“And now you will witness the Beast, Moishe, who will devour a chicken in front of your eyes”, – said the Circus owner. Local media flashed their cameras. Kids jumped from excitement. Children always love watching The Adventures of the Semitic Beasts. Little Jennie’s father is a respected member of society, who works for a pharmaceutical company, where he tries a newly developed COVID vaccine on over a hundred Jewish “volunteers”. Her mom owns a lovely little slave, Sarah, who is preparing her beauty treatments and washes her dirty laundry.
Sounds like an ideal scenario for a Nazi, right?
You do not have to read Mein Kampf (however, I highly recommend reading it) to imagine this reality would not be impossible if Hitler’s Germany won the WWII. Equally Hitler would be hailed as a hero and a national saviour, – possibly, not only in Germany, but in various subjugated countries. All his atrocities, exterminations and crimes against humanity would be labelled a necessary sacrifice to avoid the bigger evil, an Imperialist Threat, Jewish fascism, Martians or the end of the world.
To any adequate human being today a world with human trials, slavery and glorification of tyrants sounds unfathomable, horrifying, pure wrong.
Nevertheless, the states of the world have been commending an identical regime for a century now, attributing a victory over Nazism to the Soviet Union, and counting Soviet and later Russian people among the top international organisations.
And it matters not that Soviet leader of the time, Joseph Stalin, has given Hitler the assurances and backing to slaughter and subjugate European Nations, while covering the Eastern Front with his Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, that he has murdered all top generals in a major Purge, leaving his nation nothing but the role of meat cannon; it matters not that anyone not willing to fight was shot by Stalin’s newly created “zagradotryads” who stood behind the avantgarde infantry; it matters not that the people of Soviet Union have lost an estimated 27 million, over 20 % of its population, in the Second World War! The loss of 27 million lives, an absolutely unnecessary sacrifice, was the result of a shocking Soviet incompetence and a criminal disregard of human life! An inhumane Soviet regime that has made the war possible and sacrificed 1/5th of its people to rectify its fatal error is being hailed as a winner and an equal participant of the civilised world! What a travesty!
Moreover, the people of Soviet Union, and later, – Russia – have been fed the lies about this war and their place in the world for decades! Russians of all generations feel an immense pride for being the descendants of a blood-stained Soviet Regime, they are being taught to celebrate a major Soviet victory and see the dissolution of the Soviet Empire as a personal trauma!
Now, every relatively educated person would know the facts and statistics of the Second World War and of the Soviet atrocities. Just like we all know those of the Third Reich.
Then, on which basis are we all, and Germans in particular, condemning the horrors of Hitler’s regime, while staying silent, and in case of Russians, – outward jubilant, – about the atrocities of the Soviet system?!
There is one, and only one difference here – Hitler lost the war; while Stalin’s Russia was among the winners. Soviet stealing of the atomic weapons design clearly helped the case.
Indeed, while Nazi’s atrocities were going on for about a decade, USSR’s and now Russia’s crimes have been happening for over a century. Guess it’s worth giving a quick timeline for those, who are still unsure that Soviet crimes far outweigh the Nazis’:
Jewish Pogroms in 1920s
It is estimated that 3,450 Jews or 2.3 percent of the Jewish victims killed during the Russian Civil War were murdered by the Bolshevik armies.
Destruction of the “Class Enemies”
Since its creation in 1922, NKVD (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) were specifically responsible for maintaining the political regime in the Gulag and conducting mass deportations and forced resettlements. The latter targeted a number of ethnic groups that the Soviet authorities presumed to be hostile to its policies and likely to collaborate with the enemy, including Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and Koreans.
The Holodomor
Like the Holocaust of 1941-1945, the Holodomor of 1932–1933 was a targeted genocide of a nation. Holocaust was a systematic killing of Jews by the Nazis, while the Holodomor was the mass murder of the Ukrainian nation, carried out by the Soviet government. According to findings from the Court of Appeals of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits. Have you heard of the genocide which killed over 6 million Ukrainians?
Mr. Jones is a good movie to watch about Holodomor.
The Great Purge (The Great Terror)
Stalin was obsessed with conspiracies and expected threat from every corner. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical “fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies. By 1936 Stalin’s paranoia reached a crescendo. The fear of losing his position, the potential return of Trotsky, and the rising threat of fascism from the west, goaded him into authorizing the Great Purge. The purges themselves were largely conducted by the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police of the USSR. The initial stages of the purges were targeted at the Soviet government itself. The NKVD began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. Eventually the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command which would have a disastrous effect on the military altogether.
Vyacheslav Molotov who signed a treacherous German–Soviet non-aggression pact, was one of the main executioners of Stalin’s Great Purges. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: intelligentsia, peasants—especially those lending out money or wealth (kulaks)—and professionals.
