"Mordor". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 18.03.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/mordor-symbol-of-russia/

Why do Ukrainians use the images from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – Mordor and the orcs – to describe Russia and Russian soldiers, rather than references from zombie or vampire films and TV series? Is this connected to aesthetic intuition, the existential experience of war, or value orientations? These questions are addressed in another article by Nikolai Karpitsky for the Dictionary of War, which the editorial team of PostPravda.info is compiling.

Mordor

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Mordor is a land in the southeast of Middle-earth ruled by the Dark Lord Sauron. It is a barren, volcanic wasteland covered in ash, unfit for normal life. Yet the orcs who inhabit it feel entirely at home there and strive to turn all lands into the same kind of wasteland. Their purpose in life is to serve Sauron and spread his power, killing and dying for it.

In modern cultural consciousness, Mordor has become a symbol of inhuman dictatorship and slavery. The obsessive idea of domination seems to transform people into orcs incapable of independent thought, driven instead by instincts of servility, aggression, and hatred toward others. Initially, it was Russians themselves who began to call their country Mordor – those who found the strength not to hide behind comforting illusions. However, most Russians fail to perceive the horror of the state’s irrational violence, thanks to psychological defense mechanisms that create illusions. Fear and a sense of helplessness in the face of arbitrary power are displaced by faith in its humanity and the righteousness of its actions. But when the sheer force of horror destroys this illusion, Russia’s dark side is revealed – inhumanity, irrationality, and the unpredictability of evil. That is what people call Mordor.

Mordor Through Ukrainian Eyes

The spread of the image of Mordor as applied to Russia is not connected with propaganda or ideology. No one imposed such an interpretation or offered a theoretical justification for it. Russians themselves first began to perceive their country as Mordor based on their own existential experience. For Ukrainians, however, such an association did not exist until 2014. But after Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014, they too felt an existential threat from Russia and began calling it Mordor.

Ukrainians perceive their own country as a home – one that may have many problems, but problems that can be fixed. The presence of Mordor, however, changes the perception of living space: part of the home is consumed by chaos, where existence is impossible. In the heart of Ukraine, life continued more or less normally, but the closer one was to the frontline with the horde of orcs, the more palpable became the chaos and the breath of death. With the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, that breath spread across the entire country – there were no safe places left.

The most terrifying thing in facing an existential threat is the enemy’s irrational motivation, which rules out the possibility of reaching an agreement. If Putin were pursuing political influence or material gain, his actions could be explained rationally, and one could seek compromise. It is precisely this illusion of rationality that Western leaders cling to, hoping to negotiate peace. However, Putin has declared an utterly irrational goal – the destruction of Ukrainian identity, calling it “denazification.” As long as Ukrainians continue to perceive themselves as Ukrainians, they remain his enemies, destined for annihilation. Thus, the motivation for the attack on Ukraine merges with a necrophilic drive for destruction. That is why Ukrainians perceive the Russian invasion as the onslaught of orcs, with whom no agreement is possible, and the war with Russia as a war of extermination waged not only against the Ukrainian army but against all Ukrainians.

Why Tolkien?

Ukrainians use images from Tolkien’s epic to describe Russia and its army because, first, his depiction of war corresponds to the existential experience of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and second, the value stance of Tolkien’s heroes coincides with that of Ukraine’s defenders. In his trilogy, Mordor’s aggression occurs not only on the material but also on the spiritual level, and any manifestation of moral relativism leads to defeat. In resisting Russian aggression, Ukrainians consider the unambiguous separation of good and evil, as shown in Tolkien, to be of fundamental importance. Any attempt at a relativist interpretation of good leads to justifying Russian narratives, including equating the victim with the aggressor.

The popularity of Tolkien’s imagery was reinforced by the screen adaptations of his epic. Yet far more films, TV series, and anime have been made about zombies and vampires – images that resonate not only with the necrophilic orientation of Russian power but even with the symbolism of Russian military units, “Z” and “V.” Russian command ruthlessly expends manpower in senseless suicidal assaults, as if that power were not living at all, and soldiers obediently agree to die in such attacks, as if they were zombies. Nevertheless, the carriers of aggressive Russian imperial ideology are associated specifically with orcs, not zombies or vampires. This is due to the aesthetic rejection of death symbolism in Ukrainian cultural consciousness, which refuses to extend it even to enemies. Although orcs embody evil, they are still alive, unlike zombies or vampires. Mordor is not an otherworldly realm or a kingdom of the dead, but the embodiment of evil in earthly life. Therefore, it must also be fought in our reality. If in Russia death is glorified, in Ukraine it is the struggle for life that is glorified. This difference is revealed in the way Russians and Ukrainians wage war.

