Сорока на плоті / The Magpie
Let Bygones Be Bygones?
President Yushchenko has profanely denigrated the issue of official recognition for OUN-UPA and the memory of its fallen fighters to a handshake and a smile.
During this year’s Victory Day observance on May 9 in Ukraine, one of the most barefaced Bolshevik holidays on the calendar, President Yushchenko offered a message to two opposing groups of military veterans. On one side, there were the former combatants of the Soviet Army, who, despite fighting against an independent, blue and yellow Ukraine a half a century ago, today enjoy legal and esteemed status in independent, blue and yellow Ukraine. On the other side, there were the veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), formed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) to fight under the blue and yellow standard for the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine, who today are reviled by most Ukrainians in independent Ukraine and still don’t possess official status.
This is just one of the conundrums of contemporary Ukraine.
While urging Ukrainian parliamentarians to adopt laws giving OUN-UPA veterans pensions, welfare and healthcare status, and, presumably, the free cab rides that have been available to Soviet Army veterans on holidays, and nothing else, President Yushchenko, appealing to some perverted sense of fair play and letting bygones be bygones, encouraged the two groups to make up and be friends.
“I am convinced that there will come a time when Ukrainian veterans will shake hands with one another in the name of the future of the country. I am convinced that we will bear witness to a time, when the question of reconciliation will become a reality for the Ukrainian nation,” the President said.
“You looked death in the eyes not once; today I ask you not to hide your views from the present. Perhaps you saw differently the future but I am convinced that each one of you saw this future in a free, sovereign and independent Ukraine,” he continued.
President Yushchenko, whose father served in the Soviet Army, is apparently demonstrating his confusion about the mission of OUN-UPA and its fight against all invaders and enemies of Ukraine – the Soviet Russian empire, Nazi Germany, communist and non-communist Polish troops, and others – in order to reestablish an independent, sovereign Ukrainian state with its capital in Kyiv.
Indeed, the spoils go to the winner and the Soviet Russian empire did win the war in its part of the world. Consequently, its army has been given credit for evicting the Nazi German war machine from Ukraine, contributing to its defeat, rescuing Ukraine and preserving Soviet Russian hegemony over Ukraine.
Neglecting that OUN-UPA troops also fought and died against Nazi German soldiers is not the sole issue at hand. A partial issue is saying the past never existed and veterans of the OUN-UPA and former combatants of the Soviet Army – and everyone else – should shake hands for the good of the country.
So there is no misunderstanding, I do not share President Yushchenko’s naïve excitement for a chance reconciliation between two diametrically opposite ideologies. I simply oppose it.
It is shameful for the President to ask two unequal groups of people to shake hands and make up, especially when one of them enjoys official recognition by today’s independent Ukraine and the other one is still regarded as collaborating bandits.
Does President Yushchenko equate the war for the national liberation of Ukraine with a schoolyard brawl, or a falling out between two friends or a lovers’ spat? Would it be appropriate to ask Jews to cheer at the appearance of the swastika or Afro-Americans the Confederate battle flag?
President Yushchenko demonstrated his lack of leadership by not issuing a regular presidential edict-ukaz that would recognize OUN-UPA. He again showed his weakness when he told the political parties vying government leadership that “reconciliation” should be a prerequisite for the coalition government, thus turning the legacy of the OUN-UPA into a political football.
Borrowing from literary themes evoked by Winston Churchill during the war and today by Tom Brokaw, in the Ukrainian theater of operations of World War II, the finest hour belonged exclusively to the men and women of OUN-UPA, the true greatest generation of righteous, idealistic Ukrainians, and certainly not to the soldiers of the Soviet Army, who were duped, deceived and forcibly conscripted into its service.
They and their supporters have claimed the Soviet Army singled-handedly chased the Hun out of Ukraine. But they are wrong. Just as they were morally and nationally wrong for siding with Soviet Russia and the hammer and sickle against Ukraine. There are many confirmed historical records of OUN-UPA troops successfully engaging Nazi and Soviet troops in battles across Ukraine. Those records also include numerous accounts of the execution of captured OUN-UPA soldiers as well as regular citizens who voluntarily and eagerly supported and gave comfort to them. For 60 years the surviving OUN-UPA veterans have been subjected to confinement, traducement and aspersion by Soviet Russian officialdom, not to mention many common folk.
The Soviet Army had the resources to push the Nazi Army all the way to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, while initially only marginally engaging the OUN-UPA fighters. However, after the Germans were locked in their country, the Soviet Army was free to turn its equally vicious war machine against Ukraine’s freedom fighters. Their relentless goal was to destroy not only the idea of an independent, blue and yellow Ukraine, but the spirit of OUN-UPA and all soldiers who fought in its ranks, some of whom were forever left in the forests and bunkers with blood trickling from their chests. Their buddies, the survivors, the still living veterans, today are being asked by President Yushchenko to shake hands with their killers, the Soviet Army veterans.
The issue of recognition of OUN-UPA goes beyond pensions and welfare. Giving each of them a couple of hundred hryven and a free taxi ride does not pay tribute to their and their fellow fighters’ mission. This is about the President of an independent, blue and yellow Ukraine having the moral character and national fortitude to stand up and unequivocally declare the country’s and nation’s gratitude for the bravery, heroism and sacrifice of its greatest generation of sons and daughters, without adding uncalled for platitudes about the gallantry of the Soviet Army troops in liberating Ukraine.
Recognition for OUN-UPA is where the immovable line in the sand must be drawn and anyone on the other side of this divide cannot be considered a Ukrainian patriot.
National recognition of OUN-UPA – the only just form of reconciliation – requires the same kind of leadership that an orange presidential candidate once showed on the Maidan. Anything short of that will mean that Ukraine can hope to become only a separate and unequal society, where former enemies have more glory and privileges than true freedom fighters.
IHOR DLABOHA
posted 06.05.2006
