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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.
2014 •
The radical rightwing party Svoboda rose to prominence in Ukraine's 2012 parliamentary elections as an alternative to the political establishment, writes Anton Shekhovtsov, expert on Ukrainian rightwing groups. But its role in Euromaidan may well amount to Svoboda's swan song.
This paper focuses on the phenomenon of the All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" ("Freedom"). "Svoboda" is Ukrainian National Radical Right extremistic political party which has gained a dramatical succеss on the parliament elections-2012. The report discusses the causes of the growing popularity of this political forse in the modern Ukrainian social context. The author makes a special emphasis on the anti-Semitic content of the "Svoboda" ideology. The rhetoric of its leaders and activists, including newly elected MPs, is analised in detail. The growing popularity of the political party which sistematically uses xenophobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and welcomes the street violence against the political opponents, is of great concern in Ukrainian civil society and international community.
This paper analyzes public perceptions of Joseph Stalin and Stepan Bandera in modern Ukraine. It uses data from a national representative survey conducted in September 2013 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology for this study. The analysis reveals major determinants of attitudes toward the leaders of, respectively, the Soviet Union and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, amid continuing attempts to recast their political identities in contemporary Ukraine.
New Europe College Black Sea Link Program Yearbook 2014-2015
The Ukrainian Far Right and the Ukrainian Revolution2015 •
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 mass-murder of Poles in Volhynia in Western Ukraine during World War II. The mass murder of Poles by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Stepan Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) during the Nazi occupation of Volhynia in 1943 became an important political issue in Poland and Ukraine after the collapse of communism. Previous studies by Polish, Ukrainian, and Western researchers offered different and often divergent theories of this historical event. It is often presented in Ukraine as a mutual Ukrainian-Polish conflict. In contrast, in Poland, the mass murder of Poles in Volhynia is often characterized as genocide. A research question is whether this was a Ukrainian-Polish conflict, ethnic cleansing or genocide. This study analyzes a variety of archival documents, historical studies, and eyewitness accounts. It offers an estimate of Polish casualties derived from analysis of OUN-UPA, Polish, and Soviet, and sources and demographic data. This study concludes that the mass murder of the Polish minority in Volhynia by the OUN-B, the UPA, and their security service (SB) represented not a mutual Ukrainian-Polish conflict or genocide of Poles but that it was a part of ethnic cleansing.
Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
Oleksandr Zaitsev. De-Mythologizing Bandera: Towards a Scholarly History of the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement2015 •
Stepan Bandera (1909–59), the leader of the radical Ukrainian nationalist movement, is, perhaps, the most controversial figure in the history of Ukraine. One has only to compare the titles of some of his biographies, Stepan Bandera—Symbol of Revolutionary Determination, by Petro Mirchuk;1 Stepan Bandera—a Life Dedicated to Freedom, by Mykola Posivnych;2 and, finally, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, published by ibidem in 2014.3 In this collection of review essays, we use Rossoliński-Liebe’s recent book as a departure point for a broader discussion on the current state of the historiography on Bandera and on Ukraine’s recent past more broadly. Who was Stepan Bandera: an uncompromising revolutionary, a freedom fighter, or a fascist and an ideologue of “genocidal nationalism”? Historians and ordinary Ukrainians diverge radically in their answers to this question.
The mass protests of Ukrainian citizens and the ascendance of the new government in Kyiv were accompanied by an intense informational campaign, which had not always corresponded to the truth. In the terms of this campaign, Maidan's activists, the political opposition – and, correspondingly, the new government that was formed after the revolution ended in victory – were depicted as ultra-nationalistic, extremist, and xenophobic. Under these circumstances, it is extremely important for both Ukrainian citizens and foreign observers to understand the real role of national-radicals in the Maidan protests and the events which followed. Is it truth that the " banderovtsy " 2 made up the bulk of the protesters? Is the victory of the Maidan also the victory of the political ultra-right? What kind of future does the far right have in the new Ukrainian political reality?
Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse
From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: The Rise of the Ukrainian Far-Right Party Svoboda2013 •
What does Ukraine think?, edited by Andrew Wilson
The spectre of Ukrainian “fascism”: information wars, political manipulation, and reality2015 •
The rise of illiberal civil society in the former Soviet Union?
The unique extra-parliamentary power of Ukrainian radical nationalists is a threat to the political regime and minorities2018 •
In Marie Krarup. Ny kold krig. Gjern: Hovedland, (In Danish)
The Conflict in Ukraine and the New Cold War: An Interview (English-Language Text)2018 •