Andreas Umland. Demokratizatsiya. Volume 28, Issue 2, Spring 2020.
For most of Ukraine’s post-Soviet history, as the country grappled with enormous social, economic, and international tensions, party-political ultra-nationalism—as opposed to organized moderate nationalism—was surprisingly unsuccessful in national electoral contests. Nationalist slogans gained prominence during Ukraine’s 2004 electoral uprising, which came to be known as the Orange Revolution.
The subsequent Revolution of Dignity of 2013-2014, while demonstratively pro-European, had similarly “nationalizing” effects. It also provided ample opportunity for far-right propaganda, whose representatives and symbols (flags, stickers, slogans, etc.) became prominent not only on Kyiv’s Independence Square, but across the country. Though neither ideologically trend-setting nor politically dominant, both moderate and radical nationalist tendencies were constituent elements of the eventually violent uprising that became known as “Euromaidan” (literally, European Square).
Since 2014, a-if not the-major factor that has increased Ukrainian society’s receptivity to various forms of nationalism, including radical ethno-centrism, has been Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Russia’s only thinly disguised “delegated interstate war” against Ukraine has provided, and continues to provide, fertile ground for political radicalization and mobilization. Intra-Ukrainian confrontations about how to adequately respond to the Kremlin are dividing Ukrainian society and creating openings for extremists. Unlike in Italy and Germany in the 1920s or in Serbia and Russia in the 1990s, however, the country’s massive real and perceived war-related losses (lives, health, territories, homes, income, wealth, infrastructure, etc.) have failed to generate a powerful Ukrainian ultra-nationalist movement. Yet although far-right parties remain politically weak, radical nationalist politicians and ethnocentric NGOs are more visible in the public arena than they were a decade ago.
Although the Kremlin’s various actions against the Ukrainian state before and since the Euromaidan have had a major influence on right-wing extremism in contemporary Ukraine, they are not its only determinants. Sociologists have long noted xenophobic attitudes among the Ukrainian people, and these have been growing rather than diminishing over time. In addition, there was and continues to be a broad spectrum of radical-nationalist concepts, conspiracy theories, and ethno-centric ideas derived from Ukraine’s pre-Soviet, Soviet-era and post-Soviet history.
Among these, the popular mythology of “Judeo-Bolshevism”-the antisemitic conspirology of the allegedly crucial role played by Jews and Judaism in the rise of the radical left in Russia and elsewhere-continues to play a prime role. Certain inter-war and World War II nationalist traditions were continued in parts of the Ukrainian diaspora living in Western Europe and North America. Since 1991, some of these-partly liberal, partly extreme-nationalist ideas have been re-introduced by emigre activists and organizations that have re-engaged with their homeland, especially Western Ukraine.
Nevertheless, at the national level, the Ukrainian far right has fared miserably in all presidential and almost all parliamentary elections since independence. Admittedly, party-political post-communist ultra-nationalism has remained weaker across Eastern Europe since the break-up of the Soviet bloc than comparativists of right-wing extremism had anticipated. Nevertheless, the electoral weakness and low political legitimacy of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists is historically and comparatively remarkable. It is particularly surprising when viewed against the background of both favorable conditions for the rise of Ukraine’s far right since 1991 and the rise of various populist and extremely right-wing parties in many East and West European countries-from Russia and Serbia to France and Italy-over the past 30 years. Nor did the war-related absence of large parts of Ukraine’s Russophone non-nationalist electorate in Crimea, the Donbas, and Russia from the 2014 and 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections lead to an electoral breakthrough for party-political ultra-nationalism. The post-Soviet Ukrainian far right’s continuing irrelevance to Ukraine’s legislature and executive, an increasingly noteworthy peculiarity of post-Soviet Ukrainian politics, has meant that the academic study of its contemporary permutations remains underdeveloped, in contrast to the burgeoning scholarship on historical Ukrainian ultra-nationalism.
