Stepan Bandera | 17Oct2009 | Lubomyr Markevych

Intrigue over Stepan Bandera

[W.Z. In commenting on the following article

Russia seizes Stalin-era research
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8311335.stm

Lubomyr Markevych notes the parallels with the KGB/FSB actions on Stepan Bandera:]
 
Happens in Ukraine as well. The SBU (the KGB's successor in Ukraine) reported that various files relating to Stepan Bandera and the killing of Roman Shukhevych and Volodymyr Ivasiuk were removed from its archives and taken to Moscow. As recently as last week the SBU announced that they had requested the FSB (the KGB's successor in Russia) to make copies of the Bandera files and return the copies to Ukraine for its historical records. The FSB refused.
 
In addition, annecdotal stories continue to circulate in Ukraine about the KGB's removal and burning of files in 1991-92 near the town of Irpin north of Kyiv and the removal of other files and shipping them by rail to Moscow under armed guard. Former President Kravchuk neither confirms nor denies these allegations which were made under his watch and allegedly with his compliance. Yevhen Marchuk who was head of the SBU at the time has never commented. However former KGB agents who later swore allegiance to Ukraine are adamant that the above removals took place. Other KGB agents who refused to take the oath to Ukraine are now retired from the service, continue to reside in Ukraine but won't comment.
 
In related developments, a groundbreaking collaborative first took place with the SBU opening an exhibit this week dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Stepan Bandera and displaying historical artifacts lent to it by the "Museum of Ukraine's Struggle for Freedom", in London, England.  See:
http://www.sbu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=90074&cat_id=39574
 
This follows on the SBU's opening of an exhibit in Lutsk earlier this month dedicated to the 67th anniversary of the creation of the UPA. Among the exhibits are a large selection of documents, photos and artifacts from SBU files, including an original UPA battle flag. However the choice of Volyn for this exhibit comes as a surprise, at least to me. While it was in Volyn and not Halychyna that the first formations of UPA were conceived and saw action, it was also the region where the most damning excesses of ethnic cleansing and murder of the Polish civilian population took place. It is to Ukraine's and Poland's credit that UPA's actions agaisnt Poles in Volyn and the Polish Armja Krajowa's actions against Ukrainian civilians in Halychyna have been recently confronted and are now the subject of collaborative scholastic exploration by historians of both countries. In so doing both Poland and Ukraine are trying to square their historical excesses against the more important and bigger picture of why their respective insurgencies came into existence in the first place. The article which follows does not appear to address this issue however it would be unfortunate if the exhibit in Lutsk did not do so as well. Failure to confront this matter at every opportunity only serves to nourish Russia's pathological UPA-phobia and allows it to exploit the issue at every divisive opportunity, - even as the Poles and Ukrainians are attempting to move on. See the article:
http://www.sbu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=90043&cat_id=39574
 
LM

***********************************************
[W.Z. Mr. Markevych earlier provided the following link to an article in Life Magazine, 07Sep1962 on Bohdan Stashynsky, who assassinated Stepan Bandera in Munich on 15Oct1959 and defected to U.S. officials in West Berlin in 1961:]

Tomorrow October 15th, 2009 is the 50th anniversary of Stepan Bandera's assassination in Munich, Germany at the hands of KGB assassin Bohdan Stashinsky.

Some of you may remember the day and perhaps a few might even remember that LIFE Magazine published an article on his assassination on the third anniversary of his death(Sept 7, 1962). Through the modern wonder of digitized archiving this article is now available on line at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=-k0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA72&dq=Bandera&as_pt=MAGAZINES#v=onepage&q=Bandera&f=false
(The article starts on page 70)

Many thanx to Bohdan Romaniuk for tracking it down for a new generation of readers.