Step with me through the nightlife of wartime Odessa, where that now-typical growl of the diesel generator gnaws at the darkness, moving through the masonry, to find me comfortably collapsed into a seat — collapsed comfortably into some unknown drink. It had that gunmetal hint of unclean beer lines.
Sat opposite me, amidst the dregs of six Irish car bombs, are Sacha and Kirill. Both were in their early thirties. Both knew each other through the same football hooligan group. Both were attempting to enlist as soldiers.
My curiosity is piqued by the patent swastika on Kirill’s wrist. Though he claimed his Nazi sympathies were a thing of the past, and both men claimed to have left the football-hooligan world behind, I felt I may uncover some answers here.
“So, what can you tell me about Stepan Bandera?”
I had been in Ukraine for a little over a week and Bandera had become an enduring interview point. Vladimir Putin has justified the invasion of Ukraine by claiming to deNazify the country and has specifically targeted the “Banderites” as the enemy. But who was Stepan Bandera, and why does he matter?
Stepan Bandera was a nationalist leader in Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. For some time following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Bandera and his Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists collaborated with the Nazi regime, in the hopes of obtaining independence (from the Soviet Union). Once it had become clear that Germany had no intentions of granting such independence, Bandera and the OUN severed their ties and began fighting both powers through an underground terrorist network.
The promotion of blood-and-soil ethnonationalism, the collaboration with the Nazi regime, and the genocidal acts of OUN members, have implicated Bandera in the murder of some 200,000 Poles and Jews. From the ostentatious seven-metre-tall veneration of Bandera in Lviv, to the rechristening of roads in his name, to the (now-removed) posthumous award of hero of the nation conferred on Bandera by President Yushchenko — his image was unabating. Each of these actions were met with both domestic and international opposition. Yet the outward support by some segments of Ukrainian society have given Russian state media a field day in portraying the country as a hotbed of neo-fascists.
Bandera has seen a surge in support. The typically western (Ukrainian) confines of his support have spilled over and one poll of April 2022 saw 74% of respondents return positive views of Bandera.
Was there any truth to the Russian claim? Is fascism on the rise in Ukraine? What does Bandera represent? Surely, sat here with two ex-football hooligans and one ex-neo-Nazi, I would find out.
A fresh round of gunmetal pints sits before us. “He is like William Wallace, a national defender, but politically, I am neutral towards him.” So concluded Kirill’s commentary on Bandera.
Uneasy with the conflation of genocidal fascism and freedom fighting, I began to press further. “What about the massacre of the Poles and—”
“Look, guy, he killed invaders” interrupted Sacha. He continued: “We will kill them all, all the invaders.” Herein lay the legacy of Bandera, or at least the legacy I discovered.
“With friends and family, dead or dying, some fifty friends between Sacha and Kirill, Bandera has become a sort of national glue.”
Sacha and Kirills’ comments reflect an ordeal shared by almost everyone I interviewed. With friends and family, dead or dying, some fifty friends between Sacha and Kirill, Bandera has become a sort of national glue. A glue that binds individuals together in resistance to Russian repression, at the cost of glossing over the problematic elements of his legacy.
Everywhere I visited, similar answers were given. In Kyiv two friends, Dimitri and Andrei, both young postgraduates, told me a comparable story. We had been caught by the curfew. Stuck in Dimitri’s flat for the foreseeable future, we turned to the bottle and began talking. Faced with the concomitant tasks of thick accents, slurred words and a maelstrom of nattering voices, the audio transcriber has done a commendable job: “I think Stepan Bandera is still controversial person, but for most of people in Ukraine right now, he’s like a symbol, because we need any symbol for our culture [sic].”
The Israeli-Ukrainian historian and public activist Vyacheslav Likhachev has commented on this phenomenon of forgetting, arguing that “in terms of public awareness, the only thing important [about figures such as Bandera] is that they fought for Ukrainian independence, period.”
Nevertheless I can’t shake the disquiet I feel about the erasure of the darker elements of Bandera’s legacy. Not simply because his ideology is abhorrent. That feeling of disquiet persists not because of the statues. That feeling of disquiet persists not because I believe the graveside cluster of red-and-black Banderite flags spells the renewed threat of genocide. That feeling persists not because so-called Banderism as an ideology is widespread in Ukraine. It simply isn’t. Far-right parties have little traction. In 2014, no far-right party met the threshold requirements to be elected to the Ukrainian parliament, and currently far-right parties hold only one seat.
The disquiet persists because I fear this cultivation of national symbolism will soon morph into historical amnesia.
Sprawling across the gaudy armchairs of the Tref Cinema Café Odessa and clutching a mug of hot sweet tea between my fingers, which were covered in a film of sweat, I began to interview Anna, a half-Ukrainian half-Russian teacher of English. After listening to her rather impressive story — from potential partisan to refugee — I broached the topic of Bandera.
“When we were speaking about such national heroes…I had such an awkward feeling. They were not right, they were like monsters.” Anna continued: “Now, I understand this was not my true feeling…now it is time to look into their history, into their victories over the devils of their time, to learn it properly and to tell to my kids the true story [sic].” Anna further clarified, “I can’t say he was a hero”, but she stressed that “there’s so much information that needs to be learned in another way.”
Amidst the unyielding defiance against the “invaders” and “devils,” lies the perilous prospect of a sanitised version of Bandera’s legacy. Perilous not because I think ideological Banderism will, or does, have a foothold in Ukraine. Perilous because any modern incarnation of (postwar) Ukraine will have to eschew itself from the insidious Banderite legacy.
“If we are to uphold modern ideals and notions of progressiveness, then Bandera and his legacy must be reckoned with fully in postwar Ukraine.”
Russian propaganda channels are sugared by the unchecked emergence of Bandera as a national hero. Whilst broader and more public recognition of his complex legacy is not some silver bullet that can shift Russian public opinion, it will go some way to differentiating Ukraine (for undecided minds) from its avaricious neighbour. Furthermore, I believe postwar Ukraine should align itself with Europe. If we are to uphold modern ideals and notions of progressiveness, then Bandera and his legacy must be reckoned with fully in postwar Ukraine.
These suggestions are consciously tentative, for several reasons. The interviews I conducted can in no way speak for a whole nation — they cannot offer me the full picture on Bandera. More so, it is clear that extreme crisis has prompted the re-emergence of Bandera’s blood-and-soil symbolism — the ending of the war may just as swiftly prompt its demise. And thirdly, I am not convinced that Banderism poses any threat to people at large (fringe extremists may exist), either now or in the future.
So, there may be some truth in the Russian claim that Ukrainians are Banderites, but only in the loosest of senses; only in the sense that he partly stands for Ukrainian resistance. As to the claims that Ukrainians are neo-Nazis and ideologically pure Banderites — bullshit.
Step with me through the nightlife of wartime Odessa, where that now-typical growl of the diesel generator gnaws at the darkness, moving through the masonry, to find me comfortably collapsed into a seat — collapsed comfortably into some unknown drink. It had that gunmetal hint of unclean beer lines.
[names of interviewees have been changed to protect anonymity]