Revolutionary nationalism and the anti-bureaucratic revolution
Dao-enery Tell in battest of too on the one e winter of 1951/52, in the Carpathian forests, Major Petro Poltava (his real name is not known) was killed in similar circumstances.
outstanding leaders of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)
and commanders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). They belonged to the same generation of young cadres of the Ukrainian revolutionary were its principal theoreticians. With their names and work is linked the radical ideological and programmatic evolution of the national liberation movement in the Ukraine toward democratic socialism.
The political thought of the OUN and the UPA, developed by Hornovy and Poltava, is perhaps the most dangerous legacy of the Ükrainian nationalist movement of the 1940s for the Kremlin and what the Stalinists are
UKRAINE an movement and
They were commander of the 'Lemko' section of the killed in combat in the Soviet Ukraine (D.R.)
most anxious to eradicate from the memory of this revolutionary moveKremlin as in Warsaw, thought of what might happen if an alliance were to come about between the Polish and Ukrainian social movements stirs panic. So, trying to fan the flames of national hatred between Poles and Ukrainians, of which the chauvinistic anti-Ukrainian campaign in Poland is an aspect, is a typical preventive operation. Solidarnosc's attitude to national oppression
In Poland, such an operation is all the more necessary from the bureaucracy's point of view because over the last two years, the underground press of Solid. arnose and the independent publishers have devoted considerable attention to the history and perspectives of Polish-
With a democratic educational approach and with an understanding of the need for mutual solidarity against the common enemy, they have explained the bases of the traditional activity by the underground Solidarnose is an important element in forming a democratic consciousness with respect to the national question and in developing strategy of the social movement in Poland.
Recently, the Polish Inprekor contributed to this effort by publishing a special on the Ukrainian national question. In this framework, it presented the real history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The editors of the Polish Inprekor socialists in Poland should include in their program support for the slogan Trotsky raised in
"For a free of workers' and peasants' They also believe that revolutionary socialists in Poland recognise that there will be no self-managed Poland without an independent Ukraine. International Viewpoint 8 April 1985
Arthur WILKINS
In August 1943, the OUN's Extraordinary Congress adopted a new program. It was in this period that the OUN took the leadership of the insurrectionary and underground struggle of the masses of the western Ukraine against German same time, it was preparing to wage armed resistance ainst the reconquest of the Ukraine by
Moscovite imperialism, national oppression imposed by Stalinism.
On the one hand, the program adopted at the 1943 congress called for the formation of an independent united Ukrainian state, as well as for collaboration with the liberation movements of other oppressed nations of the USSR, to eliminate the "prisonhouse of nations" and replace it with a system of free national states. OUN saw such a system as the only possibility for ending Russia's domination over its neighboring nations.
On the other hand, the new program was based on the assumption that any national revolution had at the same time to be a social revolution, that there could be no real national liberation either in the USSR or in the world in general without social liberation. "By abolishing the exploitation of class by class, we will create a just social order in the Ukraine," the resolutions of the 1943 congress
The statement entitled "What Is the UPA Fighting For?" based on the resolutions of the congress said that in an independent Ukraine, big industry (as as the major trading enterprises and the would be the property of the nation state, and that small industrial and trading businesses cooperatives and city governments. the same time, the workers would be guaranteed a role in running the enterprises. The land would be nationalized, to be tilled either individually or collectively in accordance with the will of the
Poltava later explained: nationalists are fighting to assure that in the future Ukraine a classless society will be built, that is a society in which there will be no exploitation of human beings by human beings and in which no social layer will economically dominate other
*The foundation of this system will be social ownership of the instruments and means of production. In this way the economic basis for the formation of exploiting classes will be removed." (2)
The OUN and the UPA believed that in the USSR a monopoly of power was held by a "parasitical class of Bolshevik cised a two-fold domination: 1) totalitarian domination (dictatorship) over the working masses of all nationalities in the empire, including the working people of the Russian nation. 2) colonial domination over the non-Russian nations and nationalities (Moscovite Bolshevik imperialism"). On this basis, they maintained, carried twofold exploitation of class by class and nation
Hornovy and Poltava went into great analyzing these two types of domination and exploitation. same time, they pointed out that the origin and nature of the power of the "class of Stalinist masters" were different from those of class rule in the capitalist see that the exploitation of human beings by human beings," Horn-
"is not based solely in private
"Za shcho boret'sia Ukrains'ka Povstancha Armiia (UPA)?" in Dialoh, No 9, 1983. 2. P. Poltava. Zbirnyk pidpil'nykh pysan (Collection of Underground Writings*). Ukrains'skyi Samostiinyk, Munich 1959, p 145.
