This study investigates the life and the political cult of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian far-right leader who lived between 1909 and 1959. Bandera’s cult emerged in the mid-1930s and has endured to the present. The person and the cult did not exist separately from each other but remained in a state of mutual dependency. They did not occur and function in a vacuum but in specific cultural, social, and political contexts. The investigation of these contexts is one of the crucial goals of this study. It will allow us to comprehend the interrelation between Bandera’s life and the processes surrounding his mythologization. The book combines a political biography of the legendary Ukrainian leader, embedded in the history of his movement, with an analysis of the writers, historians, ideologists, film directors, politicians, and political activists who were involved in the process of creating the Bandera cult between the mid-1930s and the end of the first decade of this century.
Even without the cult that arose during his lifetime and flourished after his death, Stepan Bandera was an intriguing person. It was not purely by chance that he became one of the central symbols of Ukrainian nationalism, although the role of chance in history should not be underestimated. With his radical nature, doctrinaire determination, and strong faith in an ultranationalist Ukrainian revolution that was intended to bring about the “rebirth” of the Ukrainian nation, Bandera fulfilled the ideological expectations of his cohorts. By the time he was twenty-six, he was admired not only by other Ukrainian revolutionary ultranationalists but also by some other elements of Ukrainian society living in the Second Polish Republic. The same factors made him the leader (Ukr. Providnyk or Vozhd’), and symbol of the most violent, twentieth century, western Ukrainian political movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsia Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN), which in late 1942 and early 1943 formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA). Despite, or perhaps because of the fact that Bandera spent a significant part of his life outside Ukraine, in prison or other confinement, he became a legendary personality after whom thousands of his followers, sympathizers and even ordinary western Ukrainians were called Banderites (Ukr. banderivtsi, Pol. banderowcy, Rus. banderovtsi). There are also those who think that his remarkable-sounding name, meaning “banner” in Polish and Spanish, contributed to his becoming the symbol of Ukrainian nationalism.
A biographical investigation of Bandera is challenging. His political myth is embedded in different ideologies, which have distorted the perception of the person. Not without reason do the Bandera biographies that have appeared in Poland, Russia and Ukraine since 1990 differ greatly from one another and inform us very little about the person and related history. Very few of them examine archival documents. Many are couched in various post-Soviet nationalist discourses. Their authors present Bandera as a national hero, sometimes even as a saint, and ignore or deny his radical worldview and his followers’ contribution to ethnic and political violence. Others present Bandera as a biblical kind of evil and deny war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians by the Poles, Germans, and Soviets. Earlier publications on Bandera written during the Cold War were either embedded in Soviet discourse or, more frequently, in the nationalist discourse of the Ukrainian diaspora.
The investigation of Bandera requires not only a comparison of his biographies and other publications relating to him, but, more important, the examination of numerous archival documents, memoirs written by persons who knew him, and documents and publications written by him personally. The study of these documents reveals how Bandera acted at particular stages of his life, and how he was perceived by his contemporaries. This enables us to understand Bandera’s role in twentieth-century Ukrainian history and helps us look for answers to the most difficult questions related to his biography, such as if and to what extent he was responsible for OUN and UPA atrocities, in which he was personally not involved but which he approved of.
The cult of the leader is a phenomenon created by and rooted within a particular society, group, or community that is prepared to accept the ideological dimensions of the cult. A leader often emerges in a time of crisis and his adherents believe that he will help the community weather it. The power and charisma of the leader derives usually only in part from him. In greater measure, it is a social product, a creation of social expectations vested in him.[1] The leaders around whom personality cults are established are therefore either charismatic or, more frequently, believed to be charismatic. Charisma might be a “personality gift, a situational coincidence, or a particular pact between leader and the followers.”[2]
A charismatic leader cannot exist without a “charismatic community,” which would accept, admire, celebrate, and believe in his “extraordinary” qualities. To achieve this state of mind and affairs, an emotional relationship between the leader and the community must be established. The community feels connected with its leader who, as his followers believe, takes care of them and leads them toward a better future.[3] One of the most effective ways to establish an emotional relationship between the leader and the community is through the performance of rituals. The practicing of political rituals is crucial for the formation of a collective identity that unites a group. Rituals influence the morality and values of the individuals practicing them, and transform the emotional state of the group.[4]
In practice, the process of creating charisma around the leader might proceed in different ways, depending on the nature of the movement. Small movements in multiethnic states—such as the OUN or the Croatian Ustaša—would use methods different from those used by movements that took control of the state and established a regime, such as the Italian Fascists or the German National Socialists. Charisma may also be attributed to a leader after his death. A charismatic community might still be under the influence of its deceased leader and therefore continue to admire and commemorate him. Not only the body of the leader but also his personal objects, including his clothing, writing desk, or pen might become imbued with sacred meaning after his death. The members of the charismatic community might treat those objects as relics, the last remnants of their legendary leader and true hero.[5]
The cults of fascist and other totalitarian leaders emerged in Europe after the First World War. Their emergence was related to the disappearance of relevant monarchies and of the cults of emperors who had been regarded as the representatives of God on earth, and whose absence caused a void in the lives of many.[6] Several fascist movements regarded the Roman Catholic Church as an important institution to imitate because the head of the Church did not need his own charisma to appear charismatic.[7] Nazi Party Secretary Rudolf Hess wrote in a private letter in 1927: “The great popular leader is similar to the great founder of a religion: he must communicate to his listeners an apodictic faith. Only then can the mass of followers be led where they should be led. They will then also follow the leader if the setbacks are encountered; but only then, if they have communicated to them unconditional belief in the absolute rightness of their own people.”[8] The legal philosopher Julius Binder argued in 1929: “The Leader cannot be made, can in this sense not be selected. The Leader makes himself in that he comprehends the history of his people.”[9] The historian Emilio Gentile observed that the “charismatic leader is accepted as a guide by his followers, who obey him with veneration and devotion, because they consider that he has been invested with the task of realizing an idea of the mission; the leader is the living incarnation and mythical interpretation of his mission.”[10] In this sense, the leader as an incarnation of a mission, or as a charismatic personality, might acquire the qualities of a saint or messiah that correspond to the community’s needs.[11] Followers of a leader believe that he comes as “destiny from the inner essence of people,”[12] because he embodies the idea of the movement and personifies its politics. Roger Eatwell observed that the leader might help people to “understand complex events” and “come to terms with complexity through the image of a single person who is held to be special, but in some way accountable.”[13]
A fascist leader is expected to be an idealistic, dynamic, passionate, and revolutionary individual. He is the “bearer of a mission,” who tries to overthrow the status quo and has a very clear idea of his foes. His mission is understood as a revolutionary intervention. He frequently presents himself as a person who is ready to sacrifice his life and the lives of his followers for the idea of the movement. His transformation into a myth is almost inevitable, and he may become the prisoner of his own myth.[14]
The interwar period witnessed the rise of a range of different charismatic leaders and personality cults. A few leaders, such as Tomáš Masaryk in Czechoslovakia, were neither fascist nor authoritarian.[15] Some of them, like Józef Piłsudski in Poland were authoritarian, but not fascist, and could best be described as military.[16] The cults sprang up in different political, cultural, and social circumstances. The most famous European personality cults were established around Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union. Other cults surrounded Francisco Franco in Spain, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, Ante Pavelić in Croatia, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and Ion Antonescu in Romania, Miklós Horthy in Hungary, Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg in Austria, Andrej Hlinka and Jozef Tiso in Slovakia.[17]
Unlike most of these personalities Bandera never ruled a state, nor was his cult institutionalized in a sovereign state during his lifetime. This changed, ironically enough, half a century after his death, when not only did his cult reappear in western Ukraine but the President, Iushchenko, designated him a Hero of Ukraine. Since the middle of the 1930s, Bandera has been worshiped by various groups, as Providnyk, as a national hero, and as a romantic revolutionary. The ideological nature of the Bandera cult did not differ substantially from that of other cults of nationalist, fascist, or other authoritarian leaders, but the circumstances in which the Bandera cult existed were specific. Moreover, the long period over which the Bandera cult has been cultivated is not typical of the majority of such European leader cults. Following his assassination, the Ukrainian diaspora commemorated Bandera, not only as the Providnyk but also as a martyr who died for Ukraine. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the cult re-emerged in Ukraine. One of the purposes of this study is to explain both the continuity of the Bandera cult, and its varieties.
