Who is Bender's story. Stepan Bandera - organizer and symbol of the Ukrainian national liberation movement

Stepan Andreevich Bandera(* January 1, 1909, Stary Ugrinov - † October 15, 1959, Munich) - Ukrainian political figure, ideologist of the Ukrainian nationalist movement of the twentieth century, chairman of the OUN-B Provod.
Father, Andrei Bandera, a Greek Catholic priest, was at that time the rector of Ugrinov Stary. Came from Stryi.
Mother, Miroslava Bandera (* 1890, Stary Ugrinov - † 1921), came from an old priestly family (she was the daughter of a Greek Catholic priest from Ugryniv Stary).
A detailed autobiography of Stepan Bandera has been preserved.
Childhood
House of the Bandera family in Stary Ugrinov. Stepan spent his childhood in Stary Ugrinov, in the house of his parents and grandfathers, growing up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. The fronts of the First World War moved through his native village four times in 1914-1915 and 1917. In the summer of 1917, residents of Galicia witnessed manifestations of national revolutionary shifts and revolution in the army of Tsarist Russia. In his autobiography, Stepan Bandera also mentions “the big difference between the Ukrainian and Moscow military units”
Since childhood, S. Bandera witnessed the revival and construction of the Ukrainian state. Since November 1918, his father was an ambassador to the parliament of the Western Ukrainian Ukrainian People's Republic - the Ukrainian National Rada in Stanislav and took an active part in the formation of public life in Kalushchyny.
In September or October 1919, Stepan Bandera entered the Ukrainian gymnasium in Stryi, where he studied until 1927. In third grade (from 1922) he becomes a member of Plast; in Stryi I was in the 5th plastun hut named after Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl, and after graduating from high school - in the 2nd hut of the senior plastuns “Detachment Red Kalina”.
In the spring of 1922, his mother died of tuberculosis of the throat.
Early life
In 1927-1928, Stepan Bandera was engaged in cultural, educational and economic activities in his native village (he worked in the Prosvita reading room, led an amateur theater group and choir, founded the sports society "Lug" and in the organization of a cooperative). At the same time, he led organizational and educational work through the underground educational institution in neighboring villages.
In September 1928, he moved to Lvov and here he enrolled in the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School, where he studied until 1933. Before the diploma exam, through political activity, he was arrested and imprisoned.
During his student years he took an active part in organized Ukrainian national life. He was a member of the Ukrainian society of polytechnic students “Osnova” and a member of the board of the Circle of Field Science Students. For some time he worked in the bureau of the Agricultural Owner society, which was engaged in the development of agriculture in Western Ukrainian lands. With the Prosvita society, he traveled on Sundays and holidays to nearby villages in the Lviv region with reports and to help organize other events. In the field of youth and sports organizations he was active primarily in Plast, as a member of the 2nd kuren of senior plastuns “Team Red Kalina”, in the Ukrainian Student Sports Club (USSC), and for some time also in the societies “Falcon-Father” and “meadow” in Lviv. He was involved in running, swimming, skiing, and traveling. In his free time, he enjoyed playing chess, and also sang in the choir and played the guitar and mandolin. He did not smoke or drink alcohol.
Activities in the OUN 1932-33
In 1932-1933 he served as deputy regional conductor, and in mid-1933 he was appointed regional conductor of the OUN and regional commandant of the UVO at the ZUZ. In July 1932, Bandera, with several other delegates from the OUN Committee in Western Ukraine, participated in the OUN Conference in Prague (the so-called Vienna Conference, which was the most important gathering of the OUN after the founding congress). In 1933 he participated in conferences in Berlin and Gdansk.
Under the leadership of Bandera, the OUN moved away from expropriation actions and began a series of punitive actions against representatives of the Polish occupation authorities. During this period, OUN members committed three political murders that received significant resonance - the school curator Gadomsky, accused of the destruction of Ukrainian schools and Polonization by the Poles, the worker was carried out by the Russian Bolsheviks as a protest against the Holodomor in Ukraine and the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs Peratsky, for whom the Polish authorities carried out bloody actions of “pacification” (Pacification) Ukrainian. Stepan Bandera was in charge of the assassination attempts on Mailov and Peratsky.
Conclusions
In June 1934 he was imprisoned by the Polish police and was under investigation in prisons in Lvov, Krakow and Warsaw until the end of 1935. At the end of 1935 and the beginning of 1936, a trial took place before the district court in Warsaw, in which Bandera, along with 11 other defendants, was tried for belonging to the OUN and for organizing the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky. Bandera was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment. After that, he was imprisoned in the "wity Krzy" ("Holy Cross") prisons in the Kielce circle, in the Wronki circle of Poznań and in Berestia nad Bug until September 1939. On September 13, when the situation of the Polish troops in that section became critical, the prison administration and guards hastily evacuated and the prisoners were released.
In the first half of January 1940, Bandera arrived in Italy. I was in Rome, where the OUN village was led by prof. E. Onatsky. There he met his brother Alexander, who lived in Rome from 1933-1934, studied there and did a doctorate in political-economic sciences, got married and worked in our local village.
The tragic fate of Stepan Bandera's relatives
Temple in Krakow, where Bandera got married Church of St. Norbert in Krakow, where Bandera got married With the beginning of the occupation of Ukraine by Nazi troops, one of the resistance units was led by Stepan’s younger brother, Bogdan. He died in 1942 or 1943.
On July 5, 1941, Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow. Yaroslav’s wife and three-month-old daughter Natasha followed him to Berlin to be close to her husband. Bandera was kept first in prison, then in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept until 1944. The brothers Alexander (Doctor of Political Economy) and Vasily (graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy of Lvov University) were killed by Polish capos in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.
Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera, Stefan's father, was killed by the Soviet authorities. Sisters Oksana and Martha-Maria were arrested in 1941 and exiled to Siberia (Krasnoyarsk Territory). The leadership of the USSR did not allow them to return to Ukraine for decades - Martha-Maria Bandera died in a foreign land in 1982, and the year-old Oksana Bandera returned to her homeland only in 1989 after almost 50 years of living in Siberia. She died on December 24, 2008.
Another sister, Vladimir, was in Soviet forced labor camps from 1946 to 1956.
OUN Bandera
