“A nation which believes that some neighboring country will build a state for it will never be able to find its feet and will always be a paralytic, with its political groups serving as the rear wheels to foreign agencies.” These are the words of Oleh Olzhych, a poet, politician, political writer, patriot of Ukraine (not one that gives nice ardent speeches, but one that makes a life choice that goes beyond any thinkable boundary of human strength). This is his clear, compressed, and laconic style. This was his prophecy (to our common Ukrainian shame, these words by Olzhych describe things that are taking place in present-day Ukraine).
Olzhych (Kandyba) was a son of the outstanding Ukrainian lyrical poet Oleksandr Oles and obtained an honorable place in our national history through his anguish and blood. Olzhych went through 12 days of continuous tortures in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen. (The Nazis wanted to break the will of one of the high-ranking leaders of the OUN (Melnyk faction).) Olzhych managed to win in this duel and did not say a word to his enemies – with a pencil, which he was barely able to hold his fingers swollen from torturing, he wrote to the executioners that he categorically refused to witness either against his friends or about his work in the OUN. This was his ticket to immortality. On the 13th day, June 10, 1944, Olzhych died on the cement floor of cell No.14 in Zellenbau, Sachsenhausen’s secret and most heavily guarded object in which they kept prisoners sentenced to death. Despite brutal beating, he never betrayed anybody.
Olzhych’s heroism cannot but impress. However, a moral duty of those for whom Ukraine is not an abstract notion (or a “territory of survival”) is not only to be aware of his unrivaled victory or his exclusive role in leading Ukraine’s nationalist underground in 1941–44, but also to know about his oeuvre as a political writer and thinker, Ukrainist, historian, and archeologist. Olzhych built an indestructible Ukrainian “rock of values” in his very young years and remained faithful to it until his death. Olzhych’s political writings might be less fortunate than his literary works, which is why this gap needs to be filled, if only in general.
One should see not mythical, but historically real Olzhych the way he was in reality and understand that some part of his ideas was strictly conditioned by the concrete unmerciful epoch of the 1920s and the 1930s — the time of the duel of two empires and totalitarian systems, which were Ukraine’s oppressors (which could not but affect the views of our hero, having deprived him of any kind of sentimentality). There is no need to fully agree with Olzhych, but his ardent love for Ukraine is contagious.
The ideology of the Ukrainian nationalism of 1920s and the 1930s, which was represented, among others, by Olzhych, firmly opposed both the totalitarian Soviet Bolshevism of the Stalinist type and Western liberal and conservative doctrines in terms of ideology and organization. Regarding Stalinism, Olzhych had witnessed the Red Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine practically since his childhood and never cherished illusions in this respect. Kandyba, the OUN’s mature political leader, noted in his article “Millitant Neoclassicism” (1935): “Clearly, the nation’s young spirit had to oppose the fiery fairytale of communism with a passion of the state idea.” Below is another important idea: “Everything started from awakening historical memory,” because for Olzhych, the Ukrainian past of Ancient Rus’ and Cossack times was actually an ardent and anxious present day, a value which had to be revived by the patriots “there” and “then,” rather in some abstract future. “The state is being built today” is the formula developed by Olzhych in his early years, and he defended it persistently and rigidly until his death.
“Overcoming death and regaining values that go beyond the life of an individual and generation is the achievement of the past epoch.” This is another formula that is a good illustration of Olzhych’s credo. In this connection, let us ponder the following question: Has Ukraine’s present-day independence, for the most part formal and represented only by its flag and coat of arms, decreased the relevance of Olzhych’s words, which he said over 70 years ago? However, not only was Olzhych developing an indestructible “rock of values,” but he also made a deep and penetrative analysis of the main political and especially cultural processes of his time.
The Ukrainian poet and fighter defined the Bolshevik political fundamentals in the sphere of culture in the following way: “Feeling its messianism, Bolshevism not only acquires the culture it needs, like Fascism, but also wants to bring new culture of its own, like the breed of the class that takes over the wheel of history, thus creating the proletarian culture. Understandably, this proletarian culture should be international, because, according to Lenin, the purpose of socialism is not only to destroy the dispersion of the population into small states and any separation of nations, not just bring them closer, but also merge them. ‘Humanity can come to merging of all nations only through a transition epoch, when every suppressed nation will be fully revealed, i.e., separated,’ and so the cultural formula, ‘national in its form and international according in its content,’ was created.”
Olzhych further writes: “The internal contradiction and ultimate ‘hopelessness’ of building national culture in these terms have caused the whole set of inconsistencies and the reeling of Bolshevik cultural policy.” That is the reason why he speaks about the “death of Bolshevik enthusiasm, which has been substituted by falsity and hypocrisy, enthusiasm that cannot be shielded by any police order.”
The author sums up: “So, with all its planned character and soundness, the Bolshevik cultural policy does not produce the desired results. The reason for that, regardless of materialistic philosophy, is the fundamentally erroneous practice of applying administrative bureaucratic ruling methods and various police sanctions in the spheres of art and science. Cultural creative work, which needs a strong internal sense of truth and real passion, loses its sources when the brutal hand of Sergeant Prishibeev bursts in. However, the decisive factor is the atmosphere of falsehood and lies generated by Soviet sociopolitical realities. Every kind of creative work perishes in it, and it has been completely transferred through the Bolshevik cultural policy into the spheres of arts and science.”
This very much resembles a historical verdict against the dogmatic doctrine which exerted every effort to cultivate a “new,” unheard-of type of man in one-sixth part of the planet (including Ukraine). I should only note that here Olzhych speaks about the cultural policy of the Stalinist regime. There is no need to describe his attitude to the political doctrine of Bolshevism, which was destroying his native Ukraine.
