Father, Andrei Bandera, a Greek Catholic priest, was at that time rector in Uhryniv Stary. Came from Stryi.
Mother, Miroslava Bandera (* 1890, Stary Ugrinov - † 1921), came from an old priestly family (she was the daughter of a Greek Catholic priest from Ugryniv Stary).
A detailed autobiography of Stepan Bandera has been preserved.
Childhood
House of the Bandera family in Stary Ugrinov. Stepan spent his childhood in Stary Ugrinov, in the house of his parents and grandfathers, growing up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian patriotism and vibrant national-cultural, political and public interests. The fronts of the First World War four times in 1914-1915 and 1917 moved through his native village. In the summer of 1917, the inhabitants of Galicia witnessed manifestations of national revolutionary changes and revolution in the army of tsarist Russia. In his autobiography, Stepan Bandera also mentions "the big difference between Ukrainian and Moscow military units"
Since childhood, S. Bandera witnessed the revival and building of the Ukrainian state. From November 1918, his father was an ambassador to the parliament of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic - the Ukrainian National Rada in Stanislav and took an active part in shaping the state life in Kalushchin.
In September or October 1919, Stepan Bandera entered the Ukrainian gymnasium in Stryi, where he studied until 1927. In the third grade (from 1922) he becomes a member of Plast; in Stryi he was in the 5th plast hut named after Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl, and after graduating from the gymnasium - in the 2nd hut of the senior scouts "Red Kalina Detachment".
In the spring of 1922, his mother died of tuberculosis of the throat.
Youth
In 1927-1928, Stepan Bandera was engaged in cultural, educational and economic activities in his native village (he worked in the Prosvita reading room, led an amateur theatrical circle and a choir, founded the Lug sports society and organized a cooperative). At the same time, he supervised organizational and educational work through the underground UVO in neighboring villages.
In September 1928 he moved to Lvov and here he enrolled in the agronomic department of the Higher Polytechnic School, where he studied until 1933. Before his graduation exam through political activities, he was arrested and imprisoned.
In his student years he took an active part in the organized Ukrainian national life. He was a member of the Ukrainian society of students of polytechnics "Osnova" and a member of the council of the Circle of field students. For some time he worked in the bureau of the Rural Owner society, which was engaged in the development of agriculture in the western Ukrainian lands. On Sundays and holidays, with the “Prosvita” society, he went on trips to the nearby villages of the Lviv region with reports and to help organize other events. In the field of youth and sports-rukhankov organizations, he was active primarily in Plast, as a member of the 2nd kuren of senior scouts "Red Kalina Detachment", in the Ukrainian Student Sports Club (USSK), and for some time also in the Sokol-Father and "meadow" in Lviv. He was engaged in running, swimming, skiing, traveling. In his spare time he enjoyed playing chess, in addition he sang in the choir and played the guitar and mandolin. He did not smoke or drink alcohol.
Activities in the OUN 1932-33
In 1932-1933, he served as deputy regional conductor, and in the middle of 1933 he was appointed regional conductor of the OUN and regional commandant of the UVO at ZUZ. In July 1932, Bandera, with several other delegates from the OUN CE in Western Ukraine, participated in the OUN Conference in Prague (the so-called Vienna Conference, which was the most important meeting of the OUN after the founding congress). In 1933 he participated in conferences in Berlin and Gdansk.
Under the leadership of Bandera, the OUN moves away from expropriation actions and begins a series of punitive actions against representatives of the Polish occupation authorities. During this period, the OUN committed three political murders that received a significant response - the school curator Gadomsky, accused of destroying Ukrainian schools and Polonization by the Poles, the worker was staged by the Russian Bolsheviks as a protest against the Holodomor in Ukraine and the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs Peratsky, for whom the Polish authorities carried out bloody actions of "pacification" (appeasement) Ukrainian. Stepan Bandera was in charge of the assassination attempts on Maylov and Peratsky.
Conclusions
In June 1934 he was imprisoned by the Polish police and was under investigation in the prisons of Lvov, Krakow and Warsaw until the end of 1935. At the end of 1935 at the beginning of 1936, a trial took place before the district court in Warsaw, in which Bandera, along with 11 other defendants, was tried for belonging to the OUN and for organizing the assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Peratsky. Bandera was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment. After that, he was imprisoned in the prisons "wity Krzy" ("Holy Cross") in the Kielce circle, in the Wronki circle of Poznań and in Berestya nad Bug until September 1939. On September 13, when the position of the Polish troops in that segment became critical, the prison administration and the watchman hurriedly evacuated and the prisoners were released.
In the first half of January 1940, Bandera arrived in Italy. I was in Rome, where the OUN village was headed by prof. E. Onatsky. There he met his brother Alexander, who lived in Rome from 1933-1934, studied there and did a doctorate in political and economic sciences, married and worked in our local stanitsa.
