in eastern Galicia with the concept of the leader, the party, and the masses. These ideologists inspired the Bandera generation to admire Mussolini and Hitler and to hate communism, Marxism, Jews, and democracy.[363]
UVO AND OUN DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN ESPIONAGE SERVICES THE GERMAN ABWERH, LITHUANIA AND BRITAIN
63 The UVO and the OUN were therefore dependent on Germany and Lithuania and provided them with espionage services in return. Germany and Lithuania also supported the Ukrainian nationalists because they regarded Poland as their countries’ enemy, and like the Ukrainians, they laid claim to parts of Polish territories.
63 According to the Polish Intelligence Service, the OUN also collaborated with the British Secret Intelligence Service. The relationships between the UVO-OUN and these supporting states were frequently based on cooperation between the OUN and a particular institution—in Germany, for example, the Abwehr (military intelligence). In official statements however, the OUN denied that it cooperated with other countries, and it claimed to be financially and politically independent.
64 After the German-Polish nonaggression pact, German politicians promised not to cooperate with the OUN. Nevertheless, both the Abwehr and Lithuanian politicians continued to collaborate with the OUN during the second half of the 1930s.[224]
64 Mussolini’s Italy was another important partner of the OUN, as was the Croatian Ustaša, which was founded in 1929.
61 At the Second General Congress of the OUN in August 1939 in Rome, the title of Vozhd’ was used officially for the first time in the history of the organization and was bestowed upon Mel’nyk.[213]
76 In the Ukrainian heroic narrative, she hanged herself in order not to reveal organizational secrets under torture by Polish interrogators. Naturally, the narrative did not mention that Basarab had been carrying out espionage tasks for the Abwehr.[286]
130 As to the question of Lithuanian collaboration with the OUN, Żeleński pointed out that although Lithuania was a small and impoverished country, which could not even afford to maintain a representative at the League of Nations in Geneva, it paid the OUN about $1000 a month.[537]
130 Finally, he stressed that Lithuania had supported the OUN not only before but also after Pieracki’s assassination.[538]
130 Ultimately, Żeleński characterized the OUN as a “company” that murdered in order to make money. He stressed that murder, and spying for other countries were the main sources of income for the OUN. It sent its representatives to North America, on Lithuanian passports, to “sell” assassinations as patriotic deeds to the Ukrainian diaspora. Żeleński argued that, according to Konovalets’s letter to Senyk, which had been found in the Senyk archives, Konovalets’ decided to kill Pieracki because the OUN was close to “bankruptcy.”
130 He decided to murder Pieracki “not only to demonstrate the power of the organization but also to enlarge its finance capital.”
155 Like many other Ukrainians, he had experienced ethnic discrimination in the Second Polish Republic and regarded Germany as the most important partner of the Ukrainians, sharing with the Nazis many political convictions, including antisemitism and other racism. On 18 April 1941, he petitioned General Governor Hans Frank to purge “Polish and Jewish elements” from the ethnic Ukrainian territories within the General Government.[684]
ANTISEMITIC MASS MURDER
64 Kolodzins’kyi argued in “The War Doctrine” that during a national uprising, the western Ukrainian territories should be fully “cleansed” of Poles, and also that “the more Jews killed during the uprising, the better for the Ukrainian
73 Simultaneously, Jews were increasingly perceived as agents of communism.
DONTSOV BECOMES IDEOLOGICAL LEADER IN EXILE/TRANSLATES MEIN KAMPF. ANTISEMITISM BECOMES UNVEILED
66 The OUN leaders in exile respected Dontsov and regarded him as their main ideologist and intellectual guide.
67 fanaticism because, as he claimed, only fanaticism could change history and enable the Ukrainians to establish a state. Dontsov’s new system of morality was obviously problematic, because it justified all kinds of crimes and violence as long as they were conducted for the good of the nation, or in order to achieve statehood. In general, the ideologist of the Bandera generation copied many of his ideas from other European far-right and fascist discourses, in particular German and Italian.[237] Dontsov also tried to break with the
67 Dontsov began to admire fascism in late 1922. By 1926 he had already translated parts of Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Ukrainian and had published them. For Dontsov, Hitler was the ideal of a fascist leader.
67 The Ukrainian ideologist compared the Führer to Jesus and to Saint Joan of Arc. In addition to extreme nationalism and fascism, Dontsov also popularized antisemitism. In the late 1930s, he opted for the racist kind of antisemitism preached and practiced by the National Socialists in the German Reich.[241] Nazi Germany was for him the ideal fascist state, although it was the Italian Fascists who first drew his attention to the phenomenon of fascism.
