The War That Failed to End
In Ukraine, the history of World War II continues to serve as a battleground of two different versions of its past. The first is represented by proponents of the well-developed Soviet-era myth of the Great Patriotic War, revised after 1991 to restore the original centerpiece of that myth—the image of Joseph Stalin as victor.
The alternative offered to that old myth is the heroic image of the nationalist underground fighting on two fronts, against the Nazis and the Soviets. While World War II mythologies serve as a consolidating factor for all of Ukraine’s neighbors, including Russia, Belarus, and Poland, they continue to divide Ukrainian society along political and geographic lines. The myth of the Great Patriotic War with Stalin at its center unites Ukraine with Russia and Belarus in its memory of World War II. The myth of heroic nationalist resistance against communism brings Ukraine closer to the countries of East-Central Europe.The struggle over the Stalin monument in Zaporizhzhia pitted two diametrically opposed political forces and visions of history, communist and nationalist, against each other, leaving scant middle ground for interpreting the history of World War II in Ukraine on the eve of the Maidan protests of 2013 and Russian aggression and annexation of the Crimea in 2014. As shown by the analysis presented here, the debates over Stalin and Bandera, as well as over the Soviet and nationalist legacies, divided Ukrainian society between two versions of the past. Neither side seemed to realize at the time that both versions were little more than politically constructed myths.