sevunts20180609RCI.html

Canadian monument to controversial Ukrainian national hero ignites debate

[W.Z.: My extensive comments in the colour fuchsia throughout this article are dedicated to the memory of Yaroslav Harchun (1944.xx.xx-2006.08.14) (survived by his wife Zonia Keywan and their two children Simon and Julia), who worked for many years in the Ukrainian section at Radio Canada International in Montreal. He had an insider's understanding of KGB methods directed against Ukrainian Independence and I can only imagine what his reaction would be to Mr. Sevunts' article. For many years his voice was beamed to listeners in Ukraine yearning for freedom -- a sample of which can be heard as narrator for the Holodomor film by Taras Hukalo, a link to which is archived at the top of my Holdomor page.]

[For the last year or so, there has been a concerted attack by the Russian propaganda machine and the Holocaust Industry to delegitimize Ukraine's independence. A recent example, dated 23Apr2018, prompted Professor Viktor Brekhunenko to respond to the derogatory letter sponsored by Congressman Ro Khanna and signed by 56 Members of Congress of the United States.

Of particular relevance to this article by Levon Sevunts are a series of tweets in the fall of 2017 by the Russian Embassy in Ottawa decrying three monuments erected by the Ukrainian-Canadian community in Canada on their private property -- two in Edmonton and one in Oakville, Ontario.

In his "controversial" hit piece, Mr. Sevunts displays 14 photographs, usually preceded by a negative heading such as "A far right movement", "Terrorist beginnings", "A German commando", "Lviv pogrom", "Apprenticeship in mass murder". He then turns to the writings of and quotes from two charter members of the "nest of Ukrainophobic vipers spawned at the University of Alberta" -- John-Paul Himka and his protégé Per Anders Rudling, who do their utmost to demonize the Ukrainian Independence Movement -- especially Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera.

The first photograph is of a bust of UPA leader, Roman Shukhevych, located in front of "Dim Molodi" in Edmonton. Not shown is the monument to the Halychyna Division (referred to as "Divisia" by Ukrainian-Canadians), which is located in St. Michael's Cemetery in Edmonton, where my parents, brother and many relatives are buried. I would expect that most of the ethnic Ukrainians living in Edmonton and certainly the vast majority of the dead souls buried in St. Michael's Cemetery are grateful to Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera, who represent the aspirations of millions of Ukrainians to establish an independent Ukraine. Does Mr. Himka propose to initiate a petition to have these symbols of Ukrainian statehood removed?

I am amazed by the double morality of those that demonize the efforts of the Ukrainian Independence Movement. History demonstrates that freedom and independence in the face of violent opposition by the oppressors can only be attained by physical force. This entails civil disobedience, "terrorist" activities, military confrontations, etc. Why does anyone expect Ukraine to be an exception?

During and at the conclusion of WWI, Ukrainians endeavoured to create an independent state by peaceful democratic means. They failed. At the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Versailles, they were double crossed and rebuffed. This has recurred again and again. Democracy and diplomacy don't work; military force and violence do.

During the 1920s and 1930s, OVU and OUN set up their revolutionary cells in complete secrecy, which requiresd a hierarchical (totalitarian) structure and strict diecipline. (It certainly was not democratic.) Every OUN participant was dedicated to the motto: "Establish an independent Ukraine or die trying."

The Germans (especially Adolf Hitler) were horrified by the draconian penalties imposed on them by the Treaty of Versailles and were determined to revise it. Ukrainians hoped that any revision would result in an independent Ukraine. Their contacts with the German Wehrmacht resulted in the creation of the Roland and Nachtigall Battalions composed of Ukrainians, but armed and controlled by Germans. There were elements in the German Wehrmacht that truly supported Ukrainian aspirations. (Unfortunately, this did not include Hitler). Ukrainians were disappointed, when Hitler allowed Hungary to annex Carpatho-Ukraine on 15Mar1939 and they were shocked and disillusioned, when Stepan Bandera and the OUN leadership were arrested and sent to German concentration camps shortly after Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state on 30Jun1941. Thereafter, mutual distrust reigned supreme.

The atmosphere changed drastically after the Battle of Stalingrad resulted in the complete destruction of the German Sixth Army on 02Feb1943. It became obvious to everyone (except Hitler) that Germany would lose the war. Before that date Ukrainians were hoping for German benevolence towards them; after that date they started hoping that the Western Allies would sweep through Germany and confront the Red Army. No one (except Roosevelt) had any illusions about Stalin. Thus, any adjustment of the position and tactics of the OUN leadership is logical and understandable.

"Heroism" is a very subjective concept. I do not consider the killing of a large number of enemy personnel as heroism. (In fact, killing an opponent is an admission of failure to convince your opponent to your point of view by peaceful means.) To me, heroism is a form of martyrdom associated with sacrificing one's life and/or wellbeing for the benefit of others. The Ukrainian people will be forever grateful to hundreds of thousands of their brethern who sacrificed their "souls and bodies for our freedom", as stated in the Ukrainian anthem.]

[... photo ...] -- The monument to Roman Shukhevych, commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from 1943 until his death in 1950, has stood at the entrance of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, Alberta, since mid-1970s. Shukhevych is lionized [demonized] by some for his fight for Ukrainian independence against Poland, the Soviet Union and later Germany. But critics of the monument say it glorifies a Nazi henchman who sided with Germany in hopes of winning independence for Ukraine. (Photo courtesy of John-Paul Himka)

A Canadian monument to a hero of an anti-Soviet nationalist uprising in Ukraine is raising questions about the manipulation of historical memory for political purposes.

