Matters that could have cast a poor light on Stepan Bandera seem to have been “forgotten” or never written down by his comrades-in-arms and admirers, and some relevant documents may have been purged or hidden. This conduct seems to be related to the larger process of collective amnesia concerning the darker side of the OUN and UPA on the part of veterans of this movement. In order to make some observations about Bandera’s personality and his worldview, we need to analyze the groups, institutions, and ideologies that shaped him in his formative years, and to describe the ideological atmosphere of Bandera’s youth.
As previously mentioned, Bandera grew up in a religious and patriotic family. His worldview and interests were first molded by his father, Andrii Bandera, a Greek Catholic priest who tried to combine the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism with the Greek Catholic religion.[353] OUN member Lev Shankovs’kyi characterized Andrii as the “true revolutionary who passed to his Son [sic] his entire passionate love to the Ukrainian nation and the question of its liberation.”[354] After the primary school in Staryi Uhryniv was closed in 1914, Andrii provided Stepan with a primary education.[355] Religion was for Stepan an important value but, unlike for his father, it was not more important than nationalism. During his student years, when Stepan once visited the family at Christmas, his father became angry with him because Stepan’s friends came up to him in church and he left the service before it had ended. In reaction to his father’s fury, Bandera answered: “First the nation, and then God!”[356] Nevertheless, the nation and God were blurred in Bandera’s mind. Looking back in 1954, Bandera wrote about nationalism and religion:
Without a doubt, the Ukrainian nationalist liberating-revolutionary movement, as directed and formed by the OUN, is a Christian movement. Its deepest roots are Christian and not merely not contradictory to Christianity. In terms of worldview, Ukrainian nationalism considers spirituality and the worldview of the Ukrainian nation as its springs. And this spirituality and worldview are very Christian as they were shaped under the thousand-year-long influence of the Christian religion.[357]
The element of religion was integrated into the political activities that Bandera organized together with his father, and later in the SUNM with other young Galician Ukrainians. Similarly, some events that Bandera coordinated, while he was propaganda director in the homeland executive, combined nationalism with religion. Priests were involved in ceremonies organized by the SUNM, and later by the homeland executive of the OUN. During the commemorations on the burial mounds for the fallen soldiers, priests were expected to conduct a panakhyda and to provide the ceremony with an aura of holiness. They were thereby involved in the process of sanctifying the ideological motives of the organizers. As already explained, after the execution of Bilas and Danylyshyn, Bandera’s propaganda apparatus organized numerous services for these two executed young revolutionaries. The OUN needed the Greek Catholic Church in order to transform the dead nationalists into heroes and martyrs.
As a boy, Bandera was also influenced by the First World War, the subsequent Polish-Ukrainian war, and especially by the attempts to establish a Ukrainian state. The Austrian-Russian front divided Staryi Uhryniv for two weeks, as a result of which the Bandera house was partially destroyed. 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] He also saw his father take an active part in the struggle for a Ukrainian state and was aware of his father’s attempt to assert the power of the ZUNR in the Kalush region in 1918 with the help of armed Ukrainians who even stayed for some time in the family’s backyard, before they left for Kalush.[359] In his short autobiography of 1959, Bandera recalled that he was especially influenced by the “celebrations and the spirituality due to the merging of the ZUNR with the UNR into one state in January 1919,” which in fact was only a symbolic act without any political impact.[360] As the Polish army expelled the Ukrainian army into the east, Bandera’s father left Kalush with the army for several months. After his return, Andrii Bandera’s accounts of the war also made a powerful impact on young Stepan.[361]
In his youth Bandera accepted only radical parties, respected only radical nationalists, and rejected all streams that were leftist, democratic, or moderately national. Hryhor Mel’nyk reported on Bandera’s contempt for the national-democratic UNDO and on his antisemitic perception of this party. Around 1924, according to Mel’nyk, when Bandera was only about sixteen, he viewed the UNDO as a party “with Jews” or “Grimbavm’s party.” It was a party to be combated because it worked against Ukrainian radical nationalism, which was for Bandera the only legitimate political movement. The term “Grimbavm’s party” was derived from the Jewish politician Izaak Grünbaum who, in 1922, founded the Bloc of National Minorities (Blok Mniejszości Narodowych, Blok fon Nashonal Minorities, Blok Natsional’nykh Menshyn, or Block der Nationalen Minderheiten, BMN), a political party representing a coalition of various ethnic minorities living in the Second Polish Republic. The UNDO joined the BMN in 1927.[362]
Bandera’s bias in favor of nationalism and the “traditional antisemitism” came from his environment, his family, and the tension inherent in Polish-Ukrainian relations during his formative years. Bandera seems to have perceived the world in bipolar or black-and-white nationalist categories as early as his high school years. His fascination with fascism as a set of ideas began either when he was in high school, joined the OVKUH, and studied Dontsov; or during his student years when he joined the OUN. 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]
Strongly identifying himself with the nationalist interpretation of the history of the Ukrainian people, Bandera no doubt understood himself in his high school years to be a member of a nation that had been occupied, exploited, and oppressed for centuries, mainly by Jews, Poles, and Russians. Dontsov portrayed Russians and the Soviet Union as the main enemies of Ukraine. 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.