The myth of a leader is related to the phenomenon of a leader cult but the two concepts are not synonymous. The leader myth is a story that reduces the personality and history of the leader to a restricted number of idealized features. It may be expressed by means of a hagiographic article, book, image, film, song, or other form of media. The myth usually depicts the leader as a national hero, a brave revolutionary, the father of a nation, or a martyr. It describes the leader in a selective way, designed to meet and confirm the expectations of the “charismatic” or “enchanted” community. Like every myth, it mobilizes emotions and immobilizes minds.
The leader myth belongs to the more modern species of political myths, embedded in a particular ideology. Such myths emerged alongside modern politics, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. According to Christopher Flood, there is a reciprocal relationship between political myths and ideologies. Ideology provides myths with a framework of meaning, and myths are a means of visualizing and manifesting ideology.[18]
For the purposes of this study, ideology is characterized as a set of ideas of authoritative principles, which provide political and cultural orientation for groups that suffer from temporary cultural, social or political disorientation.[19] Ideology oversimplifies the complexity of the world, in order to make it an understandable and acceptable “reality.” It also deactivates critical and rational thought.[20] For Clifford Geertz, “it is a loss of orientation that most directly gives rise to ideological activity, an inability, for lack of usable models, to comprehend the universe of civic rights and responsibilities in which one finds oneself located.”[21] Ideologies are more persistent in societies that have strong needs for mobilization and legitimization, such as totalitarian states and fascist movements, than in those without such needs. Owing to their unifying, legitimizing, and mobilizing attributes, ideologies can also be understood as belief-systems that unite societies or groups, provide them with values, and inspire them to realize their political goals.[22]
The political myth of Stepan Bandera was initially embodied in the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, which, in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, underwent a process of fascistization. This ideology produced a whole mythology, consisting of a set of various political myths, of which the Bandera myth was perhaps the most significant. 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.
The concept of integral nationalism has been attractive to many scholars who have investigated the OUN. The notion of integral nationalism was shaped around 1900 by Charles Maurras, a leader and ideologist of Action Française, a French royalist, conservative, and antidemocratic movement. Fifty years later, John Armstrong published Ukrainian Nationalism, the first comprehensive and authoritative study of the OUN and the Second World War. The American historian classified the extremist form of Ukrainian nationalism as “integral nationalism,” and specified that “the theory and teaching of the Nationalists were very close to Fascism, and in some respects, such as the insistence on ‘racial purity,’ even went beyond the original Fascist doctrines.”[23] According to him, integral nationalism “never had much appeal in France or other Western European countries, but, in modified forms, it became a dominant force in the ‘dissatisfied’ countries of Central and Southern Europe in the twenties.”[24] Before Armstrong, historians such as Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes applied the concept of integral nationalism to far-right movements and authoritarian regimes in Hungary and Poland, as well as to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This method allowed Hayes and Armstrong to avoid using the contested term “fascism” but it did not contribute to the analytical and comparative understanding of the analyzed movements and regimes. As Armstrong explained, integral nationalism was “by definition a movement of individual nations rather than a universal ideology.”[25]
In his early years as a scholar, Armstrong elaborated a number of important characteristics of the ideology of the Ukrainian nationalists and also a few significant differences and similarities between the OUN and other East Central European far-right movements. He defined “integral nationalism” in terms of five characteristics: “(1) a belief in the nation as the supreme value to which all others must be subordinated, essentially a totalitarian concept; (2) an appeal to mystically conceived ideas of the solidarity of all individuals making up the nation, usually on the assumption that biological characteristics or the irreversible effects of common historical development had welded them into one organic whole; (3) a subordination of rational, analytic thought to the ‘intuitively correct’ emotions; (4) expression of the ‘national will’ through a charismatic leader and an elite nationalist enthusiasts organized in a single party; (5) glorification of action, war, and violence as an expression of the superior biological vitality of the nation.”[26]
Analyzing the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, Armstrong argued that “the essential irrationalism of the ideology was expressed by fanatical romanticism, which was, however, among the comparatively unsophisticated Ukrainians more spontaneous and genuine than the cynical rejection of reason by the Germans and Italians.”[27] In an article published in 1968 he broadened the scope of his analysis to include other East Central European movements, such as the Hlinka Party and the Croatian Ustaša. He admitted that all of them were influenced by Italian Fascism but emphasized that “at least as a start, it seems preferable to not call OUN’s ideology ‘fascism’ but to designate it ‘integral nationalism.’”[28]
Armstrong rightly analyzed the OUN in the context of the Ustaša, but the classification of the ideologies of the OUN, the Ustaša, and the Hlinka Party as “integral nationalism” is, at least from the contemporary point of view, problematic and not entirely convincing. First, neither did the OUN use the term “integral nationalism,” nor did it identify itself with the ideology of “integral nationalism.” Second, the OUN and its leaders did not claim the “traditional hereditary monarchy” and a number of other features typical of integral nationalism, as did Maurras, the father of this ideology. 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. Ukrainian extreme nationalism featured some of the elements of integral nationalism, such as placing the country above all. Similarly, Horthy’s regime in Hungary, Piłsudski’s in Poland, Mussolini’s in Italy, or Hitler’s in Germany were to some extent influenced by Action Française and Maurras’ writings, but they were neither united by, nor were they a form of integral nationalism, as Armstrong and Hayes argued.[29]
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.
Of all of the ideologies investigated in this study, the most controversial, especially when related to Bandera and the OUN, is fascism. Constantin Iordachi correctly remarked that “fascism continues to be one of the most intriguing and most debated radical political phenomena of the twentieth century.”[30] To use the term appropriately and to avoid misunderstandings, it is necessary to elucidate its meaning and to explain how it will be applied in this study. This will allow us to determine in which sense the OUN was a fascist phenomenon and Bandera a leader of a fascist movement. It will also enable us to place the OUN on the map of interwar European far-right, fascist, and other authoritarian movements and regimes. This approach should not narrow our analysis of Bandera and the OUN but should provide an appropriate theoretical context.
