UPA veterans fight for recognition in Ukraine (05/08/05)

UPA veterans fight for recognition in Ukraine

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - For his service in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Soviet authorities imprisoned Mykhailo Stus, 78, in a Siberian concentration camp for eight years.

They dragged him through prisons in Krasnoyarsk and Kazakstan for another two years before releasing him to return to Ivano-Frankivsk in 1957.

He reunited with his parents and his brother, a prisoner of German concentration camps whom he hadn't seen for 17 years. The reunion didn't last long.

"They told me to be out of western Ukraine by the month's end," Mr. Stus said of the Soviets. He went east to look for work in the mines.

As most of Ukraine prepares itself for May 9 festivities to honor those who fought for the Soviet Union during the second world war, UPA veterans such as Mr. Stus once again face obscurity as the Ukrainian government has yet to recognize them.

With a Ukraine-oriented leader at the nation's helm, UPA veterans and their supporters anticipate that President Viktor Yushchenko will muster the political will to recognize those who fought for the simple belief that Ukrainians should rule Ukraine.

UPA veterans seek two specific forms of recognition, said Orest Vaskul, the head of the Kyiv Regional Brotherhood of OUN-UPA that includes the eastern oblasts.

Mr. Vaskul served three separate Soviet prison terms for his UPA involvement - the last one as late as the 1980s.

The government should grant UPA an official status as a fighting army during World War II, Mr. Vaskul said. Secondly, it should designate their fight as a national-liberation struggle for Ukraine's independence.

Only 10,000 or so veterans are still alive in Ukraine, according to Volodymyr Viatrovych, the director of the Liberation Movement Research Center.

Unlike their counterparts who served in the Soviet Red Army, UPA veterans are not recognized by the Ukrainian government and do not receive any benefits from the federal government.

Eight Ukrainian oblasts offer benefits to UPA veterans Mr. Viatrovych said. They are Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Volyn, Rivne, Zakarpattia, Khmelnytskyi and Chernivtsi.

In these oblasts, veterans receive 100 hrv ($20) a month, a 50 percent discount off their utility bills and free transportation within cities, but not between cities, Mr. Viatrovych said.

So far, Mr. Yushchenko and his Cabinet Ministers have been treading very delicately around UPA recognition and have yet to declare outright support.

UPA recognition is a legislative matter for the Verkhovna Rada to resolve, Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Mykola Tomenko said at an April 25 press conference, where he discussed preparations for the 60th anniversary of Victory Day on May 9.

"The problem is more political than social-economic, so there aren't any problems for the government to resolve if the Verkhovna Rada reached a decision, apart from the social components of this question," Mr. Tomenko said.

"In discussions in city organs, particularly in western Ukraine, I know there are ideas, in the social sense, of honoring all those who fought during the second world war, and that is a way out of the situation."

President Yushchenko, whose father was a Red Army veteran, has devoted most of his efforts so far to encouraging nationwide reconciliation efforts between the Red Army and UPA veterans, particularly on the local level.

Mr. Tomenko said he's received reports that veterans' organizations are already beginning to meet in certain cities.

"The process of reconciliation cannot begin in Kyiv," Mr. Tomenko said.

However, many veterans don't seem interested in the idea. Red Army veterans underscore wholeheartedly that they freed Ukraine from German fascism.

At an April 14 discussion led by UPA historians, Boryslav Yatsko, a Red Army veteran, said that there is plenty of evidence that UPA soldiers committed their fair share of atrocities. He cited letters signed by hundreds of people who witnessed them.

Mr. Yatsko, a member of the Association of Veterans' Organizations in Ukraine, referred to the Banderivtsi as "sokyrnyky," or ax-wielders. "(They were) cutting off children's hands, legs, heads ... and so forth," Mr. Yatsko said.

The historians, members of a group performing research for an official government commission to learn about the activities of the UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) have released 28 books on the subject in the past six years.

"You've written so much about that subject, but not a single time did you mention who really freed Ukraine, Mr. Yatsko said. "The Red Army! And that is not mentioned here."

Dr. Yurii Shapoval, a historian at the Institute of Political and Ethnonational Research at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, disagreed with Mr. Yatsko.

"Who told you that the Red Army freed Ukraine?" Dr. Shapoval asked. "It was the Red Army that fended the Nazis away from Ukraine. That they freed Ukraine is a myth. There was no liberation - only a new yoke."

UPA veterans believe that they were Ukraine's true liberation fighters. Furthermore, Mr. Vaskul of the Kyiv Regional Brotherhood of OUN-UPA expressed no desire for reconciliation.

"How can we reconcile with our occupiers who destroyed entire villages?" Mr. Vaskul said. "There's no reconciliation when they called us bandits and fascists."

Now that Leonid Kuchma is no longer president, Mr. Vaskul plans for more UPA veterans to visit Ukrainian schools, particularly those in the central and eastern oblasts, to dispel Soviet myths and propaganda against the UPA.

While the Ukrainians debate UPA recognition, the nation is nevertheless making elaborate preparations to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory against the German fascists.

For decades since the war, Victory Day has been an annual national holiday in Ukraine, replete with a military parade and armada demonstration in Kyiv.

For this year's 60th anniversary, television stations have been airing segments of veterans vividly describing their experiences.

Posters in the Kyiv metro stations congratulate the veterans and feature the famous Soviet photograph of Oleksii Berest flying a hammer and sickle flag over the Reichstag in Berlin on April 30, 1945.

Aside from the holiday, Ukraine's 4 million Red Army veterans receive a wide range of government benefits based on their rank, years of service and disability.

All veterans enjoy some increase in their pensions, free local transportation and discounts on transportation between cities, Mr. Yatsko said.

While UPA veterans would like to receive equal benefits, their priority is government recognition for their fight. "We didn't fight for benefits," Mr. Vaskul said in a firm voice. "We fought for the Ukrainian nation."

While Mr. Vaskul is slightly skeptical about the government ever granting recognition, there are early signs that show Mr. Yushchenko is leaning toward it.

Acting on the president's initiative, Mr. Tomenko suggested in early March a simpler honorary ceremony for Red Army veterans instead of the military parade.

Mr. Yushchenko suggested setting up tables along the length of Khreshchatyk, where government officials would meet veterans and thank them for their wartime sacrifice.

However, Communist Party and Social Democratic Party deputies in the Verkhovna Rada insisted on a Victory Parade. Legislators voted to ensure that the May 9 festivities included the traditional military parade.

Still, the president has enough support to move forward with recognition as it is, said Yurii Yakymenko, a director at the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies in Kyiv.

Some advocates believe Mr. Yushchenko was delaying any initiatives until after the March 26 parliamentary elections, so as not to alienate voters.

"Mr. Yushchenko won't ignore this issue," Mr. Yakymenko said. "It's not in his character to hide from political opponents."

As for Mr. Stus' job hunt, after enduring repeated rejections from mine managers for his UPA involvement, he reached a large Dnipropetrovsk mine run by an ethnic Greek machinist.

"How could you fight against such a mighty empire?" the Greek asked one day.

Mr. Stus quoted him a verse from Taras Shevchenko's "Haidamaky":

"From Konashevych until now, the fire never extinguishes.
People are dying, suffering in prisons, naked, barefoot ...
Children are growing up without baptism ..."

"We knew we weren't likely to win," Mr. Stus said of the UPA struggle. "But we fought so that our sons and daughters would live in an independent Ukraine."

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