Like the first anniversary, the second anniversary of Bandera’s death was commemorated in many localities around the globe.[1975] In São Paulo the commemorations began with a panakhyda in the Greek Catholic church, in which Bandera’s symbolic coffin was arranged. The coffin was decorated with flowers. Nuns put a trident made of rose petals on the coffin. During the panakhyda two young men stood with banners on each side of the coffin. After the mourning service, the participants moved to a secular building for the political part of the commemoration. There were so many people that there was only standing room for many of them. I. Sobko opened the second part of commemorations with a minute of silence, after which he said, “The enemies [of Ukraine] try to destroy us in foreign lands, but the spirit of Stepan Bandera gives us the power of victory.” A children’s choir under the direction of a nun performed the Brazilian national anthem. The panakhyda and the political gathering were broadcast for those Ukrainians in Brazil who did not attend the commemoration.[1976]

On 17 November 1961, the day on which the German authorities revealed who had killed Bandera and how, the ZCh OUN organized a press conference, at which they informed the journalists about the details of the assassination.[1977] Ukrainian nationalist articles connected Bandera’s murder with the assassinations of Petliura in 1926 and Konovalets’ in 1938 and depicted the Soviet Union as a country that was continuing Stalin’s policies.[1978] Immediately after the identity of Bandera’s assassin was officially announced, various Ukrainian associations, committees, and other organizations around the world began organizing demonstrations against the Soviet Union. On 18 November 1961, 1,500 activists attended a meeting in Bradford of the Federation of Ukrainians in Great Britain (Ob”iednannia Ukraїntsiv u Velykii Brytaniї, ObVB), at which they demanded that, for the assassination of their Providnyk, the “free world” put on trial Alexander Shelepin, the head of the KGB, Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the KPSS and chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, in addition to the whole “Muscovite government,” and the entire Central Committee of the KPSS.[1979] Under a huge photograph of Bandera, Shliakh peremohy published Shelepin’s and Stashyns’kyi’s pictures on the first page and called them “the organizer of the murder” and “the executioner.”[1980] In the next issue, Shliakh peremohy reported on page 1 that Stets’ko would be the next to be assassinated. On page 3 it published Petro Kizko’s poem “Not Enough Revenge,” in which the author demanded “such a punishment for Moscow that a fire would burn it for ages.”[1981]

On Sunday 19 November 1961, anti-Soviet and anticommunist demonstrations took place in Munich, Edmonton, Derby, Port Arthur, and Port William. On Saturday 25 November, demonstrations occurred in seven localities around the globe. The next day, similar demonstrations were conducted in thirty-one localities and on Sunday 3 December, in twenty-four. Altogether, according to the ZCh OUN historiography, in the final months of 1961 and the first few months of 1962, the Ukrainian diaspora held 132 anti-Soviet and anticommunist demonstrations and meetings.[1982]

At a demonstration in London on 25 and 26 November 1961, activists carried posters with inscriptions such as: “The blood of the Ukrainian Leader is on Khrushchev’s hands!” “Down with Russian murderers!” “Ukraine mourns the murder of Bandera!” “Today Khrushchev kills Ukrainians, tomorrow it may be you!” “Your children’s future is threatened by the oppressors of Ukraine!” “Bandera died for Ukraine’s freedom,” “BE AWARE! Khrushchev is out to bury you!” “Communism is another form of Russian imperialism!”[1983]

A demonstration in New York took place on 2 December 1961 in front of the building used by the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. The protestors carried Ukrainian and American flags, and caricatures of Khrushchev; they distributed leaflets, and explained the purpose of their protest to passers-by. At 5 p.m. they burned the Soviet flag and then “with huge rage” stormed the building, which they tried to enter through doors and windows. At other demonstrations, such as one in Minneapolis, Ukrainian political activists also burned Soviet flags. At some demonstrations, the protestors were joined by “freedom fighters” from Soviet republics such as Estonia, from which Waffen-SS soldiers and Nazi collaborators had also moved to North America after the Second World War.[1984]

The ZCh OUN also used Bandera’s death to start a fund called the Stepan Bandera Liberation Struggle Fund (Fond vyzvol’noï borot’by im. Stepana Bandery). Donations from individuals and associations ranged from $5 to $200, and in 1960, amounts up to $3,105 were received.[1985] Funds were also collected for the trial of Stashyns’kyi. One of the arguments was “not to let the enemy triumph,” as in the trial of Schwartzbard for Petliura’s assassination in Paris in 1926. The organizations collected DM 197,800, the equivalent of about $50,000.[1986] With the help of these funds, the ZCh OUN published historical propaganda literature such as Russian Colonialism in Ukraine and Murdered by Moscow: Petliura, Konovalets, Bandera. Three Leaders of the Ukrainian National Liberation Movement Assassinated at the Orders of Stalin and Khrushchev.[1987] The second book was written by Lenkavs’kyi, author of “The Ten Commandments of a Ukrainian Nationalist,” who, during the “Ukrainian National Revolution” in July 1941, had stated that “regarding the Jews we will adopt any methods that lead to their destruction.”[1988]