Andrey Kuzichkin. Putin’s Imperial Project – Assimilation of Ukrainians and the Erasure of Ukrainian Heritage

Source: PostPravda.info 22.09.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/freedom-of-speech-en/putins-new-imperial-project/

Does Putin really want to revive the USSR? In reality, he wants to restore control over the sphere of influence of the former USSR, but not the USSR itself. Putin’s new imperial project is based on a false historical construct in which Russia appropriates the legacy of Kyivan Rus. He seeks to create a Moscow-centric “Greater Russia” in which there is no place for Ukrainian national consciousness.

An Estonian publicist Andrey Kuzichkin from Postimees.ee, shows that the assimilation of Ukrainians and the erasure of Ukrainian heritage is the policy Putin pursues both inside Russia and in the occupied territories in order to implement his imperial project.

The liquidation of Ukrainian cultural centers in Russia

In my hometown of Tomsk, the Ukrainian cultural center Dzherelo (Spring), created by Ukrainian activists in 1990, was liquidated on August 21, 2025. This is just one example of the complete destruction of Ukraine’s rich heritage in Putin’s Russia.

​After the collapse of the USSR, Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, emphasized the paramount importance of national policy, since cultural ties in the post-Soviet space made it possible to preserve the illusion of unity of the former republics of the USSR. Thus, in 1998, an agreement was signed between Russia and Ukraine on the mutual creation of cultural centers.

In the same year, the Ukrainian National Cultural Center was opened on Old Arbat in the center of Moscow, which became an umbrella organization for many Ukrainian diaspora centers in Russian regions. However, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the start of hostilities in Donbas in 2014, this very center became the target of constant provocations by Russian ultras: they burned Ukrainian flags in front of the center building, smeared paint on the walls, and disrupted cultural events.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian National Cultural Center in Moscow was closed. The agreement on cultural centers with Ukraine was canceled by Vladimir Putin in 2024. The fact that the leader sitting in the Kremlin has a pathological hatred towards Ukraine and Ukrainians is a medical fact. But why did Ukraine become the object of Putin’s manic pursuit? To understand this, let’s look at the pages of history.

Ukrainian colonization of lands outside Ukraine

In the 19th-20th centuries, after the abolition of serfdom in Russia and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, a mass resettlement of Ukrainians began in several regions of Russia. In a good climate and on free fertile lands, people from Ukraine very quickly established prosperous settlements, applying their national talents as farmers and herders.

Thus, in the southern part of Russia, Malinovyi Klyn (transl. Raspberry Klyn) was established in Kuban, Zholtyi Klyn (Yellow Klyn) in the forest-steppes of the Lower Volga region, Seryi Klyn (Gray Klyn) in Southern Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, and Zeleny Klyn or Zelenaya Ukraina (Green Klyn or Green Ukraine) in the southern part of the Far East. Klyn it is what Ukrainians called a plot of land. Later, it became a general name for all areas where Ukrainians lived outside of Ukraine.

In the aforementioned areas, the share of Ukrainians in the local population was up to 70 percent. Many travelers noted at the beginning of the 20th century that in the villages of the Far East “you cannot hear Russian speech at all, only the “malorussian” dialect (the dialect of Little Rus), and the fairs there are held exactly like somewhere in Myrhorod near Poltava.”

In 1917, after the abdication of Nicholas II and the formation of the Provisional Government in St. Petersburg, the national self-awareness of Ukrainians in Russia began to grow rapidly. A session of the Rada, an advisory body convened by local Ukrainians and Cossacks, was held in Kuban. The Rada proclaimed the creation of the Kuban Republic.

The First All-Ukrainian Far Eastern Congress was held in the Far East, the delegates of which demanded that the Provisional Government grant Ukraine and Green Ukraine national autonomy within Russia. To combat the consequences of forced Russification, Ukrainian schools were opened in Green Ukraine, Ukrainian-language newspapers were published, state authorities were formed, and national armed forces were created.

The civil war that broke out in Russia and the offensive of the Red Army put an end to all these plans: the Ukrainian self-government in Kuban and the Far East was destroyed in 1920-1922, and those who participated in it were shot.

Putin’s New Imperial Project: Greater Russia without Ukrainians

It is not surprising that the attempts of the peoples of the former empire to achieve independence became a trauma for all subsequent rulers of the USSR, and this was also inherited by Putin. Already in 2016, Vladimir Putin reproached Lenin in his public speeches, who, in his opinion, unnecessarily and in defiance of Stalin, defended the right of peoples to self-determination up to the point of secession.

