Ukraine: nationalism without Bandera

On January 1, while the average person was caught up in the New Year holidays, rallies in memory of Stepan Bandera were held in Ukraine, dedicated to the next anniversary of his birthday. There were torchlight processions, bright slogans and, as usual, calls to send Muscovites to the vigorous Matryona.

Of course, Bandera is a hero of Ukrainian history who had high personal qualities. Pure, bright, fanatical, devoted to the cause and the Motherland. It is simply impossible to consider the history of Ukraine in the 20th century without his figure. However, we must not forget that Stepan Bandera is, first of all, a martyr, ground by the millstones of various states. First he was imprisoned by the Poles, then by the Germans, then shot by Soviet security officers.

The real political effect of Bandera’s activities tends to zero. A myth was created around him, but he himself lost historically.

Like its idol, modern Banderaism is also doomed to reach a dead end. Bandera’s Ukraine, which sometimes comes to the fore and sometimes fades into the shadows, is a country between a rock and a hard place. Doomed to bare her teeth to the “damned Muscovites,” she hopes that she will be taken to Europe as a poor stepdaughter. Bandera himself did the same thing - he served the interests of the Nazis, although in his heart he hoped to make his people a fraternity, and not a six.

Ukrainian nationalists who rely on the myth of Stepan Bandera are doomed to parochialism and complexes of the persecuted and humiliated. In Banderaism there is no flight of thought, no super task, no globality.

If Ukrainian nationalists want to become truly powerful guys, then they need to put Slavism at the center of their ideology, and not hooliganism that smells of lard and vodka. Here it should be remembered that there was Kievan Rus, which was the collector of Russian lands, the center of attraction for all Slavs. In the end, it was under the banners of Kievan Rus that the legendary Prince Svyatoslav defeated the Khazar Khaganate, an influential parasitic state that traded in the slave trade.

Who is cooler - a selfless underground fighter, remembered for his endless ordeals in prisons under all regimes, or a powerful, inspiring Slavic state with a Ukrainian center, stretching its borders from the Black to the White Sea?

Ukrainian nationalists would like to propose the following slogan: “Kyiv is the capital of Rus'.” Oddly enough, this thesis could become the basis for rapprochement between Russia and Ukraine (the form of rapprochement can be different - a confederation, a political union, a single state). Let Russia be the center of the Greater Space, and let Kyiv become the capital of the Slavs, the capital of the Russian nation. Such a division could satisfy the national ambitions of the Little Russians.

There are simply no other cities capable of becoming a Slavic capital. Moscow is too filthy merchant, St. Petersburg is too European, Novgorod is too peripheral. And Kyiv is just right!