Many people of good will in Russia, Ukraine and around the world have been horrified by the recent RIA Novosti article by Timofey Sergeytsev outlining what Moscow should do to “de-Nazify” Ukraine – on that article, see my earlier post To ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine, Moscow must impose a brutal generation-long occupation, Novosti journalist says.
- Full text of Sergeytsev’s article translated by Mariia Kravchenko, revised and annotated by Susan Smith-Peter: A Russian Plan for the Genocide of the Ukrainian People
- A perspective on the article by the historian of the Soviet and German genocides Timothy Snyder: Russia’s genocide handbook
But perhaps the most damning critique of Timofey Sergeytsev’s proposals to occupy and de-Ukrainianize and de-Westernize Ukraine comes from a place few might expect – from conservative Russian nationalist commentator Dimitry Savvin who denounces it in the most sweeping terms.
“By itself,” the editor of the Riga-based Harbin portal says, “such texts never were a rarity, but until now, only the propaganda structures of various kinds of Soviet ‘patriots’ allowed themselves to print them. The appearance of such a publication in an official Kremlin outlet is undoubtedly a serious milepost, marking the further re-Sovietization and moral degradation of the Putin leadership.”
Related: Russian ideology: imperialism, militarism, and racism
“By its openness, Sergeytsev’s article leaves far behind even Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Rozenberg’s Myth of the 20th Century,” Savvin continues. “If you will, the only obvious analogue is [Martin] Latsis’ article about the Red Terror of 1918. In its chauvinist and Ukrainophobic component, it is ideologically close to the Nazi genocidal campaigns in Poland.”
Related: I am an Untermensch: Ukrainian writer responds to Russia’s “Nazi manifesto”
And it also resembles “the Bolshevik genocide of the peoples of Russia in 1918-1920 and the genocidal deportations of the 1930s and 1940s” by the Soviet regime. We can only hope that this article and others like it “will be considered by a special tribunal on the crimes of the Putinist neo-Soviet regime.”
Read More:
- Moscow Patriarchate tells Russian troops: “Your task is to wipe the Ukrainian nation off the face of the earth”
- ‘Yesterday Georgia, today Ukraine, tomorrow Kazakhstan?’ – Kazakhs respond to Moscow threats
- “They were shot in the back of the head.” Eyewitness account of Russia’s murders of Bucha residents
- Russian ideology: imperialism, militarism, and racism
- I am an Untermensch: Ukrainian writer responds to Russia’s “Nazi manifesto”
- Abductions and smoke grenades: Russian occupiers trying to break peaceful resistance in Kherson Oblast
- Ukrainian music about Russia’s war: a tale of struggle, pain, power, and courage
- Bucha massacre: Ukraine urges ICC to gather evidence of Russian war crimes
- “They killed my family in cold blood!” Russian military targets civilians fleeing bombardments
- Russian occupiers launch war on Ukrainian history, burning books and destroying archives