A series of NKVD operations affected a number of national minorities, accused of being “fifth-column” communities. A number of purges were officially explained as an elimination of the possibilities of sabotage and espionage by the Polish Military Organisation and, consequently, many victims of the purge were ordinary Soviet citizens of Polish origin.
Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of the population.
My grand-grandmother’s father and two brothers were tortured and killed by NKVD as “enemies of the nation”, merely because they were Poles.
The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting a number of the Soviet Union’s diaspora nationalities: the Finnish, Latvian, Estonian, Bulgarian, Afghan, Iranian, Greek, and Chinese.
Concerning diaspora minorities, the vast majority of whom were Soviet citizens and whose ancestors had resided for decades and sometimes centuries in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire, “this designation absolutized their cross-border ethnicities as the only salient aspect of their identity, sufficient proof of their disloyalty and sufficient justification for their arrest and execution”. Some scholars have called the National Operations of the NKVD genocidal.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a Soviet Army officer who became a prisoner for a decade in the Gulag system) presents in The Gulag Archipelago the most holistic view of the timeline of all the Leninist and Stalinist purges (1918–1956).
Total murders during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million.
Soviet War Crimes During WWII
Throughout WWII Soviet soldiers were committing crimes not only against the direct enemies, Germans, but against most states of Europe. The targets included both collaborators with Germany and the members of anti-Communist resistance movements such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Ukraine, the Forest Brothers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the Polish Armia Krajowa. The NKVD also conducted the Katyn massacre, summarily executing over 20,000 Polish military officer prisoners in April and May 1940.
German historian Thomas Urban writes that the Soviet policy towards the people who fell under their control in areas occupied by Soviet after WWII showed strong elements of ethnic cleansing – very similar to the work of Nazi SS Death Squads.
Torture was used on a wide scale. Prisoners were scalded with boiling water in Bobrka; in Przemyslany, people’s noses, ears, and fingers were cut off and their eyes were also put out; in Czortków, the breasts of female inmates were cut off; and in Drohobycz, victims were bound together with barbed wire. According to historian, Prof. Jan T. Gross:
We cannot escape the conclusion: Soviet state security organs tortured their prisoners not only to extract confessions but also to put them to death. Not that the NKVD had sadists in its ranks who had run amok; rather, this was a wide and systematic procedure.
According to sociologist, Prof. Tadeusz Piotrowski, during the years from 1939 to 1941, nearly 1.5 million persons were deported from the Soviet-controlled areas of former eastern Poland deep into the Soviet Union, of whom 58.0% were Poles, 19.4% Jews and the remainder other ethnic nationalities. My friend’s grandmother was one of such people, forced to leave her village together with her parents. They had to give the train conductor their last possessions to avoid being sent to Gulag.
Fântâna Albă massacre, which happened in the modern day Ukraine, saw 44–3,000 Romanians killed by the Soviet Border Troops and the NKVD while attempting to escape to Romania. Such event has been referred to as the “Romanian Katyn”.
In Poland, German Nazi atrocities ended by late 1944, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Red Army forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in plunder, rape and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the regime.
It was a common Soviet practice to accuse their victims of being fascists in order to justify their death sentences. All the perversion of this Soviet tactic lay in the fact that practically all of the accused had in reality been fighting against the forces of Nazi Germany since September 1939. At that time the Soviets were still collaborating with Nazi Germany for more than 20 months before Operation Barbarossa started.
Mass Rapes on All Territories “Liberated” by Soviet Soldiers
Following the Winter Offensive of 1945, mass rape by Soviet males occurred in all major cities taken by the Red Army. Women were gang raped by as many as several dozen soldiers during the liberation of Poland. In some cases, victims who did not hide in the basements all day were raped up to 15 times. According to historian Antony Beevor, following the Red Army’s capture of Berlin in 1945, Soviet troops raped German women and girls as young as eight years old.
The attitude of Soviet servicemen towards ethnic Poles was better than their attitude towards the Germans, but it was not entirely better. The scale of rape of Polish women in 1945 led to a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases.
Ungváry writes that when the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. Estimates of the number of rape victims vary from 5,000 to 200,000. According to Norman Naimark, Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered.
According to some British and American sources, the Soviets made it a policy to loot and rape civilians in Manchuria, which they were ”liberating” from Japanese.
Red Army was also involved in mass-scale looting at liberated territories.
Treatment of the Prisoners of War
According to the depositions, Soviet massacres of German, Italian, Spanish, and other Axis POWs were often incited by unit Commissars, who claimed to be acting under orders from Stalin and the Politburo. Other evidence cemented the War Crimes Bureau’s belief that Stalin had given secret orders about the massacre of POWs.
