Stepan Bandera

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Lore & Background

Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 in Staryi Uhryniv, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, to Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest Andriy Bandera and Myroslava Głodzińska. He had seven siblings. He did not attend primary school due to World War I and was taught at home. After graduating from a Ukrainian high school in Stryi in 1927, he enrolled in agronomy at Politechnika Lwowska in Dubliany but never completed his studies due to political activities and arrests. He joined the Ukrainian Military Organisation in 1927 and the OUN in February 1929. In 1931, he became head of propaganda of the OUN, and later head of the OUN for Poland in 1932. On Bandera's orders, OUN began a campaign of terrorist acts. In 1934, he was arrested and tried for involvement in a plot to assassinate Polish interior minister Bronisław Pieracki, convicted of terrorism, and sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment. After the trials, he became renowned among Ukrainians as a symbol of a revolutionary fighting for Ukrainian independence.

Reader's Guide

During the 1939 invasion of Poland, Bandera left custody amidst the turmoil and moved to Kraków. In 1940, the OUN split into two factions, with Bandera leading the more radical OUN-B. On 22 June 1941, the day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Bandera formed the Ukrainian National Committee. Its head, Yaroslav Stetsko, announced the creation of a Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941 in German-captured Lviv, pledging to work with Nazi Germany. Germany disapproved, and for his refusal to rescind it, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1942. He was released in September 1944 in the hope that he could fight the Soviet advance. In March 1945, Bandera negotiated with the Nazis to create the Ukrainian National Army and the Ukrainian National Committee. After the war, he settled with his family in West Germany, where he was assassinated by Bohdan Stashynsky, a KGB agent, in Munich in 1959. Bandera remains a highly controversial figure. Many Ukrainians, particularly in Western regions, hail him as a martyred liberation fighter, while others condemn him as a fascist or Nazi collaborator. In the post-war Soviet Union, 'Banderite' became a common slur for any Ukrainian nationalist, persisting in Russia under Vladimir Putin. On 22 January 2010, President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title Hero of Ukraine, which was internationally condemned and annulled in 2011 under Yanukovych. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a nationwide opinion poll from April 2022 showed 74% of Ukrainians viewed him positively, up from 24% in 2012. In 2026, concerns over the Ukrainian state's perceived glorification of Bandera culminated in a diplomatic crisis with Poland.

Did You Know?

• Bandera did not attend primary school due to World War I and was taught at home by his parents.
• He sang in a choir, played guitar and mandolin, and enjoyed hiking, jogging, swimming, ice skating, basketball, and chess.
• Bandera was sentenced to death for terrorism in 1934, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
• He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in January 1942.
• A 2022 poll showed 74% of Ukrainians viewed Bandera positively, up from 24% in 2012.