Ukrainian Nazism today: origin and ideological and political typology

Unofficial translation

Eduard Popov
PhD
Director of the Independent
Non-Profit Organisation "Center for Public
and Information
Cooperation "Europe"

Modern Ukrainian nationalism / Nazism dates back to the early 1990s. Nazi proponents and social engineering technologies "exported" to Ukraine, which became an independent state, contributed to it.

Historical background. The history of Ukrainian nationalism is the history of the confrontation between the Ukrainian nationalism of the Great (Dnieper) Ukraine and the nationalism of Galicia of Austro-Hungarian origin. It began before World War I. First and foremost, it lead to political confrontation between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918-1920 (the leader of the UPR Symon Petliura actually betrayed the WUPR after he concluded an alliance with Poland at the expense of the former); secondly, it developed into a dispute between the Petliura's and Bandera's supporters, which resulted in the victory of Galician nationalism in the post-Soviet Ukraine. Galicia (the former historical region of Galician Rus, which was part of the Austrian and then Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1772 to 1918) got a de facto monopoly on ideology and became the center where most of the "old" nationalist parties and organizations were established and remains (along with Volhynia) the main electoral base for Ukrainian nationalism. The genesis of organized (party) Ukrainian nationalism / Nazism also goes back to the Galician versions. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was founded in 1929 and initially existed as a single organization. After the murder of its leader Eugene Konovalets by Pavel Sudoplatov, it split (in 1940) into the warring Bandera's and Melnikov's factions (OUN-B or OUN-R (revolutionary) and OUN-M). Since July 1919, Eastern Galicia and Western Volhynia became part of the Polish state and were subject to Polonization. That is why the OUN had a radical anti-Polish position. It endorsed also a pro-German geopolitical and pro-Nazi ideological approach during the chairmanship of Eugene Konovalets. After the split of the OUN both factions had the same mindset. Even before Hitler came to power, close ties were established between Ukrainian nationalists and the NSDAP; OUN activists studied in the party schools of the German Nazis. Subsequently, the intelligence services of Hitler's Germany took patronage over the OUN factions: Abwehr military intelligence – over the OUN-b, Sicherheitsdienst (SD, SS Security Service) – over the Melnikov's faction. For instance, the commander of the OUN-UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), the military wing of the OUN-B, Roman Shukhevych was Hauptmann of the Abwehr and was deputy commanding officer of the punitive and sabotage unit "Nachtigal" established by the Nazis in occupied Poland. A number of OUN ideologists and leaders openly called Ukrainian nationalism a part of the European fascist movement. It is important to note: The OUN gravitated not to Italian fascism (the doctrine of the corporate state), but to German National Socialism with its racial theory. Therefore, like the Croatian Ustaše, the OUN is a version of National Socialism with its genocidal practices of solving the national question. Ukrainian nationalists had no state of their own, and they received social support from illiterate villagers. Galicia and Volhynia, the two centers of Ukrainian nationalism, were backward regions dependent on agriculture. It is important to note that Poles and Jews represented the upper class of the social and cultural hierarchy in the more urbanized Galicia. Thus, Ukrainian nationalism, which developed imitating of German National Socialism, emerged in a culturally backward and agrarian environment and served as an ideological and political basis for ethnic revenge.

Like the Croatian Ustaše, the OUN linked territorial expansion to the issue of ethnic "purity." All peoples were divided into "friendly" and "unfriendly". The Jews, Poles, Russians, Hungarians (in the terminology of Ukrainian nationalists – Zhyds, Lyakhs, Muscals, and Magyars) occupied the "leading" positions among the latter. The former were to be evicted from the territory of Ukraine, while the latter were to be subject to violent acts, which were "justified" theoretically and exercised routinely.

On 30 June 1941, the day after the Red Army left Lvov, Bandera's proponents proclaimed the Ukrainian state under the leadership of Yaroslav Stetsko. Close cooperation with Hitler's Great Germany was proclaimed. After that, the first punitive action to implement the program of the OUN-R in the sphere of national policy began: The extermination of the Polish and Jewish population of Lvov. Historians estimate that the number of Jewish victims between 30 June and July 2 and on July 25 was 4.000-5.000 people. The number of Polish victims is considerably lower in quantitative terms (a few dozen people), but affected the Polish cultural and scientific elite: Ukrainian nationalists literally hanged Polish professors from street lamps. It was decided to create the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) led by Roman Shukhevych (call sign: Tasras Chuprinka) at the third conference of the OUN-B in February 1943. It was also decided to radically solve the Polish question. This was the start of the Volyn Massacre – the extermination of the Polish population in the region. The Polish Sejm and Senate recognized the Volhynia Massacre as an act of genocide of the Polish people in 2016. 17 July is commemorated annually as a day of remembrance for the Polish victims. In total, between 30,000 and 60,000 Poles were exterminated during the Volhynia Massacre, which was carried out by both factions of the OUN and Bulba-Borovets' Polissian Sich. The total number of Polish people who fell pray to Ukrainian nationalists in Galicia and Volhynia alone is up to 200.000. In addition, Ukrainian nationalists, being part of punitive units in the service of the Wehrmacht and SD police units, destroyed hundreds of Belarusian villages and hamlets. Ukrainian nationalists from the OUN-M burned the Belarusian village of Khatyn with its inhabitants.