Soviet soldiers rarely bothered to treat wounded German POWs. A particularly infamous example took place after the Crimean city of Feodosia was briefly recaptured by Soviet forces on December 29, 1942. 160 wounded soldiers had been left in military hospitals by the retreating Wehrmacht. After the Germans retook Feodosia, it was learned that every wounded soldier had been massacred by Red Army, Navy, and NKVD personnel. Some had been shot in their hospital beds, others repeatedly bludgeoned to death, still others were found to have been thrown from hospital windows before being repeatedly drenched with freezing water until they died of hypothermia.
Many of the bodies of POWs were horribly mutilated, ears and noses cut off and genital organs amputated and stuffed into their mouths. Breasts of some of the nurses were cut off, the women being brutally raped.
Revolutions in Countries in the “Soviet Sphere of Influence”
In both the Hungarian Revolution (1956) and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 Soviets were shooting into inhabited quarters of the cities, despite no return fire, and of “haphazard shooting at defenceless passers-by.”
Afghanistan (1979–1989)
Up to 2 million Afghans were killed by the Soviet forces and their proxies. In order to separate the mujahideen from the local populations and eliminate their support, the Soviet army killed and drove off civilians, and used scorched earth tactics to prevent their return. They used booby traps, mines, and chemical substances throughout the country. Soviet soldiers as well as KhAD agents kidnapped young women from the city of Kabul and the areas of Darul Aman and Khair Khana, near the Soviet garrisons, to rape them.
2 Chechen Wars
Considering Russian lies and atrocities against neighbouring independent states, understanding Chechen wars is crucial, especially due to identical tactics employed by Russians during the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine.
The first war was preceded by the Russian Intervention in Ichkeria, in which Russia tried to covertly overthrow the Ichkerian government. After the initial campaign of 1994–1995, culminating in the devastating Battle of Grozny, Russian federal forces attempted to seize control of the mountainous area of Chechnya, but faced heavy resistance from Chechen guerrillas and raids on the flatlands. The Chechen Air Force (as well as the republic’s civilian aircraft fleet) was completely destroyed in the air strikes that occurred on the very first few hours of the war. Nevertheless, Boris Yeltsin’s cabinet’s expectations of a quick surgical strike, quickly followed by Chechen capitulation and regime change, were misguided. Russia found itself in a quagmire almost instantly. The morale of the Russian troops, poorly prepared and not understanding why and even where they were being sent, was low from the beginning. Although the Russian military command ordered to only attack designated targets, due to the lack of training and experience of Russian forces, they attacked random positions instead, turning into carpet bombing and indiscriminate barrages of rocket artillery, causing enormous casualties among the Chechen and Russian civilian population. When the Russians besieged the Chechen capital, thousands of civilians died from a week-long series of air raids and artillery bombardments in the heaviest bombing campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden. Russian historian and general Dmitri Volkogonov said the Russian military’s bombardment of Grozny killed around 35,000 civilians, including 5,000 children, and that the vast majority of those killed were ethnic Russians.
Like in Ukraine now, Russians were using forbidden weapons of cluster bombs – 1995 Shali cluster bomb attack.
Russian soldiers often prevented civilians from evacuating from areas of imminent danger and prevented humanitarian organizations from assisting civilians in need. Russian troops committed numerous and systematic acts of torture and summary executions. Humanitarian and aid groups chronicled persistent patterns of Russian soldiers killing, raping and looting civilians at random, often in disregard of their nationality. The violations committed by members of the Russian forces were usually tolerated by their superiors and were not punished even when investigated.
One of the most notable war crimes committed by Russian forces was the Samashki massacre, on which the United Nations Commission on Human Rights had this to say:
It is reported that a massacre of over 100 people, mainly civilians, occurred between 7 and 8 April 1995 in the village of Samashki, in the west of Chechnya. According to the accounts of 128 eye-witnesses, federal soldiers deliberately and arbitrarily attacked civilians and civilian dwellings in Samashki by shooting residents and burning houses with flame-throwers. The majority of the witnesses reported that many OMON troops were drunk or under the influence of drugs. They wantonly opened fire or threw grenades into basements where residents, mostly women, elderly persons and children, had been hiding.
Undisciplined Russian soldiers were also reported to be committing murders, rapes, and looting in Ingushetia.
Estimates of the number of civilians killed range widely from 20,000 to 100,000, with the latter figure commonly referenced by Chechen sources.
The general disdain for Russian behavior in the Western political establishment contrasted heavily with widespread support in the Russian public. Domestic political authorities’ arguments emphasizing stability and the restoration of order resonated with the Russian public and quickly became an issue of state identity.
Russian apartment bombings – 4–16 September 1999
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. Then-prime minister Vladimir Putin‘s handling of the crisis boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months. Russian courts ruled that the attacks were orchestrated by Chechen-linked militants, while some scholars, journalists, and politicians have argued that the bombings were a false flag attack coordinated by the FSB in order to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya, and bring Putin into the Presidential seat.