The term “fascism” is derived from the Latin word “fasces,” meaning a bundle of rods tied around an axe. The fasces were carried by the Roman lictors, symbolized the juridical authority of the magistrate, and represented the unity and strength of the community. In the late eighteenth century, the Italian Jacobins used the word “fascism” as an expression of political freedom and national unity. In the nineteenth century, the term “fascism” was used by various socialist and nationalist political groups. In March 1919 in Milan, Mussolini used the term “fascism” when he founded the Fascio di Combattimento, to the ranks of which he recruited a number of ex-soldiers, syndicalists and futurists. At the end of October 1922, the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF) conducted the March on Rome, as a result of which Mussolini became prime minister of Italy. In this position, he began to seize power and to create the first fascist regime. Although the establishment of a full-scale dictatorship in Italy was accomplished only in 1926, fascism had been admired by a plethora of European politicians, writers and intellectuals, at least since Mussolini’s 1922 coup d’état.[31]
During the interwar period the term “fascism” was used in at least three ways. First, it described the political regime in Italy. Second, it was extended to other far-right movements and regimes that held values and ideas similar to those of the Italian Fascists. By the end of the 1920s, Mussolini had declared fascism an “export product” and undertaken its popularization and attempted globalization. He argued that fascism is “Italian in its particular form—universalist in spirit.”[32] The seizure of power by the National Socialists in Germany in 1933 significantly reinforced the expansion and popularization of fascism in Europe and on other continents. Third, the term “fascist” was used in particular by communists and socialists to discredit political opponents of various orientations.[33]
The earliest interpretations and condemnations of fascism came from Marxist intellectuals, communists, and liberals. In the early 1920s, the Communist International (Comintern) used the term “fascism” in connection with the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany. It soon, however, began to apply it to various conservative, authoritarian, or military regimes, such as those of Józef Piłsudski in Poland, the Antanas Smetona regime in Lithuania, the Miklós Horthy authoritarian government in Hungary, and the Ion Antonescu regime in Romania. Although these regimes borrowed some trappings from fascism, they were at odds—or even in open combat—with fascist movements in their respective states. By labeling Piłsudski’s authoritarian regime as “fascist,” the Comintern sought to emphasize how disappointed it was with the Polish leader. Piłsudski in his earlier life had been a socialist, but after his seizure of power in 1926, he showed no interest in collaboration with communists.[34] Similarly, even socialists were sometimes labeled as “fascists.” In 1924, Stalin announced that “Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.” Because the Social-Democrat government in Germany took action against the May Day march in 1929, during which several communists were killed, the Comintern argued that “Social Democracy is preparing … the establishment of a fascist dictatorship.”[35]
Equally important for orthodox Marxists was the identification of capitalism with fascism. In the Comintern report of 1935, Georgi Dimitroff claimed that fascist regimes were “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”[36] Only a few Marxist thinkers, such as Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti, interpreted fascism in a more nuanced and non-dogmatic manner. On the other hand, some liberal commentators perceived fascism as “a sort of illness of national culture.”[37]
In Soviet discourse during the Cold War, democratic countries of the Western bloc were frequently portrayed as fascist. Outside the Soviet Union, leftist groups used “fascist” as a derogatory term to discredit their enemies.[38] In the 1950s, the theory of totalitarianism, which compared and sometimes even equated communism with fascism, concentrating on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, became very popular. This approach explained the origins and features of totalitarian regimes but neglected the political, social, and cultural differences between fascism and communism.[39]
The first non-Marxist studies on the subject of European fascist movements and regimes appeared in the 1960s. Authors such as Ernst Nolte, Eugen Weber, and George L. Mosse dealt with countries including Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain, as well as movements such as the Russian Fascist Party (Rossiiskaia fashistskaia partia, RFP) and the Croatian Ustaša.[40] From the outset, the extreme and genocidal form of Ukrainian nationalism was not classified and investigated as a fascist movement, although the OUN, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s, had felt an ideological affinity with Italian Fascism, National Socialism, the Ustaša, the British Union of Fascists, the Romanian Iron Guard, and a number of related movements. Scholars such as Armstrong, who began investigating the OUN in the 1950s, were frequently misled by the fact that the OUN emphasized its own national uniqueness and indigenous roots. This feature, however, was typical of all fascist movements. In particular, small and weak movements tended to stress the uniqueness of national traditions, because their leaders and ideologists were concerned about the independence of their countries and wished to avoid being labeled as national “traitors” or agents of international movements.[41]
Like the National Socialists and Ustaša, but unlike the British Union of Fascists and the Russian Fascist Party, the OUN did not use the term “fascist” as part of the name of the organization. OUN members and ideologists referred to themselves as nationalists but felt, especially in the late 1930s and early 1940s, that Ukrainian nationalism was the same type of movement as National Socialism or Italian Fascism. They also perceived themselves as a “liberation movement.” Its aims were to combat and remove the “occupiers” of Ukrainian territories and to establish an independent Ukrainian state. With this in mind, the OUN was closely related to “liberation movements” such as the Ustaša and the Hlinka Party, which were also rooted in societies without nation states.
