Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe: Stepan Bandera. The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2014. 654 S., 66 Abb., 7 Ktn. ISBN: 978-3-8382-0604-2

Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe: Stepan Bandera. The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2014. 654 S., 66 Abb., 7 Ktn. ISBN: 978-3-8382-0604-2.

A comprehensive and well-researched biography of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera faction, OUN-B) is long overdue. With this book, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe has only partly succeeded rectifying this deficit. The book is the result of his extensive research in the archives of seven countries, his interviews with veterans of the OUN and includes a considered overview of contemporary publications.

Biographers often fall for their subjects. This cannot be said of Rossoliński-Liebe, who tries to deconstruct the cult of Bandera, popular in parts of Western Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. There is much not to like about Bandera and the OUN. In the 1930s the OUN committed terrorist attacks against representatives of the Polish state and Ukrainians who were willing – at least temporarily – to accept Polish rule in these borderlands. At the beginning of the Second World War, the OUN sided with Nazi Germany; it is highly probable that after the German attack on the Soviet Union, members of the OUN instigated pogroms and killed Jews who had escaped to the forests. In 1943 and 1944, its underground army – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – murdered tens of thousands of Polish civilians in an attempt to ‘cleanse’ the region of Poles. There is already an extensive body of literature on OUN and UPA war crimes which Rossoliński-Liebe draws on, but he provides additional evidence. The main aim of the book, however, is not to prove that members of the OUN and its affiliated partisan units committed numerous murders and were anti-Semitic but to prove that Bandera was a fascist leader and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists a fascist organisation.

Rossoliński-Liebe emphasises that Bandera has become a projection screen for supporters and enemies alike. All of them project their views of the OUN on Bandera. The ‘real Bandera’ stays hidden. But this biography does not answer the question about the ‘real Bandera’ either. Rossoliński-Liebe too projects his highly negative views of the OUN on Bandera.

The book is divided into 10 chapters. It starts with a very short introduction outlining the origins of the Ukrainian national movement and the ideology of the OUN. The next, short (24 pages) chapter is dedicated to Bandera’s formative years. The first 25 years of Bandera’s life are quickly covered. Throughout the book, the reader does not learn much about Bandera’s personal life, and his character stays elusive. A key chapter analyses the Warsaw and Lviv murder trials, in which Bandera was one of the defendants. He was sentenced to prison for having ordered the assassination of the Polish minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki. Two chapters discuss the activities of the OUN/UPA during the Second World War. One of the most interesting chapters deals with Bandera’s life after the war and his assassination. The last three chapters discuss the mythologisation and glorification of Bandera by members of the Ukrainian diaspora, the representation of Bandera in Soviet propaganda, and the return of the Bandera cult to (Western) Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Bandera’s life and the history of the OUN are intimately linked, but this book is more about OUN ideology and policy than a political biography of Bandera. The author holds Bandera implicitly responsible for the actions of the OUN(b) but largely does not consider it necessary to prove Bandera’s direct involvement. This makes sense as long as Bandera was free and capable of giving orders and overseeing the activities of his organisation, but this approach is problematic for the long periods during which Bandera was either sitting behind bars in a Polish prison (1934–1939) or interned by Nazi-Germany (July 1941 – December 1944, the last three months just under house arrest). The author produces conclusive evidence from published and unpublished sources that in the 1930s and during the Second World War Bandera and the OUN embraced fascist ideology. It is also clear that the OUN and UPA were responsible for many acts of mass violence against civilians. Bandera’s responsibility for this violence is more difficult to prove. It is highly likely that he condoned the anti-Semitic violence at the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union. It is less clear how much he knew and what he thought about the Holocaust and to what extent he condoned anti-Semitic violence and the mass murder of Polish civilians after he was interned by the Germans. He certainly did not publicly distance himself from this violence.