After the death of Yevgeny Konovalets, according to the will, the OUN Wires were headed by Colonel Andrei Melnik, Konovalets’ comrade-in-arms from the time of the UPR struggle and joint work in the ranks of the UVO. In August 1939, the second Great Gathering of Ukrainian Nationalists took place in Rome, which officially approved Andrei Melnik as head of the OUN. However, a group of young nationalists led by Stepan Bandera, who, after the occupation of Poland by Germany, returned from prison and was cut off from the activities of the Organization, in the form of an ultimatum began to seek from the OUN and its chairman, Colonel Andrei Melnik, a change in the tactics of the OUN, as well as the removal from the PUN of several of its members . The conflict took on acute forms and led to a split. A cell of Bandera departed from the OUN, which in February 1940 created the “Revolutionary Wire of the OUN” and took the name OUN-R (later OUN-B; OUN-SD).
A year later, the Revolutionary Provod convened the Second Great Meeting of the OUN, at which Stepan Bandera was unanimously elected chairman of the Provod. Under his leadership, the OUN-B becomes a vibrant revolutionary organization. She develops an organizational network in her native lands, creates OUN-B marching groups from the membership that was abroad, and, in agreement with German military circles committed to the Ukrainian cause, creates a Ukrainian legion and organizes the liberation struggle, together with other peoples enslaved by Moscow.
Before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, Bandera initiated the creation of the Ukrainian National Committee to consolidate Ukrainian political forces in the fight for statehood.
The decision of the Organization Wire on June 30, 1941 proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian State in Lviv. However, Hitler instructed his police to immediately liquidate this “conspiracy of Ukrainian independentists”; the Germans arrested Bandera just a few days after the act of proclaiming the revival of the Ukrainian State - July 5, 1941. The German prisoner was Stepan Bandera in December 1944. Then he and several other leading members of the OUN were released from conclusions, trying to join the OUN-B and UPA to their forces as an ally against Moscow. Now Stepan Bandera rejected the German proposal.
At the Regional Broad Meeting of the OUN-B Wire on Ukrainian lands in February 1945, which was interpreted as part of the Great Gathering of the OUN-B, a new Bureau of the OUN-B Wire was elected in the following composition: Bandera, Shukhevych, Stetsko. This choice was confirmed by the Conference of the OUN-B in 1947, and then Stepan Bandera again became the Chairman of the Wire of the entire OUN-B. As the Guide of the OUN-B, Bandera in the post-war period decides to continue the armed struggle against Moscow. He intensively organizes regional communications and OUN-B combat groups, which maintain contact with the Territory constantly until his death.
In 1948, an opposition was formed in the Foreign parts of the OUN-B, which Stepan Bandera overthrew on the ideological, organizational and political plane.
In December 1950, Bandera resigned from the post of Chairman of the OUN-B ZCH Wire. On August 22, 1952, he also resigned from the post of head of the wire of the entire OUN-B. But this decision of his was not, however, accepted by any competent institution of the OUN-B, and Bandera subsequently remained the Guide of the OUN-B until his death in 1959.
1955, the 5th Conference of the OUN-B AF was held, which re-elected Stepan Bandera as the Chairman of the OUN-B AF Conduct, and since then the work of the Organization has been intensively carried out again.
Post-war years
The post-war years were tense for the family, because the Soviet secret services were hunting not only for the leader of the national movement, but also for his children. For example, before 1948 the family changed their place of residence six times: Berlin, Innsbruck, Seefeld, Munich, Hildesheim, Starnberg. Finally, due to the need to give their daughter a good education, the family finally moved to the German city of Munich (Bavaria) in 1954. Parents tried to hide the importance of her father's person from Natalya, so as not to expose the girl to danger. Memories of Natalya, daughter of Stepan Bandera, about that time:
It was in Munich that Stepan Bandera spent the last years of his life, living under a passport in the name Stefan Popel. According to one version, the passport was left to him from Lvov chess player Stefan Popel, who left Ukraine in 1944, at the beginning. In the 1950s he lived in Paris, and in 1956 he moved to the USA.
Murder
The grave of Stepan Bandera in Munich on October 15, 1959 in the entrance of the house on Kreitmayr street, 7 (Kreittmayrstrae), in Munich at 13:05 they found Stepan Bandera, still alive and covered in blood. A medical examination showed that the cause of death was poison. Bogdan Stashinsky, using a special pistol, shot Stepan Bandera in the face with a stream of potassium cyanide solution. Two years later, on November 17, 1961, the German judiciary announced that Bogdan Stashinsky was the killer of Stepan Bandera on the orders of Shelepin and Khrushchev.
After a detailed investigation against the killer, the so-called. “Stashinsky's trial” from October 8 to October 15, 1962 The verdict was announced on October 19 - the killer was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
The German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe confirmed that the main accused in the murder of Bandera was the Soviet government in Moscow. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, published in the issue of December 6, 2005, former chairman of the USSR KGB Vladimir Kryuchkov admitted that “The murder of Stepan Bandera was one of the last to eliminate undesirable elements by the KGB through violent methods.”
On October 20, 1959, Stepan Bandera was buried at the Munich Waldfriedhof cemetery on field 43.
Announcement in the newspaper "SVOBODA" about the death of S. Bandera Postage stamp for the 100th anniversary of his birth The surname "Bandera" became one of the symbols of the Ukrainian national liberation movement of the 20th century. After the declaration of independence, many youth, political and public organizations were named in his honor. One of the informal names of Lviv is "Banderstadt" those. "City of Bandera" A music festival is held in Volyn "Banderstat".
In 1995, director Oles Yanchuk made the film “Atentat – Autumn Murder in Munich” about the post-war fate of Stepan Bandera and the UPA units.
In the “Great Ukrainians” project, the conductor of the Ukrainian liberation movement took third place. The project ended in a loud scandal: Bandera, represented by Vakhtang Kipiani, was among the voting leaders, but became third, while in support of the future winner Yaroslav the Wise, represented by Dmitry Tabachnik, according to some reports, on the last day of voting more than 100 SMS were received from 80 numbers every minute. The project's editor-in-chief, Vakhtang Kipiani, said that the voting results were falsified, but the project's producer, Yegor Benkendorf, disputed this. The presenter of the project, Anna Gomonai, expressed her conviction that an official investigation into this case should be conducted:
On January 1, 2009, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian state postal enterprise Ukrposhta issued a commemorative envelope, as well as a postage stamp, authored by Vasily Vasilenko. On the front side of the envelope there is an image of Stepan Bandera, under which is the logo of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (topped with the state flag of Ukraine). Below the image there is the inscription “100 years since birth” and a facsimile of the personal signature of the OUN conductor.
2009 was proclaimed in Ternopil region as the “Year of Stepan Bandera”.
Monuments
Monument to Stepan Bandera in Ternopil. Monument to Stepan Bandera in Berezhany.

