Ukrainian Far-Right Organisations

Golinkin’s text is in so far of interest as his argument is symptomatic for a recently emerged, more common Western approach to Ukraine that has become widespread among intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, and that understands itself as being left-wing. On closer inspection, the structural pattern of many of these interpretations of Ukraine, including Golinkin’s, reveals a style of argument whose stereotyping of a nation – in this case, of Ukraine – is characteristic of right- rather left-wing thought.

Genre et objet d’un consensus assez large, bénéficiant d’une image extrêmement positive à travers le monde — en témoigne le grand nombre de manifestations qui lui sont dédiées chaque année— le Métal et sa branche « Black » semblent avoir définitivement tourné la page polémique d’une histoire jalonnée de violences, de crimes et d’incidents. Si elle a pu apparaître dans ses débuts comme une musique souvent brutale, toujours militante, marquée du sceau de l’infâmie par la presse et le public non-initié, le Black Métal constitue aujourd’hui un genre lissé, plus policé, dont la philosophie anti-chrétienne et l’image extrémiste ne seraient à prendre qu’au second degré. Mais en dépit d’une « dédiabolisation » du genre, nombreuses sont les formations à plaider pour un retour sources et à rejeter l’idée d’un Black Métal devenu mainstream et aseptisé.

Principal foyer de cette scène revenue à ses fondamentaux : l’Est de l’Europe, et plus particulièrement l’Ukraine. Ces espaces culturels se distinguent par la profusion de groupes ayant su conjuguer l’esprit contestataire extrême et des revendications nationales exaltées. La guerre, qui marque une radicalisation des idées, constitue un véritable tremplin pour la construction et la diffusion des représentations géopolitiques de l’extrême-droite locale. Tentons ainsi de délimiter les liens intimes qui unissent la scène Black/Pagan Métal est-européenne à ces courants politiques nationalistes, et de mesurer leur interdépendance.

Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры. 2017. T. 14. № 1. http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss27.html

II.1. ОУН в 1930-е годы и во время германо-советской войны 1941-1945 гг.

Олена Петренко
Игры в эмансипацию: женщины и ОУН в 1930-х годах

Джон-Пол Химка
Львовский погром 1941-го: немцы, украинские националисты и карнавальная толпа

Гжегож Россолински–Либе
«Украинская национальная революция» 1941-го года: дискурс и практика фашистского движения

Дмитрий Титаренко
Пресса Украины периода нацистской оккупации как фактор украинской националистической пропаганды

Михаил Тяглый
«Цыганский вопрос» в идеологии и практике украинского национального движения во время Второй мировой войны


II.2. Формы и последствия коллаборационизма ОУН с нацистской Германией

Кай Струве
Команда особого назначения «Львов», украинская милиция и т.н. «Дни Петлюры» 25-26 июля 1941-ого года

Пер Андерс Рудлинг
Обучение убийству: шуцманшафт батальон 201 и гауптман Роман Шухевич в Белоруссии в 1942-ом году

Игорь Баринов
Союзники или коллаборанты? ОУН и нацистская Германия в ходе оккупации Украины в 1941-1943 гг.

Юрий Радченко
Дневник нацистского идеолога и бюрократа Альфреда Розенберга: Холокост и «восточная политика» Третьего Рейха

The Ukrainian Euromaidan protests started on 21 November 2013 and culminated in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych at the end of February 2014. As with other mass uprisings, it brought together, to the streets and squares, people with different grievances. However, those with the least progressive grievances significantly shaped the protests and, in the end, benefited the most from them.

Neither whataboutism, nor negationism, isolationism or escapism will help Ukrainians to alleviate the accumulating embarrassment that Kyiv’s glorification of war-time ultra-nationalists creates among its friends in the EU, North America and other world regions. The various lapses of Ukraine’s misconceived memory policies, especially during the last two-and-half years, are now hitting back, as they provide plenty of convenient manipulation material for the Kremlin’s propagandists, proxies and sympathisers. They undermine the trust of Ukraine’s major foreign partners in Kyiv’s project for a modern European Ukrainian state, at a time when Ukrainians need their help most.

Публiкацiя мiстить аналiтичний виклад результатiв дослiдження змiн ставлення до ЛГБТ, якi вiдбулись в українському суспiльствi за час, що минув з початку Євромайдану. Дослiдження базується на порiвняннi даних двох опитувань 2013 i 2016 рр., а також на на аналізі публiчних виступiв праворадикальних лiдерiв.

Правые - не враги европейского единства. Они наоборот хотят видеть Европу объединенной и сильной. Но такая Европа не имеет ничего общего с бюрократическими структурами, которые уничтожают коренные европейские народы.
Подробнее: http://azov.press/ru/vropeizaciya-bez-porad-andreasa-umlanda

В этом очерке не раскрывается весь многогранный и динамичный феномен новых добровольческих частей 2014 года. Вместо этого, я сфокусируюсь лишь на предыстории и некоторых аспектах возникновения одного особого и несколько девиантного примера общего феномена добровольцев6, а именно на раннюю историю одного из самых знаменитых из этих подразделений – полка «Азов». Более того, история этой структуры здесь рассматривается лишь с точки зрения политических, а не военных наук, т.е. как разновидность негражданского общества, а не вооруженных сил Украины. Иными словами, я сконцентрируюсь здесь на определенных особенностях создания «Азова», а не на боевых действиях, заслугах или возможных промахах этого подразделения. Последние представляют собой ещё более трудно исследуемые сюжеты, которые я не в состоянии обоснованно и компетентно оценить. Не столько сама известность, сколько причина западного медийного внимания к «Азову» – а именно, эксцентричные политические взгляды создателей подразделения – стали и для меня поводом для краткого рассмотрения специфики его предыстории, идеологии, руководства и создания. Неонацистские, как будет показано ниже, тенденции в этой теперь уже сравнительно большой военной части представляют собой проблему сразу в нескольких отношениях. Некогда явно фашистские взгляды главных командиров полка ставят под вопрос как его сегодняшнюю, в других отношениях, возможно, заслуживающую уважение боевую деятельность, так и послевоенное будущее «Азова».