The tragic fate of the relatives of Stepan Bandera
Temple in Krakow, where Bandera married St. Norbert's Church in Krakow, where Bandera married With the beginning of the occupation of Ukraine by the Nazi troops, one of the resistance units was headed by Stepan's younger brother, Bogdan. He died in 1942 or 1943.
On July 5, 1941 Stepan Bandera was arrested in Krakow. His wife Yaroslav went to Berlin with his three-month-old daughter Natasha to be close to her husband. Bandera was kept first in prison, then in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was until 1944. The brothers Oleksandr (doctor of political economy) and Vasyl (graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy of Lviv University) were killed in 1942 by Polish kapo guards in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Andrei Mikhailovich Bandera, the father of Stefan, was killed by the Soviet authorities. Sisters Oksana and Martha-Maria were arrested in 1941 and exiled to Siberia (Krasnoyarsk Territory). The leadership of the USSR did not allow them to return to Ukraine for decades - Martha-Maria Bandera died in a foreign land in 1982, and the summer Oksana Bandera returned to her homeland only in 1989 after almost 50 years of living in Siberia. She died on December 24, 2008.
Another sister, Vladimira, was in Soviet labor camps from 1946 to 1956.
OUN Bandera
After the death of Yevhen Konovalets, according to the will, Colonel Andrei Melnyk, Konovalets's ally from the time of the struggle of the UNR and joint work in the ranks of the UVO, headed the OUN Provision. In August 1939, the second Great Gathering of Ukrainian Nationalists took place in Rome, which officially approved Andriy Melnyk as head of the OUN. However, a group of young nationalists led by Stepan Bandera, who, after the occupation of Poland by Germany, returned from prison and was cut off from the activities of the Organization, in an ultimatum form began to seek from the OUN and its chairman, Colonel Andrei Melnyk, a change in the tactics of the OUN, as well as the removal of several of its members from the PUN . The conflict took sharp forms and led to a split. The Bandera cell departed from the OUN, which in February 1940 created the “OUN Revolutionary Wire” and took the name OUN-R (later OUN-B; OUN-SD).
A year later, the Revolutionary Wire convened the II Great Gathering of the OUN, at which Stepan Bandera was unanimously elected chairman of the Wire. Under his leadership, the OUN-B becomes an ebullient revolutionary organization. It develops an organizational network in its native lands, creates OUN-B marching groups from the membership that was abroad, and in agreement with the German military circles committed to the Ukrainian cause, creates a Ukrainian legion and organizes a liberation struggle, together with other peoples enslaved by Moscow.
Before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, Bandera initiates the creation of the Ukrainian National Committee to consolidate Ukrainian political forces in the struggle for statehood.
On June 30, 1941, by the decision of the Organization's Wire, the restoration of the Ukrainian State in Lvov was proclaimed. However, Hitler instructed his police to immediately eliminate this "conspiracy of Ukrainian separatists", the Germans arrested Bandera a few days after the act of proclaiming the revival of the Ukrainian State - on July 5, 1941. Stepan Bandera was a German prisoner in December 1944. Then he and several other leading members of the OUN were released from conclusions, trying to attach the OUN-B and the UPA to their forces as an ally against Moscow. Now Stepan Bandera has rejected the German offer.
At the regional wide meeting of the OUN-B Wire on Ukrainian lands in February 1945, it was interpreted as part of the OUN-B Great Gathering, a new Wire Bureau was elected in the following composition: Bandera, Shukhevych, Stetsko. This choice was confirmed by the 1947 OUN-B Conference ZCH and then Stepan Bandera again became the Chairman of the Wire of the entire OUN-B. As the conductor of the OUN-B, Bandera in the post-war period decides to continue the armed struggle against Moscow. He intensively organizes regional communication and OUN-B combat groups, which keep contact with the Territory constantly until his death.
In 1948, an opposition was formed in the foreign parts of the OUN-B, which Stepan Bandera overthrew in the ideological, organizational and political plane.
In December 1950, Bandera resigned as Chairman of the OUN-B ZCH Wire. On August 22, 1952, he also resigned from the post of head of the wire of the entire OUN-B. But this decision of his was not, however, accepted by any competent institution of the OUN-B and Bandera remained in the future as the Conductor of the OUN-B until his death in 1959.
1955, the 5th Conference of the OUN-B ZCH was held, which re-elected Stepan Bandera as the Chairman of the OUN-B ZCH Wire, and since then the work of the Organization has been intensively carried out again.
Postwar years
The post-war years were tense for the family, because the Soviet special services hunted not only for the conductor of the national movement, but also for his children. For example, until 1948 the family changed their place of residence six times: Berlin, Innsbruck, Seefeld, Munich, Hildesheim, Starnberg. Finally, due to the need to give her daughter a good education, the family in 1954 finally moved to the German city of Munich (Bavaria). Parents tried to hide from Natalia the importance of her father's person so as not to endanger the girl. Memoirs of Natalia, daughter of Stepan Bandera, about that time:.
