One of Putin’s “justifications” for aggression against Ukraine is that its government would be fascist or Nazi. This accusation is repeated over and over again by the left, especially by Stalinists.
By: Diego Russo
We have no confidence in Zelensky‘s government, after all, he is a representative of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, which has always sold out its country, sometimes to Western imperialism, sometimes to Russia. But it is a gross lie for Putin to say that Zelensky is a fascist. A lie to justify an unjustifiable war before the world and even before the Russian public. A justification as false as Bush’s lie that Iraq had mass destruction weapons, that was used as a pretext for war against that country.
Putin’s lie is denounced by hundreds of scholars of Genocide, Nazism and World War II from all over the world, who signed a statement published by BBC:
“We strongly reject the Russian government cynical abuse of the term genocide, the memory of World War II and the Holocaust, and its equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression. This rhetoric is factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers of the Red Army.“
Likewise, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial to the victims of the infamous Nazi concentration camp condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and declared its full solidarity with the Ukrainian people, as well as with the Russians repressed by Putin for declaring their opposition to the war.
But this lie to justify Putin’s murderous policy, like all big lies, is based on a true element. The actual existence of far-right-wing groups, and even fascist ideology, in Ukraine. The falsity of the argument, on the other hand, consists in considering Ukrainian nationalism as a whole to be far right-wing and fascist.
Far-right and Ukrainian nationalism can’t be equated
As far as the far right is concerned, Ukraine is unfortunately not an exception among other “white” European countries. The far-right, including Nazi-fascism, has been growing in the world as a by-product of capitalist decadence, impoverishment of the middle classes, sharpening and polarization of the class struggle. It represents one more element of barbarism, with the immigrant and refugee crisis, the rise of unemployment, the increase of exploitation, hunger, the destruction of the environment, the Covid-19 epidemic, etc., etc., etc. It is a reflection of the rottenness of the imperialist capitalist system as a whole.
Nationalism – understood as the defence of its right to national independence – is a mass feeling in Ukraine. But far right-wing ideologies are not. It is not by chance that nationalism is massive in Ukraine. Ukraine has always been an oppressed nation, first by the former Russian Empire and then by Stalinism. The Russian Empire was correctly called the “prison of the peoples,” referring to the more than 160 oppressed nationalities. At the end of the former Russian Empire, Marxists were actively involved in the struggle of the Ukrainian people against Russian oppression.
Lenin defended the right to self-determination of all peoples oppressed by the Russian Empire, including Ukraine. For Lenin, the nationalism of oppressed nations was revolutionary. He fought to give a working-class and socialist character to the national struggle but he was also part of this struggle. The movement for self-determination of Ukraine, as well as other peoples forcibly held under Russian rule, was a strong impetus for the October 1917 Revolution, which was much more than a “Russian” revolution. Ukraine, then emerging for the first time as an independent nation, thanks to Lenin’s policy, joined the then-nascent USSR on equal rights with Russia, Belarus and other nations.
It was the October Revolution that granted Ukraine’s right to self-determination. And it is precisely this right that Putin now attacks, claiming that Ukraine’s right to self-determination is an absurdity invented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Putin advocates, in his words, to “decommunize” Ukraine by arms, i.e., to eliminate any vestige of Ukrainian independence.
Lenin’s policy for the oppressed nationalities is to this day a benchmark of how the working class can overcome national divisions and unite workers against exploiters and oppressors. But it did not last long. The Stalinisation of the USSR, the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International was accompanied by a radical change of policy towards the nationalities that were part of the USSR. In fact, it was precisely in this field that Stalinism emerged as a political current of its own, and opposed to Leninism. It took place even during Lenin’s lifetime, in the controversy over the Caucasian countries. Stalin defended a policy of “autonomisation” of Georgia and other nations of the Caucasus, instead of the right to self-determination, and he did so with the typical rudeness that would make him famous. There was a strong reaction from the Georgian Communist Party. Lenin took part in the controversy, violently criticizing Stalin’s position. He proposed Stalin’s removal from office and broke off personal relations with him. It was Lenin’s last battle, just before he died. And it was thanks to this last battle, defeating Stalin, that the right to self-determination entered into the Soviet Constitution. This right would be claimed by several nations to leave the USSR in the late 1980s and that is precisely what is attacked by Putin today.
