Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult by Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe (review)

With the first major biography of Stepan Bandera in English, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe has provided a thorough, readable, and often penetrating account based on archival collections in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Russia, the U.S., and the U.K. The subject himself remains elusive; many events associated with his name took place while he was either in prison, under house arrest, or in exile. The author had to deal with Bandera's place in contemporary Ukrainian politics and the impassioned nature of the topic.

The book's ten chapters begin with the turn to the right in European politics during the interwar period, and Bandera's formative years in formerly Austro-Hungarian Galicia, which became part of the new Polish state under the 1921 Treaty of Riga. The pivotal third chapter dwells on the trials of Bandera and other activists of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) for the 1934 assassination of Polish Minister of the Interior Bronislaw Pieracki. Believed to have been ordered by Bandera, the event "established" the illegal OUN. The young nationalists refused to speak Polish at the first trial in Warsaw, but used the second one in L'viv to publicize their program for an independent Ukraine. The author describes Bandera's speech as his "major intellectual achievement" (p. 157)—but Bandera would not leave prison until 1939.

Chapter 4 examines the "Ukrainian national revolution," including the split in the OUN in February 1940 (between a moderate wing following Andre Melnyk and a more extreme, younger group around Bandera), the ensuing cult of Bandera, and the Second Great Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists in Cracow in spring 1941. The author notes that in a declaration in May the OUN-B called for the extermination of "Moskali [Russians], Jews, aliens, and Poles" as it began to collaborate with the Abwehr in the formation of the two battalions that entered the Ukrainian SSR in June 1941 with the German Army. The key event after the invasion from a Ukrainian perspective was the OUNB's declaration of Ukrainian independence in L'viv on June 30, 1941—which the author contrasts with the Ustasha's analogous declaration in Croatia, which did not glorify Hitler and the Wehrmacht. In the pogrom that followed "Germans and the Ukrainian military establishment controlled by the OUN-B" carried out the killings of Jews, and Bandera's "moral and ethical responsibility [is] evident" (p. 239).

Chapter 5 introduces the Melnyk wing of the OUN, an older faction that remained close to the invaders, before returning to Bandera and his removal by the Germans to Berlin. It covers the tragic fate of the Bandera family, the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Waffen SS Division, and the ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia by the OUN and UPA in summer and fall 1943. The subject himself goes largely absent from the chapter, though the author notes that UPA partisans "identified themselves" with him. Chapter 6 provides an excellent depiction of Western Ukraine in the final years of Stalin's leadership, when the Soviet authorities killed or deported 500,000 Western Ukrainians. The chapter makes good use of pioneering research by Alexander Statiev and Grzegorz Motyka. It also discusses the Nazi-supported 1943 formation of the original version of the Cold War's Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, in which the Banderivtsi played a fundamental role.

Chapter 7 encompasses Bandera in exile, first in Innsbruck and later Munich. The Bavarian city became the centre of OUN activities. Two bodies were claiming the heritage of 1930s Ukrainian nationalism: the Bandera wing of the OUN Abroad (ZCh OUN); and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR), which adjusted to the realities of Soviet victory and the need for Western support by moderating extremist positions. Bandera remained firm in his campaign for an ethnicallypure independent Ukraine with no place for Jews, Poles, and...