It was in Munich that Stepan Bandera spent the last years of his life, living under a passport in the name Stefan Popel. According to one version, the passport was left to him by the Lviv chess player Stefan Popel, who left Ukraine in 1944, at the beginning. In the 1950s he lived in Paris, and in 1956 he moved to the USA.
Murder
The grave of Stepan Bandera in Munich on October 15, 1959 at the entrance of the house on Kraitmayr Street, 7 (Kreittmayrstrae), in Munich at 13:05 they found Stepan Bandera, still alive and covered in blood. A medical examination showed that the cause of death was poison. Bogdan Stashinsky shot Stepan Bandera in the face with a jet of potassium cyanide solution from a special pistol. Two years later, on November 17, 1961, the German judicial authorities announced that the murderer of Stepan Bandera was Bogdan Stashinsky from the order of Shelepin and Khrushchev.
After a detailed investigation against the killer, the so-called. "Process of Stashinsky" from October 8 to October 15, 1962 The verdict was proclaimed on October 19 - the murderer was sentenced to 8 years in a heavy prison.
The German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe ruled that the main accused in Bandera's murder was the Soviet government in Moscow. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, published in its December 6, 2005 issue, Vladimir Kryuchkov, former chairman of the USSR KGB, admitted that "The murder of Stepan Bandera was one of the last eliminated by the KGB by violent methods of undesirable elements."
On October 20, 1959, Stepan Bandera was buried at the Munich cemetery Waldfriedhof on the 43rd field.
Announcement in the newspaper "SVOBODA" about the death of S. Bandera Postage stamp for the 100th anniversary of his birth The surname "Bandera" has become one of the symbols of the Ukrainian national liberation movement of the XX century. After independence, many youth, political and public organizations are named after him. One of the informal names of Lviv is "Banderstadt", those. "city of Bandera". Music festival held in Volyn "Banderstat".
In 1995, director Oles Yanchuk made the film "Atentat - Autumn Murder in Munich" about the post-war fate of Stepan Bandera and the UPA units.
In the "Great Ukrainian" project, the conductor of the Ukrainian liberation movement took third place. The project ended in a scandal: Bandera, represented by Vakhtang Kipiani, was among the leaders of the vote, but became the third, while in support of the future winner Yaroslav the Wise, represented by Dmitry Tabachnik, according to some reports, on the last day of voting, more than 100 SMS came from 80 numbers every minute. The chief editor of the project, Vakhtang Kipiani, said that the voting results were falsified, although the producer of the project, Yegor Benkendorf, disputed this. Project leader Anna Gomonai expressed her conviction that an official investigation into this case should be carried out:
On January 1, 2009, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian state postal enterprise "Ukrposhta" issued a commemorative envelope, as well as a postage stamp, the author of which is Vasily Vasylenko. On the front side of the envelope there is an image of Stepan Bandera, under which is placed the logo of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (surmounted by the national flag of Ukraine). Below the image there is an inscription "100 years since the birth" and a facsimile of the personal signature of the OUN conductor.
2009 was proclaimed "The Year of Stepan Bandera" in Ternopilskaya.
monuments
Monument to Stepan Bandera in Ternopil. Monument to Stepan Bandera in Berezhany.
There are monuments to Stepan Bandera in Lviv (see the Monument to Stepan Bandera in Lviv), Ternopil (see Monument to Stepan Bandera in Ternopil), Ivano-Frankivsk, Drohobych, Terebovlya, Berezhany, Buchach, Dublyany, Mykytintsy, Sambor, Stryi, Borislav, Zalishchyky, Chervonograd, Mostisks, the villages of Kozovka, Verbov, Grabovka and Sredny Berezov. In the city of Turka in 2009, a pedestal for the monument to Stepan Bandera was laid.
Museums
There are 5 museums of Stepan Bandera in the world:
Streets
In honor of Stepan Bandera, an avenue in Ternopil and streets in Lvov, Lutsk, Rivne, Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chervonograd, Drohobych, Strya, Dolyna, Kalush, Kovel, Vladimir-Volynsky, Gorodenka and other settlements are named.
Assignment and deprivation of the title "Hero of Ukraine"
January 20, 2010 "for the invincibility of the spirit in upholding the national idea, the heroism and self-sacrifice shown in the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state", The President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded S. Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine with the award of the Order of the State (posthumously). On January 22, at the celebrations on the occasion of the Day of Unity at the National Opera, the head of state noted that "millions of Ukrainians have been waiting for this for many years." Those present at the celebrations greeted the presentation standing. The grandson of the OUN conductor, also named Stepan Bandera, came out to receive the award.
