russian colonialism 101: why russia is a death cult.
has always been.
Since Russia unleashed catastrophic ecocide on Ukraine earlier this June, it felt like a bizarre nightmare of a deja vu. The level of shock and pain was eerily similar to what I felt during the first week of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. I experienced the same deja vu vibe about sudden silence, by-default skepticism about anything a Ukrainian says, and the disappearing act by the world’s largest humanitarian organizations when faced with the worst man-made catastrophe that Europe has witnessed since Chornobyl.
But this is not what I want to devote this week’s edition to. Another thing that was back is the mass denial that anything this horrific could be intentionally done by Russia. Despite Russia having ‘the means, motive, and opportunity’ to commit the crime, the ‘whodunnit’ speculations spread like wildfire across foreign mainstream media. An opportunity that Russian propaganda couldn’t miss to exploit.
By blowing the Kakhovka dam, Russians mass murdered not only civilians and animals but many of their soldiers, too. They also cut out their occupied territories from drinking water and destroyed their critical line of defense. Being so senseless and self-destructive still doesn’t make sense for many foreigners. But it would if they only listened to Ukrainians and other victims of Russian imperialism.
For any Ukrainian, that wasn’t a surprise. This is not even the first time Russians have blown up a dam in my home region.
Even beyond Ukraine, the senseless hunger for the total annihilation of any conquered land is a distinctive feature of Russian colonialism through centuries.
Gaslight, invade, exterminate — in my work of amplifying evidence of Russian colonial crimes, I put the emphasis on Moscow’s ‘scorched earth’ tactics for a reason. They are not accidental. They are a necessary part of the toolkit.
Just several weeks before the Kakhovka man-made catastrophe, I shared a little-known abroad story of the Baturyn massacre. After Ukraine's tried and failed to break free from Russian colonialism in 1708 by siding with Sweden in the Great Northern War, the Russian empire punished Ukrainians with a carefully orchestrated Baturyn massacre — one of the most horrific mass slaughters in Europe's history. Baturyn was a thriving Ukrainian capital, a cultural, intellectual, and political center with a population of up to 15,000 — making it even slightly bigger than Kyiv at the time.
Just invading it wasn’t enough for Russians. They mass raped the city's women and then cut them to pieces. They did the same to the elderly and kids, chopping even the newly-born. Russian colonial general Menshikov encouraged his soldiers to be creative in their executions: they deployed the so-called execution wheels for the agonizing mutilation and torture of Ukrainians.
According to well-preserved witness accounts and investigations by 18th and 19th-century historians, Russians also cut off the heads of Ukrainian leaders in Baturyn. They sent them as souvenirs to their military and imperial command.
Swedish historian Anders Fryxell claimed that Russian general Menshikov ordered crucify of the corpses of the Baturyn defenders, put them on rafts, and let them down the Seim River so the rest of Ukraine would see the consequences of resisting Russia.
Many European armies engaged in atrocities at the time. Still, the Baturyn massacre sent shockwaves. European newspapers reported on it with headlines "a terrible massacre," "all of Ukraine is in blood," "Women and children on the points of sabers." According to French historian Jean-Benoit Scherer Russians looted the city, and what they couldn't steal, they set it on fire. Baturyn ceased to exist.
Despite the explicit Russian ban on restoring the city, unbreakable Ukrainians eventually rebuilt Baturyn. But it remains a shadow of its former self. For several generations, it wasn't even classified as a town. Before the ongoing genocide, barely 2,500 lived there. The last 25 years Ukrainian archaeologists spent uncovering mass graves of Ukrainians slaughtered by Russian colonial troops in Baturyn. Three centuries later, still an incredibly traumatic experience for many of them - digging out mutilated bones of kids and women.
This is just one episode of thousands, reminding us that Russia is a long-established death cult. And there’s an entire philosophical explanation for this, as brilliant Peter Pomerantsev points out in his psychoanalytical essay that connects Russian culture of death and Freudian analysis.
“The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive. But Russia is also sending out a similar message to Ukrainians and their allies with these acts of ultra-violent biblical destruction: give in to our immensity, surrender your struggle. And for all Russia’s military defeats and actual socio-economic fragility, this propaganda of the deed can still work.”
Russia is obsessed with destruction, and it won’t stop until it sets the entire world on fire. Or until we stop it.
here is what's in store for you this week:
we don’t talk often enough about the history of Russian attempts to colonize Africa
despite the propaganda, Russian colonialism has always been radically anti-women
there’s no such thing as ‘Russian ethnic minorities’ in the countries neighboring Russia - they are settler colonizers.
repeat after me: Crimea-Qirim has never been Russian.
curious for more? let's go.