The first series was printed in Pravda Ukrainy under the title “Banderovshchina.” The authors, V. Zarechnyi and O. Lastovets, remarked that the recent growth of national identity in Ukraine, caused by the politics of democratization and glasnost, was leading to the “rehabilitation of the bloody banderovshchina.” They claimed that they wrote the article because some Ukrainians had begun to blame the Communist Party and the Soviet authorities for not making any compromises with the OUN-UPA during and after the Second World War, which would have ended the “fratricide” that occurred. The authors introduced the history of the OUN and UPA in a typical Soviet way, exposing the villainous nature of the Ukrainian nationalists, extolling Soviet power and denying or diminishing Soviet crimes in western Ukraine.[2151] In October 1989, the same newspaper published the article “Bloody Traces of the Banderites,” in which A. Gorban recalled Halan’s murder.[2152]
The second series of articles, written by the Soviet Ukrainian historian Vitalii Maslovs’kyi, appeared in October 1990 in Radians’ka Ukraїna under the title “Bandera: Banner or Band.”[2153] The date suggests that, as in the diaspora, a Bandera cult had begun emerging in Soviet Ukraine around the anniversary of his death on 15 October. Maslovs’kyi stated that, given the current fascination with Bandera in western Ukraine, he wanted to find whether the name Bandera was derived from the Spanish word “banner” or from the Ukrainian word “band [banda].” Maslovs’kyi was one of the leading Soviet experts on the OUN-UPA. He had studied the subject for several years and was acquainted with many crucial archival documents. He included some significant information in his article, such as the introduction of the fascist salute by the OUN-B at the Second Great Congress of the Ukrainian Nationalists in March-April 1941, and details of the killing of OUN-M members by the OUN-B.[2154] Yet Maslovs’kyi, in a way typical of Soviet historians, diminished, omitted, and denied Soviet crimes and the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime. He also tried to strengthen hatred against the OUN-B by offensive terminology and by providing incorrect information. For example, he introduced the Nachtigall battalion as an SS division and not as an Abwehr battalion.[2155] Unlike earlier Soviet historians, however, he did not deny that Bandera was murdered by the KGB agent Stashyns’kyi.[2156]
V. Dovgan’, author of the third anti-Bandera series, began by observing that “destructive nationalist elements” had been “inflating” a Bandera cult in Ukraine:
Various publications, in particular in Galicia (i.e. in Lviv, Ternopil’, and Ivano-Frankivs’k oblasts) popularize his road of life and reprint his articles and speeches. Portraits and signs with his portrait grow in popularity. In July of this year in Drohobych, during a meeting of former UPA bandits, the foundation stone was laid for a future Bandera monument. And on 14 October [1990] a monument to Bandera was unveiled in the Ciscarpathian village of Uhryniv. Streets in several cities in Galicia have also been named after him. In numerous cities, particularly in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivs’k, we hear a loud “Slava!” to the honor of Bandera and appeals to the youth to follow the path that he outlined. ...
Who were Stepan Bandera and the Banderites who took the name of their Providnyk? What is the banderovshchina that weighed like a horrible ghost for more than 10 years on the western Ukrainian countryside?[2157]
Like Maslovs’kyi, Dovgan’ was well informed about the history of the OUN and Bandera’s life. He studied crucial documents such as “Struggle and Activity” and knew many details concerning Bandera’s life. He reminded his readers about the OUN-B’s collaboration with Nazi Germany and the ethnic violence from 1941 onward. At the same time, he omitted and denied Soviet violence, in particular the torture and killing of prisoners in 1940–1941 in western Ukraine and the brutal killing and deportation of civilians after 1944. He also ascribed a range of deeds to the Ukrainian nationalists, which they had not committed. One of them was the killing of the Polish professors by the Ukrainian Nachtigall battalion. Dovgan’ also addressed the question of Bandera’s collaboration with the SIS and the parachuting of ZCh OUN members into Soviet Ukraine. Although some newspapers, such as the Moscow Megapolis-Ekspress on 31 May 1990 and the Ukrainian nationalist Za vil’nu Ukraїnu on 9 August 1990, had announced that Bandera was killed by Stashyns’kyi, Dovgan’ argued that it was still an open question whether Bandera had been killed by Stashyns’kyi or by Oberländer.[2158]
In addition to Soviet propaganda, western Ukraine was also exposed at this time to Ukrainian nationalist propaganda. In April 1990, Pravda Ukrainy wrote that “Lviv emissaries” referred to Bandera at several meetings in Volhynia as the “‘great son’ of the Ukrainian nation.”[2159] On 30 June 1990 at the market square in Lviv, Ukrainian nationalists and dissidents celebrated the declaration of 30 June 1941. According to Maslovs’kyi, Oleh Vitovych, one of the leaders of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Youth (Spilka Nezalezhnoї Ukraїns’koї Molodi, SNUM), said in his speech: “The ideas for which Stepan Bandera was fighting are also present today. These are the ideas of the nationalism of the revolutionary movement in Ukraine. We, the young generation of nationalists, arm ourselves with these ideas.”[2160]