Banner at the Karpaty-Shakhtar match in Lviv with a portrait of the figure and the inscription "Bandera is our hero" (April 2010) This decision caused a mixed reaction both in Ukraine and abroad:
Reaction to Ukraine
International reaction
Cancel
On April 2, 2010, the Donetsk District Administrative Court declared illegal and canceled the Decree of President Viktor Yushchenko on awarding Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine. The court declared the specified Decree illegal and subject to cancellation, since such a title can only be awarded to citizens of the state; acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship has been possible since 1991; persons who died before this year cannot be citizens of Ukraine; Stepan Bandera died in 1959, so he is not a citizen of Ukraine, through which he cannot be awarded the title of "Hero of Ukraine".
On April 12, 2010, Viktor Yushchenko filed an appeal against the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court dated April 2, 2010, arguing that "the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court on the case does not meet the requirements of the current legislation of Ukraine, and therefore must be canceled."
Appeals were filed also from other persons.
June 23, 2010 Donetsk Administrative Court of Appeal accepted the appeals dismissed; the decision of the Donetsk District Administrative Court to be left unchanged. The decision of the court of appeal could be appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine within one month, which was not done.
On January 12, 2011, the press service of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych reported that:
On January 13, 2011, Roman Orekhov, a lawyer representing the interests of Stepan Bandera (junior) in Ukraine, said that now there are no legal grounds to assert that the historical figures Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych were finally deprived of the title of Hero of Ukraine, awarded by the decree of President Yushchenko.
The lawyer also suggested that the message from the presidential administration on January 12, which he called a "provocation", was political in nature and was intended for interested circles in Russia, as well as Russian reporters who traveled to Ukraine to cover the court case.
These decisions caused discussions in society, including on the legal consequences of these court decisions.
Other honorary titles
In response to the deprivation of the title "Hero of Ukraine", a number of cities in western Ukraine awarded Stepan Bandera the title of honorary citizen. So, on March 16, 2010, he received the title of "Honorary Citizen of the city of Khust", on April 30 - "Honorary Citizen of the city of Ternopil", on May 6 - "Honorary Citizen of the city of Ivano-Frankivsk", on May 7 - "Honorary Citizen of the city of Lviv", on August 21 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Dolyna", December 17 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Lutsk", December 29 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Chervonograd", January 13, 2011 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Terebovlya", January 18 - "Honorary Citizen of the City of Truskavets" and "Honorary citizen of Radekhov”, January 20 - “Honorary citizen of the city of Sokal” and “Honorary citizen of the city of Stebnyk”, January 24 - “Honorary citizen of the city of Zhovkva”, February 16 - “Honorary citizen of the Yavoriv region”.
Stepan Bandera is a Ukrainian politician, the main figure of Ukrainian nationalism. The biography of Stepan Bandera is filled with a series of terrible events, this politician went through concentration camps, murders and prisons, many facts of his biography are still shrouded in a haze of mystery. Nevertheless, many data about Stepan Andreevich Bandera are known for certain, mainly thanks to the autobiography he wrote shortly before his death.
Childhood and youth
Stepan Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugrinov (Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary) in the family of a Greek Catholic clergyman. Stepan was born the second child, after him six more children appeared in the family.
The parents did not have their own home, they lived in a service house belonging to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In his autobiography, the already adult Bandera wrote:
From childhood, the spirit of patriotism reigned in the family, parents brought up in children living national-cultural, political and public interests.
There was a large library in the service house, it was visited by many important politicians in Galicia: Mikhail Gavrilko, Yaroslav Veselovsky, Pavel Glodzinsky. They had an undeniable influence on the future leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Stepan Bandera also received primary education at home, he was taught by his father Andrei Bandera, and some sciences were taught by visiting Ukrainian teachers.
The family of Stepan Bandera was extremely religious, the future leader of the OUN was a very obedient child who respected his parents. Bandera was a believer from an early age, in the morning and in the evening he prayed for a long time. From early childhood, Stepan Bandera was going to become a fighter for the freedom of Ukraine, therefore, secretly from his parents, he prepared his body for pain: he pricked himself with needles, tortured himself with heavy chains, and doused himself with ice water. Due to the so-called painful exercises, Bandera developed rheumatism of the joints, which haunted him until his death.
At the age of five, Bandera witnessed the outbreak of the First World War, they were destroyed, because veterans passed through the village of Stary Ugrinov several times. An unexpected surge in the activity of the national liberation movement had an even greater impact on his future activities. Bandera's father also took part in this movement: he contributed to the formation of full-fledged military units from the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and also provided them with all the necessary weapons.
In 1919, Stepan Bandera entered the gymnasium in the city of Stryi, where he studied for eight years, during which he studied Latin, Greek, literature and history, philosophy and logic. In the gymnasium, Bandera was remembered as "a short, poorly dressed youth". In general, Bandera was a very active student, despite the disease of the joints: he played a lot of sports, participated in many youth events, sang in the choir and played musical instruments.
