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This work asks questions on the relationship between innovative collective actors, such as the 'new social movements' and the political institutions of representative democracy starting from an underlying hypothesis: the idea that civil society is the main source of political legitimation of liberal democracy. More precisely, what this monograph reflects on is the capacity of the social movements to concretely test alternative forms of democracy. The aim of the contemporary movements is to augment the fundamental values of the "democratic revolution", namely the principles of freedom and equality. They constantly lead to conflict and social antagonism: indeed new conflicts and new antagonisms arise every time that the movements implement radical experiences of democracy in the multiple and different spheres of social life. Only by accepting and setting value by these alternative democratic practices and experiences – and this is the author of this work's thesis – may democratic ideals be revived in contemporary society.

By enabling greater freedom of expression to the soviet civil society, Gorbachev's perestrojka caused the re-emergence of radical nationalist movements among soviet nationalities. In Ukraine these radical movements, though born in a typically post soviet social and cultural environment, drew inspiration from movements and thinkers deeply influenced by European fascism and the right wing radicalism of the first half of the twentieth century. Radical right wing nationalism in post soviet Ukraine, a minority opposed to both pro-Russian and national-democratic currents of Ukrainian mainstream political life, played no role in national independence and in the events of the first two decades of independence, including the "Orange Revolution" of 2004. The bloody events of Euromajdan and the following war in Ukraine's Donbass between pro-Ukrainians and pro-Russian separatists created an opportunity for these radical movements to play a greater political and paramilitary role and to take advantage of the renewed patriotic spirit.