The way of interpreting and understanding fascism was altered in the 1990s by scholars such as Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Roger Eatwell, and Stanley G. Payne, who tried to elaborate a concept of generic fascism. A huge difficulty, when developing such a concept, was the heterogeneity of interwar far-right, authoritarian, and fascist movements, the uneven empirical research of the particular movements and regimes, and the inconsistent nature of fascism. The concept of generic fascism was derived from early studies by Nolte, Mosse, and Weber. It provided a basic theoretical framework for comparative fascist studies but it did not finish the debates on fascism and its diverse aspects, including for example the questions as to whether fascism appeared only in Europe and only in the interwar period or whether it was a global phenomenon not limited in time, or if there was a clear difference between fascist movements and revolutionary ultranationalist non-fascist movements.[42]
First of all, it is important to point out the differences between a fascist movement and a fascist regime. Only a few movements became regimes in the sense that the Italian Fascists and the National Socialists did. Others, such as the Ustaša and the Hlinka Party, formed a regime only with the help of Nazi Germany and were dependent upon it. There were also long-lasting regimes like Franco’s in Spain, and Salazar’s in Portugal, which at times adopted many fascist features, but in the long term were a combination of national-conservative and fascist regimes. Robert Paxton proposed five stages of fascism: “(1) the initial creation of fascist movements; (2) their rooting as parties in a political system; (3) the acquisition of power; (4) the exercise of power, and finally in the longer term, (5) radicalization or entropy.” Although logical and instructive, Paxton’s concept was not entirely relevant to the study of some East Central European movements, such as the Ustaša or the OUN, which first needed to establish a state in order to establish a regime. His concept was deduced from fascist movements in democratic states. Paxton suggested that “fascism can appear wherever democracy is sufficiently implemented to have aroused disillusion” and argued that the Ku Klux Klan was the “earliest phenomenon that seems functionally related to fascism.”[43]
Griffin, who adopted a Weberian ideal-type methodology, emphasized the myth, its mobilizing force, and its revolutionary, populist, and ultranationalist framework: “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”[44] Crucial to Griffin’s conception of fascism is the notion of palingenesis, meaning the rebirth or redemption of a nation by means of new populist ultranationalist policies after a period of supposed decline. Simultaneously, Griffin also pointed out the limits of an ideal-type definition and suggested that “such a model is essentially a utopia, since it cannot correspond exactly to anything in empirical reality, which is always irreducibly complex, ‘messy’, and unique. Definitions of generic terms can thus never be ‘true’ to reality, but they can be more or less useful in investigating it (‘heuristically useful’) when applied as conceptual tools of analysis.”[45]
Roger Eatwell observed that Griffin’s early definition of fascism omitted “fascism’s ‘negation,’” the six points of “fascist minimum” first formulated by Nolte. These points were: anti-Marxism, antiliberalism, anticonservatism, Führerprinzip, a party army, and the aim of totalitarianism.[46] Griffin seems to have omitted these points because he had developed an “empathetic approach” inspired by the writings of George Mosse and Emilio Gentile.[47] This was one of the weaknesses of Griffin’s concept of fascism because it detached fascism from its violent and disastrous nature, while emphasizing fascism’s creative strengths related to palingenesis.[48] Seeking an appropriate definition of fascism, we should not only complement Griffin’s definition with Nolte’s “fascist minimum” but also point out further negative features typical of fascism, such as anti-democracy, ultranationalism, populism, racism, antisemitism, militarism, and the cult of ethnic and political violence.
In his definition of fascism, similarly to Griffin, another leading scholar, Stanley G. Payne, emphasized the revolutionary and ultranationalist core: “Fascism may be defined as a form of revolutionary ultranationalism for national rebirth that is based on a primarily vitalist philosophy, is structured on extreme elitism, mass mobilization, and the Führerprinzip, positively values violence as end as well as means and tends to normalize war and/or the military virtues.”[49] Also like Griffin, Payne advised that such definitions of common characteristics should be used with great care. Discussing palingenesis, he pointed out another weak point of Griffin’s theory. Payne indicated that palingenesis is typical not only for fascist but also for leftist, moderate, conservative, and extreme right-wing nationalisms, and that there were also “non-fascist populist revolutionary forms of nationalism,” such as the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, MNR) in Bolivia. According to Payne, it is necessary to “clearly distinguish between fascist movements per se, and the non-fascist (or sometimes protofascist) authoritarian right.” Such a distinction is, however, difficult to make because “the heyday of fascism coincided with a general era of political authoritarianism” and because “it would be grossly inaccurate to argue that this process proceeded independent of fascism, but neither was it merely synonymous with fascism.” In a table including fascists, radical right, and conservative right movements, he did not consider the OUN and Ukraine, but classified similar and better-known movements, such as the Ustaša, the Iron Guard, and the Polish National Camp Falanga, as fascist.[50]
Ian Kershaw, the author of several excellent studies on the Third Reich, including a superb biography of Hitler, pointed out the limits of the concept of generic fascism. He argued that he has “no difficulty in describing German National Socialism both as a specific form of fascism and as a particular expression of totalitarianism” but remarked that “when it comes to explaining the essence of the Nazi phenomenon, it is less than satisfying.” This observation is very important because all fascist movements and regimes had their own unique features, sight of which should not be lost while analyzing them in the framework of fascist studies.[51]
Somewhat similarly to Kershaw, Georg Mosse argued in favor of studying fascism “from the inside out,” or trying to reconstruct how its followers perceived it. He defined fascism as a complex phenomenon, which cannot be reduced only to politics and can be comprehended through empathy: “Fascism considered as a cultural movement means seeing fascism as it saw itself and as its followers saw it, to attempt to understand the movement in its own terms. Only then, when we have grasped fascism from the inside out, can we truly judge its appeal and its power. … The cultural interpretation of fascism opens up a means to penetrate fascist self-understanding, and such empathy is crucial in order to grasp how people saw the movement, something which cannot be ignored or evaluated merely in retrospect.”[52]
Michael Mann reminded us of a very simple but extremely important aspect of fascism. He wrote that “fascist ideology must be taken seriously, in its own terms. It must be not dismissed as crazy, contradictory, or vague.” He also argued that historians of fascism need to take the values of fascists seriously; they should not excuse or relativize them but seek to understand fascists’ worldviews and deeds. Furthermore, he remarked that “fascism was a movement of high ideals, able to persuade a substantial part of two generations of young people (especially the highly educated) that it could bring about a more harmonious social order,” and that the fascist movements were “hierarchical yet comradely.”[53]
A very significant element of fascism was revolution. Movements such as the German National Socialists took over power and established a regime by cooperating with conservative politicians. Hitler perceived this process as a “national revolution.”[54] Other movements took power by a coup d’état, such as the March on Rome by the Italian Fascists, which was staged to frighten liberal and conservative politicians and brought Mussolini to power. Fascist movements and regimes viewed revolution as a means not only of taking over power but also of altering society, changing its values and mindsets, and destroying opponents. Griffin called this process the “permanent revolution.”[55] As this study will show, the OUN’s leaders, including Bandera, used both concepts—“national revolution” and “permanent revolution”—to prepare a revolutionary act, take over power, and establish a fascist dictatorship.
Although fascist movements and regimes shared similar values and felt that they belonged to the same family of political movements, we certainly should not look at them as equal or identical. Kevin Passmore pointed out the inconsistent and contradictory nature of fascism. He reminded us that fascist ideology combined various elements, including contradictory ones, such as modernism and fascination with traditions, or secularism and obsession with religion. It also united very different types of people such as street fighters, intellectuals, and terrorists.[56]
Zeev Sternhell observed that fascism was a “pan-European phenomenon,” which “existed at three levels—as an ideology, as a political movement, and as a form of government.”[57] Given that fascism appeared in various countries and in different societies, it must have varied on all three levels in terms of culture, national tradition, economy, social structure, and political culture. Fascist movements appeared in industrialized countries, such as Britain and Germany, and also in rural and economically less developed countries, such as Romania, Croatia, or Slovakia. It also appeared in nation states, such as Italy, France, and Germany, and in societies without states, such as Croatia and Slovakia. Antisemitism and other forms of racism were central to National Socialism and several East Central European fascist movements, but not to the Italian Fascists. Romanticism, mysticism, and irrationality were more typical of the OUN and the Iron Guard than they were of Italian Fascism.