Stalin supported the autonomy of the republics and was against the national independence of peoples. But Lenin’s model won. In Putin’s opinion, this laid a “historical mine” under the USSR, which destroyed the Soviet Union in 1991. However, this is, in Putin’s opinion, “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century,” because “historical Russia, which was created over a thousand years, collapsed.”

By equating the USSR and historical Russia, Putin actually announced his plans to restore the lost heritage. Many experts believe that this is about Putin’s attempts to restore the Russian Empire in a new form. However, I think that Putin does not want to step on the historical rake a second time: he does not need a multinational federation, where the right of peoples to self-determination will be preserved only formally, but still. Putin needs a united and indivisible Greater Russia. where the Russian ethnos will undoubtedly become dominant. In accordance with the concept of the “Russian world”, in which Russia appropriates the legacy of Kievan Rus, the Russian ethnic group will undoubtedly be dominant in it.

For two decades, Putin’s regime has followed this path, curtailing the rights of national republics, liquidating national schools, restricting the teaching of national languages, rendering once economically independent regions subsidized and completely dependent on Moscow. However, Ukrainians, as the most numerous diaspora with their own state outside of Russia, became for Putin not just a challenge, but a looming threat that disrupted plans to revive Greater Russia that included Moscow Russia, White Russia (Belarus) and Periphery Russia (Ukraine). There was a danger that Ukrainians in Russia could have become carriers of European political ideas and thus a new mine.

Anti-Russia in Putin’s mind and reality

Vladimir Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” was published on the Kremlin website in July 2021. In essence, it was a manifesto that envisaged the forcible integration of Ukraine into the Russian national space by military means.

At the end of the article, Vladimir Putin mentioned the “anti-Russia” project eight times. The Kremlin leader claimed that Western countries were actively turning Ukraine against Russia, setting the fraternal peoples at odds with each other. Numerous European experts rushed to jointly refute Putin’s claim.

But I think Putin was right that by 2021, Ukraine had indeed become anti-Russia. If you don’t count the Baltics, of all the post-Soviet countries, Ukraine developed the furthest on the path to democracy in the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR. The short period of democratization in Russia ended with the revenge of the Chekists and oligarchs when Putin was elected president. Ukraine, however, having experienced two Maidans, firmly set out on the path of European integration.

Political competition, the dependence of power on the people and an independent judiciary, civil society control over the power structures and the army, the absence of censorship, freedom of speech and creativity, respect for human rights and the primacy of the individual over the state – all of these ceased to be just slogans and became a strategy for the Ukrainian state, which in the name of the people declared its intention to become part of Europe.

Ukraine is a dangerous example for the Putin regime for Russians

However, for Putin’s Russia, which moved from a moderate autocracy to a military dictatorship, all these plans of Ukraine became a challenge, a threat and a slap in the face. For Putin, the danger also lay in the fact that Ukraine became a modern state and the center of Russia’s creative and political elite shifted from Moscow to Kyiv.

The Russian entertainment industry and entrepreneurs in general opened nightclubs and restaurants in Kyiv and Lviv, built ski resorts in the Carpathians, and invested in Ukrainian startups. Until the annexation of Crimea in 2014, over 70 percent of Russian TV series were filmed in Ukraine in collaboration with Ukrainian directors and actors. Among other things, six seasons of the extremely popular TV series “Svaty” (“The In-Laws”), the executive producer of which was Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were filmed there from 2008 to 2012.

Ukraine became a country that others, not just liberal and creative Russia, followed suit. Even Russian officials, seeing that no presidential candidate in Ukraine won the first round of the elections or received 90 percent, asked each other in astonishment: “Oh? Is this allowed?!” This is exactly what Putin could not forgive Ukraine for.

The failure of the plan for the political subordination of Ukraine

Putin wanted Ukraine to become another “Belarus” – a puppet state with a crazy dictator whom the Kremlin itself would put on the throne. When Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian leader of the Donetsk mafia, became president of Ukraine after the fifth attempt in 2010, the Kremlin decided that the game had been won, everything was going according to plan, and Ukraine’s fate as part of Greater Russia had been decided.

But in 2014, Yanukovych fled from the rebellious people, and an angry Putin declared war on Ukraine, annexing Crimea and using separatists in eastern Ukraine as his proxy forces. But gradually, the sharp confrontation in Donbas from 2014 to 2018 instead turned into a simmering conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy essentially fulfilled his election promise by 2020 and stopped the war in the east of the country (according to the UN, 26 civilians died in Donbas in 2020 and 25 in 2021 as a result of military activity). Realizing that the Greater Russia plan was in danger, Putin decided to finally resolve the “Ukrainian question” by launching a large-scale aggression against Ukraine. Russia’s anti-Ukrainian policy reached a new level.

