Bandershtat has been organized annually since 2007, near Luts’k in Volhynia (Fig. 64). The name may have been derived from a song and music album from 1991 by the rock band Braty Hadiukiny, called “We Guys from the Bandera City.” The participants in Bandershtat not only spent a few days sleeping in tents and listening to alternative music but also took part in various nationalist rituals. They dressed in UPA and NKVD uniforms and pretended to fight each other, invited UPA veterans and listened to their talks, formed a huge word BANDERA by standing behind each other and had themselves photographed from a plane, invited paramilitary and neo-fascist organizations that positioned Wolfsangel flags in front of their tents, and intended to invite Stepan Bandera’s grandson Stephen Bandera. Bandershat was organized by the 2005-founded National Alliance, which specialized in organizing torch parades and paramilitary training camps. According to the Alliance, the aim of the festival was to “elevate the national idea in Ukrainian youth” and to “immortalize the image of Stepan Bandera as a national symbol.”[2314]

In 2007 the pub Kryїvka was opened in the Rynok square of Lviv. It was located in the cellar of a sixteenth-century tenement and was designed as a bunker of the UPA. Everyone who entered was greeted with “Glory to Ukraine!” uttered by a uniformed man with a rifle. The guest was expected to respond with “Glory to the Heroes!” The interior was decorated with nationalist and military objects. The pub commercialized a romanticized and distorted image of the UPA. On the one hand, it overlooked the violence committed by the Ukrainian partisans, and on the other, it did not inform the guests that life in a UPA bunker was painful and unbearable, as its inhabitants suffered from various diseases, wore the same underwear and clothes for weeks, and were regularly bitten by lice.[2315]

In one room, a few giant posters popularized the idea of Bandera as a human being. They showed the Providnyk at different ages, accompanied by his family and friends, or in short pants during holidays at the seaside. The menu, as well as informing guests about dishes, the names of many of which related to the UPA, also depicted several sketches of the UPA bunkers and photographs of UPA partisans. One of the depicted partisans was the legendary UPA leader Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi who unleashed the ethnic cleansing in Volhynia in early 1943. Kliachkivs’kyi and several UPA partisans were apparently presented in the menu to invoke the impression that they had eaten the same dishes that were served at Kryїvka. The menu listed various kinds of bacon, including kosher bacon (kosherne salo). One of the devices exhibited in the pub was a rifle. Every guest, including children, could pick it up and play with it. The ambience of the pub suggested that the rifle had been previously used by the UPA insurgents.[2316]

Iurii Nazaruk, the manager of the pub, reasoned in an interview that Kryїvka was both a museum and a pub, intended to change the negative Soviet image of the UPA by disseminating “true knowledge about the UPA.” According to him, the pub was more effective than nationalist publications and the Bandera monument in Lviv, which was too monumental and thus made modern people skeptical about the Bandera cult. According to Nazaruk, people who did not regard the UPA insurgents as heroes did not understand anything about the Ukrainian “liberation movement.” Asked about antisemitism in the UPA, Nazaruk responded that there were many Jewish physicians in the UPA, and that there may even have been a Jewish UPA unit that fought for an independent Ukrainian state. He added that even if such a unit did not exist, this myth about the UPA was true “because it is a good myth [rather than a bad Soviet myth].”[2317]

In 2008 the biker club “Banderas” was opened in Chernivtsi, the main city of Bukovina. One of the symbols of the club became a UPA partisan on a motorbike. Every member of the club was obliged to display the symbol on a leather vest.[2318] Vasyl’ Kozhelianko, a Chernivtsi-based author, published in 2000 the counterfactual novel Parade in Moscow, in which Hitler accepts the proclamation of the OUN-B state on 30 June 1941 and conquers Moscow in November 1941. Kozhelianko also has Bandera take the salute of the armies of the Axis countries at the Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow on 7 November 1941. Next to the Ukrainian Providnyk, Kozhelianko places Hitler, Mussolini, Antonescu, Franco, Horthy, and the “Japanese emperor.”[2319]