Rossoliński-Liebe shows that there were striking similarities between the ideology, inner structure, and political aims of the OUN and those of the Ustasha in Croatia or the Arrow Cross Movement in Hungary. What Rossoliński-Liebe addresses but does not fully discuss is the question how central fascism was to the ideology, views, and policies of Bandera and his followers. Was Bandera an ardent fascist? He was certainly attracted by the political success of figures such as Hitler and Mussolini whose leadership style he tried to emulate. But there was also another, more pragmatic reason why Bandera and the OUN embraced fascism. For the Ukrainian national movement Germany was a natural ally against Poland and the Soviet Union in the fight for an independent Ukraine. With Germany ruled by the Nazis, ‘speaking fascist’ might offer some benefits.

Rossoliński-Liebe could also have done more to elucidate Bandera’s and the OUN’s place in the Ukrainian national movement. Many Ukrainians were nationalists without being members of the OUN or supporting its methods. Rosssolinski-Liebe writes that in the 1920s and 1930s the “ideology of Ukrainian nationalism” underwent a process of fascistization (p. 23). Most Western Ukrainian politicians and intellectuals, most Greek Catholic priests and a substantial number of peasants were Ukrainian nationalists, but only a minority were actually members of or actively supported the OUN. The strongest party in this period was the UNDO (Ukrainian National Democratic Alliance), which was a nationalist but not a fascist party. In this respect, when Rossoliński-Liebe takes the OUN as shorthand for the Ukrainian national movement as such, he plays into the hands of both apologists of the OUN and Soviet propaganda. The OUN did not dominate Ukrainian nationalism before the war. During the Second World War, the two branches of the OUN managed to marginalise all other parties. This happened in a period when compromises and peaceful strategies were not in great demand. Rossoliński-Liebe could have done more to place the OUN in the historical context of the Second Polish Republic. The focus on proving that the OUN was a fascist organisation led him to neglect other influences. Some aspects of OUN ideology were quite similar to the ideology of the Polish national democrats, especially the anti-Semitic views held by the right wing of that movement. During the Second World War in Lviv, part of the Polish Home Army was strongly influenced by the Polish national democrats, and some Home Army statements on the Holocaust and on the necessity of ethnic cleansing in the region (in this case, the aim was to ‘cleanse’ the area of Ukrainians) are very similar to OUN comments. Rossoliński-Liebe dismisses the OUN’s shift towards more democratic principles at the end of the Second World War as a purely tactical move. There are strong indications that the OUN did not shed its fascist ideology after the war, but the question remains whether this fascism is the key for understanding the movement. Bandera and his followers subordinated everything to the aim of achieving national independence. When it was clear that the fascist powers would lose the war the OUN suddenly started to develop a strong liking for liberalism and democracy hoping that this would appeal to the victorious Western democracies. Rossoliński-Liebe dismisses the concept of integral nationalism a bit too easily and quickly.

The story of Bandera’s death reads like a crime novel and is typical for the cold war. The part on the mythologisation of Bandera after the war is instructive but does not add much to the main argument of the book, i.e., that Bandera was a fascist and the OUN a fascist organisation. The discussion of historiography on the OUN and Bandera would be more useful if it were included in the introduction. Rossoliński-Liebe is also a bit unfair on the researchers who published on the OUN in the 1980s. Some historians writing at the time on the Ukrainian national movement were less critical of the OUN than they are today, but this was mostly because of a lack of thorough research and was also a reaction to the distortion of the history of Ukrainian nationalism by Soviet propaganda and historiography. The book carries a liberal sprinkling of the term “fascist”, to hammer home the message. OUN members and Bandera are highly problematic ‘heroes’ but I fear that Rossoliński-Liebe’s deconstruction will only appeal to the converted: those who are already critical of Bandera and the OUN. The style of writing is sometimes unnecessarily polemical. By slightly toning down his rhetoric Rossoliński-Liebe could have made it more difficult for admirers of Bandera and the OUN to reject his findings. It is a brave book. The history of Bandera and the OUN are a minefield in today’s political landscape, and many historians of Ukrainian history shy away from the topic.

Christoph Mick, Coventry, Great Britain