In an interview with IA REGNUM, director of the Institute of Historical Research of Lviv University, guest professor of the Central European University in Budapest, senator and head of the Department of History of Ukraine at the Ukrainian Catholic University Yaroslav Gritsak tells the story of the creation of the OUN-UPA, about the development of these structures, and also analyzes the most controversial and resonant moments of history with their participation.
IA REGNUM: What are the pros and cons of the activation of controversial historical issues in Ukraine during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko?
Plus, I see that discussions on history have intensified, in particular, regarding those phenomena, events and persons that were not only hushed up, but kept in the shadows under President Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma's historical policy boiled down to not waking the sleeping dog, not touching on sensitive issues that pose the threat of a split in Ukraine. Yushchenko addressed precisely these issues. First of all - to the famine of 1932-1933. And here Yushchenko's policy was unexpectedly successful for many. As polls show, during Yushchenko's rule, a consensus has developed in Ukrainian society that: a) the famine was artificial and b) it was genocide. It is important to note that this consensus has embraced even the Russian-speaking South and East of Ukraine.
But this is the list of Yushchenko's successes. Ukrainian society turned out to be not ready for a discussion about the past - and this applies equally to politicians and "ordinary" Ukrainians. This is especially true of the events of the 1930-1940s. Nothing splits Ukraine so much as the memory of the Second World War, but specifically in this memory - the UPA, OUN and Bandera. This reflects certain historical realities, because Ukraine was divided at that time. It was like this before the war, and it remained divided during the war. In this regard, various regions of Ukraine had a very different experience of Soviet and German power - and it is difficult to reduce it to a common denominator. This is the fundamental difference between Ukraine and Russia. If we want to understand the historical experience of Ukraine in World War II, it is better to compare it not with the Russian experience of 1941-1945, but with 1917-20. Relatively speaking, during the Second World War, Ukraine had its own civil war, while in Russia there was no such war. Therefore, as much as the memory of the war unites Russia, so much as it splits Ukraine.
Perhaps the Ukrainians would have been able to reach some minimal consensus on these issues if these discussions were limited only to Ukraine. But Ukrainian lands have been and, to a certain extent, remain at the center of a geopolitical conflict that inevitably influences discussions about the past. Moreover, we must not forget that the war ended the old multi-ethnic Ukraine. Those Poles and Jews who managed to survive and leave - voluntarily or forcibly - outside the Ukrainian lands, took with them their memory of the war in Ukraine. Therefore, discussions about the Ukrainian past inevitably affect not only Russia, but also Poland, Israel and others. For example, the most interesting and truly meaningful discussion about Bandera took place in North America, which not many people know about. Therefore, discussions about Ukraine are always greater than Ukraine - in connection with which it is much more difficult for Ukrainians to reach a national compromise.
BakuToday: Let's briefly talk about the history of the creation and development of the OUN-UPA …
First, it should be noted that there was not one OUN, there were several OUN. The first was, relatively speaking, the old OUN - OUN Yevgeny Konovalets. After his assassination, the old OUN split in 1940 into two warring parts: the OUN of Stepan Bandera and the OUN of Andrei Melnik. Part of the OUN-Bandera experienced a strong evolution during the war. Having emigrated abroad, she came into conflict with Bandera there and, having split off, formed another organization - OUN - "Dviykari". Therefore, when we talk about the OUN, we must remember that even among nationalists a kind of civil war is being waged for this name and this tradition …
Another problem is that when they say OUN-UPA, they assume that it is the OUN and the UPA - this is one and the same organization. But this is a false premise. OUN and UPA are related, relatively speaking, like the Communist Party and the Red Army. Bandera's OUN played a very large role in the creation of the UPA, but the UPA was not identical to the Bandera OUN. There were a lot of people in the UPA who were outside of it, there were even those who did not share its ideological goals. There are memories of Daniil Shumka about his stay in the UPA: this man was generally a communist, a member of the KPZU. I know at least two veterans of the movement who personally knew Bandera and who hate him and protest every time they are called "Bandera". In addition, at some point, a part of the Red Army soldiers nailed to the UPA, who, after the retreat of Soviet troops, hid in the forests or in the villages, or escaped from captivity. There were especially many Georgians and Uzbeks among them … In general, the UPA in a certain sense resembled Noah's Ark: there was "a pair of each creature".
The identification of the UPA with the "Bandera" dates back to the war. By the way, the first to do this were not the Soviet, but the German authorities. After the war, all Western Ukrainians began to be called "Bandera" - and not only in Siberian camps or in Poland, but even in Eastern Ukraine. In each case, when we talk about "Bandera", one must bear in mind that this term has often been used and is being used in vain.