Critics of the monument say Roman Shukhevych was also a ruthless Nazi henchman and honouring him plays into the hands of the Kremlin propaganda machine that seeks to delegitimize the very idea of Ukrainian statehood.

The bronze bust of Shukhevych, one of the leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (known under its Ukrainian acronym UPA) during WWII and immediately after, has stood quietly at the entrance of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, Alberta, for 45 years.

Shukhevych’s stern gaze has greeted generations of Ukrainian-Canadians who came to the centre for various community activities, oblivious of the national hero’s messy wartime record of mass murder and ethnic cleansing.

But a series of tweets by the Russian embassy in Ottawa last October, decrying the presence of Nazi monuments in Canada has put the wartime record of the OUN and UPA and one of its most famous and controversial leaders under public scrutiny.

The tweets focussed on three monuments: the bust to Shukhevych and two monuments to the veterans of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division that was renamed into the 1st Ukrainian Division shortly before the end of WWII. One of these monuments is located at the St. Michael’s cemetery in Edmonton, the other is in Oakville, Ontario.

Ukrainian-Canadian historian John-Paul Himka, believes the Russian embassy tweets are part of a propaganda campaign by the Kremlin.

“They have an interest in these matters because they are trying to present Ukraine as a fascist regime and as a Nazi coup, so that fits into their agenda and they like to create division and chaos in democratic countries,” says Himka. [When, where and for how long did Mr. Sevunts interview Mr. Himka?]

But it doesn’t mean that some of the Russian allegations are untrue, Himka says.

“They look for things that they can use,” Himka says, adding that he is very troubled by attempts by some Ukrainian-Canadian leaders and organizations to whitewash Shukhevych’s wartime record and glorify his exploits.

Lionized by some [the vast majority] in the Ukrainian Canadian community as a brilliant guerilla commander who led the largest insurgency in Europe against Stalin, Shukhevych is considered a war criminal by Jews and Poles for his alleged role in the Holocaust and an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Polish minority in Western Ukraine.

[Do the Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora consider David Ben Gurion (Grun), Menachem Begin (Biegun), Yitzhak Shamir (Yezernitsky) and others to be war criminals? Certainly, most Arabs and dispassionate observers around the world do so.
- What about the myriad members of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Jewish origin in the Soviet Union including Trotsky, Kaganovich, Mekhlis, Yagoda? Were they not complicit in crimes against humanity?

Do the Poles in Poland and in the Diaspora consider Josef Pilsudski and the Polish Independence Movement, who went to heroic lengths to re-establish an independent Polish state after WWI, to be war criminals? Were not members of Haller's Blue Army guilty of perpetrating atrocities and war crimes? They did succeed in establishing an independent Polish state. Unfortunately, they annexed Ukrainian ethnographic territory and, during the 1920s and 1930s, instituted a "pacification" program to pacify and Polonize the Ukrainian population in these areas. (See Lypovetsky here and here.) The Ukrainian Independence Movement established OVU/OUN specifically to counter these chauvinistic Polish policies and to continue the struggle for an independent Ukrainian state.
- During and after WWII, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) fought heroically against the German and later the Soviet occupation forces -- very similar to the OUN/UPA. (See video links in the Lypovetsky article.) Indeed, the life story of Hieronim Dekatowski (as "Zapora") mirrors that of Roman Shukhevych. Should Mr. Dekatowski and his units be considered war criminals?

Do the English in Britain and the Diaspora consider Winston Churchill to be a war criminal? Many people (including myself) think so and there is a great deal of evidence in this regard. Should the monument of Winston Churchill just opposite the Holodomor monument in Edmonton be removed?
- History demonstrates that establishing an independent state (or maintaining an empire) is seldom accomplished peacefully and requires military force. It is not done by angels.]

A multicultural paradox

Per Rudling, an associate professor of history at Lund University in Sweden, says he became aware of the Shukhevych monument 15 years ago while completing his PhD at the University of Alberta. [Presumably, he completed it in 2009.]

“I had been working on Ukrainian nationalist movement, Ukrainian-Polish and Ukrainian-Jewish relations during WWII, so … I found it a little bit puzzling the first time I saw it,” Rudling says. [When, where and for how long did Mr. Sevunts interview Mr. Rudling?]

He was even more perplexed when he found out that the monument was partly funded by Canadian taxpayers through programs designed to promote multiculturalism in Canada.

[Although I have lived in Edmonton since May 2000, I have never met Per Anders Rudling. Presumably, he attended the 41st Annual Shevchenko Lecture in Edmonton, Alberta on 30Mar2007 given by Dr. Peter J. Potichnyj on the topic "The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA): What Have We Learned 65 Years After Its Founding?"
- During the question period after that lecture, I displayed to the audience two Ukrainian-language books by Mykhaylo Andrusyak titled Brothers in Fire and Brothers in Battle.
(Михайло Андрусяк -- Брати Вогню (2004, Braty Vohnju) ISBN 966-550-2006-9 and Брати Грому (2005, Braty Hromu) ISBN 966-550-139-9)
No one was familiar with these books, which describe the UPA resistance surrounding the Bereziv villages in the Kolomyia region.
- I also referred to several books by Mykhaylo Tomaschuk, including SPALAKH: UPA resistance in the Bereziv region of which I have written a review.
- Finally, have Mssrs. Himka and Rudling read the books of Ivan Bilas, excerpts of which I have OCRed and archived in the links below?]
Role of Repressive Organs in Strengthening the Totalitarian Regime (1945-1953) Book excerpt, 1994; Ivan Bilas [pdf file; Russian]
Repressive-Punative System and Mass Deportations of Nations (1945-1947) Book excerpt, 1994; Ivan Bilas [pdf file; Russian]