Stalin, temporarily defeated, got back on the horse after Lenin’s death. Unable to openly attack Lenin’s article in the Constitution, he turns it into a dead letter. Stalinism implements in practice its anti-Leninist policy, transforming the USSR into a new “prison of peoples”, forcibly subjecting all non-Russians to Moscow’s domination and massacring tens of thousands of communist militants who remained faithful to Lenin’s ideas, especially the Trotskyists. To top it all, he did so by falsifying history, presenting his nefarious policy as “Leninist.”
Under the brutal Stalinist dictatorship, any left-wing current defending the Ukrainian right to national independence was violently repressed. The concrete result was that the just struggle for the Ukrainian right to self-determination, abandoned by the Stalinist CPs [1], was left in the hands of non-Marxist nationalist currents.
During the Second World War, a minority sector of this nationalism in Ukraine saw the confrontation between the USSR and Nazi Germany as an opportunity to make Ukraine independent, which was exploited by Hitler. Much is said today about the figure of Stepan Bandera, who supposedly led the sector that allied with Nazism. There is much controversy among historians on this subject, even within Ukraine. Bandera spent the entire period of Nazi occupation imprisoned by the Germans, who did not trust him. It is unlikely that he played the historical role attributed to him today of leading, under such conditions, the entire Ukrainian Rebel Army. By the way, there is no record that the Ukrainian Rebel Army fought the Red Army. It did fight the NKVD troops, the forerunner of the KGB, sent to suppress the civilian population, falsely called “banderists”, who were waging an extensive guerrilla war against the Soviet control of the region. Bandera’s figure was probably inflated by Stalin to justify the repression, as it is inflated today by Putin to justify the aggression against Ukraine. Stalin and Putin are doing a great favour to the far right in Ukraine by creating a “hero” for them. Regardless of controversies about history, to claim that the majority of Ukrainians collaborated with Hitler is a total falsification, the collaborators were very much in the minority. The great majority of the Ukrainian people fought the Nazi invasion to the death.
The struggle against Stalinism and for the right to self-determination continued throughout the history of the USSR after the war. Even under Brezhnev, there was a strong policy of Russification of Ukraine, repressing the use of the Ukrainian language. Uprisings in prison camps were accused of being organized by “banderists”, just as Trotskyists were accused of being fascists before the war. And cruelly repressed. Any opposition to Stalinism in Ukraine was called “banderist” and “bourgeois nationalism,” which would have collaborated with Nazism. An absurd lie, which has in the present war its logical conclusion. The minority that in fact collaborated with Nazism is widely rejected and today has a marginal weight. Collaborationist minorities, by the way, existed in all the countries occupied by Nazism, even in Russia (General Vlasov, for example).
The end of the USSR in 1991, as a consequence of the immense revolution that overthrew the Soviet Stalinist apparatus, meant a new liberation of Ukraine, guaranteeing its formal independence from Russia. Once again, the struggle of the oppressed nationalities against Russian oppression played a major role in this revolutionary process. But the new Russian capitalists, coming from the old Communist Party and the KGB, which had restored capitalism in the country, never accepted this new independence of Ukraine.
The arrival of Putin to power in 1999 pushed the Russian bourgeoisie to reassert its domination over Ukraine and the entire region that had been part of the USSR. Russia blackmailed Ukraine every winter with the threat of cutting off gas supplies if it did not accept the price increases imposed, which was unsustainable for its economy. This Putin policy led to three processes: 1) the external indebtedness of Ukraine to Russia, which demanded in payment the control of the gas pipelines crossing the country linking Russia with Western Europe; 2) the indebtedness of Ukraine to Western creditors to cover its debts to Russia, increasing its economic dependence on the US and the European Union; 3) a growing feeling of a nation oppressed by Russia and of indignation against this situation. The result of this policy was to push Ukraine more and more toward the European Union, the US and NATO.
When the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, the so-called Maidan Square revolution, finally broke out, once again the struggling Ukrainian people found themselves orphaned of a socialist alternative defending their right to self-determination because practically the entire Ukrainian “left,” educated by Stalinism, sided with Russia and supported the dictator Yanukovich, who would be overthrown on the streets and barricades.
Any worker or youth fighting on the barricades against the Yanukovich government was, so to speak, a nationalist. But only a minority of them were far right-wingers.
