From the archives: Kremlin’s mouthpiece RIA publishes Russian fascist manifesto
The article is a piece of Russian propaganda aimed at spreading hatred against Ukrainians, labeling the whole nation enemies of Russia that deserve ethnic cleansing under Russian control.
Editors’ note: Our editorial team debated whether it was worth publishing this article, as we did not want to give a platform to what we see as what is essentially a Russian fascist manifesto, promulgating hate against Ukrainians. However, we decided that in the interests of alerting the world to the depths to which Russia has already sunk into fascism, and to provide evidence for future cases in international courts of the Kremlin’s intention to carry out ethnic cleaning in Ukraine, we would publish this piece, albeit with this disclaimer and annotations within the text noting its most egregious falsehoods.
Labeling “the majority of” Ukrainians as Nazis, the article “What Russia should do with Ukraine” calls for the elimination of the Ukrainian elites and the “de-ukrainization” of the Ukrainian nation – even stripping Ukraine of its name, and destroying Ukrainian culture. Ukrainians are described in terms similar to the Nazi Untermenshen – subhuman, as the Nazis referred to non-Aryan "inferior people" such as "the masses from the East" – that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs.
This is pure fascism.
By publishing this story on April 3, the same day the world found out about horrible massacre of at least 400 Ukrainian civilians by the Russian army in Bucha, RIA Novosti has sunk to a level a cynicism not seen since the 1930s in Europe. This fascist manifesto lays bare the dreadful danger that the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin now poses to Ukraine, and to the world.
Read RIA's article below:
Back in April of last year, we wrote about the inevitability of Ukraine’s de-nazification. We don’t need the Nazi, Banderite Ukraine, an enemy of Russia and an instrument of the West to destroy Russia. Today, the question of de-nazification has come into the practical world.
De-nazification is necessary when a sizable part of the population - most likely, the majority - has mastered and drawn in the Nazi regime into its politics. (Fact check: Far-right parties typically fail to draw more than 3% of the vote in Ukraine, and in the 2019 parliament elections no far-right party won any seats.)
That is, when the theory “the people are good, the government is bad” no longer holds true. Admitting this fact is the basis of the de-nazification policy, all of its associated measures, and the fact itself is the subject matter of the policy.
Ukraine finds itself in exactly this situation. The fact that the Ukrainian electorate chose “Poroshenko’s peace” and “Zelensky’s peace”, should not mislead - Ukrainians are quite satisfied with the shortest path to peace through blitzkrieg, which the last two Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. It was this method of "appeasement" of internal anti-fascists - through total terror - that was used in Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other Russian cities.
And this completely satisfied the Ukrainian layman. De-nazification is a system of measures, related to the nazification of a mass portion of the population, which cannot technically be subject to direct punishment as war criminals.
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Nazis who take up arms have to be maximally eradicated from the battlefield. There’s no need to derive a difference between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the so-called national battalions, as well as the territorial defense forces, that has joined these two types of military formations. They’re anyway all involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, all equally responsible for the genocide of the Russian population, and who do not follow the laws and customs of war (Fact check: There is no evidence for the preceding claims).
War criminals and active Nazis have to made an example of. There has to be a total lustration - the liquidation and ban of any organizations that ties themselves to the practice of Nazism. However, aside from the leadership, a good part of the population is also responsible here, who are themselves passive Nazis, accomplices to Nazism.
They supported the Nazi government, and indulged it. (Fact check: It is false to describe Ukraine’s democratically elected government as “Nazi.”)
A just punishment for this part of the population can only be found in the burden of the hardships of a just war against the Nazi system,
The just punishment of this part of the population is possible only as bearing the inevitable hardships of a just war against the Nazi system, carried out with the utmost care and discretion, with respect to civilians.
The further de-nazification of this part of the population is composed of re-education, which should reach ideological repression (suppression) of Nazi attitudes and strict censorship: not only in the political sphere, but absolutely as well in the spheres of culture and education. It’s precisely through culture and education that the plan to deeply Nazify a mass of the population was prepared and carried out, strengthened by the promise of spoils from the victory of the Nazi regime over Russia, Nazi propaganda, internal violence and terrorism, as well as the eight year war of Ukrainian nazis against the insurgent people of the Donbass.
Denazification can only be conducted by the victor, which assumes 1) its unconditional control over the de-nazification process, and 2) an authority that can facilitate this control. In this respect, a country undergoing de-nazification cannot be sovereign. The de-nazification-leading government - Russia - cannot proceed from a liberal approach regarding denazification.
The ideology of the de-nazifying party cannot be disputed by the guilty party, subjected to de-nazification. Russia’s call for the necessity of de-nazification means that the Crimean scenario cannot work for Ukraine as whole. In fact, this scenario was already unrealistic in 2014, and in the rebellious Donbas.