Svoboda’s Brief Rise in 2012-2014
In the post-Soviet period, there have been only two years in which a far-right party has been represented with a sizable group in parliament. That party, the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (Freedom), led by Oleh Tiahnybok, had a small faction in Ukraine’s unicameral national legislature, the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council), from December 12, 2012, until November 27, 2014, comprising 37 of the parliament’s 450 seats. For approximately nine months between late February and late November 2014, Svoboda also had a few ministers in Ukraine’s first post-revolutionary government. In view of Svoboda’s antisemitic tendencies, among other characteristics, this was a worrisome development.
Yet Svoboda’s relative electoral success in the proportional part of the October 2012 parliamentary elections, where it garnered 10.44% of the vote, and its inclusion in the first post-Euromaidan government turned out to be nothing more than a brief and non-indicative episode. The peculiar political conditions surrounding Svoboda’s rise, as well as its unusually well-educated, pro-European, and urban electorate, indicated that its relative high support among Ukraine’s voters in October 2012 was an exceptional rather than symptomatic development.
Svoboda’s brief foray into national-level politics was a function of Russia’s intensifying media campaign and diplomatic activism against Ukraine’s turn to the West following the Orange Revolution and the election of the moderate nationalist Viktor Yushchenko as President in late 2004. It was also a result of the organizational disarray in the national-democratic camp: although their parliamentary factions had enough seats to form a majority in the Verkhovna Rada in 2010-2012, the “Orange” forces (so named in memory of the Orange Revolution) could not hold their deputies together after losing the country’s presidency to Viktor Yanukovych in spring 2010.
Svoboda’s triumphant entry into the Verkhovna Rada following the 2012 parliamentary elections was, above all, a reaction to the manifestly pro-Russian activities of various members of Ukraine’s government since 2010. With their cultural and foreign policies-which most nationalists and many liberals considered offensive-President Viktor Yanukovych and his team had, for almost two years, radicalized large parts of Ukraine’s patriotic and otherwise non-extremist electorate. Moreover, there was on obvious effort, in 2010-2012, of Yanukovych’s “political technologists” to artificially increase the media presence of the then still extra-parliamentary far right, as a means to split Ukraine’s overall patriotic electorate as well as nationalist party-spectrum, and in order to receive, in the form of a potent far right contender, a convenient sparring partner for future elections.
At the same time, a number of deputies who had been elected, in the previous parliamentary elections of 2007, via the lists of the pro-Western Bloc “Our Ukraine—People’s Self-Defense” and Iuliia Tymoshenko Bloc betrayed, in 2010, their parliamentary mandates after Yanukovych had become president. These supposedly national-democratic deputies switched—as so-called “tushki” (an untranslatable Russian word meaning dead bodies of animals)—to the new governing coalition supporting the cabinet of the manifestly pro-Russian and EU-sceptic new Prime-Minister Mykola Azarov, in spite of them being elected on closed lists of “Orange” electoral blocs. Against this background, one of Svoboda’s 2012 key electoral promises—duly held afterwards—was that its candidates for parliament would, if elected, not betray their voters’ mandate.
After the Revolution of Dignity in early 2014, a few Svoboda politicians were appointed to Ukraine’s first post-Euromaidan cabinet. Once again, this success was due at least in part to disarray in the “Orange” camp. Following a disagreement between the two main national-democratic factions-the All-Ukrainian Union “Bat’kivshchyna” (Fatherland) and UDAR (Ukrains’kyy alians za demokratychnyy reformy—Ukrainian Alliance for Democratic Reforms)-the latter was excluded from the post-revolutionary interim government, in spite of the fact that its leader Vitalyy Klychko had been an active participant in the Euromaidan and was, by that time, Ukraine’s most popular politician. In order to avoid a single-party cabinet, Bat’kivshchyna assigned four cabinet posts-namely, the Ministers of Defense (Ihor Teniukh), Agrarian Policy & Foodstuffs (Ihor Shvayka), and Ecology & Natural Resources (Andriy Mokhnyk), as well as one Vice-Premier (Oleksandr Sych)-and the post of General Prosecutor (Oleh Makhnits’kyy) to Svoboda in late February 2014. In the nine months that followed, Tiahnybok’s Svoboda largely followed the national democrats’ political lead in government. For example, Svoboda’s Minister of Defense Ihor Teniukh (who resigned as early as the end of March 2014) upheld the Ukrainian leadership’s controversial decision to not resist Russia’s annexation of Crimea using military force-a position that incurred criticism from fellow rightists. In September 2014, Svoboda’s parliamentary faction unanimously voted for the ratification of Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU-an unusual decision for a European far-right party. These and a number of other developments saw Svoboda move to the political center during and after the Euromaidan.