Carier start
After the gymnasium, Stepan was engaged in cultural and educational work, housekeeping, and also led various youth circles. At the same time, Bandera worked underground in the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) - documentarily, he became a member of the UVO only in 1928, but he met this organization while still a high school student.
In 1928, Stepan moved to Lviv, where he studied at the Lviv Polytechnic at the agronomy department. At the same time, he continued to work in the UVO and OUN. Bandera was one of the first members of the OUN in Western Ukraine. Bandera's turbulent activity was multifaceted: an underground correspondent for the satirical magazine "Pride of the Nation", the organizer of the illegal supply of many foreign publications to Ukraine.
General Council of Chervona Kalina. Stepan Bandera - fourth from the left in the top row In 1932, the career of Stepan Bandera received a new round of development: first he took the post of deputy regional conductor of the OUN, and in 1933 he was appointed acting regional conductor of the OUN in Western Ukraine and the regional commandant of the combat department of the OUN-UVO. From 1930 to 1933, Stepan Bandera was arrested about five times: either for anti-Polish propaganda, then for an attempt on the life of the commissar of the political police brigade E. Chekhovsky, then for trying to illegally cross the Polish-Czech police.
attacks
On December 22, 1932, when OUN militants Danylyshyn and Bilas were being executed in Lvov, Bandera organized a propaganda protest: during the execution, all churches in Lvov rang out bells.
Bandera was the organizer of many other protests. In particular, on June 3, 1933, Stepan Bandera personally led the operation to liquidate the Soviet consul in Lvov - the executor of the operation was Nikolai Lemik, who killed the consul's secretary only because the victim himself was not at the workplace at that moment. For this Lemik was sentenced to life.
In September 1933, Bandera organized a "school action", in which Ukrainian schoolchildren boycotted everything Polish: from symbols to language. In this action, Bandera managed to involve, according to the Polish media, tens of thousands of schoolchildren. In addition, Stepan Bandera was also the organizer of many political assassinations: not all operations were successful, three of them received the widest public outcry:
- an attempt on the school curator Gadomsky;
- assassination attempt on the Soviet consul in Lvov;
- the realized assassination of the Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronislaw Peracki (on June 15, the diplomat was shot three times in the back of the head).
Bandera was the organizer and participant of a huge number of OUN terrorist acts, in which Polish policemen, local communists, the Galician political beau monde and their relatives were killed. However, Ukrainians also became victims of the OUN. By order of Stepan Bandera, in 1934, the editorial office of the left-wing newspaper Pratsya (Labor) was blown up. The explosives in the editorial office were planted by a well-known OUN activist, Lviv student Ekaterina Zaritskaya.
Conclusion
On July 2, 1936, Stepan Bandera ended up in the Mokotow prison in Warsaw for his crimes. The next day, he was transferred to the Sventy Krzyż (Holy Cross) prison near Kielce. Bandera recalled that he felt bad in prison due to the lack of normal living conditions: there was not enough light, water and paper. Since 1937, the conditions for staying in prison have become even more stringent, so Bandera himself and the OUN organized a 16-day hunger strike, protesting against the prison administration. This hunger strike was recognized, Bandera made concessions.
During his imprisonment, Bandera was moved to various Polish prisons, in which he held numerous protests. After Germany invaded Poland, Bandera was released, like many other Ukrainian nationalists.
Concentration camp "Sachsenhausen" On July 5, 1941, Bandera was invited to a meeting by the German authorities ostensibly for negotiations, but at the meeting Bandera was arrested because he did not want to abandon the "Act of the Revival of the Ukrainian State", after which they were first placed in a German police prison in Krakow, and after a year and a half to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he was kept in a block for "political persons", he was constantly monitored.
When Stepan Bandera refused the offer of the German authorities, he did not become a victim of new persecution, but remained “outside what is happening” - he lived in Germany and did nothing. He tried to keep abreast of what was happening in Ukraine, but was completely isolated from it. But this did not last long, after the split of the OUN, already in 1945 he headed the OUN (b) on the initiative of Shukhevych.
Death
Stepan Bandera died not by his own death, he was killed on October 15, 1959 in Munich. According to sources, the murder of Stepan Bandera took place in the entrance of his house: he came home for lunch, but KGB agent Bogdan Stashinsky was waiting for him in the entrance - he had been waiting for the right moment to kill Bandera since January. Bandera was killed by Stashinsky with a cyanide pistol.
Bandera, who was killed in the entrance, was found by neighbors who heard his scream. He was covered in blood. It was assumed that the leader died of heart failure, but law enforcement agencies helped to find out the true reason for the murder of Stepan Bandera.
The murderer of Stepan Bandera Bogdan Stashinsky was arrested by the German police, in 1962 a high-profile trial began against Stashinsky, in which he pleaded guilty. The KGB agent was sentenced to eight years in prison, but after six years in prison, Stashinsky disappeared in an unknown direction.
