Stepan Bandera
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| Stepan Bandera Степан Бандера |
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 Stepan Bandera |
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| Born | January 1, 1909 Uhryniv Staryi, Galiсia, Austria-Hungary |
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| Died | October 15, 1959 (aged 50) Munich, West Germany |
| Nationality | Ukrainian |
| Occupation | Politician |
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (Ukrainian: Степан Андрійович Бандера) (January 1, 1909–October 15, 1959) was a Ukrainian nationalist leader who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
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[edit] Early Life
He was born in the village of Uhryniv Staryi, in the Kalush District in Galiсia (Stanyslaviv Oblast), which at that time was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His father, Andriy Bandera, was a Ukrainian priest of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic rite in Uhryniv Staryi. His mother, Myroslava Bandera, was from an old clerical family, being the daughter of a Greek-Catholic priest in Uhryniv Staryi.
Stepan spent his childhood in Uhryniv Staryi, in the house of his parents and grandparents, growing up in an atmosphere of Ukrainian nationalism.
In the spring of 1922, his mother died from tuberculosis of the throat.
[edit] Nationalist activities
Starting in 1922, he was a member of Plast – Ukrainian Scouting Organization. From 1931 Bandera was deputy of regional Scouts, then – head of regional executive of OUN and commandant of ULO - an organization which had operated illegaly in Poland since 1920. He was sentenced to death for plotting the murder of Bronisław Pieracki, the Home Secretary in the Polish government in 1934, but the sentence was vacated and commuted to life imprisonment.
Released by the USSR when the Germans occupied Lviv in 1939, in 1940 he headed the revolutionary group of OUN that had broken away from pro-German Andrii Melnyk's OUN. Khrushchev commented in his memoirs "...we still showed a certain lack of judgment by freeing people like Bandera from prison without first checking up on them"[1].
On June 30, 1941, he was elected a member of the Government of the renewed Ukrainian State proclaimed in Lviv following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. After that he was in the German Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was placed in the "Zellenbau Bunker". With Bandera were all the most important prisoners of the third Reich, such as ex-prime minister of France, Leon Blum, ex-chancellor of Austria, Kurt Schuschnigg. Prisoners of Zellenbau received help from the Red Cross unlike common concentration camp prisoners and were able to send and receive parcels from their relatives. Bandera also got help from OUN including financial assistance. Germans permitted the Ukrainian nationalists to leave the bunker for important meeting with OUN representatives in Fridental Castle which was 200 meters from Sachsenhausen.[2] He was released in October 1944 and headed the West European units of OUN and Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the UPA. After 1945, UPA partisan units continued fighting the Soviet Union and communist Poland until the early 1950s, especially in the Carpathian Mountains regions.
[edit] Murder Victim
On October 15, 1959, at the entrance of a house in Kreittmayr street, 7 (Kreittmayrstraße), in Munich, Stepan Bandera was found at 13:05, bleeding and barely alive. A medical examination established that the cause of his death was poison (cyanide gas[3]). Two years later, on November 17, 1961, the German judicial bodies proclaimed that the murderer of Stepan Bandera was Bohdan Stashynsky who acted on the orders of Soviet KGB head Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.[4]After a detailed investigation against Stashynskyi, a trial took place from October 8th to October 15, 1962. The sentence was handed down on October 19th, in which Stashynskyi was condemned to 8 years of imprisonment. The German Supreme Court confirmed at Karlsruhe that in the Bandera murder, the Soviet Government in Moscow was the main guilty party.
[edit] Legacy
In an interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2005 former KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov claimed that "the murder of Stepan Bandera was one of the last cases when the KGB disposed of undesired people by means of violence."[5] On October 20, 1959 Stepan Bandera was buried in the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich.
In late 2006 the Lviv city administration announced the future transference of the tombs of Stepan Bandera, Andriy Melnyk, Yevhen Konovalets and other key leaders of OUN/UPA to a new area of Lychakivskiy Cemetery specifically dedicated to Ukrainian national liberation struggle.[6]
In October of 2007, the city of Lviv erected, after many years of delays, a statue dedicated to the OUN and UPA leader Stepan Bandera. The appearance of the statue has engendered a far-reaching debate about the role of Stepan Bandera and UPA in Ukrainian History. On October 18, 2007, the Lviv City Council adopted a resolution establishing the "Award of Stepan Bandera."[7][8]
[edit] References
- ^ (Khrushchev Remembers: Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1970 at 140).
- ^ A.B. Shirokorad, Uteryannie zemli Rossii: otkolovshiesya respubliki, Moscow:"Veche", 2007, p. 84.
- ^ The Partisan, TIME Magazine, November 2, 1959
- ^ The Poison Pistol, TIME Magazine, December 01, 1961
- ^ Mosnews.com
- ^ [1]
- ^ Корреспондент » Украина » События » Львов основал журналистскую премию имени Бандеры
- ^ Розпорядження №495
