Українською/Ukranian version

The international discussion about Ukraine’s history politics usually centres on the same questions, same arguments and the same actors, who often (but, fortunately, not always) aim to monopolise the debate. Participating in this debate, especially when you aim to contextualise rather than make sharp moral claims, provokes accusations from both sides — you’re either “not patriotic enough” or you’re “secretly rehabilitating nationalism”.

I decided to write this text not to claim my own moral or intellectual superiority, or to make recommendations for either Ukrainian or international politics. Instead, I have tried to be as precise and clear as possible in presenting my own views on a complex issue that still requires comprehensive interdisciplinary research and the willingness of a sizeable portion of Ukrainians to admit to ideological apathy.

The mythologising of Stepan Bandera

On 25 July, 1934 the radical wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), headed by a 25-year-old Stepan Bandera killed (in their terms, “executed”) Ivan Babii, the director of Lviv Academic Gymnasium. A former officer of the Ukrainian Galician Army and supporter of Ukrainian-Polish peaceful coexistence, Babii was accused by young radicals of “active collaboration with the Polish police”. Today, the street in Lviv where the Academic Gymnasium building stands bears the name of Stepan Bandera [1].

The outbreak of world war in September 1939 released Bandera from the Polish prison where he was supposed to spend the rest of his life on convictions for political murders. Two years later, on 30 June, 1941 Bandera and fellow OUN member Yaroslav Stetsko attempted to proclaim a new Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv, but were quickly arrested by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in detention [2].

Stamps issued in honour of Stepan Bandera in 2009 under Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency. Image courtesy of the author.In October 1959, a KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky, who later handed himself in, shot Bandera in Munich. The murderer’s self-disclosure made the entire endeavour, which included a love story, into a huge political scandal [3]. This scandal contributed significantly to the mythology of Bandera, turning him — depending on your ideology— into a symbol of Ukraine’s anti-Soviet resistance or Ukrainian fascism and the extreme far right.

The common noun “Banderivtsi” (“Banderites”) emerged around this time, and it was used to designate all Ukrainian nationalists, but also, on occasion, western Ukrainians or even any person who spoke Ukrainian. Even today, the term “Banderivtsi” in public debate is never neutral — it can be used pejoratively or proudly.

Lacking information on Bandera’s deeds and political views, many people were trapped by the same propaganda narrative they wished to oppose

The Maidan protests of 2013–2014 actualised Ukraine’s Bandera mythology once again. Alongside the far right parties and groups who consciously promoted a positive myth of Bandera, a significant number of Maidan supporters called themselves “banderivtsi” [4], as well as Ukrainians whom they considered to be “enemies”.

Decommunisation and ideological diversity

Neither supporters, nor critics of Bandera commemoration in Ukraine constitute a homogeneous group. And not every supporter of the post-Maidan governments’ decommunisation policy necessarily supports the heroisation of the UPA.

More importantly, the glorification of Bandera is criticised in Ukraine from various perspectives – whether democratic, communist, or pro-Putin, among others. To understand the agenda of the critic and their motivation, we should carefully analyse the context of any statement.

It would be fundamentally wrong to divide Ukrainian society solely into ideological supporters and critics of the Bandera cult

Furthermore, in Ukrainian public debate, the most visible condemnation of nationalist views of history comes not from liberal or leftist groups, but from people who subscribe to a particular set of historical views, the origin of which can be traced to late Soviet propaganda. In other words, a rather weak self-critical position is torn between two opposite extremes in Ukraine — the post/neo-Soviet and the nationalistic.

In this complicated situation, as Olesya Khromeychuk puts it, “instead of encouraging an open and critical approach to the collective national memory, successive Ukrainian governments replace one set of interpretations with another, leaving no room for a neutral discussion of Ukraine’s controversial historical pages and thereby complicating further the unresolved conflicts with regard to the national past and the Ukrainian identity” [5].