So, it is not by chance that there are far right-wing currents in Ukraine. The absence of strong socialist currents defending Ukraine’s right to self-determination, with Putin’s and Stalinism’s propaganda around “flag-wavers”, create the conditions, in the context of a global economic crisis, for the emergence of such currents.
But is Ukraine fascist after all?
Despite all these real and concrete reasons for a strengthening of nationalism in Ukraine, the fact remains that far right-wing currents remain marginal in the political realm of the country. In the last presidential elections, in 2019, the candidate unifying the far-right groups achieved a paltry 1.6%. In the legislative elections that same year, the unified list of the country’s nationalist right barely polled 2%, which is not enough to win a seat in the country’s parliament, the Rada. In fact, the weight of these organisations has been decreasing over the years. In the 2012 Rada elections, a couple of years before Maidan, the far-right had received 10.44% of the votes. In the 2016 elections, the unified list of the nationalist right had fallen to 6.4%, and in 2019, to just 2.15%. A demonstration that the deep national sentiment of the Ukrainian people for independence is not confused with fascism.
In many other European countries, the far-right has much more votes than this, such as Vox in Spain (15% in 2019), Chega in Portugal (7% in 2022), Golden Dawn [2] in Greece (4.9% in 2019), Alternative for Germany (10% in 2021), Freedom Party of Austria (16% in 2019), etc. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front made it to the second round of the 2017 presidential election. Not to mention Trump in the USA or Bolsonaro in Brazil… And we do not characterise these countries as fascists because of that.
Those who say that Ukraine is fascist argue that far-right sectors are present in the Ukrainian state apparatus and even in its Armed Forces.
Because when Putin, reacting to Maidan in 2014, annexes Crimea and occupies part of the Donbas with mercenaries, he does so with little resistance from the Ukrainian military, as they were destroyed, since they were loyal to the ousted Yanukovych government, and largely composed of pro-Russian officers. It was in the vacuum of this absence of regular forces that groups of volunteers were formed to fight back the Russian invasion in the east of the country. These volunteers, lacking an alternative to the left, organised themselves into groups whose only ideological orientation was Ukrainian independence and nationalism. These groups were a large umbrella, sheltering all those who wanted to fight for their country, with the most varied positions. In this space, far right-wing currents were also active, but by no means dominant. The left-wing currents, once again, disappeared. There was then a policy of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie to incorporate these nationalist groups into the regular Armed Forces, in order to maintain its control over them.
The oft-cited Azov Battalion is part of this process. It was formed in 2014 with volunteers to fight Russian aggression in the Donbas, then participated in the liberation of the city of Mariupol, which allowed it to gain some authority. Then it was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard. Within it there are several groupings, the main one being the National Corps, in fact, a far right-wing group.
That is, the very emergence of this far right-wing group is a result of Russian aggression against Ukraine, a direct result of Putin’s policy. Even the Azov Battalion, accused by Putin of promoting a “genocide” against the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, is itself composed of “Russian-speaking” people, inhabitants of the eastern part of the country.
There is a debate in Ukrainian society on whether to outlaw this battalion. The Azov Battalion has little political support among the population, despite being part of the paramilitary forces fighting Russian aggression. This battalion recently launched its own candidacy in the Ukrainian elections and failed resoundingly, with a totally unrepresentative vote. According to the BBC, the National Corps of the Azov Battalion today has only 400 fighters. But if the war gives them more authority in the country, it will be entirely Putin’s responsibility, who is the one who gives them the opportunity to appear as heroes before the Ukrainian people.
As a corollary, Ukrainian right-wing extremist youths celebrated Hitler’s birthday in the city of Kherson in 2020. They were arrested, tried and sentenced to prison, where they remain to this day. This does not match the legend of a “fascist state in Ukraine.”
The alleged banning of “left-wing parties” in Ukraine
An argument also used by Stalinism is that the Ukrainian government banned the Ukrainian Communist Party and now, with the war, banned several “left” parties.
In Ukraine, unlike in Russia, there is freedom of party organisation, achieved by the 2014 revolution. There are more than 300 registered political parties in Ukraine. Of these, since the Russian aggression in 2014, a total of four parties have been banned. But not because they are left-wing. The Ukrainian Communist Party and three other right-wing parties were banned, not because of their ideological line, but for supporting the Yanukovich dictatorship and its repression of the people, which cost more than 100 dead, and for openly calling on Russia to invade their own country with troops!
