Witness of the Century
Yevhen Stakhiv had been born in Przemysl (Poland) a few months before the West Ukrainian National Republic was proclaimed in November 1918. After the Ukrainian liberation struggle in Halychyna and Volyn was defeated in 1919, he and his parents emigrated to Czechoslovakia only to be interned in a camp. When the Stakhiv family returned to Halychyna, they felt the inexorable pressure of interwar Poland’s anti-Ukrainian policies. No wonder, then, that Yevhen, still in his teens, became a nationalist activist in the Kresy Wschodnie (Polish for eastern frontiers). In 1939 he fled to Khust, Transcarpathia, where he defended the newly-formed state of Carpatho-Ukraine from the Hungarian occupiers.
After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and proclamation of a Ukrainian state in Lviv by OUN (B), relations between the nationalists and the German Nazis deteriorated, and, as Mr. Stakhiv says, “the Bandera faction was outlawed on September 15, 1941.” Mr. Stakhiv went to Eastern Ukraine to organize a nationalist underground. Once there, he saw that local “people rejected the dominating Western Ukrainian ideology developed under the influence of trends that burgeoned in Western Europe, such as idealism, fascism, Dontsovism.”
It is the Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimean regions that saw the beginning of Yevhen Stakhiv’s evolution as well as the most controversial page of his life story connected with the Young Guard (in the a novel of the same name, Stalinist writer Aleksandr Fadeyev portrayed Stakhiv as the “traitor” Stakhovich. — Ed.).
Mr. Stakhiv says, “I’d never been to Krasnodon. Now, in 1955, when I lived in New York, I was given Aleksandr Fadeyev’s book. I had seen the film before that. So I wrote a review in the Munich-based Ukrayinsky samostiynyk (Ukrainian Independent). One interesting fact: in the first (truer to life) version of the novel, Fadeyev wrote that the Communists, who were supposed to organize the underground, had fled; in the second version, the underground is being led by the Bolshevik Party. It common knowledge, however, that Stalin did not recognize any self-styled, even communist, underground. The historical truth is that this kind of underground existed in the Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions. When the Red Army came, all the clandestine fighters (130 to 150) were arrested and sent to prison camps. Only under Khrushchev was their honor restored. Stalin would say, ‘If the underground was not organized by the Party, it was by the German secret services.’ It is interesting what Ukraine said to me ‘in reply.’ Addressing a Writers Union meeting, Yury Smolych indignantly branded ‘the Munich pen-pushers’ who dare say ‘our heroic Young Guard was a bunch of bourgeois Ukrainian-German nationalists’.”
“Well,” Mr. Stakhiv continues, “I stirred up a heated dispute overseas and finally managed to have the whole Young Guard case revised. This process is still going on... I state emphatically in my articles and interviews: there was no communist underground in the Donbas! We just couldn’t have helped coming across it, as we came across the young people gathering information on the movement of German military units for Soviet radio operator Liubov Shevtsova. But I emphasize that this group carried out no ideological work and had no name! The Young Guard is Fadeyev’s concoction. The writer actively used documents supplied by SMERSH (Death to Spies, Soviet military counterintelligence. — Ed.) documents on the nationalist underground and ‘repainted’ us red, at the Party’s behest. We became still redder in the novel’s second version which, following Stalin’s orders, put more emphasis on the Party’s guiding role. The writer committed a cardinal sin. He then committed suicide by blowing his brains out. Maybe, somebody will some time write the novel’s third version about the true — nationalist — clandestine struggle in Donbas under the Nazi occupation.”
Yevhen Stakhiv described all this in much detail in the book Through Prisons, Underground, and Borders (The Story of My Life) published in 1995 by Rada, a Kyiv publishing house. Incidentally, the guest presented a copy of this book to The Day.
Mr. Stakhiv quite interestingly characterized OUN leader Stepan Bandera: “He was and wanted to be the leader, nothing but the leader. This stirred up a dispute in 1948 between the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR, led by Lev Rebet and Mykola Lebid, sent by UPA Commander Shukhevych to the West to form a representation-in-exile. — Ed.), which held that independence must be won democratically, and some of Bandera’s followers. Stepan Bandera believed in iron discipline. Even the Act of Proclaiming the Ukrainian State of June 30, 1941, says, “By will of the Ukrainian people, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Stepan Bandera proclaims the establishment of...”