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ownership making it possible to accumulate enormous riches in the hands of a small minority (the landowners and capitalists). We see that in the USSR there is no private property as regards the tools and means of production (land, forests, mines, factories and plants, transport and so forth) and that these have not only been expropriated from the landowners, capitalists and wealthy peasants, but that the former owners of these themselves have been physically exterminated.
"Yet the exploitation of many exists; there exist the exploited masses and the exploiting party masters. There exists in the USSR, an exploiting class that has been created not on the basis of private property but on that of the unlimited political power of one party....
"In the Bolshevik system, we see a process opposite to the one that occurs under the capitalist system. Concretely, in capitalism it is private wealth that confers power in the state, while in the Bolshevik system, it is political power that opens up access to material wealth and makes it possible to use this wealth
To topple the totalitarian rule of the "parasitic class" in the USSR over the working masses, what was needed, therefore, was not a revolution that would change the system of ownership but one that would establish political democracy:
"The democratic system in the future Ukrainian state, in which the government will be elected by the people and under its control, will make it impossible for exploiting classes to form on the basis of political privileges." (4)
With the establishment of political democracy, the means of production would come under genuine social ownership. In order to abolish the colonial domination of "Bolshevik Moskovite imperialism" and keep it from coming back, it was necessary to transform the USSR into a system of free and equal national states defined by the ethnographic boundaries of each nation. These two tasks were closely linked and would have to be achieved simultaneously.
At the same time as saying that in the USSR there was "the class of Stalinist masters that must be removed by force from the path of societal development" and calling "social revolution" what revolutionary Marxists call political revolution, Hornovy said clearly that this "social revolution is bolstered by the trend to national revolutions on the part of the oppressed nations of the USSR." (5)
In his works, which were written in the underground bunkers of the UPA, Hornovy devoted considerable space to the ideological struggle against Stalinism. Above all, he implacably and brilliantly exposed the consolidation of the ideology of Great Russian chauvinism, which was undertaken by Stalin in 1945. But he went further.
"A very important place in current Bolshevik ideology is occupied by the thesis about 'the progressive transition to communism Taking for granted that the first phase of communism, socialism, already has been attained, the Stalinist masters contend that the second phase, a higher phase - that of developed communism — is now being built. In such a society the principle, 'from each according to ability, to each according to his needs' will be realised, and there will disappear differences between city and village and between physical and intellectual
Hornovy's response to this theory was the following: "There can be no transition to communism in the USSR, inasmuch as there is no socialism. So long as there is no social ownership of the means of production, so long as there exists the brutal exploitation of man and so long as the principle of distribution according to labour done is not realised (from each according to ability, to each according to his work), so long can there hardly be any talk of transition to communism." Against capitalist restoration
The OUN and UPA firmly opposed restoration of capitalism in an independent Ukraine. Hornovy and Poltava constressed this. Poltava criticised the Voice of America's broadcasts for the Soviet Union, saying: "The Soviet masses hate the Bolshevik socialism. But that does not mean that the Soviet people are longing for capitalism, which was destroyed on the territory of the present USSR back in 1917-20. people in their absolute majority are clearly against the restoration of capitalism. That is the result of the revolution."
Poltava added: "We, the participants in the liberation struggle in the Ukraine, who are inside the Soviet Union and have connections with the broad Soviet masses, know only too well that they have no admiration for capitalism — neither the old European kind nor the modern American
Pointing out that under capitalism the masses of working people find themselves in the position of being citizens who are economically and politically powerless," Poltava stated: "A situation in which some social classes grow rich and live in abundance while others go hungry and sink into poverty simply because all that they possess is their own hands, their labour power, is in flagrant contradiction concepts of social justice and national solidarity....
"The Ukrainian nationalists do not want there to be exploiters and exploited in the Ukrainian people; they do not this people torn by class struggle. Since there is only one way to put an end to this dangerous situation, that is, by socializing all branches of economy, they consider this solution to for the new economic and social system."