Cancellation of the Ukrainian heritage

Russia has a long history of dispersing Ukrainian ethnic identity. Already in Tsarist Russia, the political conjuncture forced Ukrainians who wanted to pursue a career in the civil service to declare themselves ethnically Russian.

Nothing has changed in Putin’s Russia. Federation Council chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, whose mother bore the surname Bublei, prefers not to recall that she was born and spent her childhood in Ukraine. First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergey Kiriyenko bears his mother’s Ukrainian surname, his mother studied in Odesa. Gennady Timchenko, a pro-Putin oligarch with a Ukrainian surname, spent his childhood in Ukraine and graduated from school in the Odesa region.

However, they all consider themselves Russian, hiding their Ukrainian roots. And here are the astonishing figures: from 1989 to 2021, the number of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation decreased by 5.5 times – from 4.4 million to 0.8 million. It is quite obvious that there was no devastating plague among Ukrainians – Russians simply massively abandoned Ukrainian nationality, which had become politically unstable, and embraced Russian nationality.

The creeping elimination of Ukrainian culture in Russia has been going on for quite some time, but it is especially associated with Putin’s reign. As early as 2010, a court closed the only state library of Ukrainian literature in Moscow, and in 2018 it was finally liquidated on charges of distributing extremist books.

Over the past 20 years, nearly twenty Ukrainian national-cultural associations have been closed in southern Russia and the North Caucasus (the former Malinovyi Klyn). Until recently, five Ukrainian national centers operated in Krasnodar Krai. Their liquidation began in 2008.

The last of them, Sodruzhestvo Kuban-Ukraina, was closed in 2023. In 2021, a court liquidated the Prosvetitelstvo Center for Ukrainian Spiritual Culture and Education in the Far East in Primorsky Krai (the former Zeleny Klyn). In 2020, the Ukrainian cultural center Syry Klyn was liquidated in Omsk.

Ukrainian national-cultural associations in Astrakhan (the former Zholtyi Klyn), Rostov-on-Don, and Taganrog were closed. Some centers are being closed even despite their active support for the war in Ukraine. For example, the Ukrainian People’s Union of Kalmykia was closed in 2021, even though its leader, Vladimir Omelchak, approved of the annexation of Crimea.

There are exceptions. For example, in 2022, a new Ukrainian center, Slavutych, was established in North Ossetia. The organization’s chairman, Viktor Hamaza, often talks on social media about how Caucasian Ukrainians are sending humanitarian aid to Russian servicemen participating in the invasion of Ukraine.

The fight against the Ukrainian language

From September 1, 2025, the Ukrainian language has been removed from the school curriculum in Russia. This means the abolition of compulsory teaching of this language in primary, basic and secondary schools in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which Putin already considers Russia.

Already in 2017-2019, the use of Ukrainian as a state language was banned in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The constitution of annexed Crimea still maintains the status of Ukrainian as the state language.

However, this year, all Ukrainian schools in Crimea and the Russian-controlled territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions will be closed. Under the conditions of Russian occupation, Ukrainian is taught secretly, in secret apartments.

Putin’s obsession is the destruction of Ukraine and its cultural and historical heritage. This is the personal mania of the leader sitting in the Kremlin, which has become Russian national policy. And only the collapse of the Putin regime can stop this madness.

"Agency". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 11.08.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/russias-lost-agency/

Under the UN Charter, respect for the right of peoples to self-determination is a fundamental principle of international relations. UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960) states: "All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status..."

However, not all nations have agency. If a people that in no way manifests its agency is burdened with responsibility for the state, it is likely to hand over the power to decide its fate to a dictator. Will the Russian people have the right to self-determination after their defeat in the war, or will their fate be decided by a coalition of the victors? To answer this question, it is necessary to clarify the concept of “agency,” to which Nikolai Karpitsky has devoted another article in the Dictionary of War on PostPravda.Info.

Agency

In the broadest sense, agency is the ability to act as an independent actor, to make one’s own decisions, and not to be subject to the will of others. In the social sense, it is the ability to be an independent agent of influence and to assert one’s interests in society or on the international stage.

The agency of an individual is determined by their free will, which is expressed in actions. Collective agency is possible only through free collective action, in which an individual fulfils themselves and receives recognition from others. However, collective actions can also be coerced, leading to the loss of collective agency and the rise of authoritarian or totalitarian social systems.

