Every year on January 1, Ukraine celebrates the birthday of Stepan Bandera — the main ideological conductor of Ukrainian nationalism.
And although Bandera has been gone for almost 66 years, adherents of the ideology of the “Russian world” and Kremlin propagandists cannot calm down because of the conductor. On Russian talk shows, the word “Banderovets” is increasingly heard as a generalized meaning of Ukrainians, and in relation to Ukraine, the combined combination of “Banderovshchina”.
Banderophobia in Russia sometimes reached the point of absurdity, especially when the head of Chechnya Kadyrov promised a reward for “the main enemy” Stepan Bandera.
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At one time, the party leadership of the USSR created a special myth that Bandera and the UPA collaborated with Hitler. And Russia redirected all the people's anger directed at the Nazis to the Ukrainian liberation movement, accusing them of collaborating with the Third Reich.
According to the Russians' idea, then people would not support anything related to Ukraine. In the USSR, the liberation movement was suppressed in every possible way, arrests were made, people were tortured, deported to Siberia and killed.
Now Russian propaganda continues its unhealthy attention to the leader of Ukrainian nationalism, spreading myths about the “evil Banderites” on TV screens in order to encourage mobilization to go to war against Ukraine. Thus, Russian propaganda invented an enemy for itself in order to explain to Russians the “sacred” goal of Putin's war of conquest.
As for the biography of Stepan Bandera — it is amazing. For decades, he was the organizer of the underground struggle against three states – the Second Polish Republic, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
In an exclusive interview with ICTV Fakty candidate of political sciences, former adviser to the head of the SBU Yuriy Mikhalchishin spoke about the childhood and youth of Stepan Bandera, what is known about his “collaboration” with the Germans and who the special agent was who was ordered to kill Bandera.
— What is known about the childhood and youth of Stepan Bandera? What inspired him to fight for Ukraine?
— Stepan Bandera was born in 1909 in the Kalush district of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the family of a priest who was a very authoritative person in local public life.
In childhood and adolescence, Bandera played a lot of sports, as he had poor health and was forced to harden himself physically. He was actively involved in public activities, was a member of the youth organization Plast.
In Lviv, Stepan began to actively manifest himself in the ranks of the illegal Ukrainian military organization created by Yevhen Konovalets. Subsequently, on the basis of this association, the OUN will be formed — Organization of Ukrainian nationalists, whose leader would be Bandera himself.
Stepan Bandera could have been inspired to fight for the Ukrainian State by his wartime childhood, his father's example, and the general highly patriotic atmosphere that reigned in Galicia, occupied by the Poles.
— After which Bandera began to be called a terrorist? What really happened?
— Paradoxically, there was no such thing as terrorism in the criminal code of interwar Poland or the Second Polish Republic, which Ukrainian nationalists opposed.
Stepan Bandera was tried for leading an illegal organization — we were talking about the OUN.
He was also tried for being the head of a group that organized an assassination attempt on the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs, Colonel Bronislaw Pieracki, in 1934.
He was responsible for mass repressions and election fraud in 1930. The trials took place in Warsaw and Lvov.
— What is known about Bandera's “collaboration” with the Germans during World War II?
— In fact, this cooperation was purely pragmatic and calculated.
It falls on the period of spring 1940, when Bandera headed the revolutionary wing of the OUN with its center in Krakow, occupied by the Germans until the summer of 1941. The organization tried to declare the restoration of the independence of the Ukrainian state in Lvov.
This cooperation consisted of the fact that OUN members obtained intelligence information by crossing the border between the Third Reich and the USSR. In this way, the activities of the Abwehr, the German secret service of that time, were coordinated.
Also, on a partnership basis, the German secret services agreed to train a special unit of Ukrainian volunteers, which became part of the Nachtigall special forces regiment.
In the summer of 1941, this special unit took part in Operation Barbarossa, the Reich's attack on the Soviet Union.
However, due to the events in Lvov, when on June 30, 1941, an attempt was made to proclaim Ukrainian independence, this cooperation ceased.
Photo: Depositphotos
— How Stepan Bandera ended up in a German concentration camp?
— German security agencies arrested Stepan Bandera on July 5, 1941 in Krakow, since the restoration of Ukraine and its independence was not part of the Reich's plans.
