One of President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was his claim that there were Neo-Nazis in Ukraine and his “special military operation” was to achieve the de-Nazification of Ukraine. The common retort by Ukrainians and their supporters is that the President of Ukraine and arguably the most prominent face of the Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is himself Jewish. Despite the Ukrainian President being Jewish, the idea that there are Neo-Nazis within the Ukrainian resistance and even Neo-Nazi units within the Ukrainian military persists.
What is lost in the coverage of self-styled Neo-Nazis in Ukraine is an explanation or definition of what a Nazi was and therefore what a Neo-Nazi is. Does being anti-Semitic or having anti-Semitic thoughts or attitudes make one a Neo-Nazi? Does being a vehement and/or militant nationalist equivalent to being a Neo-Nazi? Maybe being a Neo-Nazi is a combination of belief and action, such as believing your country has the right to wage war unprovoked against others and then acting upon that belief.
I always try to be careful when I write about things regarding historical events such as the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, events which carry a lot of emotional weight for so many. Some may feel that writing much more than “Hitler was evil” is an attempt to rationalize or even justify the actions of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. This short work is an attempt to discuss a very particular phenomena, the possibility of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Some background is necessary to discuss this topic but of course the background I include in this work is not exhaustive and all inclusive.
The relationship between anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology, the idea of the Marxist Soviet Union being a Jewish Conspiracy, and Neo-Nazi’s in Eastern Europe is an extremely complex historical subject. So much of what is said or implied is, in my opinion, not supported by the historical record, or at the very least overlooks many historical facts. I don’t know all the facts, no one does, but I do want to offer a few ideas that I feel should be taken into consideration when trying to understand why and if there are Neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine.
What did Nazi’s Believe?
The most common dictionary definition of a Nazi likely says something to the effect that being a Nazi means being a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party. This political party was active in Germany from shortly after the German defeat at the end of World War I to the German defeat at the end of World War II. Some will point out, and I think very misleadingly, that the Nazi party was a nationalist party, as if to imply that being a nationalist is somehow akin to being a Nazi. Equally misleading is the idea that the Nazi Party was a socialist party so being a socialist is akin to being a Nazi. Some believe that the overwhelming characteristic of the Nazi Party was that party members and sympathizers were anti-Semitic. Nazi ideology was expressly and inherently anti-Semitic and Nazi Germany acted on this anti-Semitic ideology by committing some of the most barbarous acts in recorded history against innocent European Jews. But being anti-Semitic was not the whole of Nazi ideology and every anti-Semite is not by definition a Nazi sympathizer.
What really differentiated Nazi ideology from other nationalist or socialist parties before and since was its complex pseudo-scientific categorization of various peoples into racial groupings and the extraordinary effect Nazi Germany acting according to this ideology had on their European neighbors. Inherent in these categorizations was the mistaken idea that different peoples could be defined as different races and that these different racial groupings could be ranked from inferior to superior races, with of course ethnic Germans being the most superior, or Master Race.
Many have written at length about the genesis of the Nazi ideology. Most of these studies from my experience focus on the psychology or life experiences of the most prominent proponent of the Nazi ideology, Adolf Hitler. Although Hitler was critical to the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany, Hitler did not give birth to the latent ideas and attitudes that coalesced into the Nazi ideology and his death and the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II did not extinguish those latent ideas and attitudes.
Before I present a rough outline of what I see as the Nazi’s racial categorizations, its important to point out that Nazi propaganda and, more importantly, actions were mainly geared toward the peoples present in Europe in the early 1900’s and was not as concerned with others such as Africans, South Americans, Asians or others. These peoples were not present in Germany or the surrounding areas in large numbers and therefore where not as emphasized, although it is certain that the Nazi ideology designated Germans as their superiors.
