Why are Nazis acceptable in Ukraine?

Azov Battaltion insignia and Nazi symbols

One of Vladimir Putin’s demands is that Ukraine “de-Nazify.”

These days the word “Nazi” is often a general purpose insult with no specific meaning. except “very, very evil.” But there are Nazis in Ukraine, and they are the real thing.

I don’t want to exaggerate.  

Ukrainian neo-Nazis are few in number. Most estimates put hardo-core Nazis at less than 2 percent of the population.  The extreme nationalist Svoboda and Right Sector parties each received less than 2 percent of the vote in recent presidential elections.  

Volodymyr Zelensky, the current President of Ukraine, is Jewish, and he received more than 72 percent of the vote.  Most of the rest went to the incumbent.

On the other hand the neo-Nazi parties are part of the Ukraine’s governing coalition.  The Azov Battalion, whose members are openly neo-Nazi, is an important part of Ukraine’s fighting force.  The “Overton window”—the range of ideas that are acceptable to discuss—includes neo-Nazis.

To understand how this can be, you have to know about the Holodomor, also known as the Terror-Famine or Great Famine, imposed by Joseph Stalin on Ukraine from 1929 to 1933.  

It was one of the 20th century’s greatest crimes against humanity.  A United Nations report estimates it cost the lives of 3 million to 10 million Ukrainians.  It is officially recognized as genocide by Ukraine and 16  other countries.

Joseph Stalin forced millions in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union to starve to death in order to force the peasants into collective farms and gain control of the food supply.  He also suppressed Ukrainian cultural institutions.

Most historians interpret this as the Soviet Communist Party preemptively destroying all potential sources of resistance to the regime, including farmers who owned their land and individuals loyal to non-Russian cultures.

But there are those who see the Holodomor as an attempt by “the Russians” to destroy the Ukrainian race.  I’ve come across this meme serval times over the years while doing Internet research.  And I’ve also come across the meme that it was an attempt by “the Jews” to destroy the Ukrainian race.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s first look at the Ukraine terror-famine in all its horror.

The writer Arthur Koestler, in The Invisible Writing, described his disillusionment with Communism.  In 1932, as a new convert to Communism, he was invited to tour the Soviet Union.  At the entry point, at Kharkov in Ukraine, he noticed that all the other inbound travelers had luggage filled with food.

Hundreds of pounds of sugar, tea, butter, sausages, lard, biscuit and conserves of every variety were on the counters and grimy floors of the Customs shed.

I was startled by the look on the Customs’ officials faces while they were handling these foodstuffs.  It was a look of greed and resignation.  I had suffered hunger myself; the way a hungry man takes a piece of salami into his hands—the deference of his touch, and the pathetic gleam in his eyes—cannot be mistaken.

The train puffed slowly across the Ukrainian steppe.  It stopped frequently.  At every station there was a crowd of peasants in rags, offering ikons and linen in exchange against a loaf of bread.

The women were lifting up their infants in the compartment windows—infants pitiful and terrifying with limbs like sticks, puffed bellies, big cadaverous heads lolling on thin necks.

I had arrived, unsuspecting, at the peak of the famine of 1932-33, which had depopulated entire districts and claimed several million victims.  [snip]

My Russian traveling companions took pains to explain to me that these wretched crowds were kulaks, rich peasants who resisted collectivization of the land and whom it had therefore been necessary to evict from their farms.

Robert Conquest is the leading historian of Soviet crimes against humanity.  Here is the beginning of his 1986 book, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.

The attack on the peasantry was two-pronged.  First there was “de-kulakization.”  If a peasant was rich (for example, owned as much as three cows), he and his family could be stripped of everything they owned, including pots and pans, and sent to fend for themselves, usually to starve.  

Then there was confiscation of food of independent farmers, leaving them with almost nothing, because they allegedly were hoarders.  This took place not only in Ukraine, but all across Russia, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan. 

Conquest described how this worked, in painful detail in case after case, with anecdotes supported by research.  I found the book painful to read, both when it first came out and just now when I looked at it again.  If you lived in Ukraine at the height of the Holodomor, you could be sentenced to decades of forced labor for a simple act of kindness, such as giving a piece of bread to a starving child.

He wrote about the suppression of Ukrainian churches and cultural institutions.  One part that stuck in my mind was the roundup and execution of Ukraine’s blind bards.  They were unable to work in the fields, so they made their livings going from village to village and singing the great Ukrainian ballads and national songs.

Reminding Ukrainians of their free and heroic past was heresy.  Under Stalin, people were executed or imprisoned under just for arguing that national identity was as important as social class.

Considering all that happened, it should not have been surprising that, when the German armies invaded Ukraine in 1941, some (not all) of the Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators.

The German army had occupied Ukraine for about a year during World War One and set up a nominally independent Ukrainian government.  Ukrainians had a good memory of that occupation, especially compared to what came after, so it was natural that some of them welcomed the Germans back.