A far right movement

[... photo ...] -- Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, carrying a banner with a portrait of Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych (second from the right), march in the centre of the western city of Lviv on April 28, 2013. The march commemorated the 70th anniversary of 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division made up mostly of Ukrainian volunteers. (YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP/Getty Images)

The OUN was founded in 1929 by Ukrainian war veterans frustrated by their failure to establish an independent state after the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Bolshevik revolution in 1917-1920, following which Ukrainians found themselves divided between four states: the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

Formed out of a merger of radical nationalist and fascist groups, such as the Ukrainian National Association, the Union of Ukrainian Fascists, and the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, the OUN became the dominant political movement of the Ukrainian far right [Ukrainian Independence Movement], Rudling writes in a research paper entitled The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths.

The organization resorted to terror to achieve its political goals.

Terrorist beginnings

[... photo ...] -- Undated photo of Roman Shukhevych (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Shukhevych committed his first political assassination at the age of 19 in 1926, killing Polish school curator Stanisław Sobiński in Lviv in retaliation for his role in implementing language policies of the Polish government that were designed to assimilate Poland’s restless Ukrainian minority. [Majority in Ukrainian ethnographic territory.]

In 1934, Shukhevych was arrested for his involvement in the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki.

Shukhevych spent two and a half years in prison [Bereza Kartuzka Concentration Camp] where he was allegedly tortured by the Polish authorities, Rudling writes.

In January, 1938, Shukhevych crossed the border from Poland to Czechoslovakia, setting up a new political base in the Carpathian Ukraine.

[As explained in Wikipedia, Carpatho-Ukraine (Carpathian Ruthenia or Zakarpattia) was an autonomous region within Czechoslovakia from late 1938 to March 15, 1939. It was declared an independent republic by Avgustyn Voloshyn on March 15, 1939. Unfortunately, its independence lasted only one day, when Hitler allowed the Hungarian Army to attack/massacre its defenders, and occupy/annex it. In his excellent book, Dr. Peter Stercho (Drexel University, 1971)) titled Diplomacy of Double Morality gives a detailed account of the failed attempt.
- (For Ukrainians, WWII started on 15Mar1939 and ended with the death of Roman Shukhevych on 05Mar1950.)
- Roman "Shukhevych took an active part in the short-term armed conflict with Hungarian forces and was almost killed in one of the actions."]

According to Rudling, in the spring and summer of that year, Shukhevych received officer’s training at a German military academy in Munich.

Caught between Moscow and Berlin

[... photo ...] -- Soviet and German officers are having a friendly conversation in the newly captured Polish city of Brest, September 1939. This photo was taken during a joint Soviet -- German military parade in Brest, Sep. 22, 1939. [Hitler and Stalin jointly started WWII.]

In 1939, as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin partitioned Poland, many leading OUN members gathered in the German-occupied part of Poland, the so-called General Government.

The Soviet purges targeting Ukrainian nationalist leaders and intellectuals further radicalized the OUN.

With the moderate nationalist leaders either executed or exiled to GULAG camps all over the Soviet Union, the OUN, thanks to its robust underground structure, was the only Ukrainian nationalist organization that survived more or less intact, says Dominique Arel, professor at University of Ottawa, where he holds the Chair of Ukrainian Studies. [When, where and for how long did Mr. Sevunts interview Dominique Arel?]

“The Polish underground was gone, the Zionist underground was gone,” Arel says. “The OUN was the only one left standing.”

[According to the book SPALAKH, "After the flight of the Bolsheviks and arrival of the Hungarian army [1941.06.22], the OUN leadership committed a fatal mistake in that all OUN members came out into the open, legalized themselves and started rebuilding their lives. They massively celebrated the proclamation of Ukrainian Independence on 30Jun1941. [p79] They were shocked, when Stepan Bandera and the OUN leadership were arrested and sent to German concentration camps."
- I would suggest that Dr. Arel read my review (or the Ukrainian original) to understand the true history of that period and the meaning of "heroism".]

By 1941 the OUN had split into two factions: a more radical wing comprised of younger militants and named after its leader, Stepan Bandera, the OUN(b), and a more conservative faction made up of older veterans, the OUN(m), led by Andrii Melnyk.

“Both were totalitarian, anti-Semitic, and fascist,” Rudling writes. “But there was a difference in tactics: the OUN(m), the smaller of the two wings, was more cautious and stayed loyal to Nazi Germany throughout the war, whereas the OUN(b) took a more independent line vis-à-vis Nazi Germany.”

Shukhevych became one of the key organizers of the OUN(b) faction.

A German commando

[... photo ...] -- The Ukrainian volunteers of the Nachtigall batallion were outfitted in German uniforms and weapons.

In the late spring and summer of 1940, Shukhevych joined over 120 other Ukrainian nationalists for training at a secret espionage school run by the German military intelligence, Abwehr, in Zakopane, in German-occupied southern Poland, Rudling says.

With planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union entering its final stages, Abwehr set up two small Ukrainian units: Sonderformation Nachtigall and Organisation Roland.

The Nachtigall battalion, which consisted mostly of Ukrainian nationalists, was formed in Krakow in March of 1941 and its members received their training at a German boot camp in Neuhammer, Silesia, in present-day western Poland.

The Ukrainian volunteers were outfitted in German uniforms and weapons, and were attached to the 1st Battalion of the Regiment Brandenburg-800, Nazi Germany’s elite special forces unit, trained to work behind the enemy lines, securing strategic infrastructure such as bridges and oil facilities, carrying out sabotage and assassinations.

