Nadia Oleksenchuk, head of the education department of the Lviv city council, announced in August 2008 that the first lesson in 2009 in all schools in the Lviv oblast would be devoted to the Providnyk.[2290] The Ternopil’ city council announced that the same would happen in Ternopil’ schools on 31 December 2009.[2291] In all schools in the Ivano-Frankivs’k oblast, according to the Plastovyi portal, a lesson called “Stepan Bandera—Symbol of the Undefeated Nation” was taught in September 2008.[2292] The education department of the Luts’k city council announced one competition for the best academic essay by a university student on the subject “Stepan Bandera—the True Depiction of the Personality, Fighter, and Citizen,” and another for schoolchildren for the best essay on “My Attitude to the OUN Providnyk Stepan Bandera.” Bandera admirers in Luts’k were invited to a ceremonial concert on 26 December 2008, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. At the same time, a similar celebration under the motto “Long Live Bandera and His State” took place in the Ivano-Frankivs’k Theater.[2293] Also in Ivano-Frankivs’k, a Bandera monument was unveiled on 1 January 2009, and on 14 October a memorial plaque was devoted to Vasyl’ Bandera. The plaque was located on the building in which Vasyl’ Bandera and other OUN-B members were arrested on 14 and 15 October 1941.[2294] The Bandera monument in Ternopil’ was unveiled on 26 December 2008, five days before the hundredth anniversary of his birth.[2295] The Ternopil’ oblast council expressed the wish to transfer Bandera’s remains from Munich to Staryi Uhryniv.[2296] The celebration of the anniversary in Chernivtsi was opened by Viktor Pavliuk, deputy head of the oblast state council, who announced that “we should together conduct celebratory activities in honor of the Providnyk of the OUN, in order to dissolve the anti-Ukrainian stereotypes settled in the consciousness of the Ukrainian population by ideologists from the Communist Party.”[2297] In Kharkiv, a court did not allow the city council to ban Bandera commemorations.[2298]
On the Feast of Saint Mary the Protectress on 14 October 2008 in Kiev, two completely opposite demonstrations were organized. The first one was at the Shevchenko monument and attracted, among others, UPA veterans, skinheads, and men and women in folk costume. Some of them carried red-and-black OUN-B flags and Bandera posters and listened to the vocal performances of men in uniform-like dark khaki suits, who stood on the stage of the Festival of Insurgent Song, behind an old automatic cannon. The other demonstration was organized by the leftwing populist Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (Prohresyvna sotsialistychna partiia Ukraїny, PSPU) in Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti). Its participants burned a red-and-black flag and carried Soviet anti-fascist and anti-NATO cartoons, of which several suggested the continuation between the Nazis and NATO, and the participation of Ukrainian nationalists in both. One older woman carried a poster with a swastika and the inscription “These are fascist movements: Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Georgia.” Two men held a banner with the inscription “Eternal Glory to the Victims of the OUN-UPA Villains.”[2299] A year later on 14 October 2009, many more people than in 2008, perhaps several hundred, marched through the streets of Kiev with Bandera posters, red-and-black flags, and Svoboda Party banners. They shouted slogans such as “Bandera our Leader—Protection of the Mother God our Festivity!” “Glory to the Heroes, Death to the Enemies!” One older man in a UPA cap brought a machine gun, to honor the Providnyk.[2300]
Between the events of October 2008 and October 2009, others connected with Bandera took place in the Ukrainian capital. On 23 May 2009, nationalists in folk costumes and neo-fascist outfits, holding Bandera posters and performing fascist salutes, honored the Ukrainian Providnyk in front of the monument to Iaroslav the Wise.[2301] At 6 p.m. on 1 January 2009, 2,000 people with torches and Svoboda Party flags marched along Khreshchatyk Boulevard to Independence Square, where they held a meeting. Andrii Mokhnyk, leader of the Kiev Svoboda Party branch informed the Bandera admirers that contemporary Ukrainian politicians were not able to take responsibility for Ukraine as Bandera had done when he had ordered the killing of Mailov and Pieracki, and when he had proclaimed a Ukrainian state in 1941. He stressed that Ukraine needed a Providnyk like Bandera. On the same day, the Svoboda Party conducted similar Bandera rallies and demonstrations in the oblast cities Ivano-Frankivs’k, Kharkiv, Odessa, Luhans’k, Lviv, Simferopol’, Volodymyr-Volyns’kyi, and Zaporizhzhia, as well as in numerous towns and villages. Some of them were prepared in collaboration with the local authorities. The celebrations in western Ukrainian villages were very well attended. In the village of Velyka Berezovytsia, inhabited by slightly more than 7,000 people, 2,000 came to the panakhyda and took part in the commemorative gathering.[2302]
Bandera’s grandson Stephen Bandera was very busy in 2009. As in previous years, he was invited to the unveiling of monuments to his grandfather, and to various rallies and anniversaries, both in Ukraine and in the diaspora.[2303] At the unveiling
Fig. 61. The Canadian SUM choir Prolisok in folk costumes at the commemorative gathering
on 17 October 2009 in the hall of the Munich Anton Fingerle Education Centre. http://www.cym.org/archives/Munich2009.asp (accessed 14 October 2011).
