Unpunished Crimes of Russia: from Genocide by Hunger to Genocide by War

Abstract

The relevance and scientific novelty of the article are determined by the fact that it substantiates the legality of condemning the wars, mass repressions and famines committed by Muscovy against the Ukrainian nation as unpunished crimes against humanity, that is, those of a genocidal nature. This approach makes it possible to realize the goal of the research in a new way, to further understand the current stage of the full-scale war against Ukraine as a continuation of the implementation of the centuries-old imperial strategy of genocide, aimed at the total exsanguination of the Ukrainian people, the destruction of their national statehood, cultural heritage, erasure of historical memory and capture of their territory. The task is to investigate the commonality of the goal, methods, means, the nature of the cause-and-effect relationships of wars, famines of the 1920s – 1940s and the military invasion of 2014-2022, as a typical series of numerous crimes “in-perpetuity” aimed at the destruction of Ukraine. The research is based on the fundamental principles of the methodology of the Ukrainian studies: on documentary evidence; scientific works of Ukrainian studies, those of historical, philosophical, legal and demographic nature; statistical material;, periodicals and Internet resources.Adhering to the chronological principle, this article studies the nature and genetic roots of the criminal policy of Muscovy against Ukraine, especially the peculiarities of its later essence, which was most fully manifested in the process of establishing the Russian-Bolshevik regime on Ukrainian territory, in the organization of mass repressions and famines of 1921-1923, 1932-1933 and 1946-1947 and how the new wave of that policy was repeated in the current bloody war. All these unpunished crimes are equally premeditated, pre-programmed, truly genocidal in nature and have the same misanthropic goal: the physical extermination of the Ukrainian people and the cultural neutering its primordial desire to liberate itself, assert itself or build its own state. The inspirers, organizers and executors of such policies are found to be the totalitarian-imperial regimes in the form of Communism- Bolshevism in the 1920s-1940s, Brezhnevism and modern "Putinism" as a variation on the ideology and practice of Hitler's Nazism and Stalin's Bolshevism. Attention is drawn to the similarity of the methods and means of implementing genocidal policy through starvation, repression and deportation in the 1920s - 1940s and the current war, the use in it not only of the latest weapons, cyber technologies, massive missile strikes, prohibited ammunition, phosphorous and cluster bombs, but also repression against the civilian population, mass maraudings, deportations, torture, the establishment of concentration camps and in general creation of intolerable conditions for human lives.The article justifies a conclusion that the unpunished past crimes of the Stalinist-Bolshevik regime, primarily the wars, mass repressions and famines of the 1920s-1940s, committed against the Ukrainian people are the direct historical antecedent of the current war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. A number of suggestions have been made regarding the further investigation of the problem of unpunished crimes of the Russian and Soviet Empires, the heir of which is the extant Russian Federation under the current Putin regime, and the development of safeguards to prevent their repetition in the future.