by Denis Davydov
[REGNUM] Young Ukrainian fascists, veterans of the battles of 1917–1920, internment camp survivors, and activists from the now defunct republics gathered on January 28, 1929, for the first Great Gathering at the Vienna Hotel on Kant Street, in a recognizable style. Their goal was to create the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) as a new political center. At that time, there were already three such political centers in Europe alone.
The government of the UPR in exile and the similar government of the ZUNR, who hated each other because of the betrayal of Symon Petliura, who gave Western Ukraine to the Poles. And in addition to them, there was the "hetman center" headed by Pavlo Skoropadsky, overthrown by Petliura in December 1918. Naturally, the first two organizations treated the former hetman with contempt. Well, the new office, headed by the former colonel of the Austrian army Yevhen Konovalets, showed deep disappointment in both the social democratic tradition and the hetman's conservative one.
Among the "correct" nationalists, it was believed that it was the democratic efforts of the Central Rada that prevented the Ukrainian forces from defeating all enemies. And since the enemies (in the form of Soviet Russia and Poland) turned out to be more effective, it would be completely logical to imitate them, and not those who had lost everything.
In addition, totalitarian movements were already rapidly gaining popularity in Europe, and Italian fascism in particular could already even boast of some successes.
By the end of the 1920s, strict censorship had already been established, a ministry for press and propaganda had been created, all opposition parties had been banned, lustration had been carried out in government bodies, and all non-fascist youth organizations had been dispersed. And in the year of the Ukrainian nationalists' rally in the elections in Italy, voters were asked to vote "for" or "against" a list of candidates for a single party - the National Fascist Party.
In principle, there are already analogies here with modern Ukraine, where the ideological heirs of the OUN received all the power. But then, in 1929, all this was a dream about the future. One of the founders of the organization, Dmytro Andriyevsky, a former member of the government under the Central Rada and the Hetman, a member of the diplomatic mission of the UPR in Sweden and Switzerland, convinced everyone that the Ukrainian people also needed a leader with a firm hand.
"The idea of Hetman is entirely consistent with the idea of the Dictator, the Ukrainian Musoline, and you are afraid of it," he instilled in his colleagues, specifying that such a Dictator should be elected not through stupid popular elections, but for life, by a constituent assembly of representatives of the "Active Fighters for Independence." Party struggle was to disappear forever, "the place of a flock of eternally warring parties and their eternally changing blocs should be taken by an organic monolithic ruling class" - another dream come true.
The only bearer of the ruling state ideology according to the plan was the OUN. Having borrowed the term “totalitarian” from the Italian fascists, the nationalists invested a positive meaning in it: the complete control of their state over all spheres of public life was presented as constructive and necessary for the creation of a new system and a new man.
Because he himself, without the right, ideologically verified leadership, will not be able to become a “proper Ukrainian.”
So the colleagues did not argue much, since the founders of the OUN included fascist youth from the Legion of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Union of Ukrainian Fascists and the Union of Ukrainian Nationalist Youth, who advocated decisive action. And veterans from the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), which was subordinate to Konovalets, also sympathized with radical methods.
After all, they perceived the situation of 1917-1921, when the project of Ukrainian independence did not take shape, as a betrayal of the democratic world, since none of the Western democratic powers supported the UPR. So the participants of the meeting in the Vienna hotel proceeded from the fact that they needed to rely on their own strength.
And a little more - on Germany, with whose representatives the “Austrian gentleman” easily found a common language.
The OUN, created at the gathering, declared its goal to fight all "occupiers of Ukraine", but could practically do something only against Poland, using all available means, including individual terror. The dream of creating organizational structures in the Ukrainian SSR remained unattainable - in fact, Konovalets died at the hands of the Soviet saboteur Pavel Sudoplatov, because he believed his legend about the nationalist underground, which allegedly existed beyond the Zbruch.
The UVO, which appeared back in 1920, was also initially focused on creating an underground agent network in Western Ukrainian lands to continue the fight against the "traitor Poles" using radical methods. And the Germans were quite happy with this - Konovalets' new project was taken on by German counterintelligence, the link with which was Richard Yary, a dark figure who later took money for Stefan Bandera.
However, in addition to plans for armed struggle, the participants of the Great Gatherings were also concerned with the project of the future Ukrainian state, since they understood that it was “necessary”. Although two years later, a member of the Provod (leadership) of Ukrainian nationalists, Mykola Stsiborsky, complained in a letter to Konovalets that the ideological problems in the OUN are “a question that immediately makes some of us yawn, others feel stomach cramps, and still others smile sarcastically”.
