Nazi and Fascist Roots of the Ukrainian Pro-EU Protest Movement

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SpitfireList:

COMMENT: For decades, we have cov­ered the OUN/B, a Ukrain­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion allied with the Ger­man gen­eral staff in World War II. Hav­ing staffed the 14th Waf­fen SS (Gali­cian) Divi­sion and the Ein­satz­grup­pen (mobile exe­cu­tion squads) in the Ukraine, the OUN/B was a piv­otal ele­ment in the post­war Gehlen spy out­fit in its CIA and BND incar­na­tions, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the GOP eth­nic out­reach organization.

For some time, the pro-EU/German bloc of Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal par­ties cur­rently gar­ner­ing head­lines with protests in Kiev and other cities has man­i­fested the fas­cist roots ^[3] and alliances of the OUN/B.

Both Yulia Timoshenko’s “Father­land” party and the UDAR party ^[4] net­work with the Svo­boda party of  ^[5]Oleg Tyag­ni­bok (“Oleh Tiah­ny­bok”) ^[5], which has evolved directly from the fas­cist OUN/B of Stephan Bandera.

OUN/B has been deeply involved with covert oper­a­tions and fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, as well as the de-stabilization of the Soviet Union dur­ing the cli­mac­tic phase of the Cold War. With a pro­found pres­ence in the GOP’s Eth­nic divi­sion, as well as the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the OUN/B is any­thing but an his­tor­i­cal relic. The devel­op­ment of the OUN/B in both the U.S. and the Ukraine is explained in great his­tor­i­cal depth in AFA #37 ^[7].

In the past we have noted ^[8] that Yka­te­rina Chu­machenko, head of the OUN/B’s lead­ing front orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. and Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son, went on to marry Vik­tor Yuschenko and become First Lady of the Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution.”

With the Yuschenko regime in power, OUN/B founder Stephan Ban­dera was named a hero of the Ukraine ^[9]. As we see below, Roman Shukhevych  was also granted that honor. Shukhevych lead the OUN/B-staffed Ein­satz­gruppe “Nightin­gale” in its liq­ui­da­tion of the Lvov Ghetto! (Lvov has also been known as Lem­berg at var­i­ous times in its recent history.)

Now, this polit­i­cal milieu is coa­lesc­ing in the Ukrain­ian pro-EU cadre, push­ing to incor­po­rate ^[10] the Ukraine into the German-dominated EU.

In an update ^[11] “Pter­rafractyl” informs us of fur­ther evi­dence of the OUN/B roots ^[12] of the Ukrain­ian protest movement.

“Ukraine’s Forces Move Against Pro­test­ers, Dim­ming Hopes for Talks” by David M. Her­szen­horn; The New York Times; 12/9/2013. ^[5]

EXCERPT: . . . . On Mon­day evening, Ukrain­ian secu­rity forces raided the head­quar­ters of an oppo­si­tion party, Father­land, and seized com­puter servers.

The party’s par­lia­men­tary leader, Arseniy P. Yat­senyuk, is one of the main orga­niz­ers of the protest move­ment, which bal­looned in recent days to dom­i­nate the streets of Kiev and pres­sure Mr. Yanukovich after he refused to sign a polit­i­cal and trade pact with the Euro­pean Union. Father­land is best known, how­ever, as the oppo­si­tion coali­tion formed by the jailed for­mer prime min­is­ter, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, whose release has long been demanded by West­ern leaders. . . . .
. . . . Despite the action against Mr. Yatsenyuk’s party, Father­land, the author­i­ties seemed to be hold­ing back from sim­i­lar inves­ti­ga­tions of the other two par­lia­men­tary lead­ers at the fore­front of the protests, the cham­pion boxer Vitali Klitschko, of the UDAR party, and Oleg Tyag­ni­bok, of the nation­al­ist Svo­boda party.

Mr. Tyagnibok’s sup­port­ers in par­tic­u­lar are among the most fear­some demon­stra­tors and have led some of the more provoca­tive efforts to occupy build­ings and block gov­ern­ment offices. . . .

“A Broad-Based Anti-Russian Alliance”; german-foreign-policy.com; 12/3/2013. ^[4]

ENTIRE TEXT: The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is encour­ag­ing the protest demon­stra­tions being staged in the Ukraine by the “pro-European” alliance of con­ser­v­a­tive and ultra-rightwing par­ties. The “pro-Europe ral­lies” in Kiev and other cities of the coun­try are trans­mit­ting “a very clear mes­sage”, accord­ing to a gov­ern­ment spokesper­son in Berlin: “Hope­fully” the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent “will heed this mes­sage,” mean­ing sign the EU’s Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment, which Kiev had refused to do last week, in spite of mas­sive Ger­man pres­sure. To gain influ­ence in the coun­try, Ger­many has for years been sup­port­ing the “pro-European” alliance in the Ukraine. The alliance includes not only con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties, but also forces from the extreme right — because of their strength, par­tic­u­larly in west­ern Ukraine, where a cult around for­mer Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors is man­i­fest­ing itself. The All-Ukrainian Union “Svo­boda” party is par­tic­u­larly embed­ded in the national-chauvinist milieu, under the influ­ence of this cult. Over the past few days, the party’s leader has called for a “rev­o­lu­tion” in Kiev.