The Second Chechen War – 1999- 2009
By 2009, 10 years into the war, Russia had managed to severely disable the Chechens and large-scale fighting ceased. The exact death toll of the conflict is unknown. Russian casualties are around 7,500 (official Russian casualty figures) or about 14,000 according to the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers. Unofficial sources estimate a range of 25,000 to 50,000 dead or missing, mostly Chechen civilians.
According to the 2001 annual report by Amnesty International:
There were frequent reports that Russian forces indiscriminately bombed and shelled civilian areas. Chechen civilians, including medical personnel, continued to be the target of military attacks by Russian forces. Hundreds of Chechen civilians and prisoners of war were extra judicially executed. Journalists and independent monitors continued to be refused access to Chechnya.
Assassinations
From Lenin to Putin, Russian leaders were using espionage to identify and murder any leader who threatened their position. All Stalin’s rivals were killed during the Great Purge: Leon Trotsky – assassinated in Mexico by Soviet agent Ramón Mercader in 1940; Nikolai Bukharin, Grigori Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev; Bolshevik heroes, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Béla Kun.
Soviet and Russian leaders especially love murdering their opponents with poisons:
In October 1959, Stepan Bandera, the leader of Ukrainian nationalist movement, was poisoned by cyanide gas on the orders of Soviet KGB head Alexander Shelepin and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Another leader of Ukrainian movement, Yevhen Konovalets, a military commander of the Ukrainian National Republic army, was assassinated in Rotterdam in 1938 by a bomb rigged to explode hidden inside a box of chocolates. This booby-trap was disguised as a present from a close friend.
Vladimir Putin has successfully inherited his predecessors’ tradition to assassinate his opponents. Here you can view just a quick round-up of hundreds of people who dared to question his actions or ascent to power:
Sergei Yushenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, 2003
Both Yushenkov and Shchekochikhinwere investigating the 1999 apartment bombings, which led to Chechen wars and Putin’s ascent to power.
Anna Politkovskaya, 2006
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian reporter for Novaya Gazeta whose book, “Putin’s Russia,” accused the Kremlin leader of turning the country into a police state. She wrote extensively about abuse in Chechnya. She was shot at point-blank range in an elevator in her building.
Natalia Estemirova, 2006
Natalya Estemirova was a journalist who investigated abductions and murders that had become commonplace in Chechnya. She was abducted from outside her home and later found in nearby woodland with gunshot wounds to her head. No one has been convicted of her murder.
Alexander Litvinenko, 2006
“Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea” laced with deadly polonium-210 at a London hotel. Litvinenko was very critical of Putin, accusing him of, among other things, blowing up apartment blocks in 1999 and ordering the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, 2009
Markelov was a human rights lawyer known for representing Chechen civilians in human rights cases again the Russian military. He also represented journalists who found themselves in legal trouble after writing articles critical of Putin, including Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was slain in 2006. Markelov was shot by a masked gunman near the Kremlin. Baburova, also a journalist from Novaya Gazeta, was fatally shot as she tried to help him. Russian authorities said a neo-Nazi group was behind the killings, and two members were convicted of the deaths.
Boris Berezovsky, 2013
Boris Berezovsky was a Russian oligarch who fled to Britain after he fell out with Putin. During his exile he threatened to bring down Putin by force. He was found dead at his Berkshire home in March 2013.
Boris Nemtsov, 2015
In Feb. 2015, just hours after urging the public to join a march against Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine, Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant within view of the Kremlin.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal, 2018
On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned in the city of Salisbury, England. According to UK sources and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), they were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent.
Attempted Murder of Navalny, 2020
Alexey Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He has organised anti-government demonstrations and run for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Putin avoids referring directly to Navalny by name. In 2021, Navalny had more than six million YouTube subscribers. In a 2011 radio interview, he described Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, as a “party of crooks and thieves,” which became a popular epithet. In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalised in serious condition after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He was medically evacuated to Berlin and discharged a month later. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning, and an investigation implicated agents from the Federal Security Service (FSB). He was later put into prison by Russian ruling party. While in prison, Navalny and human rights groups have accused Russian authorities of subjecting him to torture. In March 2022, Navalny was sentenced to an additional 9 years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court in a new trial.
Horrifying, isn’t it? Funny thing is that everyone probably remembers these murders. People from CIS countries remember for sure. But somehow, for some unknown reason, everyone just goes on with their lives and, again, pretends Russia has a legit government who has the right to be part of a civilised world, a member of all top international organisations.
Most surprising, however, is the fact that these assassinations, illegal wars and false flag terrorist attacks do not sow the seeds of untrust among the Russian public. On the contrary, Putin’s ways seem to excite Russian people and solidify their confidence in their leader. It almost feels like Russia is involved in a centuries long religious war against all the world, and it has to overcome “small sufferings” for the sake of a larger sacred goal. What this goal is – stays a mystery for all the civilised world.