On 22 July 1962, Shliakh peremohy announced that the Ukrainian community close to Villa Adelina in Argentina was constructing a large hall for the community, the Stepan Bandera Ukrainian Home.[1989] On the same day, a monument to the heroes of Ukraine was unveiled at the SUM camp in Ellenville, New York. The camp had been opened in June 1955 in order to “educate Ukrainian youth about their history and culture, as well as cultivating them to become active members of their Ukrainian and local communities while serving God and their Ukrainian homeland” as the heads of the SUM and the founders of the camp put it. They understood their patriotic duty as the education of Ukrainian diaspora children in the spirit of the OUN and UPA. Five similar camps—Veselka, Verkhovyna, Bilohorshcha, Karpaty, and Dibrova—were opened in North America. Some of them, for instance the Dibrova camp, were also used as a recreational center and vacation spot for diaspora Ukrainians.[1990] The monument in the Ellenville camp was erected free of charge by the company owned by the former UPA partisans Mykhailo Shashkevych and Mykola Sydor. It consisted of a 12.8-meter-high (forty-two-foot) Ukrainian trident. The monument was produced by the sculptor Chereshn’ovs’kyi, a former UPA partisan, Dr. Lev Dobrianskyj, the head of the UKKA and professor of economics at Georgetown University, and the architect Zaiats’. On one side of the trident, there were busts of Petliura and Konovalets’, and on the other, busts of Shukhevych and Bandera. According to the SUM, the youth movement of the OUN-B, “All of these heroes sacrificed their lives in the battle for Ukraine’s sovereignty and nationhood and serve as an inspiration to all Ukrainian youth.” Ukrainian diaspora children have congregated for decades in front of the monument to recite poems, sing religious, nationalist, or military OUN-UPA songs, perform folk dances, and eat Ukrainian food.[1991]

The unveiling of the monument was integrated into the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the UPA, on 21 and 22 July 1962, which was attended by 5,000 people. In the evening of the first day of celebrations, a drama group from Philadelphia acted the play “The Army of Freedom UPA” (Armiia voli UPA) by OUN member Leonid Poltava. The second day of celebrations began with church services, after which the celebrants blessed the banner of the Roman Shukhevych UPA association. The opening ceremony was initiated by a parade of SUM and Plast members, UPA veterans, and other celebrants who, in their military-style uniforms or in plain clothes and with banners of their units in their hands, maneuvered through the area of the camp, while the leaders of the Ukrainian diaspora reviewed them from the stand. Afterwards, Dr. Dobrianskyj and other political activists delivered speeches. The leadership of the ZCh OUN and the Central Committee of the ABN sent greetings to the celebrants.[1992]

On the third anniversary of Bandera’s death, the radical right factions of the Ukrainian diaspora organized commemorative celebrations in a number of localities, as in the two previous years.[1993] This time however, the religious and nationalist celebrations were overshadowed to some extent by the trial of Stashyns’kyi in Karlsruhe, which took place between 8 and 19 October 1962. The nationalist press reported every day of the trial in detailed articles filled with anti-Soviet phrases. At the same time, it also published the usual articles about the assassination of Konovalets’ and the “heroism and tragedy” of UPA leaders.[1994] According to Shliakh peremohy, Iaroslav Stets’ko stated at a conference after the trial: “There must be a country in the free world that, on the basis of the sentence of the Federal Court of Justice in Germany, will bring the terrorist methods of the government of the USSR before the International Tribunal in The Hague.” He further demanded to “bring the matter of the villains from Khrushchev’s government” not only to the International Tribunal but also to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.[1995]

T. Zaryts’kyi expressed what the ZCh OUN and Ukrainian nationalists thought about Stashyns’kyi’s mild sentence of eight years for the murder of their Providnyk. He wrote that 90 percent of the press had a tendency to belittle Stashyns’kyi’s guilt, when he was actually “very perfidious, dogged, aggressive, and from his birth a criminal type.” The author further claimed that Stashyns’kyi was a traitor to the Ukrainian nation and his family and was also a “Muscovite janissary.”[1996]

