From the beginning of the conflict, the Russian government has used this controversial nationalist figure in Ukrainian history to discredit Kiev and justify its “denazification” rhetoric.
The highly controversial character is the scarecrow instigated by Russia to justify the need to “denazify” Ukraine. Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader guilty of collaborating with Nazi Germany in the 1940s, has been mentioned about 20 times by the Russian Foreign Ministry telegram account since the beginning of the war. Sergei Lavrov, the head of Russia’s diplomacy, hammered it out again during a propaganda speech on February 10, reiterating that the Kiev authorities are the “successors of Stepan Bandera.”
According to a May ministry statement (in Russian), “the Bandera cult” is “an integral part of the educational system of modern Ukraine.” In September, Maria Zakharova (in Russian), spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, again recalled that the nationalist leader had been “an accomplice in the Holocaust” during World War II. For Sergei Lavrov, therefore, the glorification (in Russian) of Bandera is proof that the Ukrainian government is promoting “neo-Nazism”.
What role did Stepan Bandera play in Ukrainian history? Why is this highly controversial historical figure actually commemorated by Ukrainians today? Should we see this as a demonstration of the Kiev government’s fascism, as the Russian government claims? In four questions, Franceinfo returns to the special place occupied by the nationalist leader in contemporary Ukraine, based on the expertise of several historians and a prominent representative of Ukraine’s Jewish community.
Who is Stepan Bandera?
Stepan Bandera was born in 1909 in Galicia, a region in what is now western Ukraine. After a short period of independence, Ukrainian territory was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union after 1919. A staunch nationalist, Stepan Bandera joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the late 1920s, a militant radical movement to liberate Ukraine from the Polish and Russian occupiers. The independence organization draws its ideology from fascism. “The OUN was inspired by the theses of Dmytro Dontsov, the translator of Mein Kampf into Ukrainian,” reveals Eric Aunoble, a historian specializing in Ukraine at the University of Geneva.
In Poland, the OUN is launching a series of attacks on the authorities. Bandera was sentenced to death for the assassination of Poland’s interior minister in 1934, a sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In 1939 he was released after the joint invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the USSR. The OUN split in two and the nationalist leader took over the leadership of one of them, the OUN-B, then called the “Banderist faction”.
Stepan Bandera then makes his most notorious political decision to collaborate with Nazi Germany, which he sees as a potential ally. “In the countries occupied by the USSR, before it committed the horrific abuses we know of, many believed that Hitler could be a liberator” against the Soviet occupiers, explains Galia Ackerman, a historian specializing in Russia. But “when World War II broke out, Ukrainian nationalists quickly became disillusioned”.
In June 1941, the OUN-B in Lviv proclaimed the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state. “But the Nazis don’t want this independence,” emphasizes Eric Aunoble. Stepan Bandera was then arrested and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a few kilometers north of Berlin. If the leader is interned in the “VIP” section of the camp, two of his brothers will perish in Auschwitz, the historian specifies. “Many Ukrainian nationalists are also shot by the Nazis,” adds Galia Ackermann.
In response to Nazi oppression, the OUN-B formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in 1942, which fought against both the German occupiers and the Soviets. In September 1944, Stepan Bandera was liberated by the Germans who were trying to use him against the advancing Red Army in Ukraine. The leader briefly collaborated with the Nazi regime.
After the Soviet victory, Stepan Bandera has to go into exile in Germany, where he lives after the war. “Partisans continue to fight against the Soviets in Ukraine. Thousands of Communist Party dignitaries are killed,” recalls Galia Ackerman. “This will add more to the black legend of Bandera in the Soviet Union than the involvement of his followers in Nazi atrocities.” The last Maquis was eventually crushed and Stepan Bandera himself was assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959.
What responsibility did he bear in the annihilation of the Jewish people in Ukraine?
“Bandera was very anti-Semitic,” says Galia Ackerman. “He was influenced by German propaganda and the Judeo-Bolshevism myth that the Jews are stooges of Communism.” In 1941, after the German invasion of Ukraine, members of the OUN organized pogroms. In the Lviv region, “the population massacred thousands of Jewish civilians, believing them to be complicit in the executions of Ukrainian nationalists committed by the NKVD [la police politique soviétique] before the Russian troops left. It is the Bandera partisans who are at work in this massacre of the Jews,” says Eric Aunoble.
