Stepan Andriiovych Bandera (1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian far-right leader of the radical militant faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN-B.
Bandera was born into the family of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest in the Austro-Hungarian region of Galicia, which after World War I became part of Poland. Involved in nationalist organisations from a young age, he joined the Ukrainian Military Organisation in 1924. In 1931, he became head of propaganda of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and later became head of the OUN for Poland in 1932. In 1934, he organised the assassination of the Polish interior minister, Bronisław Pieracki, for which he was sentenced to death for terrorism, subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.
During the invasion of Poland in 1939, Bandera left custody amidst the turmoil, moving on to Kraków. In 1940, the OUN split into two factions with Bandera leading the more radical faction, the OUN-B, in opposition to the OUN-M. Bandera's OUN-B was devoted to the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state, envisioned by him as "a one-party fascist dictatorship free of national minorities" according to Timothy Snyder. On 22 June 1941, the day that Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Bandera formed the Ukrainian National Committee. Its head, Yaroslav Stetsko, announced the creation of a Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941, in German-captured Lviv. The proclamation pledged to work with Nazi Germany. Germany disapproved of the proclamation and, for his refusal to rescind it, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1942. The Germans released him in September 1944, in the hope that he could fight the Soviet advance. In March 1945, Bandera negotiated with the Nazis to create the Ukrainian National Army and the Ukrainian National Committee. After the war, Bandera settled with his family in West Germany, where, in 1959, he was assassinated by Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB agent in Munich.Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, Basic Books, 1999. , p. 362.Kondratyuk, Kostyantin. Новітня історія України 1914–1945 [New History of Ukraine]. — Lviv: Видавничий центр ЛНУ імені Івана Франка, 2007. (in Ukrainian)
Bandera remains a highly controversial figure. In the post-war Soviet Union, "Banderite" became a common slur for Ukrainian nationalists. This usage persists to this day in neighbouring Russia under Vladimir Putin. On 22 January 2010, Viktor Yushchenko, the president of Ukraine, awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine, which was internationally condemned. The award was annulled in 2011 under Yushchenko's successor Yanukovych. Bandera's controversial legacy gained further prominence following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Opinion polling following the invasion indicated an increase in favourable views of Bandera in Ukraine.
Biography
Early life and education
Stepan Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 in Staryi Uhryniv, in the region of Galicia in Austria-Hungary, to Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church priest Andriy Bandera (1882–1941) and Myroslava Głodzińska (1890–1921). Bandera had seven siblings: three sisters and four brothers. Bandera's younger brothers included Oleksandr, who earned a doctorate in political economy at the University of Rome, and Vasyl, who finished a degree in philosophy at the University of Lviv.
Bandera grew up in a patriotic and religious household. He did not attend primary school due to World War I and was taught at home by his parents. At a young age, Bandera was undersized and slim. He sang in a choir, played guitar and mandolin, enjoyed hiking, jogging, swimming, ice skating, basketball and chess.
After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the wake of World War I, Eastern Galicia briefly became part of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Bandera's father, who joined the Ukrainian Galician Army as a chaplain, was active in the nationalist movement preceding the Polish–Ukrainian War, which was fought between November 1918 to July 1919 and ended with Ukrainian defeat and incorporation of Eastern Galicia into Poland.
Mykola Mikhnovsky's 1900 publication, Independent Ukraine, influenced Bandera greatly. After graduating from a Ukrainian high school in Stryi in 1927, where he was engaged in a number of youth organizations, Bandera planned to attend the Husbandry Academy in Czechoslovakia, but he either did not get a passport or the Academy notified him that it was closed. In 1928, Bandera enrolled in the agronomy program at the Politechnika Lwowska in its branch in Dubliany, but never completed his studies due to his political activities and arrests.
Early activities
Bandera associated himself with a variety of Ukrainian organisations during his time in high school, particularly Plast, Sokil, and Organisation of the Upper Grades of the Ukrainian High Schools (OVKUH). In 1927 Bandera joined Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO). In February 1929 he joined Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Bandera was drawn into national activity by , one of the leaders of the Ukrainian youth movement.
During his studies, he devoted his efforts to underground and nationalist activities, for which he was arrested several times. The first time was on 14 November 1928, for illegally celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ZUNR; in 1930 with his brother Andrii; and in 1932-33 as many as six times. Between March and June 1932, he spent three months in prison in connection with the investigation of the assassination of by .
In the early 1930s, in response to attacks perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists, Polish authorities carried out the pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia against the Ukrainian minority. This resulted in destroyed property and mass detentions, and took place in southeastern voivodeships of the Second Polish Republic.
