Mykola Mikhnovsky founded the Ukrainian People’s Party in 1902, the first political party to call for the establishment of a Ukrainian nation state in its program

After the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the convening of the Ukrainian Central Rada, a provisional political representation of the Ukrainian people in Kiev, Mikhnovsky joined other Ukrainian officers in developing the combat-capable Ukrainian armed forces, which he believed should defend the young state. His demands for a Ukrainian Republic independent of Moscow and attempts to develop a resilient army failed due to the pacifism of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and the Central Rada’s initial adherence to the concept of a federal Russia with Ukrainian autonomy.¹

On 3 May 1924, Mikhnovsky was found hanged in a garden belonging to his long-time political ally Volodymyr Shemet. Officially his death was ruled a suicide, however, there were rumours of Soviet secret services’ involvement … During the era of Soviet rule in Ukraine, public mention of Mikhnovsky was forbidden, as he was considered a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist.²

83.6 Yevhen Konovalets (1891 – 1938)

TODO

83.7 Stepan Bandera (1909 – 1959)

Stepan Bandera was the national leader of the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN) in Poland from the early 1930s, was arrested in 1934 and was able to escape after the German attack on Poland in 1939. The OUN had supported the German attack on Poland in September 1939, as it hoped to be able to establish a Ukrainian state in the majority Ukrainian territories in south-eastern Poland with German help, but was bitterly disappointed because the Soviet Union occupied the Ukrainian territories of Poland as part of the (secret) Hitler-Stalin Pact.

From then on, and because of the Holodomor, the repressions of the 1930s and the fear of renewed linguistic and cultural Russification, the Soviet Union was the most threatening enemy of the Ukrainians from the OUN’s point of view. In 1940, the OUN split into two parts led by Melnyk and Bandera. Both parts of the OUN and other Ukrainian exile groups supported the German attack on the Soviet Union, as they once again hoped to be able to establish a Ukrainian state with German support.

The Bandera-OUN was a radical nationalist organization
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and was responsible for mass crimes during the German occupation. However, with a few exceptions in the summer of 1941, it did not commit these crimes in the service of the Germans, but as part of its fight for an independent Ukraine, which ran counter to the German intentions for Ukraine.
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Both parts of the OUN and other Ukrainian exile groups supported the German attack on the Soviet Union, as they once again hoped to be able to establish a Ukrainian state with German support. Immediately after the occupation of the western Ukrainian capital of Lviv, Bandera’s deputy Yaroslav Stetsko declared the founding of the Ukrainian state and the establishment of a Ukrainian government here on June 30, 1941.
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murdered several thousand people here who they considered to be supporters of the Soviets and their crimes in the previous 21 months of Soviet rule. Jews were the main victims of these murders. The stereotype that Jews were carriers and supporters of the Soviet regime was also widespread in the OUN. In some cases, these acts of violence had a pogrom-like character with the participation of other inhabitants, especially in places where Soviet mass murders of prison inmates had taken place in the days before ³.

As an independent Ukrainian state did not meet the Nazis’ expectations, Bandera was arrested in July 1941 and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1943, the OUN began an armed resistance against the Germans and committed a terrible massacre of innocent civilians in Volynia - then Poland, now Ukraine: the number of victims is estimated at between 60,000 and 100,000.

Bandera was released from prison on September 25, 1944. In autumn 1946, Bandera fled to Munich, where he hid from the Soviet secret service KGB for years under the name Stefan Popel: he had been sentenced to death in absentia in the Soviet Union for his anti-Soviet activities. Bandera was finally murdered with poison by a KGB agent in Munich in October 1959. He thus became a kind of martyr in the fight against the Soviet oppression of Ukraine.

Bandera plays a lesser role in the memory of Ukrainians than Russian propaganda would have us believe. In particular, anti-Semitism - as Russia insinuates - is not part of Ukrainian national identity. Research into Bandera’s responsibility for the aforementioned massacres has not been completed, partly because Moscow is keeping the archives closed.