David North@davidnorthwsws
Mar. 4
2022
This article was initially posted as a thread on Twitter. It is a guest article by David North. The original article can be seen at www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/04/acad-m04.html
The war is having a devastating impact on historians. There are entirely principled and leftwing grounds upon which the Russian invasion of Ukraine should be opposed and which do not require adapting to the US-NATO coverup of fascism in Ukraine's past and present. But, unfortunately, even historians who have written major works on the fascist Stepan Bandera, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) are renouncing their own scholarship to suit the needs of the US-NATO propaganda campaign.
The "Statement
on Ukraine by scholars of genocide, Nazism and WWII" is a disgraceful
example of the intellectual and moral capitulation of significant segments of
the academic community to the demands for historical falsification.
The
statement begins with reference to World War II, bizarrely attacking Putin for
being "obsessed with the history of that war," as if it is abnormal
for a Russian president to be "obsessed" with a catastrophe that cost
the lives of approximately 30 million Soviet citizens.
One must
assume that the statement's signatories, who have devoted their professional
lives to the study of genocide, are also "obsessed with the history of
that war," whose central event was the Holocaust in which Bandera and
OUN-B played a critical role. The statement's signatories declare: "We do
not idealize the Ukrainian state and society. Like any other country, it has
right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups. Ukraine also ought to
better confront the darker chapters of its painful and complicated history."In
the context of its history, this statement is indeed an idealization of the
Ukrainian state and society. Ukraine is not "like any other country"
which has "right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups."
Supporters
of far-right parties carry torches and banner with a portrait of Stepan Bandera
reads 'Nothing was stopped the idea when its time comes' during a rally in
Kiev, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)As the historians
know, despite the horrific genocidal crimes committed by the OUN, under the
leadership of their "Providnyk" (fuehrer) Stepan Bandera, the legacy
of the fascist nationalists continues to exert an immense political and
cultural influence in Ukraine.
Among the
statement's signatories is the historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, who is the
author of an important 652-page scholarly work, titled Stepan Bandera: The Life
and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist—Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Rossoliński-Liebe's
book, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist -
Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. This book not only documents the crimes committed
by Bandera's movement. Rossoliński-Liebe also examined his cult-like status
among broad segments of contemporary Ukrainian society.
In the
aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, he writes: "Many monuments
devoted to the victims of the Ukrainian nationalists or to heroes of the Soviet
Union were replaced with monuments devoted to Bandera and the OUN and UPA' heroes.'"Bandera
and Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists again became important elements of
western Ukrainian identity.
"Not
only far-right activists but also the mainstream of western Ukrainian society,
including high-school teachers and university professors, considered Bandera to
be a national hero... whose memory should be honoured for his struggle against
the Soviet Union." Rossoliński-Liebe made the following significant and
troubling observation: "The post-Soviet memory politics in Ukraine
completely ignored democratic values and did not develop any kind of
non-apologetic approach to history." How is this damning commentary on the
post-Soviet intellectual life of Ukraine reconciled with the statement's
cynical and historically apologetic reference to "independent and democratic
Ukraine"? Rossoliński-Liebe also called attention to the significant
international connections forged by Bandera's followers with the United States
and other imperialist powers during the Cold War.
Iaroslav
Stets'ko, who "had written letters to the Fuhrer, the Duce, the Poglavnik
[the top Croatian Nazi], and the Caudillo [Franco], asking them to accept the
newly proclaimed Ukrainian state, was in 1966 designated an honorary citizen of
the Canadian city of Winnipeg." The historian continues: "In 1983 he
was invited to the Capitol and the White House, where George Bush and Ronald
Reagan received the 'last premier of a free Ukrainian state,'" i.e., which
had existed under the control of the Third Reich. "On Jul. 11 1982,"
recalls Rossoliński-Liebe, "during Captive Nations Week, the red-and-black
flag of the OUN-B, introduced at the Second Great Congress of the Ukrainian
Nationalists in 1941, flew over the United States Capitol.
"It
symbolized freedom and democracy, not ethnic purity and genocidal fascism.
Nobody understood that it was the same flag that had flown from the Lviv city
hall and other buildings, under which Jewish civilians were mistreated and
killed in July 1941..."
Given the
history of Ukrainian fascism and its truly sordid contemporary significance,
the apologetics in which the historians are engaged is as contemptible as it is
cowardly. The Russian government is engaged in its own propaganda-style
falsification of history, which must be exposed. Putin—a bitter opponent of the
internationalism of the October Revolution—counterpoises Russian nationalism to
Ukrainian nationalism. The competing nationalist narratives must be exposed—in
the interests of uniting Russian and Ukrainian workers in a common struggle
against the US-NATO imperialists, their fascist allies within Ukraine, and
corrupt regime of capitalist restoration in Russia.
David North has played a leading role in the international socialist movement for 45 years. He is presently the chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the national chairperson of the Socialist Equality Party (United States).
