Number 2402 Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
he Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian
Genocidal Nationalism
Number 2402
ISSN: 0889-275X (print)
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
he Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works
3.0 United States License.
This site is published by the University Library
System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of
its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is
cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Grzgorz Rossoliński-Liebe is a postdoctoral fellow at the Friedrich-Meinecke-
Institute of the Free University Berlin. He is the author of “Stepan Bandera: he
Life and Aterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult,” the irst
comprehensive biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader and the irst in-depth
study of his political cult. Rossoliński-Liebe has published several articles about the
Holocaust, antisemitism, fascism, World War II, nationalism, Soviet history, mass
violence, and the politics of memory in East-Central Europe.
No. 2402, June 2015
2015 by he Center for Russian and East European Studies, a program of the
University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh
ISSN 0889-275X (print) ISSN 2163-839X (online)
Image from cover:
Stanisławów: Parade of Ukrainian youth in folk costumes in honor of Hans Frank,
October 1941. Image courtesy of Narodowego Archiwum Cyfrowego syg. 2-3022.
The Carl Beck Papers
Publisher: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
Editors: William Chase, Bob Donnorummo, Andrew Konitzer, Robert Hayden
Managing Editor: Matthew Clews
Editor Emeritus: Ronald H. Linden
Submissions to The Carl Beck Papers are welcome. Manuscripts must be in English, double-
spaced throughout, and between 40 and 90 pages in length, including notes. Acceptance
is based on anonymous review. Manuscripts can be submitted on The Carl Beck Papers
website, http://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu. Please direct all inquiries to Matthew Clews,
Editorial Assistant, at carlbeckpapers@mail.pitt.edu.
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Abstract
This study briely presents the history of the radical form of Ukrainian
nationalism, paying special attention to the geopolitical circumstances which formed
this movement. Then, it analyzes some aspects of this phenomenon, such as its main
ideologists, racism, antisemitism, religion, rituals, leaders, concepts of revolution,
and the ethnic, political and mass violence conducted before, during, and after the
Second World War. This short monograph argues that the extreme and genocidal form
of Ukrainian nationalism did have a fascist kernel and should be considered a form
of European or East-Central European fascism. Nevertheless, because of the speciic
cultural, social, and political Ukrainian circumstances the radical form of Ukrainian
nationalism differed from better-known fascist movements such as German National
Socialism or Italian Fascism, and thus it requires a careful and nuanced investigation.
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
The First World War reinforced the crisis of traditional values and made mass
violence a common European experience. It rearranged the political order in Europe,
dissolving empires and leading to the foundation of new states, many of which
were not prepared to be ruled democratically. It also left states such as Germany
and Hungary with the feeling of having lost parts of their national territories, and
several national communities such as the Slovaks, Croats, and Ukrainians without
a state. These cultural, social, and political changes led to the emergence of a
new authoritarian, ultranationalist, and militaristic movement with socialist roots,
which was called fascism after its irst promoters, the Italian Fascists. From the
very beginning, fascism was a transnational movement. It adapted to the particular
cultural, social, and political situations in national states and stateless national
communities and also impacted several non-European countries. While in states
with democratic and liberal traditions such as Great Britain, fascists became a rather
outlandish but tolerated political group, in other states such as Italy and Germany,
they took power and established regimes. In addition, many authoritarian regimes
such as António de Oliveira Salazar’s in Portugal, Ioannis Metaxas’s in Greece, and
Francisco Franco’s in Spain adopted various fascist elements without becoming
typical fascist dictatorships.
This study analyzes how fascism affected the stateless community of Ukrainians
in eastern Galicia and Volhynia, which between 1918 and 1939 were parts of the
Second Polish Republic. In analyzing the radical form of Ukrainian nationalism, this
short monograph concentrates on the Ukrainian Military Organization (Ukraїns’ka
Viis’kova Orhanizatsiia, UVO), the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists
(Orhanizatsia Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv, OUN), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
(Ukraїns’ka Povstans’ka Armiia, UPA), but it does not claim that other parts of the
Ukrainian society were not affected by fascism. Nevertheless, because Soviet policies
prevented dissemination of fascism in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the
majority of all Ukrainians were not exposed to fascist ideology, and knew fascism
only as a demonized and distorted notion from Soviet propaganda. On the other hand,
Ukrainians in Romania and Czechoslovakia, as well as the diaspora communities in
countries such as Germany, Canada, and the United States of America, were important
outposts of the Ukrainian revolutionary nationalism rooted in southeastern Poland.
-1-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
In addition to exploring the impact of fascism on Ukrainian radical and
revolutionary nationalism, this study explains the role played by mass violence in
the ideology of Ukrainian nationalists, and discusses the ethnic and political violence
they committed during and after the Second World War. The paper also considers
whether— or in what sense— the radical and fascistic form of Ukrainian nationalism
became genocidal, and whether the Ukrainian nationalists committed genocides or
were involved in them.
An analysis of Ukrainian nationalism in the context of fascist studies is not
a simple undertaking. The Ukrainian nationalists were ambivalent about their
relationship to fascism, which they generally endorsed and admired but did not
always want to be associated with. Because of this ambiguity, the OUN is described
in this study, depending on the context, as a “Ukrainian radical nationalist,”
“Ukrainian nationalist,” or “fascist” movement. This might appear confusing or
even contradictory, but it is necessary in order to demonstrate the complexity of
the meaning of “fascism” in the ideology of the Ukrainian nationalists, who called
themselves “nationalists” but emphasized that they belonged to the family of
European fascist movements and were closely related to the Italian Fascists, German
National Socialists, British Fascists, Croatian Ustaša, and other similar movements.
By examining Ukrainian radical nationalism in the context of fascist studies,
this study does not argue that Ukrainian writers, historians, scientists, or politicians
such as Taras Shevchenko, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi, and
Stepan Rudnyts’kyi were fascists. Yet some of their writings are analyzed in this
short monograph, either to discuss how the ideologists of Ukrainian nationalism
used their ideas for their own needs or to show how these writings contributed to
the invention of Ukrainian discourses about ethnicity, eugenics, and racism, which
became an integral element of the ideology of the OUN and UPA.
Radical post-1918 Ukrainian nationalism developed from the more moderate
pre-1918 Ukrainian nationalism, which was inluenced by socialist ideas and was—
with the exception of a few writers such as Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi—not explicitly
hostile to ethnic minorities such as Jews and Poles. Only the experience of the First
World War, the failure to establish a state, and the reception of racist, fascist, and
antisemitic discourses transformed this nationalism into a rather typical East Central
European fascist movement. Pre-1918 Ukrainian nationalism, on the other hand,
was obviously not fascist and did not regard mass violence as a means to achieve
its political goals.
The radical form of Ukrainian nationalism has not been investigated in the
context of fascist studies until recently. During the Cold War, this radical and
-2-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
revolutionary Ukrainian nationalism was presented by veterans of the movement,
and among them historians at Western universities, as an anti-Soviet and anti-German
“liberation movement.” Relying on accounts of these veterans and applying the
theoretical notions of integral nationalism, historians such as John Armstrong deined
Ukrainian nationalism as a form of “integral nationalism.” Political scientists such
as Alexander Motyl argued that although the OUN had been strongly inluenced by
fascism, they could not have been fascist because they had no Ukrainian state in
which to practice fascism in the manner of the Italian Fascists, the German National
Socialists, or the Croatian Ustaša. Historians in post-communist Ukraine compared
the OUN and its 1943-founded UPA to the nineteenth–century Polish insurgents
or the Irish Republican Army, and argued that they resembled romantic and anti-
imperialistic freedom ighters more than fascists.1 This narrative was challenged only
recently by scholars who contextualized Ukrainian radical and genocidal nationalism
and viewed it from the theoretical perspective of fascist studies. By doing so, they
illuminated the interrelation between the radical form of Ukrainian nationalism and
transnational fascism.2
Fascism: Ideal Type and East Central European Speciics
“Fascism” is one of the most intriguing but also most contested phenomena of
twentieth-century history. To avoid misunderstandings, it should be clariied how
the term will be used to explore the subject of this study.
The irst interpretations of fascism occurred in the 1920s and 1930s and
were frequently authored by Marxist scholars and communists. Many of these
interpretations lacked complexity and were more political doctrines than academic
theories. A number of communist and Soviet thinkers applied the term “fascism” in
the same way to the Italian Fascists as they did to various conservative, authoritarian,
or military regimes such as the Józef Piłsudski regime in Poland, the Antanas Smetona
regime in Lithuania, or the Miklós Horthy authoritarian government in Hungary.3 In
Soviet discourse, all opponents of the Soviet Union including democratic countries
such as the United States, France, West Germany, and the United Kingdom were
called fascist.4 The irst theoretical and nuanced scholarly interpretations of fascism
were written in the 1960s by authors such as Ernst Nolte, Eugen Weber, and George
L. Mosse. Some of these scholars began to empirically investigate various forms of
European fascism and developed theoretical models of generic fascism that were
-3-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
used by scholars such as Stanley Payne, Zeev Sternhell, and Renzo de Felice. Ernst
Nolte, on the other hand, presented his own approach to fascism.5
The early scholars of fascism concentrated on Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy,
Action Française, the Croatian Ustaša, and some other better-known movements
while paying almost no attention to Ukrainian nationalism. As a consequence, the
radical form of Ukrainian nationalism was investigated only by the anticommunist
historian John Armstrong; historians of the Ukrainian diaspora, including veterans of
the OUN, UPA, and Waffen-SS Galizien; and occasionally some German specialists
on Nazi Germany or East European history, who generally followed Armstrong and
were suspicious about transnational fascist studies, which, in their view, undermined
the history of Nazi Germany and questioned German responsibility for the Holocaust.6
The present theoretical understanding of fascism was to a great extent shaped
in the 1990s by scholars such as Roger Grifin, Robert Paxton, Roger Eatwell,
and Emilio Gentile.7 These scholars based their writings on the earlier theoretical
models and encouraged other scholars to explore further aspects of this intriguing
phenomenon. Recent studies combined those theoretical frameworks with
empirical approaches to particular aspects and movements, exploring features such
as fascist aesthetic and cultural representations,8 genocide and violence,9 fascist
internationalism,10 fascism and religion,11 and racism and eugenics.12 These authors
considerably extended scholarly understanding of fascism and uncovered aspects
and links that had not been known earlier.
To analyze Ukrainian nationalism in the context of fascist studies, a particular
deinition of fascism is needed. This deinition will start from the concept of generic
fascism coined by Roger Grifin, who focused on ideology and adopted a Weberian
ideal-type methodology. In his concept of generic fascism, Grifin emphasized
the myth, its mobilizing force, and its revolutionary, populist, and ultranationalist
framework: “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its
various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”13 To be
more speciic, this concept should be extended by several negations to regard as
fascist only those movements that were entirely or in great part antidemocratic,
anti-Marxist, antiliberal, anticonservative, authoritarian, ultranationalist, populist,
racist, antisemitic, militarist, and which adopted the Führerprinzip, practiced the
cult of ethnic and political violence, and regarded mass violence as an extension of
politics.14 Finally, it should be emphasized that fascist movements in East Central
Europe such as the Hlinka Party, Ustaša, and Iron Guard developed forms of
fascism differing from the fascism of regimes that controlled industrial, urban, and
powerful states such as Italy or Germany. Fascism in East Central European states
-4-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
and stateless ethnic communities came into being in different cultural, political, and
social circumstances and was created by men and women with different cultural
backgrounds and political expectations than those in states such as Germany or
Italy. The Iron Guard’s ideology was manufactured around religion and mysticism.
The Slovak Hlinka Party and Croatian Ustaša regarded themselves as “liberation
movements” and “freedom ighters” who struggled for the independence of their
states. Such notions and ideals did not play any signiicant role among the German
National Socialists and Italian Fascists.15
History and Geopolitical Circumstances
The nature of Ukrainian radical nationalism was determined by both
European fascist discourses and the complicated history of Ukrainians, for
whom the OUN wanted to establish a state of a fascist type. In the nineteenth
century, “Ukrainians,” or people who began to perceive themselves as Ukrainians
as a result of the invention of Ukrainian identity, lived in two empires. About
80 percent of them were subjects of the Russian Empire, and about 20 percent
resided in eastern Galicia and Bukovina, which belonged to the Habsburg Empire.
The policy of Russiication in Russian Ukraine, especially in the last three decades
of the nineteenth century, prevented the expansion of Ukrainian nationalism in this
territory. Many eastern Ukrainians understood Ukraine to be a region of Russia and
themselves as a people akin to Russians. Hostility to Russia did not make sense to
them, but it made much more sense to the small group of “nationally educated”
Ukrainians, many of whom lived in eastern Galicia where they enjoyed the liberal
policies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and competed (not very successfully) with
the Polish rulers of this province.16
Although Ukrainians during and after the First World War proclaimed a
Ukrainian state in Kiev as the center of Ukraine, and another state in Lviv as the
center of western Ukraine, they did not succeed in keeping either of them. These states
were also not recognized by the Treaty of Versailles or by neighbouring countries,
particularly the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, which claimed the
same territories.17 As a result of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Treaty of
Versailles, the Treaty of Riga, and other treaties signed after the First World War,
about 26 million Ukrainians lived in Soviet Ukraine, about 5 million in Poland, 0.5
million in the Czechoslovak Republic, and 0.8 million in Greater Romania.18 In the
-5-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
interwar period Ukrainian revolutionary and extremist nationalism did not develop in
the Soviet Union, which remained unaffected by fascism, but thrived in the territory
of the Second Republic, which included eastern Galicia from the Habsburg Empire
and the western part of Volhynia from the Russian Empire. Of these two regions,
eastern Galicia was the heart of revolutionary ultranationalist activism.19
In 1920 a group of Ukrainian veterans of the First World War, disappointed
by the geopolitical status quo, founded the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO)
in Prague. Some of the best known activists of this organization were Ievhen
Konovalets’, Andrii Mel’nyk, Mykola Stsibors’kyi, Roman Sushko, and Richard
Iaryi. Before founding the UVO, they fought against the Poles, Bolsheviks, and
Whites in various Ukrainian armies such as the Sich Rilemen, a unit of the Ukrainian
People’s Army (Armia Ukraїns’koї Narodnoї Respubliky, AUNR), which had been
established from the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Army, or the Ukrainian
Galician Army (Ukraїns’ka Halyts’ka Armiia, UHA). The UVO, however, did not
become a mass political movement, but rather a terrorist organization that inanced
itself by spying for the German Abwehr and intelligence services of other countries
such as Lithuania, and Czechoslovakia.20
The situation changed only in the late 1920s. At the First Congress of Ukrainian
Nationalists, which took place from 28 January to 3 February 1929 in Vienna, the
leadership of the UVO in cooperation with other nationalist politicians founded the
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Orhanizatsia Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv,
OUN). In the course of amalgamation, the League of Ukrainian Fascists (Soiuz
ukraïns’kykh fashystiv, SUF), inventor of the Ukrainian fascist salute “Glory to
Ukraine!” (Slava Ukraїni!), also entered the OUN, which adopted the salute and
other fascist rituals. In addition, more and more young Ukrainians who were born
around 1910 joined the movement. Some of their leading representatives were
Stepan Bandera, Iaroslav Stets’ko, Stepan Lenkavs’kyi, and Roman Shukhevych.
This younger generation, including many students, soon began controlling the
homeland executive of the OUN. This political body determined policies in eastern
Galicia and Volhynia but was subordinated to the leadership in exile, which was
composed of veterans of the First World War and founders of the UVO who were
born around 1890. The young generation was in many respects more radical than
the older one. Although both generations had similar positive attitudes to fascism,
racism, and antisemitism, the younger generation was more eager to use terror and
violence. Different realms of experience and expectations caused a conlict between
the younger and older generations and contributed to the 1940 split of the OUN into
the OUN-B (led by Stepan Bandera) and the OUN-M (led by Andrii Mel’nyk).21
-6-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
During the interwar period, the center of activism of the Ukrainian nationalists
was the Second Polish Republic. The cultural, social, and political situation in Poland,
particularly discrimination against national minorities, pushed many Ukrainians
into the OUN and signiicantly strengthened this movement. The Polish authorities
tried to win the loyalty of Ukrainians through repression of their national aspirations
and teaching them Polish patriotism. They dissolved many Ukrainian schools and
transformed some into bilingual Polish-Ukrainian schools (szkoły utrakwistyczne).
The Ukrainian language was abandoned at universities and regarded by Polish
oficials as a substandard variety of Polish, while Ukrainian culture was perceived
by Polish nationalists as inferior to Polish culture. Ukrainians could not ind jobs
in public service, possessed less land than Poles, and generally had good reasons to
resent the Polish state and its policies that treated the Ukrainian minority as second-
class citizens.22
The main task of the UVO and OUN was to liberate the “Ukrainian territories”
and to establish a Ukrainian state. The irst commandment of “The Decalogue of a
Ukrainian Nationalist,” drafted in 1929 by the OUN member Stepan Lenkavs’kyi,
said: “Attain a Ukrainian state or die in the struggle for it.”23 To change the
geopolitical situation and establish such a state, Ukrainians looked for partners and
waited for war or conlict between the “occupiers” of Ukraine. The UVO and OUN
regarded Germany as their most important ally, because no other European state
was as interested in changing the status quo of the geopolitical order as Germany.