As noted above, the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas were favorable for Ukrainian ethno-centrist parties, as they removed from the electorate millions of voters who would have been unlikely to vote for those parties. Nevertheless, Svoboda’s share of the vote in the October 2014 parliamentary elections was less than half what it had earned in the October 2012 contest. Earning just 4.7% of the vote in the proportional representation part of the election, Svoboda failed to cross the 5% threshold for representation and thus held only the few seats that it had won directly in the 8th Verkhovna Rada of 2014-2019.
In the July 2019 parliamentary elections, Svoboda’s electoral support once again declined by more than half, leaving the party with just 2.15% of the vote. This occurred notwithstanding the aforementioned favorable shift in Ukraine’s voting population, five years of war with Russia since 2014, and the successful formation since March 2017 of a unified far-right list that brought together all the relevant ethno-centrist parties. As of early 2020, therefore, Svoboda-Ukraine’s leading party on the far right in general and in the ultra-nationalist space in particular-is in tis in a position not much different from the one it was in during the mid-2000s, after the Social-National Party was rebranded as the All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom.” Paradoxically, the myriad disturbances that have shaken the Ukrainian political scene since 2013-full-scale revolution, inter-state war, territorial losses, social deprivation, etc.-have not benefitted Ukrainian party-political ultra-nationalism. Rather, they have marginalized it or at least failed to prevent its re-marginalization by mid-2019.
Ukraine’s Ultra-Nationalist Potential
To be sure, Ukraine, like most European countries, has a spectrum of rightwing parties that began to emerge as early as the late 1980s. Similarly to far-right parties around the world, anti-Semitism remains a salient feature of these parties’ discourse. Since 1991, about a dozen nationalist political organizations have participated in national, regional, and local elections, sometimes forming electoral alliances with one another or with more moderate groups. Moreover, the far right has participated in all three of Ukraine’s recent so-called revolutions centered on Kyiv: the 1990 Revolution on the Granite, the 2004 Orange Revolution, and the 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity.
Ukraine’s far right features a number of prominent leaders with nationwide name recognition. Among them are:
- Iuriy Shukhevych, son of the 1943-1950 UPA commander Roman Shukhevych;42
- Dmytro Korchyns’kyy, a veteran ultra-nationalist activist with high media presence;43
- Oleh Tiahnybok, Svoboda’s leader since 2004 and a 2010 and 2014 presidential candidate;
- Dmytro Iarosh, one of the founders of Right Sector in 2013-2014 and its first leader;
- Andriy Bilets’kyy, founder of the Azov Battalion and leader of the National Corps; and
- Ruslan Koshulyns’kyy, Svoboda’s presidential candidate in March 2019.
In addition to Svoboda’s relative success in the 2012 parliamentary elections, the Ukrainian extreme right has had other occasional successes at the ballot box. These have come during regional and local elections, as well as in single-member districts during parliamentary elections, and have been most frequent in Galicia. Moreover, much like ultra-nationalists in other European countries, Ukraine’s far right has, since the 1990s, had considerable influence on the country’s cultural sphere, intellectual life, and youth scene via pseudo-scholarly racist publicism and the growing neo-Nazi music scene. Generally speaking, various forms of nationalism-both liberal and radical-have gained popularity in Ukrainian society (including its Russophone parts) since 2014.
Sometimes, such as during the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections, the various parties and their leaders have competed against one another. On other occasions, such as during the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections, they have cooperated (or at least not competed) with each other. In 2017, the three major far-right parties-Svoboda, the National Corps, and Right Sector-and some minor groups held a widely publicized joint congress and together adopted a National Manifesto that received attention not only in the Ukrainian mass media but also internationally.
