Historical memory in Lviv

Lviv is a beautiful city in western Ukraine. In many ways it has a distinct spirit, reflecting its different historical heritage from the rest of the country. Lviv, together with the eastern Galicia region of which it is the most important city, had spent much less of its history under Russian or Soviet rule. As part of the partition of Poland in the 18th century, Lviv had been annexed to the Austrian Hapsburg Empire. After an attempt to establish an independent Ukrainian state at the end of the First World War, Lviv and the rest of western Ukraine was incorporated into the restored Polish state. But while Lviv itself had a predominantly Polish and Jewish population, with Ukrainians in a minority, in the surrounding territory of eastern Galicia Ukrainians were in the majority.

Dissatisfaction with Polish rule was strongly felt among the Ukrainian population, and radical nationalists of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) carried on a violent campaign of terrorist attacks targeting the Polish state as well as Ukrainians who they regarded as traitors or collaborators. The onset of the Second World War seemed to offer them another chance to establish an independent state under their exclusivist, totalitarian rule. After the invasion and dismemberment of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939, most of the OUN leadership took refuge in the German occupied west of the country, where they established close ties with the Nazis. Following a split in the organisation, a more radical faction, the OUN-B, so-named after its leader, Stepan Bandera, made plans for a national revolution they hoped to carry out in Ukraine with Nazi support.

The OUN-B was a typical fascist organisation of its day, in its totalitarian ideology, its intolerance towards other nations in the territory it claimed, and its vicious antisemitism. Its members adopted the outstretched arm fascist salute, and drew inspiration from other fascist movements in Italy, Slovakia and Croatia, as well as Germany. Bandera, as “providnyk” (leader), throughout his life insisted upon the leadership principle (“führerprinzip” in German) of unswerving submission to the leader’s will.

When the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, they did not allow Bandera to cross into the newly occupied territory. But other OUN leaders were quick to take up the opportunity. When the German army reached Lviv, one of Bandera’s key subordinates, Yaroslav Stetsko, proclaimed a new Ukrainian state on 30 June. The arrival of the German army was followed by a bloody pogrom against the city’s Jewish population, in which a militia organised by the OUN-B took a prominent part.

Lviv’s brief experience of Soviet rule in 1939-41 had been brutally repressive. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, and frequently tortured, and hundreds of thousands were deported. Before the hasty Soviet withdrawal from the city in the face of the German advance, the NKVD secret police were ordered to shoot all remaining political prisoners. Thousands were murdered in NKVD prisons in Lviv.

Memorial to the victims of communist crimes, Lviv

I visited the National Museum - Memorial of the Victims of the Occupying Regimes “Prison on Lonsky Street”, located in one of the prisons where the NKVD murders took place. While the museum depicts the harsh prison regime during periods as a Polish, Soviet and Nazi gaol, its particular focus is on the NKVD murders, during which, according to the information provided, 1,681 were killed, or 41 per cent of the NKVD murders carried out in prisons in Lviv. However, as the historian John-Paul Himka has described, the museum gives an incomplete account of the bloody events at Lonsky prison in the days before and after the Soviet withdrawal from the city in June 1941.

Upon the arrival of the German army in the town, the bodies of the murdered prisoners were brought out into the prison yard, where shocked Lviv residents came to identify their loved ones. As the English-language text at the museum acknowledges, Jewish residents of Lviv were rounded up and forced to carry out the bodies, which were already decomposing in the summer heat. What the museum does not relate is how these Jews were savagely beaten and murdered, and how this developed into a full-scale pogrom, during which Jews were dragged from their homes, beaten and humiliated in the street, raped and murdered. This is a serious omission, made worse by the emphasis that during the Nazi occupation it was mainly Ukrainians, members of the OUN, who were victimised at the prison. Thus while the museum’s account glosses over the massacre of Jews that took place inside Lonsky Prison as well as elsewhere in the city, it presents the organisation whose members actively participated in that massacre as the primary victims of Nazi repression.

In line with typical Nazi propaganda, the OUN conflated Jews with communism. Supposed “Jewish Bolshevism” and the Jewish population were held responsible for the NKVD murders in Lviv, despite the fact that Jews were among the NKVD’s victims. Ukrainian newspapers at the time played up this association, whipping up passions against the city’s Jews. Of course, those newspapers were produced under the supervision of the German occupiers. But the conflation of Jews and communists and hostility to Jews as an enemy of the Ukrainian people were key aspects of OUN ideology.