Alliance with Germany and other fascist movements allowed the OUN to appear
as a serious political movement that could “liberate” Ukraine. Especially in the last
years before the Second World War, the OUN won more and more supporters among
young Ukrainians in Poland.24
Because of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, almost all Ukrainian territories
were incorporated into Soviet Ukraine after the start of the Second World War. At
that moment, many Ukrainian nationalists left Ukraine and went to the General
Government, where they collaborated with the Nazis and particularly the Abwehr.
The younger faction of the OUN, the OUN-B, worked on the “Ukrainian National
Revolution,” which they intended to begin at the same time as Operation Barbarossa.
The leaders of this faction decided to proclaim a Ukrainian state after the German
attack on the Soviet Union, and hoped that the Nazis would accept it, as they had
accepted Slovakia in March 1939 and Croatia in April 1941. The Nazi leaders,
however, did not plan to establish a Ukrainian or any other collaborationist state
in the territories that were released from Soviet occupation after 22 June 1941.25
Whether they were uninformed about this circumstance or simply taking chances,
-7-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
the OUN-B proclaimed Ukrainian statehood on 30 June in Lviv, as the Lithuanian
Activist Front (Lietuvos aktyvistų frontas, LAF) had done on 23 June 1941 in Kovno,
where it announced the existence of a Lithuanian state.26 The Ukrainian act of state
proclamation—which Iaroslav Stets’ko, the representative of the Providnyk Stepan
Bandera, read at about 8 p.m. in the Prosvita hall in Lviv Market Square—resembled
the text that had been used on 10 April 1941 by Slavko Kvaternik, the representative
of the Poglavnik Ante Pavelić, to announce the Independent Croatian State.27
Shortly after the proclamation, Stets’ko sent letters to the Italian Duce, the
German Führer, the Spanish Caudillo, and the Croatian Poglavnik. He informed them
of the existence of the Ukrainian state and expressed a wish for close collaboration
and a united ight for a “New Europe.”28 Although the OUN-B supported the Germans
during the pogrom in Lviv and its militia assisted the Einsatzkommandos during the
irst mass shootings, the Germans dissolved Stets’ko’s government and took him
together with Bandera to Berlin, where they met Kazys Škirpa, the leader of the LAF.29
The leaders of the OUN-B were conined until autumn 1944 in German prisons and
concentration camps. They had the rank of special political prisoners (Ehrenhäftlinge
or Sonderhäftlinge) and enjoyed privileged treatment.30 A few hundred OUN-B rank
and ile members were kept in different German camps as political prisoners.31 They
shared to some extent the fate of the Rumanian Iron Guard, who on account of the
conlict with Antonescu led from Romania to Germany in early 1941. When, in late
1942, Horia Sima, the leader of the Iron Guard, went to Italy and tried to convince
Mussolini to proceed against Antonescu, the Iron Guard were conined in different
German camps. Sima joined Bandera in Zellenbau, a building for Sonderhäftlinge
in Sachsenchausen.32
In early August 1941, shortly after the imprisonment of the OUN-B leadership,
the Germans incorporated eastern Galicia into the General Government as Distrikt
Galizien. A large part of other Ukrainian territories became Reichskommissariat
Ukraine. In eastern Galicia, the Germans collaborated with less impulsive and more
submissive individuals such as Volodomyr Kubiiovych, the head of the Ukrainian
Central Committee (Ukraїns’kyi Tsentral’nyi Komitet, UTsK). This institution
spread German propaganda in eastern Galicia, aryanized Jewish property, and
helped the Germans to establish the Waffen-SS Galizien division with more than
8,000 Ukrainian soldiers, who took an oath to Hitler.33 While Bandera, Stets’ko,
and several other OUN-B members remained conined in German concentration
camps, the Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine participated in various ways in the
genocide of the Jews and established the UPA, which massacred Poles.34 After being
released from Zellenbau in September 1944, Bandera, together with other Ukrainian
-8-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
leading politicians such as Mel’nyk, Kubiiovych, and Pavlo Shandruk, agreed to
help the Germans to mobilize Ukrainians for the ight against the Soviet Union. The
Providnyk supported the Germans until early February 1945, when he left Berlin
with his family and went to Vienna.35
Ideology
Ideology is one of the key areas to which attention must be paid in order to
understand how the members of a particular movement perceived themselves,
how they imagined shaping the future of their countries, what political aims they
wanted to accomplish, and what values they subscribed to. Because the ideology of
Ukrainian extreme nationalism, as with every other fascist movement, is a massive
and complex subject, this section will introduce only certain crucial aspects of the
writings of three main Ukrainian interwar ideologists: Dmytro Dontsov, Ievhen
Onats’kyi, and Mykola Stsibors’kyi.
Dmytro Dontsov: Spiritual Leader of The Youth
Dmytro Dontsov (1883–1973) was one of the most signiicant ideologists of
Ukrainian radical and genocidal nationalism. He had enormous inluence on the
young generation in the OUN, the Ukrainian youth who lived in Poland, and the
diaspora in general. Dontsov grew up in the Russian Empire. In his early years, he
was fascinated by Marxist and social-democratic thought. In 1922, he resettled in
Lviv and around that time became a fervent adherent of fascism. Fascism was for
him a fanatical, powerful, and authoritarian movement, which, unlike Bolshevism,
was based on radical nationalism and racism. Dontsov called postwar Ukrainian
nationalism Ukrainian fascism and regarded it as one of the European fascist
movements. He never oficially joined the OUN, although the OUN leadership
invited him several times to become the head of the OUN propaganda apparatus.36
In the article “Are We Fascists?” (Chy my fashysty?), published in 1923 in
Zahrava, Dontsov explained the nature of Italian Fascism and repeated several
times, “If this is the program of fascism, then according to me—we are fascists!”37
Yet as much as Dontsov admired fascism, he did not want to be accused of copying
it: “Because we stay on a national platform and the fascists on an international
one—we cannot be fascists.”38 Thus, on the one hand, Dontsov claimed that
-9-
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Ukrainian nationalism was fascist. On the other hand, he emphasized the uniqueness
of Ukrainian nationalism and argued that it should not be regarded as part of an
international fascism. In the early 1920s, Dontsov also rejected “fascism” as a name
for the Ukrainian movement, because the Italians had used it already. Nevertheless,
he approved of and was enthusiastic about fascism as a political system and was
pleased that Italian Fascism was so similar to Ukrainian nationalism.39
In the early 1920s, Dontsov’s admiration for fascism was so great that he even
claimed to ind several fascist motives in the writings of the Ukrainian folkloristic
and neoromantic poet and political activist Lesia Ukrainka (1871–1913), who can
hardly be classiied as a proto-fascist thinker. Yet after local political activists and
intellectuals began calling Dontsov and other publicists surrounding the journal
Zahrava “fascists” and stressing that fascism was not a genuine Ukrainian movement
but an Italian and international one, Dontsov avoided the term “fascism,” hid his
sympathy for it and used instead terms such as “active nationalism” (chynnyi
natsionalizm) without, however, changing his views and attitude toward fascism. In
1926, Dontsov published his irst programmatic book. He called it Nationalism and
included in it the program of Ukrainian fascism. By choosing the name nationalism
instead of fascism, he avoided the accusation of disseminating an international or
non-Ukrainian ideology.40
In the 1930s, Dontsov became less concerned about being accused of paying
homage to a transnational political system and began promoting fascism and
particularly its German variant, which he frequently called Hitlerism.41 He argued
that Nazi Germany was the irst regime which would “deal with Bolsheviks in the
Bolshevik way”42 and that “those who are against fascism are working for Bolshevism
whether they want to or not.”43
Although Dontsov simpliied and vulgarized the writings of philosophers such
as Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his
writings were not understandable to everyone. Dontsov’s publications were addressed
primarily to youth from high schools and universities or people who possessed some
basic knowledge about history and philosophy. Dontsov had particular inluence on
the younger generation of the OUN that was born around 1910. He believed that he
could create from these people a “new type of man” who would ight for Ukraine
more fanatically and effectively than those who had failed to establish a Ukrainian
state during and after the First World War. In order to create this “new type of
man,” he encouraged the younger generation to break with Ukrainian traditions
that he regarded as a cultural and political burden.44 Young Ukrainian nationalists
read Dontsov and were inspired by him. For example, in 1935 a group of young
- 10 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Ukrainians in Przemyśl (Peremyshl’), who set up a Society of Fascist Studies
(Tovarystvo fashyzmoznavstva), asked Dontsov in a letter to give them leadership
and guidance. They wrote that: “Fascism is a universal phenomenon, because it is
not a political doctrine but an entire worldview of indestructible principles based
on religion and morality.”45
Dontsov’s fascination with fascism and fascist leaders began with his admiration
of Italian Fascism and Benito Mussolini, but the ideal of a fascist state and a fascist
leader for him were Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. Already in 1926, Dontsov
translated into Ukrainian and published parts of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. When
Mussolini’s The Doctrine of Fascism (La Dottrina Del Fascismo) appeared in 1932,
he translated and published it as well. In 1934, the library of the journal Vistnyk,
which was edited by Dontsov, published a biography of Mussolini by Mykhailo
Ostroverkha and a biography of Hitler by Rostyslav Iendyk, both of which began
with Dontsov’s introductions. Both biographies popularized the idea of a fascist
leader in a hagiographic and propagandistic language. Their authors and Dontsov
claimed that Mussolini and Hitler were leaders due to their extraordinary features
and the will of their nations. They implied that every nation needed a charismatic
leader who would lead the people to a better future and help them to overcome all
contemporary dificulties. In addition to publishing hagiographies of Mussolini and
Hitler, Dontsov also translated and published writings of such Nazi ideologists as
Joseph Goebbels and Alfred Rosenberg.46
A very fundamental concept of Dontsov’s works was “amorality” (amoral’nist’).
Dontsov declared that amoral’nist’ is good as long as it helps Ukrainians to obtain
a Ukrainian state. This concept reversed the “common” and “universal” system
of values and morality. It justiied all kinds of crimes and violence as long as they
were conducted for the good of the nation, or in order to obtain a state. He argued
that only fanaticism and amoral ighting could change history and the unfavorable
status quo of not having a state.47
Ievhen Onats’kyi: The Rome Representative
Ievhen Onats’kyi, another important Ukrainian radical ideologist, was the OUN
representative in Rome.48 Onats’kyi published articles about fascism in the late 1920s
and early 1930s in the oficial OUN journal Rozbudova Natsiï. At the outset, not all
OUN members agreed with Onats’kyi’s pro-fascist position, and he himself needed
some time to realize that one could reconcile Ukrainian nationalism with fascism.
- 11 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
One of his opponents, professor Oleksander Mytsiuk, believed that Ukrainians could
not adopt fascism because it was a genuine Italian political system.49
In an article from March 1928, Onats’kyi argued that Italian Fascism and
Ukrainian nationalism had in common their radical nationalist nature, but they were
not the same because Italian Fascism had a state in which it could exist and thrive,
while Ukrainian nationalism did not. “Fascism is the nationalism of a nation state,”
Onats’kyi explained, indicating that Ukrainian nationalism could become fascism
only if the Ukrainian nationalists established a state.50
Nevertheless, in the course of discussing the subject with Mytsiuk and his own
relections, Onats’kyi changed his understanding of fascism. In the article “We and
Fascism” published in December 1929, he ceased emphasizing that fascism was
a political system that could exist only in a state and pointed out its uniting and
revolutionary features. He implied that fascism, or a group of “heroic fascists,”
could help a people to overcome a national crisis and make their country great and
powerful like Italy:
Fascism—means irst of all unity. This is its irst and main meaning and it
is indicated by the etymology of the word “fascism,” which is derived from
“fascio”—bundle, bunch.
At this point in time, when a country descended into chaos, when political and
national enmity began reaching its peak, when all acquainted with the Russian
and Ukrainian revolution became frightened due to the inevitable catastrophe
… at exactly that time a group of people emerged and called for unity in order
to rebuild the “Great Italy.”51
According to Onats’kyi, a fascist revolution, which he understood as the
rebuilding of the great past, could also have happened somewhere else, for example
in Russia or Ukraine.52
Onats’kyi, like Dontsov, claimed that “Italian Fascism and Ukrainian
nationalism relied on the youth.”53 Youth was for him the most active, idealistic,
and valuable element of society: “And therefore fascism—is pure activity, it is—the
youth, armed with faith and idea, sure of themselves and their victory over the low-
principled, materialistic, and egoistic enemy.”54
Using the example of Mussolini, the OUN representative in Rome also
emphasized the role of the fascist leader and familiarized Ukrainians with the
Führerprinzip:
Fascism is Mussolini. Nowhere else among the idealistic movement is the
- 12 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
anthropomorphic necessity as essential as in fascism. Everything of it is almost
the result of the personal activity of Benito Mussolini. Only due to him did
fascism acquire its particular shape. The fascists of the irst times consisted
irst of all of diverse political remainders, defectors from diverse parties and
organizations, and of people who never belonged to a political party. It was
necessary to unite and inspire them with one idea and one will.
Mussolini was in the beginning the dictator of a small bunch of his political
friends and supporters, then of the party and then of the whole of Italy.55
Onats’kyi’s description of the leader was abstract enough to explain to
Ukrainians that the leader of a fascist movement could exist not only in Italy, but
everywhere, and especially in “countries in crisis” needing to go through a revolution:
The national dictator is truly the representative of energy and the lively vitality
of the nation. The crisis helps him to emerge and to present his potentials and
his strengths but he makes himself noticeable only because the society and
the very nation strive after order and life.
The man of dictatorship, the man of the crisis is irst of all determined by
character, will, and nothing else than character singles him out from ordinary
ambitious men. Like an ambitious man without the necessary intellect, so an
intelligent person without a strong character will not elevate to the role of
leader [providnyk].
He realizes very soon that his own interests and the nation’s interests melt
together and become one. He cannot compromise them [the nation’s interests]
in any way. Therefore the nation looks to him with trust and hope. He loves
favorites. Further, he loves the brave and it does not matter to him whether
somebody breaks the law or not. A dictator becomes a hero, an object of cult
and emulation.56
Toward the end of his article, Onats’kyi came to the conclusion: “We, the
representatives of a hitherto defeated nation, see in fascism, in particular in its irst
stateless phase—another example to follow—the example of idealism. And we
cannot be content with the enforced ‘fate’ [of not being independent] and need to
overcome it. And we will overcome!”57
Onats’kyi, like Dontsov, did not insist on using the term “fascism,” but argued
that “Ukrainian nationalism” was a form of fascism for people without a state. He
wrote that Ukrainians would not steal the name of “fascism” from the Italians and
that it would be “Ukrainian nationalism” that would unite Ukrainians and fulill a
similar function to that of fascism in Italy.58 In a brief to Iaroslav Pelenskyi from 20
- 13 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
January 1930, he wrote that “we sympathize with the fascist ideology and share in
many points its sociopolitical program,” but we should not boast about being fascists
because we would thereby “arm everyone and everything against us.”59
Mykola Stsibors’kyi: The Author of Natsiokratiia
The prominent OUN member Mykola Stsibors’kyi invented in two documents—a
treatise from 1935 and a draft of a constitution from 1939—a political system called
natsiokratiia or the “dictatorship of the nation.”60 Stsibors’kyi’s writings were
especially interesting because they explained in detail how the OUN would rule its
state and also briely how the OUN would create it. Stsibors’kyi’s attitude to fascism
was typical of the Ukrainian nationalists. On the one hand, he rejected the idea of
sympathizing with fascism, and, on the other, he invented a political system that is
best described as a Ukrainian form of fascism. Stsibors’kyi criticized Onats’kyi and
other Ukrainian ideologists for using the term “fascism” and being optimistic about
this international phenomenon. He argued that the “dictatorship of a nation” was
“neither fascist nor national-socialist,” but a genuine Ukrainian system. Similarly,
he emphasized that the Ukrainian nationalists should never give up the ethnic and
national foundations of their ideology and should always present themselves as a
movement that was not dependent on or related to other fascist movements.61 Yet
more important than these conceptual and linguistic reservations was the fact that
Stsibors’kyi admired fascism as a political system, and invented his own political
system which was imbued with fascist values, cultural norms, and aesthetics.
For Stsibors’kyi, fascism was the highest stage of political progress: “Fascism
came and tore out from democracy’s hands the handicapped ideal of the nation
and raised it to an unprecedented level placing in its vital achievements its ardent
splendor and pathos of youthful creativity.”62 In addition, he claimed that those
nations that turned their backs to fascism and concentrated on their own matters
would never have “real peace and freedom.”63 His actual objections to fascism were
very limited. The most important one was that the “cult of a certain ‘police state’”
could stop the development of society and individuality or “impede the process of
creative individuality of its citizens.”64
Thus, it is not surprising that Stsibors’kyi perceived the similarity between the
OUN and the Italian and other fascist movements as very disturbing. He argued that
only enemies equated Ukrainian nationalism with fascism and pointed out that the
Ukrainian nationalists were “unique and independent.”65 One of the main purposes of
inventing natsiokratiia was to have a political system that would be fascist in content
- 14 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
but national on the surface. Natsiokratiia was written to improve the image of the
OUN and convince Ukrainians that the OUN and Ukrainian extreme nationalism
were genuine Ukrainian phenomena that deserved to be supported by every patriotic
Ukrainian. Stsibors’kyi argued that the OUN, unlike other Ukrainian parties and
movements, did not copy foreign patterns but made its own nationalist politics.66
Stsibors’kyi divided his treatise from 1935 into six chapters: democracy,
socialism, communism, fascism, dictatorship, and the last and most extensive one
on natsiokratiia. He was skeptical about democracy and socialism and presented
communism as the worst possible political system of all. He criticized democracy for
the “cult of intellect” and communism and socialism for “materialism.” In contrast, he
highly praised fascism and dictatorship, claiming that fascism focused on the nation:
Fascism concentrates all its idealism and voluntarism on one center: the very
nation. The nation is its greatest value to which everything else is subordinated.
