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Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult

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"The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist" is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed--despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustaša and the Slovak Hlinka Party--to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

670 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2014

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Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe

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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Gerad Ryan.
12 reviews3 followers
January 2, 2017
The only reason why this book has bad reviews so far is because of angry Ukrainian nationalists spamming the page. This is the only real scholarly monograph on Bandera and it's very well researched, unfortunately for the Bandera fanboys he and the OUN-B/UPA don't come out looking very good, thus all the bad reviews
588 reviews91 followers
July 5, 2019
Ukraine! Tough country. Learning history seriously put a crimp in my desire to live in other time periods/places. Even leaving aside the toilet arrangements, in so many times and places there are just no good choices. Ukraine is one such place that finds itself in that position time and again, including right now. In this book, German historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe takes us back to an even harsher time, which has all too many echoes of contemporary Ukraine.

How to even describe Ukraine’s situation in the early twentieth century? Well, for one thing, there was a lot of disagreement about where it began and ended, who was a Ukrainian, and what being Ukrainian meant. After WWI, there were major Ukrainian populations in three or four countries and in none of them were they well-treated, between the famine and the terror in the USSR and minority status in Czechoslovakia (where they were at least left alone) and Poland (where they weren’t). Eastern Ukrainians were more culturally Russian where western Ukrainians were in uneasy proximity to Central Europe and especially the Poles.

Ukrainian nationalism was profoundly frustrated, especially in the west where, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was no major power for them to look to the way Eastern Ukrainians looked (and look) to Russia. Frustrated nationalism in the early twentieth century was dynamite, dynamite sweating out little beads of nitroglycerin and waiting to blow. One of the men who slammed down the plunger on that little bundle of explosive joy was Stepan Bandera.

The son of a Greek Catholic priest (don’t ask me how Greek Catholicism came to be the national church of western Ukraine, I do not understand it) and raised in the Ukrainian part of postwar Poland, Bandera was the right (or, really, exactly wrong) kind of crazy for his time and place. A nationalist extremist from the beginning, he made his name by taking an already angry nationalism and bringing it to a higher boil, ever to the right, ever more purist, ever more violent. Schoolmates report the young Bandera as sticking pins under his fingernails and whipping himself with his belt in order to prepare for the tortures he expected from the Polish secret police. He was a real character.

He joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) as a youth and proceeded to help take the group in an ever more violent, fascist, and antisemitic direction. He built a following with younger, mostly Poland-based members. Like Hitler, he was one of those guys where people argue over whether he was truly charismatic or not — he was a dweeby little twerp who looks for all the world like Stephen Miller — but clearly had something that got him over with angry young Ukrainians. One thing that probably helped was the stark simplicity of his answers to the complex questions of Ukrainian nationality. Ukraine has a unique destiny, it’s defined by Ukrainian blood, and anyone foreign and anyone who stands in the way — Poles, Russians, Jews, democrats, communists, anyone who questions the Provydnik (leader) — need to be exterminated. This message proved popular and soon Bandera’s branch of the OUN has outstripped more moderate Ukrainian nationalists and began undertaking terror campaigns.

Bandera was in Polish jail for conspiracy to kill the interior minister when the Nazis invaded. From the beginning, Bandera and the OUN hailed the Germans as liberators (note- these were not Ukrainians who suffered from the famine in the USSR, this was Ukrainians who were somewhat discriminated against in Poland) and as the people who could help bring about an independent Ukraine. As these groups do, OUN had split, there was an OUN-B (for Bandera) and an OUN-M (for Melnyk, another fascist chieftain). When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and quickly rolled over much of Ukraine, these two competed to become the puppet government of Ukraine. Bandera had more popular appeal but Melnyk appealed more to the Germans, in large part because he was less egotistical and more pliable.

The early parts of the Nazi war against the Soviet Union saw massive atrocities carried out by both Axis soldiers and local civilians against Jews and other minorities. The book has numerous sickening depictions of Ukrainian nationalists teaming up with the Nazis to beat, humiliate, and kill Jews. Both OUN factions saw this as a positive thing at the time, the beginning of the great cleansing that would lead to a Ukrainian national rebirth. In some cases, the Germans even intervened to slow the Ukrainians down- they were getting too messy, too disorderly.

Of course, in the end, the Nazis did not want to see an independent Ukraine, even as a loyal puppet state. They wanted a slave colony. They were happy to use Ukrainians as muscle (like in the SS-Galizien division) but had no intention of making Bandera, Melnyk, or anyone else leader of a Ukrainian state. The Nazis wound up arresting Bandera, keeping him in a special division of one of the camps, a nice sort of place for high-end political prisoners like the last of the Hapsburgs and Otto von Bismarck’s grandson.

