Translated by Daria Demerlii
The name Stepan Bandera remains one of the most controversial in European and global discourse regarding the 20th century. . Despite more than half a century having passed since his death, Bandera’s image is still used as a political label and a tool for division – primarily concerning Ukraine. He is often reduced to a caricature: the claim that Bandera was a Nazi, and therefore, anyone who recognizes his importance to Ukrainian history is automatically equated with Nazi sympathizers. . This simplified equation has long served as a tool of information warfare, one whose foundations were laid by Soviet propaganda and later reproduced by the Russian state.
Today, a considerable portion of Western public opinion on this subject rests not on verified facts or sustained engagement with primary sources, but on the repetition of “hearsay” patterns. These narratives were shaped over decades through Soviet historiography, tightly controlled media, KGB operations, and, in the post-Soviet period, Russian state-sponsored disinformation. As a result, Bandera has been transformed from a historical actor into a propaganda symbol used to brand and discredit Ukrainians internationally.
The purpose of this article is to return the discussion to the level of facts. It seeks to explain who Bandera actually was, the historical context that shaped his ideas, why they were perceived so radically , and how specific circumstances contributed to his later mythologization. The aim is to offer readers a coherent framework—ranging from the political realities of the interwar period to the modern use of Bandera’s name as a tool of informational pressure.
A Product of His Era
Stepan Bandera was born and shaped during a period when Central and Eastern Europe was permeated by political radicalism and dictatorship . His generation came of age in a world where the cult of the strong state, charismatic leadership, and enforced “national unity” were the rule rather than the exception. For Ukrainians—divided among neighboring states after the collapse of empires—the struggle for statehood increasingly took the form of an uncompromising national revolution.
Poland, which included Galicia after World War I, exhibited clear authoritarian features. Józef Piłsudski, the marshal and de facto dictator, built a political system reliant on the army, security services, and strict control over opposition forces. The so-called “pacification” policy of 1930, when Polish punitive units raided dozens of Ukrainian villages, demonstrated that for Warsaw, the “Ukrainian question” was a problem to be solved , not a constituency entitled to autonomy or equal rights. Piłsudski’s international standing was underscored symbolically by the presence of Adolf Hitler at his funeral in 1935—an image that reflected a broader European reality in which the cult of the “strong leader” was widely accepted rather than marginal, and the Poles viewed it accordingly.
A similar situation existed in neighboring Hungary. Following the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Miklós Horthy established a conservative dictatorship that restricted freedoms and pursued aggressive policies of Magyarization. The Ukrainians of Transcarpathia experienced this pressure acutely: Ukrainian language was pushed out of education, cultural organizations were suppressed, and any expression of political independence aspirations was treated as a threat to Hungarian statehood.
Other neighboring states differed little in this regard. Italy had lived under Mussolini’s fascist regime for over a decade; Romania saw the rise of the Iron Guard; and in Germany, after 1933, Nazism fully established itself. For young nationalists living in an occupied Ukraine, these regimes were not abstract ideologies but the surrounding political environment. The idea of a strong, mobilizing state capable of confronting enemies appeared to be the only possible scenario. It was within this atmosphere that Bandera’s worldview took shape. For him, the pursuit of statehood was not a distant ideal but the sole alternative to permanent subjugation under foreign dictatorships. Therefore, while his later rhetoric and actions are perceived as radical, they were in many ways a direct reflection of an era in which democracy was steadily giving way to power-based regimes.
An Idea Whose Time Had Come
By the early 1930s, Ukrainian society faced double pressure : Soviet totalitarianism to the east and an increasingly aggressive policy of Polonization to the west. The Second Polish Republic systematically rolled back previously granted rights — restricting Ukrainian-language education, closing schools, persecuting cultural institutions, and imposing discriminatory economic measures that deprived Ukrainian peasants of land. After 1925, these policies intensified, contributing directly to the radicalization of resistance. The 1930 “Pacification”, during which Polish authorities carried out punitive aids through the villages of Eastern Galicia, left a deep collective trauma marked by beatings, searches, arrests, and the destruction of property.
Within this environment, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) radicalized. The younger generation, including Bandera, concluded that legal and peaceful methods were a dead end. While older leaders still attempted to balance political demands with existing reality, younger activists increasingly resorted to sabotage and political violence.
Bandera remained primarily a man of revolutionary action, yet his ideological positions already shaped the direction of the OUN. In his articles and speeches, he argued for the primacy of the national idea over all other political or social agendas. Critics often describe this stance as ethnocentric — placing the Ukrainian nation above all other identities — and draw parallels with contemporary far-right movements in Europe.