Counter to democracy, which has the tendency to regard the nation as a
mechanical set of a certain number of individuals, bound together irst of all
by real interests, fascism regards the nation as the highest historical, spiritual,
traditional and real community, within which occur the processes of existence
and creativity of entire generations—the dead, living, and so far unborn—all
are inseparably bound together.67
Similarly, discussing corporatism and the economic system in a democratic
versus a fascist state, Stsibors’kyi disapproved of democracy and praised fascism:
Democracy established parliamentarianism because it accepted that a person
has its rights and virtues from the moment of birth. Democracy regarded it as its
self-purpose. But fascism did not. It regarded the nation-state [natsiuderzhavu]
as the central point of its ideology and subordinated to it the whole society
and individual people. Fascism does not deny virtues to a person although it
establishes the attitude of a person to the state not on “inherent human rights”
[as democracy does] but irst of all on the obligation toward the nation-state.
Democracy uttered the slogans: “freedom, equality, fraternity.” Fascism
opposed them with its own slogans: “obligation, hierarchy, discipline.”68
Unlike Onats’kyi, Stsibors’kyi did not hesitate over the question of whether
fascism could exist only in states. He claimed that it could also be useful for nations
without them:
The achievement of fascism-nationalism is that it evokes the primary instinct
of the nation, fortiies its ideas and activates its creative potentials not only
for its own nation but also others, irst of all the oppressed nations. For the
latter the creative spiritual strength of fascism and its struggle for the vital
- 15 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
ideals of a nation should be an unforgettable “memento” and the sign of their
own feelings and deeds.69
Natsiokratiia was supposed to become the political system of a Ukrainian
state, which would be established in the course of a “national revolution.” On the
one hand, Stsibors’kyi presented natsiokratiia as if it would have grown up from
Ukrainian traditions and been deeply rooted in the Ukrainian people.70 On the other
hand, he reminded readers several times that Ukrainian nationalism was one of the
“newer nationalistic movements” that belonged to the family of European fascist
movements. All of those movements, according to Stsibors’kyi, regarded the nation
as the highest value and “equate the state with the nation as an organic form of
existence.” Ukrainian nationalism “understands the nation not as a mechanical set
of people bound only by common territory, language and material interests, but as
the highest form of human co-existence.”71
Fascism and nationalism were interwoven not only because they placed
the nation in the center of their interests, but also because they were both related
through fanaticism: “fascism itself is irst of all nationalism—the love of one’s
own motherland and patriotic feeling brought to the level of self-sacriice and the
cult of the sacriicing fanaticism.”72 This system of ideas, however, could not exist
without the truth: “The power of nationalism is related to the fanatical belief in its
own truth.”73 In general, the basic assumptions of natsiokratiia were very modest
and even simplistic. Stsibors’kyi explained that “nationalism builds its ideology
on maximalism, healthy egoism, love for its own, intolerance of the alien …”74
and emphasized “Good is everything that is good for the well-being, power and
development of my nation; bad is everything, that weakens its power and growth …”75
Although Stsibors’kyi did not point this out, his discussion of fascism and the
Ukrainian nation were very much determined by the fact that Ukrainians did not
succeed in establishing a state after the First World War, were discriminated against
in Poland, and, after a period of relatively liberal national policies in the 1920s,
suffered from famine and terror in the Ukrainian SSR. In this sense, Stsibors’kyi’s
radical speculations were related to the wish for a Ukrainian state that would protect
the rights of Ukrainians against their neighbors.76
Similarly to other European fascist and ultranationalist ideologists, Stsibors’kyi
introduced the category of “race” while discussing the “transformation of races”
into “new ethnic collectives.”77 He also borrowed some ideological notions from
German imperialist nationalism: “Ukrainian nationalism understands its own nation
as the highest, completely perfect and real value, and worships the slogan: Nation
- 16 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
above all! The nationalists want to see the Ukrainian Nation great, mighty, powerful
and content.”78
He regarded all parties and organizations that did not agree with the slogan
“Ukraine above all” as unacceptable and treacherous. To him, the communists were
the agents of the Soviet Union, while the Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance
(Ukraїns’ke natsional’no-demokratychne ob”iednannia, UNDO) were the agents of
Poland.79 He also demanded that all people should not serve parties, but the nation
and the state: “State—this is not only an organized community of purpose; it is irst
of all, the holiest nation that obliges every citizen to serve, to sacriice and to high
spiritual passion.”80
Stsibors’kyi’s most furious hostility was directed against the weak elements
of the nation and internal enemies of the state. He argued that “nationalism denies”
the “right to exist” to “unsolicited elements” such as “social predators, social idlers,
vermin, and political ‘chieftains.’”81 Moreover, he demanded coniscation of the
land and property of all non-Ukrainians and forbid them to buy back their land and
property.82 The national masses would both proit from these reforms and become
an indispensable part of the new regime: “We call natsiokratiia the regime of the
nation in its own state which is implemented by all socio-beneicial strata, united—
according to their socio-productive functions—in the representative organs of the
state government.”83
The right moment for implementing natsiokratiia would be after the OUN, in the
course of a “national revolution,” would take power and establish an “independent,
united State.” The “national revolution” would be started by the “armed ight against
occupiers” and would be “dificult, bloody and cruel.” With the help of the masses,
the revolutionaries would introduce a “national dictatorship” and perform the
ultranationalist “rebirth of the society.”84 Stsibors’kyi wrote that opponents would
label the new rulers and their “national dictatorship” as fascist and would claim that
“‘fascists’ want to ‘enslave’ the nation.’” They would do this because they would
know that “national dictatorship is the sign of their infamous death.”85
The ruling organ in the natsiokratiia state would be the Derzhavna Rada, a kind
of parliament. The representatives elected to this institution would be Ukrainians
who belonged to the only legal party, the OUN. Thus the parliament would represent
only Ukrainian nationalists of different social classes and occupations.86 The state
would be ruled by the Vozhd’ Natsiї, the Leader of the Nation, who would be the
“greatest of the great sons of the nation who due to the general trust of the nation and
to his internal features will hold in his hand the power of the state.” All political and
- 17 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
government institutions, such as the Derzhavna Rada and the Derzhavni Sekretari
(council of ministers), would be subordinated to the Vozhd’ Natsiї.87
A draft of a constitution prepared for a Ukrainian state at the request of Mel’nyk
in 1939 was much shorter than the treatise from 1935, but did not differ substantially
from the earlier document. Stsibors’kyi called the future Ukrainian leader the “Head
of the State—The Leader of the Nation [Holova Derzhavy—Vozhd’ Natsiї]” and,
as in 1935, made it clear that all political groups, organizations, or parties with the
exception of the OUN would be forbidden.88
Leaders
Until 1945 the OUN had three leaders: Ievhen Konovalets’, Andrii Mel’nyk,
and Stepan Bandera. All of them claimed to be the leaders of all Ukrainian people
and sought to become the leaders of a Ukrainian state, which they wanted to establish
with the help of the Ukrainian masses. Due to the speciic geopolitical circumstances,
the Ukrainian leaders acted differently from fascist leaders such as Mussolini, Hitler,
and even Pavelić after he obtained a state in 1941.
Ievhen Konovalets’ was born on 14 June 1891 in the village of Zashkiv in
eastern Galicia. He studied law at Lviv University before the First World War. In
1914 he was mobilized for the Austrian army, but was taken as a prisoner of war by
the Russian army a year later. In November 1917, he led to Kiev and fought in the
Sich Rilemen until December 1919, when he was again taken prisoner and detained
in a Polish POW camp in Lutsk. In 1920 Konovalets’ moved to Czechoslovakia,
where he and other veterans founded the UVO. He returned to the Second Polish
Republic in 1921, but left in late 1922 and subsequently lived in Czechoslovakia,
Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Konovalets’ was a convinced supporter of terrorist
acts, which he tried to promote and sell to the Ukrainian diaspora as the continuation
of the “liberation struggle.” He enjoyed authority among young and old radical
nationalists, who in a lealet from 1934 called him the “leader of the Ukrainian
nation and the national revolution,” but non-nationalist Ukrainians did not perceive
him as their leader. Konovalets’ maintained relations with many fascist European
politicians. After a meeting with Hitler in 1933, according to Karol Grünberg and
Bolesław Sprengel, he appealed to Ukrainians to support Hitler’s politics in the
East. The irst leader of the UVO and OUN was assassinated on 23 May 1938
in Rotterdam by the NKVD agent Pavel Sudoplatov. His loss was mourned by
- 18 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Ukrainian nationalists in Poland and Ukrainian communities in several European
and non-European countries. Some of these communities erected artiicial cofins,
which were watched during the mourning commemorations by young nationalists
dressed in folk costumes and uniforms.89
Andrii Mel’nyk, Konovalets’ brother-in-law, was born on 12 December 1890
in the village of Volia Iakubova. He studied at the Vienna University of Natural
Resources. Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, Mel’nyk enlisted in
the Austrian army. In 1916 he was arrested by Russians, and, like Konovalets’,
later fought in the Sich Rilemen. After the war, he stayed in the Second Republic.
Although Mel’nyk was a UVO commandant, he did not engage in terrorist policies.
He worked for the head of the Greek Catholic Church, Andrii Sheptyts’kyi, as the
manager of his estates and was also the leader of the Catholic Action of Ukrainian
Youth (Katolyts’ka aktsiia ukraїns’koї molodi, KAUM). After Konovalets’
assassination, the OUN émigrés elected Mel’nyk as the new OUN leader against
the will of the younger generation, which preferred Bandera but who at that time
was in jail. Mel’nyk took an oath on 11 October 1938 in Vienna, but the title of
Vozhd’ was oficially bestowed on him only at the Second General Congress of the
OUN in Rome in August 1939. He did not hide his fascination with fascism and
admiration for fascist Germany and Italy. In a letter to Ribbentrop from 2 May 1938,
Mel’nyk claimed that the OUN was “ideologically akin to similar movements in
Europe, especially to National Socialism in Germany and Fascism in Italy.”90 After
the beginning of the Second World War, the younger generation rejected him as the
OUN leader and joined the faction under the leadership of Bandera. Unlike Bandera,
Mel’nyk was not arrested in July 1941. He collaborated with the Germans until his
arrest in early 1944, and then again after being released in September 1944. In the last
months of the Second World War, he prolonged his collaboration with the Germans
as a member of the Ukrainian National Committee (Ukraїns’kyi Natsional’nyi
Komitet, UNK), which had been established in late 1944 to mobilize Ukrainians
to ight against the Soviet Union. After the war, Mel’nyk lived in Luxembourg and
West Germany, dying on 1 November 1964.91
Stepan Bandera was almost twenty years younger than Konovalets’ and Mel’nyk.
He was born on 1 January 1909 in the eastern Galician village of Staryi Uhryniv,
and experienced the First World War as a boy. Bandera attended a Ukrainian high
school in Stryi and began his studies at the Agricultural and Forestry Department of
the Lviv Polytechnic, but never inished them on account of his terrorist and political
activities. In 1931, Bandera became the director of the propaganda apparatus of the
homeland executive. In 1932, he became the deputy leader of the national executive,
- 19 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
and in 1933 its leader, a position that he retained until his arrest on 15 June 1934.
During this period, the OUN killed more and more Ukrainians who were accused
of treason, and performed several assassinations of Polish and Russian politicians.
Bandera was a devoted revolutionary and fanatical ultranationalist; he became the
symbol of his generation. During the two trials against the OUN in Warsaw and
Lviv in 1935 and 1936, the younger generation celebrated him as their Providnyk.
After escaping from prison in early September 1939, Bandera became the leader
of the young OUN faction, whose members were known as Banderites, and who
attempted to establish a Ukrainian state and make Bandera the leader of this state.92
Nevertheless, after the proclamation in Lviv on 30 June 1941, the Germans
conined Bandera and took him to Berlin. They detained and kept Bandera as a
special political prisoner in Berlin and Sachsenhausen until September 1944, when
he, Mel’nyk, and several other Ukrainian politicians agreed to work for the UNK
and to mobilize Ukrainians for war against the Red Army. After the war, Bandera
lived in West Germany, collaborated with the American, British, and West German
intelligence services, and stayed in contact with Francisco Franco, who invited
him to resettle in Spain. The KGB assassinated Bandera in Munich on 15 October
1959. In the course of various political processes occurring during and after his life,
Bandera became the most important symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. During the
Cold War, he was commemorated by several communities of the Ukrainian diaspora
in the Western bloc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, his cult reemerged in
western Ukraine.93
The Ukrainian language has two words for leader: Providnyk and Vozhd’.
The latter also exists in Russian, and was used by Lenin and Stalin. In the 1920s
and 1930s, Vozhd’ had a more totalitarian meaning than Providnyk and was a more
appropriate translation of Duce or Führer. The term Vozhd’ appeared in central
documents such as Stsibors’kyi’s Natsiokratia. Providnyk meant at that time the
leader of the entire organization, the leader of the homeland executive, or the leader
of a combat unit. Konovalets’ was called Vozhd’ or Providnyk, depending on the
context. In 1933–34, Bandera, as the leader of the homeland executive, was called
Providnyk. At the Second General Congress of the OUN in Rome in August 1939,
the title of Vozhd’ was bestowed on Mel’nyk. In order to distinguish themselves
from the OUN-M, Banderites referred to their leader as the Providnyk. Nevertheless,
during the “Ukrainian National Revolution” that began on the same day as Operation
Barbarossa, some sectors of the OUN-B, unaware of the policies of the OUN-B
leadership, also referred to Bandera as Vozhd’. After the war, the term Providnyk
- 20 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
became more popular than Vozhd’ and was used more frequently by people who
commemorated Konovalets’, Mel’nyk, and Bandera.
Racism
Racism in the context of Ukrainian radical nationalism was related to the
idea of independence (samostiinist’). Ukrainian racist thinkers argued that Ukraine
should become an independent state, because it was inhabited by a particular race
that needed an independent nation state to develop all of its features. Although
racism began playing a central role in Ukrainian nationalist discourses only in the
1930s, it had already become an integral part of Ukrainian modern nationalism
by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The reception of racism and
eugenics in Ukraine began long before the Ukrainian nationalists radicalized and
began to perceive themselves as fascists. The irst Ukrainian scholars and thinkers
who adopted some elements of the European discourses about racism and eugenics
were neither radical nationalists nor fascists, but their writings were later read by
Ukrainian fascists who adapted them to their own needs, frequently without studying
the academic context and intentions of the authors.
Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi (1866–1934)—the most popular Ukrainian
historian and author of the voluminous History of Ukraine-Rus’—seemed not to
have directly inspired the OUN and UPA, but his writings are worth mentioning
because of his intellectual impact on Ukrainian thinkers and politicians such as
Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi (1873–1924) and Stepan Rudnyts’kyi (1887–1937). Both
Mikhnovs’kyi and Rudnyts’kyi were extensively read by the OUN and UPA and
substantially shaped their worldview and ideology.
While studying the early history of the Ukrainians, Hrushevs’kyi began looking
for the origins of the Ukrainian nation among ancient peoples. He thereby attributed
to his contemporary fellow Ukrainians certain features that he claimed to have
deduced from their “ancient ancestors.”94 He argued that “the Slavs of today are
predominantly short-headed” but racially not monolithic. While analyzing ancient
and medieval descriptions of people living at that time in the Ukrainian territories,
he pondered the ideal type of the historical Ukrainian and wrote that Ukrainians
were “blond-haired, ruddy-skinned, and tall” and “very dirty” people.95
Mykola Mikhnovs’kyi was not a historian, but a politician based in Russian
Ukraine. In his writings, he combined racism with national interpretations of
Ukrainian history and anti-Russian, anti-Polish, and anti-Jewish discourses on
- 21 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
oppression and exploitation of the Ukrainian people. After the First World War, his
publications inspired many young Ukrainian nationalists who endorsed fascism.
