Yurii Shukhevych, the son of the celebrated commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych, recently celebrated his 75th birthday. The younger Shukhevych, who spent many years in Soviet forced labor camps, where his health was ruined, discusses many problems of our life in a rather harsh way. Our readers may not accept everything he says. But he has the right to say them because Yurii Shukhevych, Hero of Ukraine, did not simply talk about his love for his Fatherland — he devoted his entire life to it. Below is The Day interview with Yurii SHUKHEVYCH.
During your imprisonment in Soviet concentration camps you lived according to Shevchenko’s ideas and ideals, which can be defined in the following way: God and Ukraine. Were there doubts among the prisoners of conscience that Ukraine is being betrayed by its sons?
“Ukraine was being sold up the river, but in a different way than nowadays. It was betrayed by yanychary (Janissaries), who helped organize the Holodomor. Those who orchestrated it were strangers who created the program of destruction, and the performers were our myrmidons. It was they who drove their brothers and sisters into slavery and imprisonment. It was they who helped to oppress and exploit.”
In the groundbreaking monograph by six French professors, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, one of the authors Stephane Courtois writes that, after the Bolsheviks came to power, genocide became the state policy of the entire USSR, which victimized all the nations in the Soviet empire. This is an interesting opinion, which for some reason we do not apply so that the international community, particularly, Russia, will recognize the genocide of the Ukrainians.
“Genocide was the Bolsheviks’ policy from the very beginning. Let’s take Lenin and the famine of 1921, which was the result of the food production apportionment, which was outright robbery. People were deprived of bread, not only in the Volga Basin but also in Ukraine, where 1.5 million people died. This was followed by dekulakization and the Great Holodomor of 1932-33. The forms of genocide differed and included not only the Holodomor but also exile and mass executions of the finest representatives of the Ukrainian nation. One should include here mental genocide — the annihilation of thought. Of course, all this referred not only to Ukrainians; the French scholar is right about this.
“We should emphasize that we do not blame the Russians for the genocide. Moscow was the embodiment of the Bolshevik satanic evil that caused sufferings to the Russian people as well. This nation became simultaneously both the instrument of the criminal policy and its victim. Stalin and Kaganovich waged a war against the peasantry throughout the USSR: Ukrainians, Russians, Georgians, Armenians, and Lithuanians. In 1933 the Kazakhs lost 40 percent of their population.”
Your life, which includes nearly 40 years that you spent in the Soviet GULAG, is a convincing illustration of the fact that evil has to be fought, because as Ivan Franko once said, “He who does not fight evil does not love humankind.” Today evil has many faces. It can be represented by a frontal attack against Ukrainianness or it can be disguised. I recall Shevchenko’s words: “Our butchers are torturing us/ And our truth is sleeping drunken” (Chyhryne, Chyhryne)
“The contemporary elite is not real. It is a pseudo-elite, and the real one, the spiritual one, has been humiliated, trampled, deprived of its voice, and mocked. Why is the nation silent? Holodomors do not pass without leaving a trace. The people are frightened; their genetic code has been partially destroyed. But the Maidan took place, so people are ceasing to be afraid. And another Maidan will take place again if the boorishness of merchants continues. For example, I will be launching a lawsuit against Dmytro Tabachnyk for slandering my father. Roman Shukhevych devoted his entire life to the idea of Ukraine’s liberation from all occupiers. During the difficult period of the war, all his thoughts and actions were subordinated to this. Later, while heading the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR), Roman Shukhevych understood that the struggle for the freedom of the people or a single individual is undying. Long before the United Nations adopted the Declaration on Human Rights after the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalists declared the slogan: ‘Freedom for nations, freedom for individuals’ and they implemented this program by all possible means.”
Even people who do not support the nationalistic idea compare your father to Spartacus. Circumstances forced them to state the historical truth.
“Indisputably. Even our ideological opponents, in particular Che Guevara and Ho Chi Min, recognized the role that the UPA played, let alone Charles de Gaulle, who was close to us in spirit, or the Afghan mujaheddins, who fought on their land for their truth.”
The founder of modern Italy Giuseppe Mazzini said that there are eras that need a hero’s sword, and eras that need a thinker’s pen. Which means are optimal for today?
“I think that today we need a thinker’s pen and fresh new ideas. Nationalism is like a river that should be renewed, to take time into account as well as people’s needs. We need thinkers for this goal. They are among the young generation, which is an educated and caring one. The trouble is that the former party nomenklatura and cosmopolitan- minded politicians from the so-called democratic camp are not allowing talented boys and girl to become involved in the state-building processes on the highest level.”
We need Ukrainian unity for our struggle. Within this context Shevchenko’s words “Embrace, my brothers, Your smallest brother, Let mother smile, Our mother wet with tears” are extraordinarily important. To embrace is a very philosophical notion that can serve as a slogan for the national idea.
“The gulf between Ukraine’s east and west has been dug by our politicians, and they are using it according to the Roman principle of Divide et impera: divide and rule. I cannot understand how Ukrainian patriots can go on Shuster’s TV program, where he is practically mocking everything that is holy, specifically Ukrainian things. I also cannot understand how our leadership grovels before odious personalities both in the West and the East.”
Can Ukrainians come to an agreement on their land and when can this happen?
“Not only can they do this, they must. We are a single nation, be it in Lviv or Luhansk.”
Can you imagine a situation where Yurii Shukhevych, Viktor Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko, and others get together as Ukrainians to discuss specifically Ukrainian problems — not to promote themselves, not to adopt any manifesto, but simply to arrange those things on which Ukrainian people’s destiny depends?
“We have different experiences and positions, but they do not create any obstacles for such a conversation. Moreover, I am convinced that they could come to an agreement. After all, the Yushchenkos, Yanukovyches, and Shukhevyches come and go, but the nation remains. If we don’t come to an agreement, others will come and do this. Everything is leading up to this.”
I can see this from the young people with whom I have been working for nearly 40 years. There is no difference in principle among students from Donetsk and Lviv. They are all children of the same land. They have similar values and dreams, and the desire to acquire knowledge in order to realize themselves. We have to act and foster understanding. Can the Galician intelligentsia, the elite, be blamed for anything?
“It can be blamed for the artificial creation of this gulf between east and west, which still exists. It calls our brothers skhidniaks (easterners) in a humiliating way, i.e., the terminology itself is wrong. They cannot be blamed for being khokhols: it’s not their fault. It’s a misfortune. Every kind of national awareness has been crushed. To whom are we appealing then?”
How would you outline the three vectors of awakening of free Ukrainians?
“Many Ukrainians died in captivity. However, they were not dying in a submissive way, but fighting. Today the people are befuddled; they are being given poisonous potions and made to fall sleep. They seem to have freedom, there is no terror and oppression, nobody stops you from speaking, neither the NKVD nor the Gestapo victimizes you, but the people are silent. The first solution is to appeal to young people. They should be offered orientation, an alternative to those that are cultivated on television. Youth should become aware, without rejecting material things, that a person does not live by bread alone. Without spirituality a person can turn into a beast.
“The second solution is to guarantee the quality of government. Today’s elections are a joke, with demagogues acting as the main characters. They are speculating on Ukrainians’ trust. However, they should not forget the words of a German priest: ‘Many people have promised to create paradise on Earth, but nobody has managed to do this; only hell has been created.’
“The third solution is to arm the nation with instruments of kindness; a good state can be created only by kind and caring people. There should be a positive ideal.”
