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The end of Ukrainian radical nationalism is not here – yet THE WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR FAR-RIGHT MILITANCY AND VIOLENCE IN UKRAINE

Is radical Ukrainian nationalism disappearing? However marginal but playing a decisive role in the resistance against Russian aggression, along with the rest of Ukrainian society, this political movement has suffered terrible losses that raise questions about its ability to maintain itself in the post-war political arena. This forward-looking essay examines the multiple challenges posed by this issue, arguing that the Far-right in Ukraine could perhaps find in the war an undeniable opportunity for a renaissance

Essay by Adrien Nonjon June 20, 2023

Re-imagining the Ukrainian Ancestral Land The Vedic and Aryan influence of Ridnovir geopoetics

Ukrainian Neo-pagan groups, known as Ridnoviry, since the 1950s, sought to develop an archaic cosmic piety around nature and primordial traditions, to providing an alternative to the disillusions of Soviet materialist atheism and give meaning to an uprooted nation, Mainly influenced by an environmentalist and Hinduist imaginary, the landscape constitutes the main element of inertia structuring this belief. Indeed, the emotions embedded in the Brahmin knowledge and the aesthetic permanence of territory are the foundations of what could be called a pagan “geopoetics”. This concept, based on environmentalism and poetry, was part of the deployment of a new understanding of nature, and the claim of a Ukrainian ascendance linked with the Vedic and Aryan origins myth. Focusing on the main Neo-pagan groups Ridna Ukrayins’ka Natsional’na Víra (RUN-Vira) and Ob’iednannia Ridnoviriv Ukraïny (ORU), I propose in this article to return to the genealogy of this belief and show the role of geopoetics in the construction of Ukrainian Neo-paganism.

By Adrien Nonjon January 24, 2022