However, for the sake of objectivity, one cannot ignore Olzhych’s criticism (at times very sharp and destructive) relating to the theoretical foundations of Western liberalism. So, he writes about the “outdated social ideals of liberalism and the weakness of its ideological stimuli” (“In the vanguard of a heroic epoch,” 1938), which caused “its constant retreat in the cultural field before the nationalistic spiritual artistic work. The relativism of values, the weakness of liberal reactions (to everything but nationalism, which is an overall threat to the liberal world), and a lack of programming and planning in its work are further causes.”
At the same time, Olzhych seeks to thoroughly examine the historical roots of the liberal doctrine. He makes a digression into Europe’s past and comes up, in particular, with the following conclusions: “Democratic-liberal culture that has grown mostly on the ground of positivistic and materialistic philosophy and received political inspiration from the ideas of the French Revolution and various socialistic doctrines – this is the culture with which the Ukrainian nation engaged in the World War and its own revolution only to suffer a terrible defeat!
“First, its ideological basis on the political plane failed. Ukrainian democracy and socialism, which were responsible for the national defeat, have compromised the entire worldview basis of democratic liberalism. But since the very beginning the natural spiritual reaction of masses to revolution split with this spirituality and brought the style of high heroic inspiration, importance, and sacrifice to the revolution. Cruel reality that rules over the Ukrainian territory after the defeat has melted the Ukrainian soul, which had been weakened by the 19th century, into ancient historical metal. In eastern Ukraine the liberal psyche was radically erased by the Bolshevik reality, which has generated counter-nationalistic spirituality, which is even more solid and remote from the notions and tokens of liberal psychology. So, the field of resistance of liberal spirituality and culture was limited to western Ukrainian territory and emigration.”
Here it will be logical to say at least few words about the general concept of Ukrainian national history as it was seen by Olzhych. (His views were essentially influenced by Dmytro Dontsov’s teaching, i.e., integral nationalism, but this is a subject for a separate ample analysis.) Olzhych believed that “entire Ukrainian history is a struggle of two forces: a constructive one, which concentrates the Ukrainian power in order to turn it outwards, and a destructive one, which disperses it in a mutual self-destruction and brings splits and divides. This has been always followed by foreign rule in Ukraine.
“In this everlasting struggle between the creative constructive spirit and the elements of steppe and ruin, we strongly believe that the creative spirit overcomes chaos and fragmentation, no matter what its origin is or the way it is manifested, because otherwise our life and struggle would have no sense” ( “The Spirit of Ruin. Following the Pages of History,” 1940).
The tragic course of events in 1941–44 in Ukraine, in which Olzhych took the most active part, again and again tried to convince him, deputy leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, that he was right in saying: “Our disease is that the welfare of our group has become more important for us than the welfare of the people, and we view the nation via the prism of a group or organization to which we belong, not vice versa.”
However, despite all the disorders and enmities among his partisans, Olzhych was always been convinced: “Ukrainian nationalism has arisen from the internal need of the nation,” above all the need to preserve and strengthen its own state, and was not inspired by anyone from the outside. (Olzhych frequently called Taras Shevchenko “the first spokesman of Ukrainian nationalism,” thus defining in a clear-cut and unequivocal way the unique role of the supreme spiritual authority of Ukrainians in the revival and development of the nationalistic movement.)
Beyond doubt, for Olzhych the nation (“eternal and unchangeable as God himself”) is the highest value. One can challenge his concept of the nation’s “unchangeable nature,” because any nation is a historical entity that obeys the laws of historical development. But Olzhych sincerely believed (apparently, not without the influence of Dontsov’s philosophy of history) that no rationalistic categories are applicable to the comprehension of a nation’s essence: only mystical visions can be helpful here.
The real Olzhych was not a “softened” patriot, but quite a contradictory man, a personality that constantly remained in creative exploration, made mistakes, and continued to seek cherished ways to rescue the nation. In order to make the picture complete and for the sake of justice, one cannot but pay attention to such important aspects of his world outlook as a certain “cult of the leader” and “the cult of force” (“the cult of sword”).
The following are typical ideas from the article “Ukrainian historical consciousness” (1941): “The genius of the history-building type of a nation is embodied in its leading unit, the personality of the Leader granted by God. It is he who posesses the power to decide the fate of the people and shape its future… The thirst for a strong independent power among Ukrainians has always been intense, despite all allegations that it bears the ruinous inclinations of the steppe. The Cossack Republic became an epoch when a pure leadership principle was applied.”
He adds: “The basis for Ukrainian spirituality is a valiant and active perception of life. The Ukrainian spiritual personality is also defined by an expressive and strong militant instinct. Militancy makes an inseparable feature of the Ukrainian consciousness and is one of the starting points of the national worldview, which has made the people strong and self-confident on its historical way… Indeed, the sword, which was worshiped by the Scythians in the steppes along the Dnipro River and later so masterly forged by the masters of old Kyiv, has become a symbol of Ukraine and its historical destiny.”
Let us ponder Olzhych’s words: “Having regained the heroic life ideal, the nation is not afraid of any physical attacks. Feeling the divine blessing on its forehead, modern Ukraine, which has been determined for ever on its way and born in a revolution, calmly faces foul weather and storms, because it knows that they will disperse, while it will remain.” I think that even the reader, disagreeing with Olzhych at some points, will be burned by the power of his faith and belief that emanates from these lines taken from the article “Toward the 20th anniversary.” We should not forget that what our society is lacking today is the power of belief in Ukraine.