At the end of the war and immediately after its conclusion, many fighters and activists of the OUN-B and OUN-M shielded themselves from retribution in the United States and Canada. This would have been impossible without the support and direct sanction of the state authorities in the USA and Great Britain. After the collapse of the USSR, the US ruling circles "exported" Nazi proponents and social engineering technologies back to Ukraine and ensured that they entered the scientific and educational area. At the same time, the party structures of Bandera's and Melnikov's proponents were reestablished.

Thus, modern Ukrainian Nazism has ideological and organizational continuity from Hitler's collaborators of World War II, the executioners of Volyn and Khatyn.

Organized Ukrainian nationalism/Nazism in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Let us briefly list the organizational structures of the successor organizations of OUN-B and OUN-M in post-Soviet Ukraine. We will tentatively call them "old nationalists".

This generation / direction is represented by two groups of parties – parliamentary and of direct action. The parliamentary type includes:

- The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – (Bandera's or "revolutionary" wings) and

- Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (once part of the electoral bloc "Our Ukraine") – a party to pass into parliament (was created on the basis of the OUN);

- Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – Andrey Melnyk's faction;

- All-Ukrainian organization Svoboda, whose program is based on the principle of "national democracy", i.e. democracy only for Ukrainians.

Parties and organizations of the direct action type include:

- The Ukrainian National Assembly political party (after its charismatic leader Dmitry Korchynsky left it), which has a paramilitary wing called the Ukrainian National Self-Defense. Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA-UNSD) then found itself fragmented into a number of organizations. It has long lacked the strength it had in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The role of UNA-UNSD is also characterized by the fact that in the 1990s and early 2000s it served as an instrument of external expansion and performed the tasks assigned by the Ukrainian military intelligence service (GUR MO) – so it was what is now called a proxy force. This was the case during the Transnistria conflict. But the most obvious external activity of the UNA-UNSD manifested itself in anti-Russian actions: The war in Abkhazia on the side of Georgia, the two Chechen wars, and the conflict in South Ossetia.

The participation of UNA-UNSD militants, a proxy force of Ukrainian military intelligence, in two military conflicts on the territory of Russia (Chechen Republic), their participation (along with Ukrainian special forces and other military specialists) in Georgia's attack on Russian peacekeepers in August 2008 allows us to highlight Russian-Ukrainian relations in a different way. At least three times and in a limited way Ukraine invaded Russian territory and participated in acts of aggression against Russian servicemen – soldiers of the peacekeeping battalion in Tskhinvali.

- The "Trident named after Stepan Bandera" public organization, which was founded on the initiative of the OUN-R and had a reputation of the most radical nationalist force in the 1990s-2000s. Dmitry Yarosh, the self‑proclaimed leader of the Right Sector organization, an association of Ukrainian nationalists of the Euromaidan, made his name in the Trident. It is noteworthy: Trident's ideological development has stopped at the level of the 1940s, which has been the subject of scathing and mocking remarks from their rivals among the "New Right";

- Social National Party of Ukraine, which served as basis for the All‑Ukrainian organization "Svoboda" (with its leader Oleg Tyahnybok); the Youth Nationalist Congress, and a number of other organizations.

Various structures of "old nationalists" are in favor of redrawing the existing borders and "returning" lands with Ukrainian ethnic population to Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalists have territorial claims to all neighbors of Ukraine, including Poland, who is the main ally and lobbyist of Ukraine in the EU (historical lands of Ancient Rus – Podlachia, Chełm Land, the Lemko Region, etc.). But the most large-scale territorial claims are against Russia: territories of the Lower Don (or the entire Don), "Ukrainian" Kuban (in 1792, Russian Empress Catherine the Great granted the Cossacks of the Faithful Black Sea Troops, whom Ukrainian propaganda considers to be Ukrainians, lands in the Kuban, which were earlier reclaimed from the Ottoman Empire). The old slogan "to return the lands "from San to Don", included in the anthem of Ukraine, is shared by all groups of Ukrainian nationalists. However, some go even further in their territorial claims and demand to "return" to Ukraine the lands of the so-called Grey and Green Ukraines – the territories of settlers (migrants) from the Malorossiya provinces of the Russian Empire who moved to the Southwestern Siberia and the Far East, respectively.

