The following are excerpts from a conversation recorded during a discussion organized at the Invisible University for Ukraine Summer School 2025, “Beyond the Post-Soviet: Rethinking Environmental, Social, and Cultural Agency in Wartime Ukraine” (1-10 July 2025, Budapest), moderated by Ostap Sereda and Nadiia Chervinska. A transcript of the full discussion can be read here.
The post-1917 revolutionary period produced political émigrés in the classical sense, concentrated primarily in France and Czechoslovakia. In the latter, with support from Presidents Masaryk and Beneš, a veritable “Ukrainian Piedmont” emerged. The authorities there supported thousands of emigrants and students, fostering major Ukrainian institutions, such as the Free Ukrainian University, the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, the Ukrainian Studio of Plastic Arts, and the Ukrainian Economic-Cooperative Faculty.
This ecosystem also included the Ukrainian Institute of Sociology – headed by a socialist revolutionary – which had an affiliated workers’ university and a press that published journals and books like Mykyta Shapoval’s Sotsiolohiia ukrainskoho vidrodzhennia. Politically, this milieu was a diverse hub, encompassing former officials of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate, activists from the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers’ Movement, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It also served as the birthplace of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). This vibrant period ended abruptly with the Nazi and subsequent Soviet occupations, which inflicted another discontinuity on Ukraine’s political tradition.
The post-WWII diaspora political landscape, however, was quite different. Around 2.3 million Ukrainian SSR citizens had been taken to Germany as forced laborers. While most returned after the war, approximately 250,000 became Displaced Persons (DPs) in camps in the American and British zones. Demographically, 70-80 percent were from pre-WWII Polish, Romanian, and Czechoslovak territories; only about 60,000 were from central or eastern Ukraine, the latter including a small group from the industrial centers.
Though most DPs were young and from peasant or working-class backgrounds, a crucial core of intellectuals, professionals, and political activists from Galicia and Czechoslovakia had also fled to avoid Soviet repression. Living in camps with ample free time due to a lack of employment, they channeled their energy into education, culture, and religion. This activism energized the community and prevented the apathy seen in other DP contexts, creating ideal conditions for political mobilization. They spent about three years in these camps (1945-48) before systematic resettlement began.
Within the camps, the OUN-Bandera faction (OUN-B) emerged as the dominant political force. With about 5,000 members in postwar Germany, it was the only significant political organization and aggressively attempted to hegemonize all spheres of Ukrainian life.
Living in camps with ample free time due to a lack of employment, the Displaced Persons channeled their energy into education, culture, and religion.
In contrast, the Ukrainian National Rada, representing the government-in-exile, had only 200 members, and there were only a few Skoropadsky supporters. The Banderites promoted an ideology of integral nationalism, which placed the nation above all, advocated for an authoritarian Ukrainian state, and emphasized action, strength, and willpower. They often viewed Ukrainian DPs from the core lands (“naddnipriantsi”) with disdain for their perceived weak national consciousness, considering them in need of “re-education.”
It is important to note a key ideological shift that occurred within Ukraine during this time. In 1943, the OUN and UPA created the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (UHVR), led by Roman Shukhevych. Influenced by reports from eastern Ukraine, it replaced integral nationalism with a program promoting democratic rights. However, this shift had little impact on the diaspora Banderites in the DP camps, who remained rooted in European interwar authoritarian traditions.
The OUN-B’s primary postwar political project was the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a Munich-based coalition that lobbied Western governments for the independence of nations subjugated by the USSR. Yet, as a nationalist, conservative, and often authoritarian-right alliance, it remained politically marginal, and this marginality continued into the modern era.
In 1992, in Ukraine, the OUN-B was reconstituted as a political party – the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (CUN). Led by Slava Stetsko, it remained a fringe far-right group, a fact evidenced by its candidate receiving only 1.6% of the vote in the 2019 presidential election and 0.04% in parliamentary elections. Despite its minimal role, the group has been effectively exploited by pro-Kremlin propaganda to tarnish Ukraine’s political culture.
DP groups who disagreed with the Banderites or hailed from outside Galicia formed their own smaller organizations. Eastern Ukrainians, who were Orthodox, organized around the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
In 1946, the Ukrainian Revolutionary-Democratic Party (URDP) was founded. Led by the celebrated writer Ivan Bahrianyi, it became the largest political group among the Eastern Ukrainian émigrés. The URDP advocated for a “democratic nationalism,” standing in stark contrast to OUN-B’s integral nationalism.
Crucially, they believed that meaningful change in Ukraine would ultimately have to emerge from within the USSR, predicting that autonomist forces would eventually gain momentum.
In 1990, URDP changed its name to the Ukrainian Republican Democratic Party. A left-wing faction of URDP emerged and published a monthly newspaper, Vpered (Forward, 1949-59), which featured articles on developments in Soviet Ukraine, international politics, and émigré life from a democratic socialist perspective. Its editorial board comprised a roster of prominent intellectuals, including Ivan Maistrenko (a former Borot’bist), Vsevolod Holubnychyi (an economist), Borys Levytsky (a political analyst), Hryhoriy Kostiuk (a literary critic), and others. Decades later, when a new Ukrainian left-wing intellectual group emerged around the journal Diialoh in the 1980s, the Vpered group formally dissolved itself, passing the torch to a new generation.
Most of the 35,000 Displaced Persons who arrived in Canada starting in 1947 settled in Toronto and nearby areas, with smaller groups in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Montreal. The 1950s experienced strong economic growth, social conformity – especially regarding gender roles – high birth rates, an expanding welfare state, growing consumerism, and the appearance of “teenage culture.” Canada differed from the USA, where approximately 80,000 Ukrainians had settled. It had a more liberal and socially oriented political culture. It saw itself as a “cultural mosaic” rather than a “melting pot,” and lacked powerful ultra-conservative, anti-communist movements like the John Birch Society or McCarthyism. Canada had a Progressive Conservative Party that was critical of the USSR and supported Ukraine, which also introduced major social programs and the Canadian Bill of Rights.
The Canadian context allowed émigrés to find employment easily, support their children’s education, and donate to establish new Ukrainian organizations that addressed social, cultural, and educational needs.
The role of the OUN-B’s community organization was significant, with youth groups, Saturday schools, dance groups, and choirs forming the core of community life. Others from Galicia organized Plast, which, like the OUN-B youth group, promoted Ukrainian patriotism. Political activity was mainly limited to calls for a free Ukraine made at community events. The new émigré community could not effectively explain the Ukrainian struggle to Canadians generally or to the 360,000 Ukrainian Canadians concentrated in the Prairie Provinces, many of whom had lost fluency in their heritage language since settling in 1891. This task fell to English speaking intelligentsia and professionals who understood Canadian society. The “baby boomers,” born after 1946, began to take on this work.