The bearer of individual agency is a free person conscious of their ability to act and make decisions independently. The bearers of collective agency are free individuals who, despite differences in beliefs and interests, voluntarily unite to express a common stance. They embody collective agency in particular social forms – a people, civil society, the state, a religious movement, and so on. If collective actions are carried out under duress, this leads to the collapse of collective agency. Collective agency does not require unanimity, for it is grounded in the common actions of free people who may hold different beliefs and frequently diverge in their views on many issues. Unanimity arises when a people renounces its agency in favour of dictatorship.

The Agency of a People

Recognition of another’s agency is expressed in the recognition of rights – in the case of a person or an association of individuals, and in the recognition of sovereignty – in the case of peoples and states. The principle enshrined in UN documents, respect for the right of peoples to self-determination, entails recognition of their ability to shape their own agency. The sovereign right of a people is enshrined in many constitutions, which declare that the source of authority lies with the people. However, if a people fails to exercise its agency in practice, a dictator will almost certainly usurp it.

Thus, the German people lost their agency when Hitler came to power. The Stalinist regime created a new “Soviet” agency that displaced the agencies of other peoples. The Palestinians did not succeed in forming their own agency, distinct from the pan-Arab one, and when the Gaza Strip effectively gained independence in 2005, the agency of the Palestinian population was usurped by the terrorist organization Hamas.

The Agency of the Ukrainian People

A people’s agency is expressed in historical moments when society succeeds in breaking social inertia. Ukraine, like many other post-Soviet countries, remained for a long time caught in the inertia of the post-Soviet era. However, society asserted its agency by rising against the post-Soviet corrupt oligarchic system, which led to the Orange Revolution (2004–2005) and the Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014).

As a rule, in times of war, a rigid power vertical is established, and the agency of society diminishes. However, following Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the agency of Ukrainian civil society has grown; it has asserted itself as an independent force in the country’s defence alongside the state. This is evident in the growth of the volunteer movement, the large-scale improvised production of drones, and the supplying of servicemen at the front with everything they need. Moreover, when the public believed that the authorities had passed a flawed law, mass protests broke out in many Ukrainian cities on 23 July 2025, forcing the authorities to listen to the public and alter their stance.

How do Ukrainians perceive the agency of Russians?

At the beginning of the war, many Ukrainians believed that the Putin regime was waging war against them and turned to their friends, relatives, and fellow believers in Russia in an effort to achieve mutual understanding. Today, Ukrainians are largely convinced that all of Russia is waging war against them, and attempts to reach an understanding with Russians have all but ceased. In other words, Ukrainians no longer perceive the Russian people as possessing their own agency, distinct from that of the authorities. For the same reason, they do not regard the Russian opposition, which speaks on behalf of an imaginary “other Russia,” as having genuine agency. Respect is reserved only for individual Russians who openly oppose the Putin regime and support Ukraine, but they are seen not as representatives of Russia but as solitary heroes. They are treated in the same way as anti-fascist Germans during the Second World War. After all, at that time, despite their struggle, no one recognised the agency of the German people as distinct from that of Nazi Germany.

Who will decide Russia's fate after the war?

The Russian Constitution enshrines the principle that the people are the source of power. But if the people have renounced their agency in favour of the regime, they have thereby also renounced their right to self-determination. This delegitimises Russia as a subject of international law, and it continues to be taken into account only because it poses a military threat. This raises the question: who will decide the fate of Russia in the event of its defeat in the war – the Russian people or a coalition of the victors? This issue is not yet under discussion, but history offers a precedent.

The German people, having relinquished their agency in favour of Hitler, lost the ability to determine their own post-war future, and the fate of Germany was decided by the victorious powers. Different models of agency took shape in the divided parts of Germany. However, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans expressed a desire to integrate into the agency of the German people of the Federal Republic of Germany.

If, after Russia’s defeat in the war, the victorious countries also do not recognise the agency of the Russian people, this will create opportunities for developing new models of agency for the peoples of Russia. In some regions – Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and the Caucasus republics – statements asserting their own agency are already being voiced. In other regions, such as Siberia and the Far East, new models of agency have not yet taken shape, but the preconditions are already in place.

"Rashism". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 26.06.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/rashism-is-ideology-of-russian-regime/

Over the years of the war with Russia, the word “Rashism” has become firmly established in Ukrainian usage, although some political scientists regard it as a vague and unscientific notion. However, Ukrainians clearly understand what rashism is and how it differs from other forms of fascism. On May 2, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a definition of the term “rashism,” enumerating its main characteristics. This definition is descriptive in nature, and has therefore become the subject of another article by Nikolai Karpitsky for PostPravda.Info’s Dictionary of War.

Rashism

Rashism is a modern form of Russian fascism, an ideology of violently suppressing or destroying other cultural and national identities in order to expand the sphere of Russian identity’s dominance. 

