Should Russia denazify Ukraine?

What is nazism? Is Ukraine a nazi country? Is Russia a nazi country? What about WW2 collaborators and Azov batallion?

When Putin announced war against Ukraine, one of the two main objectives, was denazification (the other one being demilitarization). Is nazism in Ukraine so prevalent that the only way to dismantle nazi government is to enter with military troops?

First of all — what is nazism? Technically — it’s an ideology of a nazi Germany in 30s and 40s, called social-nationalism, an off-shoot of fascism. Same as fascism it is totalitarian (lives of ordinary people are totally governed by one party) and militaristic (love for war). What nazism added to that is the racial theory with an idea that some races are better, some are worse and that those worse should be eliminated or assimilated.

Right off the bat we may compare Ukraine and Russia in regards to who looks more “nazi”. Russia has one dominant party, a single president for more than 20 years (Medvedev does not really count — Putin was still in charge those days), opposition is imprisoned or killed, Russians have the second army in the world, they praise the Victory in a Second World War and say that “we can repeat” (можем повторить), they attack Ukraine by telling that Ukrainians are less worthy than Russians to have a country, Ukrainians allegedly are not a real nation, those who oppose it, should be eliminated, others should be assimilated as Russians. In Ukraine on another hand, presidents and parties in the parliament often change, there is not a single dominant party (some parties may dominate the parliament, but coalition is almost always necessary), Ukrainian army was not nearly as large as Russian one, ranking 22nd, Ukraine never attacked any country during its independence and there is no “die or assimilate” slogan. Who is more militaristic, totalitarian and racist?

Apparently Russia puts another meaning in the word “nazi”. So what is it? We should return to the Second World War, when the nazi threat was very real. According to Russians, Ukrainians collaborated with nazi and the most prominent figure Russia attacks is Stepan Bandera. Without going into the details why and how much Ukrainians collaborated with nazi, I will just give a simple fact from Stepan Bandera biography — he spent almost three years (1942–1944) in a nazi prison. Ukrainians did collaborate with nazis, but so did Russians (i.e. Vlasov). And actually the biggest collaborator with nazi regime was USSR itself. When nazi Germany invaded Poland, USSR did the same and they held a common nazi-soviet parade in Brest-Litovsk. Only in 1941 this changed. So if Russians want to denazify Ukraine because there are some Stepan Bandera monuments in Ukraine, they should start with denazifying Russia first — by demolishing all Stalin monuments, who was, indeed, one of the largest nazi collaborator. And yes - there are monuments of Stalin in Russia, also newly erected.

But what about the Ukrainian government, which is allegedly nazi by its nature? What about Azov Battalion? Didn’t Ukraine become a neonazi state? The simple answer is — no. Ukraine is no more nazi than Poland or Japan is. The president of Ukraine is a Jew (in case you don’t know — Jews are the ones, who should hate nazis the most because of Holocaust), so he hardly can be a head of a nazi state. Right-wing parties are virtually not present in parliament. Levels of anti-semitism are lower than in other neighbouring countries (including Russia) according to a PEW research.

And Azov? Azov formed as a volunteer militia unit after the Russian invasion in 2014 (not before). Is it a wonder that when Russia invaded Ukraine, some of the volunteers in the military unit were right-wing and ultra-right? Do you expect that ultra-rights would rather go to the ballet school during the invasion? Azov proved itself as a strong battle unit and it was later incorporated into National Guard of Ukraine. As for symbolism — if one wishes — he may find their symbol being similar to the “Wolfsangel”, which was used by nazi units. But it’s as similar to Wolfsangel, as is Russian symbol Z, which became a symbol of war in Russia. And, in case you did not know, there is no letter “Z” in a Cyrillic alphabet — this is not a mere letter, this is indeed a symbol.

Azov influence is not as strong, as one might think watching Russian news. There were less than 1000 of them in 2015, and less than a quarter of them could be qualified as neo-nazis. They do not control government. And the mere existence of some small fraction of ultra-right people, who’s views are not shared by most of the population, is not an excuse for an invasion. Especially when Russian military also has some ultra-wing fighters.

Even Russian infamous article What Russia should do with Ukraine (also translated to English) cannot find enough of evidence for nazism being present in Ukraine. What they are saying, is that Ukraine has some “disguised” form of nazism, which is very difficult to see, but it exists nevertheless, same as nazism exists in USA and Europe. Yes — you read it right. Russians say that Europe and USA are also nazis. That’s why, according to Russians, NATO supports nazi regime.

Here is a translated citation from that article:

The peculiarity of modern nazified Ukraine is in amorphousness and ambivalence, which allow Nazism to be disguised as a desire for “independence” and a “European” (Western, pro-American) path of “development” (in reality — to degradation), to assert that in Ukraine “there is no Nazism , only private individual excesses”. After all, there is no main Nazi party, no Fuhrer, no full-fledged racial laws (only their truncated version in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.

However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a “light version” of German Nazism during the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, since Ukrainian Nazism is free from such […] frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism — as European and, in its most developed form, American racism. Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula like “NATO — no, EU — yes.” The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism […]

Even Russian propagandists cannot find enough of proofs of Ukrainian nazism. However if one thinks that NATO and European Union are modern nazi formation then what is “nazi” exactly? If definitions of “nazi” are so vague, that you can call “nazi” everyone you dislike, then there is something wrong with the definition.

Russia wants do destroy Ukraine as a state — and they call it “denazification”, however internally they often use another word “deukrainization”. They can’t use this term externally, because then it’s not Ukrainians who look like nazis, but Russians. And it’s Russia then, which should be “denazified”, not Ukraine.