Unraveling Bandera_A leftist point of view

Year: 2025
Class: Source
Authors: Vladyslav Starodubtsev

Title: Unraveling Bandera. A leftist point of view
URL: https://vladyslavstarodubtsev.substack.com/p/unraveling-bandera-a-leftist-point
Zotero Link:

🟥 New Information (Red highlights)

• “Russian propaganda cleverly formulates this as follows: If Ukrainians are granted the right to self-government, they will create a National Socialist state.”
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• “In Ukraine, he is honored for his resistance against the Soviet Union. However, this has also met with criticism, not least from veterans of the partisan resistance themselves.”
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• “In 1929, in Poland the OUN arose from the merger of small fascist, ultranationalist and nationalist student organizations with the Ukrainian Military Organization, a conservative veteran group.”
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  (Note: Veteran/student ideological divide is also noted.)

• “In the interwar period, the radicals of the OUN focused on terrorist actions against the Polish occupation and against Ukrainian politicians they deemed unworthy. Such actions created a very personalistic and highly centralized, closed organization”
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• “Stephan Bandera was one of the founders of OUN(b) leading the split of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists into the moderate wing under the leadership of Andriy Melnyk”
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• “In 1941, OUN(b) declared the creation of the Ukrainian state under the leadership of Stephan Bandera.”
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• “there was a possibility to create a government of national unity from all the forces of Ukrainian political life, but due to stubbornness by the OUN(b) it would focus on creation of one-party state and brutally repress other Ukrainian force”
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• “In 1943, its leadership adopted a social-democratic nationalist program; a year before it formed a Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), both of which were important changes in strategy and ideology.”
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• “Late 1944 Stephan Bandera and a number of other OUN(b) members were released by the Third Reich.”
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• “rapidly changing frontline and geopolitical situation forced OUN(b) and UIA to send groups abroad”
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• “abroad we see growing conflict and a split of OUN(b) between those two groups on the issue of democracy”
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• “Bandera and his supporters carefully declared the need to reintroduce the ideas of a totalitarian one-party system, cult of personality, incorporate elements of racism and xenophobia of the Ukrainian ultranationalist philosopher Dontsov, into the new program”
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• “number of assassinations against democratic nationalists and left-wing republicans that dominated Ukrainian opposition at that moment”
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• “It was concluded that those regimes that relied on totalitarian systems like the USSR, Nazi Germany and Italy, or, like Poland, at least on authoritarian methods, were successful, while democratic countries like Ukraine failed.”
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• “Which also motivated a great integration of new members to the movement, who were mostly sympathetic to socialist and democratic ideals. Another factor of changing positions was the experience of German terror.”
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• “most important political conflicts within the OUN(b) abroad began in 1945, when Bandera and his supporters demanded that the organization be centralized and that criticism within the organization be banned.”
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• “While OUN(b) and UIA in Ukraine came to support a democratic program, it was different in Germany.”
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• “three OUN(b) existed: the majority of the OUN(b) abroad which was loyal to Bandera; the minority of the OUN(b) abroad that was loyal to the OUN(b) in Ukraine; and the OUN(b) in Ukraine itself together with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.”
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• “Another difference was the relationship to the “enemy nations”. For Bandera, entire nations were enemies of the Ukrainian movement, while the democratic opposition considered such an approach unethical.”
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• “Programmatic differences also existed in social questions”
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• “Political murder was part of the everyday life of the Bandera faction in their struggle for power: they did not even shy away from an assassination attempt on Vasyl Kuk, leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.”
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• “It is at the same time important to underline that democratic positions of UIA and OUN(b) on Ukrainian land are not always correlated with its actions: it still practiced ethnic based violence and massive repressive campaigns, motivated by paranoia.”
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• “The politics of history in Ukraine today misinterprets Bandera in more ways than one, creating an unhealthy image that only vaguely matches the actual character of the historical figure.”
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🟩 Good Quotes (Green highlights)

• “The ideological pressure of the occupying state USSR as well as hostile Russian and Polish diaspora organizations supported a biased approach towards Ukrainian history, ignoring the principles of proportionality and any notion of comparative analysis.”
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• “Among these false narratives are false portrayals of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, a social-democratic multicultural state defending its sovereignty against Russian invasion in 1917-1921, and a false image of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and its activities from 1942 to 1950s.”
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• “Parts of the Ukrainian resistance against the Soviet Union undeniably cooperated with the National Socialists, if not ideologically, then tactically, and were involved in massacres.”
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• “After the proclamation of the Ukrainian state, Stephan Bandera was imprisoned by the Germans from 1941 to September 1944 and was only able to influence the policies of the OUN(b) to a limited extent.”
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• “For Bandera, democracy was the denial of Ukrainian nationalism, while for the reformers, democracy was Ukrainian nationalism.”
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• “The Ukrainian independence movement has strong democratic traditions that oppose totalitarianism, cult of personality, one-party rule and xenophobia. Picking up on these would be the task of a democratic historical policy in Ukraine. In the West, on the other hand, it is necessary to unravel the history of the Ukrainian resistance against the Soviet Union.”
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