There are monuments to Stepan Bandera in Lviv (see Monument to Stepan Bandera in Lviv), Ternopil (see Monument to Stepan Bandera in Ternopil), Ivano-Frankivsk, Drohobych, Terebovlya, Berezhany, Buchach, Dublyany, Mykytyntsi, Sambir, Stryi, Boryslav, Zalishchyky, Chervonograd, Mostyski, the villages of Kozovka, Verbov, Grabovka and Sredniy Berezov. In the city of Turka in 2009, a pedestal was laid for the monument to Stepan Bandera.
Museums
There are 5 Stepan Bandera museums in the world:
Streets
An avenue in Ternopil and streets in Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chervonograd, Drohobych, Stryi, Dolyna, Kalush, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Horodenka and other settlements are named in honor of Stepan Bandera.
Assignment and deprivation of the title “Hero of Ukraine”
January 20, 2010 “for the invincibility of the spirit in defending the national idea, heroism and self-sacrifice in the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state”, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded S. Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine with the award of the Order of the State (posthumously). On January 22, at the celebrations on the occasion of Unity Day at the National Opera, the head of state noted that “millions of Ukrainians have been waiting for this for many years.” Those present at the celebrations greeted the award while standing. The grandson of the OUN conductor, also named Stepan Bandera, came out to receive the award.
Banner at the Karpaty - Shakhtar match in Lviv with a portrait of the figure and the inscription “Bandera is our hero” (April 2010) This decision caused a mixed reaction both in Ukraine and abroad:
Reaction to Ukraine
International reaction
Cancel
On April 2, 2010, the Donetsk District Administrative Court declared illegal and canceled the Decree of President Viktor Yushchenko awarding Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine. The court declared the said Decree illegal and subject to repeal, since such a title can only be awarded to citizens of the state; acquiring Ukrainian citizenship has been possible since 1991; persons who died before this year cannot be citizens of Ukraine; Stepan Bandera died in 1959, so he is not a citizen of Ukraine, through which he cannot be awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine”.
On April 12, 2010, Viktor Yushchenko filed an appeal against the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court of April 2, 2010, citing the fact that “the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court in the case does not meet the requirements of the current legislation of Ukraine, and therefore should be canceled.”
Appeals were also filed by other persons.
On June 23, 2010, the Donetsk Administrative Court of Appeal accepted the appeals and dismissed them; The decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court is left unchanged. The decision of the appellate court could have been appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine within one month, but this was not done.
On January 12, 2011, the press service of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych reported that:
On January 13, 2011, the lawyer representing the interests of Stepan Bandera (junior) in Ukraine, Roman Orekhov, said that there is now no legal basis to assert that the historical figures Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych have been finally deprived of the title of Hero of Ukraine, awarded by decree of President Yushchenko.
The lawyer also suggested that the presidential administration's message on January 12, which he called a "provocation," was of a political nature and was intended for interested circles in Russia, as well as Russian reporters who came to Ukraine to cover the progress of the court case.
These decisions caused discussions in society, including regarding the legal consequences of these court decisions.
Other honorary titles
In response to the deprivation of the title “Hero of Ukraine,” a number of cities in western Ukraine awarded Stepan Bandera the title of honorary citizen. So, on March 16, 2010 he received the title “Honorary Citizen of the City of Khust”, on April 30 - “Honorary Citizen of the City of Ternopil”, on May 6 - “Honorary Citizen of the City of Ivano-Frankivsk”, on May 7 - “Honorary Citizen of the City of Lviv”, on August 21 - “Honorary Citizen of the City of Dolina”, December 17 – “Honorary Citizen of the City of Lutsk”, December 29 – “Honorary Citizen of the City of Chervonograd”, January 13, 2011 – “Honorary Citizen of the City of Terebovlya”, January 18 – “Honorary Citizen of the City of Truskavets” and “Honorary citizen of Radekhov”, January 20 – “Honorary citizen of the city of Sokal” and “Honorary citizen of the city of Stebnik”, January 24 – “Honorary citizen of the city of Zhovkva”, February 16 – “Honorary citizen of the Yavoriv region”.

