Not exactly a revolutionary like his ancestor, this journalist still wants to change Ukraine
So what’s it like being the namesake grandson of one of Ukraine’s most famous nationalist leaders? I put this question to Stepan Bandera of Toronto, Canada, while sitting in the Drum having a late lunch recently. Bandera, who currently writes for New York City’s Diaspora newspaper The National Tribune, never knew his grandfather, who was killed by a KGB agent in 1959. But he has an affinity with him.
“People on both sides of my family were killed in World War II by the Nazis or Soviets. It fostered deep ties [in our family] to the country. We’re very pro-Ukrainian,” Bandera says after a sip of Obolon (Hr 8 for a half-liter). “Our family has always been very tight, very Ukrainian.”
Bandera, in his early thirties, had a rather typical Diaspora upbringing. He studied at a special school, learning the Ukrainian language for an hour every day, and his family celebrated old holidays and sang traditional songs like many other Diaspora families. But in other ways, his family was nothing like typical.
Bandera’s father – also a nationalist activist – died under mysterious circumstances back in 1984, just like his grandfather. “I came to Ukraine looking for a fight,” he says.
Yet Bandera comes across as poised and collected, with no chip on his shoulder. He’s quietly proud of his progenitors’ accomplishments, but sees their activities as belonging to their own historical context. He, on the other hand, belongs to his own.
Looking homeward
Bandera, who immersed himself in Slavic studies at the University of Toronto in the 1980s, orders his standard, the meatless nutty rice burger (Hr 23). Instead of French fries he goes for the grilled vegetables (Hr 15). “If you’re an Adkins diet freak,” he goes on, “you should ask them for this instead.”
Then he turns the clock back to 1991. Before the 1991 referendum on independence, Bandera visited Ukraine with a Canadian-American pro-democracy initiative meant to encourage Ukrainians to vote for a free Ukraine. It was a “romantic mission,” he admits.
“Most of us had no idea what Ukraine was about at the time,” he says.
From 1992 to 1997 Bandera crisscrossed the Atlantic looking for ways to make a living in Ukraine and settle here permanently. He bartended and did paralegal work back home, and then in 1997 he became a PR consultant for Romyr Consulting, a post he held until 2002. He also has moonlighted as a media consultant for the Democratic Initiatives Foundation from 1997 to 2002. In 2002,Bandera fell in love with a Ukrainian girl, and lived illegally in New York to be with her until they split a year later. His would-be love wanted to stay in the United States. He wanted to return to Ukraine.
Patchwork Career
Bandera is often in residence at the Drum, a hangout where everyone knows his name. He used the bar as a base during the Orange Revolution, which he described as similar to the 1991 referendum vote, but not quite.
“This time people were more politically savvy; there were no more half-measures,” he begins. “I had a kind of deja vu feeling. If in 1991 the Soviet Union was the ‘Evil Empire’ – amorphous, a metaphysical evil with no specific people to single out – this time it was much more concrete.”
He counts off some of the abuses of power that typified the Kuchma years, and names the men who corrupted the presidential vote.
“[Ukrainians] had a concrete leader [in Viktor Yushchenko] on whom to place hopes, and people had more money,” he says. “People themselves could contribute to the success.”
Given Bandera’s lineage, it’s perhaps not surprising he’s met President Yushchenko. It was on the feast day of St. Nicholas (Dec. 19) in 1999.
“He’s a very calm person. He has a sense of internal strength or serenity,” Bandera said. “He was self-assured, in charge. Yet he is this total poker-faced kind of guy. He tended to listen more than he spoke, but when he did speak, even in disagreement, he managed to be diplomatic and explain his point of view.”
While many have come to Bandera with offers of citizenship and high office, he’s always refused, feeling unsuited to such positions. As he sees it, his path lies elsewhere.
“After years of being here, I think I can best work in media, healing wounds that way,” he says, adding that he was in Donetsk at the start of the Orange Revolution with a CBC film crew. He couldn’t believe the censorship that was taking place.
“I want to go east [to Donetsk] and tell people what’s really going on here. Many can’t believe that [my two great-uncles] were killed in Auschwitz by Nazis. I started explaining the whole history of western Ukraine under the Poles and about World War II problems.
“The divisions in this country have been artificially fed,” Bandera maintains. “If Ukraine gets its act together, it will become an economic and even world powerhouse.”
Baraban (The Drum)
4 Prorizna, 229-2355.
Open daily from 11 a.m. til the last customer.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Debateable.
Average cost of a main dish: Hr 28.