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Only eight years of resistance to Nazi violence and terrorism has led to internal cohesion, and the conscious, unambiguous mass refusal to maintain any unity and connection with Ukraine, which defined itself as a Nazi society.
The duration of this de-nazification cannot take less than a single generation, which has to be born, grow up, and mature in the conditions of de-nazification. The Nazification of Ukraine took more than 30 years - starting at a minimum in 1989, when Ukrainian nationalism receive a legal and legitimate form of political self-expression and spearheaded the movement for “independence”, leaning towards Nazism.
A particular feature of Nazified Ukraine is its amorphousness and ambivalentness, which allows for the masking of Nazism as a desire to move towards an “independent” and “European” (Western and pro-American) path of development, (in reality - towards degradation), while insisting that Ukraine “doesn’t have any Nazism, only private and singular excesses.”
There isn’t, after all, a single important Nazi party, no fuhrer, no fully racist laws (only their curtailed variants in the form of repressions against the Russian language). As a result, there is no opposition and resistance to the regime.
However, all of the above does not make Ukrainian Nazism a “lite version” of German Nazism circa the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary - seeing as Ukrainian Nazism is freed from similar “typical” (political-technological by nature) boundaries and restrictions, it can freely unfold as a fundamental basis for all types of Nazisms - as European, and, in a rather development form, as American racism. That’s why de-nazification cannot be conduct in a compromised fashion, on the basis of formulas like “NATO - no, the EU - yes.”
The collective West is itself a designer, source, and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism. At that time, the Western Bandera cadres and their "historical memory" were only one of the tools for the Nazification of Ukraine. Ukrnazism is not a smaller, but in fact a larger threat to the world and Russia, than even German Nazism of the Hitlerean version.
The name “Ukraine,” seemingly, cannot be retained as the title of any fully denazified state entity in a territory liberated from the Nazi regime. The people's republics, newly created in the space free from Nazism, should and will grow from the practice of economic self-government and social security, and the restoration and modernization of social support systems for the population.
Their political aspirations cannot in fact be neutral - their atonement to Russia for their attitude towards her as an enemy can only be achieved by relying on Russia in the processes of restoration, revival, and development. No “Marshall Plan” for these territories can be allowed. No “neutrality” in any ideological or practical sense, concurrently with de-nazification, can be allowed. Cadres and organizations that serve as instruments of de-nazification in the newly de-nazified republics can only rely on the direct power and organizational support of Russia.
De-nazification will inevitably be expressed as de-Ukrainianization - the rejection of the artificially divided ethnic component of self-identification, created as far back as under Soviet authority, of the population of the historical territories of Malorossiya and Novorossiya. As an instrument of the communist superpower, this artificial ethnocentrism did not remain ownerless after its fall. In this official capacity, it passed to the authority of another superpower (a power that supersedes governments) - the Western superpower. It’s necessary to return it to its obvious borders, and to limits its political functionality.
Unlike, say, Georgia and the Baltic states, Ukraine, as history has shown, cannot exist in the form of a national government, and attempts to “build” it as such, naturally leads to Nazism. Ukrainianism is an artificial anti-Russian construct, which does not have any civilizational content of its own, and is a subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization.
De-banderism is not, by itself, enough for de-nazification - the Banderite element is just one expression and a screen, a mask for the European project of a Nazi Ukraine, which is why the de-nazification of Ukraine - is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.
The Banderite leadership has to be liquidated, as their re-education is impossible. The social “swamp”, which actively and passively supports it through action and inaction, has to survive the hardships of war and assimilate this experience as a historical lesson and atonement for its guilt. Those that did not support the Nazi regime, but suffered from it and the war unleashed by it in the Donbas, must be consolidated and organized, and must become the pillar of the new government, its vertical and horizontal. Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime serve to help the population, tempted and carried away by their role as an enemy of Russia.
De-nazification, as a goal of the special military operation, within the the scope of that operation, is understood as a military victory over the Kyiv regime, the liberation of the territory from armed Nazi supporters, the liquidation of irreconcilable Nazis, the capture of war criminals, as well as the creation of a system of conditions for the following peace-time de-nazification.
The latter, in turn, should begin with the organization of local self-government, law enforcement, and defense bodies, cleansed of Nazi elements. This can be used as the basis to launch the founding processes of a new republican statehood, integrating this statehood into close cooperation with the Russian department for Ukrainian de-nazification (newly created or converted, say, from Rossotrudnichestvo). This, along with the adoption, under Russian control, of a republican regulatory framework (legislation) on de-nazification, the definition of the boundaries and framework for the direct application of Russian law and Russian jurisdiction in the liberated territories in the field of de-nazification, and the creation of a tribunal for crimes against humanity in the former Ukraine. In this regard, Russia should act as the guardian of the Nuremberg Trials.