Ignoring ideological apathy

It would be fundamentally wrong to divide Ukrainian society solely into ideological supporters and critics of the Bandera cult. Indeed, a third group is often totally excluded from this story —people who are rather indifferent to the issues of memory and identity, who have no clear ideological views and who feel disoriented by these battles over the past.

How can we make this ideological apathy visible? This question poses a serious challenge for historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists [6]. It also warns us to be careful with easily ascribed national or geopolitical “identities”.

Bringing the Ukrainian tradition of criticising nationalism from a democratic perspective into sharper focus is no less important

A telling example here is the recent opposition to “decommunisation” activities of the Ukrainian government. Opponents of turning the town of Komsomolsk (name after a Soviet youth organisation) in Poltava oblast into “Horishni Plavni”, the village Andriivka in the Lviv region to “Marmuzovychi” and Dnipropetrovsk to “Dnipro” often formulate their concerns not in terms of “Soviet nostalgia” or “pro-Russian sentiment”, but fear of the eventual costs of re-naming, as well as non-acceptance of the new names that allegedly simplify or archaise the settlements.

It is thus crucial to understand that the opponents of some (not necessarily all) “decommunised” names do not constitute a uniform group with clear ideological preferences.

What about democratic alternatives?

On 15 May, 2016 president Petro Poroshenko declared that, starting from December 2013, Ukraine had removed roughly 1,000 Lenin monuments and renamed almost 700 settlements.

The place where Lenin used to stand now usually remains vacant. In the early 1990s, when Lenin monuments were removed en masse in western Ukraine, they were usually replaced with Bandera statues —the most recognisable anti-Soviet symbol. But Bandera commemoration remained a regional phenomenon linked to the local (east Galician and Volhynian) memories of nationalistic underground and Soviet repressions that affected 10% of the regions population. In post-Maidan Ukraine, there is no consensus on who should replace Lenin. Even though Bandera is rarely mentioned in this context, it should be noted that his name appeared in the discussions about the renaming of streets in Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk. In other words, we observe how Bandera commemoration gradually crosses the historical boundaries of East Galicia and Volhynia. In this context, a responsible debate about the appropriateness of such commemoration is important. Yet this debate in Ukraine is complicated by the fact that, <a href="https://opendemocracy.net/od-russia/oles-petik-halyna-herasym/critical-thinking-at-stake-ukraine-s-witch-hunt-against-journali">in the eyes of many politically active citizens</a>, any decisive criticism of Ukrainian nationalism could look “dangerously close to the soft version of the Russian imperial narrative” [[Tadeusz A. Olszański, Miejsce UPA w Wielkiej Wojnie Ojczyźnianej. Dylematy polityki historycznej Ukrainy. Warszawa, 2013. P. 48.]]. Keeping that in mind, it is crucial to depict the history of ethnically exclusivist nationalism, the terror politics of the OUN, and the anti-Polish and anti-Jewish crimes of the UPA clearly, with no omissions and apologism. When criticising Ukraine’s heritage of radical nationalism from the perspective of human rights, it is essential to make as clear as possible that criticism of the Bandera mythology and the OUN terror does not signal (and does not aim) overlooking Soviet crimes or a denial of Ukrainian historical subjectivity. {{Criticising nationalism from a democratic perspective}} Bringing the Ukrainian tradition of criticising nationalism from a democratic perspective into sharper focus is no less important. In 1932, émigré social democrats Isaac Mazepa, Ol’gerd Bochkovskyi and Panas Fedenko published a pamphlet “Buduiut chy ruinuiut’?” (Are they building or destroying?). Here, the authors criticised the OUN’s terror as a sign of weakness and outlined the authoritarian tendencies in “integral nationalism” [7]. The aim of Bandera’s terror was to escalate and revolutionise. This kind of politics included an attempt to portray the opponents of violence as traitors and foreign agents. It also aimed at erasing half tones and nuances, getting rid of complexity and narrowing of the Ukrainian political culture.

In a time when Europe is experiencing the almost forgotten feeling of how fragile democracy is, self-criticism, intellectual responsibility and political readiness for compromise and reconciliation are needed once again.

Andrii Portnov

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