“Gen­eral Strike and Revolution”

Oleh Tiah­ny­bok, the leader of the ultra-rightwing Svo­boda (Free­dom) party is quoted say­ing “a rev­o­lu­tion is begin­ning in the Ukraine.” Tiah­ny­bok made this procla­ma­tion in Kiev dur­ing the cur­rent protest demon­stra­tions. On the week­end, approx. 100,000 peo­ple took to the streets protest­ing against the cur­rent government’s for­eign pol­icy course, and call­ing for the coun­try to become asso­ci­ated with the EU. Dur­ing their con­tin­u­ing — and increas­ingly vio­lent — demon­stra­tions, pro­test­ers are call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to stop refus­ing to sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment with the EU. Accord­ing to media reports, numer­ous activists from ultra-rightwing orga­ni­za­tions are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the demon­stra­tions, par­tic­u­larly activists from Svo­boda. The party’s leader Tiah­ny­bok is bask­ing in the atten­tion he is receiv­ing from the inter­na­tional press. He is plan­ning a gen­eral strike to accom­plish the “rev­o­lu­tion” he announced last weekend.[1] He can rely on ultra-rightwing forces, whose influ­ence has grown over the past few years.

“National Lib­er­a­tion Movement”

The resur­gence of the cult around the for­mer Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, since the mid-1980s, has helped ultra-rightwing forces to enlarge their influ­ence in west­ern Ukraine and in Kiev. This cult focuses par­tic­u­larly on Stepan Ban­dera, a leader of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN). The OUN joined forces with the Nazis dur­ing the inva­sion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. “Along with Ger­man units, our mili­tias are mak­ing numer­ous arrests of Jews,” wrote the OUN’s pro­pa­ganda unit fol­low­ing the inva­sion of Lviv: “Before their liq­ui­da­tion, the Jews had used every method to defend themselves.“[2] While Lviv’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion was falling prey to pogroms and mas­sacres in the city, Ban­dera was pro­claim­ing the estab­lish­ment of a Ukrain­ian nation.[3] One spe­cial­ist explained in ref­er­ence to Bandera’s attempt to pro­claim a nation, that today, Ban­dera and the OUN play a “very impor­tant” role in the “eth­nic self-identity” of West Ukraini­ans. The OUN is seen “less as a fas­cist party” than “as the cli­max of a national lib­er­a­tion move­ment, or a fra­ter­nity of coura­geous heroes in Ukrain­ian national history.“[4] Since the begin­ning of the 1990s, numer­ous mon­u­ments to Ban­dera have been erected through­out the coun­try. One such mon­u­ment crowns the “Boule­vard Stapan Ban­dera” in Lviv’s center.[5] Accord­ing to analy­ses, a, “for the most part, infor­mally func­tion­ing nation­al­ist civil soci­ety” has been cre­ated around the Ban­dera cult, par­tic­u­larly in West Ukraine.[6]

Col­lab­o­ra­tionist Traditions

As far back as the 1990s, this milieu has pro­duced var­i­ous ultra-rightwing orga­ni­za­tions. In 1990, the UNA Party (“Ukrain­ian National Assem­bly”) was founded, form­ing a para­mil­i­tary wing (the “Ukrain­ian National Self-Defense” — UNSO) in 1991. Yuri Shukhevych, the son of Roman Shukhevych, a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, was one of its first lead­ers. Soon the “Con­gress of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists” (CUN) fol­lowed, which elected the for­mer OUN activist Slava Stet­sko to the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment in 1997. As Pres­i­dent by Senior­ity, Stet­sko had the honor of deliv­er­ing the open­ing address at the Verk­hovna Rada (Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment) after the 1998 elec­tions. After 1945, Stet­sko had con­tin­ued to pur­sue her Ukrain­ian activ­i­ties from her exile in Munich. It was also in Munich that, since 1948, the “Ukrain­ian National Coun­cil” had held its meet­ings — in the phys­i­cal and polit­i­cal prox­im­ity of Ger­man and US intel­li­gence ser­vices. The National Coun­cil con­sid­ered itself to be the “core of the Ukrain­ian state in exile.“[7] Already in 1998, the CUN received — in elec­toral alliances with other par­ties — 9.7 per­cent of the votes in Lviv, 20.9 per­cent in Ternopil and 23.8 per­cent in Ivano-Frankivsk. At the time, the “Social National Party of the Ukraine” (SNPU), which was co-founded in Lviv in 1991 by Oleh Tiah­ny­bok and had vio­lent neo-Nazi mem­bers, was not yet suc­cess­ful in elec­tions. In 1998 Tiah­ny­bok was voted into the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment with a direct man­date. Only after the SNPU changed its name to the “All-Ukrainian Union ‘Svo­boda’ (‘Free­dom’) in 2004, did it become more suc­cess­ful in elec­tions and the leader of Ukraine’s ultra-rightwing forces.