The name of Stepan Bandera is now identical to the concept of fascism for many, along with Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini. But for many, Stepan Bandera is a symbol of the struggle for independence, sovereignty and unity of Ukraine, whose cult of personality is sacredly revered, and whose nationalist ideas still excite minds and are a cause of concern for the whole world. Stepan Bandera, a native of the kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in Austria-Hungary, is the theorist and ideologist of all Ukrainian nationalism. He was born into the family of a Greek Catholic priest and was distinguished by religious fanaticism and, at the same time, obedience. He is the organizer of a number of terrorist acts, involved in the massacres of the Polish civilian population during, since 1927 - a member of the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), since 1933 - a member of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). He was also the regional guide of the OUN in Western Ukrainian lands.

Life of Stepan Bandera (01/1/1909-10/15/1959)

Stepan Bandera is the son of a priest, brought up in the spirit of Ukrainian nationalism, back in 1917 - 1920. commanded various combat units that fought against communism. He joined the Nationalist Youth Union in 1922. And in 1928 he became a student at the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School, enrolling in the Faculty of Agronomy. A year later, in 1929, he underwent training at an Italian school for saboteurs. In the same year he became a member of the OUN and soon led the radical group of this organization. He organized the murders of his political opponents, and also led robberies of post offices and postal trains. He also personally organized the murders of Tadeusz Gołówko (deputy of the Polish Sejm), Yemelyan Chekhovsky (Lviv police commissioner), Andrei Mailov (secretary of the Soviet consulate in Lviv). In 1939, Bandera, like many other nationalists, fled to Poland. This was due to the annexation of Western Ukraine to the Soviet Union. In occupied Poland, the Nazis released all members of the OUN, as they saw them as allies in the upcoming war with the Soviet Union. In the same year, having received freedom from the Germans, Bandera rebelled against Melnik, the leader of the OUN, whom he considered an unsuitable leader due to his lack of initiative.

During the war

On June 30, 1941, on behalf of Bandera, Y. Stetsko proclaimed the creation of Ukraine as a power. At the same time, Stepan’s supporters in Lviv staged pogroms, in which more than three thousand people died, after which Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo, where he signed an agreement to cooperate, and then called on all true Ukrainian people to help the Germans in everything and defeat Moscow. However, despite agreeing to cooperate, he was arrested again in September. He was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp, where he was kept in quite decent conditions. Bandera was one of the initiators of the creation of the UPA (10/14/42), at the head of which he put, who replaced D. Klyachkivsky in this post. The goal of the UPA was, in general, the same - the struggle for the independence of Ukraine. But still, the OUN leaders did not recommend fighting the Germans, seeing them as allies. In 1943, the OUN decided at a meeting with the German authorities to jointly fight against partisanship. So it was decided that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army would protect the railways from partisans and support any initiatives of the German authorities in the already occupied territories. Germany, in return, supplied Bandera's army with weapons. In 1944, with a new round of cooperation proposed by Himmler, Bandera was released and began training sabotage troops in Krakow as part of the 202nd Abwehr team. In February 1945, Stepan Bandera took over as leader of the OUN. By the way, he did not leave this post until his death.

After the War

After the end of the war, during 1946 and 1947, Bandera had to hide from the authorities, as he fell into the zone of American occupation of Germany. Stepan had to live illegally until the early 1950s, when he settled in Munich, where he could live almost legally. Four years later, in 1954, his wife and children joined him in Munich. By this time, the Americans were no longer pursuing Bandera, leaving him alone, but the intelligence agents of the Soviet Union still continued the hunt and did not give up hope of eliminating the leader of the OUN UPA. The OUN allocated powerful security to Bandera, who, collaborating with the German criminal police, saved their leader’s life several times by preventing attempts on his life. But in 1959, the Security Council of the OUN (b) nevertheless found out that the murder of Bandera had already been planned and this plan could be carried out at any time. He was offered, for the sake of safety, to leave Munich. At first he refused, but then he nevertheless entrusted the preparations for his departure to Stepan “Mechnik,” the head of intelligence of the OUN ZCH.