OUN/DONTSOV BEGIN TO ADVOCATE EXTERMINATING JEWS
68 The verdict had a strong impact on Ukrainian nationalists who, after the trial, ceased to veil their antisemitism. Dontsov became one of the main propagators of antisemitism among the Ukrainian ideologists. On the one hand, he attacked Jews as a “race.” On the other hand, he adapted antisemitism to the Ukrainian political situation by associating Jews with the Soviet Union, which he viewed as the main “occupier” of Ukrainian territory and the main enemy of Ukrainians. For Dontsov, the Jews were guilty for many reasons, but not as guilty as the Russians who were the actual “occupiers” of Ukraine. In reaction to the Schwartzbard trial, Dontsov claimed that the Russian and the Jewish problem were interwoven and that the Ukrainians must solve the Russian problem in order to be able to solve the Jewish question:
68 This murder is an act of revenge by an agent of Russian imperialism against a person who became a symbol of the national struggle against Russian oppression. It does not matter that in this case a Jew became an agent of Russian imperialism. … We have to and we will fight against the aspiration of Jewry to play the inappropriate role of lords in Ukraine. … No other government took as many Jews into its service as did the Bolsheviks, and one might expect that like Pilate the Russians will wash their hands and say to the oppressed nations, “The Jew is guilty of everything.” Jews are guilty, terribly guilty, because they helped consolidate Russian rule in Ukraine, but “the Jew is not guilty of everything.” Russian imperialism is guilty of everything. Only when Russia falls in Ukraine will we be able to settle the Jewish question in our country in a way that suits the interest of the Ukrainian people.[249]
68 on 7 June 1936, the OUN commemorated the death of Symon Petliura, OUN activists distributed leaflets with the message: “Attention, kill and beat the Jews for our Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, the Jews should be removed from Ukraine, long live the Ukrainian state.”[251]
69 Martynets’ claimed that it was necessary to “cleanse” the cities of Jews, and thus solve the “vital problem of the [Ukrainian] nation.” The first step to solve the “Jewish problem” would be to isolate them from Ukrainians. Martynets’ argued that the Jews would otherwise corrupt the psychology and the blood of the Ukrainian race, and contaminate the Ukrainian nation. Every kind of direct coexistence with Jews was therefore undesirable. In order to prevent the interrelation between the two “races,” Jews were to have their own schools, newspapers, restaurants, cafes, theatres, brothels, and cabarets, and were to be forbidden the use of the Ukrainian equivalents. Intermarriage between Jews and Ukrainians had to be forbidden, as in Germany.[252]
69 The UNDO claimed in autumn 1936 that “Jews are the most faithful and almost sole propagators of communism.”[255] While antisemitism was thriving in the 1930s, western Ukrainians denied their antisemitism and made fun of the fact that others perceived them as antisemites (Fig. 1).
RACE HATE
72 Racism, in the Ukrainian context, was very much related to the idea of independence (samostiinist’). Racist thinkers argued that Ukraine should become an independent state because it was inhabited by a particular race, which needed an independent nation state to develop all of its features. The OUN’s racism can be traced back to Mikhnovs’kyi’s appeal, “Do not marry a foreign woman because your children will be your enemies,” which OUN members took literally.[262]
72 Rudnyts’kyi claimed that “for one thousand two hundred years, the Ukrainian race has resided in this region, and has been able, not only to preserve its boundaries, but, after heavy losses, to regain and even to pass beyond them.”[264] He described the Ukrainian “race” as of “tall stature, with long legs and broad shoulders, strongly pigmented complexion, dark, rich, curly hair, rounded head and long face with a high broad brow, dark eyes, straight nose, strongly developed elongated lower part of the face, medium mouth and small ears.”[265] One important reason for such a racialist characterization of Ukrainians was the wish to distinguish them from Poles and Russians. Rudnyts’kyi stated that “anthropological differences of the Ukrainians from their neighbors, especially from the Poles, White Russians and Russians, are very clearly marked.”[266]
72 “On the one hand, we should enable as many healthy and racially full-fledged exemplars of the nation as possible to marry and breed. On the other hand, we should not allow sick or racially less valuable exemplars to do that.”[268] Rudnyts’kyi’s racist thinking had a significant impact on OUN ideology and the UPA’s genocidal policy.