In 1990, at its twenty-eighth congress, the Communist Party of Ukraine debated whether the OUN and UPA should be rehabilitated. The decision to take up the issue was brought about by the ongoing rehabilitation of Ukrainian nationalists in western Ukraine, which manifested itself, as Pravda Ukrainy wrote, in “lavish celebrations, religious services, renaming of streets and squares, erection of monuments, and the placing of commemorative plaques devoted to S. Bandera, R. Shukhevych, and other leaders of the OUN-UPA.” At the congress, the party called the brutal conflict between the OUN-UPA and the Soviet authorities in the 1940s and 1950s a “fratricidal war.” It condemned the Stalinist terror but decided not to rehabilitate the OUN and UPA.[2161]
Staryi Uhryniv, Bandera’s birthplace, became a particularly turbulent place during the breakup of the Soviet Union. It was only in 1984 that the Soviets destroyed the chapel in which Andrii Bandera had performed church services. On 15 October 1989, the thirtieth anniversary of Bandera’s death, seven young people, four men and three women from Stryi and Lviv, set up a bronze cross at the site, and on the same day a public meeting took place there. The KGB failed to arrest the seven young people, who were in hiding, helped by local inhabitants.[2162]
On Heroes’ Day, 27 May 1990, the SNUM from Ivano-Frankivs’k set up a foundation stone for a Bandera monument in front of the house in which Bandera was born. At about the same time, the chapel was rebuilt. Funds for the monument were collected at public anti-Soviet meetings, which frequently took place in western Ukraine at that time. The monument was prepared in a cement factory in Dubivtsi, Halych region and was transported piece by piece to Staryi Uhryniv by taxi. It was put together at night from 13 to 14 October, under the protection of a crowd of about one hundred people. The monument looked quite makeshift and consisted of two pillars and a bust with a bell underneath. It was unveiled on 14 October 1990, the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God (Sviato Pokrovy) and the Feast of the UPA. According to Stepan Lusiv, 10,000 people attended the ceremony. Shliakh peremohy reported that there were 15,000. For the sake of the celebration, a sign with the inscription “Stepan Bandera Street” was placed on the house behind the monument. Some celebrants held blue-and-yellow or red-and-black flags, or portraits of Bandera, or wore folk clothes, in particular embroidered shirts. On one side of the monument, a blue-and-yellow flag, and on the other, a red-and-black one, were set up. The celebration began with a moment of silence. A UPA veteran then fired a rifle in the air, and the crowd sang the Ukrainian anthem. After the singing of the nationalist song “We Were Born in a Great Hour” (Zrodylys’ my velykoї hodyny) Vitalii Hapovych, leader of the SNUM, asked that the blue-and-yellow cover be taken off the monument. The crowd began shouting “Glory!” Afterwards, Bandera’s sister Volodymyra Davydiuk and some nationalist activists, among them OUN-B émigrés, delivered speeches. A priest then blessed the monument and performed a panakhyda.[2163]
On 14 October 1990, the same day on which the Bandera monument was unveiled in Staryi Uhryniv, 10,000 people attended the opening of the first Bandera museum in Ukraine. The museum was located in the house in Volia Zaderevats’ka where Bandera’s family had lived between 1933 and 1936. Among the speakers was Bandera’s sister, Oksana Bandera.[2164] On the same day, the Lenin monument in Lviv was dismantled, although the authorities had been protecting it at night from 13 October onward.[2165] On 15 October, according to Vyzvol’nyi shliakh, 10,000 people came to a meeting with a panakhyda, close to the Lviv university building, to commemorate the thirty-first anniversary of Bandera’s assassination. About thirty people were on the stage at the meeting, among them the Ukrainian dissident and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, Ivan Kandyba.[2166]
The first Bandera monument in Ukraine did not fulfill its function for long. It was blown up at about 5 or 6 a.m. on 30 December 1990, possibly in order to prevent a celebration of Bandera’s birthday there on 1 January 1991. However, the monument was rebuilt and unveiled at the same place on 30 June 1991, the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of 30 June 1941. The rebuilt monument looked quite similar to the first one. It was a little taller and there were two tridents instead of a bell under the bust. Again 10,000 people, some of them dressed in folk garments and carrying blue-and-yellow and red-and-black flags, appeared at the unveiling. After the unveiling, the monument was guarded by SNUM activists. But it was blown up even sooner than the first one, at about 3 a.m. on 10 July. During the demolition, the perpetrators, very likely six Soviet security officers acting on orders from the Defense Department of the Soviet Union, shot and wounded one of the SNUM activists, Vasyl’ Maksymchuk. The same night, the Ievhen Konovalets’ monument in Zashkiv, Lviv oblast, was blown up. Five days earlier, on 5 July 1991, a monument near Brody, devoted to the Waffen-SS Galizien soldiers, had also been blown up.[2167]