Oksana Zabuzhko, the most famous Ukrainian female writer, composed a far more pathetic book about Ukrainian nationalism than had Kozhelianko. Unlike the latter’s fantasy, Zabuzhko’s historical novel The Museum of Abandoned Secrets was rapidly translated into other languages.[2320] Before writing the book, she consulted V”iatrovych who provided her with historical material and explained to her the relations between Jews and Ukrainian nationalists during the Second World War. In consequence, Zabuzhko based a significant part of her novel on Krentsbakh’s fictitious memoirs, published by OUN-B historian and former head of a division of the OUN propaganda apparatus, Petro Mirchuk. Unsurprisingly, Zabuzhko depicted the UPA as an army that looked after Jews during the Second World War and did not commit any atrocities against them, allowing them to fight against the Soviet Union for an independent Ukrainian state.[2321]

In 2009 the organization Eko-Myloserdia organized a bike trip called Stepan Bandera’s European Paths, for nine teenagers and six adults. The trip began on 1 August 2009 in Sokal’, Lviv oblast, and was planned to go through Poland and Slovakia, and to end at Bandera’s grave in Munich on 24 August. Because of its name and political nature, the expedition evoked much emotion and attracted a good deal of media attention, even before it began, especially in Poland. As the bikers came to the Polish border, opponents organized a demonstration with posters like “Those Who Glorify the Fascist S. Bandera Themselves Become Fascists.” The bikers were not let through the border, although they possessed valid passports and visas.[2322]

In 2007 and 2008, the Ukrainian television channel Inter prepared the talk show Great Ukrainians. From a hundred selected personalities, ten were chosen, including such characters as the physician Mykola Amosov, the poet Taras Shevchenko, the medieval king Iaroslav the Wise, the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, the philosopher Hryhorii Skorovoda, and of course, the legendary Providnyk Stepan Bandera. Then ten short movies about the ten Ukrainians were produced under the direction of journalists, politicians, and actors, including Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of Ukraine. The movie about Bandera was produced by journalist Vakhtang Kipiani. The movies were shown on the Inter channel, and shortly after, could be watched on the Internet. Fans chose their favorite “great Ukrainian” by sending an SMS. The show excited Ukrainian society and was the subject of daily discussions for months. People debated at home and at work who was their most admired Ukrainian and who should therefore win the contest. Many sent not one but dozens or even hundreds of SMS messages for their favorite candidate. Bandera became the “great Ukrainian” number three, after Iaroslav the Wise, and Amosov. That the Providnyk did not win was allegedly due to a fraud conducted by a group of political activists who wanted to prevent the division of Ukraine which, according to them, Bandera’s winning would cause. Although, with the exception of Bandera, no twentieth-century extremists or communist leaders qualified for the first ten, a number of them qualified for the first hundred, including the UPA leader Shukhevych in twelfth place, Lenin in twenty-third, Konovalets’ in fortieth, Brezhnev in sixty-third, and Khrushchev in ninety-third.[2323]

Although Kipiani’s movie about Bandera was an apologetic and uncritical advertisement for the Providnyk, historians and intellectuals in Ukraine accepted it rather than discussing or challenging it. The movie began with a short, pathetic talk by a young uniformed Plastun, perhaps aged twelve, with a physiognomy similar to Bandera at that age. The young patriot, sitting at a campfire in a forest, informed his older colleagues, and the film director sitting next to him, how Bandera prepared himself for future torture at enemy hands, by inserting pins under his nails.[2324]

Kipiani’s movie consisted of clips from black-and-white documentary films, in which the director placed his cartoon actors. Kipiani not only provided narrative but also appeared in the film as an actor, mainly among archival documents or in significant places like the prison or courthouse. He appeared as a link between the present and the past, or the audience and the Providnyk. He presented Bandera as a patriotic Ukrainian politician who fought, suffered, and died for Ukraine. Typically for the post-Soviet apologetic discourse he omitted all facts that could cast a poor light on the Providnyk and showed instead a band playing a heroic and patriotic rock song about Ukrainian partisans in the ruins of a church. In order to familiarize the audience with the Providnyk as a human being, Kipiani showed pictures of Bandera with friends and family and let Bandera’s grandson Stephen Bandera talk at length about his grandfather, his family, and himself.[2325]

