On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed by a majority vote the law “On the legal status and commemoration of fighters for Ukraine’s independence in the twentieth century”. According to this law, the executioners of the Jewish people during the Civil (1918-20) and Second World Wars – fighters who were part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), known for their cooperation with the Nazis and participation in the extermination of Jews and Poles – are defined as “fighters for independence” in the country. If we are speaking about personalities, we need to mention several important perpetrators: Simon Petlyura, leader of the Ukrainian nationalists during the 1918-20 Civil War organizer of the Jewish Pogroms, Stepan Bandera, the UPA’s commander-in-chief and someone who actively collaborated with Adolf Hitler, Wehrmacht Hauptmann, and, lastly, deputy commander in Hitler’s Nachtigal battalion, Roman Shukhevich.
Most Western scholars have rightly seen this move as Ukraine’s reaction to the changed relationship with Russia following the 2014 annexation of Crimea. After this, Ukrainian leaders began to reinterpret past events in order to promote a certain conceptualisation of their national community by contrasting Russian values with anti-Russian values. Thus, those who collaborated with Hitler’s regime, including in the extermination of Jews and Poles, became fighters for freedom from “Soviet occupation”, while the organisers of anti-Jewish pogroms during the Russian Civil War of 1918-20, such as S. Petlyura, became “fighters for independence”.
Such a narratological change was designed to erode one of Russia’s main values – victory in the Second World War, which claimed tens of millions of Soviet lives, was countered by anti-Soviet heroes. At the same time, those Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of the Soviet Red Army, both during the Civil War and the period of German aggression, were not usually mentioned in the new interpretation of history to create an unambiguous representation of Ukraine as a historical victim of Russian aggression.
Given the unresolved territorial issue around Crimea and the situation in eastern Ukraine, all this has played a role in the acceptance by many Ukrainians of the new conception of twentieth century history. However, the cult of Ukrainian nationalist leader S. Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis, the cult of the leader of the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” during the Second World War, as well as other Ukrainian collaborators and nationalists who killed 28 000 Jews on their own, has gradually become a convenient tool in the hands of right-wingers to strengthen a new ideology in the country. This ideology is close in its characteristics to neo-Nazism, as it justifies anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and chauvinism. It is certainly rooted within the Ukrainian context, namely the doctrine of Ukrainian integral nationalism.
Strangely enough, this is actively promoted by the Ukrainian authorities, who seemingly declare their commitment to Western values. It is not even about a few attempts to award S. Petlyura and S. Bandera, who left a controversial mark on twentieth century history, the highest state title of hero of Ukraine. Against a background of destruction of monuments to Lenin within the framework of de-communization nobody has paid attention to the fact that since the 1990s, 44 monuments to S. Bandera and 13 monuments to Roman Shukhevich are established in the country despite diplomatic protests from Poland and Israel. It is true that these are mainly in the western regions, which have traditionally been influenced by nationalist ideas, but these large constructions decorate the central squares of the 4 Ukrainian regional centres[WA2] . As the Eurasian Jewish Congress notes in its statement on Holocaust remembrance, “in recent years numerous monuments and commemorative plaques have been erected in Ukraine to various OUN-UPA figures, some of whom were directly involved in the extermination of Ukrainian Jews.”
Streets and squares in Ukrainian cities and even stadiums are named after executioners. The latest such case occurred in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, where on 5 March 2021 the city authorities named the city stadium after Roman Shukhevych. This provoked strong reactions from both foreign diplomats and NGOs, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which appealed to UEFA not to hold international football competitions there. Despite this the authorities have not reversed their decision and in response to the Israeli ambassador’s protests, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that: “diplomacy should work to promote friendship and mutual respect between peoples and discussions in this field should take place at the level of historians”, which is completely inconsistent with post-World War II European practices of responding to anything in one way or another related to the Holocaust with dread and condemnation.
