r/AlternateHistoryHub • u/[deleted] • 11h ago
Whimsu What if the Azov Battalion selected Black Army Makhnovism over Ukrainian Insurgent Army Ultranationalism?
[deleted]
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u/LeMe-Two 11h ago
Putin says Ukraine must be decommunized and nothing changes
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u/Zelenkat 11h ago
Before the Maidan, the oligarchs wouldn't have supported them, and they would have remained marginalized, their leaders would have been arrested, and the organization would have been disbanded. The end.
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
Azov did not exist before Maidan. It was literally formed as a reaction to the russian invasion.
People make things up as they go.
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u/ButterscotchTall8831 7h ago
Azov has been in making since 2000's, it was just a martial art clubs back then, but they had right wing propaganda indoctrinating since the begging. After 2014 after the rise in nationalism they started establishing children summer canps with the same brainwash technic as before. It always had the same leaders but changed names several times.
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
Not one word of it is true.
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u/ButterscotchTall8831 7h ago
What an argument
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
The only one your drivel deserves
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u/ButterscotchTall8831 7h ago
What a responce
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
Legit think this guy is a bot. Look at his post history 24/7 day after day
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
I don't think you know what "bot" means.
Oh the irony of an account with hidden posts and comments accuses a person with a transparent history of being a bot.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
so untrue that NBC news was reporting on it 9 years ago? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpV16BQfbrQ
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
Yes, exactly. The USA at the time de facto took the side of russia and were actively spreading russian propaganda.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
What sort of delusional world are you living in where you think NBC in 2017 took the side of Russia? They were running with the whole Russiagate story for years
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
The Russiagate story did not hurt russia. It was directed at Trump.
NBC is an outlet that supports the Democrat party - you know, the party whose president of the time not only let russia grab Crimea, but did everything he could yo stop Ukraine from fighting back. And when Ukraine started to fight back, imposed an embargo on selling any weapons to the country that was attacked.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
You're not going to convince anyone that Ukraine could have lasted this long without the backing of US arms and aid
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u/Zelenkat 5h ago
Azov may not have existed as such, but the core of what would later become the Azov Battalion already existed and was growing before the Maidan protests in cities across southeastern Ukraine, including Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Luhansk, and others. The closure of factories in the 1990s, the collapse of state youth infrastructure, crime, and the absence of fathers in working-class neighbourhoods meant that teenagers were socialised through free sports clubs, martial arts gyms, and football hooligan groups associated with or controlled by nationalists.
One of the key groups that helped establish Azov was Sekta 82, led by Kharkiv-based Metalist ultras, who cooperated with local nationalists from Patriot of Ukraine, headed by Andriy Biletsky, who would later become Azov's leader. During the 2014 unrest in Kharkiv, members of Sekta 82 took part in clashes with the pro-Russian Oplot group, which employed methods similar to those of nationalist formations based around sports clubs, and took control of the regional administration building after protesters had seized it. It was on the basis of activists from Patriot of Ukraine and Sekta 82 that the Azov Battalion was formed in Berdiansk. Initially, it was called the Black Corps, a name that most likely alluded to the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps.
In 2006, militants from Patriot of Ukraine ransacked the construction site of a Buddhist pagoda in Kharkiv’s Zustrich Park, beat Vietnamese workers, and tore up the Vietnamese flag at a trade mission. From 2008 to 2011, they regularly organised anti-immigrant torchlight marches, attacked foreign students, and conducted "passport checks" in student dormitories and Vietnamese residential facilities in Kharkiv. In 2008, the organisation took part in a violent dispute over the premises of the Hydromodul design bureau, allegedly claiming to be protecting it from the Vietnamese diaspora. In 2010, its activists, including Vadym Troyan, who would later become Azov’s deputy battalion commander, helped seize 48 street kiosks belonging to the Pressa-Kharkiv. On 18 October 2008, the Social-National Assembly, which also made a major contribution to the formation of Azov, joined forces with Dmytro Korchynsky's Brotherhood to stage mass clashes with police outside the SBU building in Kyiv. The clashes resulted in 147 arrests, although most of those detained were subsequently released with administrative penalties.
During this period, Patriot of Ukraine’s activities in Kharkiv were largely conducted under the patronage of, and at the behest of, the circle around the regional governor and major businessman Arsen Avakov. Biletsky's and Troyan's militants were enlisted to seize kiosks and raid dormitories, with the support of Avakov’s associate and future ally of Hennadiy Kernes, Andriy Lipchansky. After Avakov lost the 2010 Kharkiv mayoral election, Patriot of Ukraine occasionally carried out coercive operations on behalf of Kernes’s municipal administration as well. In Kyiv, members of the SNA provided security and muscle for Serhiy Ivashchenko, the Party of Regions candidate, during the 2010 local elections in Vasylkiv. The Party of Regions was generally willing to use nationalists as a bogeyman to mobilise support as part of its political tactics, as it did with the Svoboda party, so its contacts with Patriot of Ukraine are hardly surprising.