Just like other Ukrainian political camps, the far right has suffered from infighting and has not competed in all elections. Yet on the whole, there has been no shortage of party-political ultra-nationalism on the “supply” side. The main limitation has been the low “demand” for such politics. In most nationwide elections, only a small share of the electorate has cast its vote for any given far-right group or candidate.
Since the Revolution of Dignity, the far right has had far easier access to arms. All of the relevant ultra-nationalist organizations organized irregular or semi-regular volunteer battalions in 2014 that went to the front lines. Thus, they-like many other parts of Ukrainian society-quickly gained more or less legitimate access to firearms and ammunition. Some, like Azov, also obtained armored vehicles and artillery. Yet this theoretically powerful tool has turned out to be of limited utility for domestic political purposes, as use of these weapons in domestic affairs-the sort of “Weimar scenario” feared by many in 2014–is still taboo in Ukraine. Although there have been cases of nationalist vigilantism and the use of firearms by individual right-wing activists or grouplets in local-level political or business confrontations, these have been very much the exception rather than the rule. Both the Ukrainian central state and civil society have been surprisingly successful in preventing the use of arms on the streets of Kyiv and regional capitals. Moreover, these episodes have led not to political gains for the far right, but to backlash against it.
Ethno-Centric “Uncivil Society”
Given the marginality of far-right parties at the national level, Ukrainian far-right activists have been faced with the choice of either limiting themselves to regional and local electoral politics or else remaining within what has over the past 30 years been labeled “uncivil society.” This term encompasses social groups that seek neither power nor profit and can therefore be seen as part of civil society rather than the political or economic spheres. However, the ideas, aims, networks, and actions of these “uncivil” groups are either implicitly or explicitly anti-democratic. Some have even expressed a willingness to take up arms. Hence, they do not promote truly civic values, which are based on egalitarian, tolerant, and pluralistic premises.
Like traditional civic organizations, “uncivil society” groups may help to develop their members’ organizational, intellectual, rhetorical, and emotional skills, as well as provide career paths for political activists. Yet because these abilities are developed within associations unsupportive of-or even adversarial to-liberal democracy, there is a suspicion that members of this organization who manage to enter politics will use their expertise to undermine rather than support democracy.
Throughout post-Soviet Ukrainian history, most Ukrainian far-right activists have been unable to enter the national political scene, or else have been able to do so only temporarily. Accordingly, they have participated in various NGOs. This activity has increased since 2014, when civil society gained increased prominence in Ukraine as a result of the Euromaidan. Having grown out of minor pre-2014 ultra-nationalist groupuscules, post-Euromaidan far-right parties like the Right Sector and National Corps are, to be sure, seeking political power, as evidenced by the fact that former Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh and current National Corps leader Andriy Bilets’kyy (both from Eastern Ukraine) stood for election to the 8th Verkhovna Rada of 2014-2019, ultimately winning office as directly elected deputies.
Right Sector emerged in late 2013, growing out of a loose network of nationalist groupuscules that had united around Iarosh’s paramilitary sports club, “Stepan Bandera’s Trident.” In spring 2014, Right Sector founded the irregular armed unit Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. National Corps-which grew out of the “Patriot of Ukraine” and Social-National Assembly, pre-Euromaidan grouplets led by Bilets’kyy-was established in October 201569 by veterans of the Azov Battalion and their sympathizers.
Both Right Sector and National Corps derive much of their current recognition and fame from their members’ voluntary participation in Ukraine’s war against Russia in the Donets Basin in 2014-2015.70 Whereas, the marginal predecessor organizations of the Right Sector and National Corps were hardly known to Ukrainians and escaped the attention of many political analysts, Iarosh, Bilets’kyy and other formerly fringe figures have become Ukrainian national heroes since the war began. Iarosh was even wounded in a battle. The far-right activists’ participation in the war, often within their own volunteer battalions, has seen a significant increase in their and their parties’ public profile, social standing, political legitimacy, and overall popularity in Ukraine.
