The scene has been repeated every January 1st for several years. On that day, supporters of the Ukrainian far right marched through the streets of Kyiv to celebrate the birthday of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), a sulphurous figure of 20th-century Ukrainian nationalism. Not so in 2023: the streets of Kyiv have remained silent. Martial law obliges, demonstrations are forbidden in times of war.
The celebration passed in silence, but despite everything, sparked another monument dispute with Poland. The controversy began with a posting on the Twitter account of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, which celebrated Stepan Bandera’s 114th birthday in its own way by posting a photo of the Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valeri Saluzhny giving a thumbs-up in front of his portrait.
The image was accompanied by a phrase attributed to this controversial figure, stating that “the total and supreme victory of Ukrainian nationalism will take place when the Russian Empire ceases to exist” and that, in relation to the current conflict, “the instructions of Stepan Bandera are well known to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces”.
The publication, which was picked up by the Israeli and Polish media, caused a stir. Stepan Bandera not only headed the radicalized branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a formation accused of having participated alongside Nazi Germany in the Holocaust that claimed hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives in western Ukraine. But the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), its armed wing formed in 1942, is also responsible for the deaths of thousands of Poles – between 70,000 and 100,000, historians estimate – killed in north-western Ukraine between 1943 and 1944 became. A Ukrainian antihero.
A portrait of Stepan Bandera in a museum in Staryi Uhryniv (Ukraine), June 25, 2022. RAFAEL YAGHOBZADEH FOR THE WORLD
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dryly reminded in Warsaw that his government “a [position] extremely critical of any glorification or even memory of Bandera”. On January 2, after a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, the message of the Verkhovna Rada was deleted from the social network.
Figure both demonized and mythologized
This episode is just the latest. For several years, the scandal has been repeated with the approach of January 1st. The anti-Semite and xenophobia Stepan Bandera remains a demonized and mythologized figure 64 years after his death. Within Ukrainian society itself, men have long held a controversial place. “For one part of Ukraine, especially the West, he is a hero, for another, especially the Russian-speaking part of the East, he is a bandit, a Nazi collaborator,” says Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian specializing in Ukrainian nationalism.
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