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.

More Info: published in Kakanien Revisited, 29 | 12 | 2010

https://www.academia.edu/401300/Celebrating_Fascism_and_War_Criminality_in_Edmonton._The_Political_Myth_and_Cult_of_Stepan_Bandera_in_Multicultural_Canada_in_in_Kakanien_Revisited_12_2010_1-16

"Multiculturalism, Memory, and Ritualization: Ukrainian Nationalist Monuments in Edmonton, Alberta," Nationalities Papers Vol. 39, no. 5, (September, 2011): 733-768.

Per Anders Rudling

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.

More Info: "They hold the copyright. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the copy editing process. An erratum appeared in Nationalities Papers, Vol. 39, no. 6 (November 2011): 1031."

https://www.academia.edu/938636/_Multiculturalism_Memory_and_Ritualization_Ukrainian_Nationalist_Monuments_in_Edmonton_Alberta_Nationalities_Papers_Vol._39_no._5_September_2011_733-768