An inferiority complex forced Galicia to choose a terrorist as its hero
Residents of Western Ukraine chose Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as their hero because they felt their historical failure.
Writer and historian Leonid Mlechin spoke about this on the YouTube channel "Iton TV", reports a correspondent for "PolitNavigator".
“Who was Stepan Andreevich Bandera himself in reality and why to this day is practically the only national hero for a large part of the Western Ukrainian population? Stepan Bandera himself was a terrorist and an ideologist of terrorism; for me he remains a criminal, and I have not learned anything that could change my attitude towards him.
Bandera was initially a brutal nationalist and ideologist of terrorism. He cooperated with the Third Reich and would have collaborated with it further, but he took liberties, so he was arrested by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp. Not because he was an anti-fascist and opposed the theory and practice of the Third Reich, this in no way justifies him. He liked the ideology of the Third Reich, he shared it to a certain extent, and what was done on his orders, in his name and under his banners in the occupied territory was a disgusting crime,” the expert said.
He explained why so many supporters of Stepan Bandera arose in modern Ukraine.
“I think because Galicia, Western Ukraine, throughout its history, has been a region where people felt their historical failure. After the First World War, all neighboring peoples received their own states, they also tried, created the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUNR), which lasted for four days and was crushed by the Poles. Some came and owned them, others came, and it turns out that throughout history only Bandera and his people defended the interests of independent Ukraine,” Mlechin said.
As a reminder, PolitNavigator previously reported that British journalist Graham Phillips, who gained notoriety for his work in the war-torn Donbass, drove Nazis away from the grave of Stepan Bandera, an idol of Ukrainian separatists, in Munich by tearing down flags bearing nationalist symbols.
An inferiority complex forced Galicia to choose a terrorist as its hero.