No nation’s secrets could ever come even close to the dark corners of a Mysterious Russian Soul. According to Dostoevsky, “the most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything”
And all would be fine and well if Russians were contended to keep this suffering inside their borders. However, for centuries, the suffering Russian soul have been sleep-walking across its neighbours, like a Shahid suicide killer, looking for people fighting for a better life without suffering and pain.
Current Russian President was never a problem for the Russian people. If anything, he simply uncovered and masterfully directed the sentiment of the Russian nation, a nation, continuously dissatisfied with its position and looking to destroy and subjugate anyone they deem inferior or impure.
“Oh, he understood very well that for the meek soul of a simple Russian, exhausted by grief and hardship and, above all, by constant injustice and sin, his own or the world’s, there was no stronger need than to find a holy shrine or a saint to prostrate himself before and to worship.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Vladimir Putin gave Russian people all they were craving for: a nostalgic ability to live in the past and reminisce over the Glory of the Soviet Union, a common enemy, which is Western values of liberalism and freedom of choice, a feeling of being continuously misunderstood and the great goal of making Russia great again.
There was a brief period in the 1990s when we could have hoped for the awakening and thawing of long-suffering Russian souls, an increased openness to new values and ways, integration into the world community after 70 years of brainwashing and torture. The foreigner would never understand the absolute Russian rejection of this short-lasting liberation. Putin’s “strongman” image and his “handling” of “Chechen terrorists” was a sight for sore Russian eyes. Finally has the Russian nation uncovered a worthy Tsar to pay tribute to!
Boris Yeltsin and the coalition of Russian oligarchs were hoping to make Putin their marionette in power, just to discover Putin’s inhumane lust for power and influence. They miscalculated – the same way Hindenburg and his immediate political surrounding screwed up placing Hitler in power. Quickly, Putin managed to remove his political and ideological opponents and establish a cult of leader, unseen since the times of Hitler and Stalin.
Having established an absolute power and having squashed all nonconformity, in 2020 Putin has amended the constitution allowing him to remain in power till 2036 to oversee, among other things, – the “patriotic education, ban on same-sex marriage, a ban on senior officials holding foreign bank accounts, exhortations to preserve Russian language and history, and introducing a reference to Russia’s ancestral ‘faith in God’.” “The Referendum” of 2020 was Putin’s Enabling Act.
In the spirit of “patriotic education” in 2005 Putin has launched a Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement “Ours!” which declared itself to be a democratic, anti-fascist, anti-“oligarchic-capitalist” movement. By late 2007, it had grown in size to some 120,000 members aged between 17 and 25. It has been speculated that the Kremlin’s primary goal was to create a paramilitary force to harass and attack Vladimir Putin‘s critics as “enemies of the State”. Critics have compared Nashi to the Soviet Komsomol and the Hitlerjugend.
One of the movement’s main goals is preventing the introduction of foreign control in Russia. Yakemenko, the leader of Nashi, feared that the Russia’s fate may be similar to that of Ukraine which he said “was a Russian colony and now it is an American colony.”
Every summer, Nashi runs recruiting camps and educational forums (camp) in Seliger. New members receive a basic military-style training, according to Yakimenko. Some reports mention the use of the camp to improve the demographics of Russia, where twenty tents were set up for twenty newlywed couples to sleep together.
Known politicians, scientists, businessmen, cultural workers, professors (from prestigious universities), scientists, and show business stars were invited to “Seliger”. At the end of the 2013 Forum, the first public images of the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic made during the forum appeared on the Internet.
While Ours! has been an important political vehicle for internal indoctrination, the Russian-funded organisation Youth Time has proven a powerful tool for the forging of pro-Russian sentiments among talented youth from all around the world.
Having attended numerous Youth Time events, I had an honour of meeting an ex-KGB, Mr. Yakunin, one of Putin’s closest friends and one of the co-founders of Youth Time, an organisation, whose goal is to “promote youth collaboration for social change”.
While pleasantly surprised by the level of organisation and people, attending Youth Time conferences, I found myself horrified seeing that absolutely every Russian person I have met there has been supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2014 and is supporting it now.
It is one thing seeing homeless and alcoholics fall prey to Putin’s fairy tales about “killer Bandero-geese”, Ukrainian nationalists crucifying Russian babies, American bio-chemical laboratories inundating Ukrainian cities and heartless Ukrainians discriminating poor Russian speakers. But it is truly horrifying and heart-breaking seeing PhDs, academics, professors from Skolkovo and social activists supporting indiscriminate bombings and genocide of people they used to call “brothers”.
Over 2/3 of Russian people, I have met during my studies, travels and work feel proud to be Russians and support the actions of their president “without reservation”. This matches perfectly with the polls suggesting at least 71 % of Russians support the invasion of Ukraine, while over 86.6% of Russians tolerate and support the potential assault on the territory of the European Union, including: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia. Moreover, according to the survey, 75% of respondents tolerate to a varied extent the use of nuclear weapons by their government.
