Serhii Plokhy
speaker
375 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Serhii Plokhy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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He is arrested, put on trial, and that's where the myth of Pandera starts to emerge because he uses the trial to make statements about the Ukrainian nationalism, radical nationalism, and its goals. and suddenly becomes a hero among the Ukrainian youth at that time. He is sentenced for execution, for death. So when he delivers his speech, he knows that he probably would die soon.
And then the sentence was commuted to life sentence. to life in prison. Then World War II happens. The Polish state collapses under the pressure coming, of course, from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Bandera walks away and presides over the act of the split of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists into two groups.
The most radical one you used to call revolutionary, they call themselves revolutionary, is led by Bandera. They worked together with the Nazi Germany at that time with the hope that Nazi Germany would deliver them independent Ukraine.
First days of the German Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, the units formed on the basis of organization of Ukrainian nationalists march into the city of Lviv and declare Ukrainian independence. That was not sanctioned by the German authorities. That was not in German plans. So they arrest Bandera, members of his family, his brothers, leaders of the organization.
So his two brothers go to Auschwitz, die there. He was sent to Sachsenhausen for most duration of the war until 1944. refusing to revoke declaration of Ukrainian independence, which again contributes further to his mythology. After the war, he never comes back to Ukraine. He lives in exile in Munich.
So between 1930 and his death in 1959, he spent in Ukraine maybe up to two years, maybe a little bit more, but most of the time was either in the Polish prison or in the German concentration camp or in exile.
But the myth of Bandera lived, and all the members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and then the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that fought against the Soviets all the way into the early 1950s, they were called Banderites. They were called band riots by the Soviet authorities. They were known also in that way to the local population.
So there was a faraway leader that barely was there on the spot, but whose name was attached to this movement for really liberation of Ukraine at that time. Again, the battle that failed.
This label is certainly promoted first by the Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda. It works very nicely. If you focus on the years of collaboration, those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. We have the same reason to call Stalin a Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Bandera a Nazi collaborator. We look at the situation in the Pacific.
In Indonesia, in other places, the leaders who worked together with Japanese with the idea of promoting independence of their countries, after the Japanese collapse, become leaders of the empire. So the difference with Bandara is that he never becomes the leader of empire, and immunity that comes with that position certainly doesn't apply to him.
But there are other parts of his life which certainly put this whole thing in question. The fate of his family, his own time in the German concentration camp certainly don't fit the propaganda one-sided image of Bandera. In terms of him being a hero, that's a very, very interesting question because he is perceived in Ukraine today not by...
by all and probably not by the majority, but by many people in Ukraine as a symbol of fighting against the Soviet Union and by extension against Russia and Russian occupation. So his popularity grew after February 24th, 2022 as a symbol of that resistance.
Again, we are talking here about myth and mythology, because Bandera was not leading the fight against the Soviet occupation in Ukraine, because at that time he was just simply not in Ukraine. He was in Germany, and you can imagine that geography mattered at that time much more than it matters today.
The Ukrainian independence was their goal, and they were there to work with anybody who would support and in one way or at least allow Ukraine. The Ukrainian independence. So there is no question that they are just classic nationalists.
So the goal is, nationalism is the principle according to which the, or at least one definition is, according to which the cultural boundaries coincide with political boundaries.
So their goal was to create political boundaries that would coincide with the geographic boundaries in the conditions of the World War II and certainly making deals with whoever would either support, as I said, or tolerate that project of theirs.
We know that basically in his circle there were people who were anti-Semites in a sense that, okay, we have the texts, right? We know that. We don't have that information about that sort of text or that sort of evidence with regard to Bandera himself.
In terms of fascism, there is very clear and there is research done that in particular Italian fascism had influence on the thinking of people in that organization, including people at the top. But it is also very important to keep in mind that they call themselves nationalists and revolutionaries. And despite the fact...
that in 1939, in 1940, in 1941, it was very beneficial for them to declare themselves to be Ukrainian fascists and establish this bond with not just with Italy, but with Nazi Germany. They refused to do that. And then they refused to recall their independence. So influences, yes, but clearly it's a different type of a political project.
My understanding is there are Nazis in Ukraine. And there are supporters of white supremacy theories. But also my understanding is that they are extremely marginal. And they are more marginal than the same sort of groups are in Central Europe, maybe in the US as well.
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