This turned out to be important, because both Bandera and the OUN (and it’s tedious subfactions and minor rivals) survived the war. While not giving up their fascist ideas, they pivoted towards the west and sought to aid in the American side of the Cold War. The CIA, as well as British and West German intelligence, made cat’s paws of numerous Ukrainians (and many others) with dubious war records, allowing thousands to slip into new lives in the west. They didn’t turn out to be that useful — there would be no “rollback” in Eastern Europe — but it allowed them to hold on. Moreover, they could enlist the Cold War propaganda establishment, including academic historians, to whitewash their crimes, defining away their fascism and turning a blind eye to the atrocities.

Bandera got got by the KGB in Munich in 1959 (the KGB tried to frame a Nazi war criminal in the West German government- too bad that didn’t work, would’ve been a two for one). This was probably a convenient time for him to die, from a Ukrainian nationalist perspective. He wasn’t too much use — the Americans thought he was too egotistical to work much with — and the promised Third World War that would allow the Ukrainians their next bite at the apple likely wasn’t going to materialize by then.

Instead, Bandera became a martyr, and more than that, a synecdoche for right-wing Ukrainian nationalism more generally. Diaspora Ukrainians carefully tended to his cult for decades. Soviet propaganda helped, too, by insisting any Ukrainian they didn’t like, even if it was just for speaking Ukrainian where they weren’t supposed to, was a Banderist. This made him a symbol for resistance even among Ukrainians who didn’t share his violent ultranationalism. Bandera managed to outlive a Melnyk, Bulba, and the other little fascist chieftains of the area to become this symbolic figure in time for Ukraine’s independence in 1991. While a many Ukrainians, especially in the more russified east, don’t really care about Bandera or his cause, a critical mass (especially in the west) see him as a key symbol for what the Ukraine should be. This is, to say the least, unsettling. In nearly the same breath, Ukrainian nationalists will uphold Bandera, insist that Bandera did nothing wrong and was a democrat (he hated democracy), and say anyway, it’s all the fault of those nasty Jews like Soros. If it’s for a western audience, they’ll throw in Putin too.

I, for one, love big fat serious books about the ideological madness of the twentieth century, and this fits the bill. It was Rossoliński-Liebe’s dissertation, and he’s very careful with his historiography (which always takes me back to my early grad school days, all that wrangling over defining fascism- good times) and evidence. If there’s one thing he didn’t address enough, I’d say it was “why Bandera” — why he got to be the symbol instead of his rivals. Was it just the martyrdom? The extremity? I don’t know. I do know this book got Rossoliński-Liebe in some trouble- between his claims about national hero Bandera and the gauntlet he throws at nationalist (and Cold War) historiography, when he came to Ukraine the only place he could do a reading was, ironically, the German embassy. Everywhere else was threatened to the point where they cancelled (and one gets the idea the Ukrainian academic establishment wasn’t thrilled to help out either). Bandera, who wasn’t above petty shit like that — no fascist, no matter how bloodied, is ever anything other than petty — would have been proud. *****
Profile Image for Tea S..
15 reviews4 followers
March 21, 2022
giving this three stars in the context that the parts that actually have to pertain to bandera himself and most of the stuff about his cult are pretty good, but whenever this book touches on the USSR it just twists into nonsense anticommunism for the sake of anticommunism
Profile Image for Rhuff.
390 reviews26 followers
October 16, 2022
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, German-Polish historian of Berlin’s Free University, has bestowed a masterpiece of biography and historiography on the life of this vampiric East European figure. All one would want to know about Bandera – his life, death, and resurrection in a cult of the undead – is contained in this detailed accounting of his time and place.

It’s all here: from his student beginnings as a son of a Greek Catholic/Uniate priest in “Polish” East Galicia, to his terrorist prison days, his rise to prominence in on-and-off collaboration with Nazi Germany, as the icon of militant Ukrainian ultra-nationalism even under German “special detention”; to his death by KGB assassins in exile, to the personality cult stoked among the diaspora and ballooning after Ukrainian independence in 1991. One is simply overwhelmed by the mendacity of Ukrainian hagiographers – even so-called “pro-Western liberal democrats,” who should know better –at covering the Bandera record of two genocides, of Jews and Poles, in Ukrainian territory. (One might add a third, if counting the “traitors” executed by Insurgent Army death squads.)