Paradoxically, however, this sharp rise in the international visibility and national acceptability of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists-supported not least by Kremlin-directed mass media-has not translated into political successes at the ballot-box, at least not in nationwide elections. Although one might have expected a dramatic rise in electoral support for the far right following these groups’ prominence in the Revolution of Dignity and early war effort between approximately late 2013 and mid-2015, voters’ support for Svoboda in parliamentary elections has in fact been sinking precipitously. Svoboda’s presidential candidates have fared no better, earning less than 2% of the vote in 2014 and 2019. Tiahnybok had achieved equally good results in the 2010 election, the first election in which he took part.
Ukrainian voters’ consistently low support for the far right, in the very different pre- and post-Euromaidan periods, is remarkable. It is especially noteworthy in view of the fact that Ukrainian society has been in a state of constant psychological and social stress since 2014 as a result of the ongoing low-intensity warfare in the Donets Basin, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the Kremlin’s hybrid attack on Ukraine. This might have been expected to be a favorable background against which ethnocentric propaganda could flourish, leading to the rise of ultra-nationalist groups. Yet as of early 2020, Ukraine’s far-right parties have experienced nothing even remotely similar to the stunning electoral successes of their counterparts in other European countries.
The Far Right’s Growing Societal Embeddedness
In spite of the ultra-nationalists’ weakness in national polls, close monitoring and partial containment of far-right activities remain on the agenda for non-governmental watchdogs and governmental law-enforcement agencies. Despite being electorally impotent, Ukraine’s far-right activist community has remained numerically, organizationally, and tactically potent since the Euromaidan and is still present on Ukraine’s streets. Largely excluded from national politics, many ultra-nationalists have taken up projects within Ukrainian “uncivil society,” in fields ranging from memory affairs and anti-LGBT activism to urgent ecological issues and animal protection. Far-right groups have even managed to garner governmental support for certain security, veterans, and education programs.
The active participation of many far-right activists as volunteer fighters against Russia-led forces in Eastern Ukraine has reduced their isolation, stigmatization, and rejection in mainstream Ukrainian society, including Ukraine’s political and cultural establishment. To be sure, segments of Ukraine’s political elite were willing to cooperate with the far right even before 2014, as evidenced by the collaborations of moderate and radical nationalists in the 7th Verkhovna Rada, during the Revolution of Dignity, and in the post-Euromaidan interim government. Yet these alliances were situational and strategic rather than permanent and ideational.
The longer Ukraine’s armed conflict with Russia goes on, the easier it becomes for even fringe groups-like the notorious neo-Nazi S14 (or C14)-to integrate into Ukrainian society and public affairs. Not only politically and socially, but also culturally and mentally, the distance between mainstream and extreme politics, civil and uncivil society, moderate patriotic and ultra-nationalist groups, is shrinking. In light of daily reports from the front lines and weekly tallies of war victims, Ukrainian official political rhetoric, mass media discourse, cultural policies and memory affairs have become more militant and nationalistic. As a result, far-right ideas, leaders and organizations that were previously marginalized have become tolerated, if not liked, by society.
In Western democracies, the main political dividing line today is between advocates and opponents of cultural and social liberalism. In Ukraine, by contrast, the main political questions center around an individual’s or group’s attitudes toward Ukraine’s national independence, war with Russia, and the corrupt oligarchic system, as well as their foreign orientation-with this last being understood as a geopolitical direction rather than a normative affinity. Insofar as ultranationalists’ and ethnocentrists’ answers are similar to those of Ukrainian liberals and conservatives, the former groups are becoming, with every passing year of war, more accepted by the latter.
To take one example, the gradual inclusion of the neo-Nazi grouplet S14 into Ukraine’s mainstream expressed itself, in January 2019, in the inclusion of S14-leader Evhen Karas’ in the Ukrainian delegation that visited the Ecumenic Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul on the occasion of the granting of autocephaly to the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Karas’s overt participation in the official ceremony created a scandal among Ukrainian human-rights activists and international observers alike. Yet the embarrassing incident did not become much of a topic in mainstream Ukrainian society, which was more upset by the presence of a different dubious person, a Ukrainian businessman with a criminal background, at the church proceedings than by the attendance of Karas, the leader of a group that uses explicitly fascist symbols.