Moreover, Poltava said, capitalism generates economic crises and wars, which are the greatest evil humanity faces. "One of the mechanisms for preventing crises is the introduction of planning into economic life, the planned organization of production and distribution. Planning in these areas is possible only in a socialized
For this reason, the socialization of the instruments and means of production is also one of the means for averting economic crises." (8)
In the light of this presentation of the political thought of Hornovy and Poltava, the question arises of what attitude the Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists took towards Marxism. This query was taken up in their time by a group of Ukrainian revolutionary socialists (Iwan Majstrenko, Vsevolod Holubnychy, Borys Levyts'kyi), who published the ("Forward") in the West, and defended the UPA's struggle in the left wing of the movement in the capitalist
In this group it was believed that there were contradictions between the positions of Poltava and those of Hornovy, representing a Marxist current inside the OUN. In 1949-50, Vpered established contact with the OUN leadership in the Ukraine and got a letter from Poltava, written in agreement with Hornovy. Among other things, the letter
"It is only on the basic things that we agree with Marx's critique of capitalism. Thus, we make a positive assessment (although not in its entirety) of the socialist concept (as formulated by the various socialist currents) of building the society that is to replace capitalist society ...On these two points - in our view of capitalism and our conception of a classless society - at most we come close to some extent to the socialist theories, including
"We have formulated our views not as 'disciples of Marx, not as advocates of socialism, without being in the least attracted by Marxism and in a struggle against Marxism as an overall ideology, in the struggle against the pernicious conse quences of Marxism on Ukrainian soil. We have worked out our viewpoints in an starting off from our nationalist ideological positions * We cannot be linked to Marxism because in the most complete sense of the term, we are a national movement, not a class-struggle movement or a class-struggle internationalist movement, as Marxism would require." (9)
In his letter, Poltava stressed that the
OUN was formed and continued to operate "as a movement struggling against destructive effects of Marxism on the
O. Diakiv-Hornovy, Ideia i chyn. zbirka Tuoriv ("The Idea and the Deed; Collected Works"), Association of Former UPA Fighters, Language edition of the writings of O. Diakiv- New York 1968. There is an English-
Hornovy. entitled The USSR Unmasked; A
Collection of Articles and Essays on Soviet
Russian Repression in Ukraine, Vantage Press,
New York, 1976. But it is incomplete and the translation is not reliable.
4. P. Poltava, Op. Cit., p 171.
O. Diakiv-Hornovy, Op. Cit., p 258. Ibid., pp 257-258. P. Poltava, Op. Cit., pp 213-214.
### Ibid, pp 169-70
"Lyst P. Poltavy ("Letter of P. Poltava").
Vpered, No 4, (13), 1950, pP 3-4.
International Viewpoint 8 April 1985
POLAND present borders Polish borders before 1939 UPA zone of operation Political thought of Ukrainian intellectuals for the last half century and on our people's consciousness of the needs of independence and statehood." But what did Poltava mean by the Marxism against which the revolutionary nationalist movement had declared an ideological war?
We regard the first as a specific philosophical school of materialism, and criticizing it is a matter for scholarship.
"Stalin's version of dialectical and historical materialism we combat with the greatest determination as something unscientific, something contrary to spirit of science, as an instrument used by the Bolshevik Party to legitimize its exploitative and colonial policy. Stalinist dialectical and historical materialism has very little in common with
What is more, in an extensive work entitled On the Bolshevik Ideological Front, in which he demonstrated that the Stalinists'o» "creative development"s:
represented, in fact a break with Marxism, Hornovy said: coming more and more difficult for the Stalinist masters to manipulate Marxism because it is precisely Marxism which is the theory that constitutes their most dangerous foe, for it is completely at odds with Bolshevik theory and unmasks their policies. Today, Marxism looms up equally as a danger for Bolshevism once it was for Czarism." (11)
In his commentary on Poltava's letter, International Viewpoint 8 April 1985
WARSAW%
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Lodź Iwan Majstrenko wrote: "Not knowing O. Hornovy's personal history, judging only from his writings, we characterised him once in the past as a revolutionary Marxist who had come out of a communist Marxist school. Recently we were more cautious in characterising him. In issue No 3 of Vpered, in introducing an article by Hornovy, we wrote: "In Poltava, one gets the impression of a nationalist school of thought, in Hornovy, of a Marxist one." We still think that Hornovy's work On the Bolshevik Ideological Front is Marxist.
