On the front page of 22 October 1959, instead of an obituary, Ukraïns’ka dumka published a photograph of Bandera’s bust and a long, lamenting, and apologetic article that began with: “Stepan Bandera does not live! Stepan Bandera was killed by an enemy’s hand.” The bust had been prepared in a DP camp in Bavaria in 1948 in two copies, one wooden and one of gypsum, by Mykhailo Chereshn’ovs’kyi, a UPA partisan who had arrived in Bavaria from Ukraine in 1947. It showed Bandera some twenty years before his death, perhaps in the early 1940s, when the OUN-B was conducting the “Ukrainian National Revolution.”[1943] The article claimed that the news about Bandera’s death reached “not only Ukrainian society but all patriots of all other nationalities” with lightning speed and saddened them. Readers were informed that 15 October would “remain forever a day of mourning for the whole Ukrainian nation, exactly like the anniversaries of the deaths of Symon Petliura, Ievhen Konovalets’, and Taras Chuprynka [Roman Shukhevych].” The article also claimed that with “the moment of Bandera’s death came the time when all Ukrainian patriots, without exception, were obliged to … value Bandera as a revolutionary and politician.” It ended with the assertion that Bandera’s death should not be understood as an end. On the contrary, it should inspire the faithful revolutionary émigré nationalists to further struggle:

The name of Stepan Bandera was, during his lifetime, a militant banner for the whole Ukrainian nation and it remains such after the death of the Providnyk of the Ukrainian national liberation revolution, until our Fatherland definitively, once and for all, by the blood of the Heroes of the sanctified land, rids itself of every enemy and foe.[1944]

The obituaries and mourning articles referred to Bandera as a true patriot and a national hero, and depicted him as a fearless opponent of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Especially after his death, to mention that he was a fanatic, a radical nationalist fascinated with fascism, or a Nazi collaborator, was regarded as Soviet propaganda, or as a Jewish or Polish provocation. The OUN members, veterans of the UPA and the Waffen-SS Galizien, and other Ukrainian nationalists, who identified themselves with Bandera, were especially irritated by articles about Bandera that described the war crimes committed by the OUN or UPA. In reaction to such articles, the nationalist émigrés frequently blamed the author for spreading anti-Ukrainian propaganda and described how the NKVD, Poles, or Germans killed Ukrainians.[1945]

On 5 November 1959, Ukraïns’ka dumka reprimanded Juliusz Sokolnicki for committing a “disgraceful act.” Sokolnicki had published an article in the Daily Telegraph, in which he connected Bandera with the UPA’s ethnic violence against the Polish population in 1943–1944. The editors of Ukraïns’ka dumka demanded an apology. The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (Soiuz ukraїntsiv u Velykii Brytaniї, SUB) tried to publish a letter of protest in the Daily Telegraph and, when it was not accepted, published it in Ukraïns’ka dumka. In the letter the SUB activists claimed that they were shocked by Sokolnicki, who was “misinformed concerning the life and career of Mr. Bandera.” They emphasized that Bandera was imprisoned from July 1941 until April 1945 and that “therefore he cannot be held responsible for anything that happened in Ukraine in 1944, particularly from 1943 onwards.” Similarly, they claimed that “it was the troops of [the Soviet partisan leader Sydir] Kovpak who carried out the atrocities [and who] had been sent to wipe out [the Ukrainian nationalist freedom fighters] under orders from Moscow.” They described the “persecutions that the inhabitants of West Ukraine suffered under the Polish occupation” and added that “in face of our common enemy—Russian Communism—there should be cooperation between our two nations.”[1946] The incorrect dating of Bandera’s imprisonment suggests that the Providnyk’s admirers did not know much about him. More interesting, however, is how they whitewashed the war crimes of the OUN and UPA, with the help of a victimized and instrumentalized image of Bandera. Such denial of the OUN and UPA atrocities would continue for over half a century. His critics, on the other hand, would make Bandera personally responsible for crimes which were committed by his movement and not by him in person.

Given the number of religious and political commemorations that Bandera’s admirers performed in October and November 1959, reprimanding people who mentioned OUN-UPA atrocities was only a marginal activity. The commemorations were organized among the Ukrainian diaspora around the globe, in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, West Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[1947] Religion and politics blurred in these deeply ritualized ceremonies. During the panakhydas, the priests frequently introduced political motifs, mainly hatred against the Soviet Union and Russia, and sometimes also against the Jews and Poles. The gatherings and demonstrations after the panakhydas frequently became orgies of political hatred against the “red devil.” Like the panakhydas, they mingled politics with religion.[1948]

The Bandera family and the ZCh OUN received several hundred letters of condolence from individuals, mainly diaspora Ukrainians including schoolchildren, and from several dozen organizations such as the UPA, Waffen-SS Galizien veterans, and Ukrainian nationalist student and religious organizations.[1949] Various nationalist celebrations that had been planned before 15 October 1959 were renamed to honor Stepan Bandera, for instance the UPA celebration organized by the association of former UPA soldiers in Canada on 18 October in Toronto.[1950] In some cities, including London, the celebrants repeated the Bandera commemorations in late 1959.[1951]

All Ukrainian newspapers, not only those controlled by the ZCh OUN but many others, for example the New Jersey Svoboda, the main newspaper of the Ukrainian diaspora, reported on Bandera’s funeral. On its front page on 31 October 1959, the Homin Ukraїny featured an article entitled “The Final Journey of the Providnyk Bandera.” The authors glorified “the final 500-meter journey of Bandera” during which time he was accompanied by ten priests and 1,500 mourners. Admirers came from all around the world to bid farewell to their Providnyk, who “perished on the forefront of a bloody, lingering war against the cruel, deceitful, villainous enemy.” Svoboda and Ukraïns’ka dumka claimed that over 2,000 people attended the funeral. To show readers the seriousness of the tragedy that had struck Ukrainians, newspapers printed several photographs from the funeral. Homin Ukraїny published a photograph showing Bandera’s coffin carried by four men, with the funeral procession following it. Marching alongside the coffin in the center of the photograph are a man in a suit and four uniformed young women, apparently members of the SUM. The faces of the man and all four uniformed teenagers appear to be filled with sorrow and concern. One of the women is looking down at the ground and weeping. The eyes of the man in the suit are focused on the final 500 meters of his Providnyk’s journey. His face is not only sad but also appears pensive and seemingly irritated. The facial expressions of all the people in the picture communicate the same message—that of the loss of an irreplaceable personality.[1952]

During the funeral, Stets’ko delivered a speech, which later appeared in several newspapers. The leader of the ABN claimed that Bandera’s name was the symbol of the contemporary anti-Moscow struggle of Ukraine for independent statehood and personal freedom, and that Bandera’s phenomenon grew outside the frame of the revolutionary OUN, becoming common Ukrainian property, representative of the whole fighting nation. In another part of the speech, Stets’ko praised Bandera’s piety as a motivation for struggle: “Christianity was an indivisible part of His spirituality, faith in God, and Christian morality—a principle of His dealing, His strong patriotism. His nationalism was integrally linked with Christianity. He knew that we can struggle successfully against Moscow, the center of combative godlessness and tyranny, only if, next time, Ukraine proves its historical role in Eastern Europe.” And this would be a “struggle for the Christ against the Antichrist-Moscow.” Toward the end of his speech, Stets’ko became spiritual and metaphysical: “Today we separate from Bandera’s physical remains, but he will live in our hearts, in the souls of the Ukrainian nation, and THAT STEPAN BANDERA will be not seized from us by any brutal, physical, barbaric Moscow’s strength.”[1953]