When the authorities realised in the early 2010s that Patriot of Ukraine was becoming increasingly difficult to control, they began taking more aggressive measures to suppress the organisation. In August 2011, the SBU arrested members of the Vasylkiv cell on charges of preparing to blow up a Lenin monument in Boryspil. On 23 August, a fight involving gunfire broke out at Patriot of Ukraine’s office at 18 Rymarska Street in Kharkiv with journalist Serhiy Kolesnyk, who sustained head injuries. In November, an assassination attempt was made against Biletsky himself. On 27 December, he was arrested in connection with the Kolesnyk case and charged with robbery. He was held at the Kholodnohirsk pre-trial detention centre until the Verkhovna Rada’s amnesty for "political prisoners" on 24 February 2014.
Following the February 2014 amnesty, the Azov Battalion, established on the basis of Patriot of Ukraine and the SNA, adopted their racial ideology and symbolism: the "Idea of the Nation" and the Black Sun. Under the patronage of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and with financial support from Ihor Kolomoyskyi and Serhiy Taruta, the unit was expanded to regimental strength in autumn 2014 and incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A network of civilian and paramilitary organisations subsequently emerged, including the Civilian Corps, the National Corps party, and the National Druzhyna militia, among others. These organisations continued to be used by oligarchs and officials for extortion, property takeovers, and struggles against political rivals. And, thanks to sponsors, various children's and teenage camps and sports clubs continued to grow, which after 2014 even more strongly promoted the nationalist narrative.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
Fairly sure they existed as an alliance of right wing football hooligans to begin with
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
Jesus Christ. Where do you people come up with that?
No, they did not. Azov Volunteer Battalion (now 12th Special Forces Brigade "Azov") was formed by Euromaidan protesters with the purpose to stop russian invasion.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
"National Militia members include veterans of Ukraine’s four-year war against Russian-led separatists, as well as former football hooligans who took part in Ukraine’s 2013-14 revolution." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links
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u/Contrary_Kind 7h ago
A) propaganda drivel, and b) this is about Azov movement, not Azov batallion
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u/Level_Werewolf_7172 5h ago
Anarchism is a far weaker as a rallying ideology compared to nationalism, all nations are all built on some form of it and it’s far easier to rally people to fight with you for a common cause of unity under a national or ethnic identity compared to class and epically a branch that advocates the weaker to non existent national state and instead local autonomy
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u/Frosty_Dimension4026 11h ago
They face uprisings against the draft. Anarchism gets far fewer people inspired to fight against an invading army than ultranationalism.
If they got inspiration from the black army, they probably would have opposed NATO too so there probably wouldn’t have been the current war anyway.
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u/Adorable-Bend7362 10h ago
I just wonder what happened to anarchist movement, if after series of major combat and terrorist campaigns from 1870s or so to 1939 they became a marginal power and never recovered as a militant power ever since. Not even during Years of Lead, not after the fall of SocBloc, not even in recent years. I wish there would be some kind of gradual scale to show.
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u/Frosty_Dimension4026 5h ago
The majority of their forces were (forcibly) absorbed into the red army and their leadership died. A new anarchist movement never grew again.
Anarchism was also losing its popularity across Europe at the same time since Marxism and social democracy grew to dominate the left wing. It’s gotten more popular online the last few years, but hasn’t been a significant political ideology for close to a century now.
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u/Adorable-Bend7362 5h ago
I mean globally.
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u/Frosty_Dimension4026 4h ago
Marxism and social democracy both had more compelling and engaging arguments and have had more practical results. Anarchism pretty much disappeared as a serious political movement through the Cold War.
It’s had a slight resurgence online in the west, but is still heavily overshadowed by Marxism and social democracy in practice.
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u/Tleno 5h ago
Why would anarchists oppose NATO when their country is under attack? There's plenty of anarchisty movements like Rojava that accepted aid from US and such.
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u/Frosty_Dimension4026 5h ago
Anarchists wouldnt be openly seeking to join NATO, which is the main geopolitical reason Russia invaded.
Most anarchists don’t trust the US and NATO by extension. Rojava is yet another practical example of why.
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u/Normal-Fishing-5987 11h ago
The Russian Federation labels all volunteer battalions "Nazis"; nothing would have changed.
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u/SoggyValuable6575 11h ago
Specificaly the ones in which people support 14th Waffen SS division Galizien
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
no bro you don't get it Bandera was just in a tight spot he had no choice but to be in the einsatzgruppen
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u/TurnImpossible4089 7h ago
Would probably be an effective org and help push anarchism forward. They would probably work with BOAK etc.
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u/Conscious_Sail1959 6h ago
Last time anarchism got a chance was in Spanish civil war now it’s just marginal subculture
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u/Immediate-Spite-5905 10h ago
They get called Nazis and Russia invades because a Nazi to a Russian is anyone who disagrees with them.
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u/tactycool 8h ago
Correct, which is odd since Russia allied itself with, held a parade with, & started ww2 with the nazis
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u/liberalskateboardist 10h ago
it would be something like ukrainian Zapatista Army of National Liberation
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u/BingusBongus3Arms 7h ago
All the true believers die or are captured at Mariuopol. Then a bunch of regular people get filtered in. Now, like in real life it's a fairly standard national guard unit with cringe symbols.
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u/snakepliskin97 7h ago
Wouldn't have mattered. Victoria Nuland needed the manpower and god damn it she had the cookies to hand out!
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u/Kalmur 11h ago
Then they wouldn't exist, as there would be little to no members.
Anarchists fight in Ukraine on the Ukrainian side, but the force is microscopic.