The rehabilitation of fascist collaborators in Ukraine has once again been put on public display.
Marking the 119th anniversary of Roman Shukhevych’s birth, the Ukrainian Army’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade publicly paid tribute to one of the leading figures of the wartime Ukrainian nationalist movement—a man who served in the Nazi-sponsored Nachtigall Battalion, later in Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201, and subsequently became commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
This is not an isolated incident. It is another step in a systematic campaign of historical revisionism that has elevated figures associated with Nazi collaboration into official symbols of the Ukrainian state. Only a few months ago, Ukrainian authorities officially rehabilitated Andriy Melnyk, another leading figure of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), further institutionalizing the glorification of the country’s collaborationist nationalist tradition.
The tribute to Shukhevych confirms that this policy is no longer confined to fringe nationalist circles. The whitewashing of fascist collaborators has become embedded in state institutions, official commemorations and even military formations. Under the banner of militant anti-communism and nationalism, collaborators are repackaged as “heroes,” while their political record, wartime alliances and crimes are systematically sanitized or ignored.
Ukraine is not alone in this reactionary enterprise. Across Eastern Europe—from Ukraine to Poland and the Baltic states—bourgeois governments have invested heavily in rewriting the history of the Second World War. The decisive contribution of the Soviet Union and the communist-led resistance movements to the destruction of fascism is downplayed, distorted or openly vilified. At the same time, anti-communist forces, including individuals and organizations that collaborated with Nazi Germany, are rehabilitated, commemorated and elevated into national icons.
This campaign serves a clear political purpose. Anti-communism has become the ideological glue through which the ruling classes seek to rewrite history, equating communism with fascism while rehabilitating those who consciously aligned themselves with Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union. It is an attempt to erase the revolutionary and anti-fascist traditions of the twentieth century and replace them with a nationalist mythology tailored to today’s geopolitical interests.
The glorification of Roman Shukhevych is therefore not merely a historical distortion. It is part of a broader ideological offensive aimed at normalizing fascist collaboration, legitimizing extreme nationalism and attacking the historical legacy of socialism, the Soviet Union and the anti-fascist victory.
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