Today, Ukraine is honoring this murdering hero along with its WWII Nazi heroes. Accordingly "Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, condemned the plan to name streets for Bandera and Shukhevych. [WWII Ukrainian nationalist leaders of Waffen SS Divisions].
"My countrymen should know that Bandera and Shukhevych considered me and all of the Ukrainian Jews -- children, women, the elderly -- enemies of Ukrainians," he wrote on Facebook." .- Times of Israel
There was a political party called the Ukrainians trying to set up a country and failing. At the same time, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Czar.
Moving forward through the 1920's, the Ukrainian nationalists worked to destabilize the Soviet Union before and during its switch to mechanized collective farming. Droughts continued to be the norm throughout the period.
Banderites (Ukrainian nationalists with Stepan Bandera [responsible for millions of atrocities in WWII]) and Kulaks (landowners that owned the lives of peasant farmers on their lands) demanded the peasant farmers plant 30% less or pay a 30% tax. In the early 30s, these groups stole the grain, put it in storage holes and across the country for later resale. Cassandra Dean does an excellent outline of the time period and how it developed here.
The Origin of Ukrainian as a NationalityI'm not questioning about whether Ukrainians existed in the period or whether it is a legitimate nationality. There are 18 distinct nationalities living inside Ukraine. The Ukraine was the borderland between Czarist Russia and the Holy Roman Empire for centuries. Almost all central and eastern European countries have the same late start as nationalities after the 1860's Spring of Nations.
The question remains if the Ukrainian nationalists were not Ukrainian from what became Soviet Ukraine, who were they? More precisely, were they ever Ukrainian?
Wasyl Veryha was the leader of the World Ukrainian Diaspora in the 1960s-70s, "In his memoirs, Waffen-SS volunteer Wasyl Veryha recalls how Ukrainian policemen and Waffen-SS Galizien volunteers greeted each other with the Nazi and OUN salutes. 'In Buchach we walked down the dark streets of the city and met two Ukrainian policemen, who, believing we were Germans, greeted us with 'Heil Hitler!,' but we answered 'Slava Ukraini!'" -- Pers Rudling, 'They Defended Ukraine'; Vasyl' Veryha
According to Veryha in his Master's Degree thesis, Ukrainian as a nationality was not accepted fully until the 1950s. Ukrainian was first formulated as a nationality in Canada in the 1930s.
"In fact, the diverse nomenclature for the Ukrainian ethnic group caused a great deal of confusion not only at the turn of the century but also at a later period.
In 1910 a group of Ukrainian public schoolteachers led by Taras Ferley, then a socialist, founded in Winnipeg a Ukrainian Publishing Company with Y.V. Arsenych as its president and T. Ferley as its secretary. The company began publication of a newspaper Ukrains'ky Holos (Ukrainian Voice). The first editor of this paper was Wasyl Kudryk. The paper was really a pioneer in transforming the "Austrians", Ruthenians", "Galicians" and "Bukovinians" into Ukrainians. It popularized the term "Ukrainian" as a replacement for "Ruthenian".
The people of the province of Galicia and Bukovina, generally called themselves "Rusyny" (Ruthenians), Galicians, Bukovinians and Austrians" the Greek Catholic Church, to which at that time the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian immigrants adhered, preferred the term "Ruthenian."-Vasyl Veryha
In Soviet Ukraine, this was also the case. According to the official Ukrainian nationalist resource website, The History of the Ukrainian Church, the apostate (from the Russian Orthodox Church), Ukrainian nationalist clergy started their own church and went around the countryside persuading people to become Ukrainian (nationalists).
We have two central authorities showing a difference between Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainians, but what about the torturer, mass murdering, child raping, Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera? Was there a Ukrainian country or was there Ukrainian nationalist parties vying to start a country?
According to Stepan Bandera's own memoirs, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador spent much time in the Bandera household teaching (corrupting) young Bandera into becoming a nationalist or Nazi. German Nazism is the most recognizable form of nationalism and other than the country and degree of brutality, the term applies. Ukrainian nationalists scared Hitler with their brand of maniacal bloodlust.
Bandera, then leader of the OUNb (Bandera [still exists today]) states clearly there was no Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalists wanted to build one and that is why Bandera and Stetsko declared Galicia to be Ukraine in 1941.
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