About historical tradition
Anarchism and Nationalism

We have been confronted with the fact that some individuals who have aligned themselves to the anarchist movement are trying to consider certain emancipatory traditions of certain members to be the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN, UPA).

We understand the reasons of such ideological mutations. They provide an opportunity to build alliances with those representatives of Ukrainian nationalists who are trying to invent another and more decent ideological pedigree. Let’s recall the past of the organized nationalism of the «Bandera trend», focusing on the events of the 40’s. After all, the events of this period are often falsified.

At the beginning of the war, «The First Commandant of the Ukrainian National Revolutionary Army» Ivan Klymiv (Legenda) personally had a hand in the creation and organization of Jewish pogroms. After breaking the relationship with the German Nazis, this figure led the OUN’s military referendum. Therefore, he had a direct connection to the creation of military structures, of which UPA has appeared over time. However, not just one but all Ukrainian militia in the first months of the war actively helped the Nazis to realize «the final solution to the Jewish question». And the OUN (revolutionary) distributed pro -hitler declarations.

Roman Shukhevich and UPA commanders are directly responsible for the Volyn disparity of 1943. If Shukhevich originally did not supported large-scale actions of terror against Polish and political opponents-Ukrainians, then with time he became convinced of the political expediency of such practice.

The socialist and democratic rhetoric that the Bandera’s OUN have lent them to since 1943 is not a sign of rot, but an attempt to adjust to the mood of the population of Central and Eastern Ukraine. This version is confirmed by the theoretical works of Peter Fedun (Poltava), in which he explains his attitude to the future system in Ukraine.

We can note that he revises the position of prewar nationalism and instead of a totalitarian regime, he proposes to build a system based on multi-party system and formal representative democracy. However, in Fedun’s «democracy» it acquires enough authoritarian features. Rights and freedoms are irrelevant and marked by «bad words» anarchism or liberalism. Fedun wasn’t against trade unions, but wanted them to be apolitical. It supports multi-party system to channel class protest through election procedures.

Only these few well-known facts are enough to draw conclusions about this trend. It is completely contrary to anarchism and socialism. Of course, among the nationalist formations, it is possible to distinguish Ivan Mitrynga and his followers who stood in a socialist position during the war, and after the war they became either exotic American Trotskyists or Social-Democrats. And this also has little relation to anarchism.

The desire to speculate on the «insanity» of such rather dubious characters is unclear. We have our own Ukrainian libertarian tradition, which is part of the world’s. These are Nabat organization, Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine and the Southern Russian Society of Anarcho-Syndicalists. These are the individuals of the true internationalists and class fighters from the anarchist-rebel Nestor Makhno to the revolutionary syndicalist Aaron Baron. This is a beautiful and tragic story. So, we do not see the meaning in cooperation with people justifying racist killers and adherents of authoritarianism.