Title of Hero of Ukraine
Posthumously in 2010, Stepan Bandera received the title of Hero of Ukraine, which was awarded to him by the then president "for the invincibility of the spirit." Then Yushchenko noted that millions of Ukrainians had been waiting for a long time for Bandera to be awarded the Hero of Ukraine, and Yushchenko's decision was accepted by a storm of applause from the public present at the award ceremony for Stepan Bandera's namesake grandson.
Nevertheless, this event caused a great public outcry, many disagreed with Yushchenko's decision. The European Union also reacted negatively to this event, so they called on the newly elected president to cancel the decision.
At present, the personality of Stepan Bandera evokes different points of view in society: if in Western Ukraine Bandera is considered a symbol of the struggle for independence, then Eastern Ukraine, Poland and Russia perceive this politician mostly negatively - he is accused of terrorism, fascism, and also of radical nationalism.
Who are the "Banderites"?
The concept of "Bandera" came from the name of Stepan Bandera, at present this expression has already become a household name - in modern society, "Bandera" is called all nationalists.
Sources note that the concept of "Bandera" in modern society does not mean that nationalists have an entirely positive attitude towards Stepan Bandera - this is how all nationalists are called, regardless of their point of view on Bandera's activities.
Stepan Andreevich Bandera was born on January 1, 1909 in the village of Stary Ugryniv (now the Kalush district of the Ivano-Frankivsk region). His father was a Greek Catholic priest, and his mother was the daughter of a priest, so Stepan was brought up in the conditions of national cultural patriotism.
From childhood, he became a repeated witness to the war, because four times (1914-1917) the fronts of the First World War swept through his native village and the territory of Galicia constantly passed from one occupier to another. It was in those turbulent years that dramatic attempts to restore the Ukrainian independent state took place.
Stepan's father, Andrey, had a large library and took an active part in the social and political life of Galicia during the formation of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (1918-1919). He was the ambassador from Kalushchin to the parliament of the republic - the Ukrainian National Council. During the Ukrainian-Polish war (1919) he was a military chaplain in the Ukrainian Galician Army. Also in the Dnieper region he fought with the White Guards and the Bolsheviks. Andrei Bandera returned home in 1920.
In the words of S. Bandera himself in those years, "he survived the exciting events of the revival and construction of the Ukrainian state."
In 1919, Stepan entered the Stryi Gymnasium, where he took an active part in plastun organizations and student circles of resistance to the Polish authorities, operating under the auspices of the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization - an illegal military revolutionary-political formation led by Yevgeny Konovalets).
In 1929, he became an active member of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), where he successfully engaged in illegal agitation of the revolutionary liberation struggle, the purpose of which was to establish an independent Ukrainian state. And already in 1931, Stepan was in charge of all OUN propaganda in Western Ukraine.
The main principal goal of the OUN, as well as other national-patriotic organizations of that time, was the complete independence of Ukraine from any invaders.
In 1933, Bandera rose to the regional conductor and under his leadership a series of punitive measures against the Polish occupation administration took place. In particular, on June 16, 1934, the odious Minister of the Interior of Poland, Bronisław Peracki, who became famous for his bloody acts of terror against Ukrainians, was assassinated. Peratsky was the author and direct leader of the plan "in the misery of Russia", the purpose of which is to appease the inhabitants of Western Ukraine.
The day before the murder, Bandera was arrested, and on January 13, 1936, after a long investigation and litigation, he and two of his associates were sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.
In 1939, after the capture of Poland, the Germans released Stepan from prison. And it is from this moment in the biography of our hero that an ambiguous and contradictory interpretation of his role in Ukrainian and world history begins. Some historians and politicians prove his heroic patriotism and a huge positive role in the establishment of Ukrainian statehood, others - collaborationism and crimes against his own people.
Immediately after his release, in September 1939, he heads the revolutionary OUN Wire and immediately negotiates with the military leadership of Nazi Germany on a joint struggle against the Russian-Bolshevik invaders, who, at that time, according to the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, occupied the Western -Ukrainian lands. The main goal of Bandera, in cooperation with the Germans, was the creation of an independent Ukrainian state.
Using the contradictions within the Nazi administration, the northern Ukrainian legion "Nachtigal", commander Roman Shukhevych, and the southern "Roland" are being created. These military formations, according to the plan of the OUN, were to become the basis of the Ukrainian army after the declaration of independence. Since the beginning of the war, they were not officially part of the German army, had a different uniform, wore a trident and went into battle under a blue and yellow flag.
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany, violating the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, attacks the Soviet Union. And already on June 30, 1941, the Nachtigall legion, led by Roman Shukhevych, enters Lviv, captures the strategic objects of the city, and on the same day the Act of Restoration of Ukrainian Statehood is proclaimed. And the Chairman of the National Assembly, Yaroslav Stetsko, was instructed to organize the Ukrainian authorities.