Murder of Stepan Bandera

On October 15, 1959, OUN leader Stepan got ready to go home for lunch. Together with his secretary, he went to the market, where he made a few purchases, then he left the secretary and went home alone. As always, security was waiting for him near the house. Leaving his car in the garage, Bandera opened the door to the entrance to the house where he lived with his family and went inside alone. The killer, who had been watching him for several months, was already waiting for him at the entrance. The killer, KGB agent - Bogdan Stashinsky - held in his hand the murder weapon - a pistol-syringe filled with potassium cyanide hidden in a newspaper tube wrapped. When Bandera went up to the third floor, he ran into Stashinsky and recognized him as the man he had seen in church that morning. “What are you doing here?” - he asked a logical question. Without answering, Stashinsky raised his hand with the newspaper forward and fired a shot in the face. The pop from the shot was almost inaudible, but the neighbors reacted to Bandera’s scream. Under the influence of potassium cyanide, the OUN leader slowly sank onto the steps, but Stashinsky was no longer nearby... Stepan Bandera died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness.

Monument to Stepan Bandera

At the moment, there are several monuments to the OUN leader Stepan Bandera, and all of them are concentrated in Western Ukraine, or more precisely, in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Ternopil regions. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the monument was erected for the centenary of Stepan Bandera in 2009, on January 1st. In Kolomyia the monument was erected in 1991, on August 18, in Gorodenka - in 2008, on November 30. It is interesting that the monument to Bandera in his small homeland, in Stary Ugrinov, was blown up by unknown people twice. Monuments to the OUN leader were also erected in Sambir, Stary Sambir, Lviv, Buchach, Terebovlya, Kremenets, Truskavets, Zalishchiki and many other settlements.

Performance evaluation

Now it is quite difficult to fully assess the activities and personality of the leader of the OUN, Stepan Bandera, because there is still no complete biography of him. It is even more difficult to evaluate books about Ukrainian nationalism because they were written exclusively by Ukrainian nationalists. People who were not drawn into the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism were never involved in researching his activities. Some historians accuse Bandera’s biographers of sparingly listing facts from his life, saying that he was an obedient son, a fanatically pious person, that he was a good friend, and talking rather dryly about his “heroism.” , fearing to make a cult of personality out of this controversial figure. Only one thing is clear: for some, Stepan Bandera is a ruthless killer of thousands and thousands of people, and for others, he is a fighter for the independence of his own country. And for such a lofty goal, they say, one cannot disdain any means, including cooperation with the fascists and the extermination of civilians, clearing a place on Polish soil in order to then create an independent state of Ukraine there and settle only Ukrainians. For some, Bandera is a romantic utopian, for others a dictator and tyrant, who from childhood prepared himself for a great mission. In a word, and you can’t argue with this – he is a very controversial figure.

about the personality of Stepan Bandera, slandered by Soviet history

In the summer of 2007, my wife and I took a trip to the city of Lviv. We were returning home from Crimea, and decided to drive through Lvov, and further, to Brest, Minsk...

It’s interesting to see - what kind of Western Ukraine is it?

Beyond Ternopil, on the slopes overgrown with thick grass and large trees, villages are scattered, solid, prosperous. Every village has a mandatory church, or even two. On the slopes there are herds of cows, sheep, very large herds. On one slope we saw a cemetery: a chapel and long neat rows of low white stone crosses. We stopped. I decided that this was a burial place from the First World War, but it turned out that soldiers of the UPA, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, from the Galicia division, who died in the battle near Brody during the Second World War, were buried here...
History... our history, says different things about the participants in these events: traitors, Banderaites, nationalists... Here, among these graves, you understand something else: these people, no matter how you treat them, fought for the freedom of Ukraine. Freedom, as they understood it... My mother’s brother, my uncle Grigory, a tank driver, died near the city of Stanislav, now Ivano-Frankivsk, perhaps in battles with these same “Banderaites,” but I don’t dare to quit there is a stone in them. They fought for Ukraine, and in this war they gave up the most precious thing - their lives. “The fighters are sleeping, they have said their thing, and they are forever right!”

Stepan Bandera... This person has been slandered in history, just like Simon Petlyura - vilely, unfairly and undeservedly. They always talk about Bandera with the prefix “traitor,” although he never betrayed anyone. Opposed Soviet power? Yes, he performed! But he didn’t swear allegiance to her, she was as alien to him as the German fascist was to any Soviet person of those years. Once, the author of these lines argued with a Kyiv editor, and when asked who Bandera betrayed, the opponent, without any embarrassment, said: he betrayed Melnik. (Melnik is one of the leaders of the OUN.) Even such an insignificant episode was taken into account by falsifiers of history!

Some authors put Stepan Bandera on the same level as such an odious personality as General Vlasov. But Vlasov, we note, was treated kindly by the Soviet government, had considerable privileges, and most importantly, he swore allegiance to this power. However, when his life was threatened, he easily broke his oath and went over to the side of the enemy. In the Novgorod forests, when his army was surrounded and starving soldiers ate tree bark and fought for a piece of fallen horse meat, a cow was kept at the headquarters for Vlasov so that his Soviet Excellency could eat milk and eat cutlets. This fact is from a TV show about Vlasov; I didn’t remember the name, didn’t write it down, didn’t take screenshots. If the reader believes it, he will believe it; if he doesn’t, he won’t.

