“UPA Rehabilitation doesn’t Mean OUN Rehabilitation”
The best evidence of the thesis that history is politics made to face the past can be found in the current public attitude (including a number expert opinions) with regard to the OUN and Ukrainian Insurgents Army (UPA) the latter of which marked its 60th anniversary on October 14. Here the path leading to historical truth is extremely difficult due to the controversial political affiliations shown by all interested parties. Apparently, the only feasible option to reach a balanced view is to analyze the available documents, while searching for and publishing new ones. With this purpose in mind, The Day offers two views on the subject, contradicting in many respects, shedding light on the OUN-UPA’s road to Calvary. One view belongs to Myroslav POPOVYCH, a noted Ukrainian philosopher and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the other to Les HARMATNY, a journalist who appears to have taken the very last interview with the legendary UPA Colonel Vasyl HALASA.
The OUN-UPA issue is especially topical nowadays. Not so long ago, I sent an article to a collection being prepared for publication by the Olzhych Foundation commemorating the jubilee of the transfer of the insignia of Ukrainian power. I don’t think, however, that the article will appear in print. My new book will come off the presses before long and there is a whole chapter dedicated to the subject.
To begin with, I concede that UPA veterans are entitled to the same retirement allowances as those of the Red Army. These rights should be given to people who fought the Bolsheviks rather than the Nazis. Why? By no means because of what the Verkhovna Rada is trying to do — and even less so what the Cabinet is going through the motions of doing. They want to recognize UPA as a World War II combatant, meaning that all those UPA armed groups were not gangs but regular army units. If so, let me ask whose units. Does it mean that we have to acknowledge them as regular units of Stetsko’s government, proclaimed in 1941 in Lviv, after the Germans had occupied the city? If we do, it will mean recognizing today’s Ukraine as a successor to a nonexistent, fictitious government, struggling only to get the same Anti-Hitler Coalition status as Father Josef Tiso’s administration in Slovakia or Pavelic’s fascist government in Croatia.
Also, the OUN never concealed its Nazi orientation. The celebrated Olzhych wrote that he, as an ideologue of the OUN-Melnyk faction, was more inclined to the German option (i.e., Nazism) than Italian fascism, which he thought too mild. There are two documents that must be made public knowledge. The first is Yaroslav Stetsko’s letter to Adolf Hitler, in which he voices perfect solidarity with the anti-Jewish policy of the Nazi regime. I saw a copy of that document at London’s British Museum (anyone can get a photocopy). The other document is the OUN Provid resolution dated September 4, 1943, concerning the annihilation of Poles in Volyn (an incident of ethnic purge, to be sure). Yes, this document does exist! I was told so by a Deputy to the Chairman of the Security Council of Ukraine. What then makes me think that the UPA veterans can receive all those rights? Under the principles of liberalism, any person has the right to rise up in arms against despotism, if that people’s rights are flagrantly infringed. In our case, hundreds and thousands of young men and women left their homes to hide in the woods to fight for an independent Ukraine. These people can be held responsible only when charged with war crimes. There were enough war crimes committed by both sides — by that I mean the Red Army.
An altogether different thing is recognizing one’s right to rise up in arms. It was a national tragedy at the time. However, today’s Ukraine is the legal successor to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, not to that Stetsko’s government; likewise, the OUN never entered Kyiv riding on the white horse of victory. An independent Ukrainian state was the result of the evolution of the Communist system. My father, a senior lieutenant of the Soviet Army, lies buried somewhere near Kyiv, killed in action in 1941; I have no right to disown him. The struggle Ukrainian young men and women — and those of the older generation — waged against the Nazis was not for Stalin or his regime. They fought being part of the world community of nations against an even greater threat. Likewise, the people of the OUN could not have possibly banked on the Nazis in 1943-44, seeing the Third Reich as the losing side. Their eyes were on America.
UPA rehabilitation does not mean OUN rehabilitation. These are different things. Some want to say they are keeping up the OUN cause. Great. Let them do just that. But if they do, they will assume full responsibility for all that human bloodshed and stains on the perpetrators’ hands. Of course, they can always say, “It had to be done.” That is why all those radical nationalists enjoy about one percent of popular support among Ukrainians.