I feel truly sorry for millions of deceived people living beyond the poverty line and having no access to information, apart from the state propaganda, flowing into their clogged brains like sewage flowing into the ocean. But what can we say about millions of people who’ve had access to Internet, to higher education, to alternative sources of media? What can we say about Russian people living in the West and opting to believe the magical realism of one delusional state?! How do you ever explain to the Russian children, born and bred in the democratic Western states, that their parents were actively supporting the genocide?! How do you ever justify this logic? Equally, how do you ever justify the silence of millions of Russians?
Lower classes might not know the reality. But dozens of Russian people I know are perfectly aware of the atrocities Russia is carrying out in Ukraine. They know about carpet bombings, indiscriminate destruction of Ukrainian property, the usage of prohibited weapons (such as cluster bombs, used by Nazis and rendering territories uninhabitable for decades, vacuum bombs, vaporising bodies, phosphorus bombs, which burns human flesh to the bone), torture of Ukrainian citizens, mass deportations of Ukrainian citizens into Russian concentration camps. They know everything. Unlike the lower and uneducated classes of Russians, they pick from a variety of sophisticated conspiracy theories, which blame the West in orchestrating this war, conspiring to destroy Russian Federation and Christian values, preparing for the establishment of the New World Order, destroying the middle class, scheming a new colour revolution in Russia, supplying Russian neighbours with weapons intended to destroy Russia and a whole plethora of other defensive theories of international anti-Russian and anti-Christian plots.
The psychosis and paranoia Russian people carry about these countless “Imperialist” plots is entirely baseless. I have lived in over 6 countries and was able to observe an absolute and utter indifference to the fate of Russia, barring hot Russian accent, vodka, and caviar.
The Russian people look like a hopeless American Psycho ceaselessly committing crimes in hope of being finally noticed! It is as funny as it is sad.
Russian economy is the size of Texas, majority of Russians live in poverty, Russian people show nothing but the lack of culture wherever they go. The thought that anybody cares about them but themselves is simply ridiculous.
Ukrainian distinguishing feature is our open-mindedness and the ability to accept other ways and traditions. This allows us to assimilate and feel at home in Britain, Poland, Spain or United States. Russians, however, even when emigrating to other countries, keep contact mainly with their co-patriots, – probably, the only people able to comprehend their woes and unsatisfaction. Equally, they tend to continuously complain about the culture, mentality and attitudes. Russians, who live in Britain, are constantly dissatisfied with local food, British character and the laxity of the Western world. Being so unhappy with the licentious West, they clearly approve of all the benefits European, British and American education and social systems provide, while preserving and amplifying the narrative of Putin’s inhumane regime, the very regime that forced them to leave Russia and seek better life elsewhere. How do you reconcile this illogical and hypocritical existence?
Should we bend under the crude force of Russian oil reserves and nuclear weapons to allow a downright disregard of the values and principles we, the people of the civilised world, have been fighting for centuries? The principles of equality and human rights, freedom of expression, the freedom of sexual orientation, the freedom of national identity, the freedom of civil liberties, – and, counting the recent events in Ukraine, – the freedom to life and security, the freedom from slavery and torture, a mere right to existence!
Russian chauvinism has truly culminated in Putin’s recent paper “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, a worthy response to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
In the essay, Putin argues that Russians and Ukrainians, along with Belarusians, are one people, belonging to what has historically been known as the triune Russian nation. The essay denies the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation. Noting the large number of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, Putin compares “the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia” to a use of weapons of mass destruction against Russians.
Putin openly questions the legitimacy of Ukraine’s contemporary borders. According to Putin, the modern-day Ukraine occupies historically Russian lands, and is an “anti-Russia project” created by external forces since the seventeenth century. Obviously, the fact that Ukrainian nation and Kyivan Rus has existed long before Russia and that Russian language originates from the territory of modern Ukraine does not appear to bother Putin’s troubled imagination.
Putin reiterates his paranoia by blaming the “Ukrainian crisis” on foreign plots and anti-Russian conspiracies. According to Putin, the decisions of the Ukrainian government are driven by a Western plot against Russia as well as by “followers of Bandera“.
Putin ends his lengthy treatise by appearing to suggest that Ukrainian statehood itself ultimately depends on Moscow’s consent, declaring, “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”
Swiftly upon publishing the results of his fantasies, Putin made this essay a mandatory study by the Russian military. Not only deprived from the legitimate source of news, but also fed by the fascist literature, no wonder that Russian soldiers have no issues going to Ukraine to eliminate something, that, according to their newly acquired world view, does not even exist.
The problem with the behaviour of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, however, goes much further than their belief that Ukraine should not exist as a sovereign state. The easiness with which Russians are slaughtering civilian population, looting Ukrainian houses, killing innocent children, and raping Ukrainian women and girls, suggests something much more menacing than a political-based doubt regarding Ukrainian statehood.
