The day was July the 1st, the year – 2026. Ukraine’s parliament passed the bill the purpose of which is to create the Pantheon of National Heroes. Now this bill only needs to be signed by President Vladimir Zelensky to become law, but there is little doubt that Ukraine’s president will sign it into law. What is this idea of creating the national Pantheon all about?
Well, Nations commemorate the national heroes. It is not only Ukrainians who want to venerate great personalities from their past. Everywhere national heroes are iconic individuals that serve as a focal point of national awareness and national identity. They serve as paragons of courage, self-sacrifice and heroism. It should be little wonder that Ukrainians would like to join other nations in this respect and have their own National Pantheon of their national heroes. And yet there is much objection to it. Who is objecting to Ukraine’s National Pantheon in the first place?
It is Poland, the Polish Nation. Why does the Polish Nation object to Ukraine having the pantheon of national heroes? Well, because this Pantheon in all likelihood will include individuals who are responsible for massacres that were conducted against the Polish Nation during the Second World War.
Ukrainian and polish national sentiments have very often clashed throughout the history of the two nations. Throughout centuries there have been numerous bloody wars between the Poles and the Ukrainians. One of such events that has imprinted itself on the national awareness of the Polish people was the so-called Volhynia massacre that occurred in the year 1943. In a series of concentrated attacks Ukrainian military units would circle Polish villages in the said region and they would systematically murder the inhabitants to the last man, woman, and child. This was ethnic cleansing par excellence, no doubt about that. To make things worse, the murders were conducted very ruthlessly: victims had their limbs cut off, the eyes gouged out, bellies ripped open, and sometimes their bodies were crucified. We have already written about it on more than one occasion.
Now it’s not certain yet which individuals from Ukraine’s history will be included in the mentioned Pantheon as national heroes. Yet, both the Polish authorities and the Polish Nation fear and suspect that the heroes would include individuals who were responsible for the aforementioned atrocities. How do the Polish authorities and the Polish Nation know about it? Simply because those individuals have been and continue to be venerated across the whole of Ukraine. They have streets named after them and monuments put up in the memory of them and they are presented to Ukrainian schoolchildren as their national heroes. Who are these individuals that create this bone of contention between Warsaw and Kiev?
First of all it was the leaders of the nationalist or – better put – chauvinist organization that was established in Ukraine almost a century ago. The political organization was known as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN for short. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was headed Stepan Bandera and Andrii Melnyk. Bandera was more ruthless than his competitor. That is why the organization OUN split into the Bandera (OUN-B) and Melnyk (OUN-M) branches. Yet, there was a lot they both shared. What both had in mind was to create independent Ukraine, a Ukrainian state that would be free of all ethnic minorities. They hated and wanted to get rid of Russians, Poles, and Jews. Though the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist was established in the then Czechoslovakia while some of its leaders stayed for a time in Mussolini’s Italy, they began to carry out terrorist attacks inside the territory of pre-war Poland because the westernmost part of today’s Ukraine was then a part of Polish territory.
One of those attacks was performed in the city of Lvov, where Stepan Bandera’s henchman tried to kill the Soviet consul. Another attempt was carried out in broad the daylight in Poland’s capital city Warsaw. The attempt was successful. The Polish minister of the interior was killed. Now the police managed to capture Stepan Bandera who was the mastermind of the assassination. He was put on trial and sentenced to death. The Polish government proved to be lenient, though, and so that penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.
How did the Ukrainian problem emerge in the first place? why did the Poles and Ukrainians clash?
Medieval Rus’ was one political entity (though, as it was customary in the Middle Ages across Europe, ruled by a number of princes simultaneously, contesting for ultimate power). Consequently, Rus’ would have emerged in modern times as an enormous state – like France – but for the 13th century Mongol invasion. The invasion broke the backbone of a medieval Rus’. Some of the territory was occupied by the Mongols while the western parts were taken over by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and – later – by the Polish Kingdom. This was how some of present-day Ukraine found itself within Polish territory and remained under Polish rule for a few centuries. Under these circumstances the westernmost part of Rus’ (today’s westernmost part of Ukraine) developed a little bit different language and a little bit different political awareness. Some of its inhabitants of the orthodox Christians persuasion were at a time made to join the catholic church, though preserving its separate religious custom. Then in the 18th century came the time of the partitions of Poland; the terrain of present-day western Ukraine was divided between Austria (west) and Russia (east).