The term “rashism” (from “Russian” and “fascism”) is used to denote a form of fascism that shares features with its historical manifestations – Italian fascism, German National Socialism (Nazism), and others. The ideology of rashism developed from the tradition of Russian chauvinism, which has historically had an imperial character.

Within rashist ideology, a special place is reserved for Ukraine. Rashists claim that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. Ukrainian identity is tolerated only as a provincial variant of Russian identity, while those Ukrainians who refuse to accept Russian identity as the sole valid one for themselves are treated as enemies. Whereas Hitler’s Nazism defined an enemy on the basis of race, rashism defines one on the basis of identity. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is justified by the supposed necessity of “bringing Ukraine back” and eradicating Ukrainian identity as an independent identity.

Rashism and Russian Chauvinism

Russian chauvinism has accompanied Russia’s development for centuries, manifesting both at the state level and in everyday life. At the level of state ideology, Russian chauvinism has taken various forms, from the concept of “Moscow, the Third Rome,” to the idea of communism, used to justify dictatorship, and up to the current concept of the “Russian world.” Yet its essence remained the same: the justification of military and political expansion, and the imposition of a single ideology in matters of culture, language, history, and religion. 

In everyday life, Russian chauvinism manifests itself in the belief that territories once conquered by Russia – such as Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Yakutia – automatically become an “integral part” of Russia. Residents of these regions are deprived of political subject status, including the right to self-determination. They are expected to adapt to the dominant Russian culture, speak Russian, and conform to the everyday norms familiar to Russians.

Meanwhile, Russians who move to these regions are not required to respect local languages and traditions. This attitude is evident in the so-called national republics within Russia, where even in major cities such as Kazan, landlords often openly state that they rent housing only to Russians. This discriminatory practice is treated as normal.

This trend was enshrined in law in August 2018, when the Law on Education was amended to remove the national languages of the republics from the list of compulsory school subjects. However, even before that, school remained the main tool for imposing the imperial version of Russian history on all the peoples of Russia.

The turning point that marked the transformation of Russian chauvinism into a fully fledged ideology of rashism came in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbas. It was then that Russian propaganda began actively employing chauvinist narratives to justify military aggression and terror against the Ukrainian people. Rashism is no longer merely cultural or political arrogance, but an ideological justification of war and of war crimes committed in the name of eradicating another national identity. Even someone who does not openly support aggression but propagates narratives that justify its aims – such as the idea of a “single people” or the mission of the “Russian world” – can also be regarded as an adherent of rashist ideology.

Rashist Ideology

Rashism is an imperial ideology built on the image of an enemy, mythologised history, and the concept of Russia’s special mission to expand the so-called “Russian world.” In the rashist worldview, the modern world is a battlefield between the “soulless” West and “spiritual” Russia. 

In this discourse, Ukrainian identity is regarded as unnatural, supposedly imposed by the West to weaken Russia. By this logic, Russia “must” reclaim Ukraine by force, and Ukrainians who reject Russian identity are to be regarded as traitors and enemies. 

In rashism, the ideological constructs of “Russian culture” and “Orthodoxy” substitute for both genuine culture and genuine religiosity. This artificial construct borrows elements from both the Soviet and the Tsarist eras, creating a self-contradictory system, yet rashists themselves generally fail to recognise these contradictions.

Rashists and Their Stance

Supporters of rashism largely back Putin’s regime, as they see it as an instrument in the struggle against Ukrainian identity. At the same time, they may express dissatisfaction with the government in other areas, such as corruption, social policy, or economic management. Within the rashist camp there is also a radical wing that opposes Putin, believing him not decisive or harsh enough in the struggle against Ukraine.

In Ukrainian public consciousness, a distinction is drawn between ideological rashists and those who support rashism passively and unthinkingly, without firm conviction. The first category includes rashists in the strict sense of the word – people who knowingly justify Russia’s aggression. The second category includes the “vatniki” – ordinary people who avoid responsibility for moral choices and are inclined toward relativism: “not everything is so clear-cut,” “everyone is guilty in the conflict,” “only God knows the truth,” and so on. A separate category is made up of the “orcs”. These are criminals who joined the army for material gain or to avoid criminal punishment. Their motivation is not ideological: they commit war crimes driven by personal cruelty and a sense of impunity.

What rashists, vatniki, and orcs have in common is a lack of empathy for the victims of aggression and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for their country’s actions.