In the rank of Hauptmann (Capt.) Shukhevych became the highest-ranking Ukrainian officer in the Nachtigall battalion, where he was shadowed by German liaison officer Theodore Oberländer, who later became a minister in the post-war cabinet of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The Nachtigall battalion took part in the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 and marched into Lviv on June 30, 1941.

[Wrong! Roman Shukhevych and his unit deliberately reached Lviv some six hours before the German Wehrmacht in order to secure the radio station, where Yaroslav Stetsko impudently declared the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state in the face of virulent opposition by Adolf Hitler. Stetsko was arrested and, later, so was Stepan Bandera. Both refused to rescind their declaration of independence. Shortly after, the Germans started arresting young males suspected of being OUN supporters.
- Hitler planned to colonize Ukraine and exterminate/enslave its inhabitants, rather than tolerate an independent Ukraine. He was, therefore, opposed to allowing Ukrainians to join the Wehrmacht, or providing Ukrainian groups with weapons.]

Lviv pogrom

[... photo ...] -- A woman is being attacked during the Jewish pogrom in Lviv in July 1941.

During the hurried retreat from the rapidly advancing German army, Stalin’s henchman Lavrenty Beria ordered the execution of thousands of detainees held in prisons across Western Ukraine, rather than have them freed by the Germans and join the anti-Soviet forces.

The massacre of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners, including Shukhevych’s brother further inflamed the anti-Soviet and anti-Jewish sentiments in Western Ukraine, where a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism existed prior to WWII.

A bloody Jewish pogrom began in Lviv as the news of the prison massacre spread on July 1, 1941.

However, the accusation that Nachtigall organized and carried out the the pogrom was a Soviet fabrication designed to undermine the Adenauer government, using Oberländer’s wartime connection to the battalion, says Himka.

Although historians are divided on the exact role of the Nachtigall battalion in the Lviv pogrom, most [Who?] have no doubt that the battalion took part in the murders of thousands of Jews on its march from Lviv to Vinnitsa, about 430 kilometres east of Lviv. [???]

Aborted independence

On June 30, 1941, the Bandera faction of the OUN, hoping to emulate the example of neighbouring Slovakia and its Balkan ally, the Ustaša Croatia, declared independence while also pledging allegiance to Nazi Germany. [See my comment above.]

But the Germans had no intention of creating a Ukrainian state in a zone of their vital strategic interests and clamped down on the OUN(b) leadership.

The Nachtigall battalion was dissolved and disarmed. It was reconstituted into Schutzmannshaft battalion 201, an auxiliary police unit.

After receiving some additional training, much to the chagrin of its Ukrainian volunteers the battalion was transferred further north to neighbouring Belarus to fight Soviet partisans.

Apprenticeship in mass murder

[... photo ...] -- People visit a World War II memorial in the former village of Khatyn, some 60 km (37 miles) northeast of Minsk, May 8, 2010. Historians say Nazi troops killed 149 villagers, most of them children and women, and burned down their houses. The village was never restored. (Vasily Fedosenko/REUTERS)

While much of the records of Shukhevych’s time in Belarus were destroyed or lost, the analysis of the casualty reports allows researchers to conclude that the Schutzmannshaft 201 wasn’t just fighting Soviet partisans, but also took part in reprisals against unarmed civilians, says Rudling.

For each casualty that the battalion suffered there were about 40 locals killed, according to research by Rudling.

“Either they were the world’s best soldiers or they were killing a lot of civilians, probably the latter,” says Himka.

However, doing the Nazis’ dirty work in Belarus demoralized the unit and in 1943 many of them, including Shukhevych returned to Ukraine where they formed the core of the new insurgent army, the UPA, organized by the Bandera wing of the OUN.

The skills and the lessons learned in Belarus were then applied with ruthless efficiency to the Polish population of Western Ukraine when Shukhevych was made the supreme commander of the UPA in August of 1943. [According to Peter Potichnyj (see link above), UPA reported to the UHVR and not to OUN(b).]

“They fought for independent Ukraine but they also went after and killed between 60,000 and 100,000 ethnic Poles in a mass campaign of ethnic cleansing under Shukhevych’s leadership,” says Rudling.

[I first heard of the fratricidal struggle between Poles and Ukrainians in Volyn, when I read the Ukrainian-language book by Danylo Shumuk titled "Пережите і Передумане" (My Life and Thoughts in Retrospect and Reminisced, 1983, ISBN: 0-912601-00-0) in 1983/84, when I was lecturing at Kalamalka Regional College, Vernon, B.C. (now Okanagan College Vernon Campus) and became acquainted with Danylo Shumuk's nephew, Ivan Shumuk.
- On pages 155-157, Danylo Shumuk relates how (probably in August 1943 in Volyn) he noticed that the Polish village, Dominopol, was completely deserted. Upon inquiring , he was told : "That was a Polish spy nest and enemy base ... Three days ago Dominopol was liquidated.." He later confronted people from the "Sluzhba Bezpeky" (Security Service) and argued with one of the young perpetrators, who retorted: "How would you feel, if (in 1942) Poles pulled out your mother by the hair from her house and in your presence murdered her and threw her into the Bug river? If your father was shot in your presence? If your 16-year-old sister was raped and then bayoneted and thrown into the Bug river?" Still later, he was warned not to discuss the issue. (At that time, Danylo Shumuk, as "Boremski", was a political instructor for the UPA with a mandate to convince young people to join the ranks of the UPA.)
- When I read this in 1984, I concluded that this atrocity was designed to scare the Polish settlers to evacuate Ukrainian ethnographic territory and flee to Poland proper. Both the Polish AK and the Ukrainian UPA engaged in this fratricidal war in a futile attempt to ensure that Volyn would be part of their respective countries after the end of WWII. (Stalin, of course, eclipsed these efforts by orchestrating massive selective deportations of Ukrainians and Poles from both sides of the border that he unilaterally established.)
- Today in 2018, I remain skeptical of the large number of Polish victims (60,000 to 100,000) quoted by Himka et al, since I would have expected that the majority of the Poles on Ukrainian ethnographic territory would have fled to Poland proper, while Ukrainians in Polish-dominated areas would have fled to Ukrainian-dominated areas. Certainly, the recent efforts of Polish authorities and patriots to exhume and analyse the Polish gravesites on Ukrainian territory should be supported by both Poles and Ukrainians. (And, of course, reciprocated on Ukrainian gravesites on Polish territory.) In my view, it is important that the souls of the departed be appropriately commemorated by both Ukrainians and Poles, since they have become part of the soul of the land. Furthermore, these places of worship should enhance understanding and friendship between the two nations and not cause dissension.