It is very important to emphasize that fascist movements and regimes—despite their cultural and ideological similarities—did not always collaborate with each other and were not always sympathetic to each other. Major and minor conflicts between fascist, far-right, and authoritarian leaders, movements, and regimes were not uncommon, because practical matters, such as the control of a particular territory, were seen as more important than ideological connections. The clash between the Austrian National Socialists on the one side, and the Fatherland Front (Vaterländische Front) and its Home Guard (Heimwehr), collectively known after the Second World War as “Austrofascists,” on the other, is just one example of this. In July 1934 during the failed putsch against his Austrofascist regime, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis. 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]
On the one hand, the new consensus on fascism—and in particular Griffin’s concept of the theory of generic fascism—stimulated new interest in fascism, inspired new studies of the uninvestigated, neglected, or heavily mythologized fascist movements, and other features of European and global fascism, and brought forward comparative and transnational fascist studies. On the other hand, the new consensus was met with criticism. One important argument of its critics was that palingenesis or national rebirth is typical not only for fascist movements but also for almost all forms of nationalism. Another criticism was that scholars of fascism tend to level the differences between various fascist movements and regimes. In particular, German and East European historians questioned the relevance of fascist studies to the investigation of their own national history.[60]
This study will refer to a movement, regime, or ideology as fascist if it meets the main criteria enclosed in the above-explained concepts of fascism. First, we will regard movements as fascist, only if they adopted the Führerprinzip, practiced the cult of ethnic and political violence, regarded mass violence as an extension of politics, and were entirely or in great part antidemocratic, anti-Marxist, antiliberal, anticonservative, totalitarian, ultranationalist, populist, racist, antisemitic, and militarist. Second, we will regard movements as fascist, only if they tried to take over power and intended to introduce a fascist dictatorship, and if they planned the palingenesis, or a radical political and cultural regeneration of a nation in order to prevent its “degeneration.” Third, we should bear in mind the difference between conservative or military regimes like Antonescu’s, Horthy’s or Piłsudski’s, and fascist regimes like Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, and also regimes, which at times were fascist but in the long term combined national-conservatism with fascism, like Franco’s and Salazar’s. Similarly, we should also be aware that far-right nationalist movements, which tried to take over power and establish a dictatorship, might in the course of the years have changed their ideologies and their attitude toward fascism. When it was convenient for them, they might have fascistized themselves and have represented themselves as fascist. Later they might have claimed that they have never been fascist. Similarly, they might have combined nationalism with fascism and other far-right ideologies, such as racism or antisemitism in different proportions and thus be neither typically fascist nor typically nationalist or racist.
Having explained fascism, it is necessary to briefly explain the difference between fascism and nationalism, two quite closely related phenomena. The modern form of nationalism, defined as a political program that instrumentalizes and mystifies the past to form a national community and establish a nation state, has its origins in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[61] Nationalism was a byproduct of the French Revolution and the modern politics generated by it. In addition, it was also influenced by Romanticism. Nationalist movements took very different forms, depending on the social and political circumstances of the groups that invented or adopted this ideology. Nationalism became radicalized, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to George Mosse nationalism became the “life-system which provided the foundation for all fascist movements.” The mass violence caused by and experienced during the First World War contributed to the development of fascism, which was in its first stage, according to Sternhell, a “synthesis of organic nationalism and anti-Marxist socialism.” Fascism became the most radical form of nationalism, but its own ideology and goals differed from those of nationalism. Although nationalism and fascism were influenced by racism and antisemitism, they were not racist or antisemitic to the same extent. Finally, we should keep in mind that, although nationalism and fascism are distinct in nature, the boundaries between them became blurred, especially in the case of such movements as the OUN and Ustaša, which both understood themselves as nationalist “liberation movements” related to other fascist movements.[62]
During the interwar period, Bandera and the OUN called themselves “nationalists,” but regarded the OUN as a movement related to the Italian Fascists, the National Socialists, the Iron Guard, and similar movements. In this study, therefore, they will be called either nationalist or fascist, depending on the context. Individuals or groups during the Cold War or after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, who established a cultural, spiritual, or emotional continuity between themselves and the interwar OUN, its leaders and members, or its politics, will be referred to as “nationalist,” “neo-fascist,” “radical right,” or “far right,” depending on the context. “Neo-fascism” in this study means the rebirth of fascist ideas and aesthetics after the end of the Second World War, when the main fascist states had disappeared, and fascism as an ideology was completely discredited on account of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and other similar movements and regimes.
The terms “fascism” and “radical right” or “far right” do not mean the same thing. The term “radical right” is also an ambiguous one. On the one hand, it has been used since the 1950s, especially by political scientists, to describe ultranationalist, anticommunist, fundamentalist, or populist parties. On the other hand, scholars use it in a more general context to refer to modern radical nationalist movements, which have been emerging in Europe since the late nineteenth century. In general, the term “radical right” is a broader one than “fascism.” “Fascism” bears a more specific meaning than “radical right.” It refers to a specific kind of “radical right” movement that emerged after the First World War, such as the Italian Fascists, the National Socialists, and a number of other smaller parties or organizations that sought to take power and introduce fascist dictatorships.[63]
The sacralization of politics is a theoretical concept related to the previously discussed notions of cult, myth, charisma, and fascism. Emilio Gentile, one of the leading theorists of this concept, argued that totalitarian movements and regimes have the tendency to sacralize politics and to create political religions. According to Gentile, the “sacralisation of politics takes place when politics is conceived, lived and represented through myths, rituals, and symbols that demand faith in the sacralised secular entity, dedication among the community of believers, enthusiasm for action, and a warlike spirit and sacrifice in order to secure its defense and its triumph.”[64]
When analyzing the radical and revolutionary form of Ukrainian nationalism, which was deeply influenced by religion, it is important to keep in mind that the “sacralization of politics does not necessarily lead to conflict with traditional religions, and neither does it lead to a denial of the existence of any supernatural supreme being.”[65] On the contrary, the relationship between political and traditional religion is very complex. Political religions take over religious elements and “transform them into a system of beliefs, myths and rituals,” in consequence of which, the boundaries between them frequently blur: ordinary individuals are transformed into worshipers, political symbols became sacralized, and national heroes are perceived as secular saints.[66]
Gentile correctly observed that the sacralization of politics in the twentieth century was catalyzed by the First World War, during which several countries used God and religion to legitimize violence. After the war, even movements that had been declared to be atheist or anti-religious used religious symbols to legitimize their ideologies and to attract the masses. The cult of the fallen, heroes and martyrs, the symbolism of death and resurrection, dedication to and exaltation of the nation, and the mystic qualities of blood and sacrifice were very common elements of militarist and totalitarian movements.[67] The sacralization of the state was another significant variety of political religion, which became especially important in the Ukrainian context. When Ukrainians did not succeed in establishing a state, the attempt to do so became, for the Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists, a matter of life and death.[68]
After the Second World War, because of specific political circumstances, elements of the Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists continued to sacralize politics, especially in the diaspora. Both before and after Bandera’s assassination, his cult was composed of various religious elements. After his death, the transformation of Bandera into a martyr was one of them. In order to explore this matter, Gentile’s approach will be combined with Clifford Geertz’s concept of “thick description.” Using descriptive analyses of its rituals and its creation of various hagiographic items, we will try to understand the meaning of the Bandera cult, and the role it has played in the invention of Ukrainian tradition.[69]
Related to the question of sacralization is the heroization-demonization dichotomy. This notion will be explored in this study, but it should not prevent us from uncovering Bandera’s life and the history of his movement. The depiction of individuals as heroes and villains, or friends and enemies, is an intrinsic element of totalitarian ideologies. The main question to be investigated in this context is: Which ideology met what kind of needs, while depicting Bandera as a hero, or as a villain, and what kind of hero or villain did Bandera become?[70]
The investigation of Bandera, the OUN, and Ukrainian nationalism must also relate to the Soviet Union and Soviet ideology. The OUN perceived the Soviet Union as its most important enemy, before—and especially after—Jews and Poles had largely disappeared from Ukraine. Bandera’s ultranationalist revolution after the Second World War was intended to take place in Soviet Ukraine and was directed against Soviet power. What is more, Soviet propaganda created its own Bandera image, which, during the Cold War, affected the perception of Bandera in the Western bloc and, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in post-Soviet Ukraine. Therefore, the investigation of Soviet questions concerning Bandera and Ukrainian revolutionary nationalism is an important aspect of this study.[71]
The last theoretical notion that needs to be shortly introduced—before we move to the empirical part of this book—is memory. Bandera’s image in the collective memories of different communities has varied from the very beginning. Bandera was remembered in an idealized and heroic way by people who participated in his cult and who believed in his myth. The way that Polish, Jewish, and other survivors of the OUN and UPA terror remembered Bandera was very different from the way his worshipers among the Ukrainian diaspora did. Soviet propaganda shaped a very negative and offensive way of remembering and presenting Bandera and the OUN-UPA. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the memory of Bandera has divided post-Soviet Ukraine.