Roughly, the Nazi ideology had four groupings from most superior to most inferior: Germans, Non-German and Non-Slavic Europeans, Slavic Europeans, and Jews. Another group that should be mentioned as a separate racial group is the Roma, or Gypsies. The Roma were not as numerous as the other groupings but certainly suffered greatly from Nazi persecution and were treated at times similar to the Slavic peoples, sometimes more similarly to the Jewish peoples.
Germans were the Master Race under the Nazi ideology. Being German did not necessarily mean being a citizen of Germany, but ethnically German. Jews who were citizens of Germany, and who had even fought for Germany in World War I, were not considered German. Ethnic Germans living outside Germany, such as in the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia or Austria, as well as other ethnic Germans living dispersed in other countries, notably Poland and Russia, where considered part of the Master Race.
Non-German and Non-Slavic peoples of Europe were ranked below Germans. Some of these peoples, notably Italians and Hungarians, where allies of Nazi Germany during World War II. Some of these peoples, notably French, England, and Dutch were attacked by and enemies of Nazi Germany. The non-German and Non-Slavic Scandinavians to the north of Germany were another large group of peoples, some being attacked by Germany, some remaining neutral and left unscathed.
The Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe were categorized below ethnic Germans as well as below Non-German and Non-Slavic Europeans. Notable Slavic peoples are Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, non-German Czechoslovakians, Bulgarians, and the various peoples of the Balkans and Baltics. Again, this is based on what was seen as ethnic identity and not citizenship. An ethnic German who was a citizen of overwhelmingly Slavic Poland was superior to a Slavic Pole. I think its fair to say as well that under the Nazi ideology, or at least practice, the further east of Germany and the less influenced by German culture a Slavic people lived, the more backward and inferior those peoples became. Most of the Slavic peoples were enemies of and attacked by Nazi Germany in World War II. Some of the Slavic peoples, notably Romanian and Bulgarian, where caught between Germany and the Soviet Union and had periods either as being neutral or aligned to one side or the other. Some of the Slavic peoples themselves had split loyalties.
Least of all in the Nazi ideology were the Jewish peoples, in Germany and throughout the rest of Europe and the World. Nazi ideology saw the Jewish peoples not so much as inferior intellectually but as inferior morally. In part because the Jewish populations were dispersed across many different nations, Nazi ideology saw the Jews as a parasite in German and beyond that needed to be eliminated. Again, others have written about the genesis of the Nazi ideology’s hatred and condemnation of the Jewish peoples, but there is no doubt that the Nazis adopted and even magnified biases and attitudes that had been both latent and readily expressed before.
The actions of Nazi German Army under Adolph Hitler can be understood more clearly if we understand this race-based ideology and their racial categorizations. First, the Nazi sought to isolate and drive out the Jewish peoples living amongst the German peoples.
Second, the Nazis sought to gather the German peoples together by actions such as annexing the predominately ethnic German Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and the overwhelmingly ethnic German Austria.
Third, the Nazis sought to conquer their Non-German and Non-Slavic European neighbors, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and others.
At the same time the Nazis sought to achieve their Fourth goal, which was to enslave, kill, or drive out their Slavic neighbors and on their land create living space, or Lebensraum, for German settlement.
Throughout their efforts to achieve all four goals the Nazis worked to exterminate the Jewish peoples that came under their control. Although it is debatable that Nazi Germany attacked Poland and other nations with the purpose to kill their Jewish populations, as opposed to the purpose of creating living space for German settlement, it is certainly true that part of the plan was to enslave and eventually kill the Jewish populations of those lands.
A key to remember in our discussion here is that central to Nazi ideology was the idea of ethnic Germans as members of the Master Race and all others, including Slavs, being inferior. The extermination of the Jewish peoples of Europe was an attempt, in conformity with Nazi Ideology, to purify or keep pure the Master Race.
