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BETWEEN LENIN AND BANDERA
someone who is trying to spot micro processes. The barricades, fallen communist statues, a baseball hat, green and brown tents on Maidan, tents at the borderline war zone, elegant young couples, soldiers, the internally displaced professors and university students from Donetsk, Kryvyi Rih and Crimea, exhausted men drawing casually on a pipe next to the Lenin pedestal, Cossacks with their long moustaches, parents mourning “The Heavenly Hundred,4” ‘nationalists’ marching with photos of Bandera5, grandparents mourning “notorious Soviet past,” volunteers of the ATO6 bringing victory home, smiling, artists, journalists, more soldiers— this time in the wheelchairs, though, cursing both war and the state...And graffiti, and posters, and slogans and songs…“Ne Tvoja
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The name “Heavenly Hundred” refers to deceased activists whose deaths are connected to the protests on Maidan in Kyiv, from 21 January to 22 February 2014. Volodymyr Kadygrob, #Euromaidan: History in the Making (Osnovy Publishing, 2014), 170-171. Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (1 January 1909- 15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian politician, revolutionary and the head of a militant wing of Ukrainian independence movement. He was a leader of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization (OUN) during and after the Second World War. Within the national context of Ukraine, he is one of the most controversial figures of the country’s history. Remembered as a hero primarily in western regions for an attempt to proclaim an independent Ukrainian state, Bandera is seen as a war criminal in central and eastern oblasts. There, he is condemned for collaboration with Nazi Germany and for killing Jews, Russians and other ethnic minorities living on the territory of Ukraine. The ‘Banderite’ is a term (primarily of negative connotation) used to address the proponents of his figure. Accessed June 2, 2018. Source: /https://www.britannica.com/biography/ Stepan-Bandera. ATO (or Anti-Terrorist Operation) is a term that was introduced by the government of Ukraine to identify Ukrainian military operations on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk that fell under the control of Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists. Since 2014, the term ‘ATO’ has been used by media, publicity and government of Ukraine as well OSCE and other foreign institutions to refer to the military activities in eastern Ukraine. Accessed September 14, 2015. Source: http://uacrisis.org/66558- joint-forces-operation.
