Stepan Bandera and Ukraine’s Road to War with Russia

Abstract

The question “Has anything gone wrong in Ukraine?” can be answered in many different ways. Answering it, I will apply a short-term perspective and will focus on the denial of ethnic violence as a factor leading to internal polarization, weakening of the state, and Russian aggression. The internal political and cultural polarization of Ukraine can be traced back at least to the late eighteenth century when Ukraine was divided between the Russian empire and the Habsburg empire. During the long nineteenth century, Ukrainian culture was shaped by two different polities which fostered the creation of two different mentalities. This internal division was prolonged in the interwar period, when the Ukrainians in Soviet Ukraine were exposed to different politics than were the Ukrainians in Poland. In addition, the Polish colonization of Ukraine in the fourteenth century and the domination of the Polish elites in Western Ukraine until World War II complicated the situation in these territories which in 1991 became Ukraine.