The "New Right", another generation / direction of Ukrainian nationalism / Nazism, are represented by the following structures:

• Dmitry Korchinsky's organizations: UNA-UNSD in the 1990s, Brotherhood in the 2000s;
• The Kharkov-based "Patriot of Ukraine", a paramilitary wing of the Social National Assembly, as well as a number of ideologically close organizations.

During the period of the so-called Euromaidan, a number of organizations close to the Patriot of Ukraine emerged and conducted activities, which can be rather attributed to the racist camp than to traditional Ukrainian nationalists ("White Hammer" and others).

The geographical (civilizational) aspect of Ukrainian nationalism deserves separate consideration. Lvov, the "Piedmont of Ukrainian nationalism", was also the intellectual center of the "old nationalism". However, the demographic, economic, and intellectual resources of Galicia were no match for the Russian language and culture of the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine – the historical Slobozhanshchyna (part of the Moscow (Russian) state since 1500) and Novorossiya (joined the Russian Empire after the victories of the Russian Imperial Army during the 18th century). In the new historical conditions, the dispute between Bandera's and Petliura's proponents – western and eastern Ukrainian nationalists – has been revived. In the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, historical Novorossiya, the socio-cultural environment was different: Urban population was developed and educated; major urban centers emerged and developed rapidly: Kharkov, Donetsk, Odessa. Kiev, Russian in language and culture, should also be included here. The activists of Ukrainian nationalist movements in these regions came from among soccer ultras.

The most interesting example is the public organization "Patriot of Ukraine", established in Kharkov in 2005. The genesis of this organization dates back to the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine (SNPU), which was the most radical nationalist organization in the 1990s. The SNPU structure included the youth paramilitary wing Patriot of Ukraine, whose name and logo were adopted by Kharkov and Donetsk nationalists. Kharkov, the first capital of Soviet Ukraine, has always had a special status; it is the second most populous city in Ukraine. Special literature in Russian was prepared for the Patriot of Ukraine, and Russian was the working language of the organization.

The leader of Patriot of Ukraine was Andrey Biletskyi, the future founder and first commander of the Azov battalion/regiment and its "subsidiary" units, a historian by education. He is referred to by the honorable nickname White Leader in the Nazi milieu. He had been an activist of Ukrainian nationalist organizations ("Trident named after Stepan Bandera"), until he established the above-mentioned public organization "Patriot of Ukraine" – a military wing of the Social National Assembly ("twisted" name of Hitler's National Socialism). Andrey Biletskyi and the main ideologist of the Patriot of Ukraine, historian Oleg Odnorozhenko, were arrested during Yanukovych's presidency and released after the victory of Euromaidan. After his release from prison, Biletsky immediately engaged in military, political and public activities. He and his associates from the Patriot of Ukraine managed to form one of the most combat‑ready (primarily in terms of motivation) units of the Ukrainian Army / National Guard, which gained valuable combat experience in many key battles of the war in Donbass. "Azov", which became world famous, was captured during the battles for Mariupol in May 2022. The unit is currently being rebuilt.

We are more interested in political and public initiatives of Andrey Biletskyi and Social Nationalists.

In October 2016, the political party "National Corps" was established on the basis of the Azov regiment. The leader of the party was Andrey Biletskyi.

The main directions of non-political activities of the structures established on the basis of the Azov Regiment:

1. Work with children:

• Joint leisure time at sports, tourist,military and educational events and competitions, "lessons of courage" in schools, opening of free sports sections as well as free military and patriotic camps.
• Fund rising to help orphans.

2. Work with young people:

• Free sports sections and military and patriotic camps.
• Various sports tournaments, from soccer to hand-to-hand combat.
• Concerts and festivals of musical groups which have cult status in their environment, i.e. work with youth subcultures.
• Seminars and lectures for students in universities, of course, with a certain ideological overtone.

