Description
Book SynopsisThe Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed-despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustasa and the Slovak Hlinka Party-to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Trade ReviewA fascinating and well-researched monograph. It is essential reading. -- Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum This important, heavily documented and rigorously researched book could not be published at a better time. ... meticulously documented and persuasively argued. -- Omer Bartov, Brown University This book is bound to generate debate. It makes a major contribution to the discourse on the meaning of modern Ukrainian history. -- John-Paul Himka, University of Alberta The author, using a vast array of primary sources in all the relevant languages, has set the scholarly standard for future research on Bandera and the history of interwar and wartime Ukraine... A fascinating read. Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Note on Language, Names, and Transliterations Introduction 1. Heterogeneity, Modernity, and the Turn to the Right 2. Formative Years 3. Pieracki's Assassination and the Warsaw and Lviv Trials 4. The "Ukrainian National Revolution": Mass Violence and Political Disaster 5. Resistance, Collaboration, and Genocidal Aspirations 6. Third World War and the Globalization of Ukrainian Nationalism 7. The Providnyk in Exile 8. Bandera and Soviet Propaganda 9. The Revival of the Cult 10. Return to Ukraine Conclusion Glossary Bibliography Index