Heroes of the Ukraine

At the time, politi­cians, who had been closely coop­er­at­ing with Berlin, par­tic­u­larly Vik­tor Yushchenko (Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent 2005–2010), had been engaged in activ­i­ties aimed at form­ing a broad anti-Russian alliance to inte­grate the Ukraine into the Ger­man hege­monic sphere — thereby strength­en­ing the ultra-rightwing forces. For the elec­tions in 2002 and 2006, Yushchenko’s elec­toral plat­form “Our Ukraine” coop­er­ated with CUN and enabled that orga­ni­za­tion to win three seats in the national par­lia­ment in both elec­tions. Oleh Tiah­ny­bok (Svo­boda) had tem­porar­ily been a mem­ber of the “Our Ukraine” par­lia­men­tary group. He was excluded in the sum­mer of 2004, fol­low­ing his speech at the grave of a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, in which he ranted against the “Jew­ish mafia in Moscow.” That same year, Yushchenko announced that, if elected, he would offi­cially declare Ban­dera “Hero of the Ukraine.” This did not impede Berlin’s sup­port. With the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion,” Berlin also helped him to ulti­mately be elected Pres­i­dent. Yushchenko declared Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Roman Shukhevych on Octo­ber 12, 2007, and Ban­dera on Jan­u­ary 22, 2010 “Heroes of the Ukraine” — as a favor to the broad anti-Russian Alliance. At that time, Svo­boda had just received its first major elec­toral suc­cess: In the March 15 regional par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Ternopil, with 34.7 per­cent and 50 out of 120 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, includ­ing the pres­i­dent of par­lia­ment, it emerged the strongest party.

Socially Accept­able

To secure the broad­est pos­si­ble base for their anti-Russian pol­icy, the so-called pro-European Ukrain­ian par­ties are still coop­er­at­ing with ultra rightwing forces. “Batkivschyna” (Father­land), the party of impris­oned oppo­si­tion politi­cian Yulia Tymoshenko has entered an elec­toral alliance with Svo­boda in the run-up to the last elec­tions. Thanks to this alliance, Svo­boda was able to obtain 10.4 per­cent of the votes and twelve direct man­dates and is now rep­re­sented in the Verk­hovna Rada with 37 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. A firm oppo­si­tion coali­tion was formed, which included Svo­boda, Batkivschyna and Vitaly Klitschko’s “UDAR” party. This coali­tion is not only closely coop­er­at­ing in the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment but also in the cur­rent protest demon­stra­tions on the streets. Batkivschyna has “sig­nif­i­cantly aided Svo­boda to become socially accept­able,” accord­ing to an expert, but it can­not be ruled out that it thereby also “dug its own grave.” Already at the 2012 elec­tions, Tymoshenko’s party lost some of its “vot­ers to the rad­i­cal nation­al­ists” because of its coop­er­a­tion with Svoboda.[8] The dynamic of rad­i­cal­iza­tion of the cur­rent protests could invig­o­rate this devel­op­ment — aided by Berlin’s active encouragement.

Party Cell Munich

With its grow­ing strength, Svo­boda is also gain­ing influ­ence on a Euro­pean level. Since the 1990s, the party has sys­tem­at­i­cally devel­oped con­tacts to var­i­ous ultra-rightwing par­ties in other Euro­pean coun­tries. For quite a while, it had been coop­er­at­ing closely with the French Front National until the FN began to cul­ti­vate a “more mod­er­ate” image. Up to the begin­ning of this year, Svo­boda had par­tic­i­pated in a net­work that also included the “British National Party” and Hungary’s “Job­bik.” It has been seek­ing closer ties to the neo-fascist “Forza Nuova” in Italy and the Ger­man NPD.[9] But, it is also estab­lish­ing its own party struc­tures in other Euro­pean coun­tries. Last August, it founded a party cell in Munich chaired by a Svo­boda city coun­cil mem­ber from Ivano-Frankivsk, who is cur­rently study­ing in the Bavar­ian cap­i­tal. Fol­low­ing its foun­da­tion cer­e­mony, the new party cell vis­ited the Munich Wald­fried­hof, indi­cat­ing a tra­di­tional link between Munich and the Ukraine: the two OUN lead­ers Jaroslav Stet­sko and Stepan Ban­dera are buried in this ceme­tery. In a press release, the party’s new cell announced that the visit had been made “in honor of those, who had died for the inde­pen­dence of the Ukraine.“[10] Sub­se­quent to their unsuc­cess­ful Nazi-collaboration, both had con­tin­ued their strug­gle for Ukraine’s seces­sion from the Soviet Union and inte­gra­tion into the Ger­man Fed­eral Republic’s hege­monic sphere of influence.