According to Mr. Stakhiv, “Dontsov’s ideology was a woe to Ukraine and Ukrainian nationalism. Dontsov was the embodiment of totalitarianism and one-party rule. So was Bandera. I must say he was an honest, even ascetic, man, not one to take bribes. But he was also very cruel — to himself and the others; he demanded blind obedience, categorically opposed debate, even within his own narrow circle. That was the time of Nazism and the Fascism of Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, de la Roque and de Grelle in France. By the way, Dontsov published a journal in the Nazi-occupied Lviv, there were books by Mussolini, de Grelle and de la Roque in his library, as well as the books Franco and Hitler... Such were the times. I was like this, too, but what made things worse was that there was no other way out because Europe and the so-called allies (Britain and France) favored the status quo. For Ukraine, this meant perpetual slavery and partition into four parts (between the USSR, Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. — Ed.). Only Hitler wanted to revise the Versailles Treaty. War was only way to change the situation. So we bet on war and soded with the Germans until September 15, 1941. We paid a terrible price.
“‘To learn well, you must pay a lot,’ a good US friend of mine once said. But not everybody has learned thus far. It is interesting that when Ukraine became independent, Mykola Lebid and other UHVR figures said, ‘There is no need to impose any OUN patterns on Ukraine, an independent state. OUN did its job; Ukraine needs no disputes and wrangles between the followers of Melnyk and Bandera.’ But nobody heeds this advice.”
Mykola Zhulynsky added on his part, “Mykola Lebid also stressed, ‘Those times required very strict discipline, and a period when the nation is in the making or obtaining independence always calls for a strong personality, a leader.’ This often causes terrible distortions and repression (Stalin or Hitler). Yet, I agree with Mr. Stakhiv that Ukrainians had no other way to go. Although OUN split into two factions (the followers of Bandera and Melnyk) and the latter chose to collaborate with the Nazis (a few months longer. — Ed.), they espoused essentially the same ideology. One party means one ideology. The absence of a strong leader at the initial stage of independence is our serious problem, while building a democratic society and parties is a very lengthy process.”
Yevhen Stakhiv noted that Stepan Bandera had played no role in Ukraine’s political life after June 30, 1941, and had never set foot on the Ukrainian soil after 1934, when he was put in a Polish prison. He was in no way linked to the struggle waged by this Halychyna-based organization. “I was told in Eastern Ukraine during the occupation, ‘Leave Dontsov alone! ‘Ukraine for Ukrainians’ is just impossible. We are a ‘Shanghai,’ a mixture of all.’ I said, ‘But OUN leaders told me our primary goal is the state — we’ll see later what kind.’ ‘No! We’ve been cheated too often. Enough,’ the Donbas people answered me, ‘We have to know what kind of state we will be building!’”
Mr. Stakhiv continued: “We altered the OUN program, but when Bandera and 207 of his followers were released from prison, they refused to accept it. We had undergone an evolution: we had been totalitarian-minded and ended up democratic. I could say we are close to the Social Democrats (emphasis on human rights, education, health care...). The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) says that everyone is equal before the law irrespective of their nationality. And those people who languished in Nazi prison and camps could not undergo our difficult evolution. They went there and came back, being the same totalitarian-minded followers of Dontsov!”
Mr. Stakhiv watches the political life of Ukraine very closely. It was interesting to hear his attitude to the two painful problems of today — recognition of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) a Word War II combatant and the sixtieth anniversary of the Volyn tragedy, a fratricidal conflict that claimed tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Polish lives in 1943-1944. “I would like to note there has never been such an institution as OUN-UPA. There was OUN, UPA, and UHVR. For instance, the books published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ukrainian History treats them as separate organizations. The public talks about the rights of OUN-UPA veterans, mixing up the two different entities and adding here the SS Dyviziya Halychyna that allegedly fought for Ukraine. But the latter were typical collaborators. My suggestion is that one can only talk about UPA fighters. Look, there are veterans of the Red Army but not of the CPSU. The same applies to OUN. What nonsense!”
“As to the Volyn tragedy, I must say we lack courage to condemn this crime. Still, this war went on the Ukrainian territory for a sacred cause against the German occupation. This was territory of the Ukrainian Republic. The Poles waged an aggressive imperialist war against the Ukrainians. They wanted to make Volyn and Eastern Halychyna part of Poland (again. — Ed). All the blame for this should be put on the London-based government in exile, which favored the borders that existed as of September 1, 1939. That was a holy war of our nation’s Volyn branch, but it doesn’t allow or give anybody the right to kill innocent women and children.”
National goals in politics and democracy in deeds, not just word, are quite compatible. Moreover, it is urgently needed that these two components harmoniously complement each other. Mr. Stakhiv is one of those who understood this back in the late 1940s, which make, his experience all the more valuable.