Another notable statement about the sentence came from Artur Fuhrman, perhaps the most devoted foreign admirer of the OUN and of Ukrainian nationalism in the 1960s. Fuhrman was a German who was deported to a camp in Vorkuta after the Second World War, where he spent five years together with Ukrainian nationalists. His autobiographical historical novels, Blood and Coal and Under Bandera’s Banner, were published in Ukrainian by the ZCh OUN publishing houses in Munich and London. In his novels, he frequently referred to the Ukrainian nationalists as Banderites, and himself as a Banderite. Bandera was for Fuhrman not only the leader of an organization but also of the “enslaved Ukrainian people” and thus also a “synonym for Ukraine.”[1997] Commenting on the trial in Karlsruhe, Fuhrman called it a “good weapon in the hands of the freedom-loving Ukrainian nation, in particular in the hands of the OUN.” He insisted that the OUN should never stop disseminating the court’s finding that the decision to assassinate Bandera came from the Russian government. In order to make it clear how Ukrainian nationalists could profit from this decision and use Bandera’s death in their campaign, Fuhrman repeated the words of Congressman Charles J. Kersten: “The verdict of the court that the Bolshevik government is the clandestine organizer of the murders will permeate the consciousness of the whole world. This fact, like the sword of the archangel Michael, will unmask the Soviet-Russian leaders and demonstrate to mankind their real faces … and thus Bandera’s death was not in vain.”[1998]

On the fifth anniversary of Bandera’s death, the nationalist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora organized numerous commemorations and several anticommunist protest marches in various countries. At a demonstration in New York on 15 October 1964 the protesters carried banners with inscriptions like “Khrushchev and Shelepin—Bloody Murderers” and “Russians Hands off Ukraine” and distributed leaflets with the heading “We Accuse Moscow and Ask America to Be Alert.” On 17 October 1964, 500 Ukrainians arrived in Washington from several American cities. They placed a wreath at the Shevchenko monument while singing nationalist songs. They then went to the Soviet embassy, which they picketed in heavy rain for three hours, singing “partisan songs” and holding banners with inscriptions such as “God Bless America! God Liberate Ukraine!” A group of protesters went into the embassy and informed the staff, in Ukrainian, that they were representatives of the Ukrainian Liberation Front (Ukraїns’kyi Vyzvol’nyi Front, UVF) and had come to deliver a memorandum, in which they condemned Moscow for killing Bandera. The protest ended with the nationalist demonstrators singing “It Is Not Time” (Ne pora) and the Ukrainian anthem “Ukraine has not yet perished” (Shche ne vmerla Ukraїna). On the same day in Ottawa, Ukrainians picketed the Soviet embassy.[1999]

In 1964 in Edmonton, the Ukrainian community combined the commemoration of its leader’s death with two other nationalist and religious celebrations: the first was the Feast of Saint Mary the Protectress; the second, the Weapons Holiday. As in previous years, the day of festivities started at St. Josaphat Cathedral. Afterwards, a crowd of 200 people at the Ukrainian National Home building listened to their Providnyk’s speech, which had been recorded five years before, and which enabled them to admire his “farsightedness and political reason.”[2000]

Besides commemorating Bandera and organizing religious celebrations for the Ukrainian Providnyk, the Ukrainian diaspora nationalists followed, attended, or publicized similar events organized for other fascist leaders. In January 1967, ABN Correspondence announced that on 30 November 1966 a memorial service in honor of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the charismatic leader of the Iron Guard in Romania, had been held at the Saint Nicholas Church in Munich.[2001] In the same year, Stets’ko published 30 chervnia 1941 (30 June 1941), in which he denied that the militia set up by the OUN-B was involved in any anti-Jewish violence during the “Ukrainian National Revolution” and presented the proclamation of state on that day in Lviv as an anti-German act of resistance. Stets’ko’s very popular book began with a foreword by Dontsov.[2002]

The tenth anniversary of Bandera’s death attracted several hundred followers to Munich from various European countries and from North America. The nationalists appeared at Bandera’s grave on 11 October 1969 in order to “honor the memory of the Providnyk of the Ukrainian National Revolution, and to declare the indestructible will of the Ukrainian nation to prolong the liberation struggle until the victory over Moscow.”[2003] The ABN organized a press conference in Munich, to which it invited journalists in order to remind them how important the struggle against the Soviet Union was. The nationalists also attended several church services devoted to the memory of their Providnyk, and a panakhyda at his grave, which was performed by six priests. During this event, Bishop Kyr Platon reminded the mourners that Bandera was a “deeply religious man and a great patriot of the Ukrainian nation.” Then 200 SUM members held a parade and two female SUM members from England poured water from the Dnieper River and scattered soil at the grave, mixed with bread and the red fruit of the guelder rose, a national symbol of Ukraine and the title of the anthem of the UPA (Chervona Kalyna). About 1,500 mourners attended a commemorative gathering at a Munich theater, where they listened to Stets’ko’s oration, and vocal performances by the Homin choir from Manchester. When the gathering ended, the participants marched to the house at Kreittmayrstrasse 7, where Bandera had been assassinated. They listened to political speeches, placed a wreath, and sang “It Is Not Time” and the Ukrainian anthem.[2004]