To make matters worse, when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied part of the Donbas with mercenaries, these four parties supported and collaborated with Russian aggression against their own country! What country in the world would allow that, in the midst of foreign military aggression, parties could freely support and collaborate with the enemy that is militarily occupying their own country?
Yet despite Russian aggression in 2014, pro-Russian parties have freely participated in elections in Ukraine ever since. By way of comparison, it would be unimaginable for a pro-Ukrainian party to participate in elections in Russia, where merely saying that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine is punishable by 20 years in prison for extremism…
Now, during the war, other so-called left-wing Ukrainian organisations were banned. Let’s see what a Ukrainian socialist says about it:
“Unfortunately, the ‘special operation’ strengthens authoritarian and nationalist tendencies in Ukraine. But while this process must be criticised, we must remember the essence of these parties. They were banned not because they were left-wing, but because they were pro-Putin. Left-wing parties that are not pro-Russian were not banned. (…) The list of banned parties is not limited to pro-Russian “left” parties. It also includes some of the most influential oligarchic parties, successors of the Party of Regions [Yanukovych’s party]. (…) Among the banned parties is the OPZJ, the largest pro-Russian party in Ukraine. (…) The Kremlin hoped to count on it to form an occupying regime.” [3]
These parties were banned not because they were left-wing or socialist, but because they collaborated with the invasion of their own country and prepared to play the role of Putin’s puppet government in the event of an occupation victory.
Obviously, it can always be argued that there is a risk that the Ukrainian bourgeoisie will take advantage of the situation to restrict democratic rights, repress workers’ struggles and organisation and boost far-right-wing currents. A deputy minister linked to far-right forces has even been appointed from 2017 to 2019. But that risk today is very relative, because of the favourable correlation of forces, with the mass mobilisation and arming of the working people to fight the invasion. We call on the Ukrainian people to organise independently and to fight with arms against the Russian occupation, as well as to defend the democratic rights won by the Maidan Square Revolution in 2014, without relying either on the Zelensky government or on far right-wing organisations.
But using the existence of far-right fringe currents as a justification for invading Ukraine, as well as equating Ukrainian nationalism with fascism, is, as we have said at the beginning, nothing more than a big, crude lie by Putin.
Nazi-fascism in Russia
On the other hand, if the weight of far right-wing currents is marginal in Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian state apparatus, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said of Russia. Russia is considered by scholars to be the country with the most far-right-wing and outright fascist militants in the world. If in Ukraine there is the Azov Battalion, in Russia there is the Grom, the Rusich (which uses as its symbol the kolovrata, the Slavic swastika), the Russian National Unity, The Hawks, the DPNI, all acting with thousands of paramilitaries in the Donbas since 2014. There are photos of these groups operating in Ukraine with the Valknut flag, the symbol of white supremacists.
In addition to all these far right-wing groups, there are also private armies and mercenary militias linked to the big Russian oligarchs, which defend dictatorships in several countries, especially in Ukraine. We recommend reading about this market of death here: litci.org/en/the-wagner-group-russian-mercenaries-in-africa/
Every 4 November the Russian March takes place in Russian cities, with far-right activists, monarchists, outright fascists, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, misogynist, racist and homophobic groups. While opposition demonstrations in Russia are violently repressed, the Russian Marches take place under the protection of the police and the FSB and are attended by members of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, by the way, actively supports the war against Ukraine.
Moscow used to be considered the city with the most skinheads in the world, who attacked immigrants on the streets, having brutally murdered several of them. But since 2014, there are virtually no skinheads on the streets, as they have all been “fighting” in eastern Ukraine.
These far-right groups are directly funded by billionaires and members of the upper echelon of Putin’s government, such as Ragozin, now head of RosCosmos. According to The Conversation, the Kremlin maintained close relations with Russkii Obraz, a neo-Nazi group that even participated in news shows on Russian state-owned television outlets.
Why do those who raise their voices about “Ukrainian fascism” keep silent about these Russian fascist groups?
As if this were not enough, the Russian police is deeply racist, checking people in metro stations and trains for their physical appearance, detaining all non-whites, and asking for documents, especially immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. This racism is permanently revealed in everyday Russian life.