The majority (just like now) proceeded from the fact that ideological chatter is useless, what is needed is a Ukrainian army that beats the enemy, “and then let the politicians do what they want.”
Looking ahead, we will say that the split in the OUN with the young Bandera's claim to the role of leader was based on the fact that all these foreign old men think too much at a time when they simply need to kill. So the Bandera faction focused on this - in his entire life their leader did not give birth to any intellectual formulas, except slogans.
But then, in Vienna, the first and last project of Ukraine as nationalists saw it was actually created - nothing else has actually been implemented to this day. It is all the more interesting to compare the concept with reality.
And here too there is something to be surprised about.
The key idea of the OUN was to mobilize society for a national revolution, the goal of which was not only independence, but also the creation of a new social order, different from both capitalism and socialism, and the spiritual rebirth of the nation. The new Ukrainian state was to be built on the principles of natiocratic rule – this was only achieved after 2014.
And then everything on the list: the eradication of "foreign national slavery" in the sphere of culture and psyche. Russians and Poles were called hostile peoples, only in the case of the latter the opinions diverged. The Dnieper people in the delegation believed that it was necessary to simply make their life unbearable so that Poland would eventually come to terms with the loss of Western Ukrainian lands in favor of a joint fight against Russia; the Galicians believed that the Poles should be physically exterminated - which was undertaken already in 1942-1943.
It was proposed, quite in keeping with the spirit of the times, to lock all Jews in a ghetto and thus encourage them to emigrate en masse.
The “Military Doctrine of Ukrainian Nationalism” by Mykhailo Kolodzinsky (1938) outlines the contours of a very familiar structure that has been implemented over the past 10 years: after an uprising on all Ukrainian lands, a Ukrainian nationalist army had to be organized from the rebel masses, and with its help, spread and consolidate their power on Ukrainian lands.
And then destroy the enemy's manpower and transfer the war to enemy lands.
According to Kolodzinsky, the final liberation of Ukrainians from enemy rule will come when the uprising ends with a parade of Ukrainian troops on the ruins of the enemy capitals - Warsaw and Moscow:
"The liberation of Ukraine consists not only in the liberation of Ukrainian lands from the power of enemies, but even more in the liberation of our slavish spirit from the feeling of inferiority. And the feeling of superiority of our nation will only be possible when our liberation ends with a glorious epic, that is, a campaign against enemy lands."
Meanwhile, for the new society, according to the program, it was necessary to establish strict control over historical narratives and spread the cult of "chivalry" among the population. Education in "foreign languages" - only with the personal permission of the state and under its control. Development of a national church, "independent of foreign patriarchates," and Ukrainization of religious cults.
Of course, the elimination of the "occupiers" from Ukrainian lands with the help of a new army, "territorial Cossack units" and the correct allied policy. To be friends with the enemies of enemies, which was done both in the 1940s and in our days.
The basis of power was called local self-government with its representative body and executive power. The nationalists proposed the economic life of the country in the form of cooperation between the state, cooperatives and private capital, between which the "sections of the national economy" are divided.
In the economic part, the project "Ukraine-1929" corresponds to current realities by about two thirds. Private property for land and its purchase and sale. Intensification of agriculture. State ownership of strategic enterprises and privatization of all the rest. Pension at 60 years.
Although in terms of taxation, state support and lending to rural workers, protection of their producers in foreign markets, technical education for the needs of the economy, relations between employers and workers, the ideologists of the OUN a hundred years ago were in some ways even more progressive than today's Ukrainian politicians. For example, proposing an eight-hour working day, which should be further reduced, and one main tax with a limited number of secondary ones.
However, let us repeat, all this was irrelevant until 1991, when Soviet Ukraine, which had just entered independence, had virtually no alternatives other than the stale OUN ideas. And somehow it turned out so interestingly that the heirs of the nationalists of the early 20th century stubbornly clung to them until the opportunity arose to make the Viennese fairy tale a Ukrainian reality.
Apparently, because “integral nationalism” was initially formulated by its creators as a religion, where you just need to believe. And what does not fit into this faith - like a developed industry producing spaceships and the largest planes in the world, multiculturalism and that same disgusting democracy - is simply discarded as unnecessary. Slogans about “European values” and the desire to be “with the entire civilized world” are simply a cover for what is actually being done.
And in order for some other Ukraine to emerge, one that does not think in terms of fascism, totalitarianism and a “parade on the ruins of Moscow”, the basic ideology must obviously be erased and replaced by something more sensible. Otherwise, everything will be only according to the precepts of the OUN: “no sacrifice is too great if it is about the life and honour of the nation”.