An English-language sequel to "Perezhyte i Peredumane" appeared in 1984 as "Life Sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Political Prisoner" (ISBN 0-920862-17-9 and ISBN 0-920862-19-5) published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies as a translation of "Za skhidnim obriiem" (1974).
- The 6-page Foreward by Nadia Svitlychna gives an excellent background to the life story of Danylo Shumuk.
- The 8-page Introduction by Ivan Jaworsky states that it is a slightly abbreviated version of "Perezhyte i Peredumane" and acknowledges the help of John-Paul Himka and David Marples (amongst others) in its preparation.
- It is surprising that neither of these "historians" ever refer to the writings of Danylo Shumuk. Surely, they have read his Ukrainian and English-language books? Did they ever interview Danylo Shumuk, when he was in Canada from 23May1987 to 28Nov2002 and before his death in Ukraine on 21May2004?
- Presumably, while in Canada, Mr. Shumuk wrote another book: Із ҐУЛАҐА в свободні мір (Iz GULAGA v svobodny mir -- From the GULAG to the free world). Have our historians read and reviewed it?
- Why has Danylo Shumuk been relegated to the dustbin of history?]

The UPA was also involved in the murder of thousands of Jews who had survived the initial wave of the Holocaust and were hiding in the forests of Western Ukraine, says Rudling.

Himka says his research shows that in the winter of 1943-44 the UPA lured the surviving Jews out of the woods and then murdered them.

“And then ethnic cleansing operation also engulfed other minorities,” says Himka. “They killed Czechs, they killed Armenians, they killed ethnic Germans.”

The idea was to create an ethnically homogeneous country, he says.

The making of a national hero

[... photo ...] -- A man at a stall selling “Ukrainian patriotic literature” wears a t-shirt showing historical Ukrainian nationalist militant figures Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych under the slogan “Heroes of Ukraine!” on September 14, 2014 in Lviv, Ukraine. The ongoing war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army has influenced popular culture in Ukraine and encouraged Ukrainian nationalists. Bandera and Shukhevych led a violent uprising against Polish administration of western Ukraine in the 1920s and sided with the Nazis during World War II in their attempt to win Ukrainian independence. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

However, what Shukhevych is remembered for in Western Ukraine and among Ukrainian-Canadians who immigrated to Canada after WWII from that part of the country is his insurgency against the Soviet forces, says Rudling.

In 1945, the war didn’t end in Western Ukraine, there was a very long-lasting and tenacious insurgency against the Soviets.

“Shukhevych is remembered for having fought the Soviets and having led the resistance against the Soviets until he was killed or committed suicide in March of 1950,” says Rudling. “So he is remembered very differently: Jewish survivors and Poles remember him quite-quite differently than Ukrainian nationalists in Canada do.”

The Soviet security services carried out a very brutal counterinsurgency campaign with casualties among the Ukrainian population climbing to at least 100,000 people and mass arrests and deportations of more than 200,000 nationalist sympathisers to Siberia, almost all of them from the Galicia region, says Arel.

“The Soviets used the principle of collective responsibility,” says Arel. “In order to defeat the insurgency, they targeted their families.”

For the Western Ukrainian society it was an enormously traumatic event.

“But for the Ukrainian national narrative this is the one time when you had massive resistance against Russian occupation,” says Arel.

Competing narratives and quest for legitimacy

[... photo ...] -- People hold flags picturing Ukrainian politician Stepan Bandera (L), one of the leaders of Ukrainian national movement and leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and his ally Roman Shukhevych (R) during a march in Kiev on January 1, 2017, to mark the 108th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian politician. (Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

That narrative of resistance to Russian occupation has become even more relevant following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its covert invasion of eastern Ukraine, says Arel.

The Soviet Union and then Russia in turn have used the same history to develop a counter-narrative whose purpose was to completely delegitimize the very idea of Ukrainian nationalism and Ukrainian statehood, he says.

“The (Russian) narrative is that Ukrainian nationalists revealed their true faces during WWII, they’re fascists, they’re Nazis, and therefore the very idea of Ukrainian independence is flawed,” says Arel said.

By glorifying the UPA and OUN, Ukrainian nationalists in turn seek to promote a different narrative.

“This is the historic drive to legitimize the aim to become independent from Russia, because what does Russia mean?” says Arel. “Imperial Russia meant banning the Ukrainian language and the Soviet Russia means the Holodomor (genocide by famine), and Soviet Russia in Western Ukraine at the beginning of the war meant the massacre of political prisoners in prisons.”