96 Dontsov and the OUN periodicals Surma and Rozbudova natsiї also propagated the racial kind of antisemitism. In addition, Dontsov frequently linked Jews with Russian imperialism and communism. In so doing, he spread the stereotype of “Jewish Bolshevism” according to which Jews were pillars of the Soviet system. After the OUN-B split from the OUN in 1940 the young nationalists who were organized around Bandera demonstrated that they had internalized Dontsov’s concept of antisemitism. In the booklet “Resolutions of the Second Great Assembly of the OUN,” they repeated Dontsov’s remarks about Jews as pillars of the Soviet Union, almost verbatim.[366]
97 In particular Surma and Rozbudova natsiї followed the trend of the European radical right and fascist movements. These periodicals frequently published articles propagating antisemitism, fascism, and the cult of war. They also justified ethnic and political violence, and terror conducted in the name of the nation. Other motifs appearing in these journals were the heroism of the Ukrainian nation, and the viciousness, immorality, and insidiousness of Ukraine’s “occupiers” and “enemies.”
100 Dontsov, Martynets’, and Rudnyts’kyi also spread racist ideas and popularized eugenics in Ukraine.
100 In Ukrainian nationalism, racism and eugenics appeared in the context of purifying the Ukrainian nation, culture, and language of foreign—in particular, Polish, Russian and Jewish—influences, in order to obtain a pure Ukrainian “race.”
159 Stets’ko also protected Iaryi, whom the OUN-M called a “Mongolian Jewish crossbreed” and a “Soviet agent.” The OUNM claimed that the best proof for this was the fact that Iaryi was married to a Jewish woman. Furthermore, Stets’ko applied the same antisemitic strategy as the OUN-M to discredit Stsibors’kyi. He claimed that the author of the “White Book” was a traitor to the cause because he was married to a Jewish woman.[723
161 The non-Ukrainians in the “Ukrainian territories,” where the OUN state would be established, were not mentioned, but it is known from other documents that the OUN planned to expel or kill them.[738]
MAJORITY OF OUN MEMBERS WERE GREEK CATHOLICS
73. Ukrainian nationalism and the Greek Catholic Church both opposed materialism and communism. The majority of OUN members from Galicia were Greek Catholics.
73 Many of the leading OUN members, such as Bandera, Lenkavs’kyi, Stets’ko, and Matviieiko, were the sons of Greek Catholic priests.
74 Furthermore, the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism and the Greek Catholic religion were the two most significant components of Galician Ukrainian identity.
74 This can be illustrated by the brochure Nationalism and Catholicism, written by Mykola Konrad, professor at the Theological Academy of Lviv University, and published in 1934 by the UKU: O God, let these two idealisms—the Catholic “I believe” and the nationalist “I will”—as the two clear tones of the Ukrainian soul, merge harmoniously into one accord and awaken our withered hearts. Then a new era of faith, love, and power, a mighty national unity and a unified invincible front will come.[279]
CULT OF WAR AND DEATH AMONG FANATIC UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS
75 Another important feature of Ukrainian nationalist ideology was the cult of war and death, including the conviction that political problems can and should be solved by war. Ukrainian nationalists believed that, having failed to establish a state after the First World War, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. On the one hand, every OUN member killed by “enemies” or “occupiers” died as a martyr for Ukrainian independence and could become a national hero. On the other hand, the killing of enemies was gallant, right, and heroic, because it was done for the liberation of Ukraine. The main functions of the cult of war and death were to integrate violence into everyday life and to dissipate the fear of dying while conducting such dangerous activities as assassinations or robberies.
76 Propagandists and ideologists of the UVO and OUN—among them Stepan Bandera in his position as the director of propaganda of the homeland executive and later as its head— frequently instrumentalized and sacralized the dead nationalists in order to negate the fear of sacrificing one’s life and to evoke the feeling of revenge. Such instrumentalization of dead fighters was typical of many fundamentalist and fanatical movements.[285]
76 The first nationalist to become a famous martyr and hero was Ol’ha Basarab, a UVO member who, on the night of 12 February 1924, either hanged herself in a prison cell or died because of mistreatment during her interrogation. In the Ukrainian heroic narrative, she hanged herself in order not to reveal organizational secrets under torture by Polish interrogators. Naturally, the narrative did not mention that Basarab had been carrying out espionage tasks for the Abwehr.[286]
76 Surma and Rozbudova natsiї, the official periodicals of the UVO and later the OUN, commemorated the death of Basarab every year, praising her in prose and verse for her heroism and willingness to make sacrifices.[287] The cult of Basarab, like many other cults of dead nationalists, was not limited to OUN propaganda. Large crowds attended church services for Basarab. Such slogans as “Long live the Ukrainian revolution! Away with the Polish occupation! Long live Basarab!” appeared in public places.[288]
78 The OUN ideology combined ultranationalism with racism, mysticism, antisemitism, a cult of war and violence, anticommunism, hostility to democracy, communism and socialism.