In the specific Ukrainian context of the 1920s and 1930s, however, this radicalism was not rooted in doctrines of racial superiority, such as Nazism. Instead, it emerged as a reaction to systematic discrimination and an attempt to restore political rights to a stateless nation. Bandera and his circle did not seek empire-building or the subjugation of others; their stated objective was more focused and, in their view, fundamental: an independent Ukrainian state on ethnic Ukrainian territory.
After becoming head of the OUN’s regional executive in 1933, Bandera initiated a campaign of intensified militant operations. Under his leadership, the organization carried out a series of high-profile assassinations targeting Polish officials and Ukrainians viewed as collaborators. The most notable was the 1934 assassination of Polish Interior Minister Bronisław Pieracki, a figure associated with the policy of “Pacification”. For supporters, this act symbolized retribution for state violence against Ukrainian civilians.
Critics—from Polish historians to contemporary scholars such as Grzegorz Motyka—argue that OUN’s use of terrorism alienated potential allies, discredited the Ukrainian cause internationally, and reinforced an image of dangerous extremism. Conversely, sympathizers, including historians like Volodymyr Viatrovych, interpret these tactics as a forced response to a political system that left no legal space for Ukrainian activism.
The 1935-1936 Warsaw trial of Bandera and other OUN members became a political spectacle. The defendants used the courtroom as a platform to voice Ukrainian grievances to an international audience. Bandera’s behavior was deliberately confrontational: he refused to speak Polish, demanded the proceedings in Ukrainian, and openly challenged the legitimacy of Polish rule in Galicia. His initial death sentence — later commuted to life imprisonment, likely to avoid creating a martyr — cemented his reputation. From that point on, Bandera emerged both as a symbol of uncompromising resistance and, to many European observers, a dangerous extremist. Both perceptions reflected an era where political violence and authoritarianism constituted a common language of power.
World War II, Imprisonment, and the Preconditions of the Volhynia Tragedy
September 1939 marked the collapse of the Polish state and opened a new, deeply ambiguous chapter for the Ukrainian liberation movement. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent partition of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union turned Ukrainian lands into a testing ground for two totalitarian empires. For Ukrainians, this meant yet another loss of any immediate prospects for statehood, alongside an opportunity—however precarious—to exploit the conflict between the two dictatorships.
In the Soviet-occupied zone, mass repression began immediately: arrests, deportations, the dismantling of civic institutions, and the destruction of the intelligentsia. While German-occupied territories were also governed through coercion,it was there that the OUN managed to preserve and expand its underground networks.
At the same time, the war exacerbated Polish–Ukrainian tensions rooted in interwar Polonization policies. Elements of the Polish underground viewed Ukrainians as a threat to a future restored Poland, while the OUN increasingly regarded Polish structures as an extension of occupation. Amidst this chaos and reciprocal violence, the stage was set for the future tragedy in Volhynia. Many scholars emphasize that German occupation authorities deliberately inflamed Polish–Ukrainian antagonisms to further their own colonial goals.
Within the framework of Generalplan Ost, the Nazis launched Aktion Zamość on 27 November 1942, forcibly expelling Polish inhabitants from the Zamość region and resettling ethnic Germans. Archival evidence shows that auxiliary police units composed partly of local Ukrainians participated in these operations. In some instances, displaced Polish villages were resettled with Ukrainians from other areas in a deliberate strategy to provoke inter-ethnic hostility. These measures, known as Ukraineraktion (January–March 1943), were followed by retaliatory strikes from Polish underground forces. By early 1943, 394 Ukrainians had been killed in the Chełm and Podlasie regions, laying the groundwork for mass violence in Volhynia.
Some historians apply “genocidal thesis” to the events of 1943-1944, arguing that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) followed a directive to ethnically cleanse the Polish population to clear territory for a future Ukrainian state. However, the evidentiary basis for a centralized plan of total extermination remains highly contested. Surviving UPA documents suggest that actions were reactive or retaliatory — responses to Polish attacks or defensive measures to protect local populations — rather than a pre-planned campaign of total annihilation.
Crucially Stepan Bandera — often accused of orchestrating the Volhynia massacres — was imprisoned during this period. On 30 June 1941, his followers in Lviv proclaimed the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State. For Nazi authorities, this move was unacceptable: they saw Ukrainian nationalists as tools against the USSR, not as sovereign partners. Bandera was arrested in Kraków on 5 July 1941, initially placed under house arrest, and later imprisoned after refusing to retract the declaration. In September, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was held in a special high-security cell for political prisoners.
This fact is vital to understanding Bandera’s historical role. Contrary to Soviet and contemporary Russian propaganda — and to certain strands of Polish public discourse — the OUN was not an ally of Hitler. Their strategy involved exploiting imperial rivalries to pursue independence. Once this strategy clashed with Nazi goals, Bandera became a political prisoner for the Third Reich, rather than a collaborator.
