Multiculturalism, memory, and ritualization: Ukrainian nationalist monuments in Edmonton, Alberta

Abstract

Canadians of Ukrainian descent constitute a significant part of the population of the Albertan capital. Among other things, their presence is felt in the public space as Ukrainian monuments constitute a part of the landscape. The article studies three key monuments, physical manifestations of the ideology of local Ukrainian nationalist elites in Edmonton: a 1973 monument to nationalist leader Roman Shukhevych, a 1976 memorial constructed by the Ukrainian Waffen-SS in Edmonton, and a 1983 memorial to the 1932–1933 famine in the Ukrainian SSR. Representing a narrative of suffering, resistance, and redemption, all three monuments were organized by the same activists and are representative for the selective memory of an “ethnic” elite, which presents nationalist ideology as authentic Ukrainian cultural heritage. The narrative is based partly upon an uncritical cult of totalitarian, anti-Semitic, and terroristic political figures, whose war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and collaboration with Nazi Germany the nationalists deny and obfuscate. The article argues that government support and direct public funding has strengthened the radicals within the community and helped promulgate their mythology. In the case of the Ukrainian Canadian political elite, official multiculturalism underwrites a narrative at odds with the liberal democratic values it was intended to promote. The failure to deconstruct the “ethnic” building blocks of Canadian multiculturalism and the willingness to accept at face value the primordial claims and nationalist myths of “ethnic” groups has given Canadian multiculturalism the character of multi-nationalism.

Keywords:

• Ukrainian-Canadian
• multiculturalism
• multinationalism
• monuments
• memory
• nationalism

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to John-Paul Himka, David Marples, Jared McBride, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, and to two anonymous referees for their extensive and insightful comments. I also wish to acknowledge the generous support of the Interdisciplinary Research Training Group 1540, “Baltic Borderlands: Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region,” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which has provided a stimulating intellectual environment and time to write.

Notes

The third wave and their decedents are particularly well represented in the leadership of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. This organization typically presents itself as the legitimate voice of Ukrainians in Canada. “The Ukrainian Canadian Congress is the voice of Canada's Ukrainian community. The Congress brings together under one umbrella all its national, provincial an local Ukrainian Canadian organizations. Together with its member organizations, the UCC has been leading, coordinating and representing the interests of one of Canada's largest ethnic communities (1.2 million) for 70 years and is instrumental in shaping Canada's social, economic and political landscape” (“UCC Meets with Minister of International Trade”).

On Nechaev and the “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” see Pomper 90–94.

On OUN's attitude to Jews, see Carynnyk 315–52; Himka and Kurylo 253; Martynowych 173–220.

A commission appointed by the Institute of History of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences concluded that the 4th and the 5th SS Police regiments of the Waffen-SS Galizien had been involved in the killing of the civilian inhabitants in the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka. Similar conclusions are also made by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (Iliushyn 283–84; “Investigation into the Crime Committed at the Village of Huta Pieniacka”).

Ewa Siemaszko estimates that the OUN-UPA ethnic cleansing led to the death of 60,000 in 1943–44 in Volhynia and 32,000 in Eastern Galicia in 1944 (Siemaszko 85, 88, 92). Grzegorz Motyka estimates the OUN and UPA's Polish victims at between 70,000 and 100,000 (Motyka 376–81, 411).

For instance, 6% of OUN(b) and UPA leaders in Ukraine died as a result of German actions; 0.3% of the SB OUN leaders and members in Volhynia were killed by German forces (Katchanovski, “Terrorists or National Heroes?”).

Like the work by any nationalist activist, this book should be treated with some caution. Luciuk avoids the difficult questions, obfuscates the openly pro-fascist, pro-Nazi nature of the attempted OUN(b) state. Typical for the pro-OUN apologetics, it uncritically repeats Stets'ko's denial of his own fascist activities. “On relations between the Ukrainian nationalist movement and the Germans, Stetsko stated: ‘Only three nations stood against Bolshevism at the time – Germany, Italy, and Japan. We were not interested in the political systems prevailing in those countries, any more than Churchill was interested in what was going on in the Soviet Union when he said he'd join the devil himself if the latter went against Hitler. Those three states were against the international status quo…. When we proclaimed Ukrainian independence we wanted to demonstrate to the Allies that there was another conception, another force, at play in the world, that they should be fighting against both the Nazis and the Soviets” (Luciuk 293–94).

The OUN(b)-led Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) cultivated close relations with authoritarian right-wing regimes, among them Franco's Spain, Chang Kai-Shek's Taiwan and Ferdinand Marcos's Philippines (S. Stetzko 3–17).