But this was not the end of the story. Recently in Ukraine, there has been talk at government level of the need to rebury “great Ukrainians”. We are talking about “hundreds of heroes” buried abroad, but above all about odious political figures, OUN-UPA leaders Stepan Bandera and Yevhen Konovalets, as well as Simon Petlyura. In particular, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian suggested on his Facebook page that a special cemetery be set up in Kiev for Ukrainian nationalists buried abroad: “They should return home. (…) All the hundreds of heroes who lived Ukraine, and Ukraine is alive thanks to their sacrifice,” the minister wrote. Among them, he named the writer Oleksandr Olesya, the leader and ideologist of the Ukrainian nationalist movement Stepan Bandera and the leader of the nationalist movement during the Civil War, Simon Petlyura, among others. Apparently, this idea is also actively supported in the administration of the Ukrainian President. Although Zelensky himself does not want to get involved in this process yet, perhaps he can be persuaded that this will be another good compromise with the right-wing radicals.
Back in 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine decided to create a national Pantheon in Kyiv and an alley of heroes in other cities of the country. The parliament also supported it and President Poroshenko issued a decree to this effect, after which the process was frozen. If a decision is made to move the remains of the “great Ukrainians” in the near future, it is likely that the 2015 decision will be given the green light.
Obviously, the transfer of the remains of the leaders of Ukrainian radical nationalism to their homeland, and even at the state level, will be not just a kind of memorial event, but a powerful impulse aimed at the final formation of a new state ideology built on the cult of the dead leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, pogromists and collaborators of the Second World War. This will become a symbol of a new political phenomenon in Europe, which is gradually becoming more prominent in the modern world, but it is in Ukraine that it is fully embodied. We are talking about a gradual convergence of centre-right and right-wing radicals.
Back in 2015, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine decided to create a national Pantheon in Kyiv and an alley of heroes in other cities of the country. The parliament also supported it and President Poroshenko issued a decree to this effect, after which the process was frozen. If a decision is made to move the remains of the “great Ukrainians” in the near future, it is likely that the 2015 decision will be given the green light.
Obviously, the transfer of the remains of the leaders of Ukrainian radical nationalism to their homeland, and even at the state level, will be not just a kind of memorial event, but a powerful impulse aimed at the final formation of a new state ideology built on the cult of the dead leaders of Ukrainian nationalists, pogromists and collaborators of the Second World War. This will become a symbol of a new political phenomenon in Europe, which is gradually becoming more prominent in the modern world, but it is in Ukraine that it is fully embodied. We are talking about a gradual convergence of centre-right and right-wing radicals.
The uniqueness of this phenomenon in Ukraine is expressed in the fact that longstanding acquiescence to radical and extremist organizations has led to their political programme gradually turning into the political program of pro-government parties that call themselves “liberal” and thus the state, although the right-wing parties themselves are not even represented in parliament.
By 2020, all the demands of the radical right, from discrimination against minority languages, the virtual closure of their schools, the glorification of World War II collaborators, and up to the refusal to implement the Minsk agreements and the so-called “Steinmeier formula” for a peace settlement in eastern Ukraine, had been met by the authorities. The ruling parties have practically taken over the nationalist agenda from the radical right, which explains the low poll ratings of the radical-right parties themselves. Their ideas have achieved such popularity over the past 10 years that parties calling themselves “liberal”, with more opportunities and experience in parliamentary activities, have chosen to hijack their agenda in order not to lose their seats in parliament.
This is a completely different level of radicalisation of society. It is illustrated, for example, by state funding of non-governmental organizations associated with neo-Nazi parties and organizations, such as the “Educational Assembly” associated with the radical-right group C-14, the “National Centre for Human Rights” associated with it, the Youth Nationalist Congress, the “Young People’s Movement”, the youth wing of the neo-Nazi “Freedom” party “Sokol Svobody” and others. Alongside this, no less money is being allocated for the creation of the cult of “national heroes” from the already mentioned Bandera and Shukhevich.
So, the creation of a national Pantheon in Kiev, where the remains of prominent pogromists and collaborationists may be transferred, will be a crucial step towards completing a new state ideology for Ukraine, similar to the ideology of Leninism in the USSR, but with a diametrically opposite political direction. Soviet socialism and the cult of Lenin with his mausoleum are being replaced on the banks of the Dnieper by a new official ideology of Nationalism with a cult of nationalists, collaborators and Holocaust executioners, which somehow coexists with Ukraine’s declared “European values”.
Dr Valery Engel is a Senior Fellow at CARR and President of the European Centre for Democracy Development in Latvia. See his profile here.
© Valery Engel. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).