In 1904, Mikhnovs’kyi presented some points of his political program in the “Ten
Commandments of the UNP” for the Ukrainian National Party (Ukraїns’ka Narodna
Partia, UNP). In the third commandment, he claimed “Ukraine for Ukrainians!”
and in the tenth, “Do not marry a foreign woman because your children will be your
enemies …”96 He also demanded the territory “from the Carpathian Mountains to
the Caucasus” for a Ukrainian state without “Russians, Poles, Magyars, Romanians,
and Jews … as long as they rule over us and exploit us.”97 Stepan Bandera and other
Ukrainian radical nationalists studied Mikhnovs’kyi’s writings in their youth, and
Stepan Lenkavs’kyi even invented his own commandments and called them the
“Ten Commandments of a Ukrainian Nationalist.”98
A more modern and space-oriented form of racism was shaped by the geographer
Stepan Rudnyts’kyi (1887–1937), who worked together with Hrushevs’kyi on the
concept of the origins of the Ukrainian nation.99 Rudnyts’kyi provided Hrushevs’kyi’s
historical concept with the essential component of space: he deined the “natural
territory” or “living space” of the Ukrainian nation and argued that “race” was, after
“national territory,” the second most important feature of the Ukrainian nation.100
Rudnyts’kyi claimed that the “Ukrainian race is beautiful” and that the
Ukrainians possessed some important features, such as the “ability to live and struggle
for the existence of a particular race.” “The Ukrainian race,” Rudnyts’kyi continued,
“is very valuable. Tall height (Ukrainians belong to the tallest nations in Europe and
the earth) and a huge chest circumference (perhaps the biggest in Europe) while
being slender and agile make a Ukrainian very suitable for all physical work.”101
The point of departure for this nationalist Ukrainian geographer and geopolitical
thinker was the belief that “the good and wealth of nations depends much more on
biological than on economic factors.” For him, it was irst of all race and biological
predispositions and not the economic or cultural, social, and political circumstances
that determined the well-being of a group. He claimed that race and “national
biology” should enjoy absolute priority in the politics of a nation, because they
would help to increase the number and strength of its people. Similarly, Rudnyts’kyi
also admired and adopted eugenics, a very popular theory and science at that time,
which claimed to analyze and be able to improve the genetic quality of the human
population.102
Rudnyts’kyi divided mankind into races and races into nations, believing that
a “national struggle and racial struggle [borot’ba natsional’na i borot’ba rasova]”
- 22 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
would free occupied nations and make them independent.103 He understood such a
free and independent nation in racist terms and deined it as:
A large community of people, the shape of whose bodies is similar to that of
each other, but different from those of other nations, [who] have their own
independent and dissimilar mother language, which differs from other ones,
their own native customs and rites, their own native history, common feeling
of good and bad moments that they experienced together … and what is most
important, have somewhere to live, that is, they inhabit a big and rich piece
of the surface of the earth.104
For Rudnyts’kyi, therefore, race was the factor that made nations with similar
languages and cultures dissimilar. This notion began to play a crucial role in the
worldview of the Ukrainian nationalists. After centuries of co-existence with Poles
in the western parts of Ukraine and with Russians in the eastern parts, the Ukrainian
culture and language were extensively inluenced by the Polish and Russian culture
and language. Mixed marriages were common both among Poles and Ukrainians and
among Ukrainians and Russians. Similarly, celebrations of rituals of other religious
or ethnic groups were not unusual. Although the majority of Ukrainians, Poles, and
Russians perceived this as the ordinary way of life, Rudnyts’kyi considered it to be
a problem for creating a Ukrainian state. Thus, race was for him the solution to this
problem. It could help the Ukrainians to distinguish themselves from their Polish,
Russian, Jewish, and other neighbors and spouses and to identify the foes of their
racial nation:
As the soul of one man differs from the soul of another one, so the soul of one
nation is different from another nation’s. It is dificult for a Russian [moskal’]
or a Pole to understand a Ukrainian not only because their languages are
different but also because the souls of their nations are different. A Ukrainian
looks differently at the world, freedom and fate than a Russian [moskal’] or
a Pole does. Therefore it is very dificult for one nation to live in peace with
another one. Neighbouring nations have never lived together in peace. On the
contrary, just like the races so the nations wage fervent wars.105
Similarly to Stsibors’kyi, Rudnyts’kyi’s main concern was the lack of a state
in which the Ukrainians would not be treated as second-class citizens and could
decide policies on their own. Yet he did not regard this as a question of international
politics, national education, or the process of “inventing a nation,” but addressed it
by means of eugenics, racism, and Lebensraum theories. He argued that “nations
are products of nature just like animals and plants.”106
- 23 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Rudnyts’kyi’s attitude to the Jews and their coexistence with Ukrainians was
complex. On the one hand, he stated that Ukrainian peasants, whom he highly
prized for their racial features, were not correct if they believed that “intermingling
with Jews is a crime.” On the other, he condemned marriages with Jews from an
academic point of view:
But all neutral ethnologists, racial theoreticians and eulogists are in agreement
and emphasize that the combination of Aryan nations with Jews is bad for both
sides … Jews are physically absolutely weaker than Ukrainians … In addition
to that one also has to mention that the Jewish race is weak but surprisingly
irm and that the Jewish admixture appears very noticeably to the third, fourth
and even further generations with all its bad physical consequences.107
In contradiction to marrying Jews, Rudnyts’kyi understood intermingling with
“Aryan races” as beneicial for the Ukrainians: “Intermingling with racially more
worthy nations (Scandinavians, Anglo-Saxons, Germans and other Slavs of Adriatic
race [slav’’iany adryis’koї rasy] are very rare among our intelligentsia. Pity! The
proit from this would be enormous.”108
This kind of racism extensively impacted the ideology and policies of the OUN
and later the UPA, whose members and soldiers read Mikhnovskyi’s and Rudnytskyi’s
writings and adapted their content to their own needs. It also signiicantly inluenced
the mass violence conducted by Ukrainian nationalists before, during, and after the
Second World War. OUN member Mykola Sukhovers’kyi, who lived in Chernivtsi,
recalled in his memoirs that the student fraternity Zaporozhe forbade its members to
marry “an alien girl—a non-Ukrainian” after reading Mikhnovs’kyi’s Decalogue.109
At the Second Great Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists in March–April 1941,
the OUN-B wanted to have a strong and healthy race in the state that it planned to
establish: “The OUN struggles for a systematic organization of the national health
by the Ukrainian state authority, and the growth and strength of the Ukrainian
race.”110 In 1944, in reference to the writing of “Professor Dr. St. Rudnyts’kyi,”
the authors of the brochure “The Nation as a Species” came to the conclusion that
a mixed marriage was a crime that should be punished: “The Ukrainian nation is
against mixed marriage and regards it as a crime … The substance of our families
must be Ukrainian (father, mother, and children). The family is the most important
organic unity, the highest cell of the national collective, and thus we have to keep
it purely Ukrainian.”111 During the ethnic cleansing of the Poles in 1943 and 1944,
the UPA leadership demanded that Ukrainians in mixed marriages kill their spouses
and children.112
- 24 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Antisemitism
Ukrainian nationalists combined a modern, racialized concept of antisemitism
with older “traditional” Ukrainian antisemitism, which was based on religion and
pre-modern economic, social, and political circumstances. The racist antisemitism
impacted Ukrainian nationalism in the late 1920s through the 1930s and was
received to a great extent from the ideology of the German National Socialists. The
“traditional” Ukrainian antisemitism was less aggressive but very deeply rooted
in Ukrainian national culture, including the national literature. The Ukrainian
national poet and writer Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) portrayed Jews in his poem
“Haidamaky” as the agents of Polish landowners and the brigands who killed Jews as
national heroes.113 This was not an exception, but rather a common understanding of
the relationship between Jews and Ukrainians, which was familiar to most members
of the UVO, OUN, and UPA. In their publications, they portrayed the Jews as agents
of the Polish landlords and supporters of Polish and Russian nationalism in Ukraine.114
Between 1918 and 1921, 50,000 to 60,000 Jews were killed in numerous
pogroms in central and eastern Ukraine by the troops of the Ukrainian People’s
Republic, the Russian White Army, anarchist peasant bands, and local Ukrainians.115
Although pogroms did not take place in western Ukraine, their aftermath radicalized
the attitude of the Ukrainian nationalists toward the Jews and made antisemitism into
one of the most signiicant rudiments of Ukrainian nationalism. This radicalization
was set into motion by the verdict of not guilty in the trial of Sholom Schwartzbard,
who had murdered Symon Petliura in Paris on 25 May 1926. At the trial in Paris,
Schwarzbard argued that he killed Petliura to avenge the pogroms that Petliura’s army
had conducted. The outcome of this process enraged many Ukrainian nationalists,
who had turned Petliura into an important symbol of Ukrainian nationalism,
notwithstanding the fact that Petliura had not been a supporter of radical nationalism
and was previously disliked by them. In addition, they argued that Schwartzbard
worked for the NKVD, although no evidence was found for this claim.116
Although Dontsov and some other ideologists of Ukrainian fascism believed
that Russians were a more serious and dangerous enemy of Ukrainians than the Jews,
they understood the Jews as pillars and agents of Russia and the Soviet Union. In
reaction to the Petliura trial, Dontsov claimed that after solving the problem with
Russian imperialism, the Ukrainians should deal with the Jewish question:
This murder is an act of revenge by an agent of Russian imperialism against
a person who became a symbol of the national struggle against Russian
- 25 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
oppression. It does not matter that in this case a Jew became an agent of Russian
imperialism. … We have to and we will ight against the aspiration of Jewry to
play the inappropriate role of lords in Ukraine. … No other government took
as many Jews into its service as did the Bolsheviks, and one might expect that
like Pilate the Russians will wash their hands and say to the oppressed nations,
“The Jew is guilty of everything.”
Jews are guilty, terribly guilty, because they helped consolidate Russian rule
in Ukraine, but “the Jew is not guilty of everything.” Russian imperialism is
guilty of everything. Only when Russia falls in Ukraine will we be able to
settle the Jewish question in our country in a way that suits the interest of the
Ukrainian people.117
In terms of antisemitism, Mykola Stsibors’kyi was an exception among
the ideologists of Ukrainian fascism. Because of his relationship with a Jewish
woman, he began to adopt antisemitism only in the late 1930s under pressure from
other nationalists. This change of attitude toward Jews was well illustrated by his
publications. In the article “Ukrainian Nationalism and Jewry,” published in 1930
in Rozbudova Natsiї, Stsibors’kyi wrote:
… the government’s task will be to grant Jews equal status and an opportunity
to appear in every sphere of social, cultural, and other activity. As for the fear
that equality for Jews may harm the state, it must be kept in mind that Jews
are not the kind of national minority in Ukraine that could have subjective
reasons for being hostile in principle to our independence. On the contrary,
favorable conditions for existence and involvement in the maelstrom of state
and social life—all this will help to create in the Jewish masses a feeling not
only of loyalty but also at a later time of conscious patriotism …118
In 1934, Konovalets’ informed Stsibors’kyi that “mixed marriages with Jews”
were unacceptable because the Jews are “foes of our rebirth.”119 It is not known how
Stsibors’kyi would solve this dilemma, but in 1938 he claimed that in the future
Ukrainian state we would have to deal with the “alien national elements (almost all
of them hostile to us) from the urban and industrial centers.”120 In 1939, he wrote
that the “large part of the Russian, Polish, and other immigrants” would be killed
in the irst stages of the revolution.121 That same year, he denied Jews the right of
citizenship in his draft of a constitution for a Ukrainian state.122
Racist antisemitism appeared in Ukrainian nationalist discourses in the late
1920s and began to dominate in the second half of the 1930s. In the article “Jews,
Zionism and Ukraine,” irst published in 1929 in the OUN paper Rozbudova Natsiї,
Iurii Mylianych discussed how to “solve the Jewish problem” in Ukraine while
- 26 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
insisting that it “must be solved.” Mylianych calculated that “more than 2 million
Jews who are an alien and many of them even a hostile element of the Ukrainian
national organism live in the Ukrainian territories,” stating that it “is impossible to
calculate all those damages and obstructions that the Jews caused to our liberation
struggle.” He characterized the Jews as the “sources of denationalization” and
wrote that “in addition to a number of external enemies Ukraine also has an internal
enemy—Jewry.” Finally, he could not decide how the Ukrainians should “solve the
Jewish problem” and only asked some rhetorical questions: “Should we allow them
further to exploit the Ukrainian national organism? Assimilate them, take them in
the national organism, hold them, take them in, amalgamate with them? Remove
them from Ukraine? How? Expel them? Where? It is not easy to expel two million
people or to get rid of them altogether. Nobody needs this good, everybody is only
happy to get rid of them.”123
The OUN ideologist Volodymyr Martynets’ was one of the most important
Ukrainian promoters of racist antisemitism. In the brochure The Jewish Problem
in Ukraine, published in 1938 in London, he made it clear that he admired the
Nuremberg Laws passed in 1935 and felt that Ukrainians needed similar racist
regulations. Martynets’ argued that Jews were an alien race in every country in which
they lived and thus were a problem for a number of countries around the globe.
Those Jews who assimilated in countries such as Italy and Germany endangered
them no less than non-assimilated Jews, because they could contaminate the blood
of the people. According to Martynets’, no other nation had a more serious problem
with the Jews than the Ukrainians, because no other country had more Jews living
in it than Ukraine.124
Martynets’ demanded that Ukrainians should begin dealing with this problem
immediately and not wait until they established a state.125 He argued that the “Jewish
problem” could be solved only by means of isolation and racial policies. Because
Ukrainians did not have a state, they could not pass racist laws and thus should
practice isolation and separation. Jews should have their own schools, newspapers,
restaurants, cafes, theatres, brothels, and cabarets and should not use the Ukrainian
ones. Intermarriage between Jews and Ukrainians had to be stopped. This isolation
of the “Jewish race” would allow the Ukrainians to achieve two goals. First, the
Jewish race would not corrupt the Ukrainian race and cause deterioration of its racial
values. Second, isolation would decrease the number of Jews in Ukraine and inish
their “parasitic existence.” Ukrainians would then begin taking up such professions
as tavern owners, doctors, professors, and traders.126
- 27 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Rituals
Stanisławów: Rally of Ukrainians in folk costumes in honor of Hans Frank, October 1941. Image
courtesy of Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, syg. 2-3024.
Rituals practised by the Ukrainian nationalists had a different form than those
fashioned by movements that established regimes in national states. The Ukrainian
nationalists performed many of their rituals at small, often illegal gatherings or
in the underground. With the exception of the period of the “Ukrainian National
Revolution” in summer 1941, the OUN could not organize large rallies and marches
as the Italian Fascists or the German National Socialists did because of the lack of
a state. Political rituals of the Ukrainian nationalists were more closely related to
- 28 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
religion and folklore than in Italy and Germany, and more closely resembled rituals
invented by the Iron Guard and the Hlinka Party. In general, however, Ukrainian
nationalism seems to have been no less ritualized than other fascist movements.
Essential for the Ukrainian nationalists were dead soldiers, mainly those who
were killed in the First World War. Similarly important were nationalist activists
who were killed by political and ethnic “enemies of the Ukrainian nation.” These
individuals were turned by means of propaganda into martyrs and heroes and
presented as brave ighters who fell for their country, even if they were killed during
bank or post ofice robberies. The actual reasons for their death and the criminal
pasts of some of them were ignored or denied. At the sites of battles and burials,
nationalists frequently erected mounds in the company of local villagers. These were
usually sanctiied by priests and used for conducting nationalist commemorations
or demonstrations, frequently on 1 November in reference to the proclamation of
the West Ukrainian National Republic (Zakhidno-Ukraïns’ka Narodna Respublika,
ZUNR) in Lviv on 1 November 1918, or on Pentecost (Zeleni Sviata). The
commemorations began with a panakhyda (memorial service) and continued with
political speeches, sometimes delivered by priests. Politics and religion were entirely
blurred during these commemorations. The OUN also motivated the villagers to erect
symbolic mounds in places where Ukrainian soldiers were not killed. This allowed
people who did not live near the actual places of battles to gather and commemorate
their “fallen heroes” at symbolic sites. In the interwar period, Polish authorities
frequently destroyed the mounds. This caused local conlicts, ights, and even small
battles between the Polish authorities and local Ukrainians.127
In order to transform the dead soldiers and OUN activists into martyrs, Ukrainian
nationalists needed religion and priests. Thus, they frequently involved priests in
diverse nationalist commemorations and instructed them to provide the political
rituals with an aura of holiness. The OUN enjoyed support from the Greek Catholic
Church, and there were also several OUN members among the Greek Catholic priests.
One of the most devoted radical nationalists among the Greek Catholic priests was
Ivan Hryn’okh, who acted as a liaison between the Greek Catholic Church and the
leadership of the OUN. In the last few years before the Second World War, Hryn’okh
and other Greek Catholic priests organized in collaboration with the OUN in Lviv
several huge panakhydas and nationalist commemorations in honor of prominent
nationalists, including the irst OUN leader Konovalets’, who was assassinated on 23
May 1938 in Rotterdam.128 Two of the best known OUN martyrs, in whose memory
large religious and nationalist celebrations were organized annually, were Vasyl’
Bilas and Dmytro Danylyshyn. Both were executed on 22 December 1932 for killing
- 29 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
the Polish politician Tadeusz Hołówko. Shortly after the execution, the propaganda
apparatus of the national executive headed by Stepan Bandera organized services
with priests in hundreds of localities for the two executed young Ukrainians.129
The fascist greeting “Glory to Ukraine!” (Slava Ukraїni!) had been invented
in the early 1920s by the League of Ukrainian Fascists, which later merged with
the OUN.130 The UVO and OUN activists adopted and used this fascist salute, but
it is dificult to estimate how frequently. During the trials against several OUN
members in 1935 and 1936 in Warsaw and Lviv, some of the OUN defendants
from the younger generation performed the greeting in the courtroom frequently.