Fig. 62. The female SUM members from the United Kingdom at the commemorative gathering
on 17 October 2009 in the hall of the Munich Anton Fingerle Education Centre. http://www.cym.org/archives/Munich2009.asp (accessed 14 October 2011).
of the Bandera monument in Ternopil’ on 26 December 2008, he informed the crowd that he was proud to have been born in the Bandera family and to be the grandson of a Ukrainian hero. At a rally on 1 January 2009 in Staryi Uhryniv, he
reminded the celebrants that his grandfather had been the “symbol of the Ukrainian nation,” thanked the organizers in the name of the Bandera family for organizing the festivity, and listened to other prominent speakers, such as the leader of the radical right Svoboda Party, Oleh Tiahnybok.[2304]
On 17 and 18 October 2009, Stephen Bandera graced celebrations of his grandfather in Munich with his presence. On the first day of the Munich celebrations at about 2 p.m., several hundred Bandera enthusiasts from a number of countries, armed with red-and-black OUN-B flags and nationalist banners, including those of the radical right Svoboda Party, marched to Bandera’s grave, where they laid several wreaths. Some celebrants were in uniform, for instance the female and male SUM members, and the musicians of the Baturyn orchestra from Toronto, which elevated the spirit of the commemoration with military music. At the grave, a priest performed a panakhyda, after which a number of speakers, including Bandera junior and Stefan Romaniw, head of the OUN, delivered speeches.[2305]
At about 7 p.m. on the same day, the celebrants attended a commemorative gathering in the hall of the Anton Fingerle Education Center in Munich. They first listened again to the recorded speeches of such eminent Ukrainian nationalists as Bandera, Kutsan, and Romaniw. Then, they enjoyed vocal performances by a uniformed group of female SUM members from the United Kingdom, and the Canadian SUM choir Prolisok in folk costumes (Figs. 61 and 62). Both the speeches and the performances took place on a stage decorated with an immense portrait of the Providnyk. Between the political and artistic performances, the Bandera family, numbering three men and five women entered the stage and smiled at the celebrants, while standing under the portrait of their famous ancestor. The next day, the celebrations were completed with a church service.[2306]
Similar commemorative gatherings took place in 2009 in several other places inhabited by the Ukrainian diaspora. In Edmonton on 25 October 2009, about 400 people gathered at the Roman Shukhevych Ukrainian Youth Complex, at 9615–153 Avenue. The hall was decorated with a painting of the Virgin Mary, which was fixed upon a cross made from blue-and-yellow cloth. The background was red-and-black. The Ukrainian and Canadian flags were fixed on both sides of this decoration. On the right side of the stage, the audience could see a huge portrait of Bandera with the dates 1909–1959. A golden trident was hung from above the stage above the picture of the Virgin. The podium was covered in red-and-black cloth, and was decorated with a trident on top.[2307]
The celebration began with a panakhyda, during which the participants sang dirges for Stepan Bandera and performed a wide range of religious rituals under the leadership of three priests. Nationalist rituals followed. Roman Brytan, who coordinated the entire event, presented a mysterious, nationalist, and martyrdom-tinged narrative of the history of Ukraine, in segments of two to three minutes each. Between the speeches, many individual artists and musical groups, in peasant blouses and Cossack costumes, sang pop, folk, and classical songs, to glorify Bandera, some of which were based on the lyrics of OUN and UPA songs. Children of the SUM, wearing light-brown uniforms and ties sang different pop songs about the OUN, the UPA, and the Orange Revolution, which took place from late November 2004 to January 2005 in Ukraine and brought President Iushchenko to power. Altogether, some fifteen performances took place.[2308]
In addition to musical performances, Bohdan Tarasenko recited Bandera’s 1936 speech before the Polish court in Lviv, in which Bandera explained why he had given permission for the liquidation of a number of Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians. The organizers also played back a recorded interview Bandera had given Western journalists in the 1950s, explaining the necessity of a war against the Soviet Union. The event ended with a speech by Ihor Broda, leader of the League of Ukrainian Canadians in Edmonton, during which he gave thanks to the celebrants and artists for being such a “spiritual nation,” also emphasizing that the participants had helped keep the memory of Bandera alive by coming to the celebration. The speech also asserted that modern-day Ukraine is threatened by “Moscow” and that Bandera was the person who could defend Ukraine against Russia.[2309]
The Bandera commemorations surrounding the hundredth anniversary of his birth and the fiftieth of his death were crowned with the designation of Stepan Bandera as a Hero of Ukraine, by President Iushchenko on 20 January 2010, and publicly announced on 22 January. At the celebration, Iushchenko handed the order to Bandera’s grandson Stephen Bandera (Fig. 63). The younger Bandera announced in a short speech that this was “not only a great but an enormous honor” and that the Ukrainian state had finally acknowledged “the heroic deed of Stepan Bandera and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian patriots who fell for this state.”[2310] Soon after the designation, the new Ukrainian president Viktor Ianukovych promised the Russian president Vladimir Putin to strip Bandera of the order, which the Donetsk District Administrative Court carried out in April 2010.[2311]