Other important enemies of the young Stepan Bandera were the Jews. Ukrainian nationalism based its attitude toward Jews on two streams. The first one was traditional Ukrainian antisemitism, which regarded Jews as agents of the Poles and as the exploiters of Ukrainians. According to this notion, Jews exploited Ukrainian peasants economically, addicted them to alcohol, and supported Polish and Russian rule in Ukraine. Traditional Ukrainian antisemitism manifested itself in such poems as Taras Shevchenko’s “Haidamaky,” in which Jews are the agents of Polish landowners, and the brigands who kill Jews are Ukrainian national heroes.[364]
Modern racial antisemitism was the second stream of antisemitism on which Ukrainian nationalism was based. According to this kind of antisemitism, race and not religion is the main identifying mark of the Jews. The racial component, for example in Martynets’s brochure The Jewish Problem in Ukraine, entered Ukrainian nationalism in the 1930s.[365] 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]
Deeply embedded in Ukrainian nationalism, both types of antisemitism must have reached Bandera’s consciousness in his youth. Either in his high school years in the 1920s or in his student life in the first half of the 1930s, the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism made Bandera aware of the “Jewish problem” in Ukraine, the different and alien nature of the Jewish race, and the intrinsic link between Jews and communism. After the Second World War and the Holocaust, both Bandera and his admirers were embarrassed by the vehement antisemitic component of their interwar political views and denied it systematically.[367]
The two main OUN journals, Surma and Rozbudova natsiї, also significantly influenced Bandera. Surma began appearing in 1927 in Berlin. In 1928 it moved to Kovno where it was printed by the Lithuanian government press. From 1928 Rozbudova natsiї was published in Prague. Surma was smuggled to Poland from Gdańsk by train, or from Berlin and Prague through the Polish-Czechoslovakian border. Both ceased to appear after the assassination of Pieracki in June 1934. The chief editor of Rozbudova natsiї, Martynets’, stated that this paper was an “ideological-programmatic laboratory of the PUN.” Articles for Rozbudova natsiї were discussed intensively before they were published. After publication they became doctrines that all OUN members were expected to accept.[368]
As a high-ranking OUN member, Bandera must have read every issue of Surma and Rozbudova natsiї, but it is not known whether he published his articles in these journals or in other journals that appeared clandestinely in Galicia, including Biuleten’ KE OUN na ZUZ, Iunatstvo, and Iunak. In order to avoid repercussions, OUN members who lived in Poland published articles anonymously. Because Surma and Rozbudova natsiї were printed abroad, and the articles in them were usually written by older nationalists, it is more likely that Bandera published articles only in journals that appeared in Galicia.[369]
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.”