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists Bandera joined OUN in 1929 and quickly climbed through the ranks, thanks to the support of Okhrymovych, becoming in 1930 the head of a section distributing OUN propaganda in Eastern Galicia. A year later, he became director of propaganda for the whole OUN. After Okhrymovych's death and the flight from Poland of his successor Ivan Habrusevych in 1931, he became the leading candidate to become head of the homeland executive. But due to the fact that he was in detention at the time, he was unable to assume this function, and upon his release, he became deputy to Bohdan Kordiuk, who assumed this function. After the failure of the , Kordiuk had to step down and Bandera took over de facto his function, which was sanctioned at a conference in Berlin on 3–6 June 1933.
On 29 August 1931, Polish politician Tadeusz Hołówko was assassinated by two members of the OUN Vasyl Bilas and Dmytro Danylyshyn. Both were sentenced to death. Bandera-led OUN propaganda made them martyrs and ordered Ukrainian priests in Lviv and elsewhere to ring bells on the day of their execution.
Since 1932, Bandera was assistant chief of OUN and around that time controlled several "warrior units" in Poland in places such as the Free City of Danzig (Wolne Miasto Gdańsk), Drohobycz, Lwów, Stanisławów, Brzezany, and Truskawiec. Bandera collaborated closely with Richard Yary, who would later side with Bandera and help him form OUN-B.
On Bandera's orders OUN began a campaign of terrorist acts, such as attacks on post-offices, bomb-throwing at Polish exhibitions and murders of policemen to mass campaigns against Polish tobacco and alcohol monopolies and against the denationalization of Ukrainian youth. In 1934, Bandera was arrested in Lwów and tried twice: first, concerning involvement in a plot to assassinate the minister of internal affairs, Bronisław Pieracki, and second at a general trial of OUN executives. He was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to death. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
After the trials, Bandera became renowned and admired among Ukrainians in Poland as a symbol of a revolutionary who fought for Ukrainian independence. While in prison, Bandera was "to some extent detached from OUN discourses" but not completely isolated from the global political debates of the late 1930s thanks to Ukrainian and other newspaper subscriptions delivered to his cell.
World War II Before World War II the territory of today's Ukraine was split between Poland, the Soviet Union, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Prior to the 1939 invasion of Poland, German military intelligence recruited OUN members into the Bergbauernhilfe unit and smuggled Ukrainian nationalists into Poland in order to erode Polish defences by conducting a terror campaign directed at Polish farmers and Jews. OUN leaders Andriy Melnyk (code name Consul I) and Bandera (code name Consul II) both served as agents of the Nazi Germany military intelligence Abwehr Second Department. Their goal was to run diversion activities after Germany's attack on the Soviet Union. This information is part of the testimony that Abwehr Colonel Erwin Stolze gave on 25 December 1945 and submitted to the Nuremberg trials, with a request to be admitted as evidence.
Bandera was freed from Brest (Brześć) Prison in Eastern Poland in early September 1939, as a result of the invasion of Poland. There are differing accounts of the circumstances of his release. Soon thereafter Eastern Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union. Upon release from prison, Bandera moved first to Lviv, but after realising it would be occupied by the Soviets, Bandera together with other OUN members, moved to Kraków, the capital of Germany's occupational General Government. where, according to Tadeusz Piotrowski, he established close connections with the German Abwehr and Wehrmacht. There, he also came in contact with the leader of the OUN, Melnyk. In 1940, the political differences and expectations between the two leaders caused the OUN to split into two factions, OUN-B and OUN-M (Banderites and Melnykites), each one claiming legitimacy.
The factions differed in ideology, strategy and tactics: the OUN-M faction led by Melnyk preached a more conservative approach to nation-building, while the OUN-B faction, led by Bandera, supported a revolutionary approach; however, both factions exhibited similar levels of radical nationalism, fascism, antisemitism, xenophobia and violence. The vast majority of young OUN members joined Bandera's faction. OUN-B was devoted to the independence of Ukraine, as a single-party fascist dictatorship free of national minorities. It was later implicated in the Holocaust.
Before the independence proclamation of 30 June 1941, Bandera oversaw the formation of so-called "Mobile Groups" (), which were small (5–15 members) groups of OUN-B members who would travel from General Government to Western Ukraine and, after a German advance to Eastern Ukraine, encourage support for the OUN-B and establish local authorities run by OUN-B activists.ОУН в 1941 році: документи: В 2-х ч Ін-т історії України НАН України К. 2006 In total, approximately 7,000 people participated in these mobile groups, and they found followers among a wide circle of intellectuals, such as Ivan Bahriany, Vasyl Barka, Hryhorii Vashchenko and many others.