‘Hero of Ukraine’

Not surprisingly, the campaign to politically rehabilitate and glorify the image of the OUN and UPA and its leaders has not only divided public opinion in Ukraine itself but has also caused serious diplomatic tensions with Poland and Israel.

Warsaw, in particular, had supported Ukraine’s drive to break away from Moscow’s orbit and chart a more pro-Western course ever since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

But in 2007, in a move that continues to poison relations between Kyiv and Warsaw, Ukraine’s pro-Western president Viktor Yushchenko in the best traditions of the Soviet Union bestowed the title of “Hero of Ukraine” to Shukhevych. In 2010 barely a month before the end of his mandate, Yushchenko bestowed the same honour on Bandera.

[One hundred years ago on January 22, 1918, Ukraine declared independence from the Tsarist Russian Empire. In my opinion, after the 01Dec1991 referendum on Ukraine's independence was approved by 92.3% of voters, Leonid Kravchuk should have utilized 22Jan1992 as an opportunity to recognize the contributions of Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera to Ukraine's independence. At that time, there would have been little resistance to this recognition, even in Eastern Ukraine. (Furthermore, there would have been little resistance from Boris Yeltsin.) For 74 years, the citizens of Eastern Ukraine had been conditioned by insidious Russian propaganda about the evils of Ukrainian nationalism and independence (typified by Petliura after WWI and Shukhevych/Bandera after WWII). Efforts to counter this conditioning should have started immediately.]

“Bandera and Shukhevych became sort of front figures in a very clumsy rewriting of history aimed at uniting Ukraine, which at least at that point was quite a divided society, not necessarily between Russian speakers and Ukrainian speakers, but there were definite regional divisions,” says Rudling.

A divisive move

[... photo ...] -- Activists of the ultra-left wing Progressive Socialists party clash with police forces blocking a main street during a protest action in central Kiev 14 October 2007. Police were trying to separate left-wing demonstrators and Ukrainian nationalists marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of a Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a World War Two guerrilla movement that fought both Nazi invaders and Soviet forces. (Photo credit should read Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

But, the move to rehabilitate Bandera and Shukhevych, which was applauded by many Ukrainian-Canadian organizations and met with silence by Ottawa, did not unite Ukraine, says Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian researcher who teaches at University of Ottawa. [When, where and for how long did Mr. Sevunts interview Ivan Katchanovski?]

A public opinion survey commissioned by Katchanovski in 2009 showed that just 13 per cent of the respondents expressed positive attitudes towards UPA. However, about 45 per cent of Ukrainians had negative attitudes towards the insurgent army, says Katchanovski.

There were also strong regional differences with most of the support for UPA and OUN based in his native western Ukraine, says Katchanovski.

The strongest backlash against the glorification of the UPA and OUN was in parts of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and in Crimea.
[But Shukhevych and Bandera never operated in these areas!]

And the Russian propaganda, which always sought to downplay Stalin’s own collaboration with Hitler prior to 1941, played up these sentiments to further polarize the country.

Diaspora influence

Many of the displaced Ukrainians who came to Canada after WWII were refugees from Western Ukraine, particularly the Volhyn and Galicia regions, which were the hotbeds of the UPA support.

“So of course that group of people, that generation and their offspring they’ve been raised in this culture,” says Rudling. “They’ve been going to Saturday school, they’ve been performing rituals in front of these monuments, they grew up with this narration of history and to them it’s tradition, culture and I don’t think they didn’t have much reason to reflect upon this.”

Ukrainian intellectuals who were tied to the OUN had a very powerful influence on the life of the community in Canada, says Himka.

“With time all the other tendencies -- because there were leftist tendencies, more liberal tendencies -- they have pretty much disappeared,” says Himka. “And a lot of the community organizations are headed by the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.”

It is that part of the community, represented by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress that built the Shukhevych statue in Edmonton and has been pushing for a revisionist [?] view of the OUN’s and UPA’s wartime record, says Himka.

“They have an agenda about their own history,” says Himka. “They want to have a monopoly over what is said about Ukrainian history.”

These Diaspora groups also support the nationalist right in Ukraine and whitewash the WWII history of their movement, says Himka.

“They are very much involved in promoting victimization narratives: the Ukrainian internment during WWI in Canada, the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-33,” says Himka.

“These are the kind of things they really want to drive into the heads of the community so that kids sort of think their grandparents suffered this, although most Ukrainians who came to Canada were not from where the famine was.”

However, the post-war cohort of Ukrainian immigration is a small part of the 1.3 million strong Ukrainian-Canadian community, says Rudling.

[The vast bulk of Ukrainian-Canadians support Ukraine's independence and are grateful to Shukhevych and Bandera for helping achieve it.]

“The vast bulk of Ukrainian-Canadians do not really take much interest in Shukhevych and Bandera, and to the extent they do, they probably don’t really reflect much upon this,” Rudling says.

A debate forced by Putin

[... photo ...] -- Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) take part in a rally in Kiev on October 14, 2016 to celebrate the Defender of Ukraine Day and the creation of the paramilitary partisan movement Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), aimed at fighting for independence against Polish, Soviet and German forces in western Ukraine. (Photo credit should read Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)

The issue of monuments to Shukhevych or to the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division in Canada registered barely any interest 10-15 years ago, says Rudling.

“It became an issue now when Russia decides to instrumentalize this, launch a propaganda campaign for political reasons,” says Rudling.

It is quite paradoxical that it was the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin that forced this debate in Canada, he says.

“Had this discussion been launched 15 years ago, 10 years ago maybe the Russians wouldn’t have scored a point,” says Rudling.