The Soviet Union as a Jewish Conspiracy
The relationship between the Soviet Union as a whole and Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union is also very complex. Very early on, even before the Bolsheviks took power in Russia and created the World’s first Marxist state, the Bolsheviks liked to portray themselves as free from racial and ethnic bigotry. After the Bolsheviks gained power and formed the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union liked to portray itself as having eliminated Tsarist Russia’s historical anti-Semitism. That the Soviets eliminated anti-Semitism within its borders was an emphasis of concerted propaganda. One piece of evidence that the Soviet Union had eliminated anti-Semitism was that of the seven members of the original Politburo, or ruling committee of the Bolsheviks, four had Jewish backgrounds. Ironically, this is also one of the facts that German Nazi’s and other anti-Semites point to as evidence that the Russian Revolution and the founding of the Soviet Union was a Jewish conspiracy.
That the Bolsheviks attempted to put into practice the teachings of Karl Marx also was pointed to in order to prove that the Soviet Union was a Jewish conspiracy. Although Marx’s parents were from a Jewish background, he was baptized at 6 and his ideology was expressly atheistic. One of Marx’s most famous statements was that religion was the opiate of the masses. Marx’s statements about Judaism and Jews were typically hostile. In conformity with the Soviet Union’s Marxist ideology, in the early years private business enterprises were confiscated by the Soviet authorities and religious expression actively and at times violently suppressed. Jewish businesses and Jewish religious practices were not spared by the Soviets. Soviet ideology was very hostile toward religious and historical Judaism.
As just one example of early Soviet propaganda regarding anti-Semitism, one can look at the work of the most famous early Soviet film maker, who also came from a Jewish background, Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein directed and released in 1925 the most famous Soviet film of all time, The Battleship Potemkin. In that movie there is a scene where a group of revolutionaries are yelling out various slogans and a well- dressed on looker yells out, “Kill the Jews.” That on looker is immediately attacked and overwhelmed. This is how the Soviet Union liked to portray itself in the early days, and a lot of people believed it.
(46) Battleship Potemkin- Awkward Moment – YouTube
Like most things in the Soviet Union, the propaganda did not match the reality. Some of the earliest writers in the United States to point out how Soviet propaganda and reality were not aligned were Jewish. Noted anarchist Emma Goldman published My Disillusionment With Russia in 1923 after a trip to the Soviet Union. Benjamin Gitlow was a founding member of the Communist Party USA and ran as the Workers Party of America candidate for Vice-President of the United States in 1924 and 1928. Gitlow wrote critically of the Soviet Union and their activities in the United States in his book I Confess: The Truth About American Communism, published in 1940. Eugene Lyons wrote and published in 1937 his book Assignment in Utopia which was critical of both his own actions as a correspondent for the United Press, forebearer of the United Press International, and other Western journalists in covering up the famine in the Ukraine in the winter of 1932-1933.
When the supreme leader of the Bolsheviks and first Premier of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, died in January of 1924, Joseph Stalin took his place as Premier. Stalin was neither Jewish nor Russian, but Georgian. Some evidence suggests that Lenin wanted Leon Trotsky, credited with creating the Red Army and himself of Jewish descent, to become Premier. Nonetheless, Stalin took over and he and Trotsky openly at times and at other times behind the scenes competed for power and influence in the Soviet Union until Trotsky was exiled by Stalin in 1929.
In 1930, Stalin appointed as the Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, who himself was of Jewish descent. With the rise to power of Hitler’s Nazi Party and their expressly anti-Semitic ideology in 1933, Stalin’s true attitude toward Jews in the Soviet Union became more manifest. I stated earlier that four of the seven members of the Bolshevik’s first politburo, prior to the formation of the Soviet Union, were of Jewish descent. Those seven members were Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Gregori Sokolnikov, and Andrei Bubnov. Trotsky, Zinoview, Kamenev, and Sokolnokov were all of Jewish descent.
After Hitler came to power, Kamenev and Zinoview were executed by firing squad on Stalin’s orders on August 25, 1936, shortly before Stalin’s Great Purges. Sokolnikov was assassinated while languishing in a Soviet Prison in May of 1939. Trotsky, then in exile in Mexico, was executed by order of Stalin in August of 1940. As early as March of 1939 Stalin had made repeated failed attempts to assassinate Trotsky. Budnov was also executed during the Great Purges, in August of 1938.
