Book Review: Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2014
Publisher: Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe Volume: 11 pages, pdf Description: As the title suggests, Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s monograph is a vast and comprehensive biography of Stepan Bandera, spanning more than a century and providing a much-needed longue durée perspective that not only reconstructs Bandera’s life and political activity in painstaking detail, but also illuminates the reasons for the resurgence of his cult in the late 1980s and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the achievement of Ukrainian independence. However, the book is also much more than that, covering some of the most sensitive aspects of modern Ukrainian history. It provides detailed accounts of the history of the two organisations with which Bandera was associated during his lifetime – the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – as well as of their legacies in contemporary Ukraine.