“But after his arrest by the Germans in mid-July 1941, Bandera cannot be said to be personally responsible for the massacres of Jews during the rest of the conflict,” he specifies. “Although they did not pose as Ukrainian nationalists, Bandera supporters were heavily involved in the auxiliary police units that took the Jews to their execution sites by the Nazis,” recalls the historian. According to the Shoah Memorial, from 1941 to 1944 almost one and a half million Jews were murdered in Ukraine “under the bullets of the Einsatzgruppen.” [les unités mobiles d’extermination du Reich qui perpétraient des massacres dans les pays de l’Est]Units of the Waffen-SS, the German police” but also “local collaborators”.
The UPA, the armed branch of the Bandera OUN, has also been guilty of numerous massacres since 1942. This time it is the Polish minority in the Volhynia region of north-western Ukraine that is being targeted. “Some 60,000 Poles were then executed in appalling conditions,” says Eric Aunoble.
Why do some Ukrainians celebrate his memory?
Originally limited to the extreme right, the figure of Stepan Bandera rose to prominence in 2014 during the Maidan Square demonstrations. “Groups like Right Sector [un parti ultranationaliste ukrainien] were very active during these demonstrations from a militant point of view. This gave Bandera visibility far beyond the real political influence of these movements,” explains Eric Aunoble.
Stepan Bandera previously received more formal recognition in 2010 when then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko bestowed the title of Hero of Ukraine on the nationalist leader.
“There is a phenomenon of selective memory of Stepan Bandera. In Ukraine, the character is celebrated primarily as a fighter for national liberation,” analyzes Galia Ackerman. “Many Ukrainians don’t know that his troops committed crimes against Jews and Poles or that he was a fascist,” says Delphine Bechtel, a lecturer at the Sorbonne. “Because the character is portrayed primarily as anti-Polish and anti-Russian, it gave him a ‘freedom fighter’ aura.”
However, in Ukraine there is no censorship over Bandera. “The archives on this subject are completely free and some Ukrainian historians criticize the leader,” Galia Ackerman wants to specify. “Ukraine is a country under the stress of war. Bandera was chosen because he was the most intransigent and divisive figure towards Russia,” said Eric Aunoble. “But this poses a political problem, also abroad, especially with Poland, which is nevertheless one of the countries that supports Ukraine the most in this war.”
The commemoration of the nationalist leader is not unanimous in Ukraine. “President Zelenskyy distanced himself from the heroization of Stepan Bandera. For example, he dismissed Volodymyr Viatrovych, the former director of the Institute of National Remembrance, who was responsible for spreading the Bandera cult,” notes Delphine Bechtel.
Is the Bandera cult a sign of fascization in Ukraine?
“The memory of Stepan Bandera is not enough to diagnose any kind of fascism in Ukrainian society,” historian Eric Aunoble notes.
“Anti-Semitism is at a very low level in Ukraine and has been for 33 years” and the fall of communism, confirms Chief Rabbi of Kiev Yaakov Dov Bleich. “President Zelensky is Jewish obedience,” Galia Ackerman recalls. “Every year at the turn of the year, several thousand Jews easily gather in Uman”, in the center of Ukraine, because the country is “a place of pilgrimage for Hasidic Judaism”. “And of course there are obviously no racial laws against Jews in Ukraine.”
Even if “many Jews are actually dissatisfied” with the Bandera cult, Yaakov Dov Bleich concedes, the memory of the Holocaust is preserved in Ukraine. “Before the war, a program of renaming streets with the names of Ukrainian heroes and righteous people who saved Jews during the Holocaust was launched by the Jewish community in Ukraine. It was a great success,” says the chief rabbi. The government also commemorates the massacre of Babi Yar, the biggest massacre of the Ukrainian Holocaust, “every year,” he emphasizes.
Yaakov Dov Bleich is categorical: “Putin is lying” when he claims that it is necessary to “denazify” Ukraine. “The Russian President is trying to rewrite history to fit his mass murderous ideology. He uses propaganda and lies that other murderous dictators have used before him.”