Comment
Kas’yanov’s rejection seems a reasonable point to make, particularly given the passive role of Ukrainian nationalists prior to the formation of a sovereign state, a time when they were obligated to throw in their lot with the catalysts for change in Europe.
Both the Americans and British covertly supported the nationalist insurgency after the war and opened their doors to many of the leaders of this movement so clearly the Western Powers were not unduly perturbed by their past links with the Germans. Yet perhaps the reason for the persistent denigration and labeling of Ukrainian nationalists has been the rather narrow perspectives and conception of the future—and, after 1991, the established—Ukrainian state. In the efforts to reconstruct a national history, there is a marked tendency to idealize Ukrainian nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s and to render adherents ipso facto freedom fighters. One problem is surely the failure to delve deeper into Ukrainian history to find the roots of modern nationalism. As one author has pointed out, many people equate the concept of Ukrainian nationalism exclusively with Bandera, the OUN and UPA, and with Western Ukraine. Yet the birth of this movement long predated Dontsov and can be linked to the periods of rule of the Russian tsars Peter I and Catherine II. Some would go back much further to the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and medieval Polish state.6 Thus these earlier influences on Ukraine—and we have already witnessed examples in school textbooks—are ritually negated in a conception of development and statebuilding that is largely (but not solely) confined to the defining events of the twentieth century. The OUN, or more accurately the OUN-B, remains important because of its prominent role outside of Ukraine. Though its political influence in Ukraine is small, and its impact on elections and government minimal, its perceptions of the past, which are largely unchanging, still continue to exert their effect in historical narratives, writings, and in school textbooks. That is why many Eastern Ukrainians have maintained that the Bandera or Western Ukrainian version of history predominates in Ukraine today. Thus the root of the problem lies less in whether 1930s nationalism was Fascist or National Socialist, and more in the lack of historical debate on topics that clearly still need discussion, including those that have been featured in these pages.
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