Putin Using Notion of ‘Genocide of Soviet People’ to Present Russians as ‘a Messianic Nation' and Justify Rebuilding Empire, Khapayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – “The concept of ‘the genocide of the Soviet people’” is allowing Putin to portray that group “as a messianic nation, simultaneously both victor and victim” and to use that as a basis to argue that “the messianic sacrifice of one’s ancestors grants their descendants the exclusive right to determine the global political order, Dina Khapayeva says.

            As part of this claim, a Russian historian now at the University of Helsinki says, Moscow says “throughout history, Russia has sacrificed itself for the sake of humanity” and “finally saved civilization by defeating fascism,” leaving the door open “for all kinds of policies and above all attempts to restore the empire” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/25/dyrokol-dlia-pamiati). 

            In a lengthy article, which deserves a more detailed summary than can be given here, Khapayeva provides a number of key arguments and even specific facts which in most cases have not received the attention they deserve or the discussion among Russians and students of Russia they merit.

            Among the most important of these are the following:

·       This effort is at odds with the definition of genocide provided by the UN in 1948. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were not killed because of their ethnicity but because of their actions. On the territory of the USSR, other groups like Jews, Roma, and those with mental illness were; but not the main components of “the Soviet people.”

·       Putin came to power without a clear ideology and fastened on the Soviet victory in World War II and Soviet losses there, using those historical events as Stalinists had before, as universal moral solvent to defend Stalin and to obscure the Soviet dictator’s crimes.

·       Putin began his operation to create “an artificial national amnesia” about the Stalinist past at the start of his time as president and this effort is now “entering its final stages” with the destruction of the Gulag Museum and the promotion of the concept of the Soviet people as a victim of a genocide. 90 of the 110 monuments to Stalin in Russia were erected in Putin’s time.

·       What Putin is doing also has its roots in the hypocritical position of Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign which was not only partial but set the stage for discussions about what could be restored as opposed to what must not be.

·       Directly connected to the idea of “the genocide of the Soviet people” is “a new Orthodox post-Soviet aspect of re-Stalinization, the struggle for the canonization of Stalin,” something Putin has given a new impulse to by his talk about genocide.