Stepan Bandera was sentenced to death by a Polish court, spent many days on death row, but did not bow to the enemy. What he had to experience “with a noose around his neck”, what psychological and mental torment he went through - only God knows. He did not pose as a hero, was not proud of his prison past, did not boast of his suffering, and was meanly killed from around the corner by a Russian executioner from the NKVD, Stashinsky. Bandera was a real, unbending fighter for the independence of Ukraine. It is enough to note that the armed formations of the OUN and UPA he led fought against the Polish oppressors, and against the Nazis, and against the Red Army. The valiant army of General Vlasov, let us note between the lines, never acted against the Wehrmacht. Today, by the way, there are still alive those Ukrainians who experienced first-hand the merciless, truly bestial, inhuman cruelty of the Soviet Army and especially the NKVD troops in the western regions of Ukraine. The Krasnopogonniki used truly savage methods in the fight against the Ukrainian insurgent movement: detachments of thugs from the NKVD dressed in the uniform of UPA fighters and committed atrocities in Western Ukraine. Which Soviet propaganda later attributed to the “Banderaites.” It is not surprising that the fight against the occupiers continued until the mid-fifties. The occupiers were everyone who came to these lands without an invitation: Poles, Germans, and Russians. Alas, this is so! And why were this people and its heroes so defamed? Just because they wanted to live on their own land according to their own laws?.. “Your own house has its own truth!” said the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko a hundred years before these events.

Stepan Bandera, like Petlyura, is accused of anti-Semitism - and there is no worse crime in the world. Was Bandera an anti-Semite?

“One of the most serious accusations against Bandera is related to the so-called Lviv massacre. It happened in the same 1941, June 30, when Bandera proclaimed the restoration of the Ukrainian state. Information about this event is conflicting. The number of victims is estimated from 3 to 10 thousand. The absolute majority were Jews, as well as communists. “Exactly the same thing happened there as in the Baltics and in the eastern part of Poland, which the Red Army occupied in September 1939. Nowadays in Poland people often try to forget this, but in the early days of the German occupation, Poles joined the ranks of the police in large numbers. The reason was the impression left by almost two years of Soviet occupation,” says historian Jēkabsons. It is difficult to say to what extent the massacre was the Ukrainians’ own initiative, and to what extent it was an event inspired by the Germans. We must remember that a week before this, security officers killed 4,000 political prisoners, mainly Ukrainian nationalists, in Lvov. When the corpses of the victims were exhumed, the picture was similar to that in the courtyard of the Riga Central Prison in the July days of 1941. In addition, the Germans spread rumors that it was the “Jewish Bolsheviks” who committed atrocities against prisoners. This provoked loved ones to thirst for revenge. The consequences were Jewish pogroms. Obviously, the OUN also participated in them. However, anti-Semitism, which is mentioned at times, was not the basis of the ideology of the OUN and UPA. And Bandera himself did not directly take part in the Lviv massacre, and there is no information that he gave any orders there. “If he was somehow guilty of the Lvov events, it was only because he promoted Ukrainian national ideas, to a certain extent inciting people to take revenge,” explains Jēkabsons. There is no consensus among historians in assessing the attitude of Bandera’s followers towards Jews. But it is a fact that Jews later fought in the ranks of the UPA both as militants and as commanders, and especially as medical personnel. It is noteworthy that in the early 50s, when Israel and the Zionists were declared enemies of the USSR, Soviet propaganda broadcast that the UPA and the Zionists were going hand in hand.”

Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary in Galicia (modern Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the family of a priest. In 1919, Stepan Bandera entered a gymnasium in the city of Striy near Lvov. In 1920 Poland occupied Western Ukraine, and training took place under the supervision of Polish authorities. In 1922, Bandera became a member of the Nationalist Youth Union of Ukraine, and in 1928 he entered the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School with a degree in agronomist.

The situation in western Ukraine was aggravated by repression and terror on the part of the Polish authorities, caused by the disobedience of the Ukrainian population of Galicia and other regions. Thousands of Ukrainians were thrown into prisons and a concentration camp in the Kartuz region (the village of Bereza). In the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded by Yevgeny Konovalets back in 1920, they naturally could not help but notice Stepan Bandera, who was deeply outraged by the actions of pan-Poland, and since 1929 he has led the radical wing of the OUN youth organization. In the early 1930s, Bandera became deputy head of the regional leadership of the OUN. His name is associated with attacks on postal trains, expropriations and robberies of post offices and banks, murders of political opponents and enemies of the national movement of Ukraine.

For the organization, preparation, assassination attempt and liquidation of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peracki, he, along with other organizers of the terrorist attack, was sentenced to capital punishment at the Warsaw trial in 1936. However, the death penalty is subsequently replaced by life imprisonment.

Bandera was imprisoned until the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 13, 1939, thanks to the retreat of parts of the Polish army and the escape of prison guards, he was released and first sent to Lviv, which by that time was already occupied by Soviet troops, and then, illegally crossing the Soviet-German border, to Krakow, Vienna and Rome to coordinate further plans of the OUN. But during the negotiations, serious disagreements arose between Bandera and Melnik.

Bandera formed armed groups from his supporters and on June 30, 1941, at a rally of thousands in Lvov, he proclaimed the act of independence of Ukraine. Bandera's closest ally Yaroslav Stetsko becomes the head of government of the newly created national Ukrainian cabinet of ministers.

