still want to be in the EU?

[AkMike]

The bottom line is that everyone looks up to someone. Even Hitler and Stalin have their followers despite the horrors they caused.
IMO Banderas and the other 2 are footnotes in the long history of Ukraine.

[stepanstas]

Stinks that the legacy of Bandera will be under such a topic title. Ohh well.

Didn't really want to read this, but NY Times took a decent approach this time, surprisingly.

I shorted the article to the my favorite parts, click link to see full.

‘Hero of Ukraine’ Splits Nation, Inside and Out

STARYI UHRYNIV, Ukraine — Half a century after his death at the hands of the K.G.B., Stepan Bandera, a World War II partisan, has not lost his ability to rally Ukrainians against Russia — and against each other.

Russians protested the move made by the departing Ukrainian president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, to award one of the highest state honors to Stepan Bandera, on posters, in Moscow on Friday.

Monuments to Mr. Bandera have sprung up across western Ukraine, his fight for the country’s independence glowingly recounted to schoolchildren on field trips, as if he were the George Washington of Ukrainian nationalism. But in eastern Ukraine and as far away as Moscow and Brussels, Mr. Bandera is reviled as a Nazi puppet.

This disputed legacy has ensured him a prominent role in today’s Ukraine. In a parting shot as his presidency was ending, Viktor A. Yushchenko named Mr. Bandera a “Hero of Ukraine,” one of the country’s highest honors.

That touched off a political battle that may make it more difficult for Viktor F. Yanukovich, who succeeded Mr. Yushchenko as president last week, to address the ethnic, regional and historical passions that divide the country.

Already, eastern Ukrainians have held protests, burning Mr. Bandera in effigy. Mr. Yanukovich, who campaigned on a platform of improving relations with Russia, has come under pressure to revoke the award, not only from Russia but also from the European Parliament. Such a move, though, would stir a backlash in western Ukraine.

Mr. Yanukovich, who is from eastern Ukraine, has criticized the award, but has so far not said what he will do about it. “I think that the president of Ukraine should be the president of all Ukraine and not just one part,” he said.

The reactions to the Bandera honor highlight a schism that has caused so much instability in Ukraine in recent years. Nationalists in the west speak Ukrainian and loathe Russian influence. In the east are Russian speakers who feel a kinship toward Moscow. With Mr. Yanukovich’s inauguration, Ukraine has gone from one pole to the other, and the question is whether a Yanukovich presidency can change this dynamic.

Mr. Yanukovich’s narrow victory at the polls, while deemed free and fair by most monitors, did not give him much of a mandate. The loser in the presidential race, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, is clinging to her job as prime minister, and Mr. Yanukovich must oust her if he wants to carry out his agenda.

He can do so either by building a new coalition in Parliament or calling new elections. It may be harder for him to succeed at either if emotions are rubbed raw in the west of the country, where pro-Bandera sentiment is strongest.

Mr. Bandera is famed in western Ukraine for leading the drive for independence against the Soviet Union and Poland in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1941, at the height of the upheaval of World War II, he issued a proclamation declaring Ukraine an independent state. It did not realize that goal until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but he is regarded by some as a founding father.

“Every people, every nationality, has a right to their own government and their own history,” said Stepan Lesiv, director of a Bandera museum here in Staryi Uhryniv, a village in southwestern Ukraine where Mr. Bandera was born. “Bandera, and many in Ukraine, have struggled for and died for this goal.”

Russia, Poland and Jewish groups see Mr. Bandera very differently. To them, he was a fascist who joined forces with the Nazis around the time that they attacked the Soviet Union, and whose independence movement was a front for Hitler. They said he ordered or condoned massacres of Jews and Poles by Ukrainian partisans.

Mr. Bandera’s champions respond that his association with the Nazis was brief and in the service of attaining Ukrainian independence. They pointed out that he was later detained by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. He was assassinated by the K.G.B. in 1959 in Munich, where he lived in exile.

Still, even his supporters regard him as an incendiary figure, which accounts for the timing of the award. Mr. Yushchenko issued it only after he had failed in his bid for another term in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential elections in January.

After the announcement, he visited the Bandera museum here. “Glory to Stepan Bandera! Glory to Ukraine!” he wrote in the museum guestbook.

Mr. Yushchenko’s decision seemed intended to secure his reputation as a president who reinvigorated the Ukrainian nationalist movement. It certainly did not escape his notice that the move would enrage Russia, his nemesis.

...

Mr. Lesiv, the museum director, said the issue was even simpler: Russia has never come to terms with Ukrainian sovereignty. He said people in western Ukraine would rise up if Mr. Yanukovich tried to withdraw the Bandera award.

“For Ukrainian nationalists,” he said, “there is no such word as capitulation.”

...

[stepanstas]

Day in Pictures, March 5

A photographer focuses on the big photo of three volunteers who place their heads in holes in a big poster depicting soldiers of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, March 5, 2010. Ukrainians mark the 60th death anniversary of Roman Shukhevych, a Ukrainian politician and military leader, the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army also known as UPA. Shukhevych died in combat with Soviet special interior units near Ukraine's western city of Lviv on March 5, 1950. In 2007, he was posthumously awarded the title "Hero of Ukraine", the country's highest honor. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky) ORG XMIT: XEL102

[stepanstas]

dyrak

Yanukovych to strip nationalists of hero status

MOSCOW, March 5 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych said on Friday he would reverse a decision by his predecessor to honour two controversial nationalists as "Heroes of Ukraine," a title angrily rejected by Moscow and Brussels.