“Because Russia in this case they are actually right about the historical revisionism taking place, of course, for the wrong reasons. And Russia is itself a society which instrumentalizes (history) very strongly and uses it for political purposes.”

Freedom fighters or Holocaust perpetrators?

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) declined Radio Canada International’s request for an interview.

In an emailed statement to RCI [2], Ihor Michalchyshyn, executive director & CEO of the UCC, said the tweets by the Russian embassy in Canada, which eventually resulted in Ottawa kicking out embassy spokesperson Kirill Kalinin, are part of a concerted campaign to spread falsehoods and incite hatred among ethnic communities in Canada.

“During World War Two Ukrainians were caught between the genocidal regimes of Hitler and Stalin, and fought with valour against both occupiers,” Michalchyshyn wrote.

“The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought bravely against both the German and Soviet occupiers of Ukraine, well into the 1950s (in the case of the Soviet occupiers). Russia’s campaign to smear these freedom fighters is unsurprising from a regime which is working actively to glorify Stalin, deny the Holodomor as a genocide and praise the crimes of Soviet Russia.”

Himka says attempts to whitewash UPA’s wartime record harm Ukraine’s fledgling democracy by encouraging the far right in Ukraine and negatively impact democratic practices within the Ukrainian community in Canada.

“I think personally that you can’t be making heroes out of Holocaust perpetrators and ethnic cleansers,” says Himka. “I just don’t think that it’s right.”

SS division or a building block for Ukrainian army?

[... photo ...] -- Activists of the Ukrainian Pamiat (Memory) Searching Organization for victims of World War II, carry on July 21, 2013 the coffin with the remains of Soviet and Ukrainian soldiers of the “Galician” SS Division, during a reburial ceremony near the village of Chervone, some 70km west of Lviv. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images)

Michalchyshyn also reacted to the Russian tweets mentioning the 14th Waffen SS Galicia (Galizien in German) Division, also known as the 1st Ukrainian division.

The veterans of the 14th Division Galicia/Halychyna joined not to fight for Germany, but to fight against Soviet Communist tyranny and for a free Ukraine, says Michalchyshyn.

“Neither the 1st Ukrainian Army, nor the 14th Division ever fought against the Western allies in WWII. Nor did the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” says Michalchyshyn. “Their burial sites are places for their families to remember and honour them for the sacrifices they made for their families and nation.”

Arel says thousands of Ukrainian nationalists enthusiastically responded to the call to join the Waffen SS division in early 1943.

“It proved widely popular in Western Ukraine because of this overriding idea, historically grounded, that the Ukrainians were never able to succeed because they never had an armed force,” says Arel. “The consensual narrative even from the moderates was that Ukrainians lost everything after WWI because they didn’t have an army and thus they were beaten by the Soviets and by the Poles.”

But because non-Germans weren’t allowed to serve in regular Wehrmacht units, the 11,000 Ukrainian volunteers had no choice but to join one of nearly 40 Waffen divisions in the parallel SS army set up by Germany, says Arel.

[High-ranking officers of the German Wehrmacht supported incorporating Ukrainian divisions into its ranks and even supported the concept of an independent Ukraine. (Many military experts have postulated that, if Germany had supported Ukrainian aspirations for statehood rather than planning to colonize it, the Red Army would have been defeated, despite the massive aid supplied to Stalin by Roosevelt and Churchill.) Hitler was adamantly opposed to this and only after it was abundantly clear to everybody (except Hitler) that Germany would lose the war, did he reluctantly permit the creation of a Ukrainian Waffen SS unit.
- The Ukrainian intellectual elite (including Metropolitan Sheptitsky) supported the creation of a German-equipped Ukrainian Army as Dominique Arel states.
- On the other hand, Ivan Shumuk (nephew of Danylo Shumuk) related to me that, when he was transporting young "volunteers" via truck from villages to German bases, they did not look particularly happy. (Joining the Divisia was viewed more as a matter of duty than of desire.)
- Officially, OUN(b) disapproved of the creation of the Halychyna (Galicia) Division, but in his book Danylo Shumuk relates that encounters between UPA and Divisia units were neutral and without animosity.]

[... video ...] -- (This archive video shows the parade of Ukrainian volunteers of the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division in spring of 1943 in Lviv.) This archive video is part of a report by Radio Canada International.

Even though the Waffen SS divisions were initially set up as guard units for concentration camps, in 1943 the goal of the Galicia division was to fight the Red Army.

Having defeated the Germans in Stalingrad, the Red Army was moving quickly to recapture all of the territory the Soviet Union had lost to Nazi Germany and its allies at the beginning of the war.

The first iteration of the Galicia Division was nearly annihilated by the Red Army at the Battle of Brody in July of 1944.

The unit was reconstituted and moved to Slovakia where it fought against Slovak anti-Nazi resistance and then in Yugoslavia until it surrendered to allied forces in May of 1945.

Canada a heaven for war [refugees] criminals?

At least 2,000 veterans of the division moved to Canada after WWII from Britain, says Arel.

In 1985, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney launched the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, led by Jules Deschênes, a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Quebec, to investigate claims that Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals.

“The veterans of the 14th Division Galicia/Halychyna were cleared of any involvement in war crimes after a long and exhaustive investigation by the Canadian government’s Deschênes Commission, which found, ‘Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, neither in 1950 when they were first preferred, nor in 1984 when they were renewed, nor before this Commission,’” says Michalchyshyn.

However, the Deschênes Commission never looked into allegations against the OUN and UPA, says Arel.

“They just had no clue about those guys,” he says.