At the moment, Bandera's OUN - let's call it OUN-B - is trying to monopolize the memory of the UPA, to say that the UPA was a "pure" OUN-B. It is interesting that the Kremlin and the Party of Regions of Viktor Yanukovych are now also in these positions. They put an equal sign between the OUN-B and the UPA. This is far from the only case when Ukrainian nationalists agree with the Kremlin - although, of course, for completely different reasons. In general, the UPA is a very complex phenomenon and a very diverse phenomenon, it cannot be reduced to only one ideological or political camp. But historical memory does not tolerate complexity. It requires very simple either-or-forms. This is the problem. How can a historian enter this discussion when very direct, simple answers are required of him?
BakuToday: Let's get back to the issue of the UPA in more detail …
If you want to understand how the UPA came into being, let's turn our attention to Eastern Ukraine in 1919. It was a "war of all against all" - when not two, but several armies at the same time are fighting for control over one territory. In addition to the Whites, Reds and Petliura, a fourth force arose here - the greens, the independent Makhno. She controlled a large area in the steppes. If we ignore ideological differences for a moment, the UPA is approximately the same as the Makhno army: peasant, often very cruel, but with the support of the local population. Therefore, it is very difficult to defeat her. But during the revolution and civil war, when they fought with sabers and on horseback, the steppe could well have been a base for such an army. In World War II, they fought with planes and tanks. The only place in Ukraine where a large partisan army could hide is the western Ukrainian forests, swamps and the Carpathians. Until 1939 it was the territory of the Polish state. Therefore, there, especially in Volyn, the underground Polish Army of Craiova (AK) operated. In 1943, Kovpak (the commander of the Soviet partisan formation in Ukraine - IA REGNUM) comes here. That is, here, during the German occupation, the situation of "war of all against all" was repeated again.
There is a widespread point of view that the UPA was created by the Bandera OUN. This is not so, or at least not quite so. It sounds strange, but true: Bandera was personally against the creation of the UPA. He had a different concept of the national struggle. Bandera believed that this should be a massive national revolution. Or, as they said, "people's breakdown", when the people - millions - rise up against the invader, drive him out of their territory. Bandera, like all his generation, was inspired by the example of 1918-1919, when in Ukraine there were massive peasant armies that drove out the Germans in 1918, then the Bolsheviks, then the whites. In Bandera's imagination, this was to be repeated during World War II: the Ukrainian population, having waited for the mutual exhaustion of Stalin and Hitler, would rise up and drive them out of their territory. This, of course, was a utopia. But no revolution is complete without utopias - and the OUN was created as a revolutionary force. According to Bandera, the creation of the UPA distracted from the main goal. Therefore, he spoke of this idea dismissively, as about partisanship or "sikorshchina" (from Sikorsky, the head of the Polish emigration government in London, on whose behalf the AK acted in Volyn).
As a result, the UPA arose not from the orders of the OUN-B, but "from below". Why? Because in Volyn there is a "war of all against all", and it is especially inflamed with the arrival of Kovpak here. Kovpak enters one or another village, makes a sabotage, the Germans respond with a punitive action. To do this, they often use the Ukrainian police, among which there are many members of the OUN-B. As a result, a situation arises when Ukrainian nationalists have to take part in punitive actions against the local Ukrainian population. The Ukrainian police are deserting into the forest, the Germans are taking the Poles to replace the Ukrainians. Given the severity of Polish-Ukrainian relations, it is easy to imagine how this will escalate the conflict. The local Ukrainian population considers itself completely unprotected. And then irritated voices are heard from the lower ranks of the OUN-B: "Where is our leadership? Why is it not doing anything?" Without waiting for an answer, they begin to form military units. The UPA appears to a large extent spontaneously, it is only then that the Bandera leadership begins to take this process under its control. In particular, it does what is called "unification": uniting different detachments in the Volyn forests - and often does this by force and terror, eliminating its ideological opponents.
Here I must complicate my already complicated story. The fact is that when Bandera started their action, another UPA was already operating in Volyn. It arose back in 1941 under the leadership of Taras Bulba-Borovets. He acted on behalf of the Ukrainian emigration government in Warsaw and saw himself and his army as a continuation of the Petliura movement. Some of his officers were Melnikovites. Bandera "borrowed" from Bulba-Borovets not only his privates, but also the name - exterminating the dissenters. For example, there is still a discussion about what happened to the wife of Bulba-Borovets: he himself claimed that she was liquidated by Bandera, and they flatly deny it. The Bandera tactics are approximately the same as the tactics of the Bolsheviks: when they see that the process is developing, they try to lead it, and when they are in charge, they cut off the "extra" arms, legs, or even head in order to drive the process into the required framework. The argument of the Banderaites is simple: it was necessary to avoid disunity, "atamanism" - because of which, in their opinion, the Ukrainian revolution lost in 1917-20.