Rashism and Necro-Imperialism

If rashism represents the ideological stance of the Russian authorities, then necro-imperialism describes the actual state of Russian public consciousness and the political system. The difference is like that between communism as an ideology and Stalinism as actual practice: while the ideologically justified goal was the struggle against “class enemies,” in reality Stalinism manifested itself in mass denunciations and the repression of innocent people. Accordingly, if rashism denotes the ideology of expanding the “Russian world,” necro-imperialism describes, on the one hand, the authorities’ treatment of the population as a resource to be expended in pursuit of their goals, and, on the other, the people’s own willingness to accept such a role – evident in their readiness to die pointlessly on the front lines in Ukraine.

The ruling clique in Russia, made up largely of former security service operatives, is not bound to any particular ideology. Their attitude toward ideological constructs is purely instrumental: these constructs are used only insofar as they help maintain power. This cynicism was inherited from the Soviet security services. However, shifts in ideology according to political conditions do not alter the worldview underlying necro-imperialism.

Thus, rashism is an ideological conceptualisation of the fear of the world’s complexity and the drive to destroy everything that cannot be dominated, while necro-imperialism is the manifestation of this drive in social consciousness and the political system. 

Legal Definition of Rashism

On May 2, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Resolution “On the use of the ideology of rashism by the political regime of the Russian Federation, and on the condemnation of the principles and practices of rashism as totalitarian and misanthropic” (No. 3078-IX).

In its statement, the Verkhovna Rada defines rashism as “a new variety of totalitarian ideology and practices that underlie the regime formed in the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin, based on the traditions of Russian chauvinism and imperialism, the practices of the Soviet communist regime, and National Socialism (Nazism); … the characteristic features and consequences of rashism are:

– systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms;

- cult of power and militarism;

– a cult of personality around the leader at the top of the power vertical, and the sacralisation of state institutions;

– the self-glorification of Russia and Russians through the violent suppression and/or denial of the existence of other peoples;

– the use of practices aimed at spreading the Russian language and culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, the media, political and civic institutions, and the promotion of the ideas of the “Russian world” among other peoples, in order to implement expansionist state policy;

– systematic violation of universally recognised principles and norms of international law, including respect for the sovereignty of other states, their territorial integrity and internationally recognised borders, and failure to observe the principle of the non-use of force or the threat of force;

– the creation, financing, and armed support of unlawful armed groups and separatist movements on the territory of other sovereign states, and the creation and support of terrorist organisations;

the use of prohibited methods of warfare and the systematic commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity;

– the systematic organisation and perpetration of mass killings, executions, torture, deportations, the creation of artificial conditions leading to famine, other forms of mass physical terror, genocide, and persecution on ethnic, national, religious, political, or other grounds;

– the systematic use of economic and energy coercion against other states;

– regular threats to use nuclear weapons against other states and to cause technological (man-made) disasters.”

"Evil". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 22.05.2025

URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/evil-an-evaluative-concept-or-a-reality-a-chasm-between-eyewitnesses-of-war-and-observers-from-afar/

An ordinary person perceives as evil anything that harms them or contradicts their ethical and religious beliefs. On this basis, researchers often conclude that evil is an evaluative concept and should therefore be excluded from the objective analysis of social processes. However, with the outbreak of the war, Ukrainians came to realise through their own experience that the question of evil is not abstract but existential: it is bound up with their right to life.

However, in conversations with their friends, relatives, and fellow believers in Russia, Ukrainians began to hear different responses: some said that no one can know the whole truth, and that calling the full-scale invasion of Ukraine evil is merely a subjective judgment; others claimed that both sides are to blame for the war and Russia cannot be blamed alone; still others openly described the aggression as good and the resistance of the Ukrainian people as evil. 

Anyone who directly witnesses the evil of war cannot agree with such interpretations of evil:

 – agnosticism – “We cannot know who is to blame for the war”;

 – subjectivism – “You consider the war against you evil – but that is your subjective judgment; we think otherwise”;

 – relativism – “It is impossible to clearly determine what constitutes evil, because in war everyone is to blame, both the aggressor and the victim of aggression.”

 – antihumanism – “We attacked you because you are evil that must be destroyed”.

For Ukrainians, it is of existential importance to have a definition of evil that does not depend on subjective judgments or ideological biases.

Evil

Evil in the broadest sense is that whose existence is unacceptable in light of values; it is that which exists despite everything thought not to be allowed to exist. However, this definition requires clarification, as it admits of two opposing interpretations that must be regarded as mistaken because they undermine the moral compass.

Misinterpretations of Evil

1. The Absolutisation of Evil

The first mistake is to ascribe evil to the very essence of humanity, life, the world, or any part of it. Such an understanding makes evil absolute and leads to a hostile perception of reality and the justification of misanthropic ideologies. History offers examples: The Bolsheviks ascribed evil to the social nature of “class enemies,” while the Nazis attributed it to the racial or biological nature of their victims. Russia’s current aggression against Ukraine is likewise justified by the notion that evil is allegedly inherent in the nature of Western civilisation – a civilisation Russia claims to oppose.