Bandera was given an ultimatum, which consisted of revocation of the Act of Proclamation of the Ukrainian State and transition to cooperation with the Germans. Bandera refused: he was transported to Berlin, where he remained in prison until the end of the year.
At the beginning of 1942, Stepan Bandera ended up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was held in a block of especially important political prisoners.
It is interesting that the commander of the Polish Home Army, Colonel Stefan Rowecki, the former minister of occupied France, Leon Blum, and later high-ranking military officers, colonels and generals of the US Army were there with him.
— What happened to Bandera after the end of the war?
— Stepan Bandera was released in October 1944.
Amidst the military events, he continued to live in West Germany, mainly in Munich.
He lived under his own name, and later received someone else's documents, which, by the way, Bandera got from the famous Lvov chess player Stepan Popel.
Despite serious internal conflicts, Stepan Bandera continued to lead the OUN. He organized combat groups that maintained contact with the Ukrainian underground in Western Ukraine, which had become part of the USSR.
Bandera also tried to coordinate cooperation with the special services of Western countries to help the Ukrainian liberation movement.
— Who killed Stepan Bandera? Who benefited from it?
— Another paradox, but Bandera's killer was a Lviv student named Bohdan Stashynsky.
He was born in the village of Borshchovichi near Lviv, and studied at the pedagogical institute. He was detained for riding without a ticket on the railway, and during a routine check, the state security agencies decided to involve him in confidential cooperation.
Thus, Bohdan Stashynsky became an agent of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR. He was involved in various sabotage operations and the liquidation of the OUN underground in the Lviv region. He also underwent special training at KGB courses in Kyiv, after which he was sent to the FRG under false documents.
The death of Stepan Bandera was beneficial to the leadership of the Soviet KGB, which tried to demonstrate its primacy and effectiveness in the fight against Ukrainian nationalism not only within the USSR, but also abroad.
— Why does the historical memory of Stepan Bandera differ in the East and the West?
— The reason is logical and obvious – Bandera was born in the West and never visited the territories east of the Zbruch River.
It should be understood that his practical activities took place only in Western Ukraine. Despite this, small OUN underground groups also existed in the eastern regions of Ukraine, in particular during the German occupation.
Monument to Stepan Bandera in Lviv. Photo: Depositphotos
Having realized that after the end of the war nationalism in the West had not disappeared, Soviet propaganda and special propaganda did everything possible to demonize and discredit Bandera, portraying him as a collaborator and supporter of fascism.
At the same time, Soviet-German cooperation in 1939-1941 (in particular within the framework of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) did much more to strengthen Nazism and fascism than the modest cooperation of Bandera's OUN with the German Abwehr in 1940-1941.
If we are talking about Stepan Bandera, Ukraine needs to form a non-conflict and balanced view that is acceptable and, most importantly, understandable to all citizens states.
This lack of understanding creates a vacuum, which is filled, unfortunately, by Russian propaganda, which completely copies the Soviet one.
— Why Bandera is so feared in the Russian Federation?
The Russian Federation is becoming more and more ideologically similar to the Stalinist Soviet Union every year.
In this paradigm, Bandera evokes particular hatred as one of the few leaders of the enslaved peoples of the USSR who managed to organize a long-term and mass resistance movement.
Unfortunately, neither the Lithuanians, nor the Latvians, nor the Estonians, who also tried to organize a struggle against the Soviet occupation, lasted more than two or three years underground.
And the organization headed by Bandera waged a confident struggle until the mid-1950s years.
— What contribution did Stepan Bandera make to the history of Ukraine?
Bandera led the illegal OUN in Western Ukrainian lands during the critical time of the struggle against the Polish occupation in the 1930s, fought against the German occupation, was imprisoned by the Germans, and went into exile, from where he continued his organizational work to support the resistance movement and confront the Soviet government.
His contribution is not only practical, but also symbolic. It was the figure of Bandera that became the consolidating force for the formation of the image of Ukrainian nationalism and uncompromising in the fight for independence.
This is how Stepan Bandera is remembered. Of course, the symbol may differ from the real person in life circumstances, but it remains relevant to this day.
Bandera inspires many Ukrainians to continue the fight for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, causing fear and hatred in enemies.