In order to analyze the different memories of Bandera, we must differentiate between at least three concepts: individual memory, collective memory, and the politics of memory. A number of people knew Bandera and thus possessed some kind of personal memory of him. The publication and dissemination of their memories allowed other individuals, who did not know Bandera in person, to familiarize themselves with his life and to develop some emotional bond with him, if they had not already done so through the cult and myth. This obviously influenced the collective memory of a community who shared a similar identity and a similar realm of experience. Both kinds of memories were influenced by the politics of memory, which defined how to conduct official commemorations, or how a biography, film, or exhibition should present the Providnyk, in order to meet the political expectations of a community, a society, or a state.[72]
The investigation of memory—like the investigation of the cult and myth—should not, however, obstruct the investigation of the “real” history of Ukrainian nationalism and the “real” personality of Bandera. Neglecting actual history or trying to understand history through the framework of memory is a dangerous tendency in contemporary historiography which, especially in fields like the Second World War or the Holocaust, opens doors to various radical right activists and other abusers of history. To avoid such problems, we should examine a memory also in the light of Holocaust denial and Holocaust obfuscation and pay particular attention to the question whether those far-right groups and nationalist communities that commemorated Bandera, the OUN, and the UPA recalled, ignored, or deliberately denied the Ukrainian contribution to the Holocaust, and other atrocities committed by the Ukrainian nationalists.[73] With this in mind, we should examine the “archives of silence,” which are the result of collective ignorance of history. These archives are full of suppressed and forgotten—but very important—elements of national history, particularly history related to ethnic and political violence, and other elements that do not correspond with a patriotic interpretation of history.[74] “‘I did that,’ says my memory. I couldn’t have done that—says my pride, and stands its ground. Finally, memory gives in,” remarked Friedrich Nietzsche in 1886.[75]
“Genocide” is a contested term and a concept that makes more sense in legal and political discourse than in historical studies. The use of the term may interfere with academic analysis, by obscuring links between different forms of mass violence conducted by the same group of perpetrators against various ethnic and political enemies.[76] It is not the purpose of this book to argue that some atrocities committed by the OUN, the Nazis, or the Ustaša were genocidal and that others were not, or to equate the Holocaust with other mass crimes in order to elevate the status of suffering of a particular group. My use of the term “genocide” assumes the intention of the perpetrators to annihilate a group or a community because of its national or ethnic identity. By the same token it is important to emphasize the multifarious nature of OUN violence, which was directed against all kinds of ethnic enemies and political opponents, but not against each of them to the same extent. Depending on the context, I frequently prefer terms such as “mass violence,” “ethnic cleansing,” or “crimes against humanity.” In the last two chapters I explain how various groups of political activists and even scholars have abused the term “genocide” by promoting the narrative of victimization.
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. 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]
The first public discussion of this methodological problem took place in 1987–1988 between the director of the Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte) in Munich, Martin Broszat, who had joined the NSDAP on 4 April 1944, and the Holocaust survivor and leading Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer. One of the main issues in this debate was “rational” German scholarship versus the “mythical memory” of the victims.[78] The discussion, did not undo the distrust of survivor accounts but the situation began to change a decade later. In 1997 Friedländer returned to the debate in his study Nazi Germany and the Jews. He pointed out the methodological problems that were the result of neglecting survivor perspectives, and pleaded for the use of documents of both perpetrators and survivors, in order to achieve an integrated and comprehensive history.[79] Four years later, Jan Tomasz Gross published a study about the Polish town of Jedwabne. Relying on survivor testimonies Gross proved that the local Polish population killed the Jews of this locality on their own initiative and without any significant help from the Germans.[80] In the following years, historians such as Christopher Browning and Omer Bartov, who had previously concentrated on perpetrators, questioned the alleged uselessness of accounts left by victims and survivors, and provided a methodological foundation for the study of the neglected issues with the help of these documents.[81]
In this study we will follow Freidländer’s plea for an integrated history, and will use two kinds of documents: those left by perpetrators and those left by victims and survivors. This approach will enable us to obtain a full picture of the events. We will obviously deal with both kinds of documents critically. With regard to perpetrator documents, it is necessary to distinguish between propaganda documents, internal documents relating to practical matters, and apologetic postwar memoirs. We must examine the intentions of their authors and consider the circumstances under which they were written. The survivor testimonies and memoirs, on the other hand, should be read against each other and placed in context with perpetrator and bystander documents. Similarly, when analyzing records of NKVD interrogations, we should be aware that such investigations were sometimes conducted under coercive circumstances that affected the content of the records.[82]
The investigation of Bandera’s life, his cult, and the history of the OUN and UPA are highly contingent upon the study of archival documents and original publications. Because of the extremist nature of the OUN and its involvement in the Holocaust and other kinds of ethnic and political mass violence during and after the Second World War, OUN émigrés and UPA veterans began producing forged or manipulated documents during the Cold War, by means of which they whitewashed their own history. 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]
Such an approach to history resembles the Soviet approach, and to the question of how to represent Bandera and the OUN. For example, the Cultural Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Komunistychna Partiia Ukraїny, or KPU) advised the producers of the film The Killer Is Known to show Bandera only at the moment when he metamorphoses into a swastika.[84] But not only OUN or Soviet publications related to the Bandera discourse contain striking misrepresentations. The book Alliance for Murder: The Nazi-Ukrainian Nationalist Partnership in Genocide contains a picture of Archbishop Andrei Sheptyts’kyi with a swastika and suggests that the head of the Greek Catholic Church carried it during the Second World War because he sympathized with Nazi Germany. The picture, however, must have been taken in the 1920s. It shows Sheptyts’kyi with two men in the uniforms of Plast, the Ukrainian scouting organization. Plast used the swastika as a symbol in the 1920s but the organization was outlawed in 1930. Moreover, Sheptyts’kyi is shown standing on his own two feet, whereas he was already confined to a wheelchair before the Second World War.[85]
Other indications of this process can be found in post-war memoirs. Mykola Klymyshyn, a close companion of Stepan Bandera, was the author of several important historical and autobiographical publications related to the Providnyk, and an important progenitor of his cult. Klymyshyn was honest enough to admit that dark spots in his publications had been whitewashed at the personal request of Stepan Bandera. He admitted this with the object of warning future generations, who would question the omission of certain aspects in his descriptions.[86] 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] To review the different kinds of “forgotten” or instrumentalized history, it is necessary to study the original documents. Some of them, and their locations, are briefly introduced here.
The Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw (Archiwum Akt Nowych, AAN) holds collections of documents concerning the history of the UVO and OUN in the inter-war period. Documents relating to the investigation of OUN members involved in Bronisław Pieracki’s assassination, and to the Warsaw and Lviv trials, can be found in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv (Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv, TDIA) and in the State Archives of Lviv Oblast (Derzhavnyi arkhiv L’vivs’koї oblasti, DALO). A number of documents—including the twenty-four volumes of the investigation records prepared for the Warsaw trial—could not be found. In all probability, they were lost during the Second World War.
Many important documents relating to Bandera and the OUN-UPA during the Second World War are located in two Kiev archives: the Central State Archives of the Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine (Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukrainy, TsDAVOV) and the Central State Archives of Public Organizations of Ukraine (Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads’kykh obiednan’ Ukrainy, TsDAHO). The State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kiev (Haluzevyi Derzhavnyi arkhiv Sluzhby bezpeky Ukraïny, HDA SBU) holds collections of NKVD interrogation files, which also contain some information on the Ukrainian nationalists. Because NKVD interrogations were coercive, and in some cases torture was applied, such documents should be used carefully and checked against other sources. The Provincial Archives of Alberta, in Edmonton, also hold essential documents on the “Ukrainian National Revolution” and the conduct of the OUN and UPA during the Second World War.[88]
Other crucial documents relating to Bandera, the OUN-UPA, and the German occupation of Ukraine are located in the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv, BA) in Berlin and Koblenz, in the Military Archives (Militärarchiv, MA) in Freiburg, and in the Political Archives of the Foreign Office in Berlin (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, PAAA). In the Provincial Archives of Nordrhein-Westfalen (Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, LN-W), one can study documents from the preliminary proceedings against Theodor Oberländer. The Oberländer records are important for the study of the Lviv pogrom in 1941 and of the campaign against the Adenauer government’s Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims.
In Moscow, the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-poiliticheskoi istorii, RGASOI) are two further important sources of document collections relating to Ukraine during the Second World War. The Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw (Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, AŻIH) hold a huge collection of Jewish survivor testimonies, mainly collected between 1944 and 1947 in Poland by the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, CŻKH).[89] Two other important collections of survivor testimonies are located in the archives of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and in the archives of Yad Vashem. The Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, which was founded in 1994, also collected a huge number of survivor testimonies. The early documents collected by the AŻIH are especially important for this study.[90]
The Bavarian Main State Archives (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, BayHStA) and the Munich State Archives (Staatsarchiv München, StM) mainly hold police documents relating to Bandera and the OUN after the Second World War. Documents in the possession of the intelligence services are another important source for the study of Bandera and the OUN during the Cold War, but not all intelligence services have made them accessible. Some documents on Bandera during the Cold War may be found in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington. A number of important interrogation records of OUN members and UPA partisans, and other documents relating to the Cold War are located in the HAD SBU. The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (Federal’naia sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii, FSB) has informed me that its archives do not contain any documents concerning Bandera’s assassination. The Federal Intelligence Service of Germany (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) has not made most of the relevant documents available to researchers who are interested in its collaboration with the OUN.
The archives of the Stepan Bandera Museum in London hold some documents relating to Bandera’s assassination and about OUN émigrés in the Cold War period. During the last two decades, several important editions of documents relating to Stepan Bandera and the OUN-UPA have appeared in Ukraine. Some of these, such as the three volumes of Stepan Bandera in the Documents of the Soviet Organs of the State Security, together with documents from the State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine, were an important source of information for this study.[91]
Until the current study, no academic biography and no study of the Bandera cult had been written, but in the last two decades a number of important studies on related subjects have appeared in German, English, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and other languages. These studies include subjects such as the OUN, the UPA, the Second World War in Ukraine, the Holocaust in Ukraine, the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, and the Polish-Ukrainian conflict during the interwar period. Because of their huge volume, only the most relevant for the purposes of this study will be briefly introduced at this point.