The third Bandera monument in Staryi Uhryniv was unveiled on 17 August 1992, in an already independent Ukraine and was guarded thereafter by the police. The unveiling was combined with the fiftieth anniversary of the UPA and was followed by three days of patriotic celebrations. The architect of the third Bandera monument was Bandera’s nephew Zynovii Davydiuk, Volodymyra’s son. The monument, this time a bronze statue, was recast from a Lenin statue that had been prepared for unveiling in the provincial city of Kalush.[2168] Ivan Kashuba, main editor of Shliakh peremohy and former head of the SB of the ZCh OUN, delivered a speech at the unveiling ceremony.[2169] Other leading OUN émigrés, including Mykola Lebed’, also visited western Ukraine at that time.[2170]
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a number of OUN émigrés returned to Ukraine. They founded several radical right, antidemocratic parties and other organizations, which considerably impacted on Ukrainian politics, society, culture, and academia, especially in the western parts of the country, where the UPA had operated until the early 1950s. Slava Stets’ko had succeeded her husband as leader of the ABN in 1986, and Vasyl’ Oles’kiv in 1991 as leader of the OUN-B. In 1992 she founded the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (Kongres Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv, KUN), and in 1997 she was elected to the Ukrainian parliament, in which she served until her death in 2002.[2171]
In Kiev, OUN-B émigrés set up the Stepan Bandera Centre of National Revival (Tsentr Natsional’noho vidrodzhennia imeni Stepana Bandery, TsNV) at 9 Iaroslaviv Val Street. The OUN leadership, the Munich-based OUN-B newspaper Shliakh peremohy, and the London-based OUN-B journal Vyzvol’nyi shliakh were relocated there. In 2000, Andrii Haidamakha was elected leader of the OUN at the Ninth Great Congress. In 2009 the Twelfth Great Congress of the OUN elected Stefan Romaniw as leader of the OUN (Fig. 53). Both Haidamakha and Romaniw grew up in the diaspora and were recruited to the OUN when they were members of SUM.[2172] Like many other OUN diaspora nationalists, the OUN Leader Romaniw has also been an activist of multiculturalism.[2173] After his election as leader of the OUN, Romaniw stated:
I remind myself of the words of Ievhen Konovalets’, who said: “We can either be the creators of history or be its victims.” The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists has always demonstrated that it wants to create history, and the present Leadership is searching for that path. ...
We are trying to create the understanding that the OUN is in fact that spark which can ignite community spirit. Today Ukraine and the Diaspora—this is a global Organization; an Organization where we complement one another, an Organization in which we need each other, and thus on the Leadership’s part, we constantly remember: We are an Organization that is strewn around the world, but the purpose of our experience, our goal, is the same everywhere. That is why our task must be the education/development/raising of youth in Ukraine and in the Diaspora, because young people should know their roots, and love God and Ukraine. ...
I call upon you today not only to sacrifice, I call upon you to be ready to cooperate, so that you, dear friends, young and old, will stand in the vanguard together with the Leadership of the OUN to ignite this fire in America, in Canada, in Poland, in Australia, in Great Britain, or in Ukraine.
We are a global organization, our strength is our unity! I call upon you all to unite around our great ideal. ...
Glory to Ukraine![2174]
A number of ultranationalist and radical right parties and other organizations that claimed to stand in the tradition of the OUN-B and the UPA emerged in Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian National Assembly (Ukraïns’ka natsional’na asambleia, UNA) and its paramilitary wing, Ukrainian National Self-Defense (Ukraïns’ka natsional’na samooborona, UNSO) were founded in 1991. The UNA and UNSO based their ideology on Dontsov, Arthur de Gobineau, and Walter Darré, and modeled themselves on the National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD). From 1991 to 1994 and again from October 2005, their leader was Iurii Shukhevych, the son of the legendary UPA leader Roman Shukhevych. Like the generation of his fathers, Iurii Shukhevych held extremist nationalist views. In an interview in 2007, for example, he said that “the ghetto was invented not by Hitler, but by the Jews themselves.” Following Soviet anti-Zionist dogma, he also argued that Simon Wiesenthal “was a Gestapo agent.”[2175]