Following this, at the beginning of July, in the zone of Soviet occupation, the NKVD shot Stepan's father Andrei Bandera. Almost all of Bandera’s close relatives were transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

However, the reaction from the fascist authorities followed immediately - already in early July, Bandera and Stetsko were arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Berlin, where they were asked to publicly renounce the ideas of a national Ukrainian state and annul the act of independence of Ukraine of June 30.

In the fall of 1941, the Melnikites also tried to proclaim Ukraine independent, but they suffered the same fate as the Banderaites. Most of their leaders were shot by the Gestapo in early 1942.

The atrocities of the fascist invaders on the territory of Ukraine led to more and more people joining partisan detachments to fight the enemy. In the fall of 1942, Bandera’s supporters called for the unification of the scattered armed detachments of Melnik’s followers and other partisan associations of Ukraine under the command of Roman Shukhevych, the former leader of the OUN Nachtigal battalion. On the basis of the OUN, a new paramilitary organization is formed - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The national composition of the UPA was quite heterogeneous (representatives of the Transcaucasian peoples, Kazakhs, Tatars, etc., who found themselves in the German-occupied territories of Ukraine, joined the rebels), and the number of the UPA reached, according to various estimates, up to 100 thousand people. A fierce armed struggle took place between the UPA and the fascist occupiers, red partisans and units of the Polish Home Army in Galicia, Volyn, Kholmshchyna, Polesie

All this time, from the autumn of 1941 to the middle of the second half of 1944, Stepan Bandera was in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen

After the expulsion of the German invaders from the territory of Ukraine by Soviet troops in 1944, the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists entered a new phase - the war against the Soviet Army, which lasted until the mid-50s
On October 15, 1959, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

Our time reveals many secrets, many yesterday's heroes become demons, and vice versa: recent enemies become the pride and conscience of the nation, the heroes of Russia. Like, for example, Emperor Nicholas the Bloody, it is not clear for what merits he became a saint overnight, or General Denikin, whose hands are up to his elbows in the blood of the Russian people, or Kolchak, a traitor, a traitor recruited by the British General Staff. And only Simon Petliura and Stepan Bandera, defamed by “historians” and slandered by history, remained irreconcilable enemies for Russia. Because they are Ukrainians, and for a Russian person there is no more implacable enemy than the Ukrainian, whom they hypocritically call brother.

This is especially visible today, in the light of the aggression unleashed by the Russian “brothers” in the eastern regions of Ukraine.

November 2014

Stepan Bandera is one of the most controversial figures in modern history. His entire life and work are filled with contradictory facts.
Some consider him a national hero and fighter for justice, others consider him a fascist and traitor capable of atrocities. Information about his nationality is also ambiguous. So who was Stepan Bandera by origin?

Born in Austria-Hungary

Stepan Bandera was born in the Galician village of Stary Ugrinov, located on the territory of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a Greek Catholic clergyman. Mother came from the family of a Greek Catholic priest.
The head of the family was a staunch Ukrainian nationalist and raised his children in the same spirit. Bandera often had guests in her house - relatives and acquaintances who took an active part in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia.
As Stepan Bandera later wrote in his autobiography, he spent his childhood “in the house of his parents and grandfathers, grew up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and living national-cultural, political and social interests. There was a large library at home, and active participants in the Ukrainian national life of Galicia often came together.”

True patriot of Ukraine

Beginning his active career, Bandera positioned himself as a true patriot of Ukraine. The Ukrainians who joined him, who shared his views on the political future of their country, were confident that they were acting under the leadership of a compatriot. For the people, Stepan Bandera was Ukrainian by origin. Hence the famous slogans, imbued with undisguised Nazism: “Ukraine is only for Ukrainians!”, “Equality only for Ukrainians!”
The nationalist Bandera sought to seize power as soon as possible and become the head of the Ukrainian state. His goal was to demonstrate his importance to the population. For this purpose, on June 30, 1941, the “Act of Revival of the Ukrainian State” was created. The document reflected the desire for independence from the Moscow occupation, cooperation with the allied German army and the fight for the freedom and well-being of true Ukrainians: “Let the Ukrainian sovereign conciliar power live! Let the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists live! (an organization banned in the Russian Federation) Let the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian People, Stepan Bandera, live! Glory to Ukraine!”

German citizenship

This fact is not widely known, but Stepan (Stefan) Bandera lived his entire life with a German passport. He had no territorial relationship to Ukraine - neither to Petliura nor to pre-war Soviet Ukraine - for the liberation of which he supposedly fought fiercely.
An interesting fact is that German citizenship played a decisive role in the life of the leader of the Ukrainian Nazis. It was because of him that in 2011, President Viktor Yushchenko’s decision to award Badner the title of Hero of Ukraine was declared invalid. In accordance with Ukrainian legislation, the title of Hero can only be given to a citizen of Ukraine, and Stefan Bandera was a “European” from birth and died before the emergence of modern Ukraine, whose leadership could well have issued him a passport.