All of the above means that, in order to achieve the goals of de-nazification, it will be necessary to win the support of the people, to get them on Russia’s side after they’re freed from the terror, violence, and ideological pressure of the Kyiv regime, after getting them out of their informational isolation (Fact check: Ukrainian media, unlike those in Russia, are largely free, and there is no systematic political repression of the opposition as there is in Russia).
It’s understood that some time must pass for people to recover from the shock of military action, and be convinced of Russia’s long-term intention - in that they “won’t be abandoned”. It’s impossible to foresee where exactly, on what territories, this critical mass of the population will be found to make the necessary majority. The “Catholic provinces” (Western Ukraine in its five oblasts) is unlikely to join the group of pro-Russian territories. The line of separation, however, will be found through experienced routes. It will remain hostile to Russian, but will still be a forcibly neutral and de-militarized Ukraine, with Nazism banned on formal grounds.
That’s where Russia-haters will leave to. The guarantee, that this last remaining bit of Ukraine would remain neutral, should be the threat of immediate military operation if those stated requirements are not met. From the line of separation, to the Russian border, will be a territory that can potentially be integrated into Russian civilization, antifascist in its own internal nature.
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The operation to de-nazify Ukraine, which has started with a military phase, will follow in peacetime the same logic of progression as the military operation. With each step, it will be necessary to succeed in implementing irreversible changes, which would become the building blocks of the following step. For this, the necessary first steps of de-nazification can be defined the following way:
• The liquidation of armed Nazi formation (which is understood to include any Ukrainian armed formations, including the Armed Forces of Ukraine), as well as anything that assists in their military, informational, and educational infrastructure
• The creation of bodies for popular self-rule, as well as law enforcement (both for security and law and order) on liberated territory, to protective people from terrorist acts of insurgent Nazi groups
• The implementation of the Russian information space
• The seizure of any educational materials, and a band on educational programs, at all levels, that contain Nazi ideological attitudes
• Mass investigations to establish personal accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, spreading of Nazi ideology and supporting the Nazi regime
• Lustration, publicizing the names of the accomplices of the Nazi regime, engaging them in forced labor to repair destroyed infrastructure as part of their punishment for Nazi activities (for those that wouldn’t be sentenced to death or imprisonment)
• The adoption, at a local level, under Russian advisement, primary normative acts of “grassroots” de-nazification, a ban on all types and forms of reviving Nazi ideology
• The creation of memorials, commemorative signs, and monuments to the victims of Ukrainian Nazism, and the immortalization of the memory of the heroes that fought against it
• The creation and adoption of a series of anti-fascist and de-nazificative norms in the constitutions of these new people’s republics
• The creation of a constantly operating body of de-nazification, for a period of 25 years
Russia will have no compatriots in its de-nazification of Ukraine, seeing as this is purely Russian work, as well as considering that it is not just the Banderite version of Nazi Ukraine that will be eradicated, but also and most of all, Western totalitarianism, the forced programs of civilizational degradation and ruin, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the USA.
In order to realize the plan of Ukrainian de-nazification, Russian life itself will have to finally rid itself of its pro-European and pro-Western illusions, and accept itself as the last line of defense, and the preserver of, those values of historic Europe (the Old World), which it deserves, and from which the West has ultimately abandoned, losing in a war against itself.
This war stretched out for the entirely of the 20th century, and was expressed in a world war and in the Russian revolution, which are inextricably linked to each other.
Russia has done all it can to save the West in the 20th century. It helped implement that important Western project, an alternative capitalism, which won it nation-states - the red, socialist project. It destroyed German Nazism - a monstrous product of the crisis of Western civilization. The last act of Russian altruism was the hand of friendship offered by Russia, for which Russian received that horrific blow of the 1990s.
Everything that Russia did for the West, it did out of its own pocket, while making massive sacrifices. The West, in the end, rejected all of these sacrifices, devalued Russia's contribution to resolving the Western crisis, decided to take revenge on Russia for the help that it had selflessly provided. Now, Russia will go its own way, without worrying about the fate of the West, drawing on the other part of its heritage - leading the global process of decolonization.
As a part of this process, Russia has a great potential to build partnerships and allied relationships with those countries that the West has oppressed for centuries, and which will not again suffer under its yoke. Without Russian sacrifices, these nations would have not been liberated.
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Ukraine’s de-nazification is at the same time its de-colonization, which should be understood by the Ukrainian population as how it will begin to free itself from the intoxication, temptation, and dependence on its so-called European choice.
Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