The most disturbing element is not the historical record per se, but the North Korean-like Dear Leader status he has assumed in modern Ukraine. With his real-life record whitewashed – including the doings of the genocidal terrorists acting in his name – present-day Ukrainians look upon him as a benevolent John Brown / George Washington who struggled to the end, giving his life for “freedom.” Those who today wrap themselves in the cult of Ukraine, under the ongoing Russian invasion, must keep in mind that the “democratic Ukraine” of their imagination is wrapped around the sanitized cult of this mythological caricature.

The apocalyptic death cult of his early followers – planted in Polish prisons, flowering in wartime violence, supposedly plowed under by defeat in WW II – has bloomed again in the Chernobyl-fed soil of independent Ukraine. One must ask to what extent it has provoked the current war. The like-minded Azov Regiment, its most notorious modern blossom, has visions of itself arising from the rubble of a devastated Ukraine to seize the vacuum and enthrone itself per Bandera’s vision. In such ennui did Pol Pot and the Taliban rise to power. Those wishing to continue the present war, on either side, have never asked what good it does for Ukraine. The Banderites know: just as their Dear Leader died only to be born again, they too seek resurrection after the flesh of the nation is sacrificed in holy fire.
62 reviews3 followers
June 23, 2023
Dnfed, missing out some of the details of the atrocities in the middle. I got the point, and it was a tough read. To actually process what really happened and it’s relation to current events was difficult.
Profile Image for Tomasz.
936 reviews38 followers
April 18, 2023
Bardzo wartościowa książka, skonstruowana w oparciu o szeroką kwerendę, opatrzona bogatym aparatem i obficie (miejscami wręcz drastycznie) zilustrowana. Szkoda tylko, że polskie wydanie wiele z tych zalet podminowuje, bo "przekład" i "redakcja" były dziełem ignorantów, osób, dla których gramatyka języka polskiego to terra incognita, słownictwo mają boleśnie ograniczone (maniakalne używanie "albo" tam, gdzie lepsze, sensowniejsze, nawet czysto logicznie właściwe byłoby "lub", "bądź" czy "czy" od razu rzuca się w oczy), i nierzadko nie rozumiały tekstu, który usiłowały przenieść w polszczyznę, a tu i ówdzie w ogóle przekładanie sobie odpuściły (niektóre przypisy pozostały w brzmieniu oryginalnym, bądź pozostawiono odwołania do oryginalnych tekstów rzeczy wydanych już w Polsce). Wstyd.
Profile Image for Albert A..
20 reviews
December 18, 2023
While this is a decent book, it isn't a biography of Bandera. It describes a lot of the life of Bandera in short snippets and his rise through the OUN in the 1930s is handled in a single paragraph. Besides that long sections are dedicated to the UPA and don't even mention Bandera in any way. It also has an overreliance on certain sources particularly the works of Grzegorz Motyka and the word "ibidem" is repeated in the footnotes to a nauseating degree.

Despite these issues it still is a good work for a newcomer on the topic and I personally enjoyed it. It approaches the character of Bandera in an interesting way and has detailed passages on certain events related to him and Ukraine's history.
7 reviews
March 30, 2024
This is a very well written account of a very complex problem in a very complex and tangled context. The author puts the context of Stepan Andriyovych Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist.

This book will challenge many people's views on the events in Eastern Europe since the First World War: and it will indicate that there are no purely virtuous actors.

One thing that challenged me is the accepted view of Bandera's death was he was assassinated by Bohdan Mykolayovych Stashynsky for the KGB. This was certainly what I had understood to be the case, and the fact that Stashynsky confessed, supported this. However, the facts around his death and that false confessions are often forced out of people makes me question whether is was as black and white as the official version provides.
Profile Image for Hanna.
18 reviews
October 29, 2025
I love reading books like this that come from PhD theses. So much of Ukraine’s history and contemporary sociopolitical circumstances are whitewashed. I would have appreciated some expansion on OUN/UPA/SS Galizien veterans’ dealings with western intelligence; that kind of thing (like operation paperclip) is not discussed here in the US. I also could’ve used less USSR shit talking, sorry they won the war??? A book like this about the Maidan color revolution would be so interesting. The popular narrative related to that is…..odd. Ukraine is chock full of fascists but the west has always treated the whole country as victims of the evil Russia. Nobody wants to talk about NATO! I’m not sure everyone should be running around talking about ‘Slava Ukraini.’ Questionable.
Profile Image for Josue Luna Perez.
7 reviews
February 2, 2024
Dr. Grzegorz offers a complete biography, not only about Stephan Bandera, but the entire ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, which leaves no doubt that they were a stateless type of fascist movement. However, when referring about the Soviet Union, the author implies some myths previously unmasked by authors like Mario Sousa, Domenico Losurdo or Ludo Martens. Despite of that, it's an honest and complete work if you're interested in the roots of nowadays Ukrainian political movements.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews

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