EDITORIAL: UPA's rehabilitation (08/11/02)

EDITORIAL

UPA's rehabilitation

Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1942, the first units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armia - UPA) were formed in western Ukraine to fight against the foreign occupiers of Ukraine. The authoritative Encyclopedia of Ukraine, published by the University of Toronto Press, notes of the UPA that "Its immediate purpose was to protect the Ukrainian population from German and Soviet repression and exploitation; its ultimate goal was an independent and unified Ukrainian state."

The UPA, a determined and dedicated guerrilla force, also included soldiers of other nationalities - Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Georgians and Tatars, for example - who sought the liberation of their nations. In recognition of these national aspirations, the UPA in 1943 organized a Conference of the Oppressed Nations of Eastern Europe and Asia, which was attended by delegates of 13 nationalities who agreed to support each other's liberation struggles. Jewish doctors, the encyclopedia notes, "willingly joined the anti-Nazi resistance" through the ranks of the UPA.

Once World War II ended, with Ukrainian territories still under foreign domination, the UPA continued its struggle against Soviet and Polish authorities through 1949. Even after its formal deactivation on the orders of Commander-in-Chief Roman Shukhevych (nom de guerre: Taras Chuprynka), members of the UPA's underground network continued their armed struggle into in the mid-1950s.

The UPA, we must underscore, was caught between the world's two most evil regimes: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. One of those regimes, of course, was defeated, but the other was a victor in World War II. And thus, the UPA and other nationalistic Ukrainian organizations were the objects of smear campaigns directed by the Soviet regime. For decades, Soviet sources and their sycophants abroad depicted Ukrainian nationalists as "junior partners of Hitler," "servants of German fascism," "zealous assistants and henchmen," "criminals who pose as 'democrats and fighters for 'Ukrainian statehood,' " etc."

To this day, there are those who label Ukrainian Insurgent Army members as fascists. Also to this day, UPA veterans do not have the privileges given to Soviet military veterans - even when those privileges today are extended by the government of independent Ukraine.

In March of this year Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh spoke out in favor of rehabilitating veterans of the UPA, which he said is "part of Ukraine's history." Then in July a government committee headed by Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Semynozhenko drafted a law acknowledging the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (under whose ideological influence the UPA functioned). Though the text of the draft has yet to be released, an announcement indicated that the UPA would be honored as "fighters for freedom and the independence of Ukraine," and that the activity of both the UPA and the OUN would be recognized as a "resistance movement." In addition, in accordance with a recommendation by the Institute of History at the National Academy of Sciences, UPA and OUN veterans are to be recognized as having been subject to repression and thus would become eligible for social and other privileges accorded to Soviet veterans.

Certain groups inside and beyond Ukraine, to be sure, are vehemently against any recognition of the UPA or the OUN, among them the Communists and pro-Russian forces within Ukraine, as well as the Russian government, which continues to meddle in Ukraine's internal affairs. They continue to operate based on old Soviet-era stereotypes that have no place in today's Ukraine.

It's high time for the authorities of independent Ukraine to recognize the heroes of all the forces that fought for the country's independence. Ukraine must reclaim its rightful history and, finally, do away with Soviet-era judgments and depictions of its heroic sons and daughters. Their rehabilitation is long overdue.

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