3. Promotion of their own ideology in society and provision of an alternative ("third way") against the background of growing disillusionment with liberal ideology and practice, including Ukraine's "ally" – the European Union.
4. Addressing problems not directly related to politics:
5. Support of protests of ordinary citizens against illegal constructions.
6. Organizational assistance to protests in Kiev, also by force. For example, assisting the Ukrainian miners' union, which demanded payment of salary arrears and reduction of utility tariffs.
7. Raids against drug dealers in places where drugs are distributed.
8. Military and intelligence area:
9. According to some reports, when the Patriot of Ukraine was active, close contacts were established with military intelligence (GUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine) and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Training of militants (so-called "vyshkyls") of the PoU was conducted with the help of paratrooper officers and special forces and included a full course for young fighters. As a result, Kharkov neo-Nazis turned out to be the most prepared volunteer fighters to participate in combat operations.
10. Regular improvement of combat training and establishment of necessary contacts with officers of the UAF and SBU. Andrey Biletskyi and his entourage clandestinely promote the following idea: The regime of "internal occupation" (illegitimate presidents – Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky) will not last forever. Security, defense and law enforcement agencies need their own man in power, and better – at the head of the state. Andrey Biletsky, the "White Leader", aspires to play this role.
11. Establishment of contacts with representatives of foreign (primarily American) special services and officers from the armies of NATO countries operating in Ukraine, as well as numerous mercenaries and volunteers from neo-Nazi circles in Europe and Western countries. The goal is to create and strengthen foreign ties with a view to the future.

Targeted public work of this force, which is done professionally, should be highlighted. Along with military and paramilitary structures, the Patriot of Ukraine members have created their own party, the National Corps, and a number of civil organizations, including labor unions. The goal is to go beyond the narrow confines of the nationalist electorate. This is the same kind of work Adolf Hitler did in the 1920s struggling for the votes of the German proletariat.

The "New Right" or Social Nationalists are a force with strategic thinking. Andrey Biletskyi, the White Leader of the Ukrainian and European Nazis, in response to the question what he considers his greatest achievement, named not the creation of the "Azov" battalion / regiment and the party National Corps, but children's camps.

Ideologically and intellectually, the "New Right" is a qualitatively different force than the "old nationalists" whom Social Nationalists openly despise ("idiots from Trident"). Social nationalists directly appeal to the original German National Socialism, rather than to its outdated Ukrainian epigones – Bandera's and Melnikov's proponents, etc. The intellectual "library" of these structures also includes the achievements of modern Western neo-Nazis and racists. Social Nationalists, however, did not break with the old symbols and added the "heroes of OUN-UPA" into their pantheon – the "nation" needs its "heroes". But the main idea is imitation of the German National Socialism and its development, the main hero is Hitler, not Bandera.

Geopolitical aspirations of the Ukrainian Social Nationalists are much larger, and their horizon of thinking is wider than the provincial imperialism of the "old" nationalists of Galicia. The latter dream of a "great Ukraine" "from San to Don" (or to the Caspian Sea), that is, of redrawing borders in Europe, including at the expense of the "ally" Poland. These plans demonstrate their political utopianism, but at the same time the narrowness of their political horizons. The plans of the Social Nationalists are much grander: Establishment of a Central European confederation (of course, under the aegis of Ukraine) of racially pure states with an eye on Western Europe. This new force will exercise control over all of Eurasia, and thus over the world. This is nothing but the return of Adolf Hitler's geopolitical aspirations from political oblivion.

So the "old nationalists" want a Great Ukraine for Ukrainians. The New Right (Social Nationalists) want the Great White Eurasia with the center in Ukraine under the rule of the White Leader.

Russia and the world do not understand the nature of modern Ukrainian Nazism. The world (the West) prefers not to notice it and to stigmatize any considerations concerning this problem as a "Russian propaganda". Russia struggles with old phantoms, still perceiving modern Ukrainian Nazis as Bandera's proponents. The thinking of "old nationalists" is fundamentally not even provincial – it is khutor-wide. During the war in Donbass, fighters of Ukrainian Nazi battalions from Galicia really dreamed of making slaves out of local "inferior" inhabitants.

The Bandera's proponents have not disappeared, but have yielded the palm of victory to a more dynamic and powerful force – the new Nazism, which has developed in the urban centers of the east and south part of today's Ukraine, with Russian urban culture as well as the propensity and ability to think in terms of the whole world.

The above mentioned explains why Ukraine has become the mecca of European and, in general, all neo-Nazis in the world. "Old nationalists" with their miserable cult of political losers such as Bandera and Shukhevych could not interest neo-Nazis in Europe or North America. The structures that grew out of the Patriot of Ukraine in Kharkov are completely different. The ideas of white racism, a kind of racist globalism, the rejection of narrow ethnic boundaries (ideological neo-Nazis from the Russian Federation also fight on the side of the Azov regiment), a very modernist ideology aimed at the future, and, finally, the charismatic figure of the White Leader Biletskyi – all together had predetermined the popularity of the Azov regiment and its subsidiaries among racists and neo-Nazis around the world.