A vision of an ultra-nationalist state

There is no question that the OUN bears at least political responsibility for the anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine with various degree of direct participation in the Holocaust, says Arel.

“To anyone who seriously studies the OUN there is little doubt that there was nothing democratic about the movement,” says Arel. “This was an authoritarian movement whose vision of a Ukrainian independent state would be basically authoritarian state with a single party, an ultra-nationalist state.”

And the first military operation of the UPA was directed not against the Soviets or the German forces but against the Polish population of Volhyn with the aim of ethnically cleansing the region of all Poles, says Arel.

Democratic political memory

[... photo ...] -- Veterans of Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( or UPA) salute during a cermony marking 103rd anniversary of Roman Shukhevych birthday in Lviv on June 27, 2010. The World War II figure symbolizes the deep divides of the country seeking an identity. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images)

Arel says the issues of OUN’s and UPA’s troubling wartime record are subject of open scholarly discussions at annual events and conferences organized by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at University of Ottawa.

There are several young researchers, including those from Ukraine, who specialize in this subject.

“Many of them are fairly critical, critical in the sense that they are for a democratic Ukraine and they are for a democratic political memory,” says Arel.

However, it’s a different matter when it comes to the political landscape in Ukraine and in parts of Ukrainian Diaspora.

“The context in Ukraine is that you have these far right groups,” says Arel. “They are marginal electorally but they are not marginal in terms of the intimidation factor in the public debate and in the streets.”

In the context of the Canadian Ukrainian community there is still a lot of resistance to discussing these painful chapters of Ukrainian history without attempts to whitewash them because of fears that it plays into the hands of the Russian propaganda machine, he says.

“I’ve experienced it myself, there are just things they don’t like us to talk about,” says Arel.

However, there is a slow change of the leadership with younger leaders coming to the forefront, says Arel.

“Hopefully there will be an understanding that you can’t have a democracy if you don’t have a democratic political memory and by that I mean a willingness to hear all kinds of voices, to look at the evidence and to seek to overcome these defensive narratives.”

Canada’s close‎ ties with Ukraine allow Canadian officials to speak frankly about these issues with the Ukrainian government, says Adam Austen, press secretary of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

“Minister Freeland has raised them on numerous occasions with officials from Ukraine, including a recent conversation with Prime Minister Volodomyr Groysman, where this was the focus,” says Austen. “She is also in close and frequent contact about these issues with her long-time friend, Yaakov Bleich, the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine.”

Austen says Canada condemns in the strongest terms the glorification of Nazism and all forms of anti-Semitism, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, intolerance and extremism.

“Every country must come to grips with difficult periods in their past,” says Austen. “This includes Ukraine.”

[2]
Ukrainian Canadian Congress | 28Feb2018 | Ihor Michalchyshyn
https://www.scribd.com/document/381364205/Statement-by-the-Ukrainian-Canadian-Congress

Statement from Ihor Michalchyshyn, Executive Director & CEO of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, February 28, 2018:

“The Russian Federation and its embassy in Ottawa continue to be actively engaged in a disinformation campaign to distract from the current day war, occupation and human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Russian federation against Ukraine and its own political opposition.

Over the past four years Russia has invaded and occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory. The Russian government seeks ways to distract critics and the media from focusing their attention on Russia’s military aggression, an appalling human rights record and its illegal and brutal occupation of Crimea and parts of Eastern Ukraine.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has cost over 10,000 lives, over 20,000 wounded and over 1.6 million internally displaced. In an act of international terrorism in July 2014 the Russian military shot down civilian airliner MH-17, murdering 298 innocent civilians. In Syria, Russia routinely bombs civilians and props up the murderous Assad regime which has on numerous occasions used chemical weapons against its own people. This is the record from which Russia seeks to distract.

The Russian embassy in Canada continues to spread falsehoods and incite hatred among ethnic communities in Canada. During World War Two, Ukrainians were caught between the genocidal regimes of Hitler and Stalin, and fought with valour against both occupiers. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought bravely against both the German and Soviet occupiers of Ukraine, well into the 1950s (in the case of the Soviet occupiers). Russia’s campaign to smear these freedom fighters is unsurprising from a regime which is working actively to glorify Stalin, deny the Holodomor as a Genocide and praise the crimes of Soviet Russia.

The Russian government is currently using these Stalinist methods of aggression and silencing dissent. Over 60 Ukrainian citizens, such as Oleg Sentsov and many others are held in Russian prisons, where torture and violence by the authorities have been well documented.

The veterans of the 14th Division Galicia/Halychyna joined not to fight for Germany, but to fight against Soviet Communist tyranny and for a free Ukraine. Neither the 1st Ukrainian Army, nor the 14th Division ever fought against the Western allies in WWII. Nor did the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Their burial sites are places for their families to remember and honour them for the sacrifices they made for their families and nation.

The veterans of the 14th Division Galicia/Halychyna were cleared of any involvement in war crimes after a long and exhaustive investigation by the Canadian government's Deschênes Commission, which found, “Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, neither in 1950 when they were first preferred, nor in 1984 when they were renewed, nor before this Commission.” The Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, often referred to as the Deschênes Commission, was established by the government of Canada in February 1985 to investigate claims that Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals.

It is shocking that any journalist or media outlet would repeat the falsehoods coming out of the Russian Embassy rather than rely on the findings of a Royal Commission of Inquiry. We are disappointed that the Canadian media sometimes too willingly accepts statements of the Russian government at face value without engaging in critical independent analysis of the reasons for Russia’s continued attempts to smear the Ukrainian Canadian community, which has called Canada our home for more than 125 years.”