The punishment for performing the salutes in court only elevated the status of this
greeting among Ukrainian nationalists.131
“Glory to the Leader!” (Vozhdevi Slava!), another fascist greeting, was
introduced by the leadership in exile at the Second Great Congress of the OUN
in Rome on 27 August 1939.132 After the split into the OUN-B and the OUN-M,
however, the OUN-B introduced another Ukrainian fascist salute at the Second Great
Congress of the Ukrainian Nationalists in Cracow in March and April 1941. This
was the most popular Ukrainian fascist salute and had to be performed according
to the instructions of the OUN-B leadership by raising the right arm “slightly to the
right, slightly above the peak of the head” while calling “Glory to Ukraine!” (Slava
Ukraїni!) and responding “Glory to the Heroes!”(Heroiam Slava!).133
Folklore and folk costumes were other signiicant elements of Ukrainian
nationalism, similarly to other East Central European movements such as the Iron
Guard and the Hlinka Party.134 The folk costumes were worn for commemorations
and rallies and during pogroms. For example, during the oficial celebrations of the
Waffen-SS Galizien division—which had been established in the spring of 1943
and was composed of 8,000 Ukrainian volunteers—women and men, dressed in
embroidered costumes marched next to Ukrainians in Waffen-SS Galizien uniforms.
They performed fascist salutes in front of the German generals and the leaders of
the UTsK, who usually stood on a podium. During these celebrations, they also
greeted the Germans with bread and salt.135 Two years before those parades, in the
summer of 1941 during the “Ukrainian National Revolution” organized by the
OUN-B, some Ukrainians had been seen wearing folk costumes while persecuting
and murdering Jews during pogroms.136 At that time, many German troops were
welcomed by Ukrainians dressed in embroidered shirts and dresses. For example,
General Karl von Roques was welcomed enthusiastically on 30 June 1941 in
Dobromyl by a dressed-up crowd and was asked to deliver a speech. Every time he
mentioned the name “Adolf Hitler,” the people in embroidered shirts and dresses
- 30 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
became delirious and clapped.137 In August 1941, when the OUN still hesitated as to
whether or not to collaborate with the Nazis, a parade was organized in Stanislaviv
(Stanisławów). Ukrainians dressed in folk costumes welcomed Hans Frank, the
governor of the General Government, while marching in front of him and other
Nazis, and collectively performing fascist salutes.138
Religion
Among the churches in Ukraine, it was the Greek Catholic Church that became
a kind of Ukrainian national church in eastern Galicia, which was the center of
Ukrainian radical nationalism. Many OUN activists were Greek Catholics, such as
Ievhen Konovalets’; several others such as Stepan Bandera, Stepan Lenkavs’kyi,
Iaroslav Stets’ko, and Myron Matviieiko were the sons of Greek Catholic priests or
worked for the Greek Catholic Church, as did Andrii Mel’nyk. The Greek Catholic
religion was an important component of the Ukrainian Galician identity. Dontsov
called Ukrainian nationalism the “ersatz-religion of secular gods.”139 Bandera
claimed after the Second World War: “Without a doubt, the Ukrainian nationalist
liberating-revolutionary movement, as directed and formed by the OUN, is a Christian
movement.”140
In 1929, OUN member Stepan Lenkavs’kyi drafted the “Ten Commandments of
a Ukrainian Nationalist,” known also as “The Decalogue of a Ukrainian Nationalist.”
Lenkavs’kyi’s Decalogue blurred the boundaries between national radicalism and
religion and undermined religious morality with ideological immorality. In this
document, he tried to combine fascism with religion or to transform them into
something that scholars of fascism call political religion; the OUN called it the “new
religion” or the “religion of Ukrainian nationalism.”141 The promotion of violence was
an intrinsic element of this operation. The seventh commandment of the Decalogue
stated in the original version: “You should not hesitate to commit the greatest crime
if the good of the cause requires it.” Later the words “the greatest crime” (naibil’shyi
zlochyn) were replaced with “the most dangerous task.”142
Mykola Konrad, professor at the Theological Academy of Lviv, published
in 1934 the brochure Nationalism and Catholicism, which illustrated how a
contemporary Ukrainian intellectual tried to combine nationalism or fascism with
religion.143 Konrad began his essay with the statement that nationalism, unlike
- 31 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
internationalism, is natural and human. It is a part of human nature, not least because
it is in total agreement with religion:
Nationalism, in the older sense, means an idea or view that considers the
division of mankind into nations right and proper and gives them the full right
to the most advanced development.
By internationalism we mean an idea that condemns the division of mankind
into nations and aspires to remove national differences between people and to
establish cosmopolitans who feel that they belong to the whole of mankind.
Such were the stoics in the old times, and now the socialists and communists
aspire toward this.
Nationalism in the above-mentioned sense is in agreement with Catholic ethics
and sound philosophy. The law of nature and the good of the mankind demand
such nationalism.144
“The law of nature” Konrad argued further, “demands social life between
people. As a result of such coexistence common descent, community of blood,
community of race, common language, common territory, customs, traditions,
experiences, culture, religion, and statehood emerge … in short, a nation is formed.”145
Likewise, as a result of those processes, a “national spirit” comes into being and
provides the nation with “power and unity.” According to Konrad, “one can call the
nation an extended family.”146 Mankind, according to the Lviv professor, cannot exist
without nations, because “nationalism in the general meaning demands the good of
all mankind.” Mankind is an organism, and the nations are its organs.147
Fascism was for Konrad “modern nationalism” or simply “nationalism.” The
Lviv professor argued: “Italian fascism and similar movements are a manifestation
of [modern] nationalism.”148 Some of the most signiicant features of modern
nationalism were, according to him, “racism, biological structure, revolution of the
spirit, irrationalism, voluntarism, the factors of instincts, violence.”149 Also, racist
antisemitism was for him an integral part of “modern nationalism”: “In modern
nationalism nationalist egoism achieved the highest degree of the absolute; instead
of assimilation the slogan of the purity of the nation was advanced with a particular
antisemitic tendency.”150
Like Dontsov, Konrad argued that Ukrainian nationalism belongs to the same
kind of movements as Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, but, also
like Dontsov, he did not insist on labeling it as “fascism.” Similarly, he called
Italian Fascism and German National Socialism not fascist, but forms of “modern
- 32 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
nationalism.” Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, was
for Konrad not a fascist but a nationalist. The different “modern nationalisms”
were united by race and racism, which, according to the Lviv professor, emerged in
reaction to communism.151 In this context, Konrad provided an important deinition
of Ukrainian fascism:
Ukrainian modern nationalism emerged from the military spirit of the ighters
for the freedom of Ukraine and aims to establish by revolutionary means
an independent united Ukrainian state. It is the liberation movement of an
oppressed nation. It emerged during the liberation struggles and in 1920 found
its irst organisational shape in the so-called “Party of National Work” with its
ideological organ called Zahrava. At that time fascism was taking its irst steps,
and nobody had even heard of Hitlerism. In 1925 the Ukrainian nationalist
movement spread through the ranks of the student youth and struggled
relentlessly against communist organizations which [at that time] dominated
among Ukrainian students. After the relentless struggles the nationalists
prevailed and came under the spiritual of Dontsov.152
Dontsov was for Konrad not only a thinker who applied Nietzsche’s theory
to the Ukrainian reality, but also an intellectual who was as great as the eccentric
German philosopher.153 The Lviv theologian praised the leading Ukrainian ideologist
of fascism for his uncompromising, aggressive, and stirring writings: “Dontsov’s
nationalism attempts to cultivate a high spiritual level of uncritical thinking by
awakening instincts, passion, hatred toward enemies, the most advanced rapacity, and
by activating a vigorous elite that by means of violence and unscrupulous terror, ‘with
knife and blood,’ will impose its will upon the masses.”154 Similarly, Konrad admired
Dontsov’s concept of amorality and agreed that the nation is a living organism: “The
nation constitutes the highest organization of life. It is a living organism that has
its own history, psychology, and culture and is the product of its own race….”155
Moreover, he believed that a nation state needs a regime based on values such as
race: “Nationalism rejects democratic forms of government and parties and tries to
implement in nations political and social culture and moral-custom discipline in the
name of national instincts, race, love to homeland etc.”156
Following Dontsov, Konrad also argued that Nietzsche laid out the basis of
nationalism and was an “opponent of democracy,” which the Lviv professor called
the “enemy of mankind.”157 The only aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy that he did
not like was its profane and secular character. Yet he claimed that another thinker
whom he highly admired, “Dr. Joseph Goebbels, one of the leading representatives
of the national socialist movement in Germany,” knew how to deal with Nietzsche’s
- 33 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
dislike of religion.158 Similarly, he also believed that Hitler valued religion and would
use it in the struggle against Marxism:
And so, during the elections on 1 February 1933, Hitler declared in the name
of the entire government in a radio speech that “he is declaring a war for life
or death against Marxism, which is destroying the family, the ideas of honour
and faithfulness, nation, fatherland, and even the eternal foundations of all
faith and morality. The [German] national government … will strongly defend
Christianity as the basis of all morality, and family, as the organic cell of our
state and nation.”159
After a long and careful introduction of Ukrainian “modern nationalism,”
Konrad argued that “nationalism and contemporary Catholicism are closely related
in their idealism and activism.”160 He viewed them as powerful remedies against all
evil ideas and political systems, such as democracy and socialism. In combination,
they could lead to revolutions and rebirths and establish clerical fascist regimes, not
only in Ukraine but in many other countries around the globe, and thus improve the
well-being of mankind:
Nationalism and Catholicism are powerful allies in the struggle against
liberalism and socialism.
The imperative of the twentieth century is to gather a new vigorous, enthusiastic
elite, and to put it under the leadership of competent and strong leaders, to push
the masses to action, a decisive and victorious ight against the rotten spirit of
capitalism and against satanic communism, and to renew private, domestic,
national, and state life on the principles of Christian justice and love.161
The “sword and cross are the hope of the mankind for a new better tomorrow.”
Those who “separate these two elements … are the enemies of healthy and true
nationalism.”162 In other words: “Religion is the root of nationalist culture and
greatness because everything godless, profane is antinational and harms the nation;
everything religious supports it …”163
Konrad inished his essay in a symbolic way. He praised National Socialist
Germany and Fascist Italy for concluding concordats with the Vatican and ended
with the words: “May God grant that these two idealisms—the Catholic ‘I believe’
and the nationalist ‘I want’—merge harmoniously as the two clear tones of the
Ukrainian soul into one accord and awaken our withered hearts. Then a new era of
faith, love, and power, a mighty national unity and a uniied invincible front will
come into being.”164
- 34 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Revolution
Fascist movements perceived themselves as revolutionary movements and
revolution as a part of establishing a new political order. In the interwar period,
Ukrainian nationalists elaborated two concepts of revolution: “permanent revolution”
and “national revolution.” These concepts were interrelated, but not identical. It was
thought that the “permanent revolution” should prepare the masses for the “national
revolution.” During the latter revolution, the nationalists intended to take power in
the Ukrainian territories and establish an authoritarian state of a fascist type.
In 1930 an anonymous author published in the oficial OUN journal Surma the
article “Permanentna revolutsiia,” in which he explained both concepts of revolution.
He also elaborated on why Ukrainians should follow the OUN and obey it during the
revolutionary times. The author irst stated that because Ukrainians did not succeed
in establishing a state toward the end of the First World War, many Ukrainians—
according to him, “traitors”—began cooperating with the occupiers of Ukraine.
These “traitors” also wanted to establish a state, but in a peaceful and “legal” way.
They tried to achieve more rights for Ukrainians and improve the political, social,
and cultural situation of Ukrainians in Poland, and they waited for a convenient
moment such as an international conlict during which the state could be established.
In Poland they were elected to the Polish parliament, and in the Soviet Union they
supported the politics of Ukrainization. Yet they forgot that “our enemies are not our
friends,” and they collaborated with people who “conquered our territories, rushed
to liquidate us as a nation and turn us into physical and moral slaves.”165
A nation could, the anonymous author argued, establish a state only in a
“bloody ight, war or revolution.” Every kind of cooperation with the “occupiers”
was counterproductive and harmful to the national cause. This was how, according
to the author, Poles, Finns, Irishmen, Lithuanians, Czechs, Germans, Italians,
Americans, Englishmen and other people “achieved independence” and also how
the Ukrainians should act:
We will also achieve our state in a bloody ight. When we lose one liberation
struggle, we will prepare ourselves for another one. If we lose the second,
maybe we will win the third. … Ultimately we must win! The Poles lost two
insurgencies, the Finns lost a revolution in 1905, the nations oppressed by
Austria lost the revolution of 1848, the Irishmen were struggling continually
for several decades and were losing. But eventually all of them won. We, too,
will win! The blood of tens of thousands of people has already lowed for the
liberty of Ukraine. This will not be for nothing!166
- 35 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
The crucial element of both revolutions was the masses, i.e. devoted admirers
who were ready to follow the OUN into battle. The nationalists knew that they could
not win the ight against the “occupiers” and create a state in which they would
establish a nationalist or fascist dictatorship without the support of the Ukrainians:
“A national insurgency, and not a palace revolution, but a revolution of the whole
nation, has to be prepared among the broad masses by revolutionary means, and
not by ‘loyalty,’ ‘real politics,’ ‘compromises,’ ‘legality’—in general not by peace.”
To achieve this, they needed to teach Ukrainians how to lose the fear of war and
explain to them that ighting against the “occupiers” and all kind of political and
ethnic “enemies” was in their own interest.167
To take away the fear of death from ordinary Ukrainians, the anonymous author
suggested, the nationalists should glamorize war and violence with the help of history.
All Ukrainian history, according to him, consisted of bloody war and revolution,
which became integral features of the Ukrainian national tradition and thus a part
of Ukrainian culture, identity, and self-awareness: “all the bright moments of our
nation, moments of its development, all of them are tragic, cruel, unsettled. ... But
all this was not for nothing! All this survives in the awareness of the nation, and
constitutes its historical tradition …” Thus, this author proposed that Ukrainians
should understand that the UVO—which worked on the “permanent revolution” and
prepared the Ukrainians for the “national revolution”—belonged to the Ukrainian
tradition and was a “bright moment” of Ukrainian history. The Ukrainians should
not be afraid of the revolutionary nationalists, but should trust and follow them and
regard war and crime as part of their national traditions.168
The revolution must happen, the anonymous author argued, because Ukrainians
did not have any other option. If they did not follow the UVO into the “bloody
struggle,” their enemies would keep exploiting and oppressing them. Only the
revolution, or a bloody war, could stop them and liberate the Ukrainians:
There will be victims on our side! But do we have no victims at the moment?
The enemy lives from our bloody suffering [kervavytsi], impoverishes the
whole nation, ills prisons, dishonors our sanctities—churches and graves of
those who fell for liberty, tortures women and the elderly, orphans children. In
the name of what is this happening? Is it not better to sacriice a hundred times
more victims in the ight against him [the enemy] for our future, and for his
annihilation? No amount of victims would be too high if it comes to the life
and honour of the nation. These victims will be not for nothing!169
Ukrainians who would not support the movement and participate in its
revolution but “want peace, agreement, freedom, or would give up the faith of their
- 36 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
parents” would be “resettled on the indigenous Polish territory,” together with the
Poles.170
The UVO and later the OUN were performing the “permanent revolution”
throughout the entire interwar period, while preparing the masses for the bloody
uprising—the “national revolution.” This “national revolution” was planned to be
executed for the irst time in early 1934, and the Providnyk Bandera and his homeland
executive were to implement it. When Germany attacked Poland on 1 September
1939, the OUN again considered conducting a “national revolution.” Nevertheless,
it decided not to because it was not well enough prepared and was too weak to
defeat the Soviet forces that marched into western Ukraine on 17 September 1939.
However, while collaborating with Nazi Germany in the General Government, the
OUN-B prepared itself and the masses for the next revolution—the “Ukrainian
National Revolution.” It began on 22 June 1941, the day that Nazi Germany attacked
the Soviet Union, and resulted in bloody pogroms during which Jews were killed
by Germans, local Ukrainians, and the OUN-B militia. During the revolution, the
OUN-B proclaimed a state, but did not succeed in keeping it. Nazi leaders did
not approve of the Ukrainian state, as was also the case with the Lithuanian state
proclaimed by the LAF in Kaunas on 23 June 1941. Nazi leaders had other plans
for the countries in this part of Europe, and thus arrested the OUN-B leaders and
collaborated with other Ukrainians such as Volodymyr Kubiiovych. After the summer
of 1941, the Ukrainian nationalists did not engage in preparing further revolutions,
but they cleansed the Ukrainian territories of non-Ukrainian elements, which was
one of the most important goals of the “Ukrainian National Revolution.”171
Becoming Genocidal
“Genocide” is a contested concept that makes more sense in legal than academic
discourses.172 The notion has been abused by political activists to promote the
narrative of victimization or to elevate the political statutes of crimes, frequently
with comparison to the Holocaust.173 This study distances itself from such an
understanding of genocide and instead uses the concept to analyze the intentions of
perpetrators who consider, plan, or attempt the annihilation of a community because
of its national or ethnic identity. The OUN and UPA leaders wanted to establish a
homogenous Ukrainian nation state and used mass violence to achieve this aim. In
- 37 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
analyzing the policies of the OUN and UPA and their mass violence against national
minorities, it is necessary to elaborate on the question of whether the nationalists
intended to exterminate the entire Jewish and/or Polish communities in western
Ukraine, attempted to do so, were involved in the genocide of the Jews in Ukraine
that was initiated and conducted by the Germans, or adapted the genocidal policies
and methods of the Germans to their own needs. Furthermore, the moment should
be identiied when mass violence started to play a signiicant role in OUN ideology
and when the OUN and UPA began to use it as a political means.