In an article in Rozbudova Natsiї about the Jews and Ukrainians, Iurii Mylianych wrote that “in the Ukrainian territories live more than two million Jews who are an alien and many of them even a hostile element of the Ukrainian national organism.” Mylianych defined this as a problem and complained that Ukrainian politicians were not preparing to deal with it. He insisted that this problem “must be solved,” and clarified that the Jews were, in addition to the “occupiers,” a further enemy of Ukrainians. According to Mylianych, the Ukrainian Jew always supported aggressors against Ukraine, whether such aggressors were Poles, Russians, Germans, or Bolsheviks.[370]
Surma and Rozbudova natsiї familiarized Bandera not only with the current debate about Jews and antisemitism but also about fascism. Articles published in these two journals make it clear that, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the OUN was already adopting many patterns typical of fascist and far-right movements, although not all contributors to the OUN journals were certain whether Ukrainians could and should became fascists. The more cautious attitude to fascism was represented by authors like Mytsiuk, who emphasized the traditional elements of Ukrainian nationalism and the aspirations of the Ukrainian nationalists for autonomy and claimed that there could not be a Ukrainian fascism because Ukrainians did not have a state in which they could practice it. Mytsiuk also argued that fascism was an Italian phenomenon that could exist only there.[371]
Ievhen Onats’kyi, the OUN representative in Rome and a significant contributor to the OUN journals, developed a more open and more affirmative attitude to fascism. In his first articles about fascism in Rozbudova natsiї he argued, similarly to Mytsiuk, that Italian Fascism and Ukrainian nationalism had their radical nationalist nature in common but that they were not the same, because Italian Fascism had a state in which it could exist and the Ukrainian nationalist movement did not. He stated that “fascism is a nationalism of a nation-state.” He therefore argued that the Ukrainian nationalists needed to establish a state in order to become fascists.[372]
Some months later however, having further contemplated the nature of fascism, in the article “We and Fascism” Onats’kyi changed his understanding of the relationship between fascism and Ukrainian nationalism. He ceased to emphasize that fascism was a political system that could only exist in a state and pointed out the unifying and revolutionary features of fascism. He also drew a parallel between Italy and Ukraine, implying that a country in crisis needed a group of brave and powerful men, like the fascists in Italy who could conduct a revolution in order to overcome the crisis and make the country great and powerful like Italy:
Fascism—means first of all unity. This is its first and main meaning and it is indicated by the etymology of the word “fascism,” which is derived from “fascio”—bundle, bunch.
At this point in time, when a country descended into chaos, when political and national enmity began reaching its peak, when all acquainted with the Russian and Ukrainian revolution became frightened due to the inevitable catastrophe … at exactly that time a group of people emerged and called for unity in order to rebuild the “Great Italy.”[373]
In this article Onats’kyi implied that fascism is not specifically Italian, although it first appeared in Italy. He argued that it was rather a group of people who, at the right time, did the right thing in Italy. According to him a similar fascist revolution, which he understood as the rebuilding of the great past, could equally have happened elsewhere.[374]
In addition to familiarizing Ukrainian youth with fascism, Onats’kyi also acquainted them with the Führerprinzip and the role of a leader in the history of a nation. He explained the role of the fascist leader, using the example of Mussolini:
Fascism is Mussolini. Nowhere else among the idealistic movement is the anthropomorphic necessity as essential as in fascism. Everything of it is almost the result of the personal activity of Benito Mussolini. Only due to him did fascism become its particular shape. The fascists of the first times consisted first of all of diverse political remainders, defectors from diverse parties and organizations, and of people who never belonged to a political party. It was necessary to unite and inspire them with one idea and one will.
Mussolini was in the beginning the dictator of a small bunch of his political friends and supporters, then of the party and then of the whole of Italy.[375]
Onats’kyi described the leader also in a more abstract way. This allowed Ukrainians to better comprehend that the leader of a fascist nation can exist not only in Italy but actually everywhere and especially in “countries in crisis” that are likely to undergo a revolution:
He appeared when the political and social chaos of the country indeed needed a strong man, a dictator. Italy’s luck was that it found her dictator in the right moment. It was not only luck but also merit. Two necessary preconditions are essential to have a leader like Mussolini emerging … : 1) that a person, who the country needs, is called in the right moment, and 2) that the country is morally able to give birth to such a person. …
The national dictator is truly the representative of energy and the lively vitality of the nation. The crisis helps him to emerge and to present his potentials and his strengths but he makes himself noticeable only because the society and the very nation strive after order and life.
The man of dictatorship, the man of the crisis is first of all determined by character, will, and nothing else than character singles him out from ordinary ambitious men. Like an ambitious man without the necessary intellect so an intelligent person without a strong character will not elevate to the role of the leader [providnyk].