"If Hornovy himself thinks otherwise, that does not constitute proof. A character in a play by Moliere also thought that he spoke in poetry, when he spoke in prose . The information that P. Poltava has given us that O. Hornovy is a veteran OUN activist and does not come out of any Marxist school only confirms our longstanding conviction Ukraine reality the Marxist scientific arguments are so powerful in the fight against Bolshevism that even a veteran nationlaist like Hornovy has to resort to and educate the young gener ation of nationalists in the country in these arguments." (12)
There might be some question whether Hornovy and Poltava represented only a "revisionist current in the OUN and not the ideology and program of the movement as a whole. This opinion has been put forward from time to time. A careful analysis confirms what the historian Lev Shankovs'kyi said about this, that the two commanders "revised nothing in their works, were not opponents' of General Taras Chuprynka but rather developed and clarified the official program and resolutions of the OUN, the UPA and the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR)." (13) The latter was a political leadership body in which both Hornovy and Poltava held the positions of deputy president of the General Secretar-
What Shankovskyi fails to clarify is
N .E • Donetsi® A
Odess Crimea
BLACK SEA the source of the rumor about the unrepresentativeness of Hornovy and Poltava. The fact is that Stepan Bandera, the reactionary leader of the "Foreign Sections of the OUN" in the West had a hostile attitude to the democratic and left-wing positions held by the OUN on Ukrainian territory, and he raised the accusation that they represented adaptation to the prevailing ideology in the USSR or capitulation to it. (14)
It is clear that the OUN held a position of revolutionary nationalism, not revolutionary socialism. Vsevolod Hol ubnychy wrote about the OUN leader "They were not Marxists. They did approach the situation from the point of any complete doctrine probably their greatest weakness, a revolutionary party or organization the reality of the Soviet Society, from th real 'mood' of the people." (15)
In an independent Ukraine, the OUN leaders wanted to build a democrati socialist system, in accordance with the aspirations of the working people in USSR, whom they understood wel to whom they were loyal. On the of their program for national revolut they were allies of the revolutionar Marxists, and all the more so because in 10 O. Diakiv-Hornovy. Op. Cit., p 149. The important article quoted here does not appea in the English edition published by Vantag 11. Ibid., p 254.
Babenko (I Majstrenko), "Zavvahs lysta P. Poltavy ["Remarks on the Letter food P. Poltava"]. Vpered, No 4 (13) 1950, p 5. 13. L. Shankovs'kyi, "Spohady D. Shumune u ‚ suitli faktiu" ["The Recollections of D. Shumul in the Light of Facts"]. Vyzvol'nyi Shliakh No 1, 1975, p 64. 14. B. Levyts'kyi gives a good explanation of this problem in "Istorychne Znachennia roalam u v OUN". in Vpered No 2 (11), 1950. This article has also been published in English in the Canadian publication Meta, Vol 2, No 1, 1978, under the title "The Historical Significance of the Split in the OUN." 15. W. Wilny (V. Holubnychy), "The Future of the Soviet Union" York, May-June, 1951, p 80. Fourth International, New
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AROUND THE WORLD
Osyp Diakiv-Hornovy (1921-1950). No photo of Petro Poltava exists (D, R.) their critique of Stalinism and capitalism, as well as in their goal of building a "Classless society" , they drew inspiration to a large extent from Marxist theory.
Four things, fundamentally distinguished the OUN leaders from the revolutionary Marxists. First, despite what Poltava said in a letter to Majstrenko, declaring "We nationalists do not deny the class struggle, because it is a fact and because without struggle it is not possible to make any progress in life or any social progress either," nonetheless, the OUN did not give primacy to the class struggle but rather to the "idea of a nation. It made an error common among fighters for the liberation of oppressed nations.
Secondly, although the OUN leaders recognized the October Revolution as a gain for the workers and defended what remained of it in the property relations, they accused the Bolsheviks of having played a reactionary role in the revolution, of usurping political power and of rebuilding the Russian empire, the prisonhouse of nations. While they made a distinction between Marxism and Stalinism, they did not see the difference between Bolshevism and Stalinism.
Fourthly, they made an error committed by many fighters for political revolution in the Eastern Bloc countries. On the basis of its political character, they considered the regime in teh USSR to be the most reactionary in the world, and the Soviet state to be the most dangerous imperialist power, one whose "parasitic class" , as they saw it, aimed to conquer the world.
Regardless of everything that divides us from the revolutionary nationlaists, we revolutionary socialists must honor the memory and heritage of Hornovy, Poltava and the other fighters for a Ukrainian national revolution in the 1940s. This is not only because of the respect theyearned as genuine revolutionists. We must remember them because their political activity and their theoretical work teach us valuable lessons about the enormous importance of national oppression in the emergence and in the reproduction of the totalitarian Soviet bureaucracy's system of power. They help us to understand that the political revolution of the oppressed working people is bolstered by the national revolutions of the oppressed nations of the Soviet Union. 26