The examination of the impact of Soviet propaganda on the Bandera cult is a significant feature of this study. Although Soviet propaganda was intended to undo the Bandera cult and myth, it significantly strengthened them in the long term. The Soviet propaganda apparatus reacted to Bandera and the OUN-B for the first time in July 1941, shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa and the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” Soviet intelligence had already infiltrated the OUN in the early 1930s. In 1940, the agent “Ukrainets” established himself within the OUN-B, and provided the Soviet intelligence with detailed information about the OUN, its split into two factions, and its leading members.[1796]
In the first issue of the military newspaper Za radians’ku Ukraїnu on 31 July 1941 Oleksandr Korniichuk published the article: “Death to the Traitors of Ukraine!” “Hitler asked the traitors of the Ukrainian people—Petliurites, OUN members, Hetmanites, the yellow and blue dirt—for help,” Korniichuk wrote. The “yellow and blue” was a reference to the colors of the national flag, used by the OUN-B, other Ukrainian nationalist and fascist organizations, and before them the Ukrainian national movement, the UNR, and the Ukrainian national democrats. Bandera was the only person, apart from Hitler and Stalin, whom Korniichuk mentioned by name: “For the lies, provocations, and murder of our freedom-loving people, we will respond to the yellow-and-blue band and its leader Stepan Bandera with only one word—death!” (Fig. 27).[1797]
After the Soviet army withdrew from western Ukraine in autumn 1941, the “yellow-and-blue” became only a marginal target of Soviet propaganda. Until the Red Army came back to Ukraine in late 1943 Soviet Ukrainian newspapers mentioned the Ukrainian nationalists only sporadically and portrayed them as “traitors” or “Nazi henchmen.” Bandera and his adherents (bandery or banderivtsi) were introduced next to other groups of Ukrainian nationalists, such as skoropads’ki or mel’nyky, as Hitler’s agents.[1798]
In 1942 the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Ukrainian SSR was celebrated in Moscow. The Communist Party of Ukraine brought out a leaflet devoted to Stalin and one to Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the KPU. Stalin was addressed as the Leader (Vozhd’) or “Our Dear Josef Vissarionovich! [Dorohyi nash, ridnyi Iosyf Visarionovych!]” or “dear father comrade Stalin [bat’ko ridnyi tovarysh Stalin].” The emotional admiration of Stalin resembled to some extent the admiration of Bandera during the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” Bandera, however, was not usually depicted as the father of Ukrainians but as the Providnyk or Vozhd’. Because the word Vozhd’ means leader in both Russian and Ukrainian, Bandera and Stalin shared the same title. In this sense, the concept of Stalin as the leader of Soviet Ukraine competed with the concept of Bandera as the leader of a Ukrainian authoritarian state of a fascist type.[1799]