Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Tarnished Heroes : The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the History Writing and Memory Politics of Post-Soviet Ukraine

Rudling, Per Anders LU (2023) In Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society 207.
Abstract
Following its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine has sought to produce a new national history. After the 2004 Orange Revolution, newly elected president Viktor Yushchenko embarked on an ambitious project to rehabilitate the most radical branch of the far-right interwar and wartime Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Their leaders were rehabilitated in an effort to affix them as central heroes in a thoroughly revised canon of Ukraine’s past. This rewriting of history has required a highly selective rendering of those organizations’ history, in particular with regard to their role in the Holocaust and murderous ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia and Eastern... (More)
Following its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine has sought to produce a new national history. After the 2004 Orange Revolution, newly elected president Viktor Yushchenko embarked on an ambitious project to rehabilitate the most radical branch of the far-right interwar and wartime Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Their leaders were rehabilitated in an effort to affix them as central heroes in a thoroughly revised canon of Ukraine’s past. This rewriting of history has required a highly selective rendering of those organizations’ history, in particular with regard to their role in the Holocaust and murderous ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1944.

Juxtaposing the Ukrainian government’s official representation of the OUN’s leaders—such as Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Mykola Lebed, and Iaroslav Stetsko—with the emerging international scholarly research that has come to light since the opening of the archives, Per A. Rudling illuminates the deliberate blind spots of Ukraine’s new national memory. His book contextualizes the sharply divergent remembrance of these groups in Ukraine and its neighboring countries—not the least, against the backdrop of the current impasse in Polish-Ukrainian relations. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
organization
publishing date
type
Book/Report
publication status
in press
subject
in
Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
volume
207
pages
260 pages
publisher
Ibidem-Verlag
ISSN
1614-3515
ISBN
9783838209999
9783838269993
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Andreas Umland, editor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
id
dab3331c-f19b-41e2-8d68-8cc2293f28b5
date added to LUP
2016-11-21 11:45:38
date last changed
2024-02-26 07:49:01
@book{dab3331c-f19b-41e2-8d68-8cc2293f28b5,
  abstract     = {{Following its declaration of independence in 1991, Ukraine has sought to produce a new national history. After the 2004 Orange Revolution, newly elected president Viktor Yushchenko embarked on an ambitious project to rehabilitate the most radical branch of the far-right interwar and wartime Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Their leaders were rehabilitated in an effort to affix them as central heroes in a thoroughly revised canon of Ukraine’s past. This rewriting of history has required a highly selective rendering of those organizations’ history, in particular with regard to their role in the Holocaust and murderous ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1944.<br/><br/>Juxtaposing the Ukrainian government’s official representation of the OUN’s leaders—such as Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, Mykola Lebed, and Iaroslav Stetsko—with the emerging international scholarly research that has come to light since the opening of the archives, Per A. Rudling illuminates the deliberate blind spots of Ukraine’s new national memory. His book contextualizes the sharply divergent remembrance of these groups in Ukraine and its neighboring countries—not the least, against the backdrop of the current impasse in Polish-Ukrainian relations.}},
  author       = {{Rudling, Per Anders}},
  isbn         = {{9783838209999}},
  issn         = {{1614-3515}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Ibidem-Verlag}},
  series       = {{Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society}},
  title        = {{Tarnished Heroes : The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the History Writing and Memory Politics of Post-Soviet Ukraine}},
  volume       = {{207}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}