July 01, 2025
The government of Ukraine has named a major fascist ideologist as the new head of its history institution.
Poland has an Institute of National Remembrance established to educate, archive, and prosecute crimes against the Polish nation. It goes back to the General Commission for Research on Fascist Crimes, a body established in 1945 focused on investigating the crimes of the Nazi administration in Poland during World War II. It was later expanded to investigate presumed crimes against Poland under communist rule.
In 2006, shortly after the U.S. instigated 'Orange Revolution', Ukraine under then President Viktor Yushchenko established the Ukrainian Institute of National Memoryunder the cabinet. It was supposed to have a similar role as the Polish institution. It was however immediately taken over by fascists to white wash the crimes perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalist who had allied with the German Nazis.
In 2010, under the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, it was downgraded to a research institution led by Valery Soldatenko who opposed fascist Ukrainian nationalism.
After the U.S. instigated coup in 2014 Soldatenko was fired. A number of right-wing nationalist followed to lead the Institute of National Memory. In late 2024 the latest one, Anton Drobobovich, was fired for not being sufficiently radical (machine translation):
The Cabinet of Ministers dismissed Anton Drobovich from the post of head of the Institute of National Memory. His contract ended, but they did not renew it.
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Recall that Drobovich proposed to make the Arch of Freedom of the Ukrainian people in Kiev a symbol of LGBT people. He believes that the dismantling of the monument can be avoided only if its former value is completely replaced.He also called the Red Army "commie detachments", although he condemned the nationalist march in honor of the SS division "Galicia".
Last week the Ukrainian government named his replacement (machine translation):
Alexander Alferov, a former officer of the Third Assault Brigade and [former] Azov battalion, became the new head of the Institute of National Memory. The decision on the appointment was made by the Cabinet of Ministers.
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"Alexander Alferov is a Ukrainian historian, TV and radio host, public and military figure. Since 2010, he has been a research associate at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is the author, co-author and compiler of 15 books and more than 100 scientific articles. With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he became an officer of the special operations forces "Azov-Kiev", from September 2022 — an officer of the 3rd separate assault brigade, head of the humanitarian training and information support group of the psychological support department of personnel. At the same time, he was the head of the expert group on de-russification in Kiev. He has the rank of major of the reserve in Kiev," the website of the Ministry of Culture says.
Alferov is a fascist. He was the ideological enforces of the Azov brigade.
Azov, you will remember, is the fascist militia which has been pampered by western media which had once described it as "a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization" to later call it a simple military brigade.
In 2014 the BBC was still warning of it:
Run by the extremist Patriot of Ukraine organisation, which considers Jews and other minorities "sub-human", external and calls for a white, Christian crusade against them, it sports three Nazi symbols, external on its insignia: a modified Wolf's Hook, a black sun (or "Hakensonne") and the title Black Corps, which was used by the Waffen SS.Azov is just one of more than 50 volunteer groups fighting in the east, the vast majority of which are not extremist, yet it seems to enjoy special backing from some top officials: ...
Azov had since followed the path of the Waffen-SS. It has grown from a volunteer group into a battalion, then a regiment, then a brigade, which was split into two (currently fighting each other), each of which is now being upgraded to corps levels. Azov by now, is a full fledged army which has its own financial sources and does its own recruiting.
Alexander Alferov, the new head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, has been deeply involved with Azov.
In 2014, when the founder and leader of Azov Andriy Biletsky became a member of parliament, Alferov became his press secretary. From winter 2014 to June 2015, he was also the head of the press service of the Azov Regiment.
From April 2022, he was an officer of the Azov-Kyiv Special Forces, and from September an officer of the 3rd Assault Brigade, head of the humanitarian training and information support group of the staff psychological support department.
Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian historian at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, commented on Alferov's new position:
Marta Havryshko @HavryshkoMarta - 20:03 UTC · Jun 27, 2025The first "Azovite" in Zelensky's government has arrived.
Oleksandr Alfyorov is now the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory—the country’s main state memory authority. To get the post, he left the ranks of the Azov 3rd Assault Brigade.
He curated his brigade's museum exhibit in Kyiv, "In Steel Storms," which glorified the Waffen-SS Division Galicia. During his time in the unit, one of its subdivisions began using a modified SS Dirlewanger patch as its official emblem.
So why stop there? Maybe the Institute’s new logo will be the Dirlewanger insignia too 🤔
After his appointment as head the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Alferov gave an interview (video).
As Strana reported (machine translation):
The head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, and the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, cannot be compared, because the latter was educated and "brought up on high culture."This was stated by the new head of the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine Alexander Alferov.
"How can you compare a person who received a German education, who was an artist, who was brought up on philosophy and, in fact, German culture-high culture-and compare with these people? No way. These are people who cannot be compared," Alferov said.
So Hitler, who never finished school, never pursued a degree, who sold his water color pictures to passer-bys in Munich after the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts had rejected him and who ended up as a private first class after the first world war was of 'higher culture' than Vladimir Putin, who is an actual lawyer with an additional degree in resource economics, a former colonel and black belt judoka?
[Alferov] also believes that it is impossible to compare the peoples of Nazi Germany and today's Russia. He called the Russians" not orcs, but goblins.""How can you compare the German people, brought up in the spirit of law, obedience, with Protestant or Catholic, in general, powerful Christian ethics, with the people who live there, in the East, with goblins? And they also have their own name-Russians, of course. You know, when they started talking - Orcs, Orcs... No, not Orcs. Orcs are former elves. And these are really Russians," Alferov said.
Just imagine what this dude indoctrinated into the minds of young Azov recruits while he was the head of the humanitarian training of Azov. That he will now be in a role where he can indoctrinate all of Ukraine at a national level does not bode well for the country.