STATEMENT ON THE 65^TH ANNIVERSARY OF JUNE 30, 1941

     The most striking manifestation of a nation’s maturity, its unequivocal desire to maintain its own identity, is the declaration of independence. The Ukrainian nation has suffered more than perhaps any nation on earth. Tracing its origin to Kyivan Rus in the ninth century, the Ukrainian people have enjoyed freedom and independence only intermittently since the collapse of the Kyivan state in the thirteenth century. In the mid seventeenth century Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetman of the Cossacks waged war against Ukraine’s oppressors, liberating and offering freedom to Ukraine’s peoples. In 1918 Ukraine declared independence following World War I and in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution.

     Given the historical backdrop of a centuries long liberation struggle with no political proclamations of a nation-state albeit seemingly forged by Hetman Khmelnytsky and the proclamation of Ukrainian independence on January 22, 1918, made only after three attempts to cull something less than an independent state, the unequivocal manifestation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists on June 30, 1941 was evidence of the nation’s maturity. It was an undeniable message to the German liberator/invader that the Ukrainian people will not stand for anything less than independence.  Furthermore, the declaration itself while made in Lviv, Western Ukraine stressed that the capital of the Ukrainian people is in all respects Kyiv, and that independence will be proclaimed there once Kyiv is liberated from the Soviets. 

     This year we mark the 65^th anniversary of that proclamation of Ukraine’s independence on June 30, 1941. While short-lived since the actual proclamation and forged government could not be secured short-term without a military, nevertheless its significance lies in its clarity and aftermath. What ensued is a long and bitter struggle to ensure independence first against the German invader and subsequently and for a long time thereafter against the Soviet oppressor. Estimates vary yet it is indisputable that the struggle of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army formed by the OUN in 1942 to defend the Ukrainian state lasted well into the 1950’s. Furthermore, incarcerated OUN members throughout prisons and gulags were the initiators of uprisings and the inspiration for the subsequent dissident movement that carried Ukraine to independence in 1991, fifty years later.  

   The significance of the OUN, UPA and June 30, 1941 should be debated and analyzed. One considered conclusion may be that where it not for those factors, contemporary Ukraine would be not unlike contemporary Belarus. Ukraine held elections on March 26, 2006. Belarus had held them a week earlier. Even with Ukraine’s uncertainty in the aftermath (democracy is often uncertain), no two events could have been more than dissimilar. We feel that OUN, UPA and June 30, 1941 had much to do with this.   

                                                      For the Ukrainian World Congress