Mykola Stsiborskyi

Mykola Stsiborskyi was born in Zhytomyr, Volhynian Governorate, Ukraine (then part of the Russian empire) to the family of a tsarist army officer. He grew up in Kyiv. During World War I, Stsiborskyi served in the Russian army as a captain. He was wounded twice and was awarded the Order of Saint Anna 3rd and 4th degrees, St. Stanislav of 3 degrees and Cross of St. George, 4th degree. [1] After World War I, during the Russian Civil War, Stsiborskyi served as a captain in the cavalry of the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic which had fought to establish an independent Ukrainian state against the Soviet forces. [2] Following the war he emigrated to Prague where he studied economics and engineering, joining the Ukrainian Military Organization, presiding the League of Ukrainian Nationalists and later the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. A gifted writer, he became quite influential within the OUN as its principal theorist. Stsiborskyi was one of eight members of the OUN's Provid, or leadership council, that in the 1930s had been based in Rome.[3]

Mykola Stsiborskyi (first row, right) next to OUN founder and leader Yevhen Konovalets in Paris, 1929

In 1939, while the OUN was preparing for its Second Congress, Stsiborskyi was assisted by Yaroslav Stetsko, a close ally of Stepan Bandera. Stetsko was relieved of his duties by Stsiborskyi due to allegations that he was unable to properly fulfill his duties. This act may have contributed to the deterioration between Bandera's followers and the Provid which would lead to the split within the OUN. Prior to the split Bandera's group demanded that Stsiborskyi and two others be removed from the Provid, a demand that was ignored by the OUN leader Andrii Melnyk.[4]

Stsiborskyi was the principal theorist of the OUN prior to its split into the hostile Melnyk and Bandera camps.[3] He believed that the idea of democracy that began to spread throughout the world following the French Revolution had reached its high point prior to World War I and subsequently came into decline. He wrote that democracy and capitalism were inseparable, and that the two systems helped bring about much material progress and innovation throughout the nineteenth century. He also saw them as fundamentally flawed. Stsiborskyi felt that democracy and capitalism required equal rights and freedoms while, at the same time, nature was inherently not equal. With time, the weak were bound by the capitalist system to become enslaved by the strong and the democratic slogans of universal brotherhood were considered by Stsiborskyi to be merely sentimental and empty phrases. The reality in a democracy, according to Stsiborskyi, was that political rights and social control existed in direct proportion to economic power. Democracy thus became a playground for competing groups, each promoting its own interests rather than those of the nation as a whole. These interests vie for votes, and employ bribery and corruption. For these reasons, Stsiborskyi felt that ultimately the most creative, talented, and best elements in a democratic society retreat from politics in disgust.[7]

Stsiborskyi considered socialism and communism to be identical in their theories and worldview, and wrote that both were flawed reactions to democracy's failures. He rejected their emphasis on the Proletariat (working class) and claimed that socialism, as well as communism, inevitably leads to a dictatorship in favor of one social group at the expense of others in the nation.[7]

In opposition to democracy, socialism and communism, Stsiborskyi admired Italy's fascism. In contrast to Democracy's "liberty, equality, fraternity" Stsiborsky praised Fascism's "duty, hierarchy, discipline". Stsiborskyi wrote that society should be organized according to the principles of national syndicalism, a socioeconomic system adopted by Benito Mussolini. Instead of competing political parties or social classes he proposed that an authoritarian one-party government should harmoniously unite all social groups under its control, which would prevent exploitation of some classes by others and would focus all of the nation's social elements onto the goal of national development rather than on the development of particular groups such as social classes. Stsiborskyi argued that fascist dictatorship represented a "cult of creativity" in opposition to democracy's "cult of numbers/votes." He rejected the old traditional elite in favor of a new one, arising from the people, characterized by its genius and willpower. But he also saw the permanence of dictorship - and the excessive statism and obedience of the masses that followed - as a flaw in fascism, which he argued ultimately resembled communism in this.[7] Stsiborski's major work, Natiocracy, included a chapter criticizing Hitler's dictatorship.[8] He also criticized Dmytro Dontsov, referring to him as a "swindler, panic-monger, and morally spineless speculator."[9]

Stsiborskyi was married to a Jewish woman [10] and in his writings opposed antisemitism. An article he wrote in 1930 in an official organ of the OUN, denounced the anti-Jewish pogroms that occurred in Ukraine during the time of the Russian Civil War, stating that most of its victims were innocent and not Bolsheviks. Stsiborskyi wrote that Jewish rights should be respected, that the OUN ought to convince Jews that their organization was no threat to them, and that Ukrainians ought to maintain close contacts with Jews nationally and internationally.[11] An internal German memo attributed the deterioration in the relationship between Germany and the OUN between 1933 and 1937 in part to Stsiborskyi having a Jewish wife. [12]