85 As a university student, Bandera was reported to have continued torturing himself, by scorching his fingers on an oil lamp and by crushing them between a door and doorframe. During the self-torturing sessions, he told himself: “Admit Stepan!” and answered “No, I don’t admit!” Bandera also beat his bare back with a belt and said to himself, “If you don’t improve, you’ll be beaten again, Stepan!”[305]
101 Because the success of the “national revolution” was, in the understanding of the OUN, a matter of life or death for the entire nation, they considered it proper to use any means, including war and ethnic and political violence.[393]
FIRST RECORDED FASCIST SALUTE OUN MEMBERS PERFORMED IN PUBLIC
126 As Svientsits’ka was passing the dock, she went toward the defendants, raised her right arm, and shouted, “Slava Ukraїni!” The defendant Karpynets’ stood up, raised his arm, and answered, “Slava Ukraїni!” This is apparently the first recorded fascist salute that OUN members performed in public. For performing a fascist salute in court, Svientsits’ka was punished with one day in a dark cell.[517]
BANDERA AS MOTHER EARTH/GAIA WORSHIPPER
85 Another friend of Bandera’s, Volodymyr Ianiv, remembered him walking in the Carpathian Mountains, talking to birds and praying to trees. Ianiv considered it amusing behavior and a sign of Bandera’s love and respect for nature.[308]
UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS ARGUE "UKRAINIAN FASCISM" IS A FORM OF FASCISM
99 Thus, like Dontsov, Onats’kyi did not insist on using the term “fascism.” Instead he argued that “Ukrainian nationalism” is a form of fascism consisting of people without a state.[378]
BANDERAS PERMANENT REVOLUTION INSPIRED BY TROTKSYISM
101 Other ideas that influenced young Bandera and should be briefly discussed here were the concepts of “permanent revolution” and “national revolution.” The term “permanent revolution” can be traced back to Karl Marx, but it was popularized by Leon Trotsky, who saw revolution as a political and social process of transforming society.[390] In the context of Ukrainian nationalism, “permanent revolution” retained the notion of permanent revolutionary transformation but anticipated very different results from those foreseen by Marx and Trotsky.
BANDERA THE CHINLET
120 the leader of all the other [defendants] and the superior in the ranks of the terrorist organization … who coordinated the terrorist action in the entire territory of Poland and who was in contact with the leading members abroad. Bandera, the ace of the terrorist organization, looks inconspicuous. Small, thin, puny, looks not older than twenty or twenty-two, receding chin, sharp features, unpleasant physiognomy, darting eyes with a small squint, nervous movements, small pinched mouth, laughs quite often, revealing uneven teeth, talks to his defending lawyers with vibrant gestures.[485]
FASCIST SALUTES IN COURT ROOM
133 After the chairman finished reading the verdict, Bandera and Lebed’ stood up, raised their right arms slightly to the right, just above their heads—as they had learned from Italian and other fascists—and called out “Slava Ukraїni!” For this gesture, which interrupted the final moments of the proceedings, both young men were removed from the courtroom.[566]
137 As he entered, he performed a fascist salute, raising his right arm and shouting “Slava!” or “Slava Ukraїni!” All the defendants in the courtroom answered him in the same manner.[588]
134 It wrote that the lords (pany) from the Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny deliberately called Ukrainians “Ruthenians” in order to insult them, as had happened in the “good old days” when Ruthenians were classified as subhuman.[576]
142 After that Bandera delivered a speech. On the one hand, he portrayed himself as a Robin Hood who protected poor Ukrainians from the mean Poles and Soviet Russians. On the other hand, he announced that he was the fascist leader of an enslaved nation, and the Providnyk of all Ukrainians united by nationalism and the fight for independence, according to the principle that the OUN represented the Ukrainian nation, and Bandera represented the OUN. This speech was one of Bandera’s most important oratorical performances. It has excited Ukrainian nationalists down to the present day and has also been regarded as Bandera’s major intellectual achievement.