Pro-Western ex-president Victor Yushchenko issued a decree in January conferring the honour on Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian nationalist forces (OUN) which fought against Nazi invaders and Soviet forces during World War Two and after.

Yushchenko had earlier awarded the title to Roman Shukhevych, Bandera's right hand.

The decrees unnerved Ukraine's giant neighbour and former imperial master Russia and further underscored its distaste for Yushchenko, who pushed his nation towards NATO and sought to shed Moscow's influence.

The European Parliament in February said in a motion that it deeply deplored the award and called on the new leadership to reverse it.

"Of course, these decrees by Yushchenko have produced a resounding effect, and they are not accepted in both Ukraine and Europe," Yanukovich, elected in a Feb. 7 run-off election, told a news conference during a visit to Russia.

"This decision (to repeal the decrees) will be taken before Victory Day," he said.

Most ex-Soviet states still celebrate the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany on May 9, which marks the end of the 1941-45 war known as the Great Patriotic War.

Yushchenko's glorification of Ukrainian nationalists also incensed neighbouring EU member Poland.

Much of western Ukraine was Polish territory before the war. Poles blame Bandera for massacres of some 100,000 people, many of them women and children, during his campaign to carve out an independent Ukraine at Poland's expense.

[stepanstas]

Honoring heroes

The continent that spawned Hitler has no business telling Ukraine who should and shouldn't be its heroes.

Ukraine is short of heroes. Many have been murdered, while others have had their memories blackened in other peoples’ histories. This is what is now happening with World War II-era freedom fighter Stepan Bandera, who led a difficult struggle during a violent period to sow the seeds of his nation’s present, yet painfully fragile independence.

Bandera symbolized the plight of millions of Ukrainians who suffered under various foreign occupiers for most of their history. For this, Bandera – killed in 1959 by a KGB agent while living in exile – received Ukraine’s highest honor, the Hero of Ukraine, posthumously awarded during Victor Yushchenko’s last days as president.

Bandera headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and backed its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought against Poles, Soviets and Nazis, who in turn fought against each other. But now the Poles, the Kremlin and more recently the European Union are together in condemning these insurgents as Nazi collaborators. The European Parliament voted on Feb. 25 to ask Kyiv to rescind the award.

Sadly, many Ukrainians have also succumbed to the historical condemnation of others. The history of World War II is complex, particularly in the region of modern-day western Ukraine. It was bloody on all sides, and few who led the charge into battle came out with clean hands. However, the post-war Nuremburg trials never condemned Bandera’s movement for war crimes. Bandera's supporters briefly fought alongside Nazi soldiers to oust the Soviets from western Ukraine, where Russian czars had never ruled. In this, the UPA was little different to similar partisan movements in the Baltic countries. In contrast, the Soviets under Josef Stalin were aggressors on par with the Third Reich, with whom Stalin forged the secretive and sinister Molotov-Ribbentrop alliance in 1939 to carve up Eastern Europe.

Stalin’s regime also watched passively as the Third Reich attempted to wipe out European Jews. Now Kremlin leaders honor Stalin. There is no clear evidence of mass murder of Jews or Nazi collaboration by Bandera's movement. There is clear evidence that his movement was aimed at attaining Ukrainian independence, much like Jews fought for an independent Israeli state.

When Bandera’s movement declared national independence, the Nazis imprisoned him. But his army fought against all enemies of his homeland with vigor. How much of a Nazi collaborator was Bandera, if he and close associates spent much of the war in a Nazi prison, and if close relatives died in Nazi camps?

Now, when his nation seeks to honor him, the campaign to tarnish him and thus Ukrainian sovereignty is being renewed. He wasn’t a Nazi, a Bolshevik or a Pole. He was a Ukrainian who deserves to be judged by the nation he served.

[stepanstas]

Yuschenko Distressed By Yanukovych's Intention To Review Decrees That Conferred Hero Of Ukraine Award On Shukhevych And Bandera

Former president Viktor Yuschenko has expressed distress at President Viktor Yanukovych's intention to review the presidential decrees that conferred the Hero of Ukraine award on Roman Shukhevych, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

The press service of the Our Ukraine party announced this in a statement.

"It pains me that someone wants to review something ahead of May 9," Yuschenko said during a visit to Lviv.

Yuschenko considers members of the national freedom forces that struggled for Ukraine's independence during World War II as heroes.

"We should definitely say that they are our heroes because they brought our independence closer," Yuschenko said.

In connection with this, Yuschenko said that the European Parliament's reaction to the conferment of this award on Bandera "demonstrated a historical complex."

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Yanukovych intends to determine the fate of the presidential decrees that conferred the Hero of Ukraine award on Shukhevych and Bandera before May 9.

On February 25, the European Parliament expressed the hope that Yanukovych will review the conferment of the Hero of Ukraine award on Bandera.

Yuschenko conferred the Hero of Ukraine award on Bandera on January 22, when he was still the president of Ukraine.

[Zbyszek]

The two articles quoted above confirm deep dissent between former and current president of Ukraine and I am sure that the dissent is real within Ukrainian nation. It seems that the western part is represented in larger numbers than the eastern one on this forum, hence Bandera generally gets rather positive assessment here. I still think that Yushchenko made a false move because he should have taken a possible backlash from Yanukovich into account. It is not good when there is a nation hero who is hated by half a nation.
I have heard that a monument of Bandera in Lviv has to be guarded 24/7 becuse of the real danger of vandalism.
It reminds me a statue of Lenin in Cracow during long period of people's Poland when streets cleaners had full-time job removing egg remnants from the body of "great revolution leader".