He realizes very soon that his own interests and the nation’s interests melt together and become one. He cannot compromise them [the nation’s interests] in any way. Therefore the nation looks to him with trust and hope. He loves favorites. Further, he loves the brave and it does not matter to him whether somebody breaks the law or not. A dictator becomes a hero, an object of cult and emulation.[376]
Toward the end of his article about fascism, Onats’kyi came to the conclusion:
We, the representatives of a hitherto defeated nation, see in fascism, in particular in its first stateless phase—another example to follow—the example of idealism. And we cannot be content with the enforced ‘fate’ [of not being independent] and need to overcome it. And we will overcome![377]
In terms of the name of the movement, Onats’kyi argued that Ukrainians would not steal the name of “fascism” from the Italians and that it would be “Ukrainian nationalism” that would unite Ukrainians and fulfill functions similar to those of fascism in Italy. 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] He also warned Ukrainians to be careful about presenting themselves and acting as fascists. In a brief to Iaroslav Pelenskyi from 20 January 1930 he stated that “we sympathize with the fascist ideology and share in many points its sociopolitical program” but we should not insist to be fascist because we would thereby “arm against us everyone and everything.”[379]
Similarly to Dontsov, Onats’kyi believed that Ukrainian nationalism, like Italian Fascism, depended on youth.[380] And like Dontsov, he expressed the wish for a “new man,” a feature typical not only of fascism but also of other totalitarian movements and ideologies in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the main tasks of the OUN was to erase from the Ukrainian population the mentality of “slaves” or “subjects” of other states, and to foster a new “heroic” mentality. This process would transform Ukrainians into heroic and fearless “Ukrainian masses” that the OUN could lead into the fight against their enemies. For Onats’kyi, fascism was therefore both a tool for obtaining a state, and a political system that the OUN would establish in the state.[381] Antisemitism for Onats’kyi was an integral part of fascism, as he justified Italian antisemitic legislation in 1938.[382]
Onats’kyi’s articles evaluating and popularizing fascism, and his polemics with Mytsiuk, appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the late 1930s skepticism relating to fascism as a non-genuine Ukrainian phenomenon disappeared in Ukrainian nationalist circles almost completely. At that time the majority of Ukrainian nationalists did not consider Ukrainian nationalism and fascism to be mutually exclusive and did not object to being identified as members of a fascist movement. In 1938 another OUN ideologist, Iaroslav Orshan, wrote: “Fascism, National Socialism, Ukrainian nationalism, etc., are different national expressions of the same spirit.”[383]
As already outlined in chapter 1, other ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism including Dontsov and Stsibors’kyi developed a similar understanding of fascism to Onats’kyi’s. On the one hand, they understood Ukrainian nationalism as a form of fascism, and on the other hand they emphasized the uniqueness of Ukrainian nationalism and argued that it was politically more convenient for the Ukrainian nationalists not to present themselves as fascists. Stsibors’kyi wrote about the complicated relationship between fascism, nationalism, and nation:
Fascism concentrates all its idealism and voluntarism on one center: the very nation. The nation is its greatest value to which everything else is subordinated. Counter to democracy, which has the tendency to regard the nation as a mechanical set of a certain number of individuals, bound together first of all by real interests, fascism regards the nation as the highest historical, spiritual, traditional and real community, within which occur the processes of existence and creativity of entire generations—the dead, living, and so far unborn—all are bound together inseparably.[384]
Two other important ideological notions, which, in addition to nationalism and fascism, formed the young Bandera, were racism and eugenics. As already mentioned, racism as a component of nationalism was present in Mikhnovys’kyi’s writing. According to Mirchuk, Bandera was fascinated by Mikhnovs’kyi’s ideas and studied them during his time at high school.[385] In the early 1940s he even made them the ideological foundation of the OUN.[386] Dontsov, Martynets’, and Rudnyts’kyi also spread racist ideas and popularized eugenics in Ukraine. Their thinking was influenced by the European and global discourses about racism and eugenics. 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.” This kind of racism was typical of radical right movements rooted in nations that for centuries were provinces of foreign empires, or were substantially influenced by other cultures. Ukraine and Croatia were two examples of such nations.[387]
The terrorist acts that the homeland executive conducted in 1933 and 1934, when Bandera was successively its propaganda director, deputy leader, and leader, confirm that he and other OUN members internalized far-right nationalist ethics and also Dontsov’s concept of amorality. As explained in chapter 1, the homeland executive used terror for propaganda purposes and also as a tool for the preparation of the “national revolution.” The purpose of the revolution was to take over power with the help of the masses and to establish a dictatorial state. This resembled the use of terror in other fascist movements, including the German National Socialists, Italian Fascists, and the Croatian Ustaša. The main difference between the OUN and the Ustaša on the one hand, and the fascist movements within nation states including Italy and Germany on the other hand, was that the former needed first to establish a state, and the latter could directly take over power from existing governments.