The Brotherhood of Veterans of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army (Bratstvo Kolyshnikh Voiakiv Pershoi Dyvizii UNA), as the veterans of the 14th Grenadier Division Galizien of the Waffen-SS prefer to call themselves, is an integral part of the community and a member organization of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. At the death of their president Lew Babij, in January 2010 UCC President Paul Grod wrote that Babij “Mr. Babij will be remembered as a hero of Ukraine who fought during WWII for her independence as well as a great Ukrainian Canadian who loved Canada, his Ukrainian heritage and his family and friends” (Grod).

Nationalist diaspora historians like Taras Hunczak describe its veterans as “people, who managed to serve their nation in a dignified and honest manner, albeit in the uniform of the enemy, and found themselves in a very complicated situation” (Hunchak 143). Similar interpretations are found in Yurkevych, “Galician Ukrainians” 81, and Luciuk and Yurkevych 3. For a view from the other end of the spectrum, see Littman.

The 1941 OUN master plan for its wartime activities, entitled “The Struggle and Activities of the OUN in Wartime,” a master plan for the organization of their intended state, meant the subordination of all political and social activities under a totalitarian, corporatist, fascist state (TsDAVOVU f. 3833, Op. 2, Spr. 1, Ark., 33-57).

Sympathizers will be organized in general nationalist organizations, such as:

a.	paramilitary organizations
b.	organizations for the physical education [sportovo-vykhovny orhanizatsiii]
c.	cultural-enlightening organizations [kul'turno-osvitni orhanizatsiii]
d.	professional-educational organizations [profetsiino-vyshkil'ni orhanizatsiii]
e.	scientific-artistic organizations [naukovo-mystetski orhanizatsiii]
f.	women's organizations.

• This corporatist structure was reproduced as a dictatorship in exile, intended to be re-exported to Ukraine, following its “liberation.” Thus, the veterans of the armed struggle of the OUN(b) and UPA published their own organ, Voiatsk'a Vatra: Storinka Tovarystva k. voiakiv UPA v Kanadi i ZSA, the SUMivtsy, the Banderite youth section published Trybuna sumivtsia, the Banderite women carried their Storinka Ob’'ednannia zhinok LVU, for arts, there is Literatura i mystetstvo: miciachnyi dodatok “Homonu Ukraini,” distributed as part of Homin Ukrainy. The female section of the League for the Liberation of Ukraine (Zhinochna sektsiia LVU) was organized in 1954, but soon reorganized under the name the United Women of the LVU (Ob''ednannia Zhinok LVU) within the system of OUVF Organization the Ukrainian Liberation Front (Orhanizatsiia Ukrains'koho Vyzvol'nohu Frontu) (Mendela).

The heavy focus on youth is a common theme among nationalist movements, which took names such as Young Italy, Young Egypt, Young Turks, the Young Arab Party (Kedouri 93, 96).

The Plast was a nursery for the OUN, which trained its future cadres there. It published the journal Iunak especially for the Plast youth. During the Polish pacyfykacja of the 1930s it contained instructions on how to use grenades and firearms and how to organize arson.

For similar attitudes among Ukrainian nationalists in Canada, see Kedryn.

While less impressive than the Shukhevych complex, the UNO hall is organized in a similar way. In order to enter the hall, one has to pass a large shrine named Strilets'kym shliakhom (The Warrior's Path) with the portraits of the OUN(m) leaders and nationalist martyrs; besides Andrii Mel'nyk also Symon Petliura, Olena Teliha, Mykola Stsibors'kyi, Oleksandr Olzhyts, and others. Above the stage in the meeting hall hangs the OUN(m) symbol, the Ukrainian Trident with a sword, against the background of the Canadian maple leaf.

Ironically, in regards to Ukraine the diaspora strongly support linguistic assimilation. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has been lobbying the Ukrainian government to retain the official monolingualism in Ukraine. On 21 June 2010, the Ukrainian World Congress, supported by the UCC, presented President Viktor Yanukovych with a memorandum which, among other things, expressed concern about “the introduction of de facto a second official language in Ukraine” (“Ukrainian World Congress meets with President Yanukovych”).

Government ads appeared not only in Homin Ukrainy, but also in the local Edmonton Ukrainian-language paper. Ukrains'ki visti was originally associated with the Ukrainian Catholic Church. By the 1970s, however, it was mostly secular. Its bombastic language resembles the Toronto Banderite journal Homin Ukrainy, with which the editorial content sometimes overlaps (“Do osoblivoi uvahy vsikh kanaditsiv: Polityka kanads'koho uriadu shchodo bahatokul'turnosty,” four-page ad in Homin Ukrainy by the Canadian Minister of State Responsible for Multiculturalism).

The Edmonton section of the UCC received $6,800, the Shevchenko Scientific Society (Naukove Tovarystvo im. Shevchenko, NTSh) $4,000, the St. Andrew and St. John Ukrainian Schools in Edmonton, $1,305 and $1,275 dollars each, the Vegreville Cultural Association, $3,000, and $500 dollars was given each to the Ukrainian Dancing Club in Thorhild and the Union of Ukrainian Canadian Women in Smoky Lake (“Provitsiina rada KUK Al'berty”).