Several other documentary and historical feature films about Bandera were produced after 1991. On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday anniversary, the television network Vikna made the twenty-five-minute film Stepan Bandera’s Three Loves. It began with Stephen Bandera jogging through Kiev, while being introduced as a person who bears a name “with which so many murders are associated that any Mafia don would be envious.” Then director Iurii Diukanov introduced Bandera’s life and the history of the OUN, by telling the story of Bandera’s love for three women. Bandera appeared in the documentary as a romantic Ukrainian hero, who idealistically struggled for Ukraine and was tragically assassinated by his cruel and deceitful enemies. The link between love and nationalism was the main vibrant message of this patriotic production.[2326]

Ten years later, on the hundredth anniversary of Bandera’s birth, Serhii Sotnychenko, Taras Tkachenko, and Olena Nozhekina produced the documentary The Price of Freedom with Stephen Bandera as the central character. The young star of Ukrainian nationalism introduced the life of his grandfather, embedded in OUN and UPA history in several brief acts, in which each was followed by short speeches by such historians as Alexander Gogun, Iaroslav Hrytsak, Taras Hunchak, Grzegorz Motyka, Ivan Patryliak, Mykola Posivnych, Timothy Snyder, Iaroslav Svatko, Volodymyr V”iatrovych, and such political activists as the former OUN-B members Irena Kozak and Ievhen Stakhiv, and the OUN leader Andrii Haidamakha. Crucial matters, such as the denial of the pogroms and the rationalization of the ethnic violence, were confirmed by nationalist historians such as V”iatrovych, and nationalist activists such as the OUN leader Haidamakha, and not by critical historians like Motyka or Snyder, who in the movie confirmed only less controversial aspects. As a result Stephen Bandera became the main narrator of Ukrainian history, who introduced the main personality of Ukrainian history, his grandfather the Providnyk, and whose opinions are confirmed by a number of authoritative historians.[2327]

The most popular movie about Bandera, Assassination: An Autumn Murder in Munich, was produced in 1995 by screenplay writer Vasyl’ Portiak and film director Oles’ Ianchuk. In addition to Assassination, the latter produced a number of other nationalist movies, including Famine-33 (Holod-33) about the famine of 1932–1933, The Undefeated (Neskorennyi) about Roman Shukhevych, and The Company of Heroes (Zalizna Sotnia) about the UPA. In Assassination and Undefeated, the role of Stepan Bandera was played by the same actor, Iaroslav Muka. The ideological goal of Assassination was the romanticization and sentimentalization of the Providnyk and of the Ukrainian nationalists who remained in Munich after the Second World War. The historical text at the beginning of the film presented the OUN and UPA as a resistance movement fighting the Germans and Soviets.[2328] The post-war Bandera, as portrayed by the actor Iaroslav Muka, was not exactly a carbon copy of the original. Not only did Muka’s physiognomy require considerable imagination to recognize him as Stepan Bandera but his sluggish temper did not seem to correspond with the fervent and excitable personality of the Providnyk. However, Muka’s slow temper and subtle suggestions of absentmindedness allowed a sentimental and almost intellectual depiction of Bandera. This was often strengthened with sentimental music, particularly when Bandera was travelling by car or when he was working on the revolution. Bandera’s doctrinal insistence on his absolute authority in the OUN and his demanding complete subordination from every OUN member after the war were not featured in the film, as they would have jeopardized Bandera’s sentimental and intellectual portrayal. The main motif of the film was Bandera’s assassination. Shortly before the tragic act, the viewer saw Stashyns’kyi as an honest and sympathetic man, being trained at KGB headquarters in Moscow and drinking a toast of champagne to Bandera’s upcoming death, with two high-ranking Soviet officials. Bandera was killed on the staircase in Munich, to disconcerting and disquieting music, which immediately became sentimental and mourning in tone, as a huge obituary appeared on screen.