The English-language text in the museum states that among its aims is “to encourage patriotism among the citizens of Ukraine.” As has been described by Himka, as well as by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe and other historians, this is in line with a practice among OUN apologists in the Ukrainian diaspora and in western Ukraine to rewrite history so as to glorify the role of the OUN and to minimise, deny or ignore the fascist nature of the organisation, its collaboration with the Nazis and the terrible crimes its members perpetrated. It is a narrative which in recent years been pressed upon the rest of the country as well.

As it became clear that Nazi Germany would lose the war, the OUN tried to distance itself from its earlier fascist associations, and presented itself as resisting both Nazi and Soviet occupation. In fact the OUN-B’s initial overtures to the German occupiers in 1941 had been rebuffed, as the latter had no interest in supporting Ukrainian aspirations to establish an independent state. Several OUN-B members, including Bandera himself, were arrested by the Germans. Nevertheless, many members of the OUN-B militia joined the Ukrainian police force established by the Germans, which participated extensively in the holocaust. And when in 1942 the OUN-B established the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), many members of the Ukrainian police deserted to the new organisation. While the OUN-B tried to downplay its earlier fascism and Nazi collaboration, the UPA continued to murder Jews, as well as massacring tens of thousands of Poles in a genocidal campaign to cleanse the Eastern Galicia and Volhynia regions of Poles.

OUN apologists claim that the organisation was not responsible for the Lviv pogrom in July 1941, for which they blame the Germans and criminal elements in the Lviv population. But as numerous Jewish survivors attested, the OUN-B militia was extensively involved in rounding up the Jewish victims. Furthermore, photographs of the events taken by Germans show that many perpetrators were wearing the OUN-B militia’s armbands. The museum at the prison on Lonsky Street claims to bear witness to the terrible events that took place there. But its omission of the pogrom and silence about the role played by members of the OUN-B, whose members it presents as heroes and victims, is an unconscionable distortion of history.

Close by the Lonsky prison museum is a monument to the victims of communist crimes. It is marked by the Ukrainian trident, and does not indicate that there were also non-Ukrainian victims. However, elsewhere in the city, a monument to the NKVD murders commemorates Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish victims.

Rossoliński-Liebe’s book, “Stepan Bandera, the Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide and Cult”, describes how, as the Soviet Union collapsed, monuments glorifying the OUN and Bandera began to be erected in western Ukraine. A large statue of Bandera was unveiled in Lviv in 2007. The rehabilitation of Bandera and the OUN was stepped up during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, from 2005-10, who designated Bandera, as well as another leading OUN-B figure, Roman Shukhevych, as heroes of Ukraine. This move was reversed under Yushchenko’s successor, Viktor Yanukovych, but the rewriting of history to glorify the OUN as fighters for Ukrainian independence, while glossing over or denying their crimes and their Nazi collaboration has gathered pace since the onset of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014.

The designation of Bandera as a hero was denounced by the European Parliament as well as by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation which promotes remembrance of the holocaust. The Simon Wiesenthal Center also sharply condemned the decision of the Ukrainian parliament in 2018 to mark Bandera’s birthday on 1 January. The glorification of Bandera and the OUN is also widely denounced in Poland. The noted historian of the holocaust and of Ukraine, Timothy Snyder, in an article in the New York Review of Books in February 2010, described Yushchenko’s rehabilitation of Bandera as ethically unsound and as casting a shadow on his political legacy.

None of this deters the OUN’s Ukrainian apologists. There is a widely held perception today in Ukraine that their history has too long been seen through a Russian or Soviet lens, and that they should now tell their own story. There is considerable justification for this view. In the Soviet Union, the OUN and Bandera were denounced as Nazi collaborators and criminals, but the immense crimes of the Soviet regime, its savage repression of resistance to Soviet rule in western Ukraine, and the mass executions and deportations, were covered up. In response to any who criticise the glorification of Bandera and the OUN or denounce their record, a stock reply from Ukrainian OUN apologists is to claim that they are spreading Soviet and Russian propaganda. However, such inferences do not hold weight in light of the clear historical record of the fascist nature of the OUN, its Nazi collaboration and the horrendous crimes committed by many of its adherents.