Petro Savaryn (b. 1926) was at the time a member of the University of Alberta board of governors. From 1982–86 he served chancellor of that university. For many years he served on the board of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS). A prominent Ukrainian Canadian, Savaryn chaired the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta, served as president of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians (SKVU) 1983–1987 and remains an active member of the veterans' association of the Waffen-SS division Galizien (Bratstvo Kolyshnikh Voiakiv Pershoi Dyvizii UNA). As the keynote speaker of the 1984 reunion of the veterans in St Cathryn's, Ontario, Savaryn portrayed “Moscow” as the “eternal enemy of Ukraine” and denied that the Ukrainian Waffen-SS had fought for Hitler's “new Europe” (Levyts'kyi, “Savaryn vybranyi holovoiu SKVU”; Savaryn, Z soboiu vzialy Ukrainu 275).

The endowments include donations from former collaborators, including the most prominent Ukrainian collaborator in Galicia, Volodymyr Kubijovyč (1899–1985), who took the initiative to establish the Ukrainian Waffen-SS Galizien. Kubijovyč benefited materially from the aryanization of Jewish property during the Holocaust, and lobbied to have aryanized money go to Ukrainians, as, he argued, they had ended up in Jewish hands “only through ruthless breach of law on the part of the Jews and their exploitation of members of the Ukrainian people” (Rossoliński-Liebe, “Celebrating Fascism” 7). After the war, Kubijovyč served as editor of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, published by the CIUS. In November 1986 his estate established the Volodymyr and Daria Kubijovyč Memorial Endowment Fund at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, currently at CAD436,549 (Klid and Yurkevych; “Our Donors”).

On the initiative of Petro Savaryn, and CIUS director Zenon Kohut the University of Alberta in 1993 conferred an honorary Ph.D. to the radial nationalist Levko Luk''ianenko, former Soviet dissident and Ukrainian ambassador to Canada, who has since revealed himself to be one of Ukraine's leading anti-Semites (Rudling, “Organized Anti-Semitism” 91f, 95–96; Savaryn, Z soboiu vzialy Ukrainu 10, 371).

So does another monument, which partly deals with Ukrainian Canadian imagery, the Madonna of the Wheat, commissioned by the Ukrainian Womens' Association of Canada for the 75th anniversary of Alberta in 1980. For The Commitment by Edmonton sculptor Danek Możdżeński, see Swyripa 436–38.

“Buduemo dim Ukrains'koi molodi: Do teper vyplatyly (Prodovzhennia)”; “Buduemo dim ukrains'koi molodi: dotper vplatyly (Prodovzhennia)”; “Proekt domu molodi”; “Vykincheumo budovu domu ukrains'koi molodi”.

A second wing of the Shukhevych complex was opened on 9 November 1974 in the presence of much of the Edmonton and Alberta elite, among them mayor-elect Vasyl' Havryliak, MLAs, and provincial ministers. The provincial minster of labor, Dr. Bert Hohol, delivered greetings from Premier Lougheed. The SUM leader Boikiv reminded the nationalist youth of their obligations to their parent's generation, repeating the same wishes that the complex would turn into “a black smiths' workshop of Ukrainian culture, in which it will find its best expressions,” urging it to set up “an auxiliary front in the struggle of the Ukrainian people for rights and state independence” (Tysivs'kyi, “Visti z Edmonton”; the same article appeared, unsigned, as Tysivs'kyi, “Sviatochne vidkryttia druhoi chastyny domu ukrains'koi molodi”).

In May 1941, the OUN(b) issued instructions, written partly by Shukhevych himself, which explicitly promoted “a cult of heroism” in the totalitarian state they sought to establish (TsDAVOVU f. 3833, op. 2, Spr. 1, Ark. 77–89).

The oprichniki were tsar Ivan the Terrible's (r. 1533–1584) violent secret society.

Mykola Sukhovers'kyi (1913–2008) was a CIUS functionary, University of Alberta librarian, and founding member of the editorial college of The Encyclopedia of Ukraine. A member of the Provid of the OUN(m), Sukhovers'kyi served as an OUN(m) liaison in Berlin and was instrumental in the establishment of Waffen-SS Galizien. He served as honorary chairman of the Ukrainian War Veterans Association in Edmonton. Sukhover'skyi maintained a strong commitment to ethnic purity and opposition to marriages across ethnic boundaries. In 1983, he was recipient of the provincial government's “Alberta Achievement Award for Outstanding Service in Ethno-Cultural Activities” (Bairak 10; Sukhovers'kyi; Rudling, The OUN, the UPA, and the Holocaust). On the history of the Ukrainian War Veterans in Canada, see Martynowych. The CIUS administers the Celestin and Irena Suchowersky Endowment Fund, current value CAD75,585 (Klid and Yurkevych 42; “Our Donors”).