Admirers who were unable to visit the grave of their Providnyk on the tenth anniversary held rallies, marches, church services, and commemorative gatherings in numerous localities around the globe.[2005] In Winnipeg, which had designated Iaroslav Stets’ko an honorary citizen of the city in 1966, (Fig. 44) the commemoration of the tenth anniversary was enriched by soil from Bandera’s grave in Munich. This relic had been brought to the Canadian city by Semen Ïzhyk in order to radiate an aura of “nationalist holiness” during the solemn and well-attended Bandera commemorations.[2006] In London, under a Bandera portrait and OUN-B and Ukrainian national flags, young SUM members in folk costumes and uniforms recited poems.[2007]

In Washington on 11 October 1969, Mykhailo Shpontak, in the company of two female SUM members, laid a wreath under the Shevchenko monument. Several anticommunist activists, among them OUN-B member Petro Mirchuk, delivered speeches while the crowd of 500 people, armed with 100 banners and 5,000 leaflets, began to walk toward the Soviet embassy. Although the police tried to prevent the demonstrators from invading the embassy, two protestors succeeded in placing at the entrance a “Wanted” poster for Shelepin, the man who had ordered the killing of Bandera.[2008]

A similar demonstration was organized for the following weekend in Central Park in New York, at which SUM and Plast youth appeared in uniforms, with Bandera banners in their hands, while they stood next to older nationalists. After listening to anticommunist speeches, the protesters and mourners, armed with Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Cossack, Georgian, North Caucasian, Croatian, and Estonian flags, marched to the building of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. There, the demonstrators burned several Soviet flags. An SUM member and a woman in a
 

Fig. 44. The document nominating Iaroslav Stets’ko as an Honorary Citizen of Winnipeg.

ABN Correspondence No. 3 (1967): 31.

Cossack dress wanted to hand over an accusatory letter to the officials in the embassy, but nobody opened the door.[2009]

The Toronto commemorative committee advertised the fifteenth anniversary of Bandera’s death on the first page of Homin Ukraïny. The committee combined Bandera’s anniversary with the Weapon Holiday and the UPA celebration. Among the attractions were performances by three choirs, and a speech by the prominent OUN-B member Mykola Klymyshyn, who, like Petro Mirchuk, had been awarded the degree of doctor of philosophy at the Munich Ukrainian Free University (Ukraїns’kyi Vil’nyi Universytet, UVU).[2010] Ukrainians in Buenos Aires performed a panakhyda on 15 October 1974. Five days later, they gathered in the building of the Prosvita society, to perform the secular part of the commemoration, which they began with a moment of silence. One mourner then read Mykola Shcherbak’s poem “15 October 1959” and older nationalists carried into the hall a wreath with a blue-and-yellow and red-and-black ribbon and handed it over to SUM members, who put it under the portrait of Bandera. This act symbolized the handing over of the revolutionary struggle to the youth. Several activists, both young and old, then recited poems devoted to the Providnyk and sang UPA and other military songs. At the end, all sang “Ukraine has not yet perished.”[2011]

The same groups that commemorated Bandera also initiated the cult of Dontsov, who died on 30 March 1973 in Montreal. The ABN Correspondance filled the cover of the May-June issue in 1973 with Dontsov’s portrait and the inscription: “Great political thinker, champion of the idea of a common front of nations subjugated by Russian imperialism in their struggle for national independence.”[2012] At the fifth anniversary of Dontsov’s death, Homin Ukraїny published a photograph of Dontsov’s bust, prepared by Chereshn’ovs’kyi, who had also sculpted busts of Bandera, Shukhevych, Petliura, and others.[2013] In 1983, at the hundredth anniversary of his birth and the tenth anniversary of his death, Dontsov was commemorated as a “great thinker,” “revolutionary,” and “philosopher.”[2014]