Bandera spent the last five years before the Second World War in prison, where he was to some extent detached from official OUN discourses. Nevertheless, this period was very important in the development of his worldview and self-awareness. At this time, Bandera began to shape his own policies while representing the OUN at the trials in Warsaw and Lviv. The performance of fascist rituals by Bandera and other defendants during the trials suggests that Bandera’s self-awareness, as the Providnyk of a movement that planned to establish a state with a fascist dictatorship, was already formed at that time.[388] While in prison after the trial, Bandera was able to read books and subscribe to Ukrainian and other newspapers and periodicals. He was therefore not entirely isolated from Ukrainian and European political discourses during this period. After his escape from prison in September 1939, he felt secure in his position as the Providnyk of the young Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists and aspired to become the leader of the entire OUN.[389]
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. It was based on the conviction that the Ukrainian nation would die if it did not succeed in getting rid of “occupiers” and “enemies” and in establishing its own state. The “permanent revolution” was intended to prepare the “Ukrainian masses” for a revolutionary act—the “national revolution”—during which the nationalists would take power, establish a dictatorial state, and expel or annihilate ethnic enemies and political opponents. For this purpose the OUN tried to re-educate Ukrainians, to change them from people with “souls of slaves to people with souls of masters, and from people with souls of defenders to people with souls of aggressors.”[391] The OUN also tried to establish a dense network of members in every city, town, and village in the “Ukrainian ethnic territory.” This required the involvement of Ukrainian youth in the “national liberation struggle.” The UVO and OUN did this by infiltrating such youth groups as the scouting organization Plast and other youth organizations.[392]
The OUN believed that, among the Ukrainian movements, parties, and organizations, only the OUN could conduct the revolution and thereby prevent the nation from dying. Other Ukrainian movements, according to the OUN, were not only incapable of conducting the revolution but were also foes of the movement, and thus opponents of the revolution. They were a target of the OUN’s revolutionary terror, especially if they cooperated in any manner with the “occupiers.” In practice, however, the OUN considered cooperation with some other Ukrainian parties, in order to get more support from the population during the revolution. 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]
Bandera internalized the concepts of “permanent revolution” and “national revolution” at the latest in the 1930s and gave special attention to the latter. This is clear from the conduct of the homeland executive in 1933–1934 with Bandera as its Providnyk and from the actions in the summer of 1941 when the OUN organized the “Ukrainian National Revolution.”[394] Furthermore, the texts written by Bandera after the Second World War confirm that he preferred the concept of “national revolution,” apparently because it was more radical than “permanent revolution.” After the Second World War, Bandera would adapt this concept to the climate of the Cold War and use it to organize a revolution against the Soviet Union. Important in Bandera’s understanding of the revolution were the masses and, in terms of 1941, the fascist leader (Providnyk or Vozhd’), whose role Bandera was expected to play.[395]
Related to the concept of the “national revolution” was Bandera’s interest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century secret organizations. As a boy, according to his sister Volodymyra, Bandera was more interested in secret organizations, revolutionaries, and terrorists than he was in warfare or weapons. He read about and was fascinated by the nineteenth-century Russian nihilists and the more contemporary Bolsheviks. According to Volodymyra, Lenin was Stepan’s favorite revolutionary. Under the influence of Dontsov, Bandera’s fascination with Lenin was later transformed into a hatred of Bolshevism. His interest in the revolutionaries was apparently evoked by his father Andrii who, according to Bandera’s sister, told his children stories about Petliura, Skoropads’kyi, and Trotskii.[396]
Like many other OUN activists of his generation, Bandera was also greatly influenced by Polish national culture and by Józef Piłsudski’s authoritarian regime. Although the OUN combated the Polish state as an “occupier,” the Bandera generation was not only fluent in Polish and familiar with Polish culture but also learned from Polish history how a nation can achieve statehood. Thus Bandera both admired and hated eighteenth-century insurgents such as Tadeusz Kościuszko and twentieth-century revolutionaries such as Józef Piłsudski. Volodymyr Ianiv, an OUN activist with a realm of experience similar to that of Bandera, wrote about his experiences with Polish teachers:
Of course, these Polish patriots tried to teach their [Ukrainian] pupils the Polish history and culture in the best light, but something unbelievable happened here: they became the best teachers of Ukrainian patriotism. As they talked with enthusiasm about the Polish uprisings or about the main poets, we automatically transferred it to the Ukrainian circumstances.[397]
Although Dontsov familiarized this generation with the cults of other charismatic leaders, most young Galician Ukrainians never directly experienced them. 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 members, Bandera might even have read Piłsudski’s diaries and admired his national revolutionary activities, much as he admired Lenin and other revolutionaries.[399] Simultaneously, Bandera probably hated Piłsudski as the leader of the nation that “occupied” Ukraine. The interwar period was full of diverse cults of charismatic authoritarian, fascist, and military leaders. The young Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists did not resist the temptation to invent their own.