Bohdan Bora was a pseudonym for the poet Andrii Shkandrii. A veteran of the OUN (m) and the Waffen-SS Galizien, he was the father of literature professor Myroslav Shkandrii at the University of Manitoba (Bolianors'kyi 387).

The conference resulted in a volume, Serbyn and Krawchenko's Famine in Ukraine 1932–33. A prominent UCC, activist professor emeritus Serbyn has combined his activism to get the famine recognized as a genocide with lobbyism to have the OUN and UPA, and the Waffen-SS Galizien recognized as heroes (Marples, “Stepan Bandera” 563).

The Federal government had announced Blais' participation only days before, something that had caused controversy and upset the Ukrainian community. “When the federal government ignores one event, then sends anybody who happened to be available, almost at the last moment, to another, it appears to be taking a rather lackadaisical attitude to this terrible atrocity” (Levyts'kyi, “Casual treatment resented”).

The statement was written by a group of Ukrainian activists, led by Dr. Dmytro Todosijczuk, the treasurer for the fundraising for the memorial. Todosijczuk (b. 1922), is a veteran of the OUN(m) affiliated Bukovynian Battalion, (Bukovyns'kyi Kurin') and the Waffen-SS Galizien, who in Canada became a prominent expert on tuberculosis (Sukhovers'kyi 297-298).

Petro Savaryn asserts seven million Ukrainian famine dead, which he maintains “Moscow replaced with millions of Russians” (Savaryn, “‘Edmontontsy pam’'iataiot' 229 and “‘I merly merly, merly” 233). The UCC, citing Roman Serbyn, usually claims seven to ten million, but has used even higher numbers (O'Neill). On Serbyn's claims of seven to ten million deaths see for instance Serbyn. There is an emerging consensus among historical demographers that the victims of the 1932–1933 famine, one of Stalin's greatest crimes, range between 2.5 and 3.9 million in the Ukrainian SSR. For a discussion on the numbers, see Snyder (53).

See for instance Vertovec and Wessendorf.

The discussion of multiculturalism in Canada evokes strong emotions, and has been carried out in an emotionally charged language. Critics write about a “cult” of multiculturalism; supporters describe critics as “phobic” (see for instance Bissoondath; Ryan).

Typically, CIUS director Zenon Kohut defended Bandera in the Edmonton Journal, characterizing him as a “freedom fighter,” denying the fascist nature of the OUN's ideology (Kohut 145–46).

This sort of rhetoric has also become increasingly pronounced in the Western European extreme right. Alain de Benoist, the front figure of the French “nouvelle droit” presents his “ethno-pluralism” in leftist terms of anti-imperialism and peaceful coexistence of neighboring nations, rights of “native” peoples and the expedience of avoiding miscegenation. He invokes the 1948 UN declaration of genocide, which he quotes in effect of giving his own “ethnic” group the right to escape miscegenation and cultural death (Fleischer).

In Ukraine, there is little support for the nationalist myths. Less than 15% of the respondents of a KIIS survey had favorable attitudes to the OUN and UPA (Katchanovski, “Terrorists or National Heroes?”; see also Katchanovski, “The Politics of Soviet and Nazi Genocides in Orange Ukraine”).

For some of the more prominent works by critics of multiculturalism, see Bissoondath and Granatstein; but see also Ryan's polemic against them (Ryan 29–64).

“The characteristic feature of Europe is heterogeneity and not homogeneity (uniformity) – nationalisms and not internationalisms,” wrote OUN(b) leader Iaroslav Stets'ko in 1963 (Y. Stetzko 31).

Alarmed by an Edmonton Journal op-ed by University of Alberta history professor David Marples, in March 2010 UCC president Paul Grod organized teleconferences between nationalist activists, OUN leaders, pro-nationalist academics like Roman Serbyn, Lubomyr Luciuk, and Jars Balan and nationalist journalists like Marco Levytskyj, and Stefko Bandera to come up with a “community strategy regarding recent attacks on Ukraine's Liberation Movement.” Strategies discussed included financial pressure on Ukrainian studies institutions, legal action, and meetings with the editorial board of the Edmonton Journal (Rudling, “Iushenkiv fashyst” 252, 295–96). Similarly, when professor John-Paul Himka was lecturing at the Universities of Manitoba and Toronto in January and February 2011, SUM activists leafleted the event, denying the OUN's anti-Semitism and its involvement in the Holocaust and the 1941 pogroms. The organizer of the Winnipeg leafleting, Andrijko Semaniuk, serves on the SUM national executive. At the UCC XXXIII Congress in Edmonton in November 2010, Semaniuk was presented with the Ukrainian Youth Leadership Award of Excellence (“Youth Leadership Award of Excellence)”.