Exile, Political Activity, and Assassination
After his release from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in September 1944, Stepan Bandera held no illusions about the possibility of open political activity within Ukraine. The advancing Red Army and the re-establishment of Soviet control made such prospects unrealistic. As a result, his post-war life unfolded in exile, primarily in Germany, where a significant center of Ukrainian political diaspora took shape.
In a world split by the Iron Curtain, Bandera’s role shifted. He was no longer a coordinator of armed struggle but a political symbol and organizer whose primary mission was to preserve and champion the vision of an independent Ukraine. As the leader of the OUN(b), he focused on unifying the Ukrainian diaspora and launching an ideological campaign against the Soviet Union.
Ideologically, Bandera continued to develop the concept of integral nationalism, yet in the context of post-war Europe his ideas acquired a different tone. The radicalism of the interwar years gradually shifted toward an emphasis on national self-determination, resistance to imperial domination, and the defense of freedom as a fundamental value. Bandera envisioned the Ukrainian state defined by strong and disciplined authority, yet he sought to distinguish it from totalitarian systems of both Fascism or Bolshevism.
Critics—including the German historian Guido Hausmann and the Polish scholar Grzegorz Motyka — argue that despite this rhetorical shift, elements of rigid ethnocentrism remained, distancing Bandera’s vision from liberal democratic models. Supporters, including Volodymyr Viatrovych and Yaroslav Hrytsak, contend that Bandera sought to adapt his ideas to a new historical era and did not advocate political systems comparable to Nazi or Soviet regimes. What remained unchanged was his ultimate goal: the establishment of Ukrainian statehood by all means he considered possible.
It was precisely this uncompromising stance that made Bandera dangerous in the context of the Cold War. The Soviet Union viewed him as a symbol of defiance, capable of fueling nationalist sentiment not only within the émigré community but also among underground networks within Ukraine. Soviet propaganda worked tirelessly to demonize him, labelling him a “Hitler collaborator,” a “fascist,” and an “enemy of the people”. These labels were not merely rhetorical devices; they reflected the Kremlin’s fear that Bandera’s continued political activity provided a moral reference point for emerging dissident movements.
This fear ultimately led to his elimination. Soviet authorities regarded Bandera as a potential catalyst for future resistance to Soviet rule. In response, Soviet intelligence services orchestrated a covert operation that culminated in his assassination by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky in Munich in October 1959.
Bandera’s political activity in exile thus illustrates a clear transformation of his ideas—from interwar revolutionary radicalism to a Cold War–era struggle framed around national self-determination. His death demonstrated that even in exile he remained a perceived threat to the Soviet imperial system.
Mythologization
For over seven decades, the mythologization of Stepan Bandera constitutes one of the most potent tools in the Russian propaganda arsenal. During his lifetime, Soviet authorities sought to construct his image as that of a “principal enemy of the people,” personifying “bourgeois nationalism” and “fascism.” This was achieved through information warfare: distorted narratives disseminated via newspapers, newsreels, cinema, and school textbooks. Bandera was portrayed as a “Nazi collaborator,” an “organizer of mass murder,” and a “traitor to his own people.” Such a framework allowed no room for alternative interpretations and served to justify continued Soviet control over Ukraine.
After World War II, this myth was exported throughout the Eastern Bloc. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, identical clichés circulated, aiming to standardize perceptions of Ukrainian nationalism as an inherently criminal phenomenon. Over time, these narratives solidified into durable biases that persist to this day. Even in the West, some scholars — relying heavily on Soviet-era archives or Polish historiography influenced by their own national grievances — reproduced these tropes uncritically. As a result, even in serious academic works Bandera is often presented less as a political actor embedded in a complex historical context and more as a symbol of “extremism” or “radicalism.”
In the 21st century, Russian propaganda has weaponized this myth with renewed intensity. In modern media discourse, Bandera serves as a political bogeyman used to delegitimize the very idea of Ukrainian sovereignty. The Kremlin routinely invokes his name to frame any form of Ukrainian resistance as “neo-Nazism” or “Banderism.” This rhetoric has become an integral component of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine, in which historical imagery is transformed into a literal weapon. At the same time, mythologization has produced a paradoxical effect: for many Ukrainians — particularly after the Revolution of Dignity and the onset of Russian aggression — Bandera’s name has been reclaimed as a symbol of resistance and the existential struggle for freedom. This duality — demonization abroad and partial heroization at home — highlights the lasting influence of Soviet interpretive frameworks on contemporary understandings of history.
Double Standards
Current debates surrounding Bandera are often framed as evidence of a supposed Ukrainian “moral deficiency.” Yet the commemorative practices of European nations suggest a starkly different reality. Many countries simultaneously glorify or downplay the roles of controversial historical figures who fought against neighbors, engaged in ethnic violence, or collaborated with totalitarian regimes. This discrepancy points to a clear double standard.