The exact number of people killed by the Ukrainian nationalists in the
interwar period is unknown, and can be only estimated at several hundred. At that
time, the OUN targeted political opponents such as the journalist Sydir Tverdokhlib;
OUN members accused of collaborating with the Poles, such as Iakiv Bachyns’kyi;
Polish politicians who tried to reconcile the Poles with the Ukrainians, such as
Tadeusz Hołówko; Russians such as the secretary of the Soviet consulate in Lviv,
Aleksei Mailov; Jews killed for economic and ideological reasons; and many
ordinary people killed during bank, post, or household robberies. The most important
personality whom the Ukrainian nationalists attempted to assassinate was Józef
Piłsudski, who, a few years after the failed attempt of 1921, became the leader of
the Polish state. The most prominent person whom the radical nationalists actually
succeeded in murdering was the Polish interior minister Bronisław Pieracki, who
was assassinated on 15 June 1934 in Warsaw by OUN member Hryhorii Matseiko.174
During the interwar period, several Ukrainian nationalist ideologists discussed
how to use ethnic and political mass violence to establish a homogenous state. The
most important of these ideologists was Mykhailo Kolodzins’kyi (1902–1939), a
leading OUN member who trained Ukrainian nationalists together with the Ustaša
in a camp in Italy in 1933–1934. In this camp, Kolodzins’kyi met Ante Pavelić
and began writing “The War Doctrine of the Ukrainian Nationalists,” a document
that elaborated on the concept of an “uprising” against the “occupiers” of Ukraine.
This text showed how mass violence became a central element of OUN plans and
politics, as well as how the nationalists combined racism with mass violence, began
to invent genocidal scenarios for Ukraine, and which role imperialism played in
the ideology and policies of the Ukrainian nationalists. Kolodzins’kyi worked on
“The War Doctrine” for a few years and presented different versions of it at various
meetings and congresses. In one of the earliest versions of the document, he wrote
that Ukrainians needed mass violence to “physically protect their race.” According
to him, it was socialism and the reading of Karl Marx that made Ukrainians weak
- 38 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
and vulnerable. To overcome this crisis, the nationalists should awaken the “war
instinct” of their people.175
Ukrainian imperialism in Kazakhstan was intended to weaken the Soviet Union
and subordinate the Kazakhs to Ukrainians, but Kolodzins’kyi’s main objective was
to explain how the Ukrainians should deal with the Poles and Jews in western Ukraine
during the uprising.176 “Our uprising is not intended to change only the political
order. It should cleanse Ukraine of the alien and hostile element and of our own
miserable elements. Only during an uprising will we have the possibility to cleanse
western Ukraine of the entire Polish element and thereby to inish the Polish claims
to the Polish character of this territory.” By “cleansing the territory” of the Poles,
Kolodzins’kyi understood mass killings and expulsion. “We should remember,” he
continued reasoning, “that the more alien elements will be killed during the uprising,
the easier it will be to rebuild the Ukrainian state and the stronger it will be.”177
If with regard to the Poles, Kolodzins’kyi assumed both expulsion and mass
killings, with regard to the Jews he planned only murder: “The OUN uprising
is intended to destroy all living hostile elements in the Ukrainian territory …
Slaughtering a half million Jews during the uprising will not be possible, as some
nationalists say. Obviously, the hatred of the Ukrainian people for the Jews will be
particularly horrible. We do not intend to temper this hatred, on the contrary we
should inlate it, because the more Jews will be killed during the uprising, the better
for the Ukrainian state, [and also] because the Jews are the only minority which we
will not be able to denationalize.”178
This kind of reasoning about Jews and Poles demonstrated that Ukrainian radical
nationalism created genocidal aspirations by the second half of the 1930s. These
ideological changes were closely related to Ukrainian radical nationalism’s reception
of fascism and perception of itself as a fascist and racist movement. Kolodzins’kyi’s
writings about mass violence were taken seriously by the leaders of the OUN, who
saw the uprising—which they also called the revolution—as the central step toward
a Ukrainian state. Conducting an uprising was, however, dependent on international
politics and became possible only after the outbreak of the Second World War.179
Between 1 and 17 September 1939, during the time of the political vacuum
in western Ukraine, the OUN murdered about 2,000 Poles in eastern Galicia, about
1,000 Poles in Volhynia, and an unknown number of Jews and political opponents.180
The killings of these “enemies” were not on a mass scale during that time, because
the political circumstances did not enable the OUN to conduct an uprising and
build a state, and because the OUN was not prepared to carry out an uprising at that
time. After the Soviets marched into western Ukraine on 17 September 1939, some
- 39 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
OUN members went underground, while others left for the General Government.
There they collaborated with the Germans and prepared the actual uprising—the
“Ukrainian National Revolution.”181
On 22 June 1941, after several months of careful preparations, the OUN-B
began the “Ukrainian National Revolution.” Mass violence against Jews, Poles,
Russians, Soviets, and Ukrainian political enemies was a central aim of the revolution,
along with the plan to establish a Ukrainian state. During this uprising, the OUN-B,
and especially its militia, organized pogroms together with Germans, during which
they incited ordinary Ukrainians to murder Jews. The OUN-B militia also supported
the Einsatzkommandos during the irst mass shootings. Alexander Kruglov estimated
that in July 1941, between 38,000 and 39,000 Jews were killed in pogroms and mass
shootings in western Ukraine.182
In the late summer of 1941, the Germans redeployed the Ukrainian militia as
the Ukrainian police. The Germans did not want a police force that would pursue
its own political goals and tried to purge it of OUN-B members, but many OUN-B
members remained in the police by concealing their association. In the following
months, more and more Ukrainian nationalists joined the police.183 The Ukrainian
police in Volhynia and eastern Galicia were deeply involved in the annihilation of the
Jews. They assisted the Einsatzkommandos and the Sicherheitspolizei with the mass
shootings, guarded Jews in the ghettos, hunted Jews who escaped from the ghettos,
and helped the Germans to dissolve ghettos and transport Jews to extermination
camps. The Ukrainian policemen did not coordinate the genocide of the Jews in
western Ukraine, but the Germans were dependent on them and could not have
exterminated the Jews as eficiently as they did without their help.184
In March and April 1943, 5,000 Ukrainian policemen with experience in mass
killings deserted to the UPA, which had been formed a few months before by the
OUN-B.185 At that time, the mass violence of the UPA against the Polish population
in Volhynia escalated, and the UPA was killing several hundred to several thousand
civilians per week. In early 1944, the UPA began to “cleanse” eastern Galicia of
the Poles. Altogether, in 1943 and 1944 the OUN and UPA, with the assistance of
their sympathizers and Ukrainians who were promised the land and property of the
Poles or were forced to support them, murdered between 70,000 and 100,000 Polish
civilians in these two regions.186 At the same time, the Germans, UPA, OUN-B, and
Ukrainian peasants also killed several thousand Jews who survived the ghettos or
slave labor camps and hid in the forests and various hideouts in the countryside.187
The anti-Polish violence in western Ukraine ceased gradually when the Soviets came
to the territory in the spring and summer of 1944 and began to resettle the Poles to
- 40 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
the northern and western territories of Poland. In analyzing the plans and conduct of
the OUN and UPA toward the Poles during 1943 and 1944, it is dificult to ascertain
whether the nationalists intended to exterminate all Poles in these territories or
whether they applied mass violence to force them to leave. Their main objective
seems to have been to “cleanse” the territory.188
After the Soviet authorities again established themselves in western Ukraine,
the UPA continued killing “unfaithful” Ukrainians who cooperated with the
new authorities or who were accused of such cooperation, among them many
newcomers from eastern Ukraine. By the early 1950s, the nationalists had killed
about 20,000 civilians and 10,000 Soviet ighters. During this time, the forces of
the Soviet authorities killed, according to their own documents, 153,000 Ukrainian
nationalists, members of their families, and Ukrainian civilians. Additionally, they
arrested 134,000 people, and deported 203,000 to the Gulag and Siberia. In so doing,
they outdid the Ukrainian nationalists in terms of mass violence and terror, which
substantially impacted the memory of radical and genocidal Ukrainian nationalism
among western Ukrainians. By the time of perestroika, they began to commemorate
the Ukrainian nationalists as “freedom ighters,” and regarded the idea that Ukrainian
nationalism had been a form of fascism as Soviet or anti-Ukrainian propaganda.189
Conclusion
After the First World War, fascism manifested itself in all European and many
non-European countries and stateless national communities. It took various forms
and adjusted to different cultural, social, and political situations. In Ukraine, the
Ukrainian nationalists united in the OUN, adopted many elements of transnational
fascist discourse, considered themselves to belong to the family of European fascist
movements, and invented their own version of fascism. The OUN substantially
radicalized Ukrainian nationalism and transformed it gradually into an extreme and
genocidal ideology that combined the notion of liberation and independence with the
policies of mass violence. The OUN planned to establish a homogenous Ukrainian
nation state that would be an integral part of the “New Europe,” similar to Tiso’s
Slovakia or Pavelić’s Croatia.
Although the OUN emphasized that it was the same type of movement as the
German National Socialists or Italian Fascists, it avoided the term “fascist” and
preferred the word “nationalist,” because it made it easier to avoid being labeled
- 41 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
as agents of a foreign or international movement. Such an attitude toward fascism
was typical of several other movements in East Central Europe. The Hlinka Party,
for example, argued that its policies were not fascist but “our very own” (svojský)
or uniquely Slovak.190 Similarly, to avoid the accusation of serving an international
movement, the OUN emphasized the importance of Ukrainian traditions and national
history. It also based its ideology on religion and integrated many religious elements
into its rituals, in order to involve as many Ukrainians as possible and to appear as
an integral element of the Ukrainian people.
Using a convenient political moment, the OUN proclaimed a state in June
1941. It followed the example of the Hlinka Party and the Ustaša, but unlike the
Slovak and Croatian fascists, the OUN could not keep its state. The Nazi leaders’
plans for Ukraine differed from those for Slovakia and Croatia, and they did not
maintain close relations with the leadership of the OUN prior to the proclamation.
Following their arrests in summer 1941, the leaders of the OUN shared the fate of
the Iron Guard, who led from Romania and were detained in German concentration
camps as political prisoners or special political prisoners in circumstances similar
to those of the OUN. Tiso’s Slovakia and Pavelić’s Croatia, on the other hand, were
by no means independent, but rather puppet states of Nazi Germany. Despite their
conlict with the leaders of Nazi Germany, the attitude of the Ukrainian nationalists
toward mass violence did not change, and this did not affect their plans to “cleanse”
Ukraine of their ethnic and political “enemies.”
The OUN could not establish its own extermination camps as the Ustaša did,
and it could not deport Jews to extermination camps in Poland as the Hlinka Party
did. Nevertheless, it sent its members to the police who helped the Germans to
exterminate the Jews, and it founded the UPA, which massacred the Poles. To some
extent, these were the same nationalists who irst massacred the Jews and then,
after deserting in spring 1943 from the police to the UPA, “cleansed” the Ukrainian
territories of Poles and hidden Jews. The OUN and UPA did not commit genocide
on their own, but they helped the Germans to conduct genocide against the Jews,
and they also killed thousands of Poles while following an ideology that approved
of genocide and was fascist in nature.
- 42 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
I am grateful to Marco Carynnyk, Per Anders Rudling and two anonymous
reviewers for their comments and constructive criticism.
- 43 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
*Editor’s note: Certain words and phrases in direct quotations throughout the monograph have been
changed from the original in bold to italics, in order to conirm stylistically. The emphases remain as the
original authors intended.
Endnotes
1. For brief analyses of various apologetic and euphemistic representations of the
OUN and UPA, see Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust:
A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths,” The Carl Beck Papers in
Russian & East European Studies, Number 2107 (Pittsburgh: The Center for
Russian and East European Studies, 2011): 2–4; and Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe,
“The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution’ of Summer 1941,” Kritika: Explorations in
Russian and Eurasian History Vol. 12, No.1 (2011): 87–88. The most common
explanation was that the radical and genocidal form of Ukrainian nationalism
should be viewed as “integral nationalism.” This assumption goes back to John
Armstrong’s monograph Ukrainian Nationalism from 1955, and Alexander
Motyl’s study The Turn to the Right from 1980. Neither of these scholars
investigated and integrated into their studies the mass violence conducted by
Ukrainian nationalists before, during, and after the Second World War, nor did
they consider the similarities between the Ukrainian nationalists and movements
such as the Ustaša, Iron Guard, and Hlinka Party. See John A. Armstrong,
Ukrainian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Alexander
Motyl, The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of
Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (Boulder: East European Monographs,
1980). In post-Soviet Ukraine, several articles and books about “integral
nationalism” and fascism were published by Oleksandr Zaitsev. See Oleksandr
Zaitsev, ed., Natsionalizm i relihiia: Hreko-katolyts’ka tserkva ta ukraїns’kyi
natsionalistychnyi rukh v Halychyni (1920‒1930-ti roky) (L’viv: Vydavnytstvo
Ukraїns’koho Katolyts’koho Universytetu, 2011); Oleksandr Zaitsev, “Ukrainian
Integral Nationalism in Quest of a ‘Special Path’ (1920s–1930s),” Russian
Politics and Law Vol. 51, No. 5 (2013): 11–32; and Oleksandr Zaitsev,
Ukraïns’kyi integral’nyi natsionalizm (1920–1930-ti) roky: Narysy intelektual’noï
istoriï (Kiev: Krytyka, 2013).
2. For the concept of transnational fascism, see Arnd Bauerkämper,
“Transnational Fascism: Cross-Border Relations between Regimes and
- 44 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Movements in Europe, 1922–1939,” East Central Europe 37 (2010): 214–46. For
publications about fascism and Ukrainian nationalism, see Frank Golczewski,
Deutsche und Ukrainer 1914–1939 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010),
571–92; John-Paul Himka, “The Importance of the Situational Element in
East Central European Fascism,” East Central Europe 37 (2010): 353–58;
Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution,’ 83–114; Grzegorz
Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian
Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2014); Anton
Shekhovtsov, “By Cross and Sword: ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Western
Ukraine,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions Vol. 8, No. 2 (2007):
271–85.
3. Leonid Fuks, Entstehung der kommunistischen Faschismustheorie: Die
Auseinandersetzung der Komintern mit Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus
1921–1935 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984), 109–11. In 1935,
Georgi Dimitroff claimed in the Comintern report that fascist regimes were
“the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and
most imperialist elements of inance capital.” Cf. Georgi Dimitroff, The United
Front Against War and Fascism: Report to the Seventh World Congress of the
Communist International 1935 (New York: Gama, 1974), 7.
4. Constantin Iordachi, “Comparative Fascist Studies. An Introduction,”
in Comparative Fascist Studies. New Perspectives, ed. Constantin Iordachi
(London: Routledge 2009), 7–8; Daniel Ursprung, “Faschismus in Ostmittel-
und Südosteuropa: Theorien, Ansätze, Fragestellungen,” in Der Einluss von
Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus auf Minderheiten in Ostmittel- und
Südosteuropa, ed. Mariana Hausleitner and Harald Roth (Munich: IKGS-Verlag,
2006), 12–13; Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism 1914-1945 (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 128.
5. See for example Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Munich:
Piper, 1963); Eugen Weber, Action Fraņaise: Royalism and Reaction in
Twentieth Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1962); and Varieties of Fascism: Doctrines of Revolution in the Twentieth
Century (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964). The irst issue of Journal of
Comparative History was devoted to fascism. Cf. Journal of Comparative
- 45 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
History Vol. 1, No. 1 (1966); Stanley G. Payne, Fascism: Comparison and
Deinition (Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); A History of Fascism
1914–1915 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Zeev Sternhell,
“Fascist Ideology,” in: Fascism, A Reader’s Guide, Analyses, Interpretations,
Bibliography; Walter Laqueur, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1976), 315–76; Ni droite ni gauche: L’idéologie fasciste en France (Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 1983); Renzo de Felice, Le interpretazioni del fascismo (Bari:
Laterza, 1969).
6. For John Armstrong, see Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National
Revolution,’ 87; Rudling, The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust, 2–3. For a
debate about generic fascism between Roger Grifin and German historians,
see Roger Grifin, Werner Loh and Andreas Umland, ed., Fascism Past and
Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the
Comparative Study of the Extreme Right (ibidem-Verlag: Stuttgart, 2006). Only
recently German historians began to rethink the nature of European fascism, see
Thomas Schlemmer and Hans Woller, ed., Der Faschismus in Europa: Wege der
Forschung (Munich: De Gruyter 2014).
7. For an overview of and introduction to the writings of Roger Grifin, Robert
Paxton, Roger Eatwell, and Emilio Gentile, see Constantin Iordachi, ed.,
Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives (London: Routledge 2009).
8. Mark Antliff, Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art and
Culture in France, 1909–1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Julie
Gottlieb, ed., The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain
(London: Tauris, 2004), Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement
(London: Tauris, 2002).
