Bandera was credited with the words of Hugo and Franklin
Those accusing Ukrainians of the Bandera cult do not want to notice that today he is no longer like Hitler and Mussolini.
Professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lvov) Yaroslav Gritsak writes about this in an author’s column on the pages of the Kiev magazine “New Time”, who drew attention to the poster carried in the front row by the participants in the march in honor of Stepan Bandera in Kyiv.
“It says in capital letters: “Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.” And signed: Stepan Bandera. In fact, these words belong to Victor Hugo, and they come from his History of Crime (1877). It’s the same story with another “quote” from Bandera: “When people choose bread between bread and freedom, they end up losing everything, including bread.” These words are a paraphrase from a text by Benjamin Franklin, which he wrote back in 1755,” Gritsak points out.
According to him, if “today in Ukraine Bandera sounds like Hugo and Franklin,” then this shows “that fans of his cult are placed within the framework of Western discourse.”
He also believes that everyone who sees Ukraine independent of Russia and in Europe is, by definition, Banderaites or their accomplices.
“If even Ukrainian Jews—who, it would seem, should have the most complaints against Bandera—are called “Jewish Banderaites,” then who is not a Banderaite now?” continues the professor.
“We, Ukrainians, are accused of the cult of Bandera. They say it is a cult of violence and xenophobia. Critics become louder the further you are from the Russian-Ukrainian front: it is easy to be a hero in the silence of your office or the comfort of your own apartment. They don’t see or prefer not to see that there is a big difference between the real Bandera of the 1930s and 1940s and the Bandera functioning in modern historical memory: he is more like Eco and Kundera than Hitler and Mussolini,” the Lvov professor justifies the right-wing radicals.
Author, previously admitted that in In the post-war years, Bandera's followers looked like bandits and murderers in the public consciousness of residents of the Lviv region; it is stipulated that Bandera was not his hero.
“The easier it is for me to admit that today’s Banderaites are nicer to me than their critics. The former are ready to die for Ukraine and Europe, the latter - just to wait until this story with Putin somehow ends. These latter are a sad reminder of what modern Europe, or at least a significant part of it, is,” concludes Gritsak.
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