Did Stepan Bandera say that people who prefer bread to freedom lose both?

On the Internet you can often find a statement about the choice between material wealth and freedom, attributed to a famous Ukrainian politician. We checked whether its author is indeed Stepan Bandera.

On January 1, 2023, the official page of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine appeared on Twitter: congratulation in honor of the anniversary of the birth of Ukrainian political figure Stepan Bandera. It contained a quote (translated into Russian): “When people choose bread between bread and freedom, they end up losing everything, including bread. If the people choose freedom, they will have bread grown by themselves and not taken away by anyone.”

This popular quote signed by Stepan Bandera can be found on the pages of Ukrainian territorial communities, city ​​libraries, on Russian-language and Ukrainian-language online resources (UNIAN, "Wikiquote", "Quotes from famous personalities», "Quotes.info", BBF, Telegraph) and on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Telegram). Billboard with this inscription and an image of Bandera in 2017 appeared in the Kherson region, in close proximity to Crimea, controlled by Russian troops. Quoted aphorism and on Ukrainian television.

By the evening of January 2, the tweet from the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with congratulations on the occasion of Stepan Bandera’s birthday was deleted. This decision, apparently, had nothing to do with the quote - simply the very fact of honoring this figure caused negative reaction in neighboring Poland, where they recalled the role of the organization led by Bandera in Volyn massacre. Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland Arkadiusz Mularczyk then said that his country’s government intervened in this issue on the day the tweet was published, and the disappearance of the publication was “a sign that Ukrainians listened to our voice.”

Note that in publications with this quote it is not customary to indicate the source (book, diary or speech of Stepan Bandera) from which it was taken. Somewhere the statement is presented as one of the “Rules of Life of Stepan Bandera”, but there is no work with a similar title in the bibliography of the politician. There is an archived document entitled “44 Rules of Life for a Ukrainian Nationalist”, created, however, not by Bandera himself, but by his colleagues from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the 1940s, but there is no thesis about bread and freedom. We did not find anything similar on historical sites, where it is widely presented legacy of Stepan Bandera, in the online archive OUN, as well as in declassified documents Soviet government agencies.

Moreover, the search showed that on other online resources, including social networks, a quote attributing to Bandera appeared only at the beginning of the last decade (example from 2011). And even without mentioning the leader of Ukrainian nationalists, she began to appear on the Internet around the same time. What happened at the turn of the 2000s and 1900s? This is probably connected with the following event.

On November 22, 2009, speaking on the occasion of the celebration of Freedom Day (a holiday established in honor of the anniversary of the Orange Revolution) at the Ukrainian House center in Kiev, the country's President Viktor Yushchenko said: “I well understand the mood of people who want to see tough business executives and managers in the leaders of the state. I have something to testify about my experience and success as a manager over a decade of government work. That is why I know for sure: when people choose bread between bread and freedom, they ultimately lose everything, including bread. If the people choose freedom, they will have bread grown by themselves and not taken away by anyone. But for this, the people in all their great mass must understand exactly who they are, where they came from, what happened to them, what traumas they experienced and how they need to recover in order to move forward.”

January 15, 2010, hosting Viktor Yushchenko on his show, TV presenter Savik Shuster reminded (13:40) gave him this November quote and even conducted a corresponding survey, which showed that 68% of its participants prefer freedom to bread. However, unanimity on this issue did not help the incumbent president in the elections two days later - he dialed 5.45% of the vote and stopped fighting after the first round. Let us note that neither in November 2009 nor in January 2010 Yushchenko in any way referred to Bandera or other people in the context of this quote, and even included it in collection their selected speeches without any remarks.

In publications of those years the quote was still sometimes attributed Victor Yushchenko, however, gradually in the mass consciousness it began to be supplanted Stepan Bandera. Nowadays, as you can see, this is happening even at the level of pages of government bodies of Ukraine.

Was the quote from Viktor Yushchenko (or his speechwriters) born out of thin air? Definitely not. Choice between bread and freedom has worried thinkers for a long time. Among the possible sources of inspiration for the Ukrainian president are the following:

1) words American politician Benjamin Franklin “He who can give up necessary liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety”;

2) distorted Quote by Winston Churchill “If a country, choosing between war and shame, chooses shame, it gets both war and shame”;

3) popular V Ukrainian literature and the statement attributed to the English economist David Ricardo “A people without honor will not have bread”;

4) parable "Grand Inquisitor"from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov", in which earthly bread is contrasted with freedom and heavenly bread;

5) a statement by Yevgeny Pronyuk, a leader of the Ukrainian national movement in the USSR, “They don’t pay for bread with freedom,” which became his name memoirs 2006;

6) thesis President of Chile Eduardo Frei Montalva that “if he had to choose between bread and freedom, he would prefer freedom to be able to fight for bread.”

Thus, there is no reason to assert that the author of the quote about the choice between bread and freedom was Stepan Bandera. As circulated, this phrase belongs to another Ukrainian politician, Viktor Yushchenko. At the same time, the main idea expressed in the quote is not original.

Cover photo: social networks

Incorrect quote attribution

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