It’s been a common analysis these days that the divisions in modern Ukraine stem from the fact that the western areas of Ukraine – Galicia specifically – were ruled for over a century by the Austrian Empire, while the eastern and southern regions were ruled by Russia, and the Crimea by the Turks. True, the different sources of imperial control over Ukrainian territory certainly produced some of the fabled “orientation” toward the West or “Europe” in the western regions; the eastern sections were and are tied more closely to Russia. But a more important period in producing different views of history in various regions of Ukraine, and hence ideas about what should happen today, was World War II.
Russian authorities regularly refer to Western Ukrainians and their representatives in Kiev as “fascists.” That is going much too far; the Euromaidan were a mixed lot of various nationalities and religions. On the other hand, some protestors, among them highly influential people, have continued to revere ancestors allied with the Germans during the war.
Oleg Tyagnybok, leader of the right-wing Svoboda (Freedom) Party, the fourth-largest political group in Ukraine, led thousands of his supporters in a torch-lit parade through Kiev in January. The procession honored Stepan Bandera, leader during the war of OUN-B, or Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera. OUN-B was the more radical, in several senses, wing of OUN. Both parts of the organization, based in western Ukraine, strove for an independent Ukrainian state. OUN-M (after its leader, Andrii Melnyk) wanted to cooperate with the Germans in the hope that after the war, they would permit the creation of an independent Ukraine. Bandera pushed hard, as the Germans entered Soviet territory in June of 1941, for an independent state right away. For this stance he was imprisoned by the invaders in the fall of that year. But in the summer of 1941 both segments of OUN had organized “militias” that carried out pogroms against Jews. Then the Germans decided they had had enough of Ukrainian initiatives for the moment and set up their own Ukrainian auxiliary police.
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