I also visited the Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes “Territory of Terror”, which is located in what was during World War II Lviv’s Jewish ghetto. This was also the location of a Soviet transit camp from 1944-1955, for deportations to the east. The museum’s exhibits and accompanying texts commemorate the mass murder of Lviv’s Jewish residents, both in the city’s ghetto and at the Janowska slave labour camp on the outskirts of the city, as well as the deportations by the Soviet regime. In general, it gives a much fuller account of the horrors inflicted by both the Nazi and Soviet regimes than is the case at the Lonsky prison museum. That said, it does not document the crimes committed by the OUN and the UPA, whose members are depicted as victims. Notably, a series of displays in front of the museum when I visited, about individual victims, mostly concern Ukrainian victims rather than Jews, many of them OUN and UPA, or members of their families.

This troubling lionisation of people with such an unsavoury record is likely to continue to stain the country’s reputation. Ukraine has rightly received enormous international support for its heroic struggle against Russian aggression. Yet key allies, notably Poland, are among the countries that are particularly offended by such historical revisionism. What is especially baffling is that modern Ukraine, a democratic state aspiring to membership of the European Union, with a Jewish president and a Crimean Tatar defence minister, has nothing to do with the intolerant, totalitarian fascism espoused by Bandera and the OUN. Yet it is very hard to find Ukrainians who are willing to push back against the nationalist narrative, at least in public. In recent decades much has been done to uncover Ukraine’s painful history of Soviet repression. A more serious, honest and frank discussion of other aspects of the country’s difficult 20th century history is also needed.

A visit to Kharkiv

On the long train journey from Warsaw to Kyiv, one of my travelling companions was a teenage girl from Kharkiv who had with her mother taken refuge from the war in a small town in Cornwall. Her home in Kharkiv was in the centre of the city, and she had heard the blast when a missile struck the central Freedom Square on 1 March 2022. In the early days of the invasion, Russian forces had briefly entered the northern suburbs of Kharkiv, and the city had been subjected to heavy shelling and missile strikes. Numerous buildings had been damaged, and civilians killed and wounded. Unsurprisingly, many had left. But as most men under the age of 60 were not allowed to leave the country, my fellow passenger’s father had stayed behind. This was the first time she had been back to visit him.

By May 2022, the Russian invaders had been pushed back from Kharkiv, relieving much of the pressure, although, like towns and cities throughout Ukraine, it continued to face missile and drone attacks. Ukraine’s counter-attack in September 2022 had liberated most of occupied Kharkiv region. People had started to return to the city.

My travelling companion appeared to have settled in well in Cornwall. She liked the elderly couple she and her mother were staying with. Her English had improved immensely, she told me. She had got a job in a hotel, and was earning enough money to be able to send some to her father. But she was homesick. Life in a small town did not suit her. She would rather have gone to a big city. She saw her future in Ukraine.

Like many people in eastern Ukraine with relations in Russia, the war had wrought terrible damage on her family bonds. While she was born in Kharkiv, both her parents were Russian, she said. Her father was from Crimea and her mother from Russia itself. She had fallen out completely with her grandparents on both sides. At the start of the invasion, they had told her that it would all be over quickly, and that Ukraine would be liberated by the Russian army. When she had said that she did not want to be liberated, one of her grandfathers had said in that case it would be better if they were all killed. It pained her to have to say that she now felt closer to the couple she was staying with in Cornwall, who cared about her more than her own grandparents did. Such stories are all too common. Several people from Donbas have told me how communication with parents or other relatives in occupied territory or in Russia, had become almost impossible.

The next morning we woke up to the news that the Kakhovka dam had been blown during the night, causing immense environmental damage and loss of life in the lower reaches of the Dnipro river. A friend in Odessa told me that all kinds of detritus, including animal carcasses and landmines, had washed up on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. One more horror inflicted upon the Ukrainian people.

Trukhaniv island, Kyiv

In Kyiv, despite the constant trauma and weariness with the war, people continued to go about their lives as normally as possible. They sat on café terraces in the sunshine, or strolled in the city’s parks, or on the islands in the Dnipro. I too enjoyed beautiful peaceful afternoons by the water, trees and lily pads, eating shashlik and sipping cold beer. Kyiv in summer is always beautiful.

