"The Far-Right Ukrainian Diaspora's Policing of History," Ninna Mörner (ed.), The Many Faces of the Far Right in the Post-Communist Space: A Comparative Study of Far-Right Movements and Identity in the Region (=CBEES State of the Region Report 2021) (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2022): 42-60. (original) (raw)
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Baltic Worlds, 2024
Recent years have seen the emergence of critical studies produced by third-generation Displaced Persons (hereafter DPs), questioning ethno-nationalist historical narrations, hegemonic in the community. Yet, in the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, such studies have been absent. Kassandra Luciuk's current study is written by someone raised in the political elite of the Ukrainian ethno-nationalist community, in dialogue with and challenging the historical memory that her parents dedicated their lives to promote. Her study reads like a Bildungsroman of a young person whose eyes were opened to an ostracized rivalling leftist community tradition. In the process, she started to question the Nationalists monopoly of defining what it means to be Ukrainian in Canada. Her still-unpublished 2021 dissertation sheds new light on ultra-nationalist political violence in Canada and the central role of Ukrainian Nationalists in establishing normative multiculturalism in Canada. The Nationalist hegemony in the community was established through the erection of monuments, a politicized folklore, and the development of an elaborate victimization narrative of Soviet genocide abroad, Canadian concentration camps and "linguistic genocide" at home. Through claiming a share for Galician Ukrainians in the settler colonialist project, Ukrainians insisted on a special status as a "founding people" on the Canadian prairies.
Der Kult um den radikal nationalistischen und faschistischen westukrainischen Politiker Stepan Bandera entwickelte sich gleich nach seiner Ermordung durch den Sowjetischen Geheimagenten Bohdan Stashyns’kyi am 15. Oktober 1959 in München. Wie in vielen anderen Orten außerhalb der Sowjetunion organisierten Teile der ukrainischen Diaspora in Edmonton zunächst jährlich und später alle fünf Jahre Gedenkfeierlichkeiten, die zumeist aus einem Trauergottesdienst (panakhida) und einem ideologisch-politisch-kulturellen Teil bestanden. Zu diesen Feierlichkeiten wurden heroisch-patriotische Kampfgedichte rezitiert und OUN-UPA-Lieder gesungen. Bandera wurde auf ihnen wie ein großer ukrainischer Held und Märtyrer erinnert, der für die Ukraine kämpfte und für sie starb. Seine faschistischen und antisemitischen Überzeugungen sowie Pogrome und Kriegsverbrechen, die die OUN und die UPA organisierten und begangen, wurden regelmäßig verschwiegen. Das Klima des Kalten Krieges sowie die Politik des Multikulturalismus, die Kanada 1971 offiziell einführte, erleichterten den radikal nationalistischen und neofaschistischen Teilen der ukrainischen Diaspora den Bandera-Kult und seinen politischen Mythos als authentische und durch und durch natürliche Bestandteile der ukrainischen Kultur und Identität zu deuten. Bis heute wird dies als ein wichtiger Beitrag zum kanadischen Multikulturalismus verstanden und jede Kritik am neofaschistischen und antisemitischen Kult als anti-ukrainisch und chauvinistisch abgewiesen. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The cult surrounding Stepan Bandera began to develop immediately following the assassination of the radical nationalist and fascist western Ukrainian politician on October 15, 1959. Bandera was assassinated in Munich by the Soviet secret agent Bohdan Stashyns’kyi. Certain factions of Ukrainian diaspora organized memorial celebrations in Canadian cities including Edmonton, as well as in several other countries outside of the Soviet Union. Initially, these celebrations took place annually, but eventually they were held every five years. They consisted of a memorial service (panakhida) and a political-ideological-cultural component during which several vocal activists of Ukrainian nationalism did readings of heroic and patriotic poems or sang OUN and UPA songs. At these celebrations, Bandera was commemorated as a great Ukrainian hero and martyr who had died for Ukraine. Bandera’s fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs as well as pogroms and war crimes which the OUN and UPA had organised and conducted during World War II were denied. The climate of the Cold War and the politics of multiculturalism that Canada had adopted in 1971 facilitated the radical nationalist and neo-fascist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora to claim that the Bandera cult and myth were authentic and very natural components of the Ukrainian culture and identity. Thus the cult and myth have been interpreted as being important contributions to the Canadian policy of multiculturalism. Every kind of critique of this neo-fascist and anti-Semitic cult were repelled as being anti-Ukrainian and chauvinistic attacks against the Ukrainian community and the Ukrainian nation.
Ukrainian Canadians, 100 Years Later
Labour / Le Travail, 1993
Press 1991). THE YEAR 1991 was certainly an historic one for Ukrainian Canadians. The centennial year of the arrival in Canada of the first two Ukrainian settlers was also marked by momentous political changes in Ukraine. These historic events contributed to various festivities and commemorations, often celebrated at the same time. A number of academic conferences and seminars were held and these two publications were part of this commemoration. Ukrainian Canadian identity is still influenced by interpretation of events in Ukraine as well as one hundred years of historical experience in Canada. It is now possible to examine this experience in a historical perspective and raise fundamental questions about the role of Ukrainians in Canadian society. At the same time, it is an opportunity to study the larger question of Canadian identity. The history of an ethnocultural group is often the result of negotiations conducted in the community and also at the personal level among the competing and often contradictory demands between North American society and one's ethnocultural experience. Negotiating and Identity is an appropriate title and a suitable framework for the various themes in Ukrainian Canadian history. In the introduction, the editors, Lubomyr Luciuk and Stella Hryniuk, claim that, "This volume was not intended to be a definitive or even exhaustive treatment of the Ukrainian-Canadian experience over the past hundred years." Instead the editors solicited essays which explored Ukrainian Canadian history and geography and sought to provide new insights into the experiences of Ukrainian Canadians. They claim that several of the present studies are "at the cutting edge" of research in the field. The volume is a collection of essays organized into three sections that deal with immigration and settlement, internal community politics, and the relations of the community with