Litvinov, Stalin’s Foreign Minister of Jewish descent, was removed from his position in May of 1939. Litvinov, for obvious reasons, was neither disposed to make agreements with Nazi Germany nor did Nazi Germany favor working with a Soviet Foreign Minister with a Jewish background. Litvino’s replacement, Vyacheslav Molotov, then negotiated for Stalin the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact called for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to both attack and divide Poland and was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939. Germany invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939. In true Soviet fashion, Stalin waited until the Polish armed forces were on the brink of defeat by Nazi Germany before invading from the east on September 17, 1939.
Two notably examples of Soviet treatment of Poland, and Polish Jews, are the massacre of the Polish intelligentsia in the Katyn Forrest and the Soviet army’s inaction during the Warsaw Uprising.
After the Soviets invaded and took control of eastern Poland, per the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviets gathered together and executed about 22,000 members of the Polish intelligentsia, including members of the Polish military, pilots, government representatives and royalty, landowners, university professors, physicians, several hundred lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, and journalists. Poles of Jewish descent were represented amongst the dead in roughly the same percentage as their percentage of Poland’s population. Included in the dead was the Chief Rabbi of Poland’s Army. The Soviet’s favored mode of execution was a pistol shot in the back of the head. One of the main places of execution was the Katyn Forest, although executions took place elsewhere as well.
Toward the end of World War II, Germany was being pushed from Poland by the Red Army. In Poland’s capital Warsaw, which was still controlled by the Germans, the Polish Home Army, a resistance group with many Jewish members, began an uprising in the summer of 1944 to coincide with the anticipated arrival of the Red Army. The uprising itself was intended to help the Allies, including the Soviets, in defeating Nazi Germany. The approaching Soviet Army under Stalin’s orders, though, chose to stop outside the city limits and let the ill equipped and undermanned resistance fighters fight the Nazi forces occupying Warsaw alone. The Soviet Army waited patiently beyond the city limits for about two months, allowing the German occupiers to crush the resistance. Warsaw’s citizens were expelled by the Germans and the city raised.
The historical record does not support the idea that the Soviet Union was a friend of the Jewish peoples and even less so the idea that the Soviet Union was a Jewish conspiracy.
Ukraine Under Soviet Rule
From 1922 to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine was a Republic of the Russian dominated Soviet Union. The Holodomor was the death by State-created famine of millions of peasant farmers in the Soviet Ukraine and took place from the fall of 1932 to the spring of 1933. The number of those who died is a matter of intense debate, but the estimates typically range from a low of 3 million to upwards of 20 million, although most historians estimate the total to be between 4 and 7 million.
The backdrop for this State-created famine was the desire of Stalin to crush the spirit of the Ukrainian people and have them acquiesce to the Soviet Union’s demands to collectivize their farms. The Ukrainian people had struggled for centuries to maintain autonomy from Russia, in earlier times from the Tsar, and then the Soviets. After World War I, various Ukrainian factions vied to form an independent Ukrainian state, but in 1922 Ukraine was again subsumed into the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian agriculture at the time was largely characterized by peasant farmers tilling their own small plots of land. The incredibly rich soil allowed these peasants to become the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Following a Marxist economic ideology, Stalin wanted to gather these peasant farmers into large State-owned collectives, what in modern times we may call factory farms. The peasants resisted, sometimes to the point of burning their own crops. Stalin, in conformity to his nickname of the Man of Steel, decided to essentially requisition all the grain from the peasant farmers after the fall harvest in 1932 and then not allow the peasants to travel outside Ukraine when their food inevitably ran out. As could be expected, millions of Ukrainians starved to death during the winter of 1932-1933, often whole villages perished.