Purebred Jew

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, the ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism was a purebred Jew by origin. Research by the Dutch historian Borbala Obrushanski, who studied the biography of Bandera for three years, says that Stefan Bandera is a baptized Jew, a Uniate.
He came from a family of Jews baptized into the Uniate faith (converts). Father Adrian Bandera is a Greek Catholic from the middle-class family of Moishe and Rosalia (nee Beletskaya, Polish Jewish by nationality) Bander. The mother of the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, Miroslava Glodzinskaya, is also a Polish Jew.
The meaning of the surname Bandera is explained quite simply. Modern Ukrainian nationalists translate it as “banner,” but in Yiddish it means “den.” It has nothing to do with Slavic or Ukrainian surnames. This is a tramp nickname for a woman who owned a brothel. Such women were called “banders” in Ukraine.
Stepan Bandera's Jewish origin is also indicated by his physical characteristics: low stature, Western Asian facial features, raised wings of the nose, a strongly recessed lower jaw, a triangular skull shape, and a roller-shaped lower eyelid.
Bandera himself carefully hid his Jewish nationality all his life, including with the help of bestial, fierce anti-Semitism. This denial of his origins cost his fellow tribesmen dearly. According to researchers, Stepan Bandera and his devoted Nazis killed from 850 thousand to a million innocent Jews.

BANDERA, STEPAN ANDREEVICH(1909–1959) – leader of the Ukrainian national liberation movement in the first half and mid-20th century.

Born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Ugryniv Stary in Galicia (modern Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine), which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My father received a theological education at Lviv University and served as a priest in the Greek Catholic Church. According to the recollections of Stepan Bandera himself, an atmosphere of national patriotism and the revival of Ukrainian culture reigned in their house. Representatives of the intelligentsia, Ukrainian business circles, and public figures often gathered at my father’s place. In 1918–1920, Andrei Bandera was a deputy of the Rada of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic.

In 1919, Stepan Bandera entered a gymnasium in the city of Striy near Lvov. In 1920 Poland occupied Western Ukraine, and training took place under the supervision of Polish authorities.

In 1921, Stepan’s mother, Miroslava Bandera, died of tuberculosis.

In 1922, Bandera became a member of the Nationalist Youth Union of Ukraine, and in 1928 he entered the Lviv Higher Polytechnic School with a degree in agronomist.

Stepan Bandera was never able to defend his thesis at Lvov University - in 1934, for organizing, preparing, assassinating and liquidating the Minister of Internal Affairs of Poland Bronislaw Peratsky, he, along with other organizers of the terrorist attack, was sentenced to capital punishment at the Warsaw trial in 1936. However, the death penalty is subsequently replaced by life imprisonment.

In 1938, the head of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, died at the hands of a Soviet intelligence officer, future Minister of State Security Pavel Sudoplatov. At a congress in Rome in August 1939, one of the leaders of the national movement of Ukraine, Colonel Andrei Melnik, was elected his successor in the OUN.

Meanwhile, Bandera was imprisoned until the beginning of World War II, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. On September 13, 1939, thanks to the retreat of parts of the Polish army and the escape of prison guards, he was released and first went to Lvov, which by that time it was already occupied by Soviet troops, and then, illegally crossing the Soviet-German border, to Krakow, Vienna and Rome to coordinate further plans of the OUN. But during the negotiations, serious disagreements arose between Bandera and Melnik.

At the same time, widespread arrests of supporters of Stepan Bender were taking place in Volyn and Galicia. Suspicions of betrayal fall on Melnik and his people. Bandera returned to Krakow, and in February 1940 his supporters at a conference accused Melnik and his faction of aiding Nazi Germany, which, in fact, was in no way going to recognize the sovereignty of Ukraine. The decisions of the Rome conference of 1939 are annulled, and Stepan Bandera is proclaimed the leader of the OUN. Thus, there was a split into Bandera and Melnik. Soon the factional confrontation escalated into a fierce armed struggle between the two factions.

Following this, at the beginning of July, in the zone of Soviet occupation, the NKVD shot Stepan's father Andrei Bandera. Almost all of Bandera's close relatives were transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

In the fall of 1941, the Melnikites also tried to proclaim Ukraine independent, but they suffered the same fate as the Banderaites. Most of their leaders were shot by the Gestapo in early 1942.

After the expulsion of the German invaders from the territory of Ukraine by Soviet troops in 1944, the struggle of Ukrainian nationalists entered a new phase - the war against the Soviet Army, which lasted until the mid-50s. The years 1946–1948 were especially fierce, when, according to information from various sources, in total over these years there were more than four thousand bloody battles between Ukrainian rebels and the Soviet Army on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.

All this time, from the autumn of 1941 to the middle of the second half of 1944, Stepan Bandera was in the German concentration camp Sachsenhausen. At the end of 1944, the fascist leadership changed its policy towards Ukrainian nationalists and released Bandera and some OUN members from prison. In 1945 and until the end of the war, Bandera collaborated with the Abwehr intelligence department in training OUN sabotage groups.

Stepan Bandera continued his activities in the OUN, whose centralized administration after the end of the Great Patriotic War was located in West Germany. In 1947, at the next meeting of the OUN, Bandera was appointed head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and was re-elected to this position twice in 1953 and 1955.

In the last years of his life, Bandera lived in Munich with his family, who had been taken from Soviet-occupied East Germany. On October 15, 1959, Stepan Andreevich Bandera was shot dead in the entrance of his own house by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky.

After the collapse of the USSR, for modern Ukrainian nationalists the name of Stepan Bandera became a symbol of the struggle for the independence of Ukraine against Polish oppression, fascist Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism. In 2005, the Ukrainian government declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv. In 2005, the Ukrainian government declared Bandera a national hero, and in 2007 a bronze monument was erected to him in Lviv, but in January 2011 the court invalidated the decree of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of January 20, 2010 conferring the title “Hero of Ukraine” on S. Bandera.