It should be added that during the creation of the UPA in Volyn there is a massacre of local Poles. I believe that this coincidence is not accidental: the OUN deliberately provoked this massacre and used it as a mobilization factor. It was very easy to involve the peasants in this massacre at that time under the pretext, for example, of solving land issues - the Western Ukrainian village suffered from land hunger, and the interwar Polish government gave the best lands to the local Poles … The idea of exterminating the Poles fell, so to speak, on fertile soil: as historians prove, it was not Ukrainian nationalists who first expressed it, but local West Ukrainian communists back in the 1930s. Then, if you once got your hands stained with blood, you no longer have where to go, you will go to the army and continue to kill. From a peasant you become a soldier. To a large extent, one can look at the Volyn massacre as a large bloody mobilization action to create the UPA.
In general, the early period in the history of the UPA is not a matter of great pride, to put it mildly. The heroic period of the UPA begins in 1944 - after the departure of the Germans and the arrival of Soviet power, when the UPA becomes a symbol of the struggle against communism. In fact, in the historical Ukrainian memory, only this period is now remembered - 1944 and beyond. What happened in 1943 in Volyn is hardly remembered. For understanding the heroic period, it is also important that at the end of the war, the OUN-B itself is undergoing evolution. She understands that she will not go far under the slogans that exist, because Soviet troops and Soviet ideology are coming. In addition, they have their own negative experience of going east, to Donbass, to Dnepropetrovsk: the slogan "Ukraine for Ukrainians" was alien to the local population. Then the OUN begins to change its slogans and talk about the struggle for the liberation of all peoples, includes social slogans about an eight-hour working day, the abolition of collective farms, etc.
BakuToday: So we can say that the OUN definitely had some moment when they switched from nationalist slogans to social ones?
Yes, there was something very close to that … This is the policy of every extreme party that wants to dominate. She not only uses terror, but also appropriates other people's slogans if they turn out to be popular. The Bolsheviks, for example, adopted the slogans of the division of land and federation. Something similar is happening with the OUN-b. Then an interesting moment occurs here: at this time, Stepan Bandera, who is the symbol of this movement, leaves the German concentration camp. The irony of the situation is that Bandera, after leaving the concentration camp, knows practically nothing about the movement that bears his name. I know this from the memoirs of Evgeny Stakhov, who himself was one of Bandera's supporters, in 1941 went to the east of Ukraine, ended up in Donetsk. His brother was sitting with Bandera in a concentration camp. Stakhov says that when they went out together, Bandera and his brother asked him what the UPA was, where and how it works. The attitude, relatively speaking, between the OUN that operated in Ukraine and the leadership that ended up abroad is about the same as between Plekhanov and Lenin. The young created an organization, went ahead, while the old (relatively speaking, Plekhanov-Bandera) fell behind, in emigration they live by old ideas.
And here a new conflict is taking place, because the UPA has already gone too far to be with Bandera. When the people who created and led the UPA find themselves in the West, they try to create an alliance with Bandera. But there it quickly comes to a big split, because, according to Bandera, the OUN-B betrayed the old slogans and became such, relatively speaking, a national social democracy. Subsequently, this group of people, as I said, creates its own, the third OUN, cooperates with the CIA, etc. - but that's another story.
IA REGNUM: Another resonant moment in Ukrainian history is the relationship between the OUN and the Jews. What is known about this?
I don’t know much about this because there is very little good research on this topic so far. To avoid misinterpretations, I will say right away: the OUN was anti-Semitic. But my thesis is this: her anti-Semitism was rather pogrom than programmatic. I do not know of a single theorist from this wing who would write some kind of large anti-Semitic work that would tell in detail why Jews should be hated and exterminated. For example, we have in the Polish tradition such works that express open programmatic anti-Semitism. I insist on the importance of the "programmatic" criterion if we talk about anti-Semitism as one of the "isms", that is, about the ideological direction.