The famine in Ukraine was largely ignored by the Western press. Walter Duranty, who had won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his reporting for the New York Times from the Soviet Union, was told by Stalin in 1933, ”You have done a good job in your reporting the U.S.S.R., though you are not a Marxist, because you try to tell the truth about our country . . . I might say that you bet on our horse to win when others thought it had no chance and I am sure you have not lost by it.” Even the United Press’s own correspondent in Moscow, Eugene Lyons, worked to cover up the famine at the time although in later years be became a harsh critic of Stalin and the Soviet Union
The persecution of the Ukrainian peasantry by the Soviet Union coincided in time with the popular rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. As late as the May 1928 elections the Nazis received less than 3% of the vote. The Communists received four times as many votes. In the 1930 elections the Nazis still only received 18% of the vote. But the Nazi’s vote share rose to 37% in July and 33% in November of 1932 before Hitler was appointed Chancellor in late January of 1933. The Nazi received 44% of the vote in March of 1933. After that election all parties other than the National Socialists were declared illegal and the Nazi’s vote share not surprisingly shot up to 92% in the November 1933 German federal election.
Hitler promoted himself and his Nazi Party as the only ones who could protect the German people from the threat of Communism. The Holodomor made the threat of the Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union all too real.
Neo-Nazi’s in Ukraine
In trying to understand why there would be Neo-Nazis in modern Eastern Europe I think its very important to understand that an honest and objective history of the causes and conduct of World War II just was not available to the peoples caught behind the Iron Curtain. For decades the peoples under Soviet hegemony were, if not force fed, at least subjected to Soviet propaganda. Under the Soviet worldview and propaganda, World War II was a simple moral tale of the peace loving workers’ paradise that was the Soviet Union being attacked by the racist and evil capitalist Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany was solely the result of the heroic actions of the Russian forces in the Great Patriotic War.
One of the many big lies that apologists for Hitler and the Nazi Party tell is that the attack upon the Soviet Union was intended to protect the world from the grand Jewish conspiracy that was the Soviet Union. One of the many big lies that the apologists for the Soviet Union tell is that the Soviet Union was a classless society where ethnic bigotry and racial prejudices, and particularly anti-Semitism, had been eradicated.
Hitler did not sign a pact with Stalin for Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to dismember Slavic Poland to protect the world from a Jewish Conspiracy embodied in the Marxist Soviet Union. Likewise, Stalin did not sign the pact, and then act upon it, to protect the world from Nazi Germany. To believe either of these big lies is to dismiss and ignore countless inhumane acts perpetrated by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before and during World War II, and in the case of the Soviet Union, after.
A young person growing up in Ukraine after World War II would likely be hearing from the older family members or neighbors of the great suffering caused by their people under Soviet rule and Nazi occupation. That same person would likely be hearing repeated Soviet propaganda about how the great enemy of the Soviet Union was Nazi Germany, how Nazi Germany was the epitome of evil and the Soviet Union a model for the world. Gratefully, the majority would come to the conclusion that both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union committed unspeakably evil acts and were not to be admired. A small number of those living under Soviet rule and Russian domination would come to see the great enemy (Nazi Germany) of their great enemy (the Russian dominated Soviet Union) as their friend. The ages old belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. To a Ukrainian growing up with stories of the Holodomor perpetuated by the Soviet Union and the pain Nazi Germany inflicted on the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany could be more admired than despised, regardless of their personal feelings toward Jewish people.
In the end, a Ukrainian being a Neo-Nazi is almost inexplicable for a Ukrainian who fully appreciates Nazi ideology and practice. Ukrainians are Slavs. Nazi ideology was anti-Slav. Only a lack of understanding of the ideology and history of Nazi Germany, or an amazing degree of cognitive dissonance, can explain why an individual Ukrainian would be a Neo-Nazi. Nazi Germany never was a friend of the Slavic peoples, never a friend of the Ukrainian people, and despite Soviet propaganda the Jewish peoples suffered under Soviet rule as the Ukrainians had.