In Poland, a prominent example is the heroization of the so-called “Lwów Eaglets”—young volunteers who fought in 1918–1919 against the West Ukrainian People’s Republic and Ukrainian forces, effectively opposing Ukrainian statehood. They are commemorated through memorials, state ceremonies, and the restoration of the Eaglets’ Cemetery in Lviv as a sacred site of Polish national memory. What is rarely emphasized, however, is that these “heroes” fought directly against the Ukrainian national aspirations.
At the same time, Poland’s politics of memory increasingly rehabilitate the so-called “cursed soldiers.” Some of these units are documented as having committed war crimes. The detachment led by Romuald Rajs (“Bury”), for instance, carried out mass killings of Belarusian and Ukrainian civilians in 1946, burning villages in Podlasie, executing women and children, and destroying Orthodox churches. Today, despite these facts, Rajs and similar figures are often honored with plaques, street names, and official state rituals.
Ukraine, by contrast, has demonstrated gestures of reconciliation in its memory politics. In Lviv, the memorial to the “Lwów Eaglets” was restored despite their role in opposing Ukrainian independence. Meanwhile, in Poland, recent years have seen the destruction of memorial sites dedicated to fallen Ukrainian soldiers — an act that undermines the principle of mutual respect.
This selective approach to historical memory stands in sharp contrast to Polish accusations against Ukraine for the “heroization of Banderism.” History suggests that state intervention in memory politics—elevating one group to heroic status while branding another as criminal—deepens mistrust rather than reconciliation. Such selective memory lays the groundwork for future conflicts, a dynamic clearly visible in Russia’s contemporary aggression, which likewise relies on historical myths to justify expansionism.
A similar pattern can be observed in Hungary, where attempts have been made to rehabilitate the legacy of Regent Miklós Horthy through commemorative plaques, political rhetoric about “national renewal,” and public debates that frequently gloss over his regime’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. In Slovakia, controversies surround the figure of Jozef Tiso, president of the WWII-era Slovak State(1939–1945), who authorized the deportation of Jews. Efforts to partially rehabilitate or “reinterpret” his legacy reveal a broader regional tolerance toward troubling and criminal aspects of national pasts.
The international context further complicates these debates. At the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–1946, leading figures of Nazi Germany and their collaborators were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The leaders of the Ukrainian liberation movement, including Bandera, were not classified as war criminals. Their activities did not fall under the same legal criteria, as they were conducted within conditions of occupation and totalitarian repression in pursuit of national self-determination.
Consequently, arguments by Polish or Western critics against commemorating Bandera in Ukraine often overlook a crucial point: neighboring states’ own memory practices demonstrate that the heroization of controversial figures is a widespread regional phenomenon. This does not absolve historical crimes, but it underscores the existence of political choices and double standards in memory politics across Central and Eastern Europe—choices that must be acknowledged and critically examined.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
The figure of Stepan Bandera, as well as the Ukrainian liberation movement itself, has always existed at the intersection of history and politics. Today, he is not only a historical figure but also a geopolitical litmus test: his name is used to label Ukrainian statehood and its perceived regional influence. Political and economic arguments against Ukraine’s integration into the European Union often extend beyond formal accession criteria to include emotional and historical considerations, which neighboring states and international actors transform into diplomatic tools.
The examples of double standards in Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia illustrate how national memory is employed to constrain Ukraine’s potential influence. Bandera’s commemoration in Ukraine is scrutinized precisely because he symbolizes independence and resistance to imperial pressure — an imaginary threat that can be articulated through historical arguments. At the same time, similar processes of heroization unfold within neighboring countries without provoking comparable international condemnation.
Economically and politically, the EU and certain member states frequently invoke “historical sensitivity” to justify caution or stall in deeper integration with Ukraine. Within this framework, Bandera functions as a symbol used to signal alleged “risks of radicalism,” regardless of the modern Ukrainian state’s actual track record or its commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and integration into European institutions.
Within Ukraine, however, Bandera remains a unifying figure for many. His life and political activity are viewed as a testament to a nation’s fundamental right to self-determination rather than an endorsement of violence. He was a representative of his generation — a cohort shaped by occupation, dictatorship, and totalitarian rule, whose actions were radical but whose goal was clear and politically mature: the creation of an independent state.
Symbolically, Bandera continues to inspire new generations of Ukrainians resisting foreign aggression and seeking to assert their place in the modern world. His image reinforces that the struggle for freedom is not a relic of the past but an ongoing existential necessity. This is what renders his figure both historically grounded and strategically relevant in contemporary international relations.
Ultimately, Bandera is not merely a historical actor but a symbol of national sovereignty — one that demonstrates how the past is mobilized in modern political and economic processes to constrain the emergence of a powerful and independent regional actor: Ukraine.
