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A text by Pauline Foret, student at the Institute for Eastern European Studies at the Free University of Berlin
“What Russia should do with Ukraine”, this is the title of an article published on RIA Novosti, a media outlet owned by the Russian state. It was written by Timofei Sergeitsev, a political philosopher close to the Kremlin. He returns to several myths long conveyed by Russian propaganda. He talks to us in particular about “Banderism”, this movement associated with the extreme right because he considers the nationalist Stepan Bandera as a hero. This Western Ukrainian, known for his defense of Ukrainian national identity, notoriously collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War after they offered to help get rid of the Muscovite occupiers. For some Ukrainians, he is a hero and a figurehead of the nationalist movement. For others, he is a traitor to the nation. After being granted to him posthumously in 2010, his title of hero, at the origin of a controversy which crossed the Ukrainian borders, was withdrawn from him in 2011.
For the USSR and, later, for Russia, its nationalist project was never recognized. In Russian imagination and history books, Ukraine is not a nation. Any Ukrainian nationalist is therefore, by definition, a traitor to the common tumultuous history of these two countries.
The technique of Russian propaganda is simple: by a dubious syllogism, it tries to make its readers believe that since this nationalist had ideas close to Nazism, any Ukrainian nationalist is de facto also a Nazi. It’s that simple.
Initially, this reproach was addressed only to the regime in place (far, moreover, from being linked to the extreme right which did not even pass the 5% mark in the last Ukrainian elections) and to the nationalists the most enthusiastic. Since the beginning of the war, the rhetoric has changed. Now, the entire population is accused of flirting with the extreme right. The Ukrainian population, including its old men, women and children, is accused of being a greater danger to world peace and to Russia than Hitler’s Nazism.
The text mentioned below is extremely violent. It lays the foundations for a large-scale legitimization of the Boutcha or Borodianka massacres. He prepares the Russian public on the principle that these massacres were deserved. It also prepares him to accept without flinching that a violent dictatorship be set up in the territory, that the word “Ukraine” be erased from world maps and that Ukrainians be, I quote, “re-educated”.
Ironically, Russia also accuses the Ukrainian government (and the “masses”) of committing genocide against the Russians, that is, against that large part of the Ukrainian population who have distant Russian origins or who speaks Russian. I say ironically, because the Russian bombs do not differentiate between Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers. Eastern Ukraine, the most affected by this war, is largely Russian-speaking. The victims of Russian offensives are therefore precisely those “oppressed” civilians that Russia claims to want to protect.
It is therefore this text, in reality, which represents a danger which is just as appalling for humanity as the extreme right of the 1940s. I have translated the most striking extracts from it.
“In April last year, we were already writing about the need to denazify Ukraine. This Nazi Ukraine, banderiste, enemy of Russia and exploited by the West in order to destroy Russia, we do not need it. Today, this denazification project has become a reality.
When a large part of a population (probably, for that matter, its majority) is manipulated and driven by a Nazi regime to follow its policies, denazification is not an option. In this case, one cannot assume that “the people are good, only those in power are bad”.. It is this idea that is at the heart of the policy of denazification and all the actions that flow from it, this idea that is its very essence.
[…] Denazification is a set of measures to deal with to all of this Nazified population who, technically, cannot be brought to justice for war crimes.
The Nazis who took up arms must be completely exterminated on the battlefield. […] All are equally indulging in outrageous atrocities against civilians, are equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people and of disrespect for the laws and customs of war. War Criminals and Active Nazis must be punished appropriately and to lead by example.
What is needed is a purification totale. All organizations that have associated themselves with the practice of Nazism must be eliminated and prohibited. However, in addition to the senior ranks, a large part of the masses is also guilty. They were passive Nazis, collaborators of Nazism, who supported Nazi power and were lenient towards it. A just punishment for this part of the population is only possible in bearing the inevitable costs of a waralso just, against the Nazi system […].
Subsequently, in order to be denazified, the population will have to be re-educatedwhich will go through a ideological repression (i.e. suppression) of Nazi attitudes and an severe censorship : not only in the political sphere, but also, necessarily, in the cultural and educational sphere. […]
Denazification can only be carried out by the victor, which requires (1) that the victor has unconditional control over the denazification process and (2) that he has the power to ensure that control. As a result, the denazified country cannot be sovereign. The denazifying state – Russia – can’t take a liberal approach of denazification.
The guilty, those who are subjected to the denazification process, cannot challenge its ideology. Russia’s recognition of the need to denazify Ukraine is tantamount to admitting that the Crimea scenario [une adhésion à la Russie par référendum, ndt] is impossible for Ukraine as a whole. […]
The denazification can in no case take place over a period of less than that of a generation, which must be born, grow and mature under the conditions of denazification. The Nazification of Ukraine has been going on for more than 30 years – since at least 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism gained legal and legitimate forms of political expression and led the “independence” movement towards Nazism.
[…]
Ukronazism poses not a lesser threat, but a greater threat to peace and Russia than Hitler’s German Nazism.
Le name “Ukraine” clearly cannot be retained […].
Indeed, it is impossible for their aspirations to be neutral – reparation for their guilt towards Russia for having treated it as an enemy can only be done by counting on it in the processes of reconstruction, renewal and development. […]
The denazification will inevitably go hand in hand with deukrainization.
[…] »
Once the words “Ukrainian nationalism” (that is, for most people, the attachment to the Ukrainian language and culture and the desire to break away from Russian influence) and “Nazism have clearly been established as perfect synonyms, the text continues and presents the “program” of desukrainization:
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“Liquidation of the Nazi military formations (including the national army), as well as of the military, media and educational infrastructures which guarantee their activity;
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Establishment of authorities of popular autonomy and police (both for defense and for the maintenance of order) in order to protect the population against the clandestine Nazi groups;
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Deployment of a Russian media space;
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Withdrawal of educational material and banning the continuation of educational programs at any level that contain allusions to Nazi ideology;
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Continuation of large-scale investigations aimed at establishing personal responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the dissemination of Nazi ideology and support for the Nazi regime;
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Purification of ideologies and publication of the names of collaborators of the Nazi regime and establishment, as punishment for supporting Nazism, of a system of forced labor in order to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure (for those who will not be sentenced to dead or imprisoned);
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At the local level, adoption, under Russian supervision, of the main regulations of denazification “from below”, that is to say the prohibition of any type of resurrection of Nazi ideology;
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Construction of memorials and monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism and in memory of those who fought against it;
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Addition of a set of antifascist and denazifying norms to the constitutions of the new people’s republics;
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Creation of permanent denazification authorities for a period of 25 years.
Russia will have no allies in its denazification of Ukraine. Not only because it is a matter for Russia and Russia alone. But also because it will not only sound the death knell for the Banderist version of Ukrainian Nazism; it will also sign the end of Western totalitarianism. […]
It is in this last paragraph that the other side of this “special operation” appears, the rejection of Western “totalitarianism”. It is in the name of this rejection that this author proposes to erect monuments to the memory of the “victims of Ukrainian Nazism” and of “those who fought against it” – in other words, since it is a question here of the people who must suffer (and sometimes die) for Ukraine to be “purged”, in memory of the victims of the Russian bombs and in honor of those who dropped them. That this author proposes to rewrite history, to erase an entire nation. A chilling program. And which, in my opinion, deserved to be shared with a French-speaking audience. This time, we can’t say we didn’t know.
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