Yet from the perspective of Ukraine’s fledgling democracy, the most dangerous such phenomenon may be not S14, Svoboda or the now thoroughly marginalized Right Sector, but instead the multi-faceted Azov movement, with its regular National Guard regiment and its links to the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior, the all-Ukrainian party National Corps, and the unarmed vigilante wing National Fellowship. While it would be going too far to classify the Azov Regiment as a terrorist organization, its various political and “uncivil” spin-off associations arguably represent the largest long-term domestic right-wing extremist threat to Ukraine’s democracy. Unlike previous Ukrainian far-right projects, the Azov movement has managed to create a multi-dimensional and distinctly modern (and even post-modern) identity that has particular appeal to the young and is not regionally limited. It cooperates closely with likeminded groups abroad, including certain Russian neo-Nazi groups.
The older Svoboda party remains, to be sure, electorally and organizationally stronger than Azov. Yet Svoboda is only an important political force in Galicia. Right Sector, for its part, lost its post-Euromaidan dynamism after 2014. It has been a shell of its former self since the departure of its most prominent founder, Iarosh, to found the so-called “Statesman Initiative” (which he has not yet managed to turn into a notable political organization).
In contrast, Azov’s National Corps-an ultra-nationalist party whose predecessor comes originally fron Kharkiv-is more or less evenly distributed around the country. Although it has gone through periods of internal disarray, it seems not to have suffered from any major splits. Moreover, Azov is a dynamic uncivil movement that is actively advancing on different domestic fronts and strengthening its foreign contacts. It has become a visible part of the international groupuscular right, and maintains links to uncivil (mainly racist) organizations in the United States, the European Union, and the Russian Federation, among others.
Conclusion
The weak electoral performance of Ukraine’s far right to this point has been encouraging. The low popular support for Ukrainian party-political ultra-nationalism is especially noteworthy given the recent successes of right-wing populists and extremists in other European countries. In spite of an active armed conflict in Ukraine’s east and the resulting prevalence of firearms in Ukrainian society since 2014, the far right-like other political actors–has largely refrained from using weapons in domestic political affairs. Contrary to some observers’ fears or defamatory remarks, there is no Ukrainian equivalent of the German Freikorps phenomenon during the Weimar Republic, not to mention any serious threat of fascist takeover. Yet there are at least four features of-and developments in-Ukraine’s post-Euromaidan ultra-nationalist milieu that give reason for pause. First, as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine, there is growing public tolerance for radical nationalist organizations, actions, and individuals.
Second, since 2014, certain far right organizations have received permanent access to guns and even heavy weapons by founding volunteer units. Some still control minor irregular armed groups, such as Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps and the Statesman’s Initiative’s Ukrainian Volunteer Army-although the terms “corps” and “army” are hyperbolic for these marginal para-military units.
Third, far-right organizations maintain a presence on the landscape of Ukraine’s extra-parliamentary party politics, its NGO sector, its cultural life, local affairs, and (in some cases) foreign relations. Since Svoboda had cut most of its ties to European far-right parties by 2014, the latter refers primarily to the international connections of the Azov movement and other, smaller far-right groups.
Fourth, as a result of Ukrainian society’s increased permissiveness vis-a-vis the far right, there have been repeated incidents of cooperation between certain governmental institutions-such as the Security Service or Veterans Ministry of Ukraine-and parts of the far right.
Overall, the continued electoral frailty of far-right parties and their correspondingly low influence on policymaking in Kyiv make Ukraine a positive exception to the European trend of increasingly powerful far-right parties. Yet since the Revolution of Dignity, uncivil society has become increasingly prevalent in Ukrainian communal, associational, and cultural life, while the differentiation of the nationalist organizational and intellectual spectrums has continued. This, combined with growing public respect for historical Ukrainian ultra-nationalism-in particular the Bandera faction of the Second World War-era Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-has given Ukrainian public affairs distinct new characteristics. These and other politically disruptive tendencies are closely connected to, if not largely a result of, Russia’s ongoing hybrid war against Ukraine since 2014. They constitute domestically divisive, internationally problematic, and potentially destabilizing features of post-Euromaidan Ukraine.