World War II

The years of the Second World War brought both the apogee and the crisis of integral nationalism. The annexation of the Galician-Volhynian lands by the USSR in the autumn of 1939 caused the demise of the Ukrainian democratic parties in that area, while the clandestine OUN was able to preserve its underground organization.

Also, among the numerous Ukrainian refugees who fled to Germany and German-occupied Poland, the nationalists obtained an almost monopolistic preponderance. But at this very time, when the OUN was facing its greatest opportunity, a split occurred within its ranks. It was caused by the struggle to succeed Konovalets, founder and leader of the OUN, who was assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1938. The two rival factions were commonly designated after their respective leaders, Andrii Melnyk (1890-1964) and Stepan Bandera (1909-59), the “Melnykites” Qnelnykivtsi) and the “Banderites” Qjanderivtsi). Originally the schism had no ideological connotations; both groups adhered to the same totalitarian ideology and claimed the name of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Nevertheless, the conflict also possessed a psychological dimension. The supporters of Melnyk were generally to be found among the more mature and moderate elements of the OUN, the military veterans of the 1917—21 era and the old emigres who had spent most of their lives in foreign countries. The Banderites, on the other hand, were the “Young Turks” of the movement, and their faction attracted the professional revolutionaries from western Ukraine, many of whom had just emerged from Polish prisons. The ugly factional conflict, which soon degenerated into reciprocal vilification and terrorism, shattered the nationalists’ claim to provide unity and leadership to the Ukrainian cause in a critical time.

The German occupation of Ukraine lasted about three years (1941-4).

The everyday life of the Ukrainian people was dominated by physical privations and the overriding concern for sheer survival. The vicious cruelty and naked colonialism of the German occupation regime are too well known to need elaboration. It must be stressed, however, that, in spite of the indiscriminate application of mass terror, the Nazis were not able to control Ukrainian society as throughly as the Russian Bolsheviks. While any autonomous intellectual life had come to a standstill in the Ukrainian SSR in the 1930s, a fairly lively underground exchange of ideas took place during the German occupation.

Both groups of the OUN, but especially the more enterprising Banderites, succeeded in expanding their clandestine networks from the western Ukrainian base into the former Soviet territories of east-central Ukraine, where they attracted considerable local support. The Bandera faction provided the nucleus for a guerrilla force, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose operations, conducted simultaneously against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, were a powerful demonstration of the Ukrainian people’s will to national independence, asserted under the most adverse circumstances.

Confrontations with Hitler’s system, on the one hand, and with the realities of east-central (former Soviet) Ukraine, on the other, spurred revisionist tendencies within the intellectually more flexible segments of the nationalist movement. The drift of the changes was toward a liberalization of the ideology of integral nationalism: putting a new stress on the rights of the individual, rejection of ethnic or racial exclusiveness, toleration of philosophical pluralism (as against the former adherence to compulsory “idealism”), and attempts to formulate an attractive social and economic program which would combine the best features of socialism and capitalism. Still, these changes, however significant, did not make the nationalist movement democratic. Fascistic authoritarianism was deeply rooted in the nationalist mind, and revisionist tendencies were checked by the orthodox adherents of both factions.

Even the most advanced nationalist revisionists remained ambiguous on the crucial questions of political pluralism and representative government. One has also to take into consideration the brevity of the period during which these developments took place, not allowing them to grow to maturity. After the re-establishment of Soviet rule, the remnants of the nationalist underground continued their activities for several years until their final eradication at the beginning of the 1950s. The programmatic statements which emanated from the underground had, by that time, lost the specific traits of the old OUN ideology (save, of course, the goal of national independence), and their general tenor may be defined as reflecting an outlook of democratic socialism.

Ukrainian democratic forces were at a disadvantage during the war years, as they were not prepared to engage in underground operations, and the conditions of the time did not allow them to organize overtly. People of democratic convictions found an outlet in non-political cultural and relief activities, precariously tolerated by the German authorities. Circumstances for such work were more favourable in Galicia than in the former Soviet territories. The Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow and Lviv was able to render substantial services to the population of Galicia in the area of education and social welfare. This body, although outwardly conforming with the requirements of Hitler’s “New Order,” was staffed predominantly with members of the old western Ukrainian democratic parties and civic organizations. A similar centre came into existence at the opposite end of Ukraine, in Kharkiv. That zone, near the front line, was under military administration, and conditions there were somewhat less oppressive than in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, which encompassed the central portion of the country.

A remarkable fact needs to be noted. Twenty years of Soviet rule had not eradicated the memory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and the name of Petliura still enjoyed great popularity.

This applied not only to the few surviving members of the old intelligentsia, but also to many young people who had no personal memories of pre-Soviet days. All over east-central Ukraine informal circles sprang up whose participants, without possessing any formal political program, professed allegiance to the traditions of the democratic Ukrainian state of 1917-21. In comparison with the tight network of underground cells which the integral nationalists were building up, the democratic trend remained fluid and inchoate, but it was more broadly based. It represented a potential force which, under the adverse circumstances of the time, could not find adequate expression. Only in the post-war years did the movement crystallize in the Ukrainian Revolutionary Democratic Party (URDP), created in the refugee camps of western Germany. The leader of the party was the writer and journalist Ivan Bahriany (1907—63), a former inmate of Soviet concentration camps. The URDP found its supporters mostly among emigres from east-central Ukraine. It must be considered a reincarnation of the old democratic-populist trend which attempted to incorporate the experience of the Soviet era of the 1920s and 30s.

The years of World War II also gave a new lease on life to Ukrainian communism. The fresh horrors of the German occupation to some extent overshadowed the tragic memories of the 1930s. In a historical conjuncture which did not offer realistic prospects for the achievement of national independence, and faced with the stark Nazi-Soviet alternative, many Ukrainians felt that while there was hope for their nation as a Soviet Republic, there was none as a German colony. This conclusion was facilitated by Soviet wartime propaganda, which employed Ukrainian patriotic symbols, cleverly insinuated that the “mistakes” of the 1930s would not be repeated, and implied that the Ukrainian people could expect better treatment in the future. If one accepted the premise that the defeat and expulsion of the German invader was the primary, overriding goal, it followed logically that one had also to accept the Soviet system and the necessity of continued close Ukrainian-Russian association under the hegemony of Moscow. Thus a new generation of Ukrainian communists, almost all of whom had fought as officers in the Soviet army or partisan units, was forged by the wartime experience. Few, however, had any but nominal links with the traditions of the working-class movement and revolutionary Marxism. For the last quarter of a century, but especially since Stalin’s death and the advent of Khrushchev, men of this background have furnished the leading party and government cadres in the Ukrainian SSR.

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Source: Rudnytsky I.. Essays in modern Ukrainian history. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies University of Alberta,1987. — 500 p.. 1987

World War II

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