The territory captured by Austria was again separated from Russia proper. For another century it continued to develop a slightly different language and a different political awareness. At the end of the First World War those Russians who lived in the part of Ukraine that had been occupied by Austria wanted nothing to do with Moscow and they wanted to create their own state. At the same time the reborn Polish state did not want to hear of an independent Ukrainian state occupying the territories that once had belonged to the Polish Kingdom. There erupted a war as a result of which Warsaw managed to incorporate what is now Western Ukraine into the Polish state. Yet, Ukrainians sustained the resistance to the Polish authorities – hence the emergence of the aforementioned Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and hence the resultant Ukrainian terrorism performed within Polish territory.
Christian Orthodox Ukrainians were a large ethnic minority within Catholic Poland. One might be tempted to say that Poland and (Western)Ukraine were united in one state – the Polish state. It was something similar to Yugoslavia, a country that also emerged at the end of the First World War, a country that united Christian Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. In Yugoslavia Serbs were the dominant nation whereas Croats wanted to separate from Serbia-dominated Yugoslavia as much as Ukrainians wanted to separated from Poland. Croatian Stepan Bandera was known as Ante Pavelic. Croatians, too, had their terrorist organizations, and they too, carried out terrorist attacks. And the same year (1934) as the Polish minister of the interior was assassinated, Croatian terrorists killed the Yugoslavian King Alexander III in Marseilles as he was paying a state visit to France.
Then came the Second World War during the initial years which Germany conquered both Poland and Yugoslavia. Whereas Berlin allowed the Croats (Ante Pavelic) to create their own state, it did not allow Ukrainians to create theirs. Whereas Ante Pavelic enjoyed the recognition of his authority by Berlin and ruled his nation almost independently, Stepan Bandera’s attempts to declare an independent Ukraine just after Germany invaded the Soviet Union met with Berlin’s touch resistance and decisive countermeasures. Stepan Bandera was imprisoned and put in the Sachsen-Hausen concentration camp where he was an inmate for two long years.
It did not stop other Ukrainian political activists from both serving Germany and carrying out ethnic cleansing. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists had its military arm which was known as Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). It was headed by Roman Shukhevych. It was this Ukrainian Insurgent Army that massacred the Polish villages in Volhynia. Now both Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are regarded by today’s Ukrainians as national heroes. Though we do not know yet which of the many Ukrainian historical figures will find their way into the National Pantheon the likelihood that it’s going to be both Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych is very high.
The reaction of the Polish government of the Polish nation is understandable. What is difficult to comprehend is the reaction or rather lack thereof on the path of the Poland’s Western allies. Ukrainian Second World War national heroes did not only exterminate the Polish and Russian minorities, but they also exterminated – an very assiduously at that – the Jewish minority. As you know, the Western elites are very sensitive when it comes to the extermination of the Jewish people. Why then are they not objecting to the idea of turning the likes of Bandera and Shukhevych to National Heroes of Ukraine?
The answer seems to be very simple. Poland’s Western allies only need Ukraine as a tool in their war against Russia. In order to prolong this war, they need to have Ukrainian soldiers who are ready to die and suffer. A soldier who is ready to die is an individual who – apart from being very well equipped – is also psychologically primed to actually do the killing. Now soldiers whose minds have been infused with the ideas of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are ideal warriors. Make no bones about it, during World War Two Bandera and Shukhevych openly supported Adolf Hitler and enthusiastically took part and the extermination of the Jewish people. Any veneration of such people in any of the western nations would be crushed by the police, by the authorities and by the legal system without no hesitation. Now somehow the Western leaders and the Western elites appear to be insensitive to such an anti-Jewish phenomenon in Ukraine. Are they applying double standards?
That tragic part of all this is that Poland will continue to support Kiev. For one thing, Poland is a firmly anchors in the western system and cannot act on its own; for the other, Warsaw is strongly antagonistic against Russia and will readily swallow any insult offered by Ukraine. Strange how things that turn out to be…
