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.”
Israeli-Ukrainian Relations after ‘the Euromaidan Revolution’ – the Holocaust and the New Ukrainian Identity in the Context of the European Aspirations of Ukraine
: The Euromaidan revolution totally reoriented Ukraine’s policy in both internal and external dimensions. The new Ukrainian authorities facing Russian aggression and domestic instability started to build a new national identity in order to consolidate social cohesion. Due to the fact that Kiev’s new historical narrative glorifies the Ukrainian nationalists from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who contributed to the Holocaust of Jews and committed mass murders on the representatives of other nationalities, such a policy may be a serious obstacle in the context of Ukraine’s external relations. The present article investigates particularly Israeli-Ukrainian relations after the Euromaidan revolution. The article analyses the impact of the new Ukrainian identity on bilateral relations as well as attempting to answer whether or not it may influence Kiev’s cooperation with the European Union. The article contains a brief de-scription of the new identity building process in the post-Euromaidan Ukraine with special consideration of those elements of it, which are related to “Ukrainian Nationalism”.
Educating the Educators: Rethinking Subject Matter and Methods
gate? In addition to general requirements in their professional education such as psychological and social foundations and student teaching, what specifically do social studies teachers need to know and be able to do? What, in particular, do they need to study in the subject matters of the social sciences (defined here, for purposes of brevity, to include history and geography), and what should they learn about its effective direction to desired results, that is, method? Usually answers to the first question require reference to the liberal arts component of teacher education and the second to methods in the professional education component. As we shall see, this separation of subject matter and method in the education of social studies teachers, although conventional, poses problems.