What we are dealing here is Russian long standing and carefully bred ideation that their non-Russian neighbours are under-humans, a lower caste, that clearly do not deserve to be counted with. Indeed, Russian disparaging attitude to Ukrainians, Belarussians, Georgians, or Moldovans has been well known for decades.
Having a much shorter and much bloodier history than the Ukrainian nation, Russians, nevertheless, managed to make Ukrainians feel somehow wrong for loving our culture, language and heroes. For generations Ukrainian language has been looked down upon as the language of “uneducated village population”, our attempts at reinstating Ukrainian national language in the official institutions and culture was deemed a “dangerous nationalistic experiment”, the choice to celebrate historical figures that were fighting for the good and liberty of Ukraine, has been continuously dubbed an “extremism”. Basically, any attempts at creating our own Ukrainian way have been condemned and painstakingly prevented, – with attitudes, – previously, and with guns and bombs – today.
Russian hatred and narrow-mindedness go further each passing day. A month into their aggression, they are already burning Ukrainian literature in the occupied regions and sending our people to Russia-based concentration camps. While performing these Nazi-inspired acts, they dare say that they are conducting a “Special operation” for the denazification of Ukraine, while thousands of buildings and people are suffering from “Ukrainian bombings”.
Blaming the victim in committing Russian crimes and conducting false flag operations have become Putin’s textbook way of behaviour ever since the bombings of 1999. In fairness to Hitler, even he did not fall as low as to blame British or Polish in bombing their own cities. Even Hitler could not have thought of blaming the Jews in the genocide of their own people.
Putin’s achievement, however, has been a genius of directing the never-ending dissatisfaction and unsupported superiority complex of the Russian nation into a truly startling hatred and pursuit of extermination.
According to Putin, Russian unjustified aggression against Ukraine offers a way to the “Settlement of the Ukrainian Question”. It’s hard to miss a parallel to Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. The indiscriminate killings of unarmed population of Ukraine, as well as Russia’s recent deportations of Ukrainian population into Russia-based “filtration camps” leaves little room for doubt: Russia’s aim in this war isn’t simply restoring its “great Soviet past”, it’s aim is the creation of fear and the extermination of any dissent, up to the physical extermination of the whole nations. Russia’s sole way of existence is fear. Any nation that does not endure a mortar fear of its might is an existential threat to the “Russian way”.
This is the main difference of the expansionist wars led by Russia and United States. While both countries are using war to extort their influence, the logic behind American wars is mainly the access to resources. Russian wars bear the eschatological character. Those are the wars for identity, wars for the right of existence. This redemptive aspect of Russian wars is what makes them so dangerous.
The ongoing Russian war launched against Ukraine has nothing to do with what Ukrainians or NATO have or haven’t done. Russians want to punish Ukrainians for who they are, – proud, freedom-loving, liberal and tolerant people. This is not a war over resources or materials. This is the war against self-determination, freedom of choice, against the core features of Ukrainian character.
It is worth noting that Putin’s insanity is shared by the whole leadership of the Russian Federation.
Several months after Putin’s publication, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, also published an article on Ukraine. In it, he agrees with Putin’s essay, and declares that there will be no negotiations with Ukraine until the Ukrainian government is replaced. The article, endorsed by the Kremlin, was criticized for its denigrating and antisemitic tone.
Vladislav Surkov, the personal adviser (2013–2020) of Putin, also published an article concerning Ukraine and other ex-USSR territories. In the article, he questions the legitimacy of the western border of Russia (including the borders with Ukraine and the Baltic states), and argues that Russia should abolish the “wicked peace” that keeps it confined by the borders.
Perhaps, not surprising, that Russians’ imagination led them to believe that in Ukraine they would be met with bread, salt and open arms; as the liberators, that would finally restore “order” and “unity”. The article “The Advance of Russia and of a New World” by Petr Akopov was briefly published in several Russian state news sites on 26 February 2022, two days after Russian forces openly invaded Ukrainian controlled territory, but was soon deleted. Its original publication on RIA News at precisely 8:00 a.m. suggests it may have been automatically published by mistake. Russians have prepared an article they were supposed to publish post Ukrainian surrender.
The article celebrates the “gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians” (using a Russian-empire term for colonized Ukrainians), and Vladimir Putin’s historic responsibility for “resolution of the Ukrainian question”.
“Ukrainian question”, however, wasn’t resolved. Ukraine has responded decisively and forcefully to the Russian attempt to wipe it off the face of the earth. For a month already Ukrainians are fighting for their life and freedom. It is already 15 time longer than Putin gave us, judging by the article published by mistake.
Our rejection to accept the ways of a necrophiliac Russian state makes Russians and their leadership ever angrier and more revengeful. Understanding that the surrender would mean a slow suffocation under the Russian yolk, this time Ukrainians are fighting till the end.