Поддерживаемый государством апологетический подход к истории украинского ультранационализма оставляет мало места для адекватного признания, освещения и осуждения множества военных преступлений, совершенных членами ОУН(б). Он не допускает открытой общественной дискуссии о доле моральной и политической ответственности ее лидеров и идеологов за эти и другие массовые убийства гражданских лиц рядовыми украинскими националистами.

The repercussions of Ukraine’s failure to properly study, acknowledge, and teach the darker sides of its past are making themselves felt. Indeed, they seem to be causing international scandals with increasing regularity. The UINP and other activists are alienating Ukraine’s most important international partners and allies at a time when Ukraine needs their help the most. For these and other reasons, Ukraine should embrace a more academic and less escapist approach to understanding its wartime history — as most Western countries have eventually done.

The article discusses two far right movements that took part in the Ukrainian revolution in 2014. The author argues that, although the fact of the involvement of the far right in the revolution cannot be denied, the Russian media deliberately exaggerated this involvement to discredit the opposition to former President Viktor Yanukovych. Thus, the articles provides a more nuanced picture of the Ukrainian far right before, during and immediately after the revolution. This research draws on the interviews conducted by the author, video and photographic evidence, online and offline publications, results of public opinion polls, and secondary literature on the Ukrainian far right.

This paper analyzes the role of far right in the Ukrainian politics during the “Euromaidan” and the war in Donbas. The issue of the involvement of Ukrainian far right organizations in the “Euromaidan” and the war in Donbas have been politicized and polarized. Russian and separatist politicians and the media often presented the “Euromaidan” as a “fascist coup” and the Maidan government as a “fascist junta.” In contrast, the governments and the mainstream media in Western countries tended to present the role of the far right in the “Euromaidan” and in post-Maidan Ukraine, specifically in the conflict in Donbas, as marginal. Previous academic studies generally reached similar conclusions. They focused on numerical strength and electoral support for the far right parties and ignored other aspects of influence of the radical nationalist and neo-Nazi parties, specifically their role in the political violence, such as the Maidan and Odesa massacres and the war in Donbas. However, the number of academic studies of the contemporary far right in Ukraine is generally limited.
            The research question is as follows: What is the role of the far right in the Ukrainian politics during and after the “Euromaidan”? This study analyzes the involvement of specific Ukrainian radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations in the “Euromaidan,” the Odesa massacre, and the war in Donbas, their performance in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2014 and the 2015 local elections in Ukraine. The analysis focuses on major Ukrainian far right organizations, such as Svoboda (Freedom), the Right Sector, the Social-National Assembly, the White Hammer, the UNA-UNSO, Bratstvo, and C14, and paramilitary formations or special police and National Guard units organized and controlled to various extent by them, such as the Azov regiment, Dnipro, Donbas, Aidar, Sich, and St. Mary’s battalions, and the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. It uses various sources of data, such as online recordings of live broadcasts and videos of the Maidan and Odesa massacres and the war in Donbas, official database of court decisions in Ukraine concerning investigations of the involvement of the far right in major cases of political violence, video recordings of the Maidan massacre trial, information posted on websites and social media groups of far right organizations, and media reports in Ukrainian, Russian, and English languages.
            The study shows that the far right organizations had significant but minority representation among the Maidan leadership and protesters, the post-Maidan governments, and in the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections. However, the analysis also shows that the far right organizations and football ultras played a key role during violent attacks, such as attempts to storm the presidential administration on December 1, 2013 and the parliament of Ukraine in January and on February 18, 2014. There is also various evidence of the Right Sector involvement in a violent attack of the Berkut police during its highly publicized dispersal of protesters on November 30, 2013. The Right Sector and Svoboda and smaller organizations had a crucial role in the violent overthrow of the Viktor Yanukovych government, in particular, in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police on February 18-20, 2014. The study demonstrates that the Right Sector, the Social-National Assembly/ Patriot of Ukraine, and groups of football ultras were involved in the Odesa massacre on May 2, 2014. This paper also shows that the far right organizations and their volunteer battalions and paramilitary units had a significant role in the civil war in Donbas but a comparably minor role in fighting with several regular Russian military units during direct military interventions by Russia in August 2014 and February 2015. Major implications of this study for the Ukrainian politics and the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine are discussed in the conclusion. This paper implies that the far right has significant but not dominant role in the Ukrainian politics during and after the “Euromaidan.” But far right organizations and their armed units had a key role in major cases of political violence during and after the “Euromaidan,” and they attained ability to overthrow by force the government of the one of the largest European countries.

From the very beginning, the armed conflict that broke out in the Donbass in the spring of 2014 drew in right-wing radicals, on the Ukrainian as well as on the Russian side. Organised ultra-nationalist groups and individual activists established their own units of volunteers or joined existing ones.

The ideology, political traditions and general track record of these right-wing extremists meant that it was both natural and inevitable that they would take an active part in the conflict. Yet the role of right-wing radicals on both sides has on the whole been exaggerated in the media and in public discussion. This article demonstrates that Russia’s use of right-wing radicals on the side of the “separatists” in Donetsk and Lugansk provinces had greater military and political repercussions than the involvement of Ukrainian far-right groups in the “anti-terrorist operation”. The general course of the conflict, meanwhile, caused the importance of far right-groups on both sides to decline.