MIKOLA LEMIK'S DEED - A HISTORICAL ANTIDOTE AGAINST A VICTIM COMPLEX

A few days ago Ukrainian nationalists celebrate the anniversary of another significant event in the history of Ukrainian nation-liberation movement. On the 21th of October  1933 in the city of Lviv, following the order of the OUN leadership its member Mikola Lemik liquidated Alexei Mailov, the Chief of Staff of the USSR Consulate and the emissary of Soviet intelligence.

This assassination is significantly different from other ones performed by the Ukrainian nationalists of the middle of XX cent. Performing the task Lemik voluntarily surrended into the hands of the Polish police. The activist made this on purpose to provide maximal propagandistic and political effect for the assasination.

Elimination of the representative of Soviet consulate had become a symbolic act of Ukrainian revenge for the Holodomor, a man made famine arranged by Bolshevic authorities throughout the Ukrainian land. By ths action the nationalists had attempted to bear this issue to the international level.  

The assassination execution required great self-sacrifice from its performer, since other actions of this sort were extremely risky for their performers, but they were always able to escape after the work had been done. But Mikola's task was actually a suicide. 

Requirements to the candidate to perform the assasination were severe. He must not just eliminate the Kremlin's high ranking agent, but also be able to behave himself properly during the interrogation and trial. Mikola Lemik was chosen among several candidates.

Mikola Lemik's deed has become the final chord in the sery of anti-Bolshevik uprisings and radical actions that have taken place all over Ukraine occupied by Soviet Russia. 

There is a negative tendency in today's public historical discourse about the events of that period in the Ukrainian society - we often hear about the Holodomor, but unfortunately rarely about the anti-Soviet uprisings. In this manner the anti-Ukrainian forces are trying to cultivate a victim nation complex in people's minds. Mikola Lemik is a great historical example of a man with burning heart and a mind of a nation's defender, not a victim.