Post-Soviet Monuments to the Victims of the OUN-UPA

Despite vigorous attempts to fill Ukraine with nationalist monuments, commemorative plaques, and street names, many Soviet monuments and other signs in public places survived, especially in eastern Ukraine, where a few nationalist monuments were erected. In Lviv, the “capital” of western Ukraine, the Lenin monument and several other Soviet statues were removed before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the largest Soviet monument, the Glory Monument (Monument Slavy) was not. In the small spa town of Slavs’ke in the Carpathian Mountains, a statue of the Virgin Mary was installed in a monument devoted to the Red Army.[2329] In eastern Ukraine, nationalist monuments devoted to the OUN-UPA or its leaders were very rarely erected. In 1992 in Kharkiv, the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Narodnyi Rukh Ukraїny, NRU), with the approval of the city council, unveiled a small and almost unnoticeable UPA monument in the Molodizhnyi Park. The monument was protected by guards but was vandalized on at least one occasion.[2330]

The process of nationalizing Ukraine by means of OUN and UPA heroes was a reaction to the previous Sovietization of Ukraine and to the prolongation of Soviet traditions, particularly in eastern Ukraine. It is not surprising that it soon caused a counteraction, in particular in eastern Ukraine, where populist pro-Russian parties, such as the Party of Regions (Partia rehioniv), began erecting monuments devoted to the victims of the OUN and UPA, while further denying the atrocities of the Soviet regime and extolling its achievements. Up to the time of writing, an approach to the Ukrainian past that would not extol either the OUN-UPA or Soviet totalitarianism but would mourn the victims of both sides has not asserted itself. During the terms of office of the nationalist president Iushchenko, populist or communist parties and other organizations in eastern Ukraine unveiled at least four heroic, anti-nationalist monuments devoted to the victims of the OUN-UPA. On 14 September 2007 in Simferopol, the communist organization Homeland (Rodina) unveiled a monument called “Shot in the back,” which showed a female figure holding a wounded man, a Soviet citizen or soldier murdered by the UPA. The Russian inscription on the monument said, “To the memory of the Soviet people’s sacrifices who were killed by the helpers of the fascists—the fighters of the OUN-UPA and other collaborators.”[2331] Petro Symonenko, first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, said at the unveiling ceremony: “The agents of this organization [OUN-UPA] supervised by fascists, shot Soviet citizens, innocent people. We came here today to commemorate everyone who liberated the Soviet Union. You went and you were underhandedly shot in the back from a corner by the helpers of the fascists.”[2332] Leonid Grach, the leader of the Crimean Communists, informed the participants that “more than 4,000 Crimeans, citizens of the Soviet Union, were sent to western Ukraine in order to help (heal, teach etc.), and were killed there by the helpers of the fascists.”[2333]

Another monument to the victims of the OUN-UPA, a 1.5-meter-high (five-foot) upright block, built into an existing monument to the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War, was unveiled on 26 June 2008 in Svatove, a district center in the Luhans’k oblast. The unveiling ceremony was attended by members of the Communist party of Ukraine and members of the communist organization Molodaia gvardiia (Young Guard). Like Grach in Simferopol’, Mykola Sherstiuk, the mayor of Svatove, argued that the monument is devoted to local “teachers, doctors, and the military … mostly women” who were sent to the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivs’k oblasts after the Second World War and were killed there by the nationalists.[2334] Ievhen Kharin, vice-mayor of Luhansk, said in his speech: “The war is not over, the war continues. It is cruel and dirty. For the souls of our children and grandchildren whose parents and grandparents lie in graves.”[2335] The Luhans’k oblast council published on this occasion a book titled We Will not Betray Victory and Truth, with excerpts from the writings of the Soviet Ukrainian historian Maslovs’kyi, who was allegedly murdered by nationalists in Lviv in 1999.[2336]