“15,000 Ukraine Nation­al­ists March for Divi­sive Ban­dera” [AP]; USA Today; 1/1/2014. ^[12]

EXCERPT: About 15,000 peo­ple marched through Kiev on Wednes­day night to honor Stepan Ban­dera, glo­ri­fied by some as a leader of Ukraine’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment and dis­missed by oth­ers as a Nazi collaborator.

The march was held in Ukraine’s cap­i­tal on what would have been Bandera’s 105th birth­day, and many of the cel­e­brants car­ried torches.

Some wore the uni­form of a Ukrain­ian divi­sion of the Ger­man army dur­ing World War II. Oth­ers chanted “Ukraine above all!” and “Ban­dera, come and bring order!”

How­ever, many of Bandera’s fol­low­ers sought to play down his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ger­mans in the fight for Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence as the leader of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, Ukraine’s fore­most nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion in the first half of the 20th century.

Ban­dera, who died 55 year ago, remains a deeply divi­sive fig­ure in Ukraine, glo­ri­fied by many in west­ern Ukraine as a free­dom fighter but dis­missed by mil­lions in east­ern and south­east­ern Ukraine as a trai­tor to the Soviet Union’s strug­gle against the occu­py­ing German army.
...
His group also was involved in the eth­nic cleans­ing that killed tens of thou­sands of Poles in 1942–44. The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists por­trayed Rus­sians, Poles, Hun­gar­i­ans and Jews — most of the minori­ties in west­ern Ukraine — as aliens and encour­aged locals to “destroy” Poles and Jews.

Ban­dera was assas­si­nated in 1959 by the KGB in West Ger­many. [Actu­ally, it was prob­a­bly BND that killed Ban­dera, and his assas­si­na­tion at the hands of “the KGB” was involved in part of the cover-up of the JKK assas­si­na­tion. See AFA #‘s 15 ^[13], 37 ^[7], as well as FTR #158 ^[14]–DE.]
In Jan­u­ary 2010, less than a month before his term in office was to end, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko posthu­mously dec­o­rated Ban­dera with the Hero of Ukraine award. That led to harsh crit­i­cism by Jew­ish and Russ­ian groups. The award was annulled by a court in Jan­u­ary 2011 under Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych.

Kiev has been the scene of mas­sive pro-European protests for more than a month, trig­gered by Yanukovych’s deci­sion to ditch a key deal with the Euro­pean Union in favor of build­ing stronger ties with Russia.

The nation­al­ist party Svo­boda, which orga­nized Wednesday’s rally, was one of the key forces behind the protests, but other oppo­si­tion fac­tions have said the Ban­dera rally is unre­lated to the ongo­ing protest encamp­ment in central Kiev.

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://spitfirelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/14th-Waffen-SS-troops-inspected-by-Himmler.jpg

[2] can be obtained here.: http://www.kfjc.org/donate/index.php

[3] man­i­fested the fas­cist roots: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58338

[4] “Father­land” party and the UDAR party: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58701

[5] Svo­boda party of : http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/world/europe/ukraine-unrest.html?pagewanted=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131210

[6] Image: http://spitfirelist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/Deja-vu-all-over-again1.jpg

[7] AFA #37: http://spitfirelist.com/anti-fascist-archives/rfa-37-how-the-united-states-lost-the-second-world-war/

[8] we have noted: http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-529-nazi-roots-and-fascist-flowers/

[9]  named a hero of the Ukraine: http://rt.com/Politics/2010-01-30/bandera-hero-nationalism-yushchenko.html

[10] to incor­po­rate: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/58703

[11] an update: http://spitfirelist.com/news/nazi-and-fascist-roots-of-the-ukrainian-pro-eu-protest-movement/comment-page-1/#comment-74172

[12] OUN/B roots: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/01/ukraine-bandera/4279897/

[13] 15: http://spitfirelist.com/anti-fascist-archives/rfa-15-the-world-anti-communist-league-pt-2/

[14] FTR #158: http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-158-the-life-and-times-of-senator-thomas-dodd/