The twentieth anniversary of Bandera’s death was combined with the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the OUN. On its first page on 3 October 1979, Homin Ukraïny published portraits of four prominent Ukrainian nationalists—Konovalets’, Bandera, Shukhevych, and Stets’ko—and announced that on 7 October nationalists would “commemorate the heroism of thousands of fallen OUN members” in Toronto.[2015] On 10 October, it similarly published a large photograph of Bandera’s bust, and an interview with the Ukrainian dissident Valentyn Moroz about the OUN, and explained why they were combining the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the OUN with the twentieth anniversary of Bandera’s assassination: “The name of Stepan Bandera is inseparable from the history of the OUN, during his life as well as after his heroic death. He lives in the OUN, and due to it and with it in the hearts and souls of the whole Ukrainian nation, as a symbol of the will to freedom and independence as a banner of a nation on a path of revolutionary liberation.”[2016] On the next page, Liubomyr Rykhtyts’kyi explained that it is “not possible to kill a historic symbol [Stepan Bandera] as it is not possible to kill an idea.”[2017] The Head of the UVF stressed that “Bandera’s spirit is calling all of us.”[2018]

Excitement about the combined anniversary arose in numerous Ukrainian communities around the world, but the most lavish commemorations took place in Munich, the most important pilgrimage site for the Ukrainian nationalists.[2019] A number of leading Ukrainian nationalists, including Mykola Klymyshyn and Bandera’s son Andrii, came to Munich for this event. They had backed Stets’ko, the tireless leader of the ABN since 1946 and the leader of the ZCh OUN since he succeeded Bandera’s follower Lenkavskyi’ in this position in 1968. The politico-religious commemorations began with a conference on 11 October 1979 in the Munich Penta Hotel,

Fig. 45. Iaroslav Stets’ko and Andrii Bandera during the conference on

11 October 1979 in Munich. ABN Correspondance No. 6 (1979): 36.

where Stets’ko read the text “We Accuse Moscow and Warn the Free World.” In his speech, Stets’ko, according to Homin Ukraïny, enumerated the “assassinations of Ukrainian fighters, informed [the audience] about the policies of enforced Russification, encouraged [them] to boycott the Olympics in 1980 in Moscow … and called for a political-psychological counteroffensive against Moscow.”[2020] When Stets’ko had finished, Andrii Bandera addressed the question of Shelepin, the former head of the NKVD, and expressed his disappointment that, although the trial in Karlsruhe had declared him guilty, the German authorities had still not arrested him (Fig. 45).[2021]

Several hundred older OUN and younger SUM members attended the panakhyda on 13 October 1979 in Munich. Nationalists who could not appear at the grave of their Providnyk sent wreaths with red-and-black or blue-and-yellow ribbons, from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, England, and the United States. Klymyshyn and other nationalists, including SUM and ABN leaders, delivered speeches at the graveside. Representatives of Ukrainian nationalist communities in several countries saluted. The article in Homin Ukraїny did not clarify whether they used the original fascist OUN-B salute from 1941, which consisted of raising the right arm “slightly to the right, slightly above the top of the head” while calling out “Glory to Ukraine!” or whether it was a revised version without the fascist gesture.[2022]

After the oratorical and other performances at the grave, the mourners attended a commemorative gathering at the Penta Hotel in a hall decorated with the red-and-black OUN-B and the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flags, as well as portraits of Bandera. Stepan Mechnyk, one of Bandera’s comrade-in-arms, opened the event. He informed 800 assembled nationalists about a telephone call from a secretary of Iosyf Slipyi, the Greek Catholic patriarch in Rome, who assured him that the twentieth anniversary of the death of the Providnyk was also solemnized in the capital of Western Christianity. During the gathering, a number of Ukrainian dance and vocal groups from several countries, including the Bandura Quartet from France, the Dibrova women’s group from Munich, and the Chaban group from England, performed. A few individuals recited poems devoted to the Providnyk. Finally, all the performers gathered on stage and sang the Ukrainian anthem, to the glory of the Providnyk. The participants then marched through Munich to the apartment building at Kreittmayrstrasse 7, as they had done ten years earlier. At the head of the procession marched Stets’ko with such prominent OUN members as Klymyshyn and Mechnyk, and several young nationalists in SUM uniforms. In front of the building where Bandera was assassinated, Omelian Koval’ delivered a speech, in which he called upon Ukrainian youth to prolong the struggle initiated by their parents, who were from the “Bandera generation.” The young people then burned the Soviet flag (Fig. 46), and the crowd sang the Ukrainian anthem and “It Is Not Time!” Afterwards, young Ukrainians collected signatures on a petition to the Munich city council to rename Kreittmayrstrasse as Stepan-Bandera-Strasse and to erect a commemorative plaque on the building where the Providnyk had been assassinated.[2023]