Along with the "old nationalism" (Bandera's proponents) and the Social Nationalism which developed on the basis of the Kharkov-based Patriot of Ukraine, there is another kind of Ukrainian Nazism. Its source is the Ukrainian public authorities. After the coup d'état on 21 February 2014, carried out by the US, UK and a number of EU countries, the state of Ukraine as such does not exist. It is more correct to speak about the state in Ukraine. Ukraine as a state has been abolished and is under external administration. State institutions responsible for ideology and education have adopted the slogans and ideologemes of the Ukrainian Nazis: For example, the greeting "Glory to Ukraine!" adopted by the UPA is now officially used in the Ukrainian army. Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych are officially included in the list of heroes. The state authorities in Ukraine are pursuing a policy of Nazification, many provisions of which are borrowed from the programs of the OUN. Such as:

- Cultural and educational policy of post-Maidan Ukraine, aimed at the complete eradication of the languages of indigenous peoples and national minorities of Ukraine and, mainly, Russians – the people who did establish the Ukrainian statehood along with the Ukrainians themselves.

- Complete subordination of the church to the state, banning of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) and creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine which is schismatic in its essence. These acts should also be qualified in the spirit of the Nazi formula "One country, one people, one language, one church".

In fact, the state in Ukraine has officially banned the right to existence of the canonical Orthodox Church and the Russian people ("there are no Russian minorities in Ukraine" – said speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk).

Here is another case which demonstrates how people in Russia misunderstand the phenomenon of modern Ukrainian Nazism: The Ukrainian nation is referred to as if it existed, whereas the Ukrainian nation is a project, something to be created. By the way, the most far-sighted Ukrainian nationalists understand this. It is not by chance that there is no room for primitive Russophobia in the ideology of the Azov regiment and the National Corps. On the contrary, there is a struggle for the support of Russians, which is not surprising: Many of the Azov's leaders are Russians. It's just that Russians are suggested to dissolve into the "Nation of Heroes" – a Ukrainian nation being constructed from various parts.

The construction of the Ukrainian nation is under way in today's Ukraine. And it is being created thanks to ... Russia. The special military operation was the catalyst of this process. The foundation of the Ukrainian nation, the "Nation of heroes", is not only and not so much the low-literate farmers of Galicia and the villagers of Volhynia, but also Russian-speaking inhabitants of Kiev, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk, who know Russian culture. And their hatred for Russians is all the stronger because by blood and language we are one people. As answering the question: "Why do you hate us so much?", the character in the novel by the Serbian writer Vuk Drašković said, - "Because we are you."

Social engineering technologies used by the state authorities in Ukraine are also aimed at the creation of a new, artificial Ukrainian nation. However, one can hardly doubt that both the strategic plan and technologies were created not by Ukrainians, but in the "laboratories" of the United States. "Bricks" of the foundation for the creation of this nation are Russians and other indigenous peoples as well as national minorities of Ukraine.

So, in modern Ukraine there are (or rather, coexist) varieties of Ukrainian Nazism: "old nationalists" (notionally Bandera's proponents), the New Right or Social Nationalists, and finally, Nazi practices of the state authorities in Ukraine. "Ukrainian Nazism" is a more accurate term than the "Ukrainian nationalism." The symbolic date of the death of the Ukrainian "nationalism" (if it had even existed before) was 2 May 2014, when the Trade Unions building in Odessa was burned down. Official number of victims was 48. Applying the term "nationalists" to Ukrainian followers of Hitler and SS means moral compromise with absolute evil and an incorrect method of categorizing ideological and political phenomena.

We would also like to emphasize: The rise of Nazism in Ukraine and the already accomplished transformation of this country into the epicenter of world Nazism/neo-Nazism is no longer a factor of internal Ukrainian politics or even Russian-Ukrainian relations. This is an important aspect of pan-European, and perhaps even world, politics. Even Russia's victory on the battlefields of the "so-called" special military operation will not lead to a complete destruction of this dangerous force. The post-war existence of the surviving OUN structures (with the active support of the intelligence and government agencies of the United States, Great Britain and NATO) supports this prediction. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian New Right (Social Nationalists) have incomparably greater demographic and intellectual resources.

The expansion of the Ukrainian Social Nationalism will not necessarily be conducted under Ukrainian slogans. The certain popularity of the Ukrainian Nazism among the Russian far-right may be explained by the flexibility and adaptability of this movement to the conditions of a new environment. Instead of the Ukrainian nationalism, white racism and even Pan-Slavism may come to the forefront. That is why it is so important to conduct a targeted study of this phenomenon.