The complications of the interwar period and of relations between the Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic, and the political situation of the Ukrainians in particular were investigated by historians such as Christoph Mick, Maksym Hon, Timothy Snyder, Jerzy Tomaszewski, and Robert Potocki.[92] Frank Golczewski published a monumental and very informative monograph on German-Ukrainian relations between 1914 and 1939.[93] The fate of Ukrainians in the Habsburg and Russian Empires, and the subject of Ukrainian nationalism in the nineteenth century were explored in the 1980s, among others by John-Paul Himka, and later by historians such as Iaroslav Hrytsak.[94] The multiethnic character of the Ukrainian territories was portrayed by scholars such as Andreas Kappeler, Natalia Yakovenko, Mark von Hagen, and a number of other scholars.[95] Bohdan Bociurkiw published an important monograph on the Greek-Catholic Church.[96] Antony Polonsky wrote a three-volume study about the Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.[97]
Until now, three scholars have published monographs on the OUN. In 1955 John Armstrong published his classic and meanwhile problematic study. Roman Wysocki’s and Franziska Bruder’s monographs appeared after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when it became possible to investigate Soviet archives. Wysocki concentrated on the OUN in Poland between 1929 and 1939. Bruder wrote a critical and thoroughly researched study of OUN ideology, paying particular attention to antisemitism and political and ethnic violence.[98] Another scholar who investigated the antisemitism of the OUN is Marco Carynnyk.[99] Alexander Motyl in 1980 and Tomasz Stryjek in 2000 presented studies on Ukrainian political thinkers, including Dmytro Dontsov, the main ideologist of the Bandera generation.[100] Grzegorz Motyka published the most comprehensive monographs on the UPA, in which he also investigated the Polish-Ukrainian conflict during the Second World War, the anti-Polish atrocities in eastern Galicia and Volhynia, and the conflict between the UPA and the Soviet authorities. Motyka’s study, however, analyzes the anti-Jewish violence only marginally.[101] Important articles on the Ukrainian police, OUN, UPA, and ethnic violence were published by Alexander Prusin.[102] Jeffrey Burds published articles on the conflict between the Ukrainian nationalists and the UPA, and on the early Cold War in Ukraine.[103] Alexander Statiev published a very well researched monograph on the conflict between the Ukrainian nationalists and the Soviet authorities, as did Karin Boeckh on Stalinism in Ukraine.[104]
An important monograph on the German occupation of eastern Ukraine (Reichskommissariat Ukraine) during the Second World War, which also pays attention to the ethnic violence of the OUN and UPA in Volhynia, was written by Karel Berkhoff.[105] Dieter Pohl published a significant and authoritative monograph on the German occupation of eastern Galicia in which he investigated in depth how the Germans, with the help of the local Ukrainian police persecuted and exterminated the Jews. The roles of the OUN, the UPA, and the local population in the Holocaust, however, are analyzed only as a sideline in this book.[106] Thomas Sandkühler, who also published a monograph on the German occupation of western Galicia, took the role of the OUN more seriously to some extent, but also concentrated on the German perpetrators.[107] Both Dieter Pohl and Frank Golczewski published several important articles on the Ukrainian police and on Ukrainian collaboration with the Germans.[108] Shmuel Spector investigated the Holocaust in Volhynia, paying special attention to survivor accounts, on the basis of which he published an important study that does not marginalize the non-German perpetrators.[109] A decade ago, Hans Heer published an article about the Lviv pogrom of 1941, and John-Paul Himka, Christoph Mick, and I did so more recently.[110] The Holocaust survivors and historians Philip Friedman and Eliyahu Yones also conducted significant studies of various aspects of the extermination of the Jews in western Ukraine, including the Lviv pogrom, and the attitude of the UPA toward the Jews.[111] The Holocaust survivor and historian Aharon Weiss published an important analytical article about Ukrainian perpetrators and rescuers.[112] In 2012 Witold Mędykowski published a transnational study of pogroms in the summer of 1941 in Belarus, the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.[113] Omer Bartov, Wendy Lower, Kai Struve, and Timothy Snyder have published on various issues relating to the Holocaust in western Ukraine.[114]
Several scholars published material on the subject of the Ukrainian diaspora, but with the exception of articles written by John-Paul Himka, Per Anders Rudling, and myself, the history of the OUN and Ukrainian nationalism in the Ukrainian diaspora has remained untouched.[115] Diana Dumitru, Tanja Penter, Alexander Prusin, and Vladimir Solonari published articles about the Soviet postwar investigation and trial records, and about the methodological problems related to their analysis.[116] Tarik Cyril Amar published an article about the Holocaust in Soviet discourse in western Ukraine.[117] Scholars such as Per Anders Rudling, Anton Shekhostov, and Andreas Umland published several articles about radical right groups and parties after 1990 in Ukraine.[118] Whether Ukrainian nationalism is a form of fascism has been discussed in publications by Frank Golczewski, Anton Shekhovtsov, Oleksandr Zaitsev, and myself.[119]
As already mentioned, a number of volumes of reprinted archival documents appeared in Ukraine during the last two decades.[120] They included much significant material, and should not be excluded solely because their authors, such as Volodymyr Serhiichuk, deny the ethnic and political violence of the OUN and UPA, or, like Ivan Patryliak, quote the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke as an “expert” on the “Jewish Question” in the Soviet Union.[121] In addition to the above-mentioned academic studies, many books have been written by veterans of the OUN, UPA, and Waffen-SS Galizien, some of whom became professors at Western universities. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the apologetic and selective narrative initiated by these historians and other writers was taken over mostly by young Ukrainian patriotic historians and activists based in western Ukraine. On the one hand, works by Ukrainian patriotic historians such as Mykola Posivnych, and OUN veterans such as Petro Mirchuk, contain important material for a Bandera biography. On the other hand, they propagate the Bandera cult and are therefore analyzed in chapters 9 and 10, in which the Bandera cult is examined.[122]
This book investigates Bandera’s life and cult. It concentrates on Bandera’s political, and not his private life. It pays attention to Bandera’s thoughts and his worldview, which can be reconstructed from books and newspapers that he read, published, or edited, opinions that he held and that he expressed in public, as well as the combat and propagandist activities that he organized or participated in. The history of the OUN and UPA takes up a substantial part of the study, in order to provide important background knowledge. The form of this book is determined by the major questions, the long period covered by the narrative, and the methods applied. It thereby differs from studies that ponder the advantages and disadvantages of nationalism or socialism for the life of a nation, or that explore short-term processes such as collaboration in a particular region or country during the Second World War.
The book is written “against the grain” in order to uncover several covered-up, forgotten, ignored, or obfuscated aspects of Ukrainian and other national histories. Obviously, the study does not seek to exonerate the Germans, Soviets, Poles, or any other nation or group for the atrocities committed by them during or after the Second World War but it cannot present and does not pretend to present all relevant aspects in an entirely comprehensive way. It pays more attention to subjects such as the ethnic and political violence of the OUN and UPA than it does to German or Soviet occupation policies in Ukraine. This method of presenting history is determined by the main subject of this study, which is Bandera and his role in the Ukrainian ultranationalist movement. Parts of the book may therefore evoke the impression that the major Holocaust perpetrators in western Ukraine were the Ukrainian nationalists and not the occupying Germans and the Ukrainian police. It is not the aim of this study to argue this. This study makes clear estimates of the percentages of people who were killed by the Germans and the Ukrainian police on the one hand, and by the OUN and UPA and other Ukrainian perpetrators on the other.
It is not the aim of this book to argue that all eastern Galician and Volhynian Ukrainians (and logically not all Ukrainians) supported the politics of the OUN, fought in the UPA, were involved in the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing against Polish population, and other forms of ethnic and political violence conducted by the OUN and UPA, or that they agreed with such actions. The study explores the interrelation between nationalism and the violence committed in its name, but it does not ignore the economic, social, and political factors that contributed to ethnic conflicts or to the formation of fascist movements.
This monograph does not negate the fact that, during the Second World War, Ukrainians were both victims and perpetrators, and that the same persons who were involved in ethnic and political violence became the victims of the Soviet regime. Moreover, the study does not suggest that all Ukrainians who were in the OUN or UPA were fascists or radical nationalists. There were different reasons for joining the OUN and UPA, and various kinds of people joined these organizations, some of them under coercion. Logically, the study does not imply that all Ukrainians who joined the OUN or UPA committed atrocities, or that among Ukrainians, only OUN and UPA members were involved in the Holocaust or other atrocities. Such an assumption would distort reality, and exonerate groups such as non-nationalist Ukrainians, the Ukrainian police, and Ukrainians who participated primarily for economic and other non-political reasons. Finally, Ukrainian political parties and organizations other than the OUN appear only marginally in this study, because the monograph concentrates on Bandera and the OUN. As a result, readers might receive the impression that the OUN was the organization that dominated the entire political life of Ukraine. This, of course, is not true. Many other nationalist, democratic, conservative, and communist organizations and parties existed in Ukraine before the Second World War, and also impacted political life there, but they are not the subject of this book.