In the war we have not sought and did not want, we now must seek victory at all costs. A defeat would mean a certain death of Ukraine, of our right to decide our future, our right to freedom.
What makes this war so important in the context of the whole world is that Ukraine’s defeat would also mean the death of the Western way, the death of individualism, of the free democracy, and of the basic human rights.
Suddenly, Ukraine became the centrepiece of the centuries-old struggle between autocracy and liberty, between the total state control and individual liberties, between open-mindedness and dogmatism.
Ukraine’s victory would mean death to Russia’s Imperialism and its never-ending bullying of the ex-Soviet states. It would show once and for all that it wasn’t only the Communist model that was a failure. It is the Russian way of “Samoderjavie” and disregard for the individual strivings and desires that is history’s dead-end. Ukrainian victory would be the final nail into the coffin of Russian chauvinism, which the dissolution of the Soviet Empire started but failed to fulfil. Equally it would mean the beacon of hope for millions of Russians, who have chosen life and freedom, but were forced to live in prison that the majority of their mentally compromised co-patriots have chosen and endorsed.
For an absolute majority of Russians of this generation, however, there is no hope left, just like there was none for the dozens before them. These people are irrevocably lost in their paranoia, hatred, and delusion. Still, time and time again, they are dragging countless other nations in their dark pit of no return.
This time, however, Russians manage to compensate the international lack of respect and recognition by the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. The arsenal that holds the whole world hostage and reveals the spinelessness of the Western elite.
While Russia has destroyed millions of lives of the Jewish people, Crimean Tatars, Poles, Czech, Hungarians, Afghani, Chechens, Georgians, and Syrians, and is currently slaughtering Ukraine, – the West has to understand:
- Any Free Nation of the World That Does Not Bow to Putin Awaits the Same Fate
- You Cannot Negotiate with a Terrorist
- This War Is Not a Ukrainian War. It Is a War Over a Choice, Freedom and Future, the Future of Our World
The West can use Ukraine as much as it wishes, delegating the responsibility for the destruction of the Russian Evil. The only ones that it’s fooling, however, are themselves. Every passing day of Western inaction sends the world a clear signal that the West is too weak to keep the leadership.
If Ukraine falls, we might as well prepare our children to be learning of Putin’s righteous crusades against the impure; and witness the representatives of numerous nations, – little slaves, working for the glorious Russian owners.
Victory always matters. This time, however, the stakes are too high to accept defeat.
Movies about Ukraine:
Mr. Jones – on Russian Genocide of Ukrainian Nation in 1931-1933
Leviathan (2014 film) – movie about Russian realities
Bitter Harvest – movie on Holodomor
Tini Zabutykh Predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors); 1965, directed by Sergei Paradjanov
Zemlya (Earth); 1930, directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Povodyr (The Guide); 2014, directed by Oles Sanin
Sluga Naroda (Servant of the People); 2015–19, directed by Aleksey Kiryushchenko
Documentaries:
Winter on Fire – on the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity
Ukraine of Fire – same plus Russian war of 2014
A Sniper’s War – story of pro-Russian separatist killer
Citizen K – on Khodorkovski vs Putin
Rich Russian and Living in London – on the creation of Londongrad
Books:
The Gulag Archipelago – on Soviet atrocities in Gulag, USSR
The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West
KLEPTOPIA: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World
Londongrad: From Russia with Cash;The Inside Story of the Oligarchs
Anne Applebaum: Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine
The Last Man in Russia: And The Struggle To Save A Dying Nation
Putin’s War Against Ukraine : Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime
Ukrainian Music:
Ukrainian Literature:
Having no sympathy towards Putin for a long time, I couldn’t ignore that the article is a masterpiece of propaganda and in many places completely twists historical facts to serve author’s narrative and also absolutely misunderstands political processes in Russia.
And linking current events towards with Soviet Union is like blaming modern day UK or US for enslaving millions and genociding indigenous populations of North America in 19th Century.
Btw calling Holodomor a “Russian genocide of the Ukranian Nation” is just a blatant lie and utter disrespect for those who died in famines of 1930s. It is estimated (by the Ukranian scientist) that direct losses of Russians were 3.3 mm people there, very close to 3.9mm of Ukranians.
Masterpiece of propaganda sounds terrific. Thank you Andrei! 🙂
Especially pleasant to hear from a Russian student of Stanford
Re US & UK – they have a long history of colonialism and oppression and this is not denied
Every nation and every person, however, has to pick their battles based on their POV, interests and future plans
Russia and its ideology is a dead-end of civilisational development
US and UK managed to evolve and maintain strong economic relations with past colonies, moreover, attracting the brightest people from all “ideologically” opposed states, like China and Russia
Judging by the fact you picked American education looks like you are not feeling too bad about US Imperialism 🙂