In Russia, when a property is put up for rent, it is customary to write in the advertisements “only for Slavs”, so that Caucasians or Asians (not to mention Blacks) cannot rent it. This in a country where at least 20% of the population is “non-Slavic.” Imagine a country where it was normal to rent flats “only to whites”, or “I don’t rent to Jews.” Well, in Russia it is exactly like that, and any foreigner who has lived there can confirm this in good faith. This was a marginal phenomenon in the 1990s and became widespread during the Putin period.
But, unfortunately, the picture is even worse than what we have described so far. The Chechen war was the key moment for Putin’s assertion as president. It was Putin who massacred the Chechen uprising for self-determination in 1999, destroyed their capital Grozny and cut a deal with the ultra-reactionary Kadyrov clan to subjugate the whole region with its fascist gangs.
In Chechnya, there are concentration camps for homosexuals, torture, extra-judicial executions, violent oppression of women, brutal repression of atheists, socialists, trade unionists, etc. One million signatures were collected demanding that Russia investigate the allegations. This petition was ignored by Putin. Kadyrov is behind countless murders of opponents and journalists. Under his rule, there is no right to free speech or free organisation. Thanks to Kadyrov, Putin receives 99% of the votes in the region in every election; a level typical of Stalinist dictatorships, as in North Korea and many other examples.
It is no coincidence that to replace the demoralised Russian soldiers in Ukraine, Putin sent in Kadyrov’s butchers, who openly declared that his men would not be “soft” on Ukrainians like Russian soldiers. The bravado was short-lived. The Ukrainian resistance, allied with the Chechens in exile, defeated Kadyrov’s professional killers, who returned demoralised to Chechnya with heavy casualties.
But it is not just Chechnya. Across Russia, repression is fierce against any independent protest movement. There are only four parties with legal representation, all pro-regime. There are no free trade unions. All the main media are controlled by Putin. Demonstrations are heavily repressed. There are no legal left-wing parties, except for the Communist Party, which is part of the regime. It is a chauvinist, nationalist, militarist and clerical party. It is linked to the oligarchs and the FSB, the political police. The proposal to recognise the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk came from the Communist Party, a move that started the war. All other left-wing organisations are illegal.
Now, this whole picture has worsened by the war, with a total ban on any protest, sentences of 15 years or more in prison for anti-war posts, closure of alternative media outlets, blocking of internet websites, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Russian media (and indeed any citizen) are even forbidden to use the term “war” to define what is happening in Ukraine and are forced to refer to the issue as a “special operation for the liberation of Ukraine”, which gives a regime preview to the “Chechnya” that will spread throughout the country if Putin wins the war.
The global far right is with Putin
Putin is supported by Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Marie Le Pen and her National Front in France, Alternative for Germany, Northern League of Italy, Freedom Party of Austria, Vox in Spain, Chega in Portugal, Golden Dawn in Greece, Steve Bannon, National Democratic Party of Germany, New Force of Italy, British National Party, Party of the Swedes, Party of the Danes, British League for Life, Italian Lombardy League, etc. Several of these parties are even defined as neo-fascist in a report by the Russian Foreign Ministry. They all supported the annexation of Crimea, opposed sanctions against Russia, and sent “observers” to the “elections” and “referendums” held in occupied Lugansk, Donetsk and Crimea, claiming their “legality, democratic character, impartiality and in accordance with international conventions“. They defend, like Putin, “traditional values”, against immigrants, ethnic, sexual, religious minorities, etc. Several of these parties met in St. Petersburg in 2015 at the “Russian International Conservative Forum”, side by side with the Russian far right.
Now, if Putin, an autocratic, xenophobic, misogynist and homophobic politician were really fighting fascism, why would he have the support of the far-right all over the world?
The truth is that Putin’s hands are dirty with the blood of the Chechen, Syrian, Egyptian, Libyan, Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian people, among others. And the blood of the Russian people too! Putin violently attacks any attempt for the liberation of peoples of the region he considers his “vital space”. Putin openly claims that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent nation and implements this vision of his through a war of aggression. The far-right is in the Kremlin itself!
If Putin really wanted to fight fascism, he would have to “denazify” his own country, his own allies, his own police and armed forces and, first of all, his own government!
Notes:
[1] We refer here to the shooting of the entire leadership of these parties, later replaced by officials loyal to Moscow.
[2] Moreover, this openly neo-Nazi organisation declared that Maidan was a “Zionist conspiracy.”
[3] A Ukrainian socialist on the banning of “left-wing” parties. Taras Bilous, Sotcialniy Rukh.