9. Sven Richard, Faschistische Kampfbünde: Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im
italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA (Köln: Böhlau, 2002); Rory
Yeomans, Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics
of Fascism, 1941–1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012);
Aristotle Kallis, Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist
Europe (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- 46 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
10. Arnd Bauerkämper, Der Faschismus in Europa 1918–1945 (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 2006); “Transnational Fascism: Cross-Border Relations between
Regimes and Movements in Europe, 1922–1939,” East Central Europe 37
(2010): 214–46; Judith Keene, Fighting for Franco: International Volunteers
in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War (London: Continuum, 2001);
Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence and the Sacred
in Argentina and Italy, 1919–1945 (Durham & London: Duke University Press,
2010).
11. Tom Villis, British Catholics and Fascism: Religious Identity and Political
Extremism Between the Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Mary
Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic: Religion and Politics in
Salamanca, 1930-36 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996); Richard Steigmann-Gall, The
Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
12. Marius Turda and Paul Weindling, ed., Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and
Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940 (New York:
Central European University Press, 2006); Roger Eatwell, “Fascism and Racism,”
in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, ed. John Breuilly
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 573–91; Anton Weiss-Wendt and Rory
Yeomans, ed., Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938-1945 (Lincoln, Neb:
University of Nebraska Press, 2013); Gabriele Schneider, Mussolini in Afrika:
Die faschistische Rassenpolitik in den italienischen Kolonien, 1936-1941 (Köln:
SH-Verlag, 2000).
13. Roger Grifin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Printer, 1991), 26.
14. Ernst Nolte, Die Krise des liberalen Systems und die faschistischen
Bewegungen (Munich: Piper, 1968), 385. See also Roger Eatwell, “The Nature
of ‘Generic Fascism’: The ‘Fascist Minimum’ and the ‘Fascist Matrix,’” in
Comparative Fascist Studies: New Perspectives, ed. Constantin Iordachi
(London: Routledge 2009), 137.
15. On the speciics of fascism in East Central Europe, see Constantin Iordachi,
“Fascism in Interwar East Central and Southeastern Europe: Toward a New
- 47 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Transnational. Research Agenda,” East Central Europe 37 (2010): 161–213;
Constantin Iordachi, “God’s Chosen Warriors: Romantic Palingenesis,
Militarism and Fascism in Modern Romania,” Comparative Fascist Studies: New
Perspectives, ed. Constantin Iordachi (London: Routledge 2009), 318‒54.
16. For the history of Ukrainians, see Andreas Kappeler, Kleine Geschichte der
Ukraine (München: Beck, 2009); Serhy Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern
Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
17. Iaroslav Hrytsak, Narys istoriї Ukraїny: Formuvannia modernoї ukraїn’s’koї
natsiї XIX–XX stolittia (Kiev: Heneza, 2000), 111–59; Golczewski, Deutsche und
Ukrainer, 414–21
18. Jarosław Hrycak, Historia Ukrainy 1772–1999: Narodziny nowoczesnego
narodu (Lublin: Agencja “Wschód,” 2000), 173, 188.
19. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 561.
20. Ibid., 547–49
21. Ibid., 547–57. For the League of Ukrainian Fascists, see Oleksandr
Panchenko, Mykola Lebed’: Zhyttia, diial’nist’, derzhavno-pravovi pohliady
(Kobeliaky: Kobeliaky, 2001), 15. For the greeting, see Sviatoslav Lypovets’kyi,
Orhanizatsiia Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv (banderivtsi): Frahmenty diial’nosti ta
borot’by (Kiev: Ukraїns’ka Vydavnycha Spilka, 2010), 14.
22. For universities and schools, see Christoph Mick, Kriegserfahrungen in
einer multiethnischen Stadt: Lemberg 1914–1947 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2010), 301–303; and Grzegorz Mazur, Życie polityczne polskiego Lwowa 1918–
1939 (Cracow: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2007), 140–41, 144–46, 149, 151. For
discrimination, see Jerzy Tomaszewski, Ojczyzna nie tylko Polaków: Mniejszości
narodowe w Polsce w latach 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Młodzieżowa Agencja
Wydawnicza, 1985), 62–63, 71–72. For general information on this subject, see
Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania,
Belarus, 1569–1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 144–53.
- 48 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
23. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 598; Franziska Bruder, “Den
ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen oder sterben!” Die Organisation Ukrainischer
Nationalisten (OUN) 1929–1948 (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2007).
24. Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian
Nationalist, 66-67.
25. Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution,’ 90–113.
26. Christoph Dieckmann, “Lithuania in Summer 1941: The German Invasion
and the Kaunas Pogrom,” in Shared History—Divided Memory: Jews and Others
in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939–1941, ed. Elazar Barkan, Elizabeth A. Cole,
and Kai Struve (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag, 2007), 370–85; Siegfried
Gasparaitis, “‘Verrätern wird nur dann vergeben, wenn sie wirklich beweisen
können, daß sie mindestans einen Juden liquidiert haben.’ Die ‘Front Litauischer
Aktivisten’ (LAF) und die antisowjetischen Aufstände 1941,” Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft Vol. 49 (2001): 889–90, 897–904.
27. For the text of the Croatian state proclamation act, see Slavko Vukčević,
Zločini na jugoslovenskim prostorima u prvom i drugom svetskom ratu:
Zločini Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, 1941–45, Vol 1. (Belgrade: Vojnoistorijski
institut, 1993), document 3 (the declaration). For the Ukrainian text, see “Akt
proholoshennia ukraїns’koї derzhavy, 30.06.1941,” TsDAVOV f. 3833, op. 1, spr.
5, 3.
28. Letter to the Führer [sic] of the Fascist Italy Benito Mussolini in Rome,
3 July 1941; Letter to General Francisco Franco, 3 July 1941; Letter to the
Poglavnik of the Independent Croatian State Dr. Ante Pavelić, 3 July 1941;
Letter to the Führer und Reichskanzler des Grossdeutschen Reiches Adolf Hitler,
TsDAVOV f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 22, 1–4, 8–9.
29. For the Lviv pogrom, see John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The
Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd,” Canadian Slavonic
Papers Vol. LIII, Nos. 2-4 (2011): 209–43; Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der
Verlauf und die Täter des Lemberger Pogroms vom Sommer 1941: Zum aktuellen
Stand der Forschung,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 22 (2013): 207–43;
- 49 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Christoph Mick, “Incompatible Experiences: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in Lviv
under Soviet and German Occupation, 1939–44,” Journal of Contemporary
History Vol. 46, No. 2 (2011): 336–63; and Hannes Heer, “Einübung in den
Holocaust: Lemberg Juni/Juli 1941,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 49
(2001): 409–27. For meeting Škirpa and other politicians in Berlin, see Iaroslav
Stets’ko, 30 chervnia 1941: Proholoshennia vidnovlennia derzhavnosty Ukraïny
(Toronto: Liga Vyzvolennia Ukraïny, 1967), 272–73, 276.
30. For Ehernhäftlinge and Sonderhäftlinge, see Volker Koop, In Hitlers Hand:
Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge der SS (Böhlau-Verlag: Köln, 2010), 7–12.
31. Adam Cyra, “Banderowcy w KL Auschwitz,” Studia nad faszyzmem i
zbrodniami hitlerowskimi 30 (2008): 388–402; Bruder, “Den Ukrainischen Staat,
137.
32. Armin Heinen, Die Legion “Erzengel Michael” in Rumänien Soziale
Bewegung und politische Organisation: Ein Beitrag zum Problem des
internationalen Faschismus (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1986), 428–33, 447–53,
460–63, 518–21; Koop, In Hitlers Hand, 190–96.
33. For Kubiivych, UTsK, and related questions, see Frank Golczewski, “Die
Kollaboration in der Ukraine” in Kooperation und Verbrechen: Formen der
“Kollaboration” im östlichen Europa 1939–1945, ed. Christoph Dieckmann,
Babette Quinkert, and Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 160;
and John-Paul Himka, “Krakivski visti and the Jews, 1943: A Contribution
to the History of Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Second World War,”
Journal of Ukrainian Studies Vol. 21, Nos. 1–2 (1996): 81–95. For aryanization,
see for example “Betr. Judenangelegenheiten,” DALO, f. R-1928, op. 1, spr. 4,
USHMM RG 1995.A.1086, reel 31. For Waffen-SS Galizien, see Michael James
Melnyk, To Battle: The Formation and History of the 14th Galician Waffen-SS
Division (Solihull: Helion, 2002); Golczewski, Die Kollaboration in der Ukraine,
178–79; Frank Golczewski, “Shades of Grey: Relections on Jewish-Ukrainian
and German-Ukrainian Relations in Galicia,” in The Shoah in Ukraine: History,
Testimony, Memorialization, ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008), 136; and John-Paul Himka, “A Central
European Diaspora under the Shadow of World War II: The Galician Ukrainians
- 50 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
in North America,” Austrian History Yearbook 37 (2006): 24. For the oath to
Hitler, see “An den Reichsführer, 05.2.1945,” BAB Berlin NS 19/544, 87–89.
34. For mass violence, see the section “Becoming Genocidal.”
35. Frank Golczewski, “Die Ukraine im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Geschichte der
Ukraine, ed. Frank Golczewski (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: Götingen, 1993),
259–60; Bruder, “Den Ukrainischen Staat, 228–29. For Bandera escaping to
Vienna, see “Protokol doprosa parashiutysta po klichke ‘Miron’, 16.07.1951,”
HDA SBU f. 6, op. 37, spr. 56232, 27–72, in Stepan Bandera, ed. Serhiichuk,
3:77–79; and “Protokol doprosa obviniaemogo Okhrimovicha Vasiliia
Ostapovicha, 21.10.1952,” HDA SBU f. 5, spr. 445, Vol. 1, 216–25, in Volodymyr
Serhiichuk, ed., Stepan Bandera u dokumentakh radians’kykh orhaniv derzhavnoї
bezpeky (1939–1959) (Kiev: Vipol 2009), 3:270–71.
36. For Dontsov’s biography, see Mykhailo Sosnovs’kyi, Dmytro Dontsov:
Politychnyi portret (New York: Trident International, 1974). For his ideology,
see Tomasz Stryjek, Ukraińska idea narodowa okresu międzywojennego: Analizy
wybranych koncepcji (Wrocław: FUNNA, 2000), 110–90.
37. “Chy my fashysty?,” Zahrava 1, 7 (1923), 97–102.
38. Ibid., 98.
39. Ibid., 100–101.
40. “Oleksandr Zaitsev, “Ukraїns’kyi natsionalizm ta italiis’kyi fashyzm (1922–
1939),” Ukraїna moderna: Mizhnarodnyi intelektual’nyi chasopys, 3 December
2012, http://www.uamoderna.com/md/98-zaitsev (accessed 19 November 2013).
41. Dmytro Dontsov, “Pro baroniv seredniovichchia i baraniv z baiky,” Vistnyk 1
(1936): 53.
42. Dmytro Dontsov, “Sumerk marksyzmu,” Vistnyk 4 (1933): 304.
43. Devius [D. Dontsov], “Komintern na novykh reikakh,” Vistnyk 9 (1935): 657.
- 51 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
44. Sosnovs’kyi, Dmytro Dontsov, 167–68, 236–39, 375–80.
45. Letter of the Society of Fascist Studies (Tovarystvo fashyzmoznavstva) to
Dmytro Dontsov, December 1935, Archiwum Dmitra Doncowa, BN, Mf 82672,
412.
46. Mykhailo Ostroverkha, Mussolini. Liudyna i chyn (Lviv: Knyhozbirnia
Vistnyka, 1934); Rostyslav Iendyk, Adolf Hitler (Lviv: Knyhozbirnia Vistnyka,
1934). In 1937 the library of Vistnyk published the biography of Francisco
Franco. Cf. R. Kerch, Franko – vozhd’ espantsiv (Lviv: Knyhozbirnia Vistnyka,
1934). See also Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 582–84; Taras Kurylo and
John-Paul Himka, “Iak OUN stavylasia do ievreïv? Rozdumy nad knyzhkoiu
Volodymyra V”iatrovycha,” Ukraїna Moderna Vol. 13, No. 2 (2008): 264; and
Tomasz Stryjek, Ukraińska idea narodowa okresu międzywojennego: Analizy
wybranych koncepcji (Wrocław: FUNNA, 2000), 118–19, 132, 139–40, 143–51.
For La Dottrina Del Fascismo, see Shekhovtsov, By Cross and Sword, 274.
47. Dmytro Dontsov, Natsionalizm (Lviv: Nove Zhyttia, 1926), 194–200.
48. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 561.
49. O. Mytsiuk, “Fashyzm (Dyskusiina stattia),” Rozbudova Natsiї 8–9 (1929):
262–70; O. Mytsiuk, “Fashyzm (Dyskusiina stattia),” Rozbudova Natsiї 10–11
(1929): 328–37.
50. Ievhen Onats’kyi, “Lysty z Italiї I. Deshcho pro fashyzm,” Rozbudova natsiї
3 (1928): 95.
51. Ievhen Onats’kyi, “Fashyzm i my (Z pryvodu statti prof. Mytsiuka),”
Rozbudova natsiї 12 (1929): 397. Emphasis in the original.
52. Ibid., 397.
53. Ievhen Onats’kyi, “Lysty z Italiї I. Deshcho pro fashyzm,” Rozbudova natsiї
1 (1928): 96.
- 52 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
54. Ievhen Onats’kyi, “Fashyzm i my (Z pryvodu statti prof. Mytsiuka),”
Rozbudova natsiї 12 (1929): 399.
55. Ibid., 399.
56. Ibid., 399–400.
57. Ibid., 401.
58. Ibid., 401.
59. Ievhen Onats’kyi, U vichnomu misti: Zapysky ukraїns’koho zhurnalista rik
1930 (Buenos Aires: Vydavnytstvo Mykoly Denysiuka, 1954), 43–44.
60. Mykola Stsibors’kyi, Natsiokratiia (Paris, 1935); “Narys proiektu osnovnykh
zakoniv konstytutsiї Ukraїns’koї derzhavy,” TsDAVOV, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 7,
1–9.
61. Mykola Stsibors’kyi, Natsiokratiia (Paris, 1935), 49, 72.
62. Ibid., 50.
63. Ibid., 58.
64. Ibid., 59–60.
65. Ibid., 81–82. Emphasis in the original.
66. Ibid., 82.
67. Ibid., 50. Emphasis in the original.
68. Ibid., 54. Emphasis in the original.
69. Ibid., 57–58. Emphasis in the original.
- 53 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
70. Ibid., 72.
71. Ibid., 73–74. Emphasis in the original.
72. Ibid., 56.
73. Ibid., 108. Emphasis in the original.
74. Ibid., 78. Emphasis in the original.
75. Ibid., 78. Emphasis in the original.
76. Ibid., 79.
77. Ibid., 76.
78. Ibid., 77–78. Emphasis in the original.
79. Ibid., 80–81.
80. Ibid., 84. Emphasis in the original.
81. Ibid., 84. The term “political chieftains” or “political otamans” was used as a
derogatory term for leaders of “counterrevolutionary” units during the Civil War
in Ukraine, in 1917–1921.
82. Ibid., 97.
83. Ibid., 84. Emphasis in the original.
84. Ibid., 80, 105–106. Emphasis in the original.
85. Ibid., 109. Emphasis in the original.
86. Ibid., 115–116.
- 54 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
87. Ibid., 114, 116.
88. “Narys proiektu osnovnykh zakoniv konstytutsiї Ukraїns’koї derzhavy,”
TsDAVOV, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 7, 2.
89. For Ukrainian youth’s attitude to Konovalets’, see “Komunikat Nr. 7,”
AAN, MSZ, syg. 5316, 76. For the meeting with Hitler, see Karol Grünberg and
Bolesław Sprengel, Trudne sąsiedztwo: Stosunki polsko-ukraińskie w X-XX wieku
(Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 2005) 392–93. Grünber and Sprengel provide as the
source “Sprawy Narodowościowe,” no. 2–3 (1933): 217–18. For other aspects,
see Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 35, 37, 63, 270–78, 282, 339, 342, 351,
374, 386–89, 391–95, 397, 430, 432–49, 555, 561, 566–72, 580, 798–807. For the
commemorations, see Ievhen Konovalets’ (Paris 1938), 64–96.
90. Andrij Mel’nyk, “An Seine Excellenz Reichsaussenminister von
Ribbentrop,” 2 May 1939, R104430/1–2, Political Archives of the Foreign Ofice
in Berlin (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, PAAA).
91. For KAUM, see Shekhovtsov, By Cross and Sword, 279. For the letter, see
Andrij Melnyk, “An Seine Excellenz Reichsaussenminister von Ribbentrop,”
2 May 1939, R 104430/1–2, PAAA. For all other aspects, see Golczewski,
Deutsche und Ukrainer, 272, 274–77, 351, 392, 802–804, 943–44.
92. For Bandera’s life and cult of personality, see Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan
Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist.
93. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 456, 504, 544, 555, 560, 564, 566–68,
697–99; Paul Stepan Pirie, Unraveling the Banner: A Biographical Study of
Stepan Bandera. MA thesis: University of Alberta, 1993; Karl Anders, Mord auf
Befehl: Der Fall Staschynskij (Tübingen: Fritz Schlichtenmayer, 1963); Grzegorz
Rossoliński-Liebe, “Celebrating Fascism and War Criminality in Edmonton: The
Political Myth and Cult of Stepan Bandera in Multicultural Canada,” Kakanien
Revisited, 12 (2010): 1–16.
