Terrorists or national heroes? Politics and perceptions of the OUN and the UPA in Ukraine
Abstract This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”
The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd
Abstract This study examines three actors in the Lviv pogrom of 1 July 1941: the Germans, Ukrainian nationalists, and the urban crowd. It argues that the Germans created the conditions for the outbreak of the pogrom and encouraged it in the first place. They also shot Jews en masse, both during and after the pogrom. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) set up a short-lived government in Lviv on 30 June headed by a vehement anti-Semite. It simultaneously plastered the city with leaflets encouraging ethnic cleansing. It formed a militia that assumed leadership in the pogrom, arresting Jews for pogrom activities. The militiamen were also present at the execution of Jews. The day after the pogrom they began to work directly for the Einsatzgruppen, again arresting Jews for execution. OUN co-operated in these anti-Jewish actions to curry favour with the Germans, hoping for recognition of a Ukrainian state. OUN’s anti-Semitism facilitated assistance in anti-Jewish violence, but it was not an independent factor in the decision to stage a pogrom. The urban crowd, composed of both Poles and Ukrainians, took advantage of the particular conjuncture of high politics to act out an uninhibited script of robbery, sexual assault, beating, and murder.
Harry Morgan’s Identity Crisis: Orientalism and Slumming during the Great Depression in Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not
This essay places To Have and Have Not in relation to the flow of illegal Chinese immigrants through Cuba and Key West to U.S. Chinatowns during the Great Depression. It also explores the representations of Asians in the novel. The essay argues that Morgan’s interaction with the “Anglomaniac” Chinese human trafficker, Sing, and his outrage against rich American tourists “slumming” in Key West reveal that his identity crisis is the result of his liminal position within the prevailing racial hierarchy.