Big mistake!  Hitler’s plan for Ukraine and the other Slavic countries was to depopulate the countries by means of starvation and killing those who resist, and making the survivors into slaves for German settlers moving into their new living space.

But this was not apparent at first.  Some Ukrainians collaborated with the invaders out of opportunism, others out of genuine conviction.  A unit of the Waffen SS was composed largely of Ukrainian volunteers.

A Ukrainian nationalist named Stepan Bandera was originally a Nazi collaborator.  He believed Ukraine was for members of the Ukrainian race, and Jews, Russians, Poles, Tatars and other nationalities did not belong there.

But when he learned what the Nazis had in mind for Ukraine, he turned against them and was imprisoned.  He was released during the last stages of the war so he could form an independent Ukrainian army to resist the Soviets.

He survived the war, helped organize an anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance with the help of the CIA and was assassination by the KGB in Germany in 1959.

I don’t want to leave the impression that most Ukrainians were Nazi collaborators.  An estimated 4.5 million Ukrainians, including Zelensky’s grandfather,  served in the Red Army fighting the Nazis, and an additional 250,000 were partisans, fighting the Nazis behind the lines.

Even so, many Ukrainians today regard Stepan Bandera as a great national hero.

§§§

My reason for bringing these things up is that Naziism in Ukraine is a big issue today.  It affects the current situation in a big way.

When Ukrainians look at Vladimir Putin, many of them see Stalin.  When Russians look at Ukraine, many of them see Stepan Bandera.

A couple of years ago, Putin only demanded that Ukraine be neutral between Russia and NATO, like Finland and Sweden, and that it grant autonomy to the Donbas region, similar to what Canada has granted Quebec.  It didn’t seem to me then that this would be an unreasonable price to pay for peace.

More recently, he promised Ukraine autonomy if it demilitarized and de-Nazified.  If that means disbanding its army, including the Azov battalion, and purging neo-Nazis from government, it wouldn’t seem impossible.

But Putin says that he has a list of neo-Nazis who’ve committed crimes against Russians, and they will not escape justice, I’m reminded of the Soviet invasions of the 1940s.  Whenever the Red Army invaded a country, it had lists of people—patriots and anti-Communists—to be arrested.  Many were never seen or heard of again.  I don’t see how Zelensky could agree to giving Russia free rein to roam Ukraine and determine who should be arrested or executed.

But maybe it doesn’t matter, because Putin in his latest speech said that Ukraine is part of the Russian nation, and he’s not going to compromise.  At this moment, it doesn’t look like he will be satisfied with anything but surrender, so maybe de-Nazification is a moot point.

In the meantime, we Americans are in the position of supporting Nazis because they are fighting Russia.  It reminds me of U.S. support for former members of Al Qaeda because they were fighting Assad in Syria.  I think our government should be careful about who they us with.

LINKS

How Zelensky Made Peace With Neo-Nazis by Alex Rubenstein and Max Blumenthal for the Greyzone [Added 2022/3/5].  This is the best of the linked articles on the Azov Battalion.  (Hat tip to Bill Harvey)

Zelensky and the Fascists: “He will hang on some tree in Khreshchatryk” by Bernhard for Moon of Alabama [Added 2022/3/5]  Scroll down for the important part.

Article by Vladimir Putin “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.

Address by the President of the Russian Federation – February 24, 2022.

The Ukrainian Famine: How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions by Patrick J. Kiger for History.com.

Azov Battalion

Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment? by Al Jazeera. (2022)

Congress Has Removed a Ban on Funding Neo-Nazis From Its Year-End Spending Bill by James Cardin for The Nation (2016)

Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are on the March in Ukraine by Lev Golinkin for The Nation (2019)

U.S. and Ukraine, Only Two Countries Vote Against UN Resolution Condemning Naziism by the Countercurrents Collective. (2021)

The United States Is Reaping What It Sowed in Ukraine by Nicholas J.S. Davies and Medea Benjamin for The Progressive (2020)

Facebook Allows Praise of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Battalion by Sam Biddle for The Intercept.  (2022)

White Supremacists, Other Extremists Respond to Russian Invasion of Ukraine by the Anti-Defamation League.

Why is Russia invading Ukraine?  Putin’s “Nazi” rhetoric reveals his terrifying war aims by Zach Beauchamp for Vox.

Bunny Rabbits and the Big Bad Wolf: Ukraine and Russia Through the Lens of Western Reporting by Gilbert Doctorow.

How a Far-Right Battalion Became Part of Ukraine’s National Guard by Tim Hume for Vice.  [Added 03/18/2022]

Far-Right Extremists Have Been Using Ukraine’s War as a Training Ground by Tim Hume for Vice.  [Added 03/18/2022]

How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia by Alexander Rubenstein and Max Blumenthal for The Greyzone.  [Added 03/16/2022]

Tags: Azov battalion, Holodomor, Neo-Nazis, Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine Famine