OUN STARTS TO FALSIFY HISTORY AND IT'S NAZI COLLABORATION AND FASCIST INSPIRATION
156 In his autobiography from 1959, Bandera also wrote that he demanded that the policies of the OUN should be less dependent on outside factors, by which he meant cooperation with Nazi Germany.[696] This claim from 1959, however, corresponds neither with the OUN-B’s actions in 1940–1941, nor with what Bandera expressed in an undated letter to Mel’nyk, written in August 1940, when he was outraged at the rumor spread by Baranovs’kyi that Bandera was hostile to Nazi Germany.[697]
161 In another document from this time, the OUN-B wrote: “Odyn narid, odyn provid, odna vlada,” a Ukrainian version of the concept of “One nation, one party, one leader” (Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer).[732]
OUN-B SHARED SIMILAR VISION TO HILTERITES - VIOLENT STRUGGLE AGAINST "ASIATICS"
162 Confident that it had the spirits of Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, and Ievhen Konovalets’ on its side, the OUN-B wanted not only to found a state for the “Ukrainian race” but also to struggle for other “nations of Eastern Europe and Asia enslaved by Moscow, for a new order on the ruins of the Moscow Empire, the USSR.” For this reason, the “Ukrainian National Revolution” was planned to take place not only in the “living space” of the “Ukrainian race.” The OUN-B also wanted to inspire a number of other “nations enslaved by Moscow” and involve them in the “liberation struggle” against the Soviet Union. This was to take place under the slogan: “Freedom for the Nations and the Individual!”[741]
162 The collaboration with radical right movements that were rooted in other republics of the USSR, and with states that were threatened by the USSR, was strategically very profitable for the Ukrainian nationalists because it weakened their main enemy. The OUN-B was particularly interested in cooperation with “Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Byelorussia.”[743]
163 These messages and lures, according to the authors of the booklet, were designed to reach the minds of the Ukrainian soldiers and soldiers from the “enslaved countries” who were serving in the Red Army, as well as the minds of peasants and factory workers, and to make them fight against the Soviet Union, on the side of the OUN-B and the Germans.[750]
163 The authors of the booklet borrowed from Dmytro Dontsov—their main teacher of extreme nationalism, antisemitism, and hatred of Russia—two interrelated antisemitic concepts. The first was that “the Jews in the USSR are the main pillar of the Bolshevik regime, and the avantgarde of the Moscow imperialism in Ukraine.” The second stated that the OUN “combats Jews as a pillar of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime.”[751]
163 The red-and-black flag, which symbolizes blood and soil (Ger. Blut und Boden), was one of them.[753]
163 These colors referred to the racist and proto-fascist German blood and soil ideology, which suggests the inseparability of a people (Rasse or Volk) and their “living space” (Lebensraum) as well as an attraction to the “soil,” which acquired spiritual and mythological connotations. Furthermore, the OUN-B employed the fascist salute of raising the right arm “slightly to the right, slightly above the peak of the head” while calling “Glory to Ukraine!” (Slava Ukraїni!), the response to which was “Glory to the Heroes!” (Heroiam Slava!).[754]
164 The OUN-B politicians understood it as evidence that it might be possible to proclaim and establish a Ukrainian state. They believed or hoped that the “New Europe”—under the aegis of Nazi Germany—would need an independent Ukraine, just as it needed an independent Croatia and Slovakia.[763]
165 OUN-B completed a very important document called “The Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime,” further referred to here as “Struggle and Activities,” on which OUN-B leaders Bandera, Lenkavs’kyi, Shukhevych, and Stets’ko had been working for several weeks.[764] The document was intended to provide the revolutionaries with orientation and specific information concerning the development of the revolution. According to the document, the OUN-B planned to use a “favorable situation” of a “war between Moscow and other states,” in order to conduct the revolution, to which the OUN-B sought to mobilize the whole Ukrainian nation.[765]
165 A huge challenge for the OUN-B revolution and state were the minorities. The authors of “Struggle and Activities” divided them into: “a) our friends, i.e. the members of the enslaved nations [and b) our enemies, Muscovites, Poles, and Jews.” Since the first group was expected to help the OUN conduct the revolution against the Soviet Union, they were to “have the same rights as Ukrainians” in the future Ukrainian OUN-B state. The second group would be “destroyed in the struggle, in particular those who protect the regime” of their country. This corresponded with the principle: “Our power should be horrible for its opponents. Terror for enemy aliens and our traitors.”[767]
