Stepan Bandera

Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (January 1, 1909 – October 15, 1959) was a Ukrainian nationalist who co-founded the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

Stepan Bandera
Степан Бандера
Stepan Bandera, c. 1934
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists–Banderite faction (OUN-B)
In office 10 February 1940 – 15 October 1959
Preceded by	Position established (Andriy Melnyk as leader of the OUN)
Succeeded by	Stepan Lenkavskyi
Personal details
Born	(1909-01-01)1 January 1909 Staryi Uhryniv, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died	15 October 1959(1959-10-15) (aged 50) Munich, Bavaria, West Germany
Cause of death	Assassination by cyanide gas
Resting place	Munich Waldfriedhof
Citizenship	Austria-Hungary (1909–1918) Poland
Nationality	Ukrainian
Spouse(s)	Yaroslava Bandera
Relations	Ołeksandr Bandera (brother) Vasyl Bandera (brother)
Children	3
Mother	Myroslava Głodzińska
Father	Andriy Bandera
Alma mater	Lviv Polytechnic
Occupation	Politician
Awards	Hero of Ukraine (annulled)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	OUN (1929–1940) OUN-B (1940–1959)
Battles/wars	World War II

Flag of the Bandera faction of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) adopted in April 1941.

English: An OUN-B poster with the slogan Slava Ukraini, Heroyam Slava!

Background

A poster made by Ukrainian-Australian artist Leonid Denysenko on the Holodomor.

Bandera joined the OUN in his twenties when western Ukraine was governed by Poland, while eastern Ukraine was ruled by the Soviet Union and going through the Holodomor, a man-made famine under Joseph Stalin that killed as many as 7,000,000.

World War II

The 1936 assassination of Poland's Minister of Interior caused Bandera to be sentenced to life imprisonment. He was freed by the Soviets to live in Nazi-occupied Poland after the Nazi-Soviet partition of Poland in October 1939. Factional infighting within the OUN caused the formation of the OUN-B led by him. Before the Operation Barbarossa, Bandera raised the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police for Hitler. He tried to create a Ukrainian government in Nazi-occupied Soviet Ukraine, but was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Upon his release in September 1944, he negotiated the founding of the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) and Ukrainian National Committee (UNK) before the fall of Nazi Germany, but it had no impact on the post-war fate of the Ukrainians. Ukraine did not restore independence until 1991.

Postwar

Bandera and his family were resettled in Munich, West Germany. The Soviet Union asked for Bandera and several Ukrainian nationalists to be handed over under the intra-Allied cooperation wartime agreement. However, the Americans refused to hand over him. They saw him as too valuable to give up due to his knowledge of the Soviet Union useful for the Cold War. In his final years, he also visited Ukrainian exile communities in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain and Canada.

Death

Due to Bandera's commitment to Ukrainian liberation from Soviet imperialism, the Soviets had made several attempts on his life, which they ultimately succeeded on October 15, 1959, when Bandera died of cyanide gas poisoning on a street in Munich.

Poles

During Bandera's detention in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the OUN-B was involved in the Volhynia massacre, killing as many as 133,000 Poles, but his role is disputed. Today, the Volhynia massacre is a controversial issue, affecting Poland–Ukraine relations and broader European politics.

Jews

Both Rossolinski-Liebe and German political scientist Andreas Umland believed that Bandera was not involved in the Holocaust:

“

[There is] no evidence that Bandera supported or condemned ethnic cleansing or killing Jews and other minorities. It was [...] people from OUN and UPA [who] identified with him.

”

Rossoliński-Liebe saw Bandera's antisemitic views as a product of his time. The view was shared by American historian Alexander John Motyl, who did not see Ukrainian nationalism as antisemitic as Nazism. Rather, the OUN-B saw the Poles and Russians as its main enemies.

Russian imperialism

Bandera believed that Russian imperialism must be ended:

For our liberation policy, it is important that the Ukrainian liberation revolution be fully assessed as a continuation of the historical struggle of Ukraine with Moscow, with Moscow imperialism, and of every kind, not just the Bolshevik one. This struggle will not cease until our goal is fully realized, which is the complete rupture between Ukraine and Moscow, the reconstruction of the Independent United Ukrainian State, the collapse of the USSR and the construction of independent, national states in post-Soviet Europe and Asia, the complete defeat of Russian imperialism and the creation around Russia, locked within its own borders, of such a system of states that it can no longer act with imperialist aggression. And further, so that the world knows that Ukraine will continue the struggle against all forces that would want to enslave it, destroy its state independence and sovereignty, or that would encroach on Ukrainian lands.

Ukrainians

Ukrainian postal stamps commemorating the centennial of Stepan Bandera's birth.

Ukrainian nationalists marching through Kyiv with Ukrainian nationalist flags, one of which was a banner with a Stepan Bandera portrait.

Stepan Bandera monument in Ternopil, Ukraine.

Since Ukraine restored independence in 1991, Stepan Bandera monuments have been built across western Ukraine, including the Stepan Bandera monument in Lviv. In December 2018, the Ukrainian Parliament declared January 1 as the national day of commemoration for Stepan Bandera.

2020s

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Stepan Bandera has reportedly been rehabilitated in Ukraine as a national hero who sacrificed for the fight against Russian imperialism, with substantial popularity among young Ukrainians.

In April 2022, it is found that 74% Ukrainians had a favourable view of Stepan Bandera. On New Year's Day 2023, the Ukrainian Parliament tweeted a photo of Valeri Zaloujny, the then-Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, giving a thumbs-up to a Stepan Bandera portrait, with a caption encouraging Ukrainians to keep up the fight.

Others

American historian Timothy D. Snyder said,

Stepan Bandera was a fascist who aimed to make of Ukraine a one-party fascist dictatorship without national minorities. During World War II, his followers killed many Poles and Jews.

Meanwhile, German-Polish historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe said,

Bandera's worldview was shaped by [...] fascism, ultranationalism and antisemitism [...] he combined extremism with religion [...] to sacralize [...] violence.

However, Czech political scientist Luboš Veselý criticized Rossoliński-Liebe's book on Stepan Bandera as a slander of Bandera and Ukrainian nationalism,

Bandera was against closer cooperation with the Nazis [....] assessment of Bandera as a condemnable symbol of Ukrainian fascism [...] is an abusive oversimplification, uprooting events and people from the context of the era or using harsh, unfounded and emotional judgments.

Stepan Bandera Media

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  Young Bandera in the Plast uniform, 1923

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  Bandera in folkloristic Cossack costume

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  Press report from the trial of Bandera and his associates for the murder of Polish minister Bronisław Pieracki, 20 November 1935

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  Declaration of the Ukrainian state, 30 June 1941

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  Kreittmayrstraße 7 in Munich, where Bandera lived at the time of his assassination

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  Bandera's grave in Munich, July 2022

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  Dmytro Dontsov's book Nationalism (Ukrainian: Націоналізм) was published in 1926.

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  Torchlight procession in honor of the 106 anniversary of the birthday of Stepan Bandera, Kyiv, 1 January 2015

Related pages

• Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II