Thu, Feb 09 2012

Opinion: Winning the 'Great Patriotic War' wasn’t Ukraine’s only or greatest victory

Tue, May 11 2010 15:00 CET

byStephen Bandera - Kyiv Post

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Opinion: Winning the 'Great Patriotic War' wasn’t Ukraine’s only or greatest victory

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev (right), Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich (centre) and Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko (2nd right) take part in the opening ceremony of a monument to cities contributing to the victory over Nazi troops in 1945, in Moscow's Alexandrovsky Garden, May 8 2010.

The same debate hits Ukrainian airwaves every year around May 9. That’s the day the Soviet Union decided would be Victory Day and parades should mark the end of the Great Patriotic War (called the Second World War in the rest of the world). In Ukraine, however, the war did not end in 1945.

It lasted well into the 1950s as Moscow sought to establish its rule over the parts of Ukraine where Bolshevik rule was not welcome. The Soviet Union had the Red Army and the NKVD. Liberation-minded Ukrainians had the UPA guerrilla army and support of the local population. Veterans of all these formations live side-by-side in independent Ukraine today. And every year around this time, the question is asked: Is their reconciliation possible?

In the late 1990s, I had the privilege of appearing as a guest on a television talk show that had veterans of the Red Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) gather in the same studio to talk about the prospects of reconciliation. In very simple terms, the veterans had different views on victory and defeat.

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