The peculiarity of Ukrainian political thought is that, with the exception of Mikhail Dragomanov and Vyacheslav Lipinsky, there were no "systemic" ideologists in it - that is, ideologues who think and write systematically. There is always someone who wrote something - but there is no way to put it on a par with "The Thoughts of a Modern Pole" by Dmowski or "Mein Kampf" by Hitler. There are certain anti-Semitic texts by Dmitry Dontsov of the 1930s - but for some reason the most vivid ones he prints not in Western Ukraine, but in America, moreover, under a pseudonym. Before the war itself, anti-Semitic texts by another ideologue, Sciiborski, appear. However, a few years before he was writing something completely different. It seems that the emergence of these anti-Semitic texts pursues a pragmatic goal: to send a signal to Hitler and the Nazis: we are the same as you, and therefore we can be trusted and we need to cooperate.
Ukrainian nationalism, rather, was so pragmatic and applied, and in a bad sense. Ideologically, this movement was rather weak, because it was made by young people of 20-30 years old who had no education, who had no time for ideology at all. Many of those who survived admit that even Dontsov was too difficult for them to understand. They became nationalists "by the nature of things," and not because they had read something. Therefore, their anti-Semitism was more pogrom than programmatic.
There is a big dispute over what was the position of Bandera or Stetsk on this score. There are excerpts from the publications of Stetsk's diary, where he writes that he supports Hitler's policy regarding the extermination of Jews. It is likely that it was. But, again, there is a lot of controversy as to how authentic this diary is. Immediately after the proclamation of the "Ukrainian statehood" (statehood) on June 30, 1941, pogroms began in Lvov. But after doesn't necessarily mean because. Now there is no longer any doubt that the Ukrainian police, in which there were many nationalists from the OUN-B, took part in these pogroms. But whether they did it on the orders of the OUN-B or on their own initiative is unknown.
We must take into account that the main wave of pogroms in the summer of 1941 swept through those territories that in 1939-1940. were annexed by the USSR - in the Baltic countries, parts of Polish territory and in Western Ukraine. Some well-known historians - say the famous one like Mark Mazover - believe that the escalation of pogrom anti-Semitism is a direct consequence of a very brief but very violent experience of Sovietization. My father, who in 1941 was only 10 years old and then he lived in a small Western Ukrainian village, recalled that as soon as news came from Lvov about the proclamation of an independent Ukraine, the older village guys as one were preparing to go to the nearest town to "beat the Jews." It is unlikely that these guys have read Dontsov or other ideologues. It is quite possible that, as in many similar situations, the OUN-B wanted to lead the process, which has already started.
One thing is clear: OUN-b did not like Jews, but did not consider them its main enemy - this niche was occupied by Poles, Russians, and then Germans. In the minds of the nationalist leaders, Jewishness was a "secondary enemy."They all the time said in their decisions and at meetings that one should not allow oneself to be distracted by anti-Semitism, because the main enemy is not the Jews, but Moscow, etc. the Ukrainian state was established according to the OUN-b scheme, then there would be no Jews there (just as there would be no Poles there) or it would be very difficult for them there. Historians who study the history of the Holocaust in Western Ukraine have come to the conclusion that the behavior of local Ukrainians could not influence the "final solution" of the Jewish question. Local Jews would have been exterminated with or without the help of the Ukrainians. However, the Ukrainian leadership could at least express their sympathy. During the mass extermination of Jews, the OUN-B did not issue a single warning that would strictly forbid members of the organization to take part in these actions. A similar document appeared among the UPA during its "democratization", i.e. only after the end of the promotion. And this, as the Poles say, was "mustard after dinner."
It is also known that when Jews, especially Volyn Jews, fled en masse into the forests, the UPA exterminated them. John Paul Khimka is writing about this now, and he writes on the basis of memories. But in the memoirs, the term "Bandera" is often heard, which, as I said, was used too widely, in relation to all Ukrainians. In short, I would like to see documents - in particular, reports of the UPA. The second "but": some Jews who escaped from the ghetto still found refuge in the UPA. There are recollections on this score, specific names are called. Mostly they worked as doctors. Every army needs medical supplies. The number of doctors before the war among Western Ukrainians was small for various reasons, and the UPA obviously could not count on Polish doctors. It is said that at the end of the war, these Jewish doctors were shot. There are, however, memories that say that these doctors remained loyal to the end and, when necessary, took up arms. This question, like everything related to the topic "UPA and Jews", is acute and little researched. There is an inversely proportional relationship: the sharper the discussion, the less they know what they are discussing.
Summing up, I want to say the following: it seems to me, however, that with the departure from the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, the most heated discussions are over. Now we need to expect the appearance of normal works that would discuss these moments in a normal way. In the meantime, most of what you can read and hear about the OUN and UPA - including what I am talking about now - is nothing more than hypotheses. Better or worse, they are reasoned, but all the same, these are hypotheses. That is why new qualitative research is so important and desirable.