94. Serhii Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevskyi and the
Writing of Ukrainian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005),
- 55 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
92–95.
95. Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Istoriia Ukraїny-Rusy (Kiev: Persha spilka, 1913),
1:307, 310. For an English translation, see Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, History of
Ukraine—Rus’: From prehistory to the eleventh century, ed. Andrzej Poppe and
Frank Sysyn, trans. Marta Skorupsky (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
Studies Press, 1997), 1:234, 236.
96. Roman Koval, “Heroi, shcho ne zmih vriatuvaty Bat’kivshchyny,” in
Samostiina Ukraїna, ed. Roman Koval (Kiev: Diokor, 2003), 9.
97. Ibid., 9.
98. Petro Mirchuk, Stepan Bandera: Symvol revoliutsiinoї bezkompromisovosty
(New York: Orhanizatsiia oborony chotyr’okh svobid Ukraïny, 1961), 14, 18;
Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 598.
99. Oleh Shablii, “Peredmova,” in Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Chomu my khochemo
samostiinoї Ukraїny, ed. L. M. Harbachuk (Lviv: Svit, 1994), 8.
100. Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, “Do osnov ukraїns’koho natsionalizmu,” in Chomu my
khochemo samostiinoї Ukraїny, edited by L. M. Harbarchuk (Lviv: Vydavnytsvo
Svit, 1994), 297.
101. Ibid., 297.
102. Ibid., 298–99.
103. Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, “Chomu my khochemo samostiinoї Ukraїny,”
in Chomu my khochemo samostiinoї Ukraїny, ed. L. M. Harbarchuk (Lviv:
Vydavnytsvo Svit, 1994), 38–39.
104. Ibid., 39.
105. Ibid., 39–40.
- 56 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
106. Ibid., 40.
107. Rudnyts’kyi, Do osnov ukraїns’koho natsionalizmu, 307.
108. Ibid., 308.
109. Mykola Sukhovers’kyi, Moï spohady (Kiev: Smoloskyp, 1997), 50.
110. “Postanovy II. Velykoho Zboru,” TsDAHO f. 1, op. 23, spr. 926, 188.
111. “Orhanizatsiia Ukraïns’kykh Natsionalistiv: Natsiia iak spetsies. Rodyna v
systemi orhanizovanoho ukraïns’koho natsionalizmu,” HDA SBU, f, 13, spr. 376,
Vol. 6, 6v. The author of the brochure was referring to Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Do
osnov ukraїns’koho natsionalizmu (Vienna, 1923).
112. Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960: Działalność
Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii
(Warsaw: Rytm, 2006), 346–47.
113. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 599.
114. Cf. for example Iur. Mylianych, “Zhydy, sionizm i Ukraїna,” Rozbudova
Natsiї 8–9 (1929): 271.
115. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, 1914‒2008 (Oxford: The
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 3:32‒43.
116. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 497–505.
117. Dmytro Dontsov, “Symon Petliura,” in Literaturno Naukoyi Vistnyk 5, 7/8
(1926), 326–28, quoted in Marco Carynnyk, “Foes of Our Rebirth: Ukrainian
Nationalist Discussions about Jews, 1929–1947,” Nationalities Papers Vol. 39,
No. 3 (2011): 319.
118. Mykola Stsibors’kyi, “Ukraїns’kyi natsionalizm i zhydivstvo,” Rozbudova
Natsiї 11–12 (November-December 1930): 272, quoted in Carynnyk, Foes of Our
- 57 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Rebirth, 320.
119. Cf. Carynnyk, 325–26.
120. Mykola Stsibors’kyi, “Probliemy hospodars’koї vlasnosty,” Na sluzhbi
natsiї: Al’manakh (1938): 14, quoted in Carynnyk, Foes of Our Rebirth, 326.
121. Mykola Stsibors’kyi, Zemel’ne pytannia (Paris: Ukraїns’ka Knyharnia-
Nakladnia, 1939), 85, quoted in Carynnyk, “Foes of Our Rebirth,” 326.
122. “Narys proiektu osnovnykh zakoniv konstytutsiї Ukraїns’koї derzhavy,”
TsDAVOV, f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 7, 8. For the circumstances of writing this draft ,
see Carynnyk, Foes of Our Rebirth, 324.
123. Iur. Mylianych, “Zhydy, sionizm i Ukraїna,” Rozbudova Natsiї 8–9 (1929):
271.
124. Volodymyr Martynets’, Zhydivs’ka probliema v Ukraїni (London, 1938).
125. Ibid., 1–3.
126. Ibid., 8–16.
127. “Komunikat Nr. 7,” AAN, MSZ syg. 5316, 63–71, 77; Petro Mirchuk,
Narys istoriї OUN: 1920–1939 (Kiev: Ukraїns’ka Vydavnycha Spilka, 2007),
251; Petro Arsenych and Taras Fedoriv, Rodyna Banderiv: Do 90-richchia vid
dnia narodzhennia ta 40-richchia trahichnoї smerti providnyka OUN Stepana
Bandery (1909–1959) (Ivano-Frankivs’k: Nova Zoria, 1998), 7–8.
128. Mazur, Życie polityczne, 139.
129. Ostap Hrytsai, “Dva khloptsi hynut’ za Ukraїnu,” Rozbudova natsiї 1–2
(1933): 1–3; “Iz Ukraїns’koї Golgoty,” Surma Vol. 67, No. 5 (1933): 1; Roman
Wysocki, Organizacja Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów: Geneza, struktura, program,
ideologia (Lublin: Wydawnictwo uniwersytetu Marie Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2003),
- 58 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
289.
130. Lypovets’kyi, Orhanizatsiia Ukraїns’kykh Natsionalistiv, 14.
131. Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian
Nationalist, 139–40, 151–52, 156, 160–61.
132. Letter from Bandera to Mel’nyk, TsDAVOV f. 3833, op. 1, spr. 71, 9.
133. “Postanovy II. Velykoho Zboru,” TsDAHO f. 1, op. 23, spr. 926, 199.
134. Also non-fascist, moderately nationalist movements and peasant parties
across Europe heavily relied on folk costumes in their propaganda. On this
question see for example Laura Olsen, Performing Russia: Folk Revival and
Russian Identity (New York: Routledge, 2004); Violeta Davoliute, The Making
and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War
(New York: Routledge 2013).
135. For collections of pictures from these celebrations, see Melnyk, To Battle;
Bohdan Matsiv (ed.), Ukraïns’ka dyviziia ‘Halychyna’: Istoriia u svitlynakh vid
zasnuvannia u 1943 r. do zvil’nennia z polonu 1949 r. (L’viv: ZUKTs 2009);
Nusya Roth collection RG 1871, YIVO, Institute for Jewish Research, New
York; Per Anders Rudling, ‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14. Waffen-Grenadier-
Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited, The Journal of Slavic Military
Studies Vol. 25, No. 3 (2012): 329–68; and “‘The Honor They So Clearly
Deserve’: Legitimizing the Waffen-SS Galizien,” Journal of Slavic Military
Studies Vol. 26, No. 1 (2013): 114–37.
136. Kurt Lewin, Przeżyłem: Saga Świętego Jura w roku 1946 (Warsaw: Zeszyty
Literackie, 2006), 58–59; Jacob Gerstenfeld-Maltiel, My Private War: One Man’s
Struggle to Survive the Soviets and the Nazis (London: Mitchell, 1993), 60.
137. “Kriegs-Erinnerungen des General der Infanterie Karl von Roques aus der
ersten Zeit des Ostfeldzuges 1941, I. Teil,” BA-MA Freiburg, N 152/10, 4–5.
138. See the illustration on the cover and the collection “Stanisławów. Wizyta
- 59 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
gubernatora Hansa Franka,” syg. 2-3020 to 2-3028, in Narodowe Archiwum
Cyfrowe, http://www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl/
139. Shekhovtsov, By Cross and Sword, 275.
140. Stepan Bandera, “Proty fal’shuvannia vyzvol’nykh pozytsii,” in Perspektyvy
ukraїns’koї revoliutsiї, ed. Vasyl’ Ivanyshyn (Drohobych: Vidrodzhennia, 1999),
323–24.
141. Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2006); Emilio Gentile, “The Sacralisation of Politics: Deinitions, Interpretations
and Relections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism,”
Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions Vol.1, No.1 (2000), 18–55;
Emilio Gentile, “Fascism as Political Religion,” Journal of Contemporary
History Vol. 25, Nos. 2–3 (1990): 229–51.
142. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 598.
143. Mykola Konrad, Natsionalizm i katolytsyzm (Lviv: Meta, 1934).
144. Ibid., 5–6. Emphasis in the original.
145. Ibid., 6.
146. Ibid., 7.
147. Ibid., 7–8, 10.
148. Ibid., 12.
149. Ibid., 12.
150. Ibid., 13. Emphasis in the original.
151. Ibid., 14–16.
- 60 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
152. Ibid., 17–18. Emphasis in the original.
153. Ibid., 26.
154. Ibid., 25.
155. Ibid., 26.
156. Ibid., 27.
157. Ibid., 18, 23.
158. Ibid., 41.
159. Ibid., 43. Emphasis in the original.
160. Ibid., 28.
161. Ibid., 29.
162. Ibid., 29. Emphasis in the original.
163. Ibid., 33.
164. Ibid., 45. For an alternative translation, see Shekhovtsov, By Cross and
Sword, 281.
165. “Permanentna revolutsiia,” Surma Vol. 37, No. 10 (1930): 4.
166. Ibid., 4. Emphasis in the original.
167. Ibid., 5. Emphasis in the original.
168. Ibid., 6.
- 61 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
169. Ibid., 7.
170. Ibid., 7.
171. For the plans to begin a revolution in 1933 or 1934, see Władysław
Żeleński, Akt oskarżenia przeciwko Stefanowi Banderze, Mikołajowi Łebedowi,
Darji Hnatkiwskiej, Jarosławowi Karpyncowi, Mikołajowi Klymyszynowi,
Bohdanowi Pidhajnemu, Iwanowi Malucy, Jakobowi Czornijowi, Eugenjuszowi
Kaczmarskiemu, Romanowi Myhalowi, Katerzynie Zaryckiej, oraz Jarosławowi
Rakowi, Warsaw, 2 October 1935 (published as a booklet), 32, 80; and Mirchuk,
Narys istoriї OUN, 252. For the plans and attempts to begin a revolution
in 1939, see Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 68–69. For the “Ukrainian
National Revolution” in 1941, see Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National
Revolution,’ 83–114.
172. For the concept and etymology of “genocide,” see Adam Jones, Genocide:
A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge, 2011); A. Dirk Moses,
“Genocide,” Australian Humanities Review 55 (2013): 23–44; Christian Gerlach,
Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2–3, 5–6.
173. For some abuses of the concept of genocide in the context of the OUN and
UPA, see Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Debating, Obfuscating and Disciplining
the Holocaust: Post-Soviet Historical Discourses on the OUN-UPA and other
Nationalist Movements,” East European Jewish Affairs Vol. 42, No. 3 (2012):
220–21.
174. Żeleński, Akt oskarzenia, 54–56; Timothy Snyder, Sketches from a Secret
War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), 157; Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer, 441, 444–45.
For the assassination of Polish and Ukrainian politicians and political activists,
see “Ukraińska Organizacja Wojskowa. Warszawa 30.11.1934,” AAN, MSZ, syg.
9377, 30–31.
175. Voienna doktryna ukraїns’kykh natsionalistiv, OUN Archives in Kiev, f. 1,
op. 2. Spr. 466, 1, quoted in “Deiliada v Moskvi ta Varshavi: ‘Voienna doktryna
- 62 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
ukraїns’kykh nationalistiv’ Mykhaila Kolodzins’koho,” Ukraїna moderna, 6
October 2012, http://www.uamoderna.com/event/186 (accessed 22 September
2014).
176. Zaitsev, Ukraïns’kyi integral’nyi Natsionalizm, 271.
177. Voienna doktryna ukraїns’kykh natsionalistiv, OUN Archives in Kiev, f. 1,
op. 2. Spr. 466, 103–104, quoted in “Deiliada v Moskvi ta Varshavi: ‘Voienna
doktryna ukraїns’kykh nationalistiv’ Mykhailo Kolodzins’koho,” Ukraїna
moderna, 6 October 2012, http://www.uamoderna.com/event/186 (accessed 22
September 2014)
178. Ibid. 136–37.
179. Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution,’ 84, 90–91;
“Deiliada v Moskvi ta Varshavi: ‘Voienna doktryna ukraїns’kykh nationalistiv’
Mykhailo Kolodzins’koho,” Ukraїna moderna, 6 October 2012, http://www.
uamoderna.com/event/186 (accessed 22 September 2014).
180. For the killings of Poles, see Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 70, 72;
Władysław Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo dokonane przez
nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia 1939–1945 (Warsaw:
Wydawnictwo von borowiecky, 2000), 2:1034–37.
181. Rossoliński-Liebe, Der Verlauf und die Täter des Lemberger Pogroms,
213–16; Rossoliński-Liebe, The ‘Ukrainian National Revolution,’ 90–95.
182. Alexander Kruglov, “Jewish Losses in Ukraine, 1941–1944,” in The Shoah
in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memorialization, ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy
Lower (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 274; Himka, The Lviv
Pogrom of 1941, 209–43; Mick, Incompatible Experiences, 336–63; Rossoliński-
Liebe, Der Verlauf und die Täter des Lemberger Pogroms, 216 –41; Wendy
Lower, “Pogroms, Mob Violence and Genocide in Western Ukraine, Summer
1941: Varied Histories, Explanations and Comparisons,” Journal of Genocide
Research Vol. 13, No. 3 (2011): 114–55; Timothy Snyder, “The Life and Death
of Western Volhynian Jewry, 1921–1945,” in The Shoah in Ukraine: History,
- 63 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Testimony, Memorialization, ed. Ray Brandon and Wendy Lower (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2008), 89–94; Kai Struve, “Rites of Violence? The
Pogroms of Summer 1941,” Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry 24 (2012): 257–74.
183. Bohdan Kazanivs’kyi, Shliakhom Legendy: Spomyny (London: Ukraїns’ka
Vydavnycha Spilka, 1975), 263–66; Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin,
“Collaboration in Eastern Galicia: The Ukrainian Police and the Holocaust,”
East European Jewish Affairs Vol. 34, No. 2 (2004): 104–105; Golczewski, Die
Kollaboration in der Ukraine, 172; Lucyna Kulińska and Adam Roliński, Kwestia
ukraińska i eksterminacja ludności polskiej w Małopolsce Wschodniej w świetle
dokumentów Polskiego Państwa Podziemnego 1943–1944 (Cracow: Księgarnia
Akademicka, 2004), 210.
184. Snyder, The Life and Death of Western Volhynian Jewry, 89–97; Omer
Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies: Jewish-Christian Relations in
Buczacz, 1939–1944,” East European Politics and Societies Vol. 26, No. 3
(2011): 491–506; Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife
of a Ukrainian Nationalist, 256–60; Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische
Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung
eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 139–331;
Golczewski, Die Kollaboration in der Ukraine, 171–75; Grzegorz Rossoliński-
Liebe, “Erinnerungslücke Holocaust: Die ukrainische Diaspora und der Genozid
an den Juden,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte Vol. 62, No. 3 (2014): 403–
404.
185. Grzegorz Motyka, “Polski policjant na Wołyniu,” Karta 24 (1998): 126;
Timothy Snyder, “The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943,” Past
and Present 179 (2003): 211–12.
186. Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 410–12.
187. Bruder, “Den ukrainischen Staat erkämpfen, 217–23; Philip Friedman,
“Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Nazi Occupation,” in Roads to
Extinction, ed. Philip Friedman, Ada June Friedman, Salo Baron (New York:
Jewish Publication Society, 1980), 187–89; Shmuel Spector, The Holocaust of
Volhynian Jews 1941–1944 (Jerusalem: Achva Press, 1990), 256; John-Paul
- 64 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402
The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Genocidal Nationalism
Himka, The Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Holocaust. Paper prepared for the
forty-irst national convention of the American Association for the Advancement
of Slavic Studies, Boston, 12–15 November 2009.
188. Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 303–10. For the discussion of this question
by Polish and Ukrainian historians, see Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Der
polnisch–ukrainische Historikerdiskurs über den polnisch-ukrainischen Konlikt
1943–1947,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas Vol. 57, No. 1 (2009):
54–85.
189. For the numbers, see Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka, 649–50; Katrin
Boeckh, Stalinismus in der Ukraine: Die Rekonstruktion des sowjetischen
Systems nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007), 366–
67. On the conlict see also Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency
in Western Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);
Jeffrey Burds, “AGENTURA: Soviet Informants’ Networks and the Ukrainian
Underground in Galicia, 1944–1948,” East European Politics and Societies
Vol. 11, No. 1 (1996): 89–130; Jeffrey Burds, “The Early Cold War in Soviet
West Ukraine, 1944‒1948,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European
Studies, Number 1505. Pittsburgh: The Center for Russian and East European
Studies, 2001.
190. James Mace Ward, Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the
Making of Fascist Slovakia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 199.
- 65 -
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies
htp://carlbeckpapers.pit.edu | DOI 10.5195/cbp.2015.204 | Number 2402