From the standpoint of theistic religions, such a position is utterly unacceptable, for to claim that evil is inherent in the very essence of something is to accuse God of creating evil. Although historical doctrines have attributed evil to the essence of God or to the material world, they have always proved destructive to traditional cultures. In contrast, in ancient thought, evil was understood as the absence or deficiency of good, while Christianity saw it as the denial of the fullness of life resulting from a mistaken exercise of free will.

2. Moral Relativism

The second mistake lies in reducing evil solely to a subjective judgment. In this case, a person labels as evil anything that seems bad to them in a particular situation. Yet what is bad for one may be good for another. For example, one man was rejected by a girl, while another became the one she chose. This gives rise to the idea that evil is merely a construct or an illusion, and thus even Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is deemed ‘ambiguous,’ depending on subjective perception. Ultimately, this leads to moral relativism, which ignores the difference between the aggressor and their victim.

The Unacceptability of Subjective Judgments in the Objective Analysis of Social Phenomena

Both stances, the absolutisation of evil and moral relativism, are actively used to manipulate public opinion. When addressing one audience, Russian propaganda relies on the notion of the West as absolute evil, an enemy Russia is allegedly ‘forced’ to fight on Ukrainian territory. For the other audience, arguments are framed in terms of moral relativism: everyone is to blame for the conflict – Russia, Ukraine, and the West – and therefore it is unfair to blame Russia alone.

The scientific approach to the analysis of social phenomena rules out ethical, religious, and subjective judgments. In this context, evil as an evaluative category should be set outside the scope of scientific analysis. Therefore, it is important to distinguish the concept of evil from the subjective judgment of ‘what is bad,’ since such judgments depend on views and circumstances and can even be reversed. Instead, the concept of evil should reflect objective reality and be independent of personal opinions and beliefs.

Evil as the Denial of the Right to Exist

The common core of views about evil across different cultural traditions is this: evil is a form of the absence or negation of life, a deficient reality that brings suffering. Thus, disease is the absence of health, and death is the negation of life. In the social dimension, evil manifests itself as the denial of other people’s right to exist. This is manifested in actions or attitudes that directly or indirectly deny the value of human life. Such social phenomena are objective and do not depend on subjective judgments.

However, not every harm caused by an action testifies to evil. An act is evil only when it is motivated or justified by the denial of another’s right to exist, and this is precisely the objective criterion of evil, independent of subjective opinion. This approach allows us to formulate the concept of evil at the interpersonal and social levels.

Russia’s Military Aggression Is Objectively Evil

Evil is embodied in actions that cause harm and suffering and express an attitude toward others that, to some degree, denies their existence.

The objectivity of evil does not mean that it possesses an essence of its own. Evil is a characteristic of attitude, not of essence. Yes, the nature of a criminal is not, in itself, evil. On the contrary, evil manifests itself when a person denies their humanity. By attributing evil to the very essence of humanity, we thereby justify denying people their right to exist, and in doing so, we reproduce evil ourselves.

The decision to attack Ukraine fits the definition of evil given above. Vladimir Putin stated that the purpose of the invasion is “denazification”. This term masks a policy aimed at destroying Ukrainian identity, as can be seen in the occupied territories. Thus, the war was launched on the premise of denying Ukrainians the right to exist. This is an objective fact, independent of subjective judgments.

The denial of reality can manifest not only in direct violence but also in disregard, when the victim ceases to be perceived as a living individual. This is evident in how many Russians sincerely believe the propaganda about Ukraine’s ‘salvation’ from the Nazis, even though they could have learned the truth from their Ukrainian friends, relatives, or fellow believers. In other words, they perceive even their loved ones in Ukraine not as living human beings, but as abstractions. Such disregard is another form of denying existence, not aggressive in form, but leading to the same consequences: support for war, mass violence, and killings. However, even if a person firmly believes they wish Ukrainians well, sincerely convinced that Russia is ‘liberating’ Ukraine, they nonetheless become an accomplice to evil. The subjective perception of one’s own act as good does not change the fact that, objectively, it is an embodiment of evil.

One of the most dangerous consequences of war is becoming accustomed to evil – its normalization. The seizure of territories, torture, and the killing of civilians cease to be regarded as utterly unacceptable. However, this “normalisation” is subjective: it does not negate the objective basis of understanding evil as an attitude toward people which denies their very existence. It was this attitude that was put into practice in the war against an entire nation.