The previous month, in May, missile and drone attacks had been particularly frequent. People lost sleep. Nerves were frayed. But during my stay, the air raid warnings were less frequent. Around the city were signs pointing to air raid shelters. As on my previous visit in the autumn, people had to decide whether to go to the shelters. Many decided to ignore the warnings. A friend told me that they looked at the news feeds on their mobile phones to assess the degree of risk, and whether or not they should take to a shelter. One afternoon, I headed for the nearest metro station in response to an alert. The person I was with, scrolling through the news, told me this was a major attack. During air raids alerts, entry to the metro stations was free of charge. People stood around, some talking to each other, others glued to their phones. Apparently on the surface people had heard the explosions. Perhaps surprisingly, this Russian attack on Kyiv coincided with a visit to the Ukrainian capital by a delegation of African leaders. Might this affect the pro-Russian leanings of some of them?

Since the spate of missile attacks the previous autumn, attacking Ukraine’s power infrastructure, the country had received more modern, more effective western air defence systems, including the American Patriot system. But it had not received enough of them, forcing the Ukrainian authorities into an appalling dilemma, as to whether to protect cities or frontline soldiers embarking on their summer counter-offensive, and which cities to protect? Almost all the missiles and drones aimed at Kyiv were now shot down, although the pieces of destroyed missiles still had to fall to earth. But other cities were less well protected.

Boarded up Regional Administration building, Kharkiv

Towards the end of June, I travelled to Kharkiv. Taking the overnight train, I arrived early in the morning. Few people were about yet as I walked around the city centre. The debris of missile strikes had been cleared up, but the scars were still there. Many buildings, including the battered regional administration, had boarded up windows that had been shattered by the blasts. As in other cities, many monuments had been covered for their protection, including the statue of the great Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, and the World War I British tank that had been abandoned during the Russian civil war (actually a misnomer, as the multi-sided war was fought throughout the former Russian Empire, and much of the fighting took place in Ukraine).

Yet the city was very much alive. The gardens in Shevchenko park were beautifully tended. Families enjoyed the warm weather. Café and restaurant terraces were full of customers. I was delighted to find that my favourite café from previous visits was working normally. The cakes and pastries were still excellent. The only difference was that the waiters and waitresses now addressed customers in Ukrainian, as they are required to do.

Shevchenko Park, Kharkiv

My first visit to Kharkiv had been in the summer of 2014. The atmosphere then had been very different. In February to April that year, following the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, Kharkiv had teetered on the brink, nearly going the same way as Donetsk and Luhansk. The regional administration building had briefly been occupied by pro-Russian activists. Pro-Russian thugs from a sports club attacked pro-Ukrainian demonstrators. The city mayor wavered and initially appeared to take the pro-Russian side. The local police and security services seemed paralysed. But decisive action by an elite police unit from the town of Vinnytsia bloodlessly ended the occupation of the administration building. The commander of the unit said that had swift action not been taken, support and weapons would have poured over the nearby Russian border, and that Kharkiv, like Donetsk and Luhansk, might have been lost. The atmosphere was tense when I visited that summer of 2014. Groups of police hung around outside the regional administration building. I was struck by how few Ukrainian flags were in evidence. Very different from Kyiv, or Dnipropetrovsk (now renamed Dnipro), which I visited after Kharkiv, where the Ukrainian flag was everywhere, the national anthem blaring out constantly in the central square.

Kharkiv lives and works

This time, in 2023, it was quite different. Whatever pro-Russian sentiment there might once have been in Kharkiv had been blown away by Russia’s aggression. Ukrainian flags were all over the place. Posters expressed thanks to the Ukrainian army, defenders of Kharkiv and of Ukraine. Others showed construction workers or gardeners about their work, with a defiant quote from the mayor: “Kharkiv lives and works.” Indeed, it was remarkable that despite such severe blows, such destruction, the people of Kharkiv continued to work, and to live. But the cruelty of the war continues. Missiles sometimes get through. A sad little monument in the city centre, surrounded by teddy bears and other soft children’s toys, commemorates the children who will never grow up.

This is the cost of the West’s prevarication over sending Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself. It is measured in the deaths of innocents, of people who have suffered terrible injuries, children who dreamed of being gymnasts or footballers, but who now have to learn to walk with prosthetics. The air defence systems that protect Kyiv are highly effective, but the inhabitants of other cities are left open to Russian terror because of the niggardliness of Western leaders with their pathetic excuses about not wanting to escalate the conflict or to provoke Russia. Ukrainian soldiers have to fight with an arm tied behind their back because Western leaders hesitate to send the modern planes they need, or the long-range missiles that could hit the sources of Russia’s terror strikes. So many of us have been impressed by Ukrainians’ spirit and resilience in face of such terrorism. As they defend themselves against a brutal aggressor, they deserve all the support we can give them.