UKRAINIAN 'NATIONAL REVOLUTION' BEGINS WITH OPERATION BARBAROSSA
166 We treat the coming German army as the army of allies. We try before their coming to put life in order, on our own as it should be. We inform them that the Ukrainian authority is already established, it is under the control of the OUN under the leadership of Stepan Bandera; all matters are regulated by the OUN, and the local authorities are ready to establish friendly relations with the army, in order to fight together against Moscow and collaborate [with Nazi Germany].[774]
167 The OUN-B members, and in particular the OUN-B militiamen were advised to follow the rule: “During the time of chaos and confusion, it is permissible to liquidate undesirable Polish, Muscovite [Russian or Soviet], and Jewish activists.”[783]
167 We have to remember that these existing elements have to be, as the main pillar of the NKVD and the Soviet authority in Ukraine, exterminated while [we are] establishing the new revolutionary order in Ukraine. These elements are: 1. Muscovites [Moskali], sent to the Ukrainian territories in order to strengthen the Moscow power in Ukraine. 2. Jews [Zhydy], as individuals as well as a national group. 3. Aliens [Chuzhyntsi], especially various Asians with whom Moscow colonized Ukraine … 4. Poles [Poliaky] in the western Ukrainian territories, who have not ceased dreaming about the reconstruction of a Greater Poland.[785]
168 During the first phase of the revolution, the registration would simplify the act of detaining the Jews in concentration camps together with “asocial elements and wounded.”[794] Citizens of the OUN-B state were expected to provide the militia with information about “Red Army soldiers, NKVD men, Jews [zhydiv (evreïv)], and informers—in short, everyone who does not belong to the village community.”[795]
177 The “Ukrainian National Revolution” began simultaneously with Operation Barbarossa, in the early hours of 22 June 1941, when Nazi Germany—supported by troops from Finland, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Slovakia—attacked the Soviet Union. About 800 OUN-B activists in four task forces, which were divided into groups of five to twelve members, followed the German army eastward through the Ukrainian territories.
WORLD WAR 2 COLLABOARATION WITH HITLERITES
174 In addition to preparing the revolution on paper and developing plans for the future Ukrainian state, the OUN-B also made a range of preparations with the Abwehr in the General Government, and in Soviet western Ukraine where it controlled the nationalist underground.
174 the General Government, the OUN-B collaborated with such Abwehr officers as Wilhelm Canaris,[819] Theodor Oberländer,[820] Hans Koch,[821] and Alfred Bisanz.[822] The Abwehr provided the OUN-B with resources to train and arm its members in the General Government and in the underground in Ukraine. The Germans expected the latter to attack the Soviet army from the rear, after the beginning of Barbarossa.[823] Further, the military collaboration resulted in, among other things, the formation of the Abwehr battalions, Nachtigall with 350 soldiers, and Roland with 330. Both were made up of Ukrainian soldiers, led by German and Ukrainian officers. The Ukrainians called the battalions Brotherhoods of Ukrainian Nationalists (Druzhyny Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv).[824] The OUN-B also provided an espionage service for the Abwehr, using its organizational structure in western Ukraine and working as soldiers, spies, and translators in the Abwehr.[825]
GENOCIDE
178 overlapped. On the way to Lviv in a task force on 25 June 1941, Iaroslav Stets’ko, strongly antisemitic at the time of the revolution, wrote to Stepan Bandera from the village of Mlyny: “We are setting up a militia that will help to remove the Jews and protect the population,” and continued “Father Lev Sohor has already organized a militia and has a written mandate from the OUN for this, and the village has accepted this. So have them [the Jews] come here to meet the militia, and it will eliminate those Jews and so forth.”[859]
UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS VIEWED THE CITIES AS HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM
170 The Ukrainian nationalist anxiety about the cities—and the belief that they had nothing in common with the Ukrainian culture that was deeply ingrained in the villages—manifested itself in slogans such as “Peasant Ukraine Conquers Cities and Kills the Enemies of Ukraine.”[800] The OUN leaders planned to mobilize the Ukrainian villages against the cosmopolitan cities in which, according to the authors of “Struggle and Activities,” most of the foes of the Ukrainians lived.[801]