The German authorities first responded to such actions of the Ukrainian nationalists with an ultimatum to immediately cancel the Act, and when they refused to fulfill the conditions of the Nazis, mass terror was used against them. Hundreds of participants in the so-called "Bandera sabotage" were arrested and thrown into prison. The same fate befell Stepan Bandera, he was arrested in Krakow. His two brothers Vasily and Alexei were tortured to death in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Both Ukrainian legions "Nachtigal" and "Roland", after refusing to obey the Germans, were disbanded and disarmed. But, despite this, it is the soldiers of these units that will later become the core of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).
Due to the unfavorable course of the war, the Germans released Stepan from custody in December 1944 and began negotiations on joint actions against the Bolsheviks. The main requirements of Bandera were the recognition of the Act of the Resumption of Ukrainian Statehood, and the possibility of creating an independent Ukrainian army. But these goals were not realized, since Soviet troops soon captured Western Ukraine, and on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany signed the Act of Surrender.
Further struggle for independence unfolded on the territory of Western and Greater Ukraine already against the Soviet occupying power and actively continued until 1955. Led Bandera's anti-Soviet resistance from abroad.
On October 15, 1959 Stepan Bandera was killed in Munich. As German investigators would later establish, the murder was committed by a KGB agent of Ukrainian origin, Bohdan Stashinsky, who shot him in the face with a solution of potassium cyanide.
In the format of the Soviet historical concept, Bandera is seen as a collaborator, a criminal and a traitor to his own people, and his supporters are equated with the Nazis against whom the Soviet state heroically fought.
But, with the collapse of the USSR and the restoration of Ukraine as an independent state in 1991, a radically opposite Soviet, Ukrainian point of view on the figure of Stepan Bandera appeared. Moreover, the history of the liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people in the 20th century is inextricably linked with his name.
However, complex disputes on this topic continue in Ukrainian society to this day. They became especially aggravated after the then President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Stepan Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine in 2004, which was later, in 2010, canceled by the Donetsk District Administrative Court.
The fact that in the interactive project of the Inter TV channel "Great Ukrainians" Bandera took the honorable 3rd place, after Yaroslav the Wise and Mykola Amosov, speaks of his high authority among Ukrainians.
In the context of a new wave of Ukraine's struggle for independence from the encroachments of Muscovy in 2013-2014, the ideas of our hero become extremely relevant. Only one thing is certain: every independent nation has the right to its heroes, despite the fact that they are not always positively perceived by representatives of other nations.
Munich resident Stefan Popel
On October 15, 1959, a man with a face covered in blood was taken to a Munich hospital. The victim's neighbors who called the doctors knew him as Stefan Popiel. When the doctors arrived, Popel was still alive. But the doctors did not have time to save him. Popel died on the way to the hospital without regaining consciousness. Doctors could only ascertain death and establish its cause. Although the man delivered had a fracture at the base of his skull from a fall, the immediate cause of death was heart failure.
When viewed on Popel, they found a holster with a pistol, this was the reason for calling the police. The arriving police officers quickly established that the true name of the deceased was Stepan Bandera, and that he was the leader of Ukrainian nationalists. The body was examined again, this time more carefully. One of the doctors drew attention to the smell of bitter almonds coming from the face of the deceased. Vague suspicions were confirmed: Bandera was killed: poisoned with potassium cyanide.
Required preface - 1: OUN
The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) emerged in Western Ukraine in 1929 as a response to the oppression of the Ukrainian population of Galicia by the Polish authorities. According to the agreement of 1921, Poland undertook to give Ukrainians equal rights with the Poles, autonomy, a university and create all conditions for national and cultural development.
In fact, the Polish authorities pursued a policy of forced assimilation, Polonization and Catholicization of the Galicians. In local governments, only Poles were appointed to all positions. Greek Catholic churches and monasteries were closed. In a few schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, Polish teachers taught. Ukrainian teachers and priests were persecuted. Reading rooms were closed, Ukrainian literature was destroyed.
The Ukrainian population of Galicia responded with mass actions of disobedience (refusal to pay taxes, participate in the census, in elections to the senate and the Sejm, serve in the Polish army) and acts of sabotage (arson of military warehouses and state institutions, damage to telephone and telegraph communications, attacks on gendarmes) . In 1920, the UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization) was created by former servicemen of the UNR and ZUNR, which became the basis of the OUN created in 1929.
Required preface - 2: Stepan Bandera
Bandera was born in 1909 in the family of a Greek Catholic priest, a supporter of the independence of Ukraine. Already in the 4th grade of the Bandera gymnasium, he became a member of a semi-legal nationalist organization of students, took part in organizing boycotts and sabotage of the decisions of the Polish authorities. In 1928, Stepan became a member of the UVO, and in 1929 - the OUN.
