Celebrating Fascism and War Criminality in Edmonton. The Political Myth and Cult of Stepan Bandera in Multicultural Canada,
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
The cult surrounding Stepan Bandera began to develop immediately following the assassination of the radical nationalist and fascist western Ukrainian politician on October 15, 1959. Bandera was assassinated in Munich by the Soviet secret agent Bohdan Stashyns’kyi. Certain factions of Ukrainian diaspora organized memorial celebrations in Canadian cities including Edmonton, as well as in several other countries outside of the Soviet Union. Initially, these celebrations took place annually, but eventually they were held every five years. They consisted of a memorial service (panakhida) and a political-ideological-cultural component during which several vocal activists of Ukrainian nationalism did readings of heroic and patriotic poems or sang OUN and UPA songs. At these celebrations, Bandera was commemorated as a great Ukrainian hero and martyr who had died for Ukraine. Bandera’s fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs as well as pogroms and war crimes which the OUN and UPA had organised and conducted during World War II were denied. The climate of the Cold War and the politics of multiculturalism that Canada had adopted in 1971 facilitated the radical nationalist and neo-fascist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora to claim that the Bandera cult and myth were authentic and very natural components of the Ukrainian culture and identity. Thus the cult and myth have been interpreted as being important contributions to the Canadian policy of multiculturalism. Every kind of critique of this neo-fascist and anti-Semitic cult were repelled as being anti-Ukrainian and chauvinistic attacks against the Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian nation.
De-Mythologizing Bandera: Towards a Scholarly History of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement // Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society. 2015. Vol. 1. No 2. P. 411-420. Олександр Зайцев
"Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monuments in Edmonton, Alberta," .
Nationalities Papers Vol. 39, no. 5, (September, 2011): 733-768
Canadians of Ukrainian descent constitute a significant part of the population of the Albertan capital. Among other things, their presence is felt in the public space as Ukrainian monuments constitute a part of the landscape. The article studies three key monuments, physical manifestations of the ideology of local Ukrainian nationalist elites in Edmonton: a 1973 monument to nationalist leader Roman Shukhevych, a 1976 memorial constructed by the Ukrainian Waffen-SS in Edmonton, and a 1983 memorial to the 1932–1933 famine in the Ukrainian SSR. Representing a narrative of suffering, resistance, and redemption, all three monuments were organized by the same activists and are representative for the selective memory of an “ethnic” elite, which presents nationalist ideology as authentic Ukrainian cultural heritage. The narrative is based partly upon an uncritical cult of totalitarian, anti-Semitic, and terroristic political figures, whose war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and collaboration with Nazi Germany the nationalists deny and obfuscate. The article argues that government support and direct public funding has strengthened the radicals within the community and helped promulgate their mythology. In the case of the Ukrainian Canadian political elite, official multiculturalism underwrites a narrative at odds with the liberal democratic values it was intended to promote. The failure to deconstruct the “ethnic” building blocks of Canadian multiculturalism and the willingness to accept at face value the primordial claims and nationalist myths of “ethnic” groups has given Canadian multiculturalism the character of multi-nationalism.
Myth Making with Complications,"
Fascism 5 (2016): 26-65
Ukrainian president Viktor Iushchenko’s posthumous designation of Roman Shukhevych (1907–1950), the supreme commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as a Hero of Ukraine in 2007 triggered intense, and polarized debates in Ukraine and abroad, about Second World War-era Ukrainian nationalism and its place in history. Particularly sensitive are Roman Shukhevych’s whereabouts in 1940–1943, when he served in German uniform, as a Hauptmann, or captain, in the battalion Nachtigall in 1941 thereafter, in 1942–1943 in Schutzmannschaft battalion 201, taking part in ‘antipartisan operations’ in occupied Belarus. This article analyzes the controversy regarding the memory of Roman Shukhevych.
Schooling in Murder: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 and Hauptmann Roman Shukhevych in Belarus 1942
In 1943, a majority of the commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA) consisted by people who had collaborated with Nazi Germany in 1941-42. Many of which had served in the auxiliary policy force, the Schutzmannschaften. That Roman Shukhevych, the supreme commander of the UPA served as officer in the Nachtigall battalion in 1941 is well known. Less known is his activities as a Hauptmann in Schutzmannschaft battalion 201 in Belarus in 1942, where he took part in counter-insurgency campaigns against Soviet partisants. The year 1942 is often omitted from pro-nationalist accounts of the UPA. This article is an attempt to reconstruct this blank spot in Shukhevych biography.
More Info: “Schooling in Murder: Hauptmann Roman Shukhevych of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201,” paper presented at the international conference Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych. Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach połudiowej Polski w latach 1939-1946, University of Wrocław, June 21, 2010. Published as “Szkolenie w mordowaniu: Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 i Hauptmann Roman Szuchewycz na Białorusi 1942 roku,” in Bogusław Paź (ed.), Prawda historyczna a prawda polityczna w badaniach naukowych. Przykład ludobójstwa na kresach połudiowej-wschodniej Polski w latach 1939-1946, (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2011), 191-212.
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