Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (1 January 1909-15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian ultranationalist and a leader of the radical-right faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from 1940 until his assassination by the Soviet Union in 1959. He was involved in terrorist resistance against Poland during the Interwar period, collaborated with Nazi Germany against the USSR during Operation Barbarossa, participated in the Holocaust and the genocide of Poles in Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, was later imprisoned by the Germans for his nationalist activism, and led anti-communist resistance against the Soviets until his death by poison in 1959. Bandera is a polarizing figure in Ukraine, where Ukrainian nationalists hail him as a champion of Ukrainian independence against the Poles, Russians, and Germans, and critics (including the pro-Russian camp of Ukrainian politics) view him as a murderer, Nazi collaborator, and fascist.
Biography[]
Stepan Andriyovych Bandera was born in Staryi Uhryniv, Eastern Galicia, Austria-Hungary in 1909, the son of a Greek Christian priest. He became a nationalist as a youth and joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, becoming its chief propaganda officer in 1931, its second-in-command in Galicia from 1932 to 1933, and head of the OUN in Galicia from 1933. Bandera turned the OUN against the Polish officials responsible for anti-Ukrainian policies, was sentenced to death for Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki's assassination in 1934 before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he was freed during the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. His right-revolutionary views contrasted with the conservative views of Andriy Melnyk's faction of the OUN, leading to Bandera splitting from the main organization with his "OUN-B" faction, which saw no place for Poles and Jews in an independent Ukraine. During Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Bandera supported the German invaders and campaigned for Ukrainian independence in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, establishing OUN-dominated local authorities. He was also hired by the Germans to carry out subversive activities within the USSR. On 25 November 1941, however, Nazi Germany turned on the Ukrainian nationalist movement due to its fears that Bandera was planning a nationalist revolt in occupied Ukraine, and Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo on 15 September 1941. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and he was released in September 1944 and resisted both the Soviet Communists and German Nazis. In 1946, Bandera re-established the OUN with support from the British MI6 intelligence agency, heading it from West Germany and working with anti-communist organizations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. In 1959, he was poisoned with cyanide gas by KGB agents while in exile in Munich, Bavaria.