Stepan Bandera (January 1, 1909, the village of Stary Ugryniv, near Stanislavov, Austria-Hungary - October 15, 1959), one of the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists.
The son of a Uniate priest, who in 1917-20 commanded various combat anti-communist detachments (later he was shot, and the two sisters of Bandera were deported to Siberia). After the end of the civil war, this part of Ukraine became part of Poland. In 1922 he joined the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth. In 1928 he entered the agronomic faculty of the Lvov Higher Polytechnic School. In 1929 he took a course in the Italian intelligence school. In 1929 he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) created by E. Konovalts and soon headed the most radical "youth" group. From the beginning of 1929, a member, from 1932-33 - deputy head of the regional executive (leadership) of the OUN. He organized robberies of mail trains and post offices, as well as the murder of opponents. At the beginning of 1933, he headed the regional OUN wire in Galicia, where he organized the struggle against the policies of the Polish authorities. The organizer of the murder of the Minister of the Interior of Poland Bronisław Peracki (1934). At the trial in Warsaw in early 1936, he was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment. In the summer of 1936, another trial took place - in Lvov - over the leadership of the OUN, where a similar sentence was passed against Bandera. After the occupation of Poland by the German troops, he was released, collaborated with the Abwehr. After the murder of Konovalets by NKVD agents (1938), he came into conflict with A. Melnik, who claimed leadership in the OUN. Feb. 1940 brought together an OUN conference in Krakow, at which a tribunal was created that pronounced death sentences on Melnik's supporters. In 1940, the confrontation with the Melnikovites took the form of an armed struggle. In Apr. 1941 OUN split into OUN-M (supporters of Melnik) and OUN-B (supporters of Bandera), which was also called OUN-R (OUN-revolutionaries), and Bandera was elected head of the main wire. Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, 3 marching groups (about 40 thousand people) were formed, which were supposed to form the Ukrainian administration in the occupied territories. Bandera tried with the help of these groups to proclaim the independence of Ukraine, putting Germany before the fact. On June 30, 1941, on his behalf, J. Stetsko proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian state. At the same time, Bandera's supporters staged a pogrom in Lviv, during which approx. 3 thousand people July 5 arrested in Krakow by the Gestapo. Bandera was demanded to abandon the Act of 30/6/1941, B. agreed and called on "the Ukrainian people to help the German army everywhere to smash Moscow and Bolshevism." In Sept. re-arrested and placed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was kept in good conditions. One of the main initiators of the creation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) on October 14, 1942, succeeded in replacing its chief commander D. Klyachkivsky with his protege R. Shukhevych. The goal of the UPA was proclaimed the struggle for the independence of Ukraine, both with the Bolsheviks and with the Germans. Nevertheless, the leadership of the OUN did not recommend "resorting to battles with large German forces." At the beginning of August 1943, a meeting of representatives of the German authorities and the OUN took place in Sarny, Rovno region, to agree on joint actions against the partisans, then the negotiations were transferred to Berlin. An agreement was reached that the UPA would protect railways and bridges from Soviet partisans and support the activities of the German occupation authorities. In return, Germany promised to supply parts of the UPA with weapons and ammunition, and in the event of a victory of the Nazis over the USSR, to allow the creation of a Ukrainian state under the protectorate of Germany. In Sept. 1944 the position of the German authorities changed (according to G. Himmler, "a new stage of cooperation began") and Bandera was released. As part of the 202nd Abwehr team in Krakow, he was engaged in the preparation of OUN sabotage detachments. From Feb. 1945 and until his death, he served as the leader (leader) of the OUN. In the summer of 1945, he issued a secret decree, which, in particular, spoke of the need “immediately and most secretly ... to liquidate the aforementioned elements of the OUN and UPA (those who can surrender to the authorities) in two ways: a) send large and small UPA detachments to battle with the Bolsheviks and create situations for them to be destroyed by the Soviets at posts and ambushes
dah." After the end of the war, he lived in Munich, collaborated with the British intelligence services. At the OUN conference in 1947, he was elected head of the wire for the entire OUN (which actually meant the unification of the OUN-B and OUN-M). Killed (poisoned) by an agent of the KGB of the USSR - a converted member of the OUN Bandera Strashinsky. Later, Strashinsky surrendered to the authorities and testified that the order to eliminate Bandera was given personally by the chairman of the KGB of the USSR A.N. Shelepin. After the collapse of the USSR and the declaration of independence of Ukraine, B. became a symbol of independence for all radical Ukrainian nationalists. In 2000, the right-wing parties of the Ivano-Frankivsk region called for the transfer of B.'s ashes to their homeland and the opening of a historical and memorial complex.
